Public Relations: Don’t blow your apology with qualifiers
As someone who blogs regularly on crisis communications issues, I'm very grateful for the TSA. They provide a never-ending stream of case studies on how not to communicate with the public. Case in point – a young lady recently managed to inadvertently get a 3-inch knife past two separate TSA checkpoints.Given the number of screenings that TSA deals with each day it's understandable that mistakes like this will happen. How you respond to them makes all the difference in losing or gaining public respect.
TSA responded to the incident by stating, "We continue to take the discovery of knives and other prohibited items seriously, however, intoday's post-9/11 security environment, intelligence tells us our officers' greatest focus needs to be on the biggest threat to aviation security today-explosives and explosive components."
Think about the message they are sending here: "it's not important that we missed a lethal weapon at two checkpoints because explosives are our real concern." What TSA is trying to say is true – explosives do pose a greater risk than knives. But the issue was a failure to detect a weapon at two separate locations – explosives didn't enter into it. What the public wanted was reassurance that they were safe, not a lesson in priorities.
Anytime your explanation includes a qualifier such as "but" or "however", you're on weak ground. It sounds like you're covering up a bad mistake by minimizing the importance of the incident. A better approach would have been to just say, "We continue to take the discovery of knives and other prohibited items seriously. Clearly mistakes were made by our personnel. We will investigate this incident and do what we can to prevent it from happening again." People understand mistakes but they really despise arrogance.
But maybe I'm being too harsh on the poor TSA, they did manage to spot the two inches of bottled water carried by the person in line ahead of the young lady, after all.
TSA = Thousands Standing Around.
Actually, the TSA people we see at the checkpoints are generally good, hard working folks who are subjected to constant abuse ranging from snide comments to physical assault … and for not alot of compensation. It is the decision makers and public affairs folks who should take the hits on examples such as the one you posted.
They minimize the threat level of edged weapons, perhaps forgetting that the terrorists who took over the planes on 9-11 had … edged weapons (box cutters).
Gary –
You’re absolutely right. The real problem was not the original error, which, while not acceptable, was understandable. What made it problem was the way TSA management chose to spin the response. Trying to deflect blame almost always backfires.
I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.