Controlling Your Media Interviews: Strategies to Craft Your Message and Handle Tough Questions

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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others.

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Now here is your host, peter Woolfolk.

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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world.

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This podcast has been ranked by Apple as being among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so thank you to all of our guests and listeners for making this happen.

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Now question you are about to have an important interview with the media.

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How do you ensure you have some input and control over that interview?

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Too often, inexperienced PR people and others simply let the media have control over the interview.

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My guest today says those days are over.

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Joining me from New York City is Dorothy Crenshaw.

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She is now PR officer of Mod-Op.

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Before opening her namesake agency, Dorothy was president of Crenshaw Communications, which she helped build into a premier mid-size New York PR agency for over 13 years.

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Earlier, she was executive vice president and managing director for Gray Advertising and prior to Gray, she also was Edelman Worldwide.

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So, Dorothy, welcome to the podcast.

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Thank you.

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Thank Happy you Peter, Happy be discussing this with you.

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Well, look, you recently wrote an article outlining how to take charge of a media interview, which I personally believe also is a very, very important information to have and a skill to have.

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First of all, why do you think this happens?

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First of all, why do you think this happens?

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Well, I think sometimes this comes with experience.

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We've worked with many, many clients doing media prep sessions, and if they're less experienced, they may feel like they just have to passively sit back and wait for the next question and hope to get it right, or that they're lobbing the ping pong ball back over the net.

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But they shouldn't feel that way.

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They should feel very confident and comfortable and, most of all, like they have something important to share.

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So they should feel like they can take control over the interview.

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I don't mean 100% control, but certainly they should have a feeling of confidence about managing their messaging.

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So then let's talk about how should they go about that, what should they think that they need to know, and how to go about beginning to make that happen.

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Well, I think it starts with knowing what you want to share, and it helps to think in terms of threes.

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I usually counsel clients to have three points in mind and, if they're doing anything like radio audio podcast interview, to have it written down so they can refer to it.

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We think there's some kind of there's a body of psychological research that shows that we think better in sets of three.

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So just think about the three most important things you want to share.

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That's the first step.

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You know, one of the things that I found in my experience is that a lot of times when I was involved in those things, I would also actually ask the media person what questions do you want to ask?

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So I'll have that information up front as well.

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That's a great idea.

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However, I can tell you from experience that media won't always share their questions with you, or at least they won't always share all of them, and that, particularly when it comes to broadcast interviews, they may very well change it the very morning or the very day of the interview.

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So don't count on having all the questions in advance, and some media will refuse to do that at all.

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Okay, you know.

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The other thing I also found important is to determine whether you're dealing with a beat reporter or a general assignment reporter.

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That also makes a difference as well.

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That makes a huge difference and, in fact, if you're working with a PR person or agency and you really should be, I think I'm not being biased it's their job to tell you, to give you all that information.

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We will always put together what we call a briefing sheet.

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Every agency does this.

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It gives the spokesperson the reporter's background, their last five or ten interviews, spokesperson, the reporter's background, their last five or ten interviews, what we suggest the interview should be about, whatever intelligence we've been able to get about that reporter.

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I mean professional intelligence about their past work and what they're interested in.

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So you should have all that information.

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Now, what are some of the other things that you believe people should know in terms of being able to take charge, because one of the things you mentioned in your article was to challenge a negative premise.

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Yes, yes, If you anticipate that an interview will be somewhat adversarial, I think you need to start by knowing how you intend to promote the interview after it's done or not.

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You intend to promote the interview after it's done or not, and what I mean by this is that in the post I used the example of a recent interview that the president of Guyana did with a very important BBC reporter and Mr Ali.

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The Guyanese president was able to gain a real advantage in the interview, and one way he did that was by having his team circulate his best moments on social media.

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Now, we all know that most people don't sit down and actually take in a lengthy article or a 10-minute interview.

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They might just see some soundbites on social media.

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So, of course, the first step is to lead with your best moments.

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Now you also mentioned about having your way or having your say.

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Help us understand how that works.

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Well, something very interesting that I think President Ali does in this particular interview but you will find it in many places is that he doesn't necessarily accept the premise behind every question.

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You know, it's that classic.

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You know, when did you stop doing this terrible thing?

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Well of course you don't want to admit that you've ever done anything terrible.

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In fact you have not.

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So you need to challenge that premise and you can just say it in those words.

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You can say well, actually I don't agree with that premise.

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I actually think a better question is blah, blah, blah and segue into the point that you want to make.

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You know, I think that's a hugely important point that you're just making there, because too often people and again I guess we're looking at more inexperienced people don't think that they have the right to challenge information from a reporter.

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Yes, this definitely comes from experience and I want to say I've seen it used in bad faith.

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I don't believe that it should be used in bad faith by people who are trying to distort the truth.

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But when you know that someone let's say someone on the other side of the table during a media interview has erroneous information or partial information, you really do have the responsibility to challenge it.

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Mm-hmm.

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And I think that's hugely important.

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What other tips do you have for folks who need to understand how they can basically take charge of an interview?

