Six Months Into the Nancy Guthrie Case, Pima County Needs a Podium, Not a Press Release

By Jason Pack | Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, Crisis Communications Consultant, Media Rep Global Strategies

Six months now since Nancy Guthrie disappeared out of her home in Tucson, and this week Sheriff Nanos got asked a simple question: why no press conference. His answer was that press conferences are for when you’ve got something specific you need help with, and short of that, a media release does the job.

Now, I want to be fair here. I don’t think this is a man doing wrong by his case. I think this is a good cop who hasn’t been given the tools of a good communicator, and that’s a different problem entirely. Plenty of the best investigators I ever worked with couldn’t stand in front of a camera to save their life, and it never once said a thing about how they worked a case.

I ran media for the FBI during the Boston Marathon bombing. I watched the Special Agent in Charge, Rick DesLauriers, stand at a podium every single day next to the police commissioner and the state police. Now here’s the thing about DesLauriers. That man spent his whole career in counterintelligence. Spooks and shadows. Trained his entire professional life not to say a word in public about anything. And there he was, every day, in front of cameras, telling folks what they knew and what they didn’t. If a fella built like that can find his way to a podium under pressure, that tells me it’s not about whether it comes natural. It’s about whether somebody around you helps you get ready to do it anyway.

I’ll say this too, because it’s part of the story. There were some real questions raised early on about how that scene was handled. The reporting says the property didn’t get taped off for a few days, and some early evidence didn’t get the attention it probably deserved right out the gate. Those are the kind of mistakes that happen fast, in the first confused hours of a case like this, and they’re also the kind of mistakes you can’t take back. I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter.

But here’s why I bring it up in a piece about communication and not about the investigation itself. When you’ve already had some rocky early moments, that’s exactly when you need to be out front the most, not less. Trust you’ve already lost some of, you don’t get back with a press release. You get it back by showing your face and taking the hard question.

Here’s what I’ve always taught, going back to my Bureau days and now running my own shop. A press conference isn’t about the information. It’s about showing up. You can have absolutely nothing new to say and still walk out there and say, “here’s what we’re working on, here’s what we don’t know yet.” That costs you something. That’s why it works. A press release costs you nothing, and folks can tell.

Now to be fair, Nanos got something right this week too. Somebody asked about the Guthrie family, and he didn’t hedge one bit. Said they’re not suspects, said they’re victims of a horrific crime, plain as that. Good on him for saying it clear. My point is just this. If you can be that clear, say it where people can watch you say it, with a reporter able to ask a follow up, and with the FBI standing right there next to you.

And let me say this plain, because it matters. None of this is a knock on the detectives, the agents, the folks actually working this case day and night. From what I’ve seen, the working relationship between Pima County and the Bureau on the ground has been solid, and that’s usually how it goes. It’s the men and women doing the actual work who carry these cases, not whoever’s standing at the microphone. This critique is about the microphone, not about them.

Here’s what nobody talks about though. When the public sees two agencies fussing with each other, even if the folks doing the real work never had a cross word between them, confidence takes a hit anyway. And that costs you tips. Somebody sitting at home with the one piece of information that breaks this case is a lot less likely to pick up the phone if they’re not sure who’s in charge.

And here’s a piece most folks never think about. Correcting a bad rumor out loud isn’t spin. It’s just good management. Every rumor left sitting out there is a detective chasing something that was never real, in a department already stretched thin.

A media release tells people what happened. A press conference tells them somebody’s still fighting for them. Six months in, with a family still waiting on answers, I think Pima County owes them both, and I think their sheriff has the tools to get there. It’s a skill, not a gift. It can be learned.

This is exactly the kind of thing I train agencies and companies on at Media Rep Global Strategies. How to talk when you don’t have anything new to say. How to build trust before you need it. If your department or your organization has ever found itself standing where Pima County is right now, give us a call. We’d be glad to help you get there.