When unexpected crises hit a company, executives often find themselves rudderless in a monsoon of media calls. Without knowing how to get the company’s story across, the executives can damage their company’s reputation.

• “The savviest chief executive in the world often falls victim to a kind of paralysis when a crisis strikes,” says Steven Fink, author of Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable. “Executives often bury their heads in the sand and refuse to communicate. But adopting a bunker mentality is always to their own detriment.”
• The goal during a crisis is to avoid a mushrooming of repetitive articles about it. The more headlines about a crisis, the more stamped it becomes in the public’s mind and the more momentum it gains.
• “You shouldn’t say anything [in the presence of a reporter] that you don't want to read in a newspaper or see on the tube,” writes David Snell in his book How to Succeed in Media Interviews When Mike Wallace Comes Calling.