Is it ever okay to tell the media NO COMMENT?
It's a question that pops up every time I do media training: "Are there instances when a spokesperson should say "No Comment" to the media?" In one word, okay make that three...Are you crazy? You should never say it.
Okay, I concede that there are times when you can't even say boo to journalists who keep pressing you for answers, but I think the words “No Comment” or “I'll decline to comment” is an admission of something and that something isn't usually good.
Here's what you can say instead: “I will be very happy to comment once our pending litigation is successfully resolved,” or even, "I am still gathering all the facts and information on the incident so any statement I make now will be presumptive and erroneous, I can promise though that a release will be issued by tomorrow morning."
The media aren't stupid, they know that what you really mean "No Comment" but guess what? The words never left your mouth and that means they can't report it. The result is that you and your company can avoid looking negative, defensive, secretive or at the very worst, guilty.
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Judette Coward Puglisi (MSc, Dip IR, BA), Managing Director. Find out more 
Over the past two weeks, we have handled three press conferences and I observed something startling.
The reporters covering the story were on average about 22 years old. In some instances they could have been younger. And I think the general inexperience of reporters today may be a reason why we are getting increasingly just plain bad reporting.
In once case, a television reporter handed the microphone to a Minister to hold while she conducted her interview. When I whispered to her afterwards that she shouldn't do that because she was giving away control of her interview, she responded by saying that no one ever told explained that to her at the station where she worked.
Here's the thing Hilean, I disagree that journalists deliberately seek to manipulate words or get things wrong. I believe that the code of truthtful reporting is very much alive in newsrooms. My concern is that I am seeing such young journalists on stories I have to wonder if they are truly grasping the context of the press conference or even the story itself.
One more thing and this really gets me. At the point of the Q&A, the perfect moment to ask the right, and yes, tough questions. Not a hand goes into the air. Reporters become either tongue tied or are just too shy.
I yearn for the days when you'd get your stories from writers and reporters that you knew and trusted.
Editors too don't question the stories they get, they just run with it, they don't sift through the PR nonsense (no offence) to get to the real story, it seems that once something on the assignment list was done, the story should run.
I also think some editors are so out of touch, it's running with the story yes, but there seems now to be a disquieting tendency to focus on controversy, to look for the heat rather than light and emphasise conflict over consensus.
I get the need to be the protector of the underdog against big government and big business so to speak but throwing resources at the controversy of the day rather than the essential issues of the era seems to do a big disservice to the very public the media tries to protect.
It's about training, education, and hunger.
I would also add experience and knowledge to the mix but I take your point, too many times editors and heads of news are entirely divorced form the process as Laura said.
How would you suggest both sides move forward to create a better news finding and delivery process?
I believe that in a newsrooms setting that process may have to be formalised, ask any head of news and they will tell you they know it is needed but it will be just another something to do on their very long list.
There another side of the news business, Kathy Ann mentioned it when she talked about competition. She was referring to the kind that happens among the media houses but there is another aspect: a firercely competitive, often back stabbing kind of cloud that hangs over newsrooms and that managers often tend to feed.
I hear young reporters say this to me time and time again, and the reality is Candace I am not sure how much mentoring can go on in that kind of environment.
That our people in prominent positions continue to use that response, though, is just a sad reflection of how much training they get in dealing with the media. I think that much of what the decision-makers focus on in organisations is the mileage they get from donations and other routine and unimaginative approaches to PR. They neglect to realise that PR goes beyond that and stifle the profession locally. PR must also touch on such issues as media relations during tough times.
I agree with Laura, though, that our media personnel are also very poorly trained. They are basically recruited fresh out of school (A levels or university) and put on a beat right away. It sometimes pains me to see the sentence construction in the news. But, let me stop here for this is a subject that strikes a chord with me...a discordant one at that.
Hermese.
Desiree, your distinction between editors and management is also well noted. You're right of course formalised training lies with management (Hurray for the CCN Group for awarding a one year scholarship for Kwame Lawrence this week.)
I was talking to Irving Ward this week editor of the Express and he said that media houses are sometimes reluctant to offer reporters scholarships because it's like opening the door to a host of other opportunities that lies outside the newsroom but that's another blog all together
I still feel that editors have a mentoring role to play and I am not convinced that it happens Desiree
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