Peter Creswick wrote:
Two, create a SINGLE MEDIA LIAISON point, ie, a "GFA Media Liaison
Officer", if you will, ie, ONE phone number, for the media to call.
To go a bit further, I think we need to consider creating a "GFA Duty
Officer" position, staffed at any one time by one of a number of
suitable people, RTO types, ie, have them rostered, but with ONE phone
number only known to GFA people, that can be redirected to whoever the
duty officer is on any given day / weekend / whatever.
Then, when an incident occurs, that one person becomes the receiver of
all information from the site, the club concerned, etc.
Put yourself in the position of that person.
You're gardening at home on a Sunday afternoon. Somewhere, someone in
Australia has an accident. That person's club is busy liaising with
ambulance, police and ATSB, satisfying their duty of care and their
statutory requirements. Notifying the GFA's media liaison is a pretty
distant priority. Remember, we have duties of care, laws and
regulations, and they say our priorities are to care for the injured,
assist the emergency services, contact the ATSB and notify the RTO/Ops.
The media, who have been monitoring emergency services frequencies
with a scanner, are all over it. They're trying to get telephone
interviews before the ambulance turns up, and they have an outside
broadcast van in transit to the airfield hoping to get some juicy
footage. Even if nobody lets them in they're going to be parked
outside the gate with a 100x zoom lens hoping to catch something
worth pixellating on the six o'clock news.
Reporters pretty quickly figure out that the GFA has a media liaison,
and they ring you up. When you answer the phone you'll get a barrage
of questions about some accident which you have absolutely zero reliable
information about, and you'll be expected to provide useful, accurate
and coherent responses to their questions.
Any questions they ask will need to be answered with, "I don't know," or
"No comment," because you won't have the info needed to give accurate
answers. All you'll really be able to do is offer general motherhood
statements about how gliding is safe but unforgiving. Those kind of
responses are going to make a reporter yawn, hang up, and talk to
someone who actually knows something worth reporting.
(or, more likely, it'll inspire the journo to just make something up).
Further, it should become mandatory for local / involved GFA members to
report in ASAP, so that the facts are gathered ASAP, AND it should also
be mandatory that NO MEDIA INTERVIEWS be given by those local / on
scene, AND that it be mandatory that those people refer the media
immediately to the "GFA Media Liaison Officer" and website.
Your "No media interviews" rule is what makes reporters make stuff up.
They have a thirst for information, and if information is not provided
they'll invent it. That's why last weekend's accident had six different
accounts of what happened from six different media outlets: nobody
said anything substantitive, so they fabricated it from whole cloth.
Last year's launching accident at Stonefield was reported as a fatality,
as a hang glider accident, as involving a light aircraft, and as resulting
in serious spinal injuries by various media agencies. None of those
assertions were true. One reporter even said, "It is unclear whether
the accident occurred during take-off or landing," if you can believe
it. To which the obvious response is, "It was unclear *to that reporter*,
which wasn't surprising because nobody talked to him and he really
didn't have the faintest idea, so that's what he said in his report."
Far better to have the club nominate someone to take media calls and
respond to them with simple, quotable, accurate data. "A single seat
glider was involved in a launching accident. The pilot has sustained
leg fractures and has been taken to Adelaide for treatment. The ATSB
will be releasing a report once they've concluded any investigatory
activities they believe should be carried out, until then we cannot
speculate on the cause of the accident without compromising those
investigations." That gives the media everything they need to write
an accurate story with first-hand data.
In short, the only way to stop the media reporting crap, and worse, is
to "feed the media" what WE want them to say.
Agreed, but a GFA media liaison who is expected to respond cogently
in an emergency isn't the right way to achieve that.
- mark
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I tried an internal modem, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton
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