Managing Communications in a Crisis

Peter Ruff's media career began at a local newspaper, then onto local radio and into the BBC, where he worked for 18 years on news and current affairs for both radio and televsion. For four years he was the BBC's Moscow correspondent and, in 1986, informed the world of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. After leaving the BBC he became Director of Communications for a major international waste company that was under pressure from environmental campaigners. Later he took charge of media relations for the chemical industry, dealing with environmental crises involving the chemical, oil, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Through The Aziz Corporation, he advises major FT 250 companies on crisis management communications. Khalid Aziz spent the first twenty years of his career in the media. Trained by the BBC, he went on to work for a range of news and current affairs programmes from Newsbeat on Radio One to Panorama. He worked extensively as both presenter and producer, receiving industry awards for his broadcasting excellence. Khalid founded The Aziz Corporation in 1983 and today it is the UK's leading spoken communications consultancy. Crisis management is a key element in the company's consultancy portfolio, along with other areas of communications such as media handling and presentation skills.

Part 1 Understanding Crises and the Theory of Communication; Chapter 1 Understanding crises; Chapter 2 Elements of crisis management; Chapter 3 Stakeholders and audiences; Chapter 4 Third-party endorsement; Chapter 5 Communications in a crisis; Chapter 6 Science versus emotion; Chapter 7 How the media works; Chapter 8 Single-issue lobby groups; Chapter 9 Lobbying; Chapter 10 The price of failure; Part 2 Practical Crisis Communication; Chapter 11 Practical steps to prepare for a crisis; Chapter 12 Internal audiences; Chapter 13 The spokesperson; Chapter 14 The crisis team; Chapter 15 Crisis planning and whistle-blowing;