Timeless Lessons From The Coronavirus Pressers That Must Not Be Forgotten

President Biden intends to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11 and  Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted her resignation on May 6, saying that now was a good time to make a transition, as the pandemic was fading. Her last day will be June 30.

Since the beginning of the pandemic three years ago, there were many important PR lessons over the past three years from the pandemic that should not be forgotten because they can relate to agency situations.  These lessons should be remembered and used as training sessions tutorials.

Among the lessons to be remembered are:

• How to disseminate information during a crisis situation, and

• How often should information be disseminated during the crisis situation, and

• How to interact with a skeptical media during a crisis situation, and

• The proper use of third party experts by clients in a crisis situation, and

• Why misleading the media during a crisis situation leads to additional negative coverage.

In my opinion, the most important of all lessons from the pandemic came from the dueling press conferences between President Trump and Gov. Cuomo. They should be a staple in all agency training sessions because they clearly show the rights and wrongs that can occur during a presser.

Press conferences should be avoided whenever possible, I’ve believed during my two careers in the news business – first as an editor and journalist at New York City dailies and wire services, and for most of my career in the PR business. 

The contrasting pressers of President Trump and Gov. Cuomo provide illustrate why I feel that way.

Here they are:

As a journalist, I witnessed how easy it is for a client to lose control of the situation, when unexpected questions were asked. (A prime example was during one of President Trump’s pressers, when he refused to allow Dr. Fauci to answer a reporter’s question about using an anti malaria drug, as the president had suggested numerous times. The president’s refusing to let a medical doctor answer a medical question resulted in major negative publicity for Trump.) 

As a PR practitioner, I witnessed how often clients were disappointed, when after spending tons of money on a press conference the media results were not what was hoped for. 

Watching the coronavirus pressers were similar to a Masters Class, free of charge after the outbreak of the coronavirus, with two formers -- President Trump and Gov. Cuomo as the professors.

The pressers should be closely studied by people in our business and used as teaching tools on how speakers at press conferences should conduct themselves -- the president’s on how not to act, the governor's on how to perform.

President Trump’s daily pressers were a PR disaster, jam-packed with contradictory statements. The usual script was for the president to make statements regarding the coronavirus situation according to his gut-feeling or hunches. These remarks were not based on facts and many were corrected immediately by Dr. Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Birx, the then Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force. 

Also occasionally after the pressers were concluded, the White House had to disseminate clarifications of what the president meant. 

The reaction to the president’s daily coronavirus pressers were so negative he abandoned them.

Conversely, the way the Cuomo press briefings were conducted daily should be used as a prototype for how to conduct a presser. The governor delivered factual information, in addition to what he expects to happen in the future. Both were clearly defined. On some questions, the governor deferred to his health expert, Dr. Zucker, who was the Commissioner of Health for New York State, without fear of being corrected because there were no gut-feeling, hunch statements or fabrications delivered by Cuomo. Only scientific facts. The result of the governor’s press conferences made him a respected national figure and his pressers were carried nationally.

Some more examples: In order to deflect criticism of his handling of the coronavirus situation, Trump tried to change the subject of his pressers by talking about how well he handled his impeachment. It was an A plus performance he said; also, talking about his fight against drug cartels. It didn’t work and he fooled no one. (Journalists said the president was trying to change the subject.) Trump also refused to let Dr. Fauci answer a reporter’s question about medical advice given by the president. All of these examples, and more, resulted in major negative media criticism for the president. There were too many other situations of these types to detail. (Ben Smith, in a New York Times media column, described the daily Trump pressers as often feeling like “…clumsily produced episodes of reality television, a kind of parody of old-fashioned TV seriousness.”

Another major difference between Trump’s press conferences and Cuomo’s occurred when the governor submitted to testing on national television. He did so to demonstrate how simple and fast the testing procedure is, as he urged people to not be afraid to be tested. And unlike Trump, who has rejected comments from medical experts, Cuomo kept highlighting the opinions of medical experts during his pressers.

In what was an obvious attempt to drown out the praise for Cuomo, the president moved his daily pressers to the time that Cuomo held his. It didn’t work. TV stations cut away from the president to broadcast Cuomo’s more factual conferences. 

There are many important take-a-ways from those daily dueling coronavirus pressers that PR practitioners should remember:

• Today’s media is more aggressive than ever, and everything said, during crises and none crises situations, will be fact checked for accuracy. 

• Shooting from the hips remarks invariably leads to negative press coverage.

• During a PR crisis, what an expert in the situation says will have more believability by the media than what a corporate executive says.

• Attempting to change the media from covering a situation by bringing up a different subject, as Trump had done, doesn’t work.

• Just because media attends a press conference doesn’t mean that it will result in the coverage you want.

• And that important media lessons that are not in your communication’s schools texts can be learned from paying attention to the daily give and take between politicians and reporters.

Press conferences are a tool that should be used only when there is important “hard news” to announce. And even then the results can be disappointing because often what clients and PR people think is important isn’t so to reporters.

An alternative to holding Broadway style press conferences that I prefer and used many times was to arrange “round table” pressers.

I would invite a handful of reporters, no more than a dozen, to interview the client over lunch at those “round tables.” The advantages were obvious. During a full scale press conference PR people have no control of who the assignment editors will send.  

With the round table pressers I was able to select the reporters. Only journalists whose beat was covering the client’s business were invited. They included reporters from major dailies, wire services and trade books, ensuring that the questions were more targeted and 

intelligent. Radio and TV interviews with the client were offered after the presser. Importantly, headline seeking reporters were not invited. 

The result was articles that were entirely about the client’s business -- just what a client expects, but rarely gets. 

And the “round tables” saved a ton of client money that could be used for other projects.