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Lee Feinstein, the former U.S. ambassador to Poland, has an impressive résumé. He served under two presidents (Clinton and Obama), worked at the Departments of Defense and State, and is a prolific author. Today, he serves as the Senior Transatlantic Fellow for the German Marshall Fund.
But when I saw this tweet on Sunday night, I knew I’d want to write about an interview he recently gave.
The tweeter, @JudgeElihu, snapped a photo from Mr. Feinstein’s television appearance, which aired on BBC World. Although I couldn’t find the video from this appearance, I did find video of another interview Feinstein conducted from the same room in March.
The room from which Mr. Feinstein conducted the interview was a mess: a nightstand door was open, a bed was directly behind him, and small, barely detectable items were perched on the dresser....
The prevailing wisdom in PR has been that you should keep hammering away at the key messages you're trying to get across in a media interview, no matter what.Is the reporter asking you a completely unrelated question? Doesn't matter—repeat your key message. Do they want to speak to you about an issue or topic your key messages don't even cover? Doesn't matter—repeat your key message.Is the interview a fairly relaxed conversation about your company's strategy, rather than a reputation-destroying crisis? One size fits all—just repeat your key message.If you do this enough, this line of PR thinking goes, your points will stick and the reporter will repeat them. The industry even gave this approach a name of its very own: "block (the reporter's actual question) and bridge (to your key message)." Great—except it rarely works....
CNN.com recently ran a fascinating piece about the “GOP’s secret school,” in which candidates learn how to interact with the media. The school is a reaction to the high-profile crises the GOP has inflicted upon itself in recent years—from Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment to Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” ad—and party officials are determined not to repeat past mistakes.
According to the article:“Since the beginning of 2014, the RNC says it has graduated over 200 operatives and placed many of them as communications directors and press secretaries in Capitol Hill offices and federal campaigns nationwide…[Instructor] Rob Lockwood has also conducted media training boot camps with nearly 1,000 candidates, staff and local political figures in a dozen states.
”It appears that this GOP training class is doing everything right in its effort to improve external communications. There’s good advice here for everyone involved in politics, regardless of party or cause. In this post, I’ll highlight the excerpts that caught my attention most....
In 1999, upon reporting for my first Sunday shift at CNN, I was invited into a “question” meeting with Wolf Blitzer and his executive producer.
The three of us sat around for 15 minutes, coming up with questions for former Vice President Dan Quayle, who was mounting a bid for the 2000 GOP nomination.
We developed a seemingly impressive list of questions, but I noticed that the questions all fit inside certain categories. Some questions were intended to be “stumpers”; others called for speculation.That taught me an important lesson. Spokespersons don’t have to prepare for every possible question. They simply must prepare for every type of question. Below, you’ll find the types of questions reporters always seem to ask—and how to answer them with ease...
The seven-second stray can be deadly. It can damage your reputation and drown out everything else you’ve said.
... Years later, I developed a name to describe that phenomenon: “the seven-second stray.” I call it that because if a spokesperson is on message for 59 minutes 53 seconds of an hour-long interview but says something off message for just seven seconds, I can virtually guarantee that the reporter will select that seven-second answer to play over and over again.
The seven-second stray can be deadly. Not only is it often damaging to your reputation, but it drowns out everything else you’ve said, becoming the only quote the audience will remember from your interview....
General Motor’s Mary Barra admitted this week that, “something went wrong with our process…and terrible things happened.”
And while that is certainly true and laudable for the new CEO of the auto giant to admit her company mishandled some safety issues for 13 years, saying she is deeply sorry is not quite enough.
Yesterday, she held what GM described as a news conference but, according the the WXYZ-TV report below, only handful of print reporters were invited, slamming the car door on local Detroit stations and the national news networks.
There are times (particularly when dealing with good news situations) when companies can play favorites. But when you are in a hole like GM — you can’t afford to annoy major parts of the media....
