Crisis Communications – Skype to the rescue

Apr 24, 2020

This week Charlie looks at an article from The Times, ‘Welcome to The Skype Pandemic’, which discusses how journalists and experts tuning in to interviews from their homes is affecting our news consumption.

A team of Kim, Gillian and I have been teaching the CBCI course this week and I was thinking of talking about the lessons learned from this experience in today’s bulletin, but an article in the New York Times caught my eye and I thought I would share an idea from it. I like the New York Times as the journalism is good, and it gives an interesting view of the USA which you don’t get from the BBC website. It was also of interest to me as I have been interviewed on the BBC as an expert on Brexit and crisis management, and some of the points mentioned in the article were things that I recognised.

The main theme of the article was that journalists and experts are now working from home, so when they phone into news programmes, they are using Skype. Therefore, the quality of the picture and sound is not the same as it is in a studio. The article says that after a while of everyone using this method, the journalists and experts tend to blend into one and it is difficult to recognise the difference between them. It contrasts Joe Biden, who is broadcasting from his basement, with pictures of President Trump on his daily broadcast. My lesson from this is that if you are in a crisis situation and your CEO is invited to an interview, insist they come into the studio or office (whilst still social distancing), and not just do the interview over Skype, which would be more convenient for them.

You can read the article here.

Let me know your thoughts!

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