In my last two articles, I explained how effective crisis PR – the most effective being pre-publication prevention rather than any attempted post-publication cure – can only be undertaken using the tools that the print and broadcast media have themselves provided for this purpose.

As I have also outlined, this is because all editorial decisions involving a derogatory commentary about a company or individual (which, alas, constitutes a large proportion of British media content) are based primarily on an assessment of the risk of a regulatory and/or legal challenge to the material in question.

When the credible spectre of such a challenge is raised before publication by a professional capable of mounting it, the likelihood of inaccurate, negative material being published is greatly reduced – as I know from participating in such decisions for over 30 years. There is a twofold benefit to adopting such a strategy.

In the immediate term, when a false and damaging publication is threatened, the most effective response is to use the "right to reply" to challenge the factual basis of the allegation and raise the prospect of independent scrutiny of the publication or broadcast at issue – initially by the relevant regulator. This is best accomplished by a recognised crisis PR lawyer who is not only well-versed in how editorial decisions are made but also skilled in eliciting effective scrutiny of them.

The second benefit is the establishment of a track record for having a robust reputation protection policy. My father was a probation officer, and one of his clients – a burglar – once told him that while having an alarm box (whether fake or real) on the front of your house would not reduce the overall number of burglaries in the area, it would make it far less likely that your house would be targeted.

The same principle applies in the media world, where corporate and individual reputations are routinely “burgled” for commercial gain. Let me illustrate this with an example from my experience of "legalling" South Park episodes for UK transmission – often under the constraint of a mere 24-hour window.

I would follow the two-stage process used by all editorial lawyers in such situations. The first step is to assess whether there is a theoretical regulatory and/or legal claim concerning the material. If the answer is "no", then the job is done. If the answer is "yes", the next step is to determine how likely it is that the company.