When I worked on investigative special reports for TV, the station often decided not to name or identify the people or companies the story was questioning. This often was the case when the story included undercover video. But we still asked those people and companies for on-camera interviews or some form of comment.
Eventually, something struck me about the companies which submitted a statement compared to those who simply ignored my emails and phone calls. When we included those statements on-air or on our website, we often began, “Company XYZ released the following statement …” The company’s own statement led us to ultimately identify the business.
Plenty of news stations identify the subjects of their investigative reports whether the company agrees to comment or not. But a recent network news investigation again reminded me of this scenario. A company, which hired us for crisis communications, brought the story to my attention. (To learn more about our experience, read Part 1 of our blog series.) The story put several companies in a bad light. If you looked carefully or paused the video and closely inspected it, you might catch information identifying the companies. But the reporter did not identify the companies in his voice over. If fact, he didn’t even identify on-air the company that gave a statement. But when the news network posted the company’s entire statement on its website, I learned the name of business.
When I aired investigative reports and asked companies for comment, a business never asked me, “Does the news story in any way identify my company?” If I answered no, a business owner might wonder what motive he or she might have to self-identify himself by releasing a statement.
“Doing the right thing” might be a motive to release a statement in this case. But when companies are in damage-control mode, owners might legitimately ask themselves why they should self-identify themselves when the TV station is not.
A news story may identity a company many ways. The story could:
- Name the company
- Show employees that will identify the company
- Show video that will identify the company
- Release other, unknown information that will identify the company.
Companies should ask journalists if their story will identify their businesses in any of the above ways or in another fashion we might not be thinking of. The answers to these questions alone may not provide an answer about whether to grant an interview or release a statement. But the answers would give a company a much clearer picture of what type of PR crisis they might or might not be facing.