So let's just get this out of the way, life is unfair. There could be hundreds of people dying in a weekend on the nation's highways. And half of them can be in a car that was made by one manufacturer. It doesn't even make the news. But there can be one person killed or even injured in a small plane and a small town in Kansas somewhere that flies into a building. And it's going to be national news, international news, it's going to be everywhere.
It's not necessarily rational. It's not necessarily fair how the media handles these issues. But that's it. That is the way the world works. So this course is about helping you get your message across and do the best you can. during times of crisis.
We're not trying to change the news media, we're simply trying to do the best we can to project the image and the messages we want during a time of crisis. Now I understand your initial instinct quite often when there is a crisis is to say, Oh, wait a minute, no come and we want to get our facts straight. I understand that. But you have to have some response. You have to show concern. You have to get the facts out as you know them.
And maybe all you know is that a plane at 8:27am was no longer sighted on radar. There's always some facts you can stay. There's always something you can talk about what you are doing. If nothing else, you are notifying federal authorities. So what you don't want to do is let your opponents define you. You don't want to let the media define you.
You don't want there to be a vacuum where hysteria takes over and you are seeing is hiding. Now, accidents do happen. I understand that. And in the particular industry, we're in the airline industry. Let's face it, it's simply more challenging because if something goes wrong and a plane goes down, it's simply going to be more dramatic. But that doesn't mean that you can't be forthright to have messages to be available and to show the world to show your customers, the public, regulators, investors and everyone else, that you're being transparent, that you're being accessible and you are hiding nothing.
That's what this course is going to teach you how to do so that regardless of the incident, you at least are not going to make matters worse by how you're handling the media. And no matter what happens in this incident, this crisis, the media are going to respect you. The public is going to respect you and you're going to be seen as an honest broker of information. So let's hop right in.