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Well, something that you do see sometimes in interviews are people talking over one another.

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It could be that you're in some kind of adversarial situation and someone is going on and saying something that's not quite accurate, but you hesitate to interrupt them because it looks rude or it might escalate the situation.

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Take to interrupt them because it looks rude or it might escalate the situation.

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And what I think in this particular case President Ali did successfully was he raised his voice, but still in a modulated way, and he actually put his hand up in the universal stop sign and said wait a minute, let me, let me Stop you right there.

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Let me just correct that.

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And he said it gently but with great authority in his tone of voice.

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So what I would suggest someone does, if they feel that they simply have to break in, is to raise their voice a couple of decibels, but not too much, and simply keep talking.

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But I think the most media, most journalists or certainly most broadcast hosts will let you have your say, because that's their job.

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That was the point I was going to make, that if, in fact, that they did say something that was erroneous, that you needed to stop, basically stop right away and say they needed to correct that.

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I need to correct that information because what you just said is not accurate.

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And remember, you can always go back and correct something that has been mentioned a few minutes earlier.

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Nothing is stopping you from saying, oh and, by the way, during your first question, what you mentioned isn't exactly correct and here's why question.

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but what you mentioned isn't exactly correct, and here's why.

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So I think one of the things that we're getting out of this is that, as the person being interviewed, you should understand that you have some for lack of a better term rights, that you don't have to accept everything that's being said, particularly if it's inaccurate, and that you can step in to make changes to make sure that it's being reflective of what you're actually saying, that it is accurate information.

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That's so funny.

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You say that because we actually have a page in our media training deck that says the interviewee bill of rights and it's a long list of things that you should expect before you agree to any kind of media interview.

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And I'm not saying this because I expect them to be adversarial, because typically they are not, but it's just more about the things that you should require and that, again, it's typically the PR person's job to make sure happen.

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But you know you have to take responsibility when you're the one basically in that seat.

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Well, you brought that up, this list.

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Could you rattle off maybe about five items from that list that you think should be discussed, maybe prior to an interview?

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Sure, absolutely.

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First of all, you have the right to not answer a question.

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You have the right to say I don't have that information, but I'll get that for you.

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Again, you have the right to challenge any premise of the question.

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You have the right to reject any hypothetical.

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If someone tries to pin you down and say, well, is it A or is it B, you don't have to talk about that.

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You have the right to mention when you cannot share information.

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Very often our C-level let's say a CEO or another C-level executive will be asked about information like earnings or profits and they may not be able to share that.

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So you absolutely have the right to say you know I can't share that, but what I can tell you is that we are 10% over our benchmarks or something like that.

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Again, what we're trying to do in the spirit of cooperation and in the spirit of having our interviews actually be aired or printed or posted, is we want to give the media something substantial, but we can't always give them the exact information that they may want.

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You know.

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Another thing I think is important for people to consider is the no comment that some people say that and from my point of view it's the worst thing they can say, because under conditions you can comment and you can say you know I can't comment because you know the judge does not allow me to, or this is privileged information or something along those lines.

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But just leaving it at no comment leaves people with some suspicion that maybe you're trying to cover something up.

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That's right.

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I think the phrase no comment has become kind of a cliche and what it usually signals is oh, I'm afraid to say anything, and it's not really.

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They're not very good words to put together, but you can certainly express that in a different way and like I said, we always suggest that if we are not able to share, you know one, you know piece of information that we offer something else.

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And in some cases I can recall years ago I was with the when I lived in Washington DC.

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I was communications person for the fire department and I can recall the chief getting up there.

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He was about some ambulance being sent to the wrong address it's.

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The chief couldn't answer it so I had to actually get the guy who oversees the ambulance operation to come in and explain why.

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So that really took the chief off oversees the ambulance operation to come in and explain why.

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So that really took the chief off the spot because he was in a bad.

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He tried to answer everything, which I think is a bad mistake, that the leader doesn't have to try to answer every question because they don't know the nuts and bolts of all the operations of an organization.

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That's such a good point.

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As a matter of fact, they shouldn't know everything.

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It makes them look, you know, in some cases besieged or under pressure or overwhelmed.

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If they try to answer everything, they should be calm and dignified and say you know, I'll have such and such address that, or I'll have the team get back to you about that today.

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That's the thing that I think a lot of people should fully, fully understand that you don't have the answers to all the questions.

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Again, sort of going back to some past experiences when I worked on Capitol Hill and there's so much legislation going on up there, if I ran into somebody that focused on that legislation, I could maybe answer the headlines sort of stuff, but the details of it.

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Then I'd refer them to the person to help write the legislation.

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Details of it, then I'd refer them to the person that helped write the legislation, which is fair, because they're the ones that know all the nuts and bolts and nuances of what it is.

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They're asking Exactly and you don't want to get it wrong and any journalist will appreciate that.

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Mm-hmm, and I think that's hugely important too.

