Falmouth mock oil spill teaches lessons (From Falmouth Packet)

Falmouth mock oil spill teaches lessons

4:11pm Thursday 5th February 2009 in News By James Toseland

Students at University College Falmouth and Falmouth Harbour Commissioners learnt how to handle the media interest of an oil spill from both sides of the table at a mock press conference yesterday.

The press conference held at the National Maritime Museum involved four harbour commissioners, including harbour master Mark Sansom, answer questions from journalism students from all year groups on a fictional oil spill hitting Falmouth.

The harbour commissioners used predicting technology called Pisces to simulate what would happen should an oil spill occur and the students were given press statements from one hour, four hours and a day after the event.

Both the students and the harbour commissioners felt that the mock press conference helped them immensely to deal with this type of situation. For the students it was their most realistic experience of a press conference, something that they hope to be a regular part of their career. For the harbour commissioners it was invaluable training of how to handle the press if an oil spill ever happened.

Third year journalism student Kezia said that she thought this was the most realistic exercise they had done.

"We know now that if an event happens we are never going to know all the aspects of it and we would have to adapt our questions to the situation."

New harbour commissioner Mark Killingback said that due to his limited experience in dealing with the media, a mock press conference like this helped him familiarise himself with the situation.

"Any media training and practice in dealing with questions from the press is good for us, also it is good practice to give information in a way they can understand it.

"If something like this had really happened and we have not had any media training we may not give our information in the best way."

Mr Killingback's sentiments were echoed by harbour master Mark Sansom, who was pleased to engage with the students on such a personal level, where before they may have only spoken to them on the phone to formulate questions.

"Oil spills, no matter what size, generate a lot of public interest and we would have to hold press conferences. Exercises like this prepare us for that should it happen.

"We would have to liase with everyone and it is important to simulate these things and know the procedure."

Senior lecturer Anne Taylor was pleased with the experience her students got from the scenario and she is hoping to spend a whole day with the harbour commissioners in the future to make the situation even more realistic.