The Media Interview

I saw an accomplished scuba diver being interviewed the other day and one of the opening questions was: how many dives have you done over the years? She hesitated for some time and then began saying how she hadn’t kept accurate logs, etc.

If you find yourself being asked for numbers or statistics - consider the context. If a business reporter is asking for productivity statistics and you don’t have them at your fingertips, you don’t want to give approximations or anything that might be misleading. Simply say that you don’t know and offer to get those figures as soon as possible.

In the case of the diver, the details aren’t important. We just want to know a rough number of dives - has it been hundreds, thousands? Having complete logs may be important for you as a scuba diver, but your audience doesn’t demand that kind of accuracy.

And since someone asked about it once, have an answer about total dives ready for your next interview.

Here’s a blog reader, commenting on the blog of a writer who is a social media marketer, working in part on Second Life…

You did pretty good [on the TV interview], it’s fun to see someone we know being on the News!

There’s still something about being on broadcast TV, even in the middle of the social media revolution…

Larry King gave a good demonstration last night of what not to do as a guest. He was on Anderson Cooper 360, being interviewed by John King about Dr. Jan Adams walking off the Larry King Live show.

Larry King was constantly looking away from his interviewer and at the camera. Breaking eye contact in order to look at the camera creates a bad impression; suddenly you’re no longer in a conversation - you’re playing to the lens and it feels disingenuous. Perhaps King was still in “host mode” and forgot that he’s the interviewee talking with someone in a studio (as opposed to via satellite). Whatever the case, I’m sure he doesn’t like it when his guests do such a thing.

The plastic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mother the day before she died, walked off CNN’s “Larry King Live” during an interview tonight.

Larry King opened the hour by saying that it wasn’t clear if Dr. Jan Adams would appear as promised. King said that West’s family had formally asked Adams not to go on the show, but that he was still conferring with his lawyers. King then proceeded to interview several entertainment reporters who had been lined up for later in the show.

Then came word that Dr. Adams would in fact appear, so King broke for a commercial. When they returned, Dr. Adams was seated across from King and it looked like everything was fine, until he proceeded to explain why he wasn’t going to do the interview. Dr. Adams then removed his mike, shook King’s hand, and walked off the set, leaving Kin to hastily go to another commercial:

Interviewed later on Anderson Cooper 360, King discussed what it was like having a guest walk off his show:

..I used to say ‘nothing has ever happened before that hasn’t happened before’, in other words I’ve had everything happen to me in fifty years - except THAT! I’ve had fires in the studio, I’ve had people fight… but I have NEVER had a guest rip off the mike and walk - and remain friendly; he stayed til the end, he was there at the end of the show; he was very friendly to me - he was - he took out - he said he was taking my producer to dinner because she had gone through so much over this.

The first few seconds of a media interview, like a job interview, are important for creating the right impression. I was reminded of that while reading this post about body language in a job interview by Erik Folgate:

You can show great self-confidence to the interviewer(s) in the first 10 seconds of the interview. Make strong eye contact and give a firm hand shake. It doesn’t matter if you are a girl or a guy, you need to have a firm hand shake. Don’t shake their arm off and hurt their hand, but just give a positive, firm shake for a two mississippi count. Look them in the eye while you shake and give a pleasant smile. Don’t grin like an idiot and don’t give a blank stare. This is so crucial, I can’t stress the importance of the first 10 seconds of an interview.

Radio and TV interviews have their equivalents to ’strong eye contact and a firm hand shake’ - through your voice, through the clarity of your first few thoughts, and much more. And don’t forget an equally strong ending.

Part of a posting by Alex Zuffoletti, a graduate student in journalism, about her class’s trip to the IMG/Bollettieri Academy, which trains high-level athletes:

one talk that I did enjoy was with these two former actors. They led the “game on” aspect of the program, which basically teaches sports stars, or wannabe sports stars, to not bore everyone with their talk about their training, their sports performance, and their diet. They need to have “coins” (interests, personal qualities, something fascinating to say), so that people will want to be friends with them, and so that they don’t look like stupid jocks when the media interviews them.

