Crisis Communications Media Handling The Don'ts During an interview

• Lie or try to cloud the truth.
• Improvise or dwell on negative allegations.
• Raise issues you don’t want to see in the story.
• Answer questions off the top of your head.
• Speculate, guess, assume or hypothesize.
• Speak for others.
• Say “no comment.”
• Be led into other areas of discussion.
• Demand that an answer you have given not be used. If you say it, you have to live with it. You can ask that it not be used and explain why you would prefer that it not be used, but you can’t demand anything . . . and if the reporter chooses to use it, there’s little you can do.