Combating misinformation in public schools

n this episode, OSBA's Scott Gerfen interviews Tom Fladung, managing partner of Hennes Communications and a national expert in crisis communication. They discuss the challenges that school leaders face with the spread of misinformation and fake news and how it impacts public institutions, especially schools. Fladung shares real-world examples, the importance of maintaining a steady communication flow and best practices for building trust and credibility within school communities. He also provides actionable strategies for school districts to prepare for and effectively respond to misinformation.Brought to you by Pappas & Associates: They're shaping policy with integrity. https://www.pappaskc.com.

For more resources, training and advocacy updates from the Ohio School Boards Association, visit ohioschoolboards.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Fake news, viral lies, and real-world consequences. How can school leaders respond when misinformation spreads like a wildfire? Tom Flatig of Henness Communications is here to talk about the digital wildfire school districts faced and how to fight back with speed, clarity, and trust. Leading the way is brought to you by Pappasin Associates. We're grateful for their continued support of OSBA and this podcast. Joining us today is Tom Flatig. He is managing partner of Henness Communications. He's a national expert in crisis communication. Tom has helped school districts across the country manage reputational threats, respond to viral misinformation, and regain control of their narrative in those high pressure moments. Tom, thanks for being here. Tom, what makes today's environment uniquely dangerous uh when it comes to the spread of misinformation about schools and public institutions?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Well, I think there's a couple of factors in play, Scott. First, as everybody knows, uh the speed of communication is now instantaneous. You know, we used to talk about a 24-7 news cycle. That's way too slow for today. Communication is instantaneous. We all carry this little communications device, which can get us information at a moment's notice. Everyone is, in effect, a publisher. You are a finger stroke away from publishing something on Facebook, on TikTok, on Snapchat, on Instagram, on X, and on and on. Then consider the fact that, you know, trust in public institutions waxes and wanes. And I, you know, I'm hesitant to say this is uh the least trust we've had, or this is the worst time. I'm always I'm always kind of leery of that. But I think there's no doubt that uh uh trust in a lot of public institutions is at a low ebb right now, and people are much more willing to believe the very unusual, the what uh would otherwise be unthinkable. Because there are instances when the unthinkable turns out to be true. Unfortunately, I think that's morphed into people willing to believe a lot of unthinkable things are true. So you add all those together and and you see why misinformation, fake news, as it's popularly come to be called, can spread so rapidly and be accepted so widely.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So, Tom, why are public schools uh especially vulnerable to fake news?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

I think there's a lot of factors in play there. First of all, they're public. Their actions are subject to public scrutiny, and that's as it should be because they're taxpayer funded. We're all paying for our public schools. We all, whether we have children there or not, have a stake in our public schools. So naturally they get a lot of public, they conduct their business in public.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

So you've worked Yes, and you worked with districts that were targeted by this viral misinformation. Uh, you know, without naming names, what are some of the most damage effects? Or can you give some examples uh of what you've seen out there?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, I'll give you a couple of examples. One that's that's uh that's spectacular, but I think is actually less is less frequent and in many ways is less difficult to manage than the second one I'll refer to. The first is in this instance, a uh a man posted on social media that his niece and others at this public school had been subject to getting mandatory vaccines. In effect, they were hauled into the gym and they were all vaccinated, and their parents didn't know and nobody knew. No, you know, first of all, uh school wasn't even in session when the man claimed that this happened. There was no evidence of this, yeah, zero evidence, but it took off, and then it got picked up by InfoWars, um uh, which was run at that time by the infamous Alex Jones, right? Millions of followers. This got millions of views. The school district immediately found itself under intense questioning. Security had to be provided to the superintendent's house, and it really took them weeks, if not months, to dig out of this, even though there was not a scintilla of truth to it. That is a, as I said, an extreme and spectacular example of fake news taking off. I'll tell you the more what I consider the more frequent, or what I don't consider, but I know is the more frequent and frequently difficult and more difficult to deal with is you have an incident in a school. And let's say it's a really serious incident, such as one student um uh uh injures another in an incident. Reports of that inevitably circulate. Students have seen it, teachers have seen it, might be captured on cell phone, it hits social media, and people begin to post speculative or intentionally false information about the incident. The reason I say this is more difficult is look at what that public school now faces. First of all, they've just started an investigation into this, they don't know all the facts, and if law enforcement is involved, that just heightens the sensitivity. You can't talk about many of the things. Student privacy is involved. You need to be fair to all those involved. All of that, though, limits what a school can say, which just opens up the opportunity for the fake news, the misinformation to spread. Schools face that regularly, and that's a tough situation.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

