The Media Interview

Washington DC media trainer Lou Hampton recently posted some good tips about preparing for media interviews with investigative reporters in particular:

You should assume the reporter has details of your private life as well as your private business dealings.

He goes on to talk about the ease with which those details are accessible these days, a point that was driven home to me last night as I watched part of the movie All the President’s Men - we forget how much time and energy it took thirty years ago just to track down a person’s phone number!

Now the internet has made access to “private” records available, easily and often at little cost. (A Wall Street Journal article, quoting Breit, Drescher & Imprevento PC, gave these figures: credit card transactions-$75; full list of assets-$295; list of brokerage accounts-$350.) It has also made public records easier to access. And practice of disaffected insiders to leak confidential memos and emails seems to continue to gain popularity. With these increased sources of information, even the lone freelancer can now become an investigative reporter with clout.