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A lot of times that again, going back to past experiences, when I had a congressman in trouble and I knew that or based on news reports that that was inaccurate, I told reporters that and that we would not only bring the people who knew exactly what was happening, but then we would actually invite you in to talk to those people so that you can ask all the questions you wanted to, to make sure that you had the right information to move forward with.

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That's good media relations.

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That's exactly what you should do if you can.

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So what are some of the other tips that were on your checklist?

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Well, I mean, there's one that's fairly extreme that I think again has been used in bad faith by some people, particularly in the political world, which is an acronym known as DARVO, and I think DARVO stands for Deny, attack, reverse, victim and Offender, but it's basically when you turn on the person who's maybe implicitly or explicitly accusing you of something and you try to accuse them of the same thing or something similar, and, like I said, I've seen this used very poorly and by bad actors.

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So I'm not saying that this is something that you should always do, but I think that the example that I described in the blog post is that that same president, president Ali of Guyana, is being basically accused by the BBC reporter of being a colluder by extracting these huge oil reserves that were recently discovered off the coast of Guyana, and it will have greatly enriched the nation.

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So suddenly, guyana is one of the richest nations after being really a very poor one, and so this BBC reporter is almost lecturing him on the potential impact, and President Ali just turns it around and basically says the world, in the last 50 years, has lost 65% of its biodiversity.

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We have kept ours, but do you value it?

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Are you ready to pay for it?

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Who in the developed world is going to pay for it?

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How can you lecture us on climate change when you have been the polluters for a century?

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So he is basically turning the tables on the reporter and accusing him really of being condescending to the developing world.

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And the excerpt that was posted and that went viral really did strike a chord, I think, among many leaders in South Asia, the Caribbean and other areas, because they agreed with President Ali.

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Now, whether he's right or wrong, I'm just saying it was a very effective tactic.

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You know, as I listen to you explain some of these things, one of the things that I think and perhaps I've not actually been to a media training class, but if you're in the public relations business, I think that you should go to one of those as to how to handle these kinds of extreme for lack of a better term extreme interviews where reporters are pressing you and trying to force you to say something that you know either shouldn't be said or should be said in a certain way, or have someone else to answer that question.

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How to handle those things in some sort of reasonable form to move forward.

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It's true.

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I mean, you have to learn how to do that, because most people don't think quickly enough to do that, nor do they necessarily have the ammunition, the facts and the figures, the data, to turn the tables.

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And, as I said, in some cases they turn the tables when it's wrong to do so and they're not acting in good faith.

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So it's to be used very carefully.

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Well, d'arnaud, let me ask you do you have any more tips from your list of things to do to maintain or take control over an interview?

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What have we missed?

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Well, you know what one of my favorite tactics is and it's not necessarily anything that you need to do, because an interview is adversarial but one of my media training mentors taught me this and I found it to be very true, and it's that if you want to stay in the story, a lot of what we try to do for our clients is to keep them in the story, meaning we will give a quote or a commentary or an interview, but you don't know, that evokes a visual image in someone's head, like the person who originally we do a lot of work in ad tech and data the person who originally said data is the new oil.

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That really stuck and actually a lot of people have taken credit for that phrase, but I don't really care who first said it.

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The reason it's stuck, I think, is because it immediately evokes an image in your head.

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We talk about data transparency.

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A lot in exchanges for our clients and their advertisers are annoyed about this black box, of this lack of transparency in the way that digital ads are delivered, and we started to talk about the glass box because we're transparent and that really stuck because, again, it it stays in somebody's head.

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I was.

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I was listening to um to a radio interview and it was about um a bridge repair, not the baltimore bridge, but another bridge, I believe in minneapolis, and they they likened it to open heart surgery while the patient is walking, and I thought, gosh, that's a great visual image.

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And no wonder that was the phrase that stayed in the broadcast, because it was so evocative.

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That, first of all, is very interesting, but I think that's going to require people being able to think on their feet relatively quickly to be able to pull that off.

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Oh, yes, you have to prepare these.

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You have to prepare these in advance, but unless you're just, you know, very accustomed to this, or unless it's part of your message deck, which it really should be.

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Yeah, there was one.

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This actually originated with a colleague of mine who had helped a client who was one of the targets of a congressional investigation, and I believe they said something like this is a political strip search, and it was such an arresting kind of almost violent line, but it actually led the.

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It was the pull code for the story, precisely because it's so evocative.

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Well, daria, this has really been not only joyful but a very informative interview.

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I am really really happy that we were able to have you on this podcast today.

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And any closing remarks for the listeners.

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Not really.

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I just think, if you are preparing for a media interview, take some time to get yourself centered, focus on what you want to say and, again, don't fear the silence.

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If you're finished and you have communicated everything you need to communicate, don't feel you need to babble on.

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That's how sometimes people make mistakes.

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Well, dorothy.

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Thank you so very, very much.

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My guest today has been Dorothy Crenshaw.

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She is now the chief PR officer for Mardup and she joined us from New York City and I want to say if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share this with your listeners.

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And also we'd like to get some great reviews from you, so please join in for the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

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This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Thank you for joining us.