The Media Interview

Aside from the socks, there were far more important media interview lessons to come out of Bill Clinton’s talk with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday (see below for video of the interview).

1. Body language and hand gestures can change the tone of an interview. Yes, the interview did get confrontational, but I think Clinton’s constant jabbing of his finger at Chris Wallace, not just in the air, but at times on Wallace’s leg, increased our perception of confrontation. More importantly, it made us focus on Clinton as the confrontational one. Also, Clinton leaned over a number of times, getting in Wallace’s face; again raising the level of confrontation.

2. Overheated can lead to overstated. Some commentators have suggested that Clinton’s reaction to Wallace’s question about whether Clinton did enough to prevent 9/11 was deliberate, but I don’t see that in the interview. Clinton seems genuinely caught off guard by Wallace, and certainly very angry and frustrated with the line of questioning. The problem with allowing those emotions to take over is that you end up saying things in a way you’ll regret later. The trick is to have the emotional reactions, but redirect them into a complete focus on and a positive passion for what you want to say.

3. Don’t rely on pre-interview agreements. Some people have said that Clinton only agreed to this interview because it primarily would be about his work with the Clinton Global Initiative. Whether that’s true or not, he should have expected the possibility of being asked about other issues - 9/11 in particular because of recent statements Clinton had made claiming that ABC’s 9/11 docu-drama portrayed his administration inaccurately. If you talk to a producer or assistant prior to a live show or a taping, and they tell you what the interviewer will or will not ask, take it with a few grains of salt. They’re probably not intentionally misleading you; things can change in the heat of the interview.

Anyway, have a look at a portion of the Clinton interview and see what you think.

UPDATE: I read several posts the morning of Tuesday September 26, saying that Fox had required YouTube to remove all copies of the Clinton interview for copyright violations. I tried the link above and it still seemed to be working as of late Tuesday. Now I’ve just read that some postings are still visible because they can’t keep up with shutting them all down…

Anyway, if this YouTube clip doesn’t work, you can also go to the Fox site and hope they keep the clip alive for a long time. I’ve linked directly into the popup window to try and save hunting for the clip when it’s not longer the top story.

Digital Media Wire has an interesting discussion about whether Fox was wise to pull the YouTube clips. They make some good points in favour of Fox’s stance, but I think in the end they’ll get far more publicity from allowing people to run the clips (all of which have the Fox symbol clearly marked in the lower left and right). Or, Fox and other mainstream media need to make it much simpler for people to access clips like this from the Fox site - instead of that popup “media player”, just run a version of YouTube’s interface - and allow us to embed clips in blogs.