I still shudder when I think of the day I was taking off to do some gardening, the Chief Exec was on holiday abroad, the Chief Safety Officer was out aviating - and the airprox board reports hit the newsdesks. The junior staff were quite right to give them my home number (Chief Engineer in this context), they needed somebody to talk to, but it does rather ruin one's day-off to be phoned mid-morning with "good morning, I'm the transport editor of the independent". You'll find me quoted on the front page the next day as "industry experts", which I thought was quite flattering given it was my day off and I had no idea we had a problem until they phoned me.
My point is, that just occasionally, one has to talk to the blighters, applying the perceived "best practice" of keeping schtum means they'll just print what seems like a good idea at the time.
To make a second point, there are two types of journalist in this context....
Firstly there is fleet-street (yes I know they aren't there any more), consisting of people highly(?!) trained to get a story that makes interesting reading, sells papers, and contains enough grains of truth to avoid their being sued for libel or deformation, but not necessarily any more truth than that. Dealing with these chaps requires both speed and delicacy - they'll go to print unless you can convince them that the whole thing is so boring there's no point. They also work to very tight deadlines - so if you are going to talk to them (usually safest) then it's best to make sure it's done quickly, by somebody who understands what's happening. Then the best approach is to drown them in bland facts, that are of course calculated not to cause problems.
Secondly there is the specialist press. I'm talking about the range of magazines from FTI to Flight, from Microlight Flying to Pilot, from Popular Mechanics to Professional Engineering. These chaps are very different, firstly the deadline to them is much less important than getting things right, and not causing widescale offence within the industry that they serve. When talking to them, it's worth finding out who you're talking to and what their interest in. The best way to get in trouble here is to tell them too many company secrets, but generally you'll find that if you take their details, say you'll call them back in a few hours, go talk to company senior management, and they'll either confirm the amount of information you should give them, or give you a steer as to who the normal contact point is, and you brief them. Specialist journos have a deep abhorence of causing trouble within their areas (they might publically whinge about something outside {a magazine specifically aimed at pilots may well be rude about the engineering profession for example} however, so do be a bit careful).
And just in passing, the latter are worth cultivating because they get a lot of their material from people like us - industry insiders, albeit often writing under pseudonyms (one of this month's high street flying magazines has about 4000 words of mine, but you'll not find my name anywhere), and at anything from 5p to 20p per word, with care not to p*** anybody off, it's not a bad second income once you've learned the ropes of the business. Even if that isn't your interest, a personal relationship with a few specialist journalists can help get your company's preferred view of the world reflected in the press read by your competitors and customers, and that can be a good thing.
G