The Media Interview

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.”

Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin simply got up and left in the middle of an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row program, leaving presenter John Wilson and the band’s drummer Will Champion to carry on:

Wilson: Do you start with that idea, Chris… [sound in background] did you start with the song Viva La Vida, and the idea within that song of the deposed dictator looking back on his life… [voice in background] is that… could I just ask you just to move back in to the mike [garbled]

Martin: [off mike] ….I’m not really enjoying this…

Wilson: Aren’t you?…

Martin: [off mike] Yeah…

Wilson: Why?…

Martin: [off mike] [garbled] two minutes…

Wilson: Sure.. yeah… You feeling a bit under pressure?

Martin: [off mike] No. Yeah. I just don’t really like having to talk about things.

Wilson: Really? [long pause with muffled sounds and voices in back] Have I upset him?

Champion: I don’t think so.

Wilson: [slightly off mike] …I don’t think I said anything conscious[garbled]…

Champion: No, no, I don’t think so…

Wilson: Well, let me ask you [the interview continues on]

Then at the very end of the interview, Chris Martin returns for one last question:

Wilson: Chris, can I just attempt to.. to begin bringing you back by… reminding you of a couple of things you said in the… [Martin: uh huh] before the album was released, you said the process was about letting the garden grow unkempt, letting the bloodhound off the leash [Martin: uh huh] uh, so you were… consciously trying to… find new musical territory then…

Martin: Um… [clears throat] yes, yes, yes… exactly [pause]

Wilson: [Closing show] Reluctant pop star Chris Martin…

My transcription of parts of the full interview which you can listen to online.

Wilson had made some comments during the early part of the interview about Coldplay’s newest album being morbid, and Martin had disagreed with that, but it wasn’t entirely clear why Martin got up and left.

What’s interesting here is that this was not a live interview; the BBC deliberately left in the sequence I’ve transcribed above. I’ve noticed more and more mainstream media doing that - leaving in things from an interview which would have been removed in the past.

I wonder if it’s partly a response to the more free-wheeling podcasting of the internet and also the ability of bands (or anyone) to post the full transcripts of interviews to try and counter what they see as mainstream media taking things out of context.

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?

Barbara Walters on one of the main reasons she stopped doing the TV newsmagazine 20/20 back in 2004:

…it seemed that every celebrity, every murderer…had a lawyer or a press agent all interviewing the interviewer to determine where they could get the most airings for their clients, what kind of questions would be asked, and how much promotion and advertising would be guaranteed. The interviewer had to audition to land the interview.

From her memoir Audition, p.561.

I have to empathize a little with Mercades Nichols, the 17 year old Florida girl who is one of several defendants in the case of a videotaped beating that got major play on YouTube and the media in general. Nichols tried to get bail restrictions eased last week, in part to allow her to speak with the media about the case. Her request was denied.

It’s easy to say that Nichols and her companions made this whole travesty “public” by posting the video on YouTube, but it would be nice to think that all the experts, lawyers, and media people could approach things a little bit differently than immature 17 year olds. Not that there’s anything new about “trial by the court of public opinion” it’s just that the proliferation of new media outlets and social media is making those “trials” more public, more influential, and, often, more ghoulish.

You know things are bad, however, when it’s Nichols’s own lawyer who’s pushing for her ability to talk to the media:

…during Tuesday’s hearing, [James] Holz argued before the judge that Nichols should be allowed to speak for herself.

“Right now, the victim and other people are openly speaking to media whenever they want,” Holz said.

“The Sheriff’s Department weekly is on television speaking about this case. It just seems to me that everybody is speaking about the case - except the person alleged,” he said. He said Nichols wants her voice to be heard.

“She has basically been demonized within the media,” he said.

[From a Lakeland Ledger article]

Holz is worried, of course, that the media attention will make a fair trial difficult, and that’s one of the downsides of turning testimony into sound bites and opinions into testimony. But you’d think he’d be more worried about the damage Nichol could do to her own case by speaking out in the media. Lawyers are the ones who are supposed to make you whisper the answer in their ears before allowing you to respond to any question at all. I guess that 10 minutes on Larry King is more important now.

