How best to handle bad stories

As with most things, prevention is better than cure. Prevent local concerns from being front page news by addressing them as soon as you become aware of them. For this approach to be successful, partners need to be proactive in their intelligence gathering and know the rumours which are circulating around neighbourhoods to be able to counter-act them with facts about crime and what you are doing in their neighbourhood to combat it.

Unfortunately, bad stories will still occur and the media will publish them. By following a few simple steps you can minimise the impact these stories might cause.
 

• Be honest and helpful: There is no point in pretending that crime is going down if it isn’t. Instead try and get the media to include some information about what initiatives are already in place to tackle the problem(s).
• Show crime or disorder trends over a period of months: If trends are shown over a certain period,
• Make sure that crime statistics reflect reality: Put the numbers in context. Show the volume crime, but also show as a percentage of overall crime for the area. This could show that in terms of percentage a particular crime is low.
• Build up trust between partnerships and the media: Keep in regular contact with journalist, do not just go to them when it suits you. Some partnerships have invited a representative from the local media to be a member of the partnership. This should encourage negative reporting to be written with a more balanced view. If you do have a journalist in the partnership make sure that you lay ground rules down about what they can report on and what information stays within the partnership.
• Adopt the 3 tells: Tell it, tell it again and then continue to tell.
   

For more information about working with the news media visit the Crime Reduction site at http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/learningzone/comm_strat/nm1.htm.