The media plays a very important role in most community, public policy, national, and international conflicts.
Depending on the nature and the amount of media coverage, the situation can be made better or worse. Direct appeals can also be made to the media’s sense of social responsibility.
What is a crisis?
According to Wikipedia, a crisis is any event that is, or is expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, business, group, community or whole society. Crises are deemed to be negative changes in the security, economic, political, societal or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning. More loosely, it is a term meaning ‘a testing time’ or an ‘emergency event’.
Web Strategies Australia
We work with small, medium and large companies and community groups across a broad range of industries in Australia. Apart from devising Crisis Management Plans we also host workshops, hold briefings, plan and develop media training and run strategy sessions. Our highly skilled Media Relations Consultant Annie O’Shea believes that every business and organisation should have an up to date, workable, easy to implement Crisis Management Plan.
Any plan is not worth the paper it’s written on unless it’s reviewed and updated to coincide with unexpected changes, company expansions, new management roles, projects and services.
Even if you have a brand-new Crisis Management Plan it can easily fail if it doesn’t reflect the delivery mechanisms of ever changing and evolving new media as well as traditional communication approaches.
If a company manages a crisis professionally and efficiently it can minimise the negative impact that a crisis can potentially have on a business and its long-term operations.
If a crisis isn’t handled well, it has the potential for a company’s earnings to plummet and severely tarnish its reputation for a much longer period of time (and in some cases, never see a company fully recover).
