The Media Interview

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 [...]

You’re a former contestant on American Idol. You’ve just finished having lunch, and as you leave the restaurant, some guy sticks a cellphone or other small camera in your face and starts asking questions about your career. You give a few answers as you try to walk away, including your opinion of Britney Spears’s [...]

I heard a headline on CNN the other day that made me curious. New York Rep. Peter King allegedly said there were too many mosques in the United States, but he claimed he was being taken out of context. The remarks were said to be in an interview with Politico.com, so I immediately [...]

Nikki Finke posted this on her Deadline Hollywood blog on Thursday:
I just confirmed that Sicko documentary creator Michael Moore was barred from making a scheduled media appearance inside the New York Stock Exchange today. His publicist says it was because he and a group of nurses intended to call for Wall Street investors and Main [...]

Randy Tinseth, vice president marketing for Boeing Commercial, blogging from the Paris Air Show, came up with a fiendishly-clever plan for scheduling media interviews:
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t describe the uniquely-air show phenomenon of trying to conduct a media interview in the afternoon while competing with the roar of jet fighters screaming overhead. [...]

Found this quote from an LAPD blog about the recent May Day confrontation in MacArthur Park (thanks to Shenanigans for posting it). I guess for some officials getting your sound-bite about keeping the peace on the six o’clock news is more important than actually keeping the peace:
The airship [helicopter] was assi[s]ting those officers, flying low [...]

Check out this detailed account on the Huffington Post of how the message of a media interview can get misrepresented in the editing process and perhaps more importantly how the misrepresentation certainly seems deliberate.
According to business psychologist and author Debra Condren, she was approached by a producer from ABC’s Nightline, who was looking for [...]

A friend of mine was given a message at work when he came back from lunch the other day: a newspaper reporter will stop by tommorrow to ask some questions. My friend writes an occasional column in a local paper and has been interviewed a couple of times before, so he didn’t think [...]

Ok, maybe this is a little paranoid, but my feeling is that if you’re doing an on-camera interview, try not to have anything very personal visible on camera.
Example: I was watching a nationally-televised interview last night and the person being interviewed had their laptop open just behind them on the desk. On the [...]