Page 85 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

54 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

• Gather and spread information quickly
• Act as the public watchdog
• Set public agendas
• Attract listeners/viewers
• Reach hundreds, thousands, or millions of people
• Express viewpoints

Effective communication with the mass media can help risk
communicators:

• Get information out quickly
• Reach major target audiences
• Rally support
• Calm a nervous public
• Prevent undue fear and anxiety
• Provide people with needed information
• Correct erroneous information
• Encourage appropriate behaviors

One of the challenges to effective communication with the media is that
reporters typically are looking for stories that

• Attract attention
• Boost the number of readers, viewers, or listeners
• Reflect the agendas of the organization’s owners or publishers
• Serve the public interest
• Advance their personal careers
• Increase viewer or reader subscriber ratings

Media stories with the following characteristics tend to attract the larg-
est audiences:

• Disasters or other high-profile events
• Drama with personal aspects
• Controversy or conflict
• Exposure of malpractice and negligence
• Scandals
• Children adversely affected
• Situations that appear to be out of control
• Many people adversely affected
• Unexpected events
• Rapid or surprising expansion of adverse effects (the “ripple effect”)