January 16, 2005 post on this web log: “If a mass media response had been written into NOAA’s crisis communication plan, one phone call to the Associated Press or CNN could have been leveraged to produce a warning to millions of people before the tsunami arrived on the beaches of some Indian Ocean countries.”
You won't find specific instructions for NOAA's personnel to reach out aggressively to the major news media in the new Tsunami Warning Center Communication SOP, which is found in its entirety here -- at least, not in the manner recommended by this blog since its inception and summarized in a January 16 post, above.
But according to a NOAA spokesperson, that's NOAA's goal, and things have changed since the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to improve media notification procedures. "December 26th was a wake-up call to the world," he remarked today during a telephone call about the new SOP and its ability to engage international news media in issuing timely life-saving tsunami warnings.
At the risk of coming down too severely on this draft SOP, here's one paragraph from the "Regional Public Affairs Officer(s) Responsibility" item (see earlier post today) and the comment sent today to NOAA about that paragraph:
• Write media advisory and distribute via PR newswire (see template; messages: reiterate warning; indicate media will be notified when more information becomes available; advise that briefing will take place once the danger passes/event occurs)
COMMENT: This is an entirely misguided approach. “…once the danger passes/event occurs…”??? Tsunami notification to the news media should not be business as usual via PR Newswire or something that waits for the danger to pass! When a potentially significant life-threatening event occurs, someone at the appropriate TWC has to trigger an alert in a duty officer’s or communication professional’s office or home; that person’s job is to initiate proactive media contact according to a prearranged protocol. If that means a Duty Officer must be on station at NOAA’s headquarters around the clock, so be it. You’re making those provisions at the TWCs, so it can be done for communications professionals. This is about establishing a system to save lives – potentially hundreds of thousands of them – so the system that’s implemented must be bold and imaginative and something far different than relying on PR Newswire as the channel to communicate these messages to the media.
Following the phone call with NOAA's spokesman, I'm willing to concede that the comment above may have been a bit strong, but I believe it is still appropriate to keep the focus on NOAA's intentions vis-a-vis outreach to the major news media.
The NOAA spokesman said public affairs personnel already are assigned around the clock to be responsive to Tsunami Warning Center personnel, and they are prepared and rehearsed to reach out to appropriate news media -- especially local media when a local tsunami event is detected.
What remains to be coordinated, it appears, is a procedure that involves rapid notification to media with international communications capabilities whenever a huge December 26-like earthquake strikes anywhere in the world. Quakes of that magnitude in tsunami-prone regions of the planet ought to automatically kick in a procedure to inform the media that have global reach -- or so it seems to us.
According to NOAA's spokesman, the American Meteorological Society will hold a meeting in late January in Atlanta, GA, home city of one of those worldwide media companies, CNN. The spokesman said the meeting may be an opportunity to raise these issues with CNN executives, at least one of whom has expressed interest in the problems addressed by this blog since its inception.
