The IRS discovers that a public company has unpaid employee taxes it owes the government. This discovery is about to become public in the media. Which type of messaging should the company use for talking points to communicate about this damaging publicity?

Upon discovery of the incident the IRS should use Crises Communication Method to communicate about the event.

Explanation:

Crisis communication is a specialized component of public relations. Its purpose is to navigate negative scrutiny with minimum damage.

When a person or corporation accuses a celebrity, well respected service, company or brand, of wrong doing, a crisis may result. The allegations may be about the personal lives of individuals, mismanagement, poor performance, services not rendered, injury or death caused by a product, or unethical behavior.

In the example above, the crises is above, a public company is being accused of employee taxes which it owes the government.

The potential for crises to erupt here is very high. Shareholders would most definitely be concerned. Employees whose tax remittances would most likely be concerned. Because it is a publicly quoted company, it is likely to generate quite a lot of negative publicity.

According to principle, the higher the number of negative reports, the faster negative publicity grows. Within a short period of time, the first negative report ends up becoming just one of many. As negativity comes to dominate public perception of the entity in question, it becomes increasingly difficult to effectively counter with positive messaging, creating a crisis for the entity or business.

In a simplified model, there are three stages in a crisis event—the stages (1) before the crisis, (2) during the crisis, and (3) after the crisis.

Crisis communication, must be carried out during the crisis, and has very specific communications demands. Crisis communication inherently involves many acknowledged unknowns in the context of a particular event.

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