Ethical Weaknesses in Emergency Communication Between National Authorities and the Public

Abstract

Initial research findings concerning seven leading Israeli national authorities and the communicative practices they use or plan to use during emergencies show that public authorities facing emergencies tend to develop four areas of professional and ethical weakness that require attention: (1) The theory vs. practice conflict, in which spokespersons for public authorities do not migrate automatically from their routine promotional orientation to one directed at saving lives; (2) Interorganizational differences between the impressively high standards of the Home Front Command and the remaining authorities studied; (3) Intraorganizational differences—while emergency staffs and their managers dedicate themselves to saving lives, spokespersons continue their focus on the image of their authorities and (4) Professional differences—information personnel such as emergency campaign managers, webmasters, information officers etc. dedicate themselves to saving lives more easily and thoroughly than spokespersons.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is part of an ongoing international research project on crisis communication practices. The present study received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 217889. The author thanks Dror Walter, Mouli Bentman, Eleanor Lev, Efrat Daskal, Daniela Korbas-Magal, and Raz Greenberg for helping compile the data and Prof. Martin C. J. Elton of the Burda Center at Ben-Gurion University for reviewing the project and offering most helpful advice.

Notes

1. As certain authorities do not employ a full range of officials and may assign several functions to one employee (for example, spokespersons are typically responsible for updating websites and handling long-term campaigns), we interviewed a total of 31 officials.