If a reporter asks an unfair question, you should push back against the premise. But did you know there are times you must reject friendly questions?... While most “incorrect premise” questions are negative in tone, some are overly charitable. And if you bite on the reporter’s overly charitable bait, your response can make you appear self-indulgent, self-pitying, or both.
For example, let’s say your company made a product—a poorly designed auto part—that is likely responsible for four deaths. The reporter might ask the company’s CEO, Bob Miller, this question: “You make more than ten million auto parts each year, and only four have been linked to deaths. Do you ever feel that it’s a bit unfair for your company to be viewed as irresponsible when you have such an impressive safety record?
”BE CAREFUL!
Bob Newhart is one of my favorite comedians, so I was excited to come across this clip from his old show Newhart, on which he played a local television host and innkeeper.
In this clip from 1984, Newhart’s character, Dick Loudon, interviews retired Air Force Colonel Lloyd Menenger about his book, Up The Amazon. The problem? He didn’t read his guest’s book prior to the interview.
When most people think of ambush interviews, they think of a television interviewer chasing after a scandal-tarred executive with camera and microphone in tow.
Those types of ambushes do occur occasionally, but they’re rare. More typically, an ambush occurs in one of two ways: - When a reporter shows up without notice.
- When a reporter deviates from the agreed-upon topic to blindside a source with something totally unexpected.
In both cases, the reporter is after one thing: a great visual that makes you look guilty. If you respond with defensiveness, anger, or shock, the news outlet will run the tape of your bad reaction repeatedly, perhaps for days. You win an ambush by denying the reporter a great visual. If you’re ever ambushed, remember the advice offered in that old deodorant ad: never let ‘em see you sweat. By remaining calm, you prevent reporters from getting the compelling “money shot” they desire.
FishBowl DC has a post out today showing (in a huge surprise to absolutely no one) that even respected national reporters can't agree on what "off-the-record" means.
Toby Harden, the bureau chief of London's Sunday Times, opines that he could "use the information but not attribute it to anyone by name or affiliation or quote it directly." (To many people -- that would be known as "deep background" not off-the-record.)
Susan Page, the Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today, comes closer to the appropriate definition (in our view) saying to her: "...'off the record’ means you can’t use the information in a story and you can’t use the information in reporting...
I’ve done hundreds of radio interviews throughout my career. They seem simple. After all, you just pick up a phone or visit a studio and have a conversation with the host.
But radio interviews are nothing like normal conversations (unless your friends take listener phone calls and toss to a commercial break every few minutes!). Remember these seven rules for your next radio interview...
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You’ve just delivered the perfect media response. Your answer is on message and perfectly quotable. It will accomplish everything you had hoped.
Then…you say more.
It pains me to see an answer that was brilliant in its first 15 seconds become diluted when it lasts for another minute. An extended answer also risks introducing secondary and tertiary points that offer reporters the ability to quote something relatively unimportant. And sometimes, those unnecessarily long answers lead to a “seven-second stray,” an off-message line that becomes your only quote from the interview.
When I see our trainees deliver a great answer—and then keep going—I tell them this: “When you score a touchdown, get off the field!”...
The question he feared most looked something like this:
“What would you say to one of your customers who purchased one of your older—and therefore less safe—products?” To help the executive develop an answer, I asked whether he viewed the older products as unsafe. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Best in the marketplace. But the new ones are even safer.”
Based on his response, I immediately categorized the question as a “false frame” question, because it contained a logical-sounding but incorrect assumption. The question’s frame was wrong, meaning we’d have to create a new and more accurate one.
To do that, I advised him to quickly rebut the false frame and then immediately make a positive and confident case that looked something like this...
If reporters break their promise to you and ask about a topic they promised they wouldn't, can you say "I'm not here to talk about that topic?"
...Maher’s responses made me think about a question we hear a lot during our media training sessions: What should I do if I’m asked a question about a topic I wasn’t originally booked to speak about? Do I have to answer it, or can I insist on speaking only about the topic we agreed to discuss in advance?...
