What is your corporate media policy who is authorized to speak to the media? Who isn't? Now there was a time when this was fairly clear cut in most organizations. If you were the CEO, or the press spokesperson, or the head of PR, you are authorized to speak on behalf of the company to the media. Anyone else if they ever spoke to the media, they were fired, they were banished, they were ruined, they were punished. That's the policy that so many companies had.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't work anymore. For many, many reasons. One reason is everybody's the media these days, everybody has a blog. Everyone has a YouTube channel. Everyone's communicating all the time. So it's very, very difficult, dangerous and sometimes even counterproductive to try to muzzle every single employee and tell them you can never talk to the media.

I believe the far superior straight strategy is to constantly communicate with everyone in your organization, your employees, your customers, your clients, your vendors, your investors, communicate with them, what's going on? What are the good things you're doing? What are your plans? What are your values? What has been accomplished? constant constant communication, then anyone who does talk to reporter, a journalist or talk shows a blog or a podcaster there's a good chance that some of those good messages will come out.

Is it possible one of your own employees will say something negative? Yeah, it's possible. That's the real world we live in today. There's nothing you can do about that. If you try to be too restrictive. You're going to make people resent you're gonna make reporters bloggers, social media, traditional media, people resent you.

You're likely to get coverage 1000 times worse. Now. I know not suggesting that someone who just shows up for work day one gets approached by 60 minutes. They don't tell anyone. And they're representing the whole company in front of the largest News Network program in your country. I'm not suggesting that certainly, people should alert corporate communications, or their boss or both, anytime a reporter comes up to them.

But if someone is walking out of the parking lot, and someone just comes up and says, By the way, what do you like most about working here? This idea that they're supposed to say, I cannot comment to the media, you must go to our corporate communication, that's too much to ask. So transparency, increase the communications flow to your employees, ask that they communicate, any contact they've had with media back to corporate communication, and the number one thing you can really do To help your employees to help your reputation to help the organization, let everyone who works with you know, it's always fine to say the word for, I don't know, but I'd be happy to find the best person in the organization to answer that question for you. And then either walk them or call them or connect them to the person in corporate communications. That's much better than no comment.

We don't talk about that or I'm not authorized. It's positive rather than defensive. And when people realize there's nothing wrong with saying, I don't know, but I'd love to help you. It's easier for the employee. It's also better for the reporter and it's better for your organization's reputation.