The Laughing Wolf

A Quick Growl From The Lair

Some quick professional adivce to official spokespeople. When you have an incident take place that is way out of the norm, it is the wrong thing to do to immediately declare that there is no evidence of terrorism.

When you do this, you commit the one unforgivable sin of communications -- you lie. When you lie, you have just lost every bit of credibility you have, your institution has, and it taints everything else from any agency or whatever involved in responding to the incident. It does not do anything to help prevent panic; instead, it can help foster panic because people are not so stupid as you seem to think. When you are caught in a blatant lie early on, it tends to make people believe you are covering up something far worse, and as such it then causes them to do the very things you don't want them to do.

Not only does this give consipracy theorists a field day, it causes even the most rational of people to doubt and question. This is particularly true if the incident involves something like ricin, which is not a naturally occurring item and must be manufactured.

Resist the temptation to be en loco parentis to the great unwashed masses and be professional. Stick with the facts that something is an isolated incident, no signs of any others around, what is being done, what is planned, and how you will respond if it is not isolated. Emphasize the isolated and contained all you want, and that things are still preliminary and further tests needed to confirm. That is what you should be doing.

Doing anything else invites detailed examination of every aspect of the incident, and casts doubt over any findings released. Because you started with a lie, people have a legitimate concern that you are less interested in the truth and far more interested in covering things up.

May such never happen to you, but if it does, be honest -- for the cost of honesty is always far less than what a lie will cost you and your institution.

LW