No comment says it all
It is a truth universally acknowledged that saying no comment is not the best strategy when responding to a communications crisis.
But it is always instructive to apply the theory to real-life crises and to see how sticking to no comment and not explaining or offering a solution plays out in the media.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has cornered the market in communications crises almost since November when the 2013/14 Ashes series started with a 381-run hammering. Without dwelling on public grief cricket fans will know that was just the beginning of a spiral of despair which saw the team whitewashed 5-0, players leaving the tour, the coach departing and ultimately the sacking of Kevin Pietersen.
You do not need to be a cricket expert to guess that the decision to end the England cricket career of the top batsman on the tour and one of the best players of his generation would not have been taken lightly. The new coaches and management would presumably not want to start the rebuilding process by deliberately undermining themselves.
But explaining the decision has been a problem. The media wanted the sacking explained preferably in forensic detail and with instances of what went wrong. The EWCB declined to do so initially for contractual and legal reasons and earned headlines along the lines of “ECB refuses to explain Pietersen exit”. Then they held a press conference billed as an explanation but did not provide exactly what the media wanted so ended up with further criticism.
The temptation is to mutter “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t” and then leave it at that. The EWCB will have been well aware of the risks of their media strategy but also well aware that PR cannot drive overall strategy for the England cricket team.
The communications issue was failing to provide an explanation initially and then seeming to have been driven to provide an explanation under duress. In reality it is likely that no explanation the EWCB could have provided would have satisfied critics who would have always opposed the decision.
There is not an easy answer unfortunately but perhaps the guidance that PR is about what you do rather than you say provides some sort of answer. Clearly those who disagree with the sacking of KP will always disagree and will have good reasons for doing so.
However if PR is about what you do rather than what you say then the answer is simple. England have to beat Sri Lanka and India in the summer and everyone will be happy. Probably.