This is coincidentally timed as I plan my topics out weeks in advance. I was teaching my Emergency Management graduate students about crisis communications. In the homework assignment due that day, I thought one student wasn’t paying attention based on their describing aid to suddenly homeless disaster survivors as “goodies.” As I read more, they noted their heavy economics background. Ah, an economist! Interesting, it was their bias that determined necessities were “goodies” and all that connotes. This was a first for me.
The very next day in the news, it was reported that New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams had to make a statement to push back against what Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he was doing: Adams was giving homeless migrants credit cards to buy whatever they want vs the reality - saving the city millions of dollars to feed migrants on debit cards that only worked in stores that sold food because the food program they had contracted previously gave out bad quality food that got thrown out anyway. Never mind that the reason NY must do this program is because Greg Abbott sent buses of migrants up there.
Do the facts matter? Not so much.
Bias exists everywhere. In what we read, what is reported, what is absorbed and what is ignored. This is especially true in a disaster.
Or an active shooter incident at a presidential candidate’s rally.
I learned in the military the first report is always wrong. There is not enough information, emotions are high, stress is skewing things, the demand for information so “appropriate” action can be taken is unrelenting. The ability for the average Joe and Jane to be instant field reporters (with no training, just a phone and a social media platform) makes this difficult for the professionals to control. Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t get it back in. Rumors persist. Skepticism persists.
That homework assignment? It was a response to a 20 minute video on how New York University handled 9/11 when it happened. The “goodies” were a $200 clothing stipend, a laptop and replacement textbooks for those 4,000 students (of NYU’s 27,000) who were evacuated from dorms located a few blocks away from the World Trade Center or were already up at the main campus and prevented from returning. They left with nothing. How could that ever be seen as something to be judged harshly? Bias.
When something like this happens, when there is something out of your control because it happened in your business or your community, be ready to strike an appropriate tone with accurate information…but anticipate that no matter what you do, people are going to view it in a way you didn’t intend.
Be prepared by having a plan for how you would handle information in a crisis or disaster. Also be prepared for pushback. Get ahead of the possibility by thinking about it and planning for it. You know what a good crisis comms plan looks like? It looks like a lovely plank in a robust business continuity plan…one with a step to put out a Q&A page to keep rumors under control.
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