SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Dozens of municipal and territorial government officials from across the NWT now have a better idea how to handle communications with the public and the media in times of crisis.

Media consultant Jim Stanton, at podium, addresses a room full of NWT municipal and territorial government officials at Yellowknife City Hall on Oct. 6. - John McFadden/NNSL photo

The officials, including senior administrative officers (SAOs) from municipalities, are all members of the Local Government Administrators of the NWT (LGANT). They gathered at city hall in Yellowknife from Oct. 6 to 8 for a professional development conference and annual general meeting.

The conference began with a presentation by Jim Stanton, a Vancouver-based media relations consultant. He told the officials that the most important thing they could in case of a fire, flood, power outage, boil water advisory or any other emergency is to have a plan in place before the actual crisis happens.

"Crisis communication is often seen as ...we'll get around to it when we have to. It is not seen as a critical thing that is part of the planning. Many organizations have business plans, they have emergency plans but their crisis plan is kind of a sidebar," Stanton said. "They think that the fire chief will take care of it or the police will do that ...You are setting yourself up for a disaster if you do that. One of the things that people are afraid of is that they don't want to tell the public because they are afraid people can't handle bad news. They are absolutely wrong. If you can tell people what's going on you calm them down. Now they are operating from a known basis and not just responding to what's out there on social media and the rumours that are circulating."

Stanton even cited American president Abraham Lincoln, who said some 160 years ago, that people if given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any crisis.

Stanton said that the advent of social media means that information can get out quickly but if officials are not out in front of the problem, Facebook and Twitter are places where rumours can start.

"The person who gets out first with their message sets the communication template. If you get out first, then everyone else reacts to your message. But if you don't get your message out first than you will be in reaction to what they say," said Stanton. "You are then going to have to start correcting misinformation."

Stanton said the idea that municipal officials can't or won't release information to the media or the public is out of date. Trustworthy officials must be assigned the job of dealing with the public and the media well before a crisis situation happens, Stanton said.

His presentation was followed by a media panel featuring three NWT journalists who offered advice to officials on how best to deal with the reporters and the public. One journalist pointed out that in the summer of 2014, with forest fires in close proximity to Yellowknife, city government officials held off on releasing any sort of emergency plan. After weeks of speculation the city made its emergency measures plan available to the public. They said they had to redact confidential phone numbers before they could make the plans available to the public.

Another journalist pointed out that the best policy to follow for officials is to tell the media what they know about the crisis situation, what they don't know and when they might have answers to questions from the public on the things they don't know.

Grant Hood, SAO for the town of Inuvik and president of LGANT, said the entire exercise on crisis communication was important.

"It was an excellent exercise for all of us who deal with emergency preparedness, and our relationship with the media, the do's and the don't's, especially in the smaller communities where they don't have a lot of interaction with the media. It was certainly a learning experience for them," Hood said. "I learned to be up front and tell it like it is. Don't embellish and don't hold back. Don't be afraid of bad news."

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