I get that question a lot. Usually it comes when I’m conducting a media training session, teaching people how to talk with reporters. The question is getting harder to answer.

Multiple major media outlets (CNN, Boston Globe, AP) reported that an arrest had been made in the Boston Marathon bombings when no such arrest had been made. […]

Reporting numbers is generally a straightforward task. Facts are facts, after all. Time after time, though journalists get them wrong. Whether it’s because they are racing to get the story first or they are sloppy with their math there is an essential truth of preparing people to talk with a reporter:

Journalists get numbers wrong. […]

The big PR news this week is Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah, in which, he confesses to using performance enhancing drugs to win all those Tour de France titles. Armstrong’s goal is to have his lifetime ban from the US Anti-Doping Agency reduced or eliminated. According to the Wall Street Journal, Armstrong believes competing in events like triathlons will provide him a steady stream of income now that all those lucrative corporate sponsors have dumped him. […]

Well, that didn’t take long. I wrote about the Year Ahead in Crisis Comms less than a week ago and already one of the four things I predicted has, sadly, come to pass.

Cinemark USA, the theater chain that owned the movie theater in Aurora, CO, where 12 people were killed and dozens wounded by a gunman last summer, sent invitations to victim’s families inviting “them and a guest” to a remembrance and a movie. […]