The Media Interview

Fascinating issue brewing in Hamilton, Ontario, where a recording and transcript of an “off the record” media interview with the city’s mayor have been released to some media outlets. In that interview with Hamilton Spectator columnist Andrew Dreschel, Mayor Fred Eisenberger apparently reveals some sensitive information from an in-camera council meeting. Dreschel won’t confirm or deny what was said, sticking by the “off the record” nature of the conversation.

It turns out that the mayor’s communications director kept recordings of all media interviews, including this one. Dreschel too kept his own recording of the session. The city councillor who released the recording and transcript won’t say who gave them to him. Speculation on that point is being fueled by the fact that the city is currently being sued by the mayor’s former communications director, apparently for unfair dismissal.

The mayor was quick to admit that he had in fact revealed sensitive information during the “off the record” interview and has called for a police investigation, saying the recording of the interview was stolen.

A comment by one of presidential candidate John McCain’s advisors, quoted in a Fortune magazine article, has created quite a stir and raises an interesting issue about the transparency of media interviews.

Here’s part of the LA Times story on the comments by Charlie Black:

Then, the longtime political pro got a bit too honest. Asked about the political impact of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Black replied: “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him.”

Black may be correct, but he’s not supposed to be quite so blunt in coldly calculating the upside for McCain of harm coming to Americans. Others — unconnected with the campaign — could offer such an assessment, but he should have dodged the question.

He knows it, and The Times’ Maeve Reston reports that outside a McCain fundraiser today in Fresno, Black said: “I deeply regret the comments — they were inappropriate. I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration.”

McCain, for his part, did what he’s supposed to do — stressing his lifelong commitment to protecting America and flat out disputing Black’s premise. “It’s not true,” he said when asked in Fresno about his aide’s remark.

Black’s regret at his comments suggests that this was indeed a major slip of the tongue during an interview - there’s no claim that he was taken out of context or anything like that.

For the record, here’s the quote in the context of the Fortune article:

On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

While it seems that the reporter has been accurate in framing this quote - Black has had ample opportunity to challenge the accuracy - it would be fascinating to read the transcript of that portion of the interview.

It’s a good example of how we trust journalists (mainstream or otherwise) to boil down all of their information into a story which still accurately captures meaning. Sadly, that trust is lacking among the general public - journalists are often well down in the poll results of people we trust - and I think one way they can regain that is to use the freedom of the internet to back up their stories with transparency (printing transcripts, for example). Which is not to say that this is an easy thing to do; how would you like people questioning your work based on the misjudgments or outright lies of others in your industry?

As for Black, I like the LA Times comment: “he should have dodged the question.”

A week or so ago I mentioned the controversy over statements made by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a taped encounter with journalist Tom Zytaruk in 2005 in the driveway of MP Chuck Cadman’s widow’s home. The statements allegedly showed Harper acknowledging that payments had been offered to Cadman when he was alive in an effort to get the independent MP to switch over to Harper’s Conservatives.

Fast forward three years and yesterday the Conservatives filed court papers to prohibit further use of the tape on the grounds that it has been tampered with. Citing two audio experts, the party claimed in the news conference that edits had been made to the tape recording by Zytaruk. Two common themes ran through the media reports I saw about the news conference:

1. The Conservatives only said that the tape had been altered, but did not say whether or not Harper’s comments were misreprented or changed because of the alleged editing.

2. Zytaruk denied having tampered with the tape.

However, when I read the Globe and Mail’s article, it seems there was more to this than we were hearing from other media:

…Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the Prime Minister, said in a later e-mail that the edits changed the meaning of Mr. Harper’s comments, and that one of them inserted a question to misrepresent his answer.

Mr. Soudas said that change “creates a question that was never asked” about an allegation that his party had offered a $1-million life insurance policy to terminally ill Mr. Cadman, an Independent, and that Mr. Harper replied, “I don’t know the details …”

“When the PM says he does not know the details, he is not answering a question about the insurance policy for [Mr. Cadman’s wife],” Mr. Soudas said in the e-mail.

and regarding journalist Tom Zytaruk, the situation was not so clear cut as a simple denial of tampering:

The man who made the recording, B.C. journalist and author Tom Zytaruk, Wednesday denied altering the tapes, calling the Conservatives’ allegation a “desperate statement.”

However, he said that he had stopped his tape recorder momentarily when he thought Mr. Harper had finished speaking. When Mr. Harper turned back, Mr. Zytaruk resumed taping. He insisted that neither he nor Mr. Harper said anything during the interruption.

“We’re talking milliseconds here,” Mr. Zytaruk told The Globe and Mail in Vancouver.