Get inspired with these thought-provoking utterances from Henry Kissinger, Jerry Seinfeld, Mark Twain, and others.
I’m a bit of a word nerd. I jot down every good media-training quote I hear. I occasionally get to use one of the witty quotes in a speech or training session. Too many of the quotes just sit, unused, in a computer file, but they shall remain unused no longer.
Here are 20 of my favorite media training quotes....
One of the greatest fears public speakers have is being confronted by questions they don’t know the answer to. Here are six great ways to handle that situation.
A reader is being described by the media as an "opponent" of a new middle school. The truth isn't quite that black and white. How can she get the media to describe her correctly?
Spokespersons who change their messages from interview to interview prevent their audiences from understanding, remembering, and acting upon their messages.
...Just how many times do you have to repeat your messages in order to achieve your goals? Advertisers rely on the concept of effective frequency to determine the number of times they should run an advertisement. Commercials for simple products with high name recognition might need to be seen only twice to result in a sales increase, whereas ads for less familiar brands might need to be seen nine times.
In the age of media and message oversaturation, those numbers strike me as low. I advise my clients that moving their audiences from unawareness to action requires anywhere from 7 to 15 exposures—and sometimes more....
When you see someone like Oprah or Anderson Cooper on television, it's easy to think that they're naturally talented speakers and interviewers. After all, the ease with which they interact with their guests, and share ideas on stage, is rare. But what if it's not all talent? What if the real secret to being that comfortable comes down to learning the right techniques and practicing them over and over?
Emmy nominated TV producer Rachel Hanfling has worked with some of the biggest names in television. She has spent 20 years finding and nurturing guests, from survivors of domestic violence to power players like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Julia Roberts, Vera Wang and Ryan Seacrest. And in that 20 years, she's learned that it's never just talent that makes you a great guest. There's a formula.
When one school superintendent was confronted with a challenging situation, she employed a unique approach to handling the news media....
According to the FOX anchor, Ms. Sabolinski didn’t want to show her face because “the story wasn’t about her.” But that’s the case for corporate and organizational leaders much of the time, and they’re still expected to act as spokespersons for incidents that occur under their watch.
Plus, as the school superintendent, this story was partially about her, insofar as she’s the person who’s expected to handle the situation responsibly while keeping parents informed about her actions. Her job in a crisis is to convey a sense of confidence and competence—and hiding her face didn’t help her send that message successfully....
Defensiveness—in the form of closed gestures, a tight smile, or abruptly clipped answers—leads the audience to wonder what you’re hiding.In order to help our trainees, I encourage them to change their interior monologues before they begin their second round of practice interviews. Instead of, “Oh, no, here come the tough questions,” I ask them to try, “I’m so happy you asked me that, because your question gives me an opportunity to discuss that issue.”
You’d be amazed by how much that small mental adjustment helps them convey a more open tone. That openness not only helps to persuade the audience but also defangs most interviewers, who are less inclined to probe a spokesperson who appears to have little to hide. Beyond the fear of the unexpected question, defensiveness comes across in at least three other ways....
When this book author went on the Fox News Channel, he encountered a biased anchor. He handled it so well, his book soared to #1 on Amazon's bestseller list.
I’ve seen a lot of biased, ill-informed, and journalistically lazy interviews through the years, and this one was one of the worst. But the author who was the target of the anchor’s ire stood up to her questions well—and, in part due to his deft handling of that interview, currently has Amazon’s top-selling book.
Writer Reza Aslan—a prolific author who holds a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion—appeared on the Fox News Channel to discuss his new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Fox News anchor Lauren Green went into the interview clearly skeptical of the book—less for its content, about which she was clearly unfamiliar—but because Aslan is Muslim. And a Muslim writing about Jesus was just too much for her to take....
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Brad Phillips highlights a common problem with Internet and Skype interviews. Calling from what looks like your teenager's room is bad for your reputation and the credibility of your message.