The Media Interview

Saw a live TV interview today in which the guest caught a bad case of the swivels. Seated on a swivel chair behind a news desk, the guest’s very effective hand gestures and body language resulted in making the chair twist back and forth just enough to make me seasick.

One of the dangers of being saddled with a swivel chair is that in your effort not to move, you can wind up looking stiff and uncomfortable. Try to get a different chair or ask if there’s a way keep it from moving using a locking mechanism. If all else fails, try stabilizing yourself with one leg on the floor and the other on the leg of the chair, then confine your movements to your arms and head where possible.

Anyone suffered through this experience? How did you cope with the swivels?

Back in January, technology journalist Kevin Murphy wrote a hilarious and insightful piece on his texturbation blog about doing interviews with company reps during press tours. Here’s a sample paragraph:

Your job is to write down what the Main Guy says. Main Guys always speak in quotes. You can write down what the Other Guy says too, but don’t worry if you get the words in the wrong order or spell them wrong. Other Guys always speak in facts.

Read the full tutorial on How to Blag an Interview.

Thanks to Dr Anton Chuvakin on the Security Warrior blog for pointing out this great post.

Based on this Washington Times article about the testimony of James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, you’d think Hansen should be the Guiness Book of Records’s “most interviewed person”:

A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews [emphasis mine] in recent years.

In fact, it was hard to miss people talking about such a stunning number of media interviews, because the article was quoted over and over by bloggers, until it was simply being repeated as fact without any citation at all, as in this example from The Oxford Medievalist:

Hansen acknowledged yesterday to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 job-related interviews in recent years.

Trouble is, if you read further down the Washington Times article, you’ll discover the actual source of the writer’s statement:

“We have over 1,400 opportunities that you’ve [Hansen] availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

Granted, “opportunities” is a bit vague, but unless you can clarify what Issa was saying, you shouldn’t assume the “opportunities” were interviews.

Trouble is, this AP story did manage to clarify what Issa meant by “opportunities”:

[Issa] said a Google search had shown Hansen cited on more than 1,400 occasions over a year in interviews and appearances.

Ohhhh, citations stemming from interviews and public appearances, not individual interviews. How hard was that to get right?

File this story from author Amy Hagberg under “things you can’t prepare for on a media tour”.

As I walked out the door of the hotel to my rental car, I was surprised to find an unexpected blanket of newly fallen snow. I wasn’t really prepared for that (no self-respecting Minnesotan uses gloves unless it is below zero) but there was a snowbrush in the Explorer so I was good to go.

I quickly stepped up into the truck (it’s a big step for a little girl like me), turned the key, cranked the defrost and looked around on the dashboard for the seat-heater button like I have in my car. I wasn’t very familiar with all of the buttons I found, so rather than stumbling around aimlessly, I hit the button for the dome light to illuminate my search.

To my horror, I found out the hard way that it wasn’t the button for the dome light I’d hit, it was the button for the sun roof. In what seemed like slow motion, I watched helplessly as the roof-top window opened and mounds of wet, sticky, newly-fallen snow dumped into the car. It was a surreal moment … it was almost like I was paralyzed as I realized what was happening. By the time I figured it out, it was too late to do anything other than shout, “NOOOOO!”…

Now I could have gone completely off the deep end … after all I was stressed, tired, hadn’t had my morning latte and was supposed to be at the studio in 45 minutes. Instead, I sat in the cold wetness and laughed out loud.

Not only did Amy manage to get changed and to the studio on time - she even grabbed that latte on the way. And she says the interview went very well.

BTW, Amy has a lot of postings about her adventures doing publicity for her books.

I have no idea if there’s anything to this post on NASCAR North, but it raises an interesting point about how organizations could use the timing of media interviews to try and influence how their spokespeople will respond.

NASCAR has gone hollywood or perhaps more accurately it’s gone WWE. So much of the spectacle that is a NASCAR race is fueled by media interviews, often held at the height of emotional vulnerability on the part of the drivers almost begging them to lash out and be controversial.

I wish the writer had fleshed out this comment a lot more. Normally, of course, organizations try to protect themselves and their people from interviews when they’re “at the height of emotional vulnerability” precisely because you can’t predict what the interviewee might say. But if you’re trying to stir the pot, then that’s the “best” time; a kind of reverse crisis management.

The problem with doing lots of media interviews is that you have less time for whatever it is that made you worthy of being interviewed. Case in point:

[Nintendo’s new video game platform] Wii has attracted a devoted (some would say rabid) following, including 26-year-old Mickey DeLorenzo of South Philadelphia. The multimedia developer quickly attained cultural hero status by blogging the results of his 30-minute-a-day Wii exercise regimen.

DeLorenzo, who lost 9 pounds between Dec. 3 and Jan. 15 just by playing Wii games, says he’s been so busy keeping up with media interviews he’s neglected his Wii exercise regimen. (He’s gained back a pound.)

Thanks to Connect Mii for this morsel.

The most upsetting thing about taking the chance to be interviewed is that you can only be as smart and as clever as the person that’s interviewing you.

- Susan Sarandon
from Toxic Fame by Joey Berlin, Visible Ink Press, 1996, p.111

The BBC has some useful online training that you can take for free. In particular, they have a few modules on radio interviewing techniques (of course it applies to any interviewing for audio only). The most useful, I think, is Module 1 because it’s an analysis and backgrounder to an actual interview. So you can hear the producer’s ideas, choices, etc. as well as hear the finished product.

I provoke them [interview subjects] because I get involved, because my interviews are never cold, because I fall in love with the person who is in front of me, even if I hate him or her. An interview is a love story for me. It’s a fight. It’s a coitus.

- Oriana Fallaci
from an interview transcript published in Time magazine, October 20, 1975

US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently granted a rare media interview to BusinessWeek senior writer Diane Brady. The interview focusses on his years at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts and issues of affirmative action, but it was his opening comment about the media which has garnered the most attention, especially among bloggers:

One of the reasons I don’t do media interviews is, in the past, the media often has its own script. One reason these stories are never told is that they are contrary to the script that people play by. The media, unfortunately, have been universally untrustworthy because they have their own notions of what I should think or I should do.

I think people rushed to reprint this quote because it supports the perception of many people that what one says in an interview has a good chance of being misquoted or quoted out of context, etc.

And, in case you’re wondering why Judge Thomas granted an interview to one of the “universally untrustworthy” media, his opening line of the interview was “Father Brooks [head of Holy Cross] asked me to do it” (Business Week was doing a story on Holy Cross).