By Anne Ready
A succinct soundbite that says it all is the key to crisis communication: “Don’t share your air.”
It was crafted by scientist and seismologist Lucy Jones. In every Los Angeles earthquake for more than 30 years, Dr. Jones explained complex science to us in ways that helped us understand. When the earth shook and we got scared, she “talked us down, without ever talking down to us,” Los Angeles Times city beat columnist Nita Lelyveld reported recently.
“Why in all the public messaging we’re getting has no one else come up with a directive so straightforward, so spot on, so easy to remember?”
“It’s pretty clear, ” said Dr. Jones, who is now retired from the federal government.”We are suffering from our inability to use science in decision making.” The aim of her new Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society is to reverse that trend and help communities grow stronger by incorporating scientific facts into their policymaking.
Crisis Communication
Dr. Jones learned from her longtime role as a disaster communicator what we teach at READY FOR MEDIA. “In a crisis you can’t give people a list of dozens of measures to take for their safety. If you do, you might well overwhelm.
“Overwhelmed, people often toss up their hands and say, I can’t do all you’re asking of me, and so I’ll do nothing at all. And doing nothing in our current crisis just isn’t an option.
“The thing about the pandemic is people are going to die whether you believe in it or not.”