The Media Interview

Advice from a media training guide produced for the Texas Department of Transportation has people talking in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media:

“Keep calm. Leave wrestling to the pigs. They always end up looking like pigs.”

Texas state senator Dan Patrick, who’s a radio talk show host, appeared on Glenn Beck to voice sentiments he also expressed in a letter to the TxDOT:

According to the media report, TxDOT’s vendor refers to those who host or call talk radio as ‘pigs.’ This is just another sad example of the total lack of respect certain segments of government have for the people it is to serve.

I think the point of the advice is: when faced with hostile, crude, obnoxious behaviour during a talk show, don’t act that way yourself - rise above it and remain calm. No one is saying that all talk radio hosts and callers are pigs.

I don’t know what media report the senator was referring to, but it sounds like someone in the media was taking it personally and took the comment out of context. And isn’t it that kind of poor reporting that the TxDOT is trying to fight by being prepared with some media coaching?

According to an article from the San Antonio Express-News, the TxDOT commissioned the media training as part of a campaign to sell people on new toll roads being proposed:

The agency… has a $20,000 contract for talk-radio training for transportation officials with the Rodman Co., which subcontracted with ViaNovo, whose team includes former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd. It plans another $4,500 training class, and the two consulting companies plan two telephone town-hall meetings at a cost of $17,480.

Rodman and ViaNovo worked on the radio training guide, said TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott, who also had input on the document, titled “Talking on Talk Radio.”

“The talk radio environment runs the gamut from productive and thoughtful to vitriolic and silly,” Lippincott said. “We certainly want to prepare (agency spokespeople) for all possibilities, and that includes everyone from a skeptical talk-show host to an outright hostile caller.”