I hate to kick someone when they're down...but what the heck! Haringey Council must surely win awards for their dreadful handling of the Baby P case.
By refusing to take any action until the government made them, they looked complacent, hostile and inward looking. The result of this stance has been a wave of public outrage.
What should they have done, then? With years of experience of handling companies, organisations and individuals in these difficult situations and carrying out media training exercises with them my advice would be to act quickly.
An organisation in this situation needs to start by offering sympathy and regret. This is not the same as apologising because it doesn't accept responsibility - I can sympathise with the fact that you were very ill after you left my restaurant but it doesn't mean that I admit that it was my food made that you ill.
Organisations then have to offer to carry out a full investigation - again this doesn't accept responsibility or admit liability but it does make it clear that they care, that they are not complacent and that they are taking action.
As my media training clients discover - doing interviews with the media well in this situation is easier than they think. This is because the only answer you can give to almost any question is to tell the interviewer that you'll have to wait for the results of the inquiry.
It's not ideal, as I point out in my media training sessions, but it will dig you out of a hole and avid the negative coverage currently suffered by Haringey.

Too much of a good thing

Alistair Darling must be ruing his relaxing weekend with the Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead.  Logs fires, walks along the beach, dinner round the kitchen table - it must have been lovely but the Chancellor is certainly regretting it now.

So what went wrong? The short answer is that Darling spent too much time with Aitkenhead. During their two days together, the Chancellor clearly felt relaxed with a journalist from a friendly paper and he chatted away.  Of all the thousands of words he spoke during the weekend his comments about the worst recession for 60 years stood out to Aitkenhead and her editor when they looked at her notes and so this what made the headline.

The increasingly popular phenomenon of reality television might seem to have nothing in common with serious reporting of a very senior government minister but there are parallels. 

Reality TV producers film for hours and edit out a tiny proportion for broadcast.  Needless to say these moments are not those which show the subject in a relaxed, positive mood - rows, chaos and disasters are what make good telly - as we all know.

During media training sessions I explain to those who want to handle the media effectively that they need to focus and say less.  In practical terms if you want to do a media interview properly you need to focus - choose two or three key messages and stick to them when you talk to the journalist.  Don't give him or her anything else to go on.  If when you're doing a media interview you provide a variety of different thoughts, observations, facts and arguments you don't know what the journalist is going to take away with them.

Similarly if you want to do a media interview well spend less time on it.  Appear helpful and open but make it clear that you only have a limited amount of time.  This will allow you to handle the media effectively by focussing on two or three key messages which the journalist will have to use as they won't have anything else.

Alistair Darling would do better to concentrate on short, focussed interviews and save the fireside chats for family and friends.  As for reality TV - if you're approached just say no.