The Media Interview

Here’s the most detailed explanation I’ve found by Paula Abdul herself (posted on MeeVee), for her odd behaviour in those recent TV satellite interviews. Accepting her explanation here still doesn’t answer why she or her handlers didn’t stop the interview and say ‘there’s a problem or I’m so tired I can’t do this, etc.’ Whatever you think, it’s also an interesting peek at life on a satellite tour.

Okay, what a lot of you may not know is that when you do the satellite media tours, you’re in a small room. You get up really early, 3:30 in the morning. You go and all there is is one camera that you’re looking into. You don’t see anyone; you don’t have a monitor that shows you; but you’re being broadcast out to different morning shows, news shows.

I did three hours of them. There were a couple of glitches throughout, but the very last one that I did after three hours had tremendous technical difficulty. What happened was there were split cities in my ear, but I thought it was all one group of people that were talking over [each other]. That’s what I was hearing in my ear. I’m going, “Oh, you’re having like a party there?” I had no idea that there were two completely different cities. So when they started to have technical difficulty, I was holding on, waiting. And I’m in a swivel chair and I’m swiveling and I’m very animated with my hands. Had I known that, you know, it’s cropped here, and that I’m actually answering questions… It was very weird, because what you’re hearing is not exactly who I was answering questions to.

Unfortunately, that’s what happened. I was answering to, was transmitting right to one of the cities. It’s so silly. It’s hard to explain unless you’re in there. But it’s very simple. I had two different cities in my ear. I was answering questions to [reporters in one city]; apparently it didn’t make sense to the person who was asking them.

On January 5, a dinner was held in honour of Max Mayfield who retired as director of the National Hurricane Center. The Palm Beach Post reports that in his thank you speech, Mayfield

recounted his worst-ever media interview, in which a fill-in CNN anchor noted the radar loop behind him and asked, “Is that a lava lamp?”

Preparing for a live television interview is tough. Even if you’ve had a lot of experience on TV, every situation is different enough - even down to the way you’re seated - that you need to be well prepared to handle what comes at you. Even then, there’s always something more…

The other day a client of mine faced the following:

1. As they were counting down to going live he was told that the 6 minute interview had been cut to 3 minutes.

2. The opening question was about his product when he’d been told minutes before that they didn’t want to “do a commercial” and the focus would be on the social issues surrounding the product.

3. The host began nudging him below the desk trying to get him to look at the desk monitor after telling him earlier not to be distracted by what’s on the desk monitor - someone in the control room had decided to play some clips from the product they didn’t want him to talk much about…

Lesson learned: Live interviews - TV in particular - are highly unpredictable and no matter how well prepared you are, you also need to be prepared for the “unpreparable”. There, you’ve had your daily dose of the paradoxical.

You often hear Zen Buddhists say that the answer is in the question. And sometimes you’ll hear interviewers taking this quite literally, as in this example from Australian breakfast show host Alan Jones during a 2004 interview with treasurer Peter Costello:

Treasurer do you ever shake your head during campaigns like this and wonder what it’s all about? Because you have been there for eight years, you have created 1.3 million new jobs. You’ve seen savings of more than $500 a month on interest repayments on the average home loan since you’ve been Treasurer, you’ve cut the debt from $95 billion to $27 billion, you’ve taken the average inflation rate from about five and a bit per cent to two and a bit, you’ve have taken the average interest rate, average, from 12.7 per cent to 7…

I don’t know if his question went on any longer - this was all that was posted on the website for the Australian watchdog program Media Watch (and the audio clip abruptly ends there too).

Answering the question while asking the question is one of my pet peeves with interviewers. In effect what they’re doing is setting up what they think the guest would have answered and then looking for a simple ‘yes’ in response.

I’ve often pondered what the motivation is for these types of questions: is the interviewer trying to show how much they know or do they think they’re helping the guest by making sure the answer gets stated clearly or do they secretly want to be “on the other side of the mike”?