Both of these revelations substantially change the story - alleging misrepresentation is more important than alleging editing, and Zytaruk’s admission that the tape was stopped is one plausible explanation for what the experts are calling “edits”. Good on the Globe and Mail for going deeper on this story.

From a PR management standpoint, do you think the Conservatives should have pursued this? Because it’s given the tape additional legs in the media. Or should they have let slightly-awake tapes lie (no pun intended)?

Answer: carry on as if they did and have your own people pose questions to you.

That’s what FEMA did back on October 23rd. Having informed the media of a briefing on the California wildfires 15 minutes before it was to start, it’s not surprising that no one turned up.

A couple of reporters listened in on the 800 number (listen only - no questions). One of them, a Washington Post reporter, began to notice that the questions apparently being posed by reporters to Deputy Administrator Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson were not very probing. Turned out, it was FEMA staff members calling out the questions as if they were reporters.

Here’s what it looked like, as carried live by Fox News:

FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs defended the botched news conference by saying that the questions were ones that reporters had been asking earlier in the day and that Johnson did not know what he was going to be asked. So that’s ok then… hmmmm.

The two most obvious courses of action would have been to reschedule the briefing or read a statement. To pretend that the media is asking questions is to give the impression that some scrutiny is going on.

NEW YORK, Oct. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Michael D. Brown, Former FEMA Director and Current Director of Cotton Companies, one of the leading disaster preparedness and restoration organizations in the nation, is available for comment regarding the wild fires that are devastating Southern California.

Offering yourself for media interviews when you have expertise on a current news story is smart, but not if your name is currently mud. Michael Brown was one of the officials who oversaw the disastrous response to the Katrina disaster - why would we suppose he’d have anything of value to say about California’s fires?

The problem with a bad rep is that you might have something valuable to say, but we can’t trust you.

I’d also say this was a bad move on the part of Cotton Companies - why would you make the public aware that you’ve hired a person who has no public credibility in your industry?

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.”

Detroit Lions wide receiver Roy Williams was out delivering pizzas for an afternoon recently - all because of a media interview.

Back on September 24th, during his weekly chat on WDFN radio, Williams said he never tips the people who deliver pizza. Doh! Despite trying to clarify himself on a later broadcast, the outrage poured in.

If you read this edited interview transcript (courtesy of the Detroit Free Press) it sure sounds like Williams is a tightwad:

On being cheap: I am cheap, I’m a cheap date. Get you some McDonalds, with some cheese on it and I’m just really cheap, man. I’m very low key, I like to stay home. I like to go bowling on Monday nights and I go to the casino every once and awhile. Other than that, you won’t see Mr. Williams out at all.

On what he plays at the casino: I’m a craps and blackjack guy. I like to throw the dice a little bit. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll take it to the cards.

You do tip the pizza guy? There’s no such thing as a tip. But I am really polite and I say ‘Thank you sir.’ … The pizza man knows, when he comes to my address, he’s coming for free.

If you’re on a date and she wants to go to a nice place, what do you do? I might just take her to the casino and get her a free buffet. If I did take a date out to a nice place, I’d take her to a nice place, like a Red Lobster or something. It wouldn’t be Morton’s or nothing like that.

But now, listen to the recorded interview (if it’s not available, try here). With the full interview and with tone and inflection thrown in, it’s seems much clearer that Williams is playing it for laughs.

Tip of the day: what may sound funny in a conversation can easily be taken out of context, especially in transcribed form, so don’t assume that throwaway lines said in jest are going to be taken that way.

How’d it all end for Williams? It actually turned into a PR dream. A local Pizza Hut challenged Williams to deliver pizzas for an afternoon and they would give $5,000 to charity, if he’d match the amount.

Karrine Steffans achieved notoriety with her 2005 book, Confessions of a Video Vixen, a tell-all about her sexual encounters with the rich and famous. One of her lovers had a pet name for her - superhead - and the name stuck. Now she’s out peddling her new book, another tell-all called The Vixen Diaries.

What’s puzzling in all of this is that Steffans claims that she was a different person nine years ago, the time covered by her books. If she’s past all that and admits that much about her lifestyle was negative, why promote it all through the books, and why be surprised when everyone wants to focus on the gory details instead of her “new self”?

Listen to these two interviews in which Steffans tries to live down her Supahead image:

Interview on WJLB Detroit

The Ricky Smiley Morning Show - more from Ricky Smiley here.

Can’t take credit for the title of this piece - it’s a phrase I found on Ike Pigott’s old blog Accentuate the Positive (the new and improved Ike is at Occam’s Razr) and I think it’s a perfect name for those situations where a loose cannon needs media coaching to get reigned in. Here’s the link to the article that Pigott was referring to when he coined the term.

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