Defending Good Science

December 2, 2002

Rumours at the Speed of Lie

For years, scientists have debated whether it something can travel faster than the speed of light. There is one substance which will indeed travel faster than anything seen on earth – a rumour or innuendo in the midst of a crisis. I call it the ‘Speed of Lie.’

Any competent crisis professional will firmly subscribe to this thought: In the absence of information, misinformation becomes news. Sometimes the worst thing you can do in the middle of a crisis is to do nothing.

The best example isn’t necessarily the most recent - everyone remembers January, 1986, when the Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’ exploded. The people in NASA were textbook subscribers to the “it can’t happen to us” mindset. No one had prepared what to do or say in the event of a catastrophic shuttle malfunction. And when the worst-case scenario unfolded, NASA took four hours to confirm the loss.

Maybe four hours was a record time. Maybe no one had ever managed to get approvals and permissions for a news release in ‘only’ four hours before. But while every single television in the nation carried live coverage of the disaster, four hours is an eternity. News anchors had nothing to report from NASA, so they resorted to what other people were saying. In those four hours, ABC, NBC and CBS were reporting rumours of everything - intentional self-destruction, terrorism, acts of war, sabotage – you name it.

It appeared obvious that NASA ‘didn’t have their act together.’ It took NASA over two-and-a-half years to recover from this incident, and launch another shuttle. One can only wonder how much sooner they would be in the air if they didn’t have to re-affirm Congress and a worried public that they did, indeed, ‘have their act together.’

This was in 1986, before the Internet and 24 hour cable news access. The situation is exponentially more competitive today. One only has to look at the rumours in the news coverage on the morning of 9/11 – in the midst of a crisis unfolding on live TV, there were stories that car bombs had gone off at the State Department, and that ten airliners had bombs on board. Obviously, this was not true, but in the midst of a crisis, perception is reality.

You will probably never have to deal with anything as monumental as the Challenger explosion or the 9/11 disaster. But the next time a situation is breaking down around you and you don’t know what’s going on, remember this principal -- waiting until you have all the answers is understandable, but not necessarily the right thing to do. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know. Let me tell you what we’re doing to find out.”

Checkmate Link of the Month

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