Why walking off a media interview is rarely (but not always) a bad idea.
I’ve spent a big chunk of my working life helping people deal with the media. Training them to stay put and stay calm in interviews – even when the questions are tough and the style is adversarial.
Getting up and walking out is never a good look, I’ve always argued. You’ll be remembered for the contretemps not the content. But there’s always an exception to the rule as the death of Sir John Nott, the former Conservative Defence Secretary, aged 92 reminds us.
Here he is in 1982 walking out of a live television interview with Sir Robin Day. A part of me wishes more politicans would do the same. But I guess the fact we’re still showing this clip more than 40 years later proves my point. That leaving the stage risks upstaging whatever it was you were trying to say.
According to the UN 3.7 billion voters in 72 countries are going to or have been to the polls in 2024.
That makes it the biggest election year in human history. Just think of it – a half the world’s population voting. Many for the first time. But I think it’s also safe to say that trust in democracy is at its lowest for some time. Perhaps the lowest ever.
People say they don’t trust politicians.
People say they don’t trust the journalists who report on politicians.
They don’t trust the news.
They don’t watch the news.
They don’t listen to the news.
They don’t read the news.
They’ve become less engaged if not disengaged.
So this feels like a really important webinar. A chance to discuss why trust and engagement with audiences has fallen. And, crucially, how to build it.
Heck democracy depends on it!
So to our guests: Victoria Steveley, deputy chief audience editor at the Belfast Telegraph.Pip Tomson most recently with ITV’s Good Morning Britain and GB News – the latter where the line between journalists and politicians has been especially blurred. Daniel Mollitor, business editor at the German Press Agency DPA and Naomi Owusu co-founder and CEO at Tickaroo the live blogging platform which is helping taking online journalism to new and hopefully more trusted levels.
Saying you’re being respectful to an interviewer or co-contributor in a media interview can come across as the exact opposite – disrespectful – as the UK’s Minister of State for Illegal Migration, Michael Tomlinson, demonstrated in an excruciating interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He was being interviewed by Mishal Husain the day after the British government’s Rwanda bill under which illegal migrants could be sent to the African country passed in the House of Commons. The full exchange is at the bottom of this post. But first ACM Training’s head media trainer, Richard Uridge, deconstructs the interview for the benefit of anyone who finds it difficult to deal with interruptions in this the latest episode in the Z to A of Media Training.
With thanks to the Conservative MP for providing an object lesson. Or should that be an abject lesson?
Here you can listen to the full interview. Copyright, of course, resides with the BBC. It’s nearly 11 minutes long but both educational and, if you’re into politics, entertaining.
Why it’s important to keep an eye on the bigger picture
Being aware of what’s going on elsewhere in your sector is a vital part of preparing for media interviews.
Here’s an example from the world of politics. The UK Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, had been asked on to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to talk about Israel’s response to Iran’s attack and the involvement of British forces in that. But no interview is an island, so to speak. And Mr Shapps is asked first (more usually it’s last) about a much less important but more immediatey topical issue from the narrower – and in this case murkier – world of party politics.
The lesson? Make sure you know what’s hot in your world and know how you’d respond to questions on these tangential but topical issues always striving, of course, to steer the interview towards what you were initially invited to talk about.
Always good to hear our media training alumni putting their newly acquired and validated skills to the public test. So here is Dr Marianne Wade, Reader in Criminal Justice and Director of the Institute of Judicial Administration at the University of Birmingham Law School, being interviewed by Jim Diamond on the case of Shamima Begum.
What happens when journalists focus all of their attention on one aspect of a story? Their readers, viewers and listeners – your audience as an interviewee – can lose sight of the bigger picture.
So Richard Uridge has recruited a very famous pair of hands to help him explain how you can avoid being driven solely by the questions you might be asked during a #mediainterview
He’s used the controversy over #ULEZ and an interview given by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as a case study.
Look out for the enigmatic smile in this the latest episode in the Z to A of #mediatraining which, we should add, is equally applicable to the Q and A element of a #presentation
Here’s the full interview with Sadiq Khan that I refer to in this video. It was first transmitted on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and the copyright remains with the BBC. Khan does successfully steer the first question towards the bigger picture. But his opening response, timed at just over a minute, represents only 11% of the interview. He did try to return to the bigger picture towards the end but he was talking about the compelling health case for ULEZ only 18% of the whole interview – too little time for what is literally a life and death issue.
The interviewer is Mishal Husain and in her opening question she’s referring to Irene Bacon, one of those who drives an older, non-compliant car, is in a lower paid job and is struggling to pay the ULEZ charge or switch to a less polluting vehicle – even with the incentive scheme.
There’s often tension between academics and journalists when it comes to communicating science and technology to a lay audience. “You’re dumbing me down,” cry the scientists. “Your’e making it all too tricky,” counter the hacks. There is a middle way as media trainer and broadcaster, Richard Uridge, suggests in this e the latest episode of the Z to A of Media Training: W is for Wising Up.
Agreed to give an interview to the media? Want to know if it’ll be adversarial or conversational? Then find out using our hot or cold interview style predictor. Not a very catchy name we’ll grant you. But it does exactly what the name suggests.
Our media trainer, Richard Uridge, indulges in a little bit of journalistic finger wagging answer in this, the latest episode in the Z to A of Media Training (sister series of the Z to A of Presenting – because why start with the letter A when everybody else does)?
