You've built trust with a media contact. How do you handle their breach of confidentiality?

When a trusted media contact breaches confidentiality, address the issue directly and professionally. First, contact them to express your disappointment and concern, providing specific details about the breach. Emphasize the importance of confidentiality in your relationship and the potential repercussions of their actions. Seek to understand their perspective and intentions behind the breach. Depending on their response, decide whether to re-establish trust gradually, setting clearer boundaries and reinforcing confidentiality agreements, or to limit future interactions to protect your interests.

If you're handling confidential work as a PR specialist, it's crucial to understand and anticipate potential risks before they arise. This process, known as risk management, is vital in our field. A great PR professional will develop a comprehensive plan to address the possibility of leaked information. This plan should be created in collaboration with your clients and receive their approval to ensure there are clear measures in place should this risk materialize.

Cela m'est arrivé une seule fois, il y a quelques années, avec un media du secteur de l'industrie. Le journaliste était arrivé depuis peu à la rédaction. Il a publié une information qui devait rester confidentielle, il le savait. Je l'ai contacté aussitôt pour en discuter et lui exprimer mon étonnement et celui de mon client. Il venait de la presse grand public et était à la recherche du scoop. Je lui ai expliqué que les relations entre les PME du secteur de l'industrie et les médias sont basées sur la confiance. Il a compris et depuis, nos relations sont excellentes. Mais cela m'a servi de leçon. Lorsqu'un journaliste arrive dans une rédaction, je préviens mes clients "Ne parler que de ce qu'on souhaite voir écrit dans les médias."

A breach of confidentiality certainly damages the level of trust. It would be necessary to have a private conversation with the media contact to understand how it happened, as you might have a wrong perception from what you heard. Explaining the importance of confidentiality and the consequences of breaching it is a must. Further actions, like limiting future interactions, are another option that can be taken to prevent it from happening again. However, it's important to always remember to handle any situation professionally for maintaining your organization's reputation.

- Assess the breach's impact and scope quietly. - Communicate directly with the contact, expressing concern and seeking clarification. - Reevaluate information sharing levels cautiously. - Emphasize the importance of trust and confidentiality in future interactions.

Mistakes happen. We are all human. It is very important that you treat your media contact as you would like to be treated. Typically, mistakes happen when there is a misunderstanding or miscommunication. It might even be your fault. I was interviewed about this for PR Daily, and the main point I would like to make from that article is to be empathic. You need to understand why it happened, and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. That is your objective. You may feel pressure from your leadership to fight for a correction or something more. But your goal is to better your relationship with your contact. You can't make it worse by letting the moment get the best of you.

Don't overreact and don't come in with accusations. Give the media contact the opportunity to explain the situation from their perspective. It's possible there was a miscommunication, or something was misconstrued, which can be cleared up quickly during a conversation. Always hop on the phone for this - email leaves too much up for interpretation when it comes to tone and meaning.

Be careful on this topic (re-establishing boundaries). Typically, the reporter knows the game. As a former journalist, I can confidently say that being accused of making a mistake feels like getting a demotion in corporate culture. Don't belittle your contact. Be sure you are clear - at the start - of what is on the record, and off and what is on background. Build your relationship first, understand how much you can trust someone before you give them something that come back to bite you. And when the mistake is made, take the right steps to prevent it in the future. Say this is off the record, explain your position, and schedule additional background sessions that will help them do their job and keep yours.

This is less strategic planning, but more relationship building. You need to understand if this journalist is important enough to share sensitive information with. If they are, then you must help them understand it clearly. If you need to host background calls with them and your leaders - do it. They will respect you more for the additional time. Trust will be built up and mistakes will be prevented in the future.

Dependiendo de lo sensible de la informacion manejada, y del impacto que tuvo, por tanto, la alta direccion de la organizacion junto al Dpto de Comunicaciones debe replantear la estrategia de relacionamiento con los medio de comunicacion social.