A journalist comes knocking. Don’t hit the panic button

Image credit: Made by Tech in Asia, with the help of AI

Picture this: A journalist just emailed you about something troubling: You and your company are about to be the subject of a negative story. What do you do?

The journalist might just be fishing. But they might also have uncovered something that they think is legit, and they’re determined to publish a piece about it.

Questions flood your mind. Should I answer their questions? Can I trust this journalist? Will the story kill my business?

You might feel angry and afraid. You might want to consult a public relations firm. But if you’re looking to DIY, this article is for you. Treat this as your “break glass in case of emergency” kit for media relations.

No response is a response

It’s true: Don’t tell a journalist everything. If you’re a startup that’s in talks to receive funding or be acquired, I won’t expect you to comment on specific clauses in a shareholders’ agreement or sales purchase agreement.

But in many other cases, stonewalling a journalist leads to a lose-lose situation.

The story becomes less nuanced, and you take a bigger reputational hit despite the publication’s best efforts at crafting a balanced story. Journalists are a jack of all trades, after all, and we don’t know the ins and outs of your business like you do.

I get it, there are limits to what you can say publicly. But you can work around it – speaking “on background” and “off the record” are your best friends. Use them wisely to talk about things without them being linked to you.

If all this sounds like a bother and you’d rather not engage, that’s your choice. Just know that others will tell your story for you, and you will probably hate it.

Even if your views get belatedly added to the piece, a lot of people would’ve already read the first version. The damage is done.

Expect to be disappointed

If you do engage, understand that journalists operate on unique assumptions. I’ve seen too much conflict happen because interviewees weren’t aware of them, or journalists were poor at communicating them.

Here’s my interpretation of these assumptions:

1. “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations,” so goes a common aphorism. This definition might be strict, but it captures how I think.
2. “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying,” said legendary film producer Robert Evans. That’s all very well, but I disagree with the latter half of that quip. At Tech in Asia, we reject false balance or bothsidesism – it’s rare that one side totally right, or that both sides are equally right. Journalists derive the truth via triangulation, but this isn’t always possible.
3. All journalists chase exclusive information, but this has a short expiry date. That’s why journalists want an answer from you yesterday – they assume a competing publication might be pursuing the same story.

Journalists do compromise

Blind man and the elephant