I’m not sure about wanting people to be friends with you, but having “coins” to use during your media interview is crucial for connecting with your audience.

Found some tips for scientists or other experts who are being interviewed by the media. Here are a couple of the points made in a seminar by Patricia Thomas, Knight Chair in Health & Medical Journalism at the University of Georgia:

4. Visualize explaining your newest publication, or the events you’ve been asked to comment on, to a specific layperson – such as your mother, your fifth grade teacher, or a stranger seated next to you on an airplane. Use analogies and metaphors. Borrow imagery from sports, cooking, gardening, automobile or household repair, or popular TV shows or music – anything consumers are likely to know a little something about.

5. Skilled reporters often try and formulate metaphors or analogies during an interview. If this happens, work with the reporter to make the imagery as clear and accurate as possible. If an analogy is close, but not entirely accurate, work with the reporter to make it right. Otherwise you’re to blame when the faulty analogy appears in print.

…I’ll go on forever if the interviewer is well prepared, but I am a bit testy when it’s clear the interviewer hasn’t done any prep.

- Tom Peters, blogging about a long week of seminars and media interviews
from his website, November 4, 2007

A new Canadian study, commissioned by Apex Public Relations, finds that mainstream media sources in general are still far more trusted than social media such as blogs and social networking sites.

According to the APEX PR Influencer Report, conducted by Leger Marketing, TV and radio top the credibility scale. In fact the top five most credible information sources were all traditional media: radio (67 per cent); television (66 per cent), national newspapers (66 per cent), regional newspapers (62 per cent) and national business magazines (52 per cent).

Interestingly, the traditional news channels also beat out friends and family, who had a credibility rating of 55 per cent, and co-workers with a rating of 38 per cent.

While traditional media has not drifted into obscurity as some pundits had predicted, consumer-generated and other new media, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking sites, are definitely on the charts, as consumers choose from the ever expanding array of information channels. In fact, one in three consumers is using a social networking site per week and 19 per cent are visiting blogs. Not surprisingly, new media was considerably lower on the credibility chart with blogs, for example, having a 10 per cent credibility rating and podcasts garnering a 7 per cent score.

Taking into account age differences, it’s not surprising that young people were more likely to trust news websites or blogs, but here’s one that did surprise me: “78% of consumers who are 18 to 24 view national newspapers as a credible source (national average is 66%)”.

Simon Wakeman makes an interesting observation in his discussion of this study:

The important factor here could well be that with “old” media I think there’s trust in the channel - people trust their usual newspaper - whereas, taking blogging as an example of “new” media, people don’t trust blogs per se, as there are thousands of blogs they are exposed to, but they trust bloggers instead. And this trust takes time to build up, just like it would in a face to face friendship.

Since taking office in 2006 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been known for almost complete control of media access to his government. The Hill is the latest to run a story about these practices:

When [national] reporters request interviews, the minister’s office passes on the request with its recommendations to the Prime Minister’s Office. Ministerial offices file information such as the length of time required for the interview, the topics to be discussed, the potential angle of the story, and proposed communications lines. Whether the PMO approves the interview may depend on any one of these factors, as well as the PMO’s level of trust in the minister to keep to script and conduct a successful interview. The Prime Minister’s Office is more likely to strike down controversial or long interview requests, for instance….

The Conservative media strategy is largely geared to local media, for which interviews do not require PMO approval. Local news comes first, and the strategy is derived in part from the last election campaign, when the Prime Minister focused on getting out his messages out through local, supper-hour newscasts on private stations. “The PMO is very clear. Anyone can do local media without PMO approval,” the insider said.

The Hill does not provide direct access to articles, so you’ll have to search their site for the rest of this piece, entitled “PMO clears media requests, some Cabinet ministers not allowed to talk”.