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A lot of people like to say "no comment," even if it's not the best answer. Just how many? Four Corners Communications Founder Drew Kerr points out in his blog today:

There are a lot of people who don't wish to comment out there, judging by merely typing in "no comment" into Google News. Today, there were over 10,000 instances of "no comment."

Kerr says it can be better to have sense of humor (when possible) instead of issuing the "guilty as charged" no comment. He himself has employed the tactic when dealing with a rumor relating to client Felix Dennis of Dennis Publishing, which publishes Maxim and The Week.

Read on and enjoy.

I employed this technique a couple of months ago when my client Felix Dennis, in a highly inebriated state over dinner in the UK, blurted out to a journalist that he had killed a man 20 years ago pushing him off a cliff. The British tabloids ran crazy with this for a couple of weeks and it eventually seeped into a few American media locations. When the NY Post wanted a comment from me, asking if Felix Dennis had really killed a man, I sat down, wrote a few drafts of an appropriate response and told them this:

"Felix has killed many people with his jokes and he has certainly killed a few magazines along the way—his own and others—but as for human beings, that's ridiculous."

The day the quote appeared, I received a number of complimentary phone calls and e-mails, and even the NY Observer tipped their hat in their Media Mob blog.