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Coming back to Katrina given that the storm and its aftermath continue to flood the news and opinion pages. Take Frank Rich’s commentary in yesterday’s New York Times. He chastised FEMA for its solicitation of “community relations officers,” instead of experienced emergency services workers. To Frank’s point, I was told that FEMA posted on its website a call for volunteers specializing in crisis communications.
Rich writes: “The two top deputies at FEMA remaining after Michael Brown’s departure, one of them a former local TV newsman, are not disaster relief specialists but experts in P.R., which they’d practiced as advance men for various Bush campaigns.”
So while Frank Rich takes FEMA to task for emphasizing PR over substance, another opinionated blogger - Mark Cuban - chastises FEMA for not having an effective communications system in place for the disaster relief effort:
“FEMA needs to realize that we are a media centric culture. We look for information wherever we can find it. The wider spread the communication, the more people will receive it and the more assistance, of the type that is needed, can be offered. I can only speculate, but based on what I saw today, which I’m sure was repeated in cities around the country, but millions, if not tens of millions of dollars in timely support was lost because people, including me were uninformed.”
Talk about mixed signals!
Posted in Hurricane Katrina, FEMA | No Comments »
Posted by Peter Himler on 9th September 2005
The top story on today’s national media agenda focuses on the lack of relevant experience by FEMA officials to deal with a disaster. The New York Times went so far as to address this issue in its lead editorial where it characterizes FEMA management as “advance men,” and includes a healthy dose of disrespect for the public relations profession.
In fact, the FEMA PR people who are serving as PR people deserve their share of chastisement given the inexplicable mixed signals over the distribution of $2000 debit cards. Clearly an emasculated and heavily patronized FEMA management merits much of the blame for not establishing clear channels of communication.
But getting back to the insinuation that public relations is no more than spin and gloss. This is a siren call for practitioners to absolve their long-held role as messengers in exchange for a seat at the decision-making table. Our core competency is not one of finding words to minimize reputational damage, but rather advising on operational decisions or actions that will produce results. Are we experts on how many firefighters or troops to deploy? No. But we should have the honed instincts to anticipate, and provide counsel on the fallout for not having enough.
Posted in FEMA | No Comments »
