What Corporate Communicators Can Learn From Flight 735

When we talk about blogs and public relations, we often talk about the “command and control” mentality of traditional business communications and how blogs have thrown all that out the window because they allow the voices at the heart of the action to tell their stories more quickly. Blogs kill spin. Blah. Blah. Blah. I would be guilty of dead horse beating if I brought this same issue up again in those terms, but there’s another aspect to this idea of blogs delivering the truth, and it has to do with journalism.

The Blog Herald reports today about a woman who blogged her experience aboard a United flight that was forced to conduct an emergency landing under military fighter escort at Denver airport after a man now known to be Jose Pelayo-Ortega reportedly made a bomb threat. Many people have correctly observed that this firsthand account of the story is much more compelling than what we’re hearing on the news. But what many seem to have overlooked is that the blogger paints a much more accurate picture of the events aboard United Flight 735.

The mainstream media has been steadfastly reporting that the plane was landed after the man “claimed to have a bomb”, but the blogger involved in the incident gives us a few more details:

He was screaming, “I want to die, “I have a camera in my stomach”, “Kill Me “and also “We have to save the Country!”…It was believed that there might be a bomb threat since the guy was raving about needing his camera and the “camera in his stomach” comments” and permission was given to land in Denver under an emergency situation.

When you first hear that there’s been a bomb threat aboard an airplane, you automatically think of the person making the threat as a villain of some kind or another - either a prankster or a terrorist explicitly claiming to have a bomb. But when you hear that the person making all the ruckus was raving about having a camera in his stomach and trying to open the door of the plane to “save the country,” you begin to see that the culprit is most likely suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

That isn’t to say that the pilots and the powers that be didn’t do the right thing by landing the plane. This guy was clearly a security risk, and when it comes to potential bomb threats it’s much better to be safe than sorry. They did what they needed to do to ensure the safety of the passengers and the crew. But assuming that the woman who blogged her story was actually witness to the events aboard the aircraft, her story is the most detailed and accurate report out there, and the facts she relates paint a very different picture from that perpetuated by the mainstream media.

In this instance, a blogger bringing the truth to light hasn’t caused any scandals. If anything, it has at least partially exonerated Pelayo-Ortega in the eyes of the people who have read the true story. But business people can learn something from this example of a blogger giving the real story while the media is still reprinting and echoing the standard line. Blogs really do cut through the crap and get straight to heart of the matter - and it can happen in any situation. Factoring these sorts of eventualities into your overall communications policy will be a key to the future of successful corporate communication.