Virginia Tech Shooting Highlights Truth As First Casualty In A Crisis
The first is that truth is the first casualty in a crisis just as it is the first casualty in a war. Within the first hours of the shooting rumours about what was happening were flying thick and fast and reported as gospel across the air waves. Reports ranged from “there might be two shooters” to “the shooter was Chinese”, right down to one reporter claiming the shooter had obtained his visa to the US from the American consulate in Shanghai . Given that we now know the shooter was an American of Korean descent, it has to be asked, from what source had the reporter obtained that information. We may never know. The simple reality is that, in a crisis situation, reporters, in the rush to get a scoop, to be the first to report something, do not have the time to carefully check and verify every piece of information they hear – they only have time to report it and move on with finding further information.
Unfortunately now, more than ever, in the words of Mark Twain, “a lie gets half-way around the world before the Truth can get its pants on”. Chinese who are complaining about the American media for reporting that the shooter was a Chinese student in the States should be asking why their Internet media were so quick to pick up the stories and run them rather than doing their own due diligence on the reports. The simple fact is the news moves fast in a crisis situation.
What can companies learn from this for their own crisis management preparedness? First of all accept that you will never have full control of the news reporting, especially in the very early hours of a crisis when every rumour, every whisper, every half-truth and even out-and-out lie will be reported and will travel across the Internet faster than news carried on telegraphic wires in Mark Twains day. Then be prepared to spend much of your time issuing statements that set the record straight, that put your side of the story out there. From the perspective of tools to do this the best is to have a “dark site” – a section of your website that is normally inaccessible to the outside world – ready to replace your website within hours of a crisis so that accurate information can be communicated to the public and to the media. In other words, use today’s technology to bypass the purveyors of misinformation.
The second point that needs to be made is that the media will always sensationalise crises like this to the point that they drive the news for the next couple of weeks. It has to be asked – again without belittling the deaths of those young people who were slain at Virginia Tech - how the deaths of 33 people compare with the deaths of more than 300 through the violence in Iraq on the same day. Yet Iraq has been pushed from lead story all week in deference to the Virginia Tech massacre.
Perhaps it is because the media and all of us are trying to make some sense of a senseless killing. Why would a student walk around his own campus on mindless killing spree? But then, why would a suicide bomber kill himself and many who share his own faith? Murder in whatever guise is mindless to this writer.
Maybe the media – and consumers of the media – paid more attention to the Virginia Tech slayings because they occurred somewhere that was supposed to be peaceful and safe. After all, the killings in Iraq are to be expected as they occur in a war zone. Or is it because the killings in Iraq have become mundane? This author hopes not.
Leo Tolstoy captured the senselessness of violent death best: “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six”. Perhaps we’ll never have all the answers; but let’s hope we can keep our perspective on life.
Oh boy, you’re going to get some comments on this one!
You are so totally right (write!)