The Media Interview

From an interview with author Mike Cox - on the Writers in the Sky blog - who has written extensively about the Texas Rangers law enforcement organization:

In a way, I’ve been working toward The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900 all my life. I grew up hearing stories about some of the old-time rangers from my granddad, L.A. Wilke. Then, as a newspaper reporter, I met a fair number of rangers. Finally, as spokesman for the DPS, I dealt with many rangers over a 15-year period. Most of the rangers would sooner be in a gunfight than do a media interview, so I had good job security. [My emphasis]

Sage words from the PR Lawyer Blog:

So, I’m sitting here five hours later wondering to myself, “What did I say on that interview earlier today.” My media relations advice is: don’t ever talk to anyone after having Novocaine. Go home. Shut your door. And go to bed!

Comedy writer Mike Snider has a great list of RADARs that people possess. It’s a take off on the notion of Gay-Dar, the ability immediately to know if someone is gay or straight. The list is hilarious, but this one jumped out to someone obsessed with media interviews:

ReallyFarDar - ability of spokespeople for NASA and JPL giving media interviews to sense which folksy metaphors or slang terms for large astronomical distances will resonate with particular audiences.

The mother of a reality TV show winner in Britain has admitted to wrongly claiming income support and council tax benefits. Former pop star and TV presenter Kerry Katona was a season winner on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! - a kind of Survivor for the famous. According to the Press Association, her mother, 48 year-old Susan Katona

…failed to notify the benefits office of a change of circumstances between July 2006 and March 2007.

It was alleged the overpayment was made because Katona failed to declare her income from media interviews about her daughter…

Don’t know why she didn’t try the obvious defence strategy: the media don’t pay for interviews. Do they?

BTW, does it seem odd that the mother of a celebrity was on income support in the first place?

A TV interview with New Zealand celebrity Nicky Watson late last year became an instant classic after this part of the encounter was repeated over and over in the MSM and the blogosphere:

Watson: “I must have called [her lost] dog’s name a million times and I hope that when he hears my voice he will come to me.”
Interviewer: “You’re hoarse.”
Watson: “No, my dog.”

Cue the sniggers.

I know I had a good laugh when I first read this, but after seeing the actual segment, I realized that three important things got lost in this transcript:

1) The way the interviewer says “you’re hoarse” does not convey the meaning of “you must be hoarse?” or “you sound hoarse” but rather, the inflection indicates a mere statement with no sympathetic overtone, making it easier to misconstrue the meaning. Add to this the fact that “you’re hoarse” follows right after “he will come to me” and it’s not hard to imagine someone accidently thinking that the interviewer is referring to the “he” and not to “a million times.”

2) In written form, we see “you’re” and we understand the meaning, but the interviewer, like most people, mispronounces the phrase and it sounds more like “your” instead of “you’re.”

3) On the clip of the interview, there sounds to me like an edit before “You’re hoarse,” so we can’t be certain of actual flow of the conversation.

So, don’t believe everything you think you see in a transcript, listen carefully to interviewer’s questions, and don’t agree to interviews when you’ve been up all night looking for your dog.

You can see the full segment here.

Here’s a NZ media personality’s take on how the program handled the segment:

[It’s not ok] to waste four minutes of everybody’s lives with a piece of nonsense aimed at mocking a desperate woman who’s lost her dog.

Sometimes you just have to wonder where an interviewer’s mind is…

I’m watching a morning show and they are interviewing [homeless] survivors of a wave of tornadoes that hit Arkansas. Apparently one of these tornadoes hit before the sirens could go off…

Interviewer: So tell me, there were no warning sirens for this one. How does that make you feel?

Husband: Like we don’t have a house.

Interviewer: So without a siren, how did you know a tornado was even coming?

Wife: I looked out the window.

Read the full post at Attraversiamo.

I’m always saying you can’t let things distract you during an interview. Here’s a story from the BBC about police Superintendent Bryan Lawson, who was being interviewed on location about drug raids:

As I was talking, I could see a guy in the corner of my eye walking past carrying something the size of a portable television under his jacket. I decided to stop and search him and found chemicals, plant food and other equipment [for a grow-op].

Caught a bit of VH-1’s I Know My Kid’s A Star the other night and apart from learning how NOT to speak to or deal with your children (some of these parents are committing verbal abuse in my books), there’s a common thread coming from the judges and host Danny Bonaduce:

It’s all about being in the moment and being committed to what you’re doing.

An excellent example was when the contestants auditioned for a dance sequence. Most of the kids weren’t dancers, but instead of throwing themselves into whatever moves they were doing, they’d stop and apologize or look to their moms or pause and try to start again… The boy who won was not the best dancer, but he was ON, he was focused, and he never wavered. The judges know they can work with someone like that - the dance training can come later. It was his attitude they liked.

When you’re in your interview - commit to the moment and don’t lose your focus.

Heard a great story the other day while waiting in the green room at a TV station. Author Sue Johnson (Hold Me Tight) was saying how she once had a 5 minute TV appearance reduced to only 3 minutes because they couldn’t get a tiger off the set from the previous interview.

Hopefully after winning a contest worth $15,000 you wouldn’t have anything bad to say about your Sponsor in media interviews, but just to be safe…

Winner must comply with all Contest rules as published. Winner agrees to conduct any and all media interviews related to the Contest, if requested, and not to disparage Sponsor during any such interviews.

Found this excerpt from a Conde Naste contest, which you can enter here.