Cultivating Stakeholder Relationships Part 3: The Media

“Boston Paramedic Faces Drug Tampering Charges”
“Ambulances in Texas Town Outfitted with New Technology”
“Kansas City (MO) Fire Ambulance Response Times Under Fire After Man Dies of Heart Attack”
“Rural/Metro-San Diego Honored by California EMS Authority”

Conundrum—Merriam-Webster defines it as “an intricate or difficult problem.” Often, our relationship with the media typifies the concept of this term. A positive relationship with the media can be an exceptionally valuable tool for your agency, your patients and your community. Conversely, an adversarial relationship could have career-ending consequences. We all too often hear about the latter, and as such, there is often an innate fear of cultivating symbiotic relationships with this key stakeholder group. But this does not need to be the case.

Foundationally, the first thing we have to realize it that we must interface with the media. We cannot pretend they do not exist, or that if we mind our own business we’ll never have to deal with them. Further, to be the kind of responsible community partner we want to be, we often need to educate the community through the media on important issues and happenings.

Before we start any discussion of the media, let’s define the difficulties they face. There are two main goals of any media outlet—whether broadcast, print or web.

Inform and Educate
The first goal is to provide education the help their audience. This takes many forms and we see it every day. Reports on accidents, new government projects and programs, businesses opening or closing, classes being offered, programs to assist veterans, criminal arrests, you name it. At the most fundamental level, watching any newscast is an informational endeavor of what’s happening, what to watch out for or how to get help.

Generate Revenue
Like any business, media outlets need to keep the lights on, pay employees and pay rent. To do this, their primary source of revenue is advertising. Some call it “sponsorship,” but the bottom line is they need to generate revenue. Any responsible media outlet leader will tell you that the sales department does not dictate what gets covered in the news and in my experience that is true. However, they will also tell you they make assignments for covering news stories based on what their news director believes their audience wants to know—and are willing to watch or read. The more viewers that choose to watch programming, including news shows, the more advertising revenue that can be generated for that show.

With this basic understanding, let’s turn to how you can effectively build relationships with the media.

Real-Time Event Notifications
As “emergency” medical providers, we are a natural attraction for the media. We deal with human drama almost every day and generate many potential stories that assignment editors may believe are worthy of publication. That attraction is often our double-edged sword. How to inform the media of cool happenings, while balancing a patient’s right to privacy. There are several methods you can use for communicating with the media.

If you are a 9-1-1 provider, create a paging group that includes the assignment editors and key reporters in your market. When “newsworthy” events happen, page the basic information to that group in real time. We use that as an effective tool to inform the media of such things as major wrecks, shootings or other specific events the media may want to know. Often, they may send a crew to the scene, or cover it in some other way. It also builds your agency as a key source for news on major events.

Create a Twitter account you can use to send information to followers. We have used this process, in addition to the paging functions, for the past several months and have generated over 400 followers. In fact, this has become so successful that many times news outlets will re-tweet our information on things like major accidents, traffic issues and such. It always brings a smile when I read news feeds from our local media affiliate tweets that say things like, “MedStar reports rollover crash with traffic delays 35W SB at Meacham.” They have thousands of followers and these messages are great community-building opportunities.

E-mail and text messaging communication tools can be used as well, to not only send out real-time happenings, but more detailed information on a current event or as an epilogue when an event is mitigated. We use this regularly, even from scenes. There have been many times we’ve been on-scene sending updates, and even photos or videos, back to news desks that end up on the evening news or in the morning newspaper. It’s important to note that an agency representative who is NOT involved in the scene be the person taking pictures or video and reporting these back to the media.

To balance the patient’s privacy, refrain from paging out private residence addresses, or events that, although newsworthy, may be of a highly personal nature. If taking photos or video, ensure there are no images that can impact patient privacy. For example, we do not page out specific addresses, but rather block ranges, and as a general rule do not page things like self-inflicted gunshot injuries. Any photos or video we send to the media do not show street addresses, do not contain faces or other identifiable patient features, and we even obscure the license plate on any photos we provide from accident scenes.

Seasonal or Themed Messages
Heart month, breast cancer awareness month, extreme weather conditions, awards for bystander interventions, or other special focus times (such as when you kick off a new program) provide a perfect opportunity for pertinent messaging. Heat/cold weather safety, promoting bystander CPR through publication of awards presented for saving lives or painting some of your units pink in support of breast cancer awareness are logical times to partner with your local media for community education. We do community education through the media when the weather gets hot or cold, when we see a spike in certain types of calls, such as pediatric drownings, and when we’ve launched new initiatives, such as our community paramedicine program or 9-1-1 nurse triage program. Using these opportunities builds not only media relations, but great community relations.

