Former CENTCOM Communications Director Joe Buccino: Quick, accurate information diffuses reputational threats

Institutions and corporations must get in front of a crisis with accurate information as soon as possible to diffuse reputational threats, advises Joe Buccino, author and former communications director for the military's central command, known as CENTCOM.

Buccino discussed points from his upcoming book, When Every Word Counts: How to Earn Trust, Command, Attention, and Communicate Clearly in Any Situation, Wednesday at a meeting of American Legion Post 20, which is affiliated with the National Press Club. 

Buccino is a retired Army colonel whose assignments included press secretary to Secretary of Defense James Mattis and acting SecDef Patrick M. Shanahan. He also worked as communications director for the Combined Joint Task Force supporting Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion, and as communications director at U.S. Central Command. He now works as communications director for the House Republican Conference.

Buccino described how communicators must work against natural instincts amid a crisis, since the human brain tends not to distinguish a physical threat from a reputational threat. "Under pressure, the mind searches for the first story that makes sense, and then filters out everything else," Buccino said. "Then we tend to ignore facts that don't fit that version." He also noted that due to emotion, audiences in pressure-laden moments tend to draw conclusions in the first 30 seconds of a presentation or briefing, and he outlined a three-step process for communicating in a crisis:

Acknowledge: Recognize the emotions involved for people affected by the crisis.

Align: Develop a shared understanding for what the situation requires.

Act: Take decisive action and adapt as needed.

Apart from emotional reactions, Buccino said another challenge for communicators is a movement away from trust in institutions and experts that goes back to the Vietnam War. Podcasters and bloggers, who may or may not be knowledgeable, have filled that void, he said.

"You've got all this pressure on the psyche of the country," Buccino said, "and leaders have to find a way to communicate through that barrier."

Buccino advised Boeing following the 2024 incident in which a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737. "There's 'x' amount of information you can release publicly when an incident is under investigation," Buccino said, "and we wanted to get right up to the edge [of what could be released]."

If an institution fails to communicate during a crisis, the reputational decline can reach a point where it's unrecoverable, Buccino said.

Artificial intelligence will not solve messaging problems. Buccino said. "A lot of leaders are offloading their public relations to AI," he said, "and there's a real danger to that." He noted that within AI, biases can become amplified, and deep fakes can become reality.

Post 20 has been affiliated with the Club for more than a century. The post was founded at the suggestion of famed World War I General John J. Pershing, who was an associate member of the Club at the time.