The Media Interview

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)?

Author Carl Weisman blogs about his experiences as a published writer, including doing media interviews:

Wow! That was intense. Imagine doing twelve interviews in one morning, including four 10 minute interviews back to back without a break. If you ever find yourself doing radio publicity for one of your books you just may have to do it too. It’s exhilarating and nerve racking at the same time. I wouldn’t have missed that experience for anything.

He learns some valuable lessons, including mentioning his website more and doing more to sell books, such as not saying too much:

You have to train yourself to give partial answers to the interviewer’s questions. When you’re done, the audience should be dying to know how the story ends. When an interviewer asks me a question about my book, I get so excited I want to tell all, but that doesn’t benefit book sales.

That is, if there’s a recorder on. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper learned this the hard way recently, when a 2005 encounter with a journalist came back to haunt him. Tom Zytaruk was working on a biography about MP Chuck Cadman who had recently passed away, when he heard that Harper - at that time, Leader of the Opposition - was visiting the Cadman residence. Zytaruk managed to get there as Harper was in the driveway and did a quick interview.

When Zytaruk’s book was about to come out earlier this year, someone leaked portions of it to the media, including quotes from the driveway interview. Those quotes appeared to back up allegations that the Conservative party had tried to bribe Cadman - an independent - to get his vote and help topple the minority Liberal government.

A portion of the audio tape and its transcript remains on the internet at the website of the Toronto Star, to whom the tape was released.

The Hill Times has a good follow up interview with Tom Zytaruk.

One of the dangers of doing phone interviews (or IM interviews) is that you’re free to do all sorts of other things at the same time, as blogger Rene Gutteridge discovered:

…I realized not too long ago that I was getting to an almost frenzied state of multi-tasking. This occurred to me one day during a live radio interview. I was discussing my book and the interviewer was talking about how much she liked it. We were having a very pleasant conversation when suddenly I reached for my mouse to check my e-mail. As I scanned the messages, my mind came to a screeching halt. What am I doing?? Checking my e-mail during a live radio interview? Was I nuts?

What are people feeling and doing while being interviewed by phone? You can find postings like this one from director Arin Crumley that give you some perspective:

Arin and co-director Susan Buice have a good little collection of videos of their phone interviews - it’s a great way to get some behind-the-scenes info on how interviews work. Their interview with the magazine Moviemaker is particularly interesting because you don’t often hear complete print interviews.

I wonder how the interviewers react to being able to see how their interviewees were really feeling about their questions… rolling eyes, snickers, etc.

Having just written about the growth of TV cameras in radio studios and the need to watch what you say during commercials breaks, comes this story from KESQ TV:

The male escort responsible for the downfall of Christian evangelist leader Ted Haggard is now alleging that embattled Senator Larry Craig also came to see him.

While promoting his new book during a radio interview with KNWQ-AM in Palm Springs Wednesday night, Mike Jones hesitated from making the allegation on the air.

Management for the radio station says Jones told them he would reveal something about Idaho Senator Larry Craig on the “Bulldog Bill Feingold Show.”

While he hesitated doing so on the air, a NewsChannel 3 camera was rolling when he made the accusation during a commercial break. [my emphasis]

Of course one always has to ask if the interviewee is deliberately playing to the TV camera or if they truly forgot it was rolling.

Don’t you hate when this happens:

At one point I said something quoteworthy but the tape wasn’t running, so she asked me to say it again and I think I pulled it off, but I think it sounded better the first time.

That’s David Erickson blogging about his experience with a taped-on-location radio interview.

The unrehearsed nature of interviews often leads to great quotes you never knew you had in you and trying to recreate that spontaneous gem isn’t easy. BTW, this is one of the reasons why you should always record your interviews - whether or not the journalist uses the quote, you’ve got it on record and can make sure you use it again.

Self-published parenting author Brenda Nixon was interviewed on the CAN Marketing Blog about her experiences with getting and doing radio interviews. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Interviewer: What are a few problems you’ve encountered on radio and how did you overcome them?

Brenda: Only a couple times have I had a host who wasn’t a skilled interviewer. He/she stumbled over or repeated questions. In those cases, I elaborated on my answers and tried to make the interview as informative for the listener as possible. One time I was interviewed by a San Francisco shock jock who used profanity and vulgar statements. With him, I continued to answer legitimate questions and simply ignored the inappropriate ones refusing to be lowered to his style of communication. I wanted his listeners to gain something of value from the interview.

Do you give stations suggested questions before an interview?

Some request question and others don’t. If a radio producer or host doesn’t mention a need for questions prior to the interview, I’ll ask as a courtesy.

Lots more useful tips in Part One of the interview and Part Two.

The days of hiding behind the microphone in a radio studio are long gone, at least for anyone in the public eye. Either the video media is covering the interview, or the station itself is making a video, or it’s even being simulcast over the web or some TV channel. Just look at the number of videos on YouTube that were shot during a radio interview.

So, what do you do? First, always ask whether an in-studio radio interview is going to be on video. If it is, dress for TV and not for radio. Still talk to your radio listener and don’t talk to any cameras. It’s always important to assume the microphone is ON while you’re in a radio studio - now you have to assume that the cameras are always rolling too.

Angela Tunner, one of my clients, is the author of Simply Summer, a cookbook that doesn’t require the oven to create easy gourmet dishes, and she’s on tour right now. On a radio talk show in the mid-west, during one commercial break, nothing could have prepared Angela for the ad that ran just before she came back on - it was a spot for a cow carcass removal company, which proudly proclaimed that they would even take all the tissue… Follow that with a recipe!