Get To Know Your Media Partners
This can be accomplished individually, or through special media events. Invest the time to learn about them, what they like to cover, their preferred method for communication and even some of their little quirks. Some outlets may focus on human interest stories, while others may focus more on investigative styles of reporting. Some may prefer e-mail information, while others prefer the phone. One of our media outlets likes to do live interviews on their morning shows with the anchors asking questions while we are live at our office, but most other TV outlets do not use that format.

Similarly, let them get to know you and make it easy for them to reach someone in your organization. Whether it’s a follow-up to a notice they received or background for a story they are doing, the media generally operate on a fairly tight deadline. Provide them a single point of contact or phone number and BE RESPSONSIVE to their requests and timeline. If you are successful doing so, you will become invaluable to them—a great position to be in!

You may also want to host some media days where you invite local media representatives to your offices for some education on what you do, thank them for what they do and to meet your team. This can go a long way toward enhancing your relationships with them.

Be Ready with a Story
On slow news days, or really at any time, a reporter or assignment editor may call you and ask “anything going on we can report on?” Always have a list of a few ideas you can offer. I keep a running note log in my iPhone of possible ideas. Of course, if all else fails, ride alongs are great options. Structure media ride alongs and limit them to ride with a non-ambulance resource, if possible. This serves two goals. First, it offers them the opportunity to see more calls without being stuck on one potentially slow unit. Second, you can better filter their experience to be sure it is patient friendly and HIPAA complaint.

Sharing Your Coverage
One of the best esteem-building opportunities is sharing your media coverage with your key internal stakeholders. When a story is published, be sure to share the coverage with your employees and any oversight entity in your organization. There are a number of ways you can track media coverage. Google offers a great free service that searches key words you set and e-mails you alerts when the criteria are met. This way, you can forward those stories along, or post them on your website and Facebook pages. There are also paid subscription services you can participate in that not only alert you to keywords, but allow you to download video and audio clips to create a media library. These stories come in handy for presentations and demonstrations of your community education initiatives.

Preparing your Team
Create a culture within your agency that embraces and enhances media interactions. Policies that place your employees at odds with the media do not serve either group well. Be sure your staff knows who to call if they are contacted by the media and work with them to always put your best foot forward. Designate a few PIOs who can work with the media to ensure your agency is responsive and statements released are compliant with patient privacy rules. It’s also a good idea to regularly remind your team members that your “brand” is one of your most important assets and everything they do has an impact on that brand.

Tips for Communicating with the Media

1. Be timely. Don’t put off an opportunity to tell your story when asked.
2. Be honest. Accidents happen and people make mistakes. Don’t hide from them. Apologize to those impacted and explain the steps you’ve takes to limit a bad occurrence in the future.
3. Be brief. Sound bites are good—use them. If being interviewed, keep your responses under 15 seconds. This helps in two ways: first, it prevents you from going down a path you might not want to, or are being asked to; second, it allows your entire statement to be aired without editing—a very useful strategy.
4. Be prepared. Have data or other support materials handy if asked by the media. You can e-mail information, but having some data on the tip of your tongue helps. Know a lot about the subject matter.
5. Be ecumenical. Share the stage with other stakeholders when you can. This shows unity with other agencies and the favor will often be returned as well.

If you would like to learn more about how to enhance your relationship with your local media partners, feel free to drop me a line at MZavadsky@medstar911.org.

Matt Zavadsky, MHA, is director of public affairs for MedStar EMS, the public utility model system in Fort Worth and 14 surrounding cities in North Texas. He holds a master’s degree in Health Service Administration and has 30 years’ experience in EMS, including volunteer, fire-based, public and private-sector EMS agencies. He is a former paramedic and has managed private sector ambulance services in four states, as well as serving as a regulator. Matt is a frequent speaker at national conferences and has done consulting on numerous EMS issues, specializing in high-performance system operations, public/media relations, public policy, employee recruitment and retention, data analysis, costing strategies and EMS research. He has served as chair of the American Ambulance Association's Industry Image Committee and as a member of its Professional Standards, Strategic Development and Management Training Institute Committees. He is adjunct faculty for the University of Central Florida’s College of Health and Public Affairs, teaching courses in healthcare Economics and policy, healthcare finance, ethics, managed care and U.S. healthcare systems.