It’s all based on the entire concept of arse covering, and making sure you can’t be caught out in a contradiction or lie, because you don’t say anything worth lying about in the first place. For a career politician, the entire art of political PR is proving that it's not your fault when things go wrong, but all your responsibility when something is going right.
This is to be expected of politicians, because this is what they do, and it takes expereinced and savvy political journos to cut through all the slimy bullshit. But it is genuinely crushing to see that attitude of non-accountability filter through to the country’s emergency services.
When bad shit is going now, people need to know what is going on, and they need to know right fucking now. Threats of fire, or flood, or tsunami; all need to be reported quickly and clearly, on as many platforms as humanly possible.
And while some emergency organisations have some comms teams, and have mastered the use of social media to get the message out, others are so busy arse covering, and trying to make sure everything is 100 percent right before saying anything, and this can disintegrate some valuable time.
There have been several recent cases where Civil Defence has failed to do this part of the job - their tsunami warning systems is a shambles, forcing breaking news reporters to resort to multiple sources, often offering conflicting information. They're so terrified of putting something out that might not be 100 percent accurate, they don’t say anything, and can waste more of that precious time before declaring whether there is actually a tsunami coming, or how big it will be.
Various police comms teams can also be awful at withholding information, with reporters unable to reach the right person, fobbed off with the promise of a media release that are always too fucking late.
There are comms people in New Zealand's emergency crews who are terrific, and they tend to be the ones who have embraced the spreadable nature of new communication tools, like Twitter. The Fire team have a dedicated media Twitter feed which has proven incredibly effective at dishing out the fastest, most important information, with invaluable data spread during terrible events like the Christchurch port hills fires.
Comms people get annoyed when they have to take 10 calls from 10 different media organisations, but not everybody listens to the same radio station, or reads the same websites, and everyone needs to know there is a goddamn inferno bearing down on them. During the Canterbury emergency, everyone got short, sharp public statements from that Fire twitter at the same time, and everyone had the same vital evacuation news.
Across the whole country, NZTA is actually pretty darn good at keeping everyone updated with transport-related emergencies and road shutdowns. It can still be hard to talk to an actual person, but their social media team get the message on road closures and delays out there bloody quickly..
This isn’t just a matter of reporters whining because they’re being put on hold while trying to confirm a report other organisations have made. These are important issues around getting important information about safety and danger out to as many people as possible, as soon as possible, and not waiting for the sign-off from someone with the power.
A lot of comms people who have come from journalism forget this as soon as they sign up for the dark side, but there really isn't time to arse about with power games. It's literally a matter of life and death.
- Katherine Grant
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