Why Media Training Is Now an AI Strategy
by Anne Deeter Gallaher
February 24, 2026
Be prepared. It's a slogan we most often associate with the Boy Scouts, but it should be a requirement for every business leader in 2026, particularly those leading corporations, universities, health care systems, and civic institutions.
During a media training exercise with a client this month, we spent several hours planning for future crises and designing “What keeps you up at night?” scenarios for every imaginable and unimaginable circumstance. The conversation turned to messaging and prepared statements—How should we respond in each scenario? What consequences does each message have for stakeholders? This type of exercise blends risk management, strategic planning, communication skills, forecasting, and creativity. Skill sets required of tomorrow’s leaders.
In our pervasive social media environment, there is no pause button. Statements cannot be retracted, wording cannot be reconsidered, and off-the-cuff remarks live online ad infinitum. But here’s what’s changed in 2026: that permanent content is now active training data for AI systems that answer questions about your company, your industry, and your leadership teams.
Since no company executive I know had a global pandemic in their crisis PR plan in March 2020, today’s foresight exercises now account for a wide range of unknowables and extremes. What once felt improbable is now part of responsible leadership planning. According to the Aon Global Risk Management Survey, 82% of companies did not rank pandemics as a top risk before COVID-19, and only about one-third of North American companies had a pandemic plan in place.
A discussion with a university provost this week highlighted the growing importance of strategic forecasting in academia. The setting is different, but the underlying challenge is familiar: public-facing leaders now face similar expectations for foresight, accountability, and clarity.
Strategic forecasting underpins our media training work where preparation is rooted in anticipating change rather than reacting to it. Harvard Business Review defines strategic foresight as “the disciplined practice of scanning for change, exploring multiple plausible futures, and using those insights to make better choices in the present… today’s methods range from monitoring emerging signals to war games to scenario planning—with AI rapidly expanding capabilities.”
This crystallizes the importance of media training. As organizations plan for a new year of growth, uncertainty, and innovation, it’s a good time to add media training to your leadership skills. When a crisis hits, having even an hour to prepare a statement may be impossible. But having a CEO or spokesperson prepared and trained to respond to reporters, speak authentically and confidently on camera, and express the heart of your brand values in a compelling interview means you can still be ready.
Preparing leaders to create key messages, reframe questions, identify stakeholders, connect with an audience, choose the right channels to communicate in, and respond to challenging questions—even in scenarios they pray never occur—is critical. It’s also important to learn when to say yes to an interview opportunity and how to make that moment count.
AI and marketing expert Mark Schaefer, who has written 12 books, the two most recent on AI explains, “This is the golden age of PR! AI referrals are determined through facts, validation, and social signals, especially from traditional media. We all need a little PR help right now if we’re going to win in this world.” He is right. Public relations is experiencing a renaissance, and the opportunities for brand storytellers are significant.
With the rise of AI search and large language models (LLMs), public relations is driving the content appearing in responses. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini all rely on trusted, authoritative sources that are found in earned media and credible journalism. Public relations is AI's fuel.
According to Muckrack, “Earned media dominates the citation mix. About 94% of all links cited by AI are non-paid media, and 82% come directly from earned sources such as news articles, third-party blogs, and industry analysis. It's a simple takeaway: PR work isn't just part of the AI ecosystem—it’s powering it.”
For Pennsylvania organizations, the stakes have never been higher. The ability to excel in an interview and connect context, audience, message, and moment is an executive superpower. And now, AI recognizes that and rewards you with visibility and authority.
Whether you’re leading a tech company, a financial institution, a nonprofit, or a government agency, don't wait for a crisis to discover your leadership team isn’t message-ready. In an era where every statement becomes permanent data, the cost of being unprepared outlives any bad news cycle. It has a lasting imprint on how your organization is understood, cited, and trusted for years to come.
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