So, Tom, what are steps some school leaders can take before the misinformation strikes? You know, to build that trust and credibility with your community.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, you're just looking at kind of the classic best practices of all communications. First of all, communicate. Um uh you need to have a regular flow of communications, whether that's through your newsletter, through um emails, videos, however, that's done, school board meetings, however that's done, you need to have a regular pace of communications about what's going on at the school. When here's where it gets a little more difficult. If you have bad news to report, and it's not necessarily a crisis, but it could be. When you have bad news to report, break the news yourselves. You take the play away from uh investigative reporters like I used to be, from whistleblowers, from speculators on Facebook. No one wants to do this, and I get that. Nobody likes to tell bad news about themselves. But if you do it, if you do that, you control your story because you're telling your story. And we know from doing this for a long time that organizations, including public schools, that are willing to take this difficult step, they are much more likely to be believed by the people they most care about. That's their teachers, staff, parents, students, community supporters, they're much more likely to be believed, including in the face of information and misinformation that may follow.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Do you recommend maybe creating something like a rumor control or transparency page on the website?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I've seen that, I've seen that done, and I and I have come to be a believer in it. The first school system that I saw do it was in Ocala, Florida, and they they called it rumor control. They were facing a lot of misinformation circulating within their community, and they started that page on their website. This is hard, arduous work because it's not like school districts, public schools are sitting around with these people who have nothing to do. And so, hey, let's find some work for them. I completely understand that. And it's not like they have a whole lot of money in their budget to say, hey, let's start this new initiative. But if you take that hard work, I've seen it in Florida and seen it elsewhere of a rumor control page. Another school district calls it the transparency page, and they update it constantly. And it's not always just to control rumors, it's it's to report information on the school. A lot of times they'll use a kind of FAQ approach, which is easy and fast. Um, and and there, you get questions that aren't necessarily based on misinformation, but that are just based on curiosity. How does the public comment period work? It's at our school board meetings. You put that there, you answer it. It also immediately gives you an outlet to deal with that misinformation as soon as you see it starting to circulate. And I'll stress this over time, not immediately, but over time, districts that have done this and directed people there to their website, which by the way is a controlled environment, not like the wild, wild west of social media. They taught their communities. When I hear something that, you know, I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it doesn't sound like the public school I know. People have been taught to go there, and it doesn't eliminate the fake news, doesn't eliminate the misinformation. But I've seen over time it damp it down a lot and gives that community a place to go, and they come to trust it.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

When we talk about uh fake news, how can school leaders, what are some practical ways that school leaders can uh identify that fake news quickly?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Well, there are a couple of ways. One is is it simply isn't true. Um, it's fantastical. It's it's more often it's it's it's not quite that malicious. It's it's an un misunderstanding of the facts. Um now, uh part of this is is what we call social media, and it usually occurs on social media, social media threat assessment. If you jumped at every piece of misinformation or fake news on social media, you'd be able to run your school because that's all you'd be doing. So one of the tests is okay, is this gaining any sort of traction? And and that's right there for you to see, and you don't need to be a social media expert. If you notice something that's wrong or misinformed or just plain false, and it's getting shared, that's a marker. If people are taking the time to share it on Facebook, repost it on X, things like that, they're sharing that. I mean, look, this is the same. Social communications fundamentally is the same. This is the same as when I used to share things across the fence with my neighbor, right? Except now it's on steroids, it's on social media, so I can share it with all 5,000 of my friends whenever I want to. So if you see things getting shared, if you see it matriculating from one social media site to another, you know, the misinformation was on X, but now it's on Facebook. Oh, now it's on Instagram too. That's a sign that you're gonna need to respond and point out what's going wrong. So being able to recognize what to respond to also is critical here.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Tom, finally, uh what's your message to school board members and superintendents uh who might feel overwhelmed by the threat of fake news? Uh, where do they start?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Well, first of all, let's let's let's do introduce some um uh some reality into this. We're not awash in fake news, even though it seems that way. Most of what's out there, including on social media, is is benign or true. Um so save your keep your powder dry and save yourself for those real threats. Figure out a figure out a process. You have figured out schools are great at figuring out processes. They have policies, they have procedures. Figure out a process for this. Who on the school board, who within that school district is going to be, in effect, deputized to do that threat assessment, to see, you know, when we should respond and what's the process for doing that. Let's take some of the panic out of this, let's take some of the indecision out of this and have a process. That, by the way, is usually part of a crisis communications plan. But let's have a process for doing that. Let's designate some people, let's have a designated spokesperson, let's figure out what we're going to do when this occurs, and then we can respond in a measured, practiced way, instead of that throwing up our hands and staring at one another and saying, What in the world are we going to do about this?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Tom, any final thoughts before we uh let you go?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Just that um, you know, fake news has been around forever. It's not a new phenomenon. It goes back to before the United States of America was the United States of America. Benjamin Franklin did it, John Adams did it. So it's not new. But it is now, as I said earlier, on steroids, given the advent of social media. I don't believe that a public school district should allow misinformation, serious misinformation that's getting shared widely to live on on social media. You have a story to tell, and in most cases it's a good story. Make sure you tell it or somebody's gonna tell your story for you.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Tom, if uh a district wants to get in touch with you, uh Hennis Communications, how do they go about doing that?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

It's easy. You can uh email uh Henness at Crisis Communications all one word.com. You can contact me directly. It's my last name, f L A D U N G at Crisis Communications.com. As you all know, Scott, we are an OSBA partner. That initial consultation with us, if you're an OSBA member, is free. And believe it or not, we've solved some problems in that free initial consultation.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Tom, thanks so much for being here. You always have great information uh for our viewers and listeners out there. And also, I want to give a big thanks to Pappas and Associates uh for sponsoring this podcast. If you found this conversation useful, be sure to subscribe and share the podcast. Leading the way, we'll see you next time.