Why Consistency is Key to Effective Media Relations

Published on April 23, 2025 by Broadsight

The first version said it was a security incident.

The second said it wasn’t.

The third came from a VP who hadn’t seen the first two.

By the time the fifth journalist emailed, the damage was already done.

It wasn’t a lack of goodwill or effort. It was a lack of coordination. One team fielded media, another drafted internal talking points, a third tracked issues in a project management tool—and none of it was synced.

The result? Inconsistent messaging, rattled stakeholders and a very public sense that the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing. A reporter even ran a quote from an earlier email alongside a contradictory internal memo. The message wasn’t just unclear—it was visibly fragmented.

The Cost of Inconsistency

In a fast-moving media moment, every word matters. A quote that contradicts an earlier statement—even slightly—can cause confusion. A delayed reply can spark speculation. And a single sentence in a news story can undercut weeks of careful messaging.

For comms teams, inconsistency doesn’t just look bad—it breaks trust. With media. With the public. And with leadership.

The frustrating part? Most teams don’t know where the inconsistency started. A version got buried in an email thread. A quote was rushed out without approval. Someone referenced last year’s messaging because that’s all they had.

Why Consistency Is So Hard to Maintain

It’s not because comms teams aren’t aligned. It’s because the systems they use aren’t.

When messaging is scattered across emails, Slack threads, PDFs, spreadsheets and documents, version control becomes a full-time job. And in a live media moment, no one has time to go digging.

By the time a comms lead says, “Which quote did we use for this last time?” the story is already live.

Broadsight was built to solve exactly this problem: giving comms teams a central, searchable place to log messaging, track who said what and when, and keep version chaos from spiraling into a story. It’s not about controlling every word. It’s about keeping your strategy intact, even under pressure.

Consistency Starts with Coordination

The most effective teams aren’t just careful with their words. They’re intentional with how those words are tracked, approved and reused.

That means:

• Keeping a centralized, searchable log of all media interactions.
• Tracking which version of a message was used, when, and with which journalist.
• Flagging moments when messaging diverges—and knowing why.
• Making approved language easy to find, even in a rush.

Without that infrastructure, even the best teams end up playing broken telephone—and they do it in public.

The Goal Isn’t Control. It’s Clarity.

Good media relations doesn’t require robotic scripts. It requires smart, human messaging that stays consistent in tone, facts and framing—even when different people are delivering it.

Because what journalists remember isn’t the internal process. It’s whether the story made sense.

If your fifth media response sounds nothing like your first, it’s not a comms failure—it’s a coordination problem. Broadsight keeps every version in sync, so your narrative doesn’t unravel in the inbox. See it in action at broadsight.ca.