As Alex and I are working our way through the second season of Battlestar Galactica (the new, superb version – not the old, horrifically godawful version), one of the key arcs is the degeneration of Col. Saul Tigh into an insecure, dictatorial villain. Drunk on both power and booze, he’s starting to make the traitorous, tormented Baltar look downright likeable.

Yet in the last episode we watched, Fragged, I found myself wanting to give the colonel a hug, chuck him under the chin and tell him, “Buck up – we’ve all been there.”

Because like Col. Tigh, I know what it’s like to see a PR maneuver go horribly, publicly off the rails. In his case, it was an impromptu meeting in the ship’s brig; in my case, a news conference at a legislature; in both cases, unmitigated disasters.

The background: In the rag-tag fleet that is all that remains of humanity, civilian authority rests in the hands of ill-prepared former-schoolteacher-turned-president Laura Roslin; the military is led by Commander William Adama and his second-in-command, Col. Tigh. A conflict has escalated into a military coup, and Adama has had Roslin arrested and thrown in the brig. When Adama was shot in an assassination attempt, Tigh assumed command.

The scenario: The Quorum, a senior 12-member body in the civilian government, is demanding to see the president. Tigh has refused. Meanwhile, Tigh’s wife reports that Roslin is hallucinating and incoherent. She urges him to let the Quorum see just how pathetic she is; it will finish her.

The decision: Tigh allows the Quorum to visit the president in the brig.

The result: Roslin has meanwhile gained access to alternative medication, and regains her faculties. Far from shattering the Quorum’s confidence in her, she rallies them against Tigh, Adama and the military coup d’état. Tigh is humiliated.

Applicability for non-geeks: In my case, we were holding a news conference for a cabinet minister. What we didn’t know was that the opposition had obtained a leaked government document outlining possible objections to everything the minister was about to say. The result was that the conference focused entirely on the objections, and not on what we were setting out to convey.

Like Col. Tigh, instead of trusting a third party, I should have gone into the room a few minutes before the news conference began… where I would have found copies of that leaked document on every chair. At the very least, we would have been able to brief the minister so that when the reporters asked about the document, he’d have had a good answer; we might not have been able to carry the day, but we’d have limited the damage.

The lesson: If a situation seems too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t rely on a report from an unreliable source who’s telling you something you’re all to eager to hear. Scout out the situation beforehand for yourself, and know your environment.

technorati tags:media_relations, news_conference, battlestar_galactica