Media-Savvy

Recently President Bush held a press conference and was asked if he had heard that gasoline prices could soon hit $4 per gallon — a prediction that had been broadcast widely on news reports and splashed across front pages nationwide.  Whether he knew the answer or just hoped that the question would go away, his response was a shaky, “Oh yeah? That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that.”  Not too media savvy.  At that point, whatever the original reason for the press conference, it was lost as the volume of that sound bite drowned out any other effort to stay on message.  This was a case where there probably should have been a bit more media interview coaching by a trusted staff.

It’s a wake up call for any encounter with the media or delivering any internal presentation.  Inevitably you will hear questions that you would rather not answer.  And pleading ignorance will only sour your entire message.  So once again the solution is preparation, but not just rehearsing your own lines, let someone be brutally honest with you by throwing out the questions that you might not want to hear.  This requires putting your ego aside and allowing you to formulate the right responses.  This is NOT something that you can do looking in a mirror by yourself.

It’s also essential that you pretend you are the one asking the questions and do some research.  You have access to all the same information that anyone else does via the internet.  We even tell people to listen to gossip.  You don’t have to react to it, just know what’s out there.  You can prepare to be interviewed and present like the pros (in some cases apparently, better than the pros) if you keep your eyes and ears open to what you can expect from others.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Media Coaching, Media Consulting, Media Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.