Cosy chats with friendly desk sergeants. Daily calls to the duty inspector from the newsroom of the local paper. Off the record briefings for the gentlemen of the press. A more symbiotic and trusting relationship between the media and the police…
All of these things and much much more have been said by the media commentariat over the past few weeks. Largely by retired journalists (and here I must declare an interest) recalling the good old days and conveniently ignoring the one thing that has changed both policing and reporting on policing out of all recognition since they dictated their copy from a red phone box: social media.
Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. Facebook, Twitter and, especially it seems, TikTok love one. In the absence or scarcity of official information in rushes a tidal wave of bilge. So-called amateur sleuths (I’m inclined to call them idiots) broadcasting breathlessly that they’re convinced – without a shred of either evidence or decency – that Bulley was being held against her will by shadowy figures. A private underwater search company stating unequivocally that the poor woman’s body could not have been in the river, as if the sonar equipment they were using was somehow any less fallible than the humans operating it.
And all of this, of course, making the agony suffered by the Bulley family even harder to bear and the job of the police investigating her disappearance even harder to do.
Much of the criticism levelled at Lancashire Police has been ill informed and unfair. Particularly the condemnation of their decision to go public with highly personal information about Bulley’s private life. They didn’t do so lightly, I would have thought. Nor without the family’s consent. Details of her struggles with alcohol were about to be made public anyway, after they were leaked to the media as an exclusive – possibly in return for money. So they decided to reveal the information themselves to lessen the value and impact of the leak. Better to keep ahead of the narrative as police press officers might put it. What else were we to do, they might reasonably ask of all those questioning their approach including the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, the home secretary, Suella Braverman, and the leader of the commons, Penny Morduant.
To this point specifically, I believe the police were right to reveal at least some of this information but wrong in the way and to the extent they went about it. They knew, presumably from day one, that Bulley was vulnerable. So they should also have known from the outset that at some point this information would be made public, warned the family accordingly and together drawn up a plan to manage it. They may have done this to be fair; I have no special insight. But if they did, the public part of the plan could have been handled better.
The police initially said at a news conference Nicola had “a number of specific vulnerabilities” which meant she was “graded as high risk.” This crucial issue was rather lost in the remaining 30 minutes or so of the conference which seemed to be more of a point by point rebuttal of criticism of the inquiry than an update on a missing person. I’ve watched the conference in its entirety twice. It certainly wasn’t the “utter disaster” as some of the more colourful coverage suggests. It certainly was a thorough and detailed description of the inquiry to date. It also nailed some of the more outlandish, to use the words of assistant chief constable, Peter Lawson, “ill informed speculation and conjecture.” (And, by the way, it was good to see the conference chaired by Mr Lawson, not by the senior investigating officer, Rebecca Smith. Sometimes the messenger is as important as – or even a part of – the message).
Picture credit: Getty Images
But what that conference also did – ironically perhaps most successfully of all – was get every journalist wondering exactly what those specific vulnerabilities were. Indeed, this was the very first and last question asked by reporters – almost inaudibly, off microphone – at the conference. This line of questioning was only going to louder and more persistent. To not have anticipated this and dealt with it there and then was problematic. All Mr Lawson said at the time was “I feel we’ve said as much as we can about that. It is personal, private information known to the investigation but foremost in our thoughts, in addition to the integrity of the investigation, is the privacy of Nicola’s family…”
So what changed in just a few hours? Because later that day, in a follow up statement, the police added that those vulnerabilities included alcohol misuse connected to the menopause. This smacked of being bounced into saying more by events, rather than being in control of events. I’d have been inclined to release the two statements simultaneously at the news conference. I’d have advised omitting the menopause point entirely. It’s too personal and, on the face of it, much less pertinent than the alcohol issue. I’d also have explained the background to the release and attempted to reassure the public – and women in particular – that this was a highly unusual move in response to irresponsible coverage and wouldn’t become a routine part of missing persons inquiries. To avoid losing the focus on these really important points I’d have shortened the conference and left out anything that sounded defensive. There’s a time and a place for that. And it isn’t when a person is still missing.
In their defence most police press officers are way down the command chain, have no rank and I’m sure are regularly ignored when asked for advice. But that doesn’t make the advice wrong. They should be speaking truth to power and asking the SIO or ACC:
Be absolutely clear: what is the purpose of this news conference or release?
Is it to give the public an important update on progress or to seek further public help – an appeal for witnesses for example?
It it to protect the family from potentially hurtful information – true or otherwise – being put into the public domain by unscrupulous and insensitive media coverage or social media commentary?
Or is it to defend the force and more to do with reputation management?
The first two, sir or ma’am, are justified. The third is not. Until well after a missing person is found. Alive, or as it would now seem in this desperately sad case, dead.
Most media interviews are what are called one plus ones: one interviewer plus one interviewee. But one plus twos – an interviewer and two (or more) interviewees – are on the increase , especially on rolling news channels.
So what’s it like being interviewed alongside another contributor? What are the potential pitfalls? What are the benefits? And what should you look out for beforehand?
ACM Training media trainer, Richard Uridge, provides some answer in this, the latest episode in the Z to A of Media Training (sister series of the Z to A of Presenting – because why start with the letter A when everybody else does)?
