John Guilfoil writes… The Astroworld Tragedy is gut-wrenching. Media reporting about it, especially a New York Times story today, reminds us how important professional journalism is to finding the truth behind a major incident. In the story, a source tells the Times that Houston Police Chief Troy Finner shared concerns about crowd control directly with performer Travis […]
From the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats… Effective public communication can help prevent attacks on crowded places by encouraging reporting. It can also reduce the impact of attacks that it was not possible to prevent by informing the public about how to protect themselves. Despite this, there has historically been limited research […]
David Ball, writing for PR News, hits it on the head… With the return of HBO’s “Succession” next month, I remember at least one teachable communication moment from the second season. In episode six, a magazine writer approaches the leaders of fictitious Waystar Royco with a story of sexual harassment and abuse within the company. The story […]
From George Platsis, writing in Security Intelligence… So far in this organizational resilience journey, we have focused mainly on the planning phase, or, as some call it, ‘left of the boom’. For a moment, let’s look at a ‘right of the boom’ (post-incident) theme: crisis management (CM), an important component of your cyber resilience planning. A good CM […]
From our colleague in Australia, Tony Jaques, reprinted with his permission… Boards and individual directors are now very clearly in the crosshairs when their organisation is battered by an operational crisis or high-profile issue. It used to seem sufficient to jettison the CEO and a handful of executives as red meat for the media, investors […]
From Ken Broda-Bahm, Ph.D., writing for The Persuasive Litigator… Arriving for the preparation meeting, the witness notices that there’s someone new in the room: a communications consultant. A non-lawyer visiting from out-of-town, the consultant is introduced by the lawyer as a specialist in legal communication and as someone who “is here to help us prepare […]
From Renee DiResta, writing in The Atlantic… One Sunday morning in July of last year, a message from an anonymous account appeared on “Bernie or Vest,” a Discord chat server for fans of Senator Bernie Sanders. It contained an image of Shahid Buttar, the San Francisco activist challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 2020 congressional runoff, and […]
Work Environment Industry Leaders Join to Create Akros Network Specialists in HR Training, Ethics, Safety, Compliance and Communications Form One-Stop Shop AKRON – October 6, 2021 – Four industry leading firms that specialize in the critical building blocks of successful organizations have formed a network giving employers one place to go for answers to high-risk […]
Introduction by Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications There are many reasons to be fearful of speaking in public. If you’re reading this, you don’t need that list. You already know it by heart. I used to be one of those people, scared to death of getting up in front of a group, saying the wrong thing, […]
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications In 1989, the first episode of “The Simpsons” aired. The Berlin Wall came down. And during the World Health Organization’s AIDS conference, one of the first documented ransomware attacks occurred – distributed via floppy disk. A mailing list of 20,000 doctors and AIDS researchers received a floppy disk that was supposed […]