Should You Use Controlled Leaks in Your PR and Media Strategy?

You’ve no doubt heard a lot in recent years about “controlling the narrative,” a central tenet in my field of public relations. But there’s another lesser-known PR strategy that can be highly effective when businesses are aiming to influence their media relations: the “controlled leak.”

A controlled leak is not a purposely released rumor (at least, not when it’s used in a professional manner). Rather, it’s a deliberate, measured unveiling of information intentionally shared with the public in a manageable and restrained way.

On the rare occasions when I employ it at my firm, I do so not to hide the truth, not to spread distracting gossip, but to provide accurate information before inaccuracy can take over. The power of the controlled leak lies in its ability to take the reins of a situation from the inside out instead of letting external forces run with your story.

And yet it’s a nuanced strategy that must be implemented with tremendous care to avoid it blowing up on you. Let’s take a closer look at what the controlled leak can do for you — and what it can’t.

The role of controlled leaks in modern-day media relations

Like any public relations tactic meant to protect a brand’s reputation, the controlled leak is all about timing and context. Timing matters because a story can spread far and wide these days in no time flat, and so getting ahead of a story that could hurt your credibility is critical. And context matters because how your audience perceives things is sometimes more important than what they perceive. The controlled leak allows you to shape both.

It does so by filling the vacuum that silence can create with content that you create. If you don’t fill that silence yourself, someone or something else will — influencers speculating, viral posts featuring misleading screenshots or half-truths — so you want your voice to be the one holding the mic when the news is announced.

What I’m saying is, not every headline is organic or accidental. Sometimes it’s necessary (or at least helpful) to feed media outlets with what you want them to focus on, with the purpose of slowing unwanted momentum and offering clarity about a situation before it can escalate, especially in high-profile and crisis communications scenarios.

The controlled leak isn’t about vying for media attention; the role it plays is to protect and direct the course of a story long enough for facts to surface and crucial PR decisions to be made — by you, behind the scenes, not by others trying to grab the spotlight.

An alternative to a formal press release

A press release isn’t always the best vehicle when you want to disseminate a message to the public; in fact, the formality of it can work against a particular situation, the directness of it can put too blunt a point on the situation, and the “on the record” permanence of it locks in language that could benefit from being more fluid.

A carefully placed leak, on the other hand, is a much softer approach that allows the messaging to evolve in line with the “temperature in the room.” For example, providing information from “a source close to the situation” does quiet but intentional work on your behalf. Indeed, anonymous sources have played a pivotal role in helping journalists tell more accurate stories since the dawn of journalism.

Let me be clear: Anonymously leaking information should not be done to deceive or deflect if there’s actually been wrongdoing. It can, however, be used to calm things down, to gauge public opinion that can crucially aid next steps and to gently steer the conversation in a productive direction before speculation runs wild online and in social media.

Avoiding the blowup a leak can cause

Controlled leaks are a powerful tool to soften the edges of a narrative that’s turning sharp, to educate the public on what’s actually happening and to redirect attention away from inaccuracies — all without triggering a full-blown press cycle. But they’re also quite risky.

If a leak is not handled responsibly and skillfully, brand trust — the most valuable asset in today’s marketplace — can be undermined in mere minutes. That’s why you have to go to great lengths to protect that trust, not allowing a controlled leak to unravel all the hard work you’ve invested in building your company’s name.

How does a controlled leak backfire?

• When too much information gets out at once, leading the audience to think “thou doth protest too much”
• When the details in that information conflict or are inconsistent, raising suspicions in the audience
• When different versions of the story emerge from multiple sources, causing the audience to question all of them
• When the leak contradicts previous or later official statements, which signals shady behavior to the audience

In these cases, media relations shift from proactive to reactive alarmingly fast. Journalists can feel manipulated (which means you’ll lose control of your media coverage) and credibility can be seriously damaged (which is very, very hard to recover once lost).

Moral of the story: When controlled leaking is done, it must be done credibly and with consistency.

The ethics of controlled leaking

This brings us to the ethical implications of purposely putting words out there without attributing them to your name. And because that’s sensitive territory, controlled leaks are never my first move. They’re a precision tool that I advise wielding sparingly, thoughtfully and only when they’ll advance your endgame.

To be ethical with this tool means understanding the difference between guiding a story and manipulating it. A leak should reduce confusion, not add to it. It should help journalists do their job better, not take advantage of their reach. It should be working toward transparency, not clouding the facts.

If you use a leak purely to distract or mislead and those true intentions surface (as they have a way of doing), the fallout will likely be worse than the seed issue itself.

To leak or not to leak — that is the question

So when should you take advantage of a leak and when should you refrain from doing so? Well, sometimes the smartest move is restraint. Even in our current “say something, anything!” climate, sometimes saying nothing for a time keeps you away from the edge of taking an unnecessarily risky leap.

When advising my clients, I tell them that a leak has to be part of a larger, cohesive narrative we’re building; it can’t exist in isolation as a one-time reflex or an act of desperation. But it can be used as a stop-gap measure — one of several lily pads that comprise a pathway leading to your eventual goal. It’s a way to say enough to indirectly address the situation until it’s time to directly reveal a fuller story.

But again, you have to do it right. And that entails grasping how the media landscape shifts, how journalists operate and just how influential real-time public sentiment is. Most entrepreneurs don’t have this expertise; but PR firms do, and that’s why a PR specialist should be the only one managing your controlled leak.

The takeaway

Controlled leaks can definitely be used to turn the volume down on messaging you don’t want out there. Remember when Bennifer 2.0 imploded? Jen’s and Ben’s publicists were all over that in milliseconds so that the public wouldn’t prematurely turn on either party or jump to too-hasty conclusions. Jennifer Lopez’s team certainly didn’t want her perceived as a despondent, abandoned victim, and so everyone gobbled up comments in the media from “a close friend of JLo’s” or “a source in her inner circle” that assured us she was doing just fine, the breakup was mutual, and she was focused on going forward, living her best life.

And guess what? That’s exactly the reality of the narrative we’ve seen play out since then. Those media leaks weren’t fallacies; from what we can all tell, they were a strategic tool to present the multihyphenate superstar in the good light she has earned and in a way that has aligned with her (and his) subsequent behavior.

Even for those of us who don’t appear on the cover of US magazine, the controlled leak can still be used to direct the camera lens where you want it to go, to reflect your accurate messaging.