Instead of letting Nichols speak to the media, perhaps the public needs to stop watching the shows that sensationalize real cases. But apparently all the fictionalized sensationalism of crime books, shows, and movies isn’t enough to satisfy…

A fascinating new trend in interviewing has emerged during the course of the US presidential primaries: the live-to-web editorial board interview. Sitting around the table with editors of a media outlet is a long-standing tradition, but the idea of streaming it live over the internet adds some interesting new dimensions.

Take the editorial board meeting between Hillary Clinton and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader on May 23, 2008. The ensuing controversy over Clinton’s reference to the Robert Kennedy assassination came, not from the Argus Leader, but from the NY Post, which was monitoring the interview via the web and picked up on the line.

Argus-Leader Executive Editor Russell Beck put it this way:

…we asked her about the mounting national pressure on her to withdraw from the race for the Democratic nomination.

Responding to our questions on that point, Clinton offered historical context (and justification) for staying in. Among her comments: “You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere around the middle of June. …We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. Um, you know, I just … don’t understand it.'’

Sitting just a few feet from Clinton, that didn’t seem like news to me.

Ditto for Argus Leader publisher Arnold Garson, editorial board members Greg Robinson and Barb Facile and Voices Editor Nestor Ramos. Out in the newsroom, editor Jeff Martin, viewing the live stream and filing news updates to our Web site, didn’t see a story out of her reference to Kennedy either, focusing instead on Clinton’s strenuous denial minutes earlier that her aides were negotiating terms of her exit with Obama’s campaign.

The New York Post, viewing the interview live, apparently picked up on something I didn’t. Minutes after the Q&A was over, that newspaper posted on its Web site a story that began this way: “Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.'’

Just as the posting of interview transcripts on the internet after the fact has been revolutionizing the ability for the public and other journalists to assess context or find other stories, the idea of live-streaming interviews makes that possible in real time. It also opens up more possibilities for misinterpretation and misuse of statements - it’s no longer the small group of people in the editorial board meeting who can use what you say.

So watching what you say becomes even more important these days.

One of the myths of media and presentation coaching is the notion that how you say something is far more important than what you’re saying. The idea got its primary boost from the studies of Arthur Mehrabian back in the 1970’s. Only problem is, that wasn’t exactly what he was saying. Jim Bergman and Sue Johnston discuss The Mehrabian Myth in a recent edition of their entertaining podcast Media Relations Matters.

I’m going to be looking at Mehrabian’s conclusions in more depth down the road. The main point I would want to make is that his studies concerned the communication of likes and dislikes, of emotional states, and within that context, he concluded that body language, vocal qualities, etc. were more important to that communication, WHEN there was a disconnect between what you’re saying and how you’re saying it.

The example I always like to use in my seminars is this: You offer me some pie, I take a bite, and my face looks like I’ve eaten a lemon, while I say to you “I love this pie”… that’s disconnect, and my face tells you how I really feel!

With all the hype about social media, search engine placement and advertising, David Leonhardt reminds online businesses not to forget the off-line media when it comes to getting publicity. For example:

* The media are now working increasingly online. The online and offline worlds are converging more than ever before. Articles that appear in local papers, industry magazines and even commentary on radio broadcasts find themselves on the Internet. That can often mean powerful links to your web site. Publicity offline means promotion online.

* In the mainstream media, you are trustworthy. If they see it on TV or in the newspaper, people believe it. (Funny, they SAY they don’t trust the media, but their actions speak louder.) Since web marketing is about relationships and trust (That is your strategy, right?), you can build that relationship with people who are only now getting online or who may not even be online for another couple years. By the time they are ready to buy from you, the relationship has already begun because they have carried your offline credibility (that’s the biggest value of media coverage) with them onto the Internet.

Here’s a blog reader, commenting on the blog of a writer who is a social media marketer, working in part on Second Life…

You did pretty good [on the TV interview], it’s fun to see someone we know being on the News!

There’s still something about being on broadcast TV, even in the middle of the social media revolution…

A lot of people fall victim to this problem in their media interviews - thanks to Griselda for voicing it:

The word absolutely drives me nuts! Everyone seems to be using this word for every answer instead of yes.

Absolutely, Griselda!

Save words like ‘absolutely’ for the moments when you strongly agree with a point the interviewer or another interviewee has made - if not, then everything takes on the same level of urgency or importance (which of course means, nothing is more important).