A few months ago, on The Big Idea, Donny Deutsch was talking with Donald Trump and Deutsch asked a question about what it feels like to be a parent (sadly I didn’t have my recorder with me and I haven’t found the transcript on line). He began the question by openly saying something like ‘you probably feel this way too’ and then proceeded to describe in great detail those feelings, finally ending with ‘is that what it’s like for you?’ I got the impression that Deutsch was very excited by parenthood and hoped Donald Trump felt the same way.

Even in a regular conversation, I think this kind of question makes the other person feel like they’re just there to confirm what the questioner says - that they’re not really part of the conversation; it has no place in a media interview.

Anyone have some good examples of this kind of question they could share?

“…live interviews [are] performance masquerading as conversation.”

- Mike Nichols
quoted by his wife, Diane Sawyer, in a January/February 1995 CJR article Yakety-Yak: The Lost Art of Interviewing by Tom Rosenstiel

Came across this great anecdote in an article on interview techniques by Deborah Potter, Executive Director of NewsLab. It’s a perfect example of how narrow, closed questions can keep you from getting the information you need.

Robert Siegel, who works for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., tells the story of an interview he did with a Turkish diplomat after Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by a Turk in Rome. His first question, “Do you know any details about this man, Mehmet Ali Agca; where he lived in Italy, what he did there, what kind of visa the Italians gave him?” The answers were all no. After several more tries, Siegel paused, about to give up. And the diplomat filled the silence with this, “… except that he is the most famous convicted murderer in Turkey, who escaped from prison after assassinating the editor of one of our major newspapers.” Siegel says he almost lost a good story by asking questions that were too narrow. He acknowledges that a better way to open the interview might have been, “Tell me about this man.”

Just saw one of these TV interviews this morning - you know the kind - the guest breathlessly rattles out an answer and the interviewer has to cut in to ask the next question and you can see or feel the guest literally shaking with anticipation to jump in again and continue talking. Often they don’t fully hear the actual question and continue on the path they originally started down. And to make matters worse, the pace is usually too fast and the tone is monotonous, so the audience has even more trouble getting the message. That’s runaway train syndrome.

You see this most often with nervous first-timers on live TV, but it can happen to anyone. You need to get yourself back on track through more practice, better preparation, media coaching, etc, and that all starts by recording your practice interviews and then making sure you get copies of your real interviews so you can keep tabs on potential problems.

Rob Amberg of of Cushman/Amberg Communications in St. Louis posted an interesting piece about Emotional Branding on his Transom blog (love the name - visit the blog to get the background on it). He talks about how Matt Miller, the CEO of Playworld Systems uses ads and media exposure to promote his company by attaching it to the emotions surrounding kids and play:

If you listen to media interviews with Matt, he doesn’t talk about playgrounds. He talks about the world needing play. And he doesn’t care if you play on his playground or a competitors. He just knows what play can do and is an advocate for it.

There’s a lot of emphasis on giving short answers for audio or video interviews - the all-important soundbite - but here’s a good reminder not to make your answers too short!

Try to answer in full sentences as it makes it easier for them to edit. So if they say “What percentage of employees do you think lie on their resumes?” Don’t answer “about 46%”. Rather say: My best estimate is that at least 46% of employees lie on their resumes. It’s probably even a little higher for those applying for executive positions.”

TV producer and host Deborah Boland on Krishna De’s Biz Growth News blog

And of course one of the things she means by “easier for them to edit” is that no one can throw the clip “about 46%” on the evening news. In other words, you’re selling yourself short by giving a super short answer because you won’t get quoted.

Oh those awkward opening moments… During live or recorded media interviews, should the interviewer welcome a guest and if so, what’s a good way to do it? What should the guest say in response, if anything? What if there are multiple guests? I recently saw an awkward TV moment where the three guests got into a lengthy and somewhat comical exchange of hellos with the host and even started greeting one another. And what if one of the guests doesn’t get to say hello and the others do… Where is Miss Media Manners when you need her?

About the only rule of thumb I’ve been able to cobble together over the years is one for interviewees: don’t speak unless spoken to. In other words, unless the host greets you, I think it sounds odd to say anything along the lines of “Glad to be here” or “thanks for inviting me”, etc.

Apart from that I would say to all parties involved: if you’re going to do any kind of greetings, keep ‘em natural and keep ‘em short.