Metro officials e-mailed the following talking points to Metro board members, high-ranking employees, Metro's "stakeholder" organizations and local governments in response to The Washington Post's four-day series about problems across the rail and bus system.
Re: 'Efforts to Repair Aging System Compound Metro's Problems'
"Attached are the sound bites, talking points, and background papers we prepared in advance of tomorrow's Post article, entitled "Efforts to Repair Aging System Compound Metro's Problems." Although we've seen an advance copy of the Sunday pieces in the early editions that are on the street today, we have not had a single media inquiry today.
Besides sending the attached materials to you, we are also sending them to our employees and key stakeholders, including elected officials and their resprective staffs.
Our media strategy for Sunday morning is to take a "wait and see" approach. We have the "sound bites" and back-up materials ready to send to other media outlets if we need them, but as I indicated Friday, we don't want to create media interest if it doesn't already exist. In other words, if no other media outlets pick up the Post story Sunday, we don't want to hand it to them. If any other media outlets do express interest in the Post articles, however, we'll be ready. For example, if WTOP radio picks up the story, we'll have Dick White ready to go on WTOP to rebut.
We'll likely follow the same strategy for Monday, although we do think there may be some attention paid to the Post pieces by other media outlets when we resume the regular work week, when other media outlets are more fully staffed than on the weekends. We'll keep you constantly posted as to the status of other media inquiries and our responses to them.
Thanks."
Attachment: Day One -- June 5, 2005 (PDF)
Attachment: Metrorail Reliability Central Messages (PDF)
Re: 'Service for Disabled Is Troubled'
"** Proprietary **
Attached are DRAFT sound bites and talking points for tomorrow's (Tuesday's) anticipated article in the Washington Post on our MetroAccess paratransit service. Using the same process we followed this morning, we will finalize these materials very early tomorrow morning once we've had an opportunity to read the article(s) in the paper.
Since we haven't had the chance to see tomorrow's article, we have no idea whether the reporters intend to paint a story that we were aware of fraud or potential fraud in our paratransit program but did nothing for two years to investigate those claims. They hinted at such a portrayal when they met with Dick White last week. Although Dick spent quite some time assuring the reporters that was NOT the case, we have no idea at this time how they will treat this issue in the paper. If they do go down that road, we intend to respond very aggressively, since that would be an inaccurate accounting of our response to those isolated reports of potential fraud.
Just as FYI, we have seen a very limited, lukewarm response to today's Post article on safety oversight from other media outlets. WTOP radio was interested very early this morning; our Board member Jim Graham was "live" just before 7 a.m., and our CEO Dick White was interviewed "live " at 7:05 a.m. We've had no inquiries from any other media outlets today!! In addition, our Customer Service call center in Silver Spring has not received a single telephone call or e-mail about the first two days of the Post series. And we have received some very positive feedback about our strategic responses from our stakeholder groups.
