Lessons from Ferguson: Are You Listening?
[By Thom Fladung, former managing editor, The Plain Dealer]
A year after Ferguson, the lessons continue to reverberate. Is anyone listening?
At the recent National Association of Black Journalists convention in Minneapolis, a panel of journalists spoke about the lessons they learned in Ferguson, Missouri, covering the shooting of Michael Brown, its aftermath, and how that experience and reporting at similar scenes has changed the way they’re doing journalism.
Joe Grimm, a colleague of mine at the Detroit Free Press, is now visiting professor in residence at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He’s also one of journalism’s best thinkers. Grimm was at the NABJ conference and wrote about the panel.
The bottom line: Journalists who were stymied and stonewalled by silent “official” sources from public safety and government turned to the community instead.
Those public officials should pay heed to these lessons from Ferguson. With or without you, the reporters will get their story. Will your facts, perspective and context be part of their reporting? Only if you’re prepared with a strategic communications plan that works in the heat of a breaking crisis.
Listen to the voice of Wesley Lowery, a Shaker Heights native and Washington Post reporter who covered Ferguson: “It was hard to get even the most basic information,” Grimm quoted Lowery. “The first press conference by the police was on the second night and it had very little information or explanation of what had happened. What we saw as we covered that first week was a lack of information.”
Lowery was arrested at a restaurant while covering the demonstrations and recently was charged with trespassing and interfering with a police officer. He’s been ordered to appear in court. “Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous,” Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, said in a statement. “You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident.”
Getting your message out amid the chaos, emotions and misinformation that accompany an incident like a police shooting is the very definition of crisis communications.
Are you prepared? Do you have a crisis communications plan? Have you created and vetted messages that can be used for such a situation? Do you know which of your people will be out front, talking to the media, the community and your other stakeholders – and are they prepared? Are you ready for real-time social media backlash and digital age journalism that won’t wait while you’re scrambling to respond?
Here’s how Grimm summarized the lessons from the NABJ panel: “Reporters in Ferguson experienced police silence, being cordoned away from the news, tear gas and arrest. These journalists say they now rely more on the community for news, truth and balance. They are also opening their lenses to show the larger story of systemic racial injustice.”
The core principles that define our approach to crisis management apply: Tell the truth. Tell it all. Tell it first.
And have a plan.
Because there will be stories. Will your voice be a part of those stories?
Photo Credit: Copyright Bruce Hennes 2011