Monday, October 22, 2018

How not to communicate in a crisis















You might not expect an absolute monarchy like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be great at crisis communication. But they did a truly abysmal job after journalist Jamal Khashoggi went into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2nd and never was seen again.

Back on May 12, 2014 I blogged about How is Crisis Communication different from public speaking? In that post I mentioned that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had as their mantra to:

“Be first. Be right. Be credible.”

The Saudi government did none of those three things. Their story instead became more wrong and less credible. A BBC News article today titled Khashoggi death: Saudi Arabia says journalist was murdered describes this farce. A CNBC story today added Saudis reportedly scrap coverup plan because Khashoggi ‘body double’ wore the wrong shoes.

No comments: