I always love going to the firehouse on an early Sunday morning and having a cup of coffee while shooting the breeze with those congregating before Church or gearing up for a day with the family. I didn’t expect to drink my coffee today while getting hammered for not holding the lofty position of Czar of all Media.
Don’t get me wrong. I am respected for the job I do as PIO. We get good reviews for our website and media placements in both the weekly local papers as well as the larger dailies and on TV. But for some reason, a few of my brothers and sisters think that in addition to providing information I can also swing a magic Halligan and tell the media what to print, where to place it and how extensive the coverage should be.
It seems some of the kitchen pundits were wondering why a captioned picture of one of our firefighters, receiving an EMS citation for his civilian response to assist patients involved in a major MVA, featured himself and an ex-Chief and not the current Chief. The award was presented at a Chiefs Council dinner with officers and members of six departments present.
I went on to tell the crowd in the kitchen that I did indeed originally send a photo with a picture of the current Chief and the recipient at the dinner as well. The editor of the paper in question e-mailed me back to see if I would be able to send him additional pictures of the presentation to choose from. I obliged. It appears he liked the ex-Chief photo better and printed that one since the recipient and ex-Chief are related and thought that was a better angle for the piece. The coffee crew wondered why I sent more than one picture and why I didn’t tell the editor to only use the picture with the current Chief.
I related to the crowd, now circling me with torches, that I try to be as accommodating as possible, but have no say in editorial placement of materials once they are in the hands of the editors. This made sense to many but one curmudgeon still wondered why I didn’t send just the one photo, and tell the editor that’s it.
Are you a PIO? No, but I stayed at a Holliday Inn Express last night.
Anyone else have an experience where arm chair quarterbacks think we should have greater sway over what is actually printed?
Also on The Fire PIO…
- Looks like we are getting some Respect – December 7, 2010
- How do I Address a Judge? – November 18, 2010
- A PIO Social Media Christmas – December 22, 2010
Somewhat on the topic (please forgive my indulgence), but a local department has a member who, when faced with a confrontation with an opposing body (usually the county fire department), threatens to call the media and “put them in the paper”.
I’ve tried to enlighten this esteemed member that, while we can notify the media and explain our point of view, we have no control over how the story would play out. That is, of course, assuming that the media would even bite into trivial matters (what seems big to us isn’t always big to the media).
I guess what I’m saying is, there’s always those who just don’t get it.
By Rick Ornberg Owner/CEO – Eagle Mountain Promotions
Once I demonstrated how the local papers checked their own stuff. Years ago our run reports were an open book to the press, and each week there’d be rundown of fire, accident and ambulance reports. (This PRE-MICU days.) They ran a story on a river rescue we performed where we used a Jim Bouy, controlled by lines from each side of the narrow river, to pull the potential victim out of a dam backwash. The newspaper account read, “Firefighter Jim Bouy entered the river with safety lines and successfully rescued the victim,…” The following week we sent a photo of two of us presented a Certificate of Heroism to the piece of equipment propped against the wall with a fire helmet balanced on top. They didn’ print THAT photo either.
While I served as PIO for my local volunteer fire department, I was able to build up the image of the department as well as effectively educate the public about what we do.
Our PR efforts had grown to almost weekly contributions to our local paper and they printed our press releases verbatim. But, that wasn’t good enough for one of our firehouse’s self-proclaimed media (and you can insert every other topic here) experts.
He took issue with an article that featured a team of individuals from our department who did some outstanding work at an incident. He felt that if EVERYONE who responded to the call couldn’t be listed in the article, that NO ONE should be identified.
He didn’t understand how listing all 23 responders (including those who stood by at the station) not only diminished our chances of getting the article printed, but it also diminished the efforts of those who stood out from those who just showed up.
We’ve been mis-quoted, wrongly identified and even mis-represented despite our best efforts to accurately and thoroughly inform the media and satisfy our resident experts.
I feel your pain.
Having the media misrepresent or miscommunicate an agency’s story is a complaint I have heard ever since becoming involved in the industry. There will often be a name misspelled, a photo miscaptioned, or even an unflattering angle explored by the media that is not how we want our stories told. However this is not something we need to continue to deal with.
We need to stop relying on the media to tell our stories and tell them ourselves. Now is truly the time to do so since the proliferation of Social Media will allow us to do that with few barriers in our way. We can do far better for the well being of our agencies by effectively communicating our own value, explaining our own views, and becoming a trusted source of information to the communities we serve.