As an exercise in crisis communications, the media handling of the tragic capsizing of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, has been nothing short of disastrous.

Already we’ve seen an unseemly spat between the captain (incredibly being interviewed by the media even after being arrested) and the cruise line operator who has apparently sought to quickly apportion blame to the captain well before any investigation can officially decide what actually went wrong.

None of this does anything for the grief of those passengers who have suffered and ultimately, in the long term, the damage it can cause to the business itself could be irreparable.

Know the facts
For any company that has the misfortune to find itself at the centre of something like this, it’s all about knowing the facts. Put up your top executive to provide regular updates to the press, but do not allow them to speculate on the causes before they are actually known. All the company efforts should be towards helping the emergency services and the welfare of the passengers.

Clear and decisive communication is not the same things as making rapid and ill thought out accusations.

Whether you love the beautiful game, or think the goal posts in your local park are there simply for the convenience of dog walkers and their piddling pooches, football often provides a useful source of case studies for good and bad media management.

Here, in my view, is a particularly bad case of media management:

It’s my ball and I won’t play
The Carlos Tevez affair – and for those who don’t follow the game, ‘famous footballer refuses to take off tracksuit and play football’ sums it up quite neatly – threw up an interesting press conference where Manchester City’s Head of Communications apparently announced that any questions surrounding Tevez would immediately end the press conference.

What do Man City think will happen if they refuse to take questions about Tevez at a press conference? That journalists will simply shrug their shoulders and write about Mancini’s (the manager) terrific hair; or whether they’ll line up a 4:3:3 formation at the next home game.

Of course they won’t. And this piece in the Guardian sums up a journalist’s attitude very well to this piece of heavy handed media dealing http://bit.ly/rbXrpf

Don’t duck the issue
As ever, don’t duck the issue. If there are legal reasons why a particular matter can’t be discussed, employment contracts for instance, then say so when asked the question. But to simply refuse to ask questions about the hottest issue of the day seems to me to belong to an era of media management that should have long since disappeared.

It’s early days with this story, but you have to admire Louise Mensch’s (MP) method of dealing with questions from an investigative journalist.  

Faced with an email alleging details of taking drugs and other misdemeanours in a previous career, she has simply admitted them and published the correspondence for all to see  – the journalist must really hate her.

As ever, if you‘ve nothing to hide, transparency is everything and if you have something to hide, transparency is even more important. It will come out in the end so you might as well control the when and the where.