What’s currently the toughest crisis communications job in the world of public relations and public information? It very well could rest in the hands of one Brian Sibley who is the hired gun from his very own Sibley PR who is currently in the uneviable position of serving as spokesman for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Incident Command post, the central information command for everyone involved in the Gulf coast oil spill clean up.
Sibley recently spoke to the folks at ZDNet, particularly about how he recognized the role of social media in the news cycle, but also how he has to cater to “traditional” media demands:
“I am a proponent of social media and the progression of the practice of PR, but it was important to see how valuable face-to-face interaction still is…There’s so much information that the media – especially the media invested in doing an accurate job – needed someone to help them navigate through this massive amount of detail coming out every day, and still changing rapidly. They couldn’t just push raw data out to the public because it wasn’t useful, but I could sit down with a producer or correspondent and help them filter through it.
Of course, despite all of the hype around social media, when you are involved with a news story of this magnitude, you need to be a communications professional that also understands how traditional media, specifically broadcast, works.
There’s definitely a news cycle for the broadcast media. They need their information quickly, and by 2 p.m. to feed the 5 p.m. broadcast for the evening news.”
Also on The Fire PIO…
- Netcast Appearance and Banned for Life – June 16, 2010
- A Crisis Communications Crisis – June 8, 2010
- Tiger Woods way over par at the Crisis Communications Open – February 20, 2010
- Nothing to say says Volumes – February 12, 2010
No Comments