Interview Of The Week

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I am rapidly becoming Winifred Robinsons biggest fan.

Which is odd, as I really don't like the programme that she works on. "You and Yours" used to be half an hour every week, then it became an hour a day of 'consumer' radio, or in other words people moaning about stuff...

Not my thing at all, and then I started driving more during the programme and found that I'd listen if Winifred was there.

Why?

Because she is a very, very good interviewer.

Which is a problem if you happen to be George Gordon from Tesco.

We begin from a position of dissonance; Tesco wants to flag up social good while Winifred wants to make the point that during all of the coverage of consumer complaints and bad practice in the supermarket industry, Tesco are never available for comment.

It doesn't get much better for Tesco. Through the interview George tries to show what the company are doing to cut food waste and Winifred accuses them of causing the food waste in the first place with B.O.G.O.F. deals on food.

So what should you take from this as a business.

1) Be Familiar - if you expect good coverage when you want it, engage with bad coverage when you don't. By refusing to respond when the journalists come to you they stop trusting you.

2) Ask What Is The Story? - To Tesco the story is that they are being cuddly and responsible, to The You And Yours listeners the story is that a giant company many of them HAVE to deal with are chiding them for something that isn't their fault. Before appearing ask what the story is from the point of view of the audience.

3) Be Prepared - George Gordon from Tesco seems to think that Winifred Robinson is a wet behind the ears ingénue. She isn't, she's one of the best broadcast interviewers out there and any press office setting this interview up should have been listening to that programme for weeks before approaching them with this initiative.

4) Make It Good - The people behind this story don't seem to have figured out the major flaw. Tesco encourages customers to cut food waste, whilst pushing customers to buy more food as it's often cheaper to buy bulk in Tescos' Shops, blaming customers for wasting half of what they are forced to buy... Yeh, that reads well doesn't it.

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JOURNALIST WHISPERING - WHAT THEY WANT AND HOW TO GIVE IT TO THEM.

It's another Vlog from the face of

Monitor Your Effectiveness.

A friend of mine has just been interviewed by a communications manager. It was for a fixed term administration post. During the interview she was asked (by the comms manager) How do you monitor your effectiveness?

How do you monitor your effectiveness...

Inside that question is a good question trying to get out.

This seems to be a problem for people working in communications; they deal in corporate BS all day they find it difficult to decompress and start communicating like normal people.

I'm really not sure what "monitoring your effectiveness" means other than taking direct feedback from line managers, colleagues and clients. I suppose you could tie that in with concrete results in a sales environment but this was for an admin role. Do you have to produce a chart with your percentage of filing accuracy?

Can we all stop, take a breath and start to talk normally again?

If you are asked (in a journalistic environment) a question that sounds corporate or (for want of a better word) bollocks; turn it round ask them to explain the question as most of the time they won't know either.

David, David, David...

What have David Starkey and Kenneth Clarke got in common? Is it that they both like the same sort of men? Is it that they were both in the reserve 11 for the 1996 European championship squad? Is it perhaps that for a time they were controlled by the same demon? No, the thing that they have in common is that they have both caused outrage on twitterbook.

If you haven't seen David Starkey and what Emily Maitliss described as "the moment" then here it is.

I don't think that my job is to wonder which is worse, racism or making light of rape, and I certainly don't think that the reaction will be the same when the dust has settled. Kenneth Clarke and David Starkey are different; one is a politician that has to be liked and the other makes a career of being stern and not caring what people think of him. Ken Clarke had to explain and chances are David Starkey won't.

I've interviewed David Starkey on a number of occasions and the first time I did I was terrified. I was familiar with his work on BBC Radio 4's 'The Moral Maze', a programme where he was positively encouraged to destroy people with his intellect. I had to talk to him on the occasion of The Queen distributing Maundy Money* at Gloucester Cathedral. I prepped like no one else could; hours were spent researching the political significance of the ceremony and how it is part of the pact between Ruler and Subjects. It was a live telephone interview and they are often the most difficult as there's no eye contact or body language to reinforce the verbal message. We started talking, he was assured and fluent, and I had a trill of nerves in my voice, however, I got through to him, he warmed me up and the moment that he laughed with me at a shared joke everything was fine.

I spoke to him on air a number of times after that and I always found him an intellectual challenge but very giving in the interview context.

What has surprised me about his faux pas (if such a delicate term can be used) is that it was an inelegant summing up of how he saw the situation. It seems that to full fill the needs of televisual brevity he missed out some very significant nuance; he gives us the answer without letting us see the working out. I bet he'd formed a pleasing sentence in the taxi to the studio and assumed that we'd certainly pick up the background.

In contrast Ken Clarkes 'Rape gaffe' was a product of him being hemmed into a corner by a sharp interviewer and a bad choice of words.

So what do you do if your organisation has said the wrong thing, either by design, omission, or idiocy? If it's by design and it all blows up in your face then you really need a strategic rethink, if it's by omission play the long game if your reputation is one of caring and sharing then explain immediately; if you're the industrial version of prickly David Starkey then sit back and curse the world for not understanding. The last one is easier to deal with, apologise hard and fast and then fire the idiot!

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Maundy

Don't Mention The Pie.

Yesterday anyone who was available in the afternoon was watching the slightly odd entertainment of the Commons Media Select Committee. It was without any doubt the highest viewing figures for any select committee proceedings because of the Murdochs. James and Rupert Murdoch were answering questions about the involvement of News International in the use of phone hacking by News Of The World Journalists. I’m not going to comment on whether I think their testimony was of any interest. I’ll leave that up to the blogs that deal with that subject. I don’t. I want to look at their performance as interviewees. What can they teach us for next time we face a hostile interviewer?

It was a game of two techniques and that is possibly the most impressive thing about their performance. It started a little shakily with a refusal to let them read a prepared statement, and then Murdoch Senior managed to interrupt proceedings to tell us all how humble he was. Humble people don’t interrupt to tell us how humble they are. From that clanging beginning however it turned into a tour de force of contrition manipulation and obfuscation.

James Murdoch has been very well taught in the methods used to diffuse a difficult interview. He was a picture of regret and sorrow when it came to the shortcomings of News International. His tone of voice didn’t really change from a low monotone of submission and his face rarely dropped the expression of a Public School Head Boy caught smoking in the quad. One of his key techniques, however, was the long and detailed answer. When faced with an interview that you know has a time limit make your answers detailed, relevant and long; throw in lots of context, sub-clauses and the occasional bit of technical data (think of the ramblings of Grandpa Simpson). There were a number of replies that seemed to take us back to his childhood and were so involved that even as a keen observer I’d lost track of what the question was.

Rupert Murdoch had a different technique. Most of the informed viewers were waiting for the questioning of Tom Watson MