Comment
Politely sharing truth is best public response
By Zhao Yanrong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-08 09:10
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Once again, an interview ends with unanswered questions. A man working for a university's press office has hung up on my call, right after I told him I was a reporter. I redialed but the call never went through.
A female student from the university had apparently been killed by a female classmate in a hotel on the first night of the new year. It was a tragedy. It was also a public relations nightmare for the university, which said it would publish information about the case on time.
Students and teachers met with the university's crisis management team in the afternoon after the news broke. After the meeting, a student supervisor confirmed that all questions must be put to the team.
Local media outlets were not able to offer readers a lot of information, which did not surprise me. But soon, all those unanswered questions became hot topics for online discussion.
Netizens were guessing about the relationship between the killer and the victim. Netizens discuss previous cases that had happened in the same university. All the talk put the university further into the public spotlight.
One of my friends from the university said the school had banned discussion about the death on campus. Students had even started worrying about their job applications because there was a rumor that some employers were ignoring applications from students from that university.
The university is just one example of many organizations facing a public relations crisis in China. The PR officers should know that the first step in averting a PR crisis lies in providing information, so the rumor mill doesn't fire up - and the way to do that starts with answering the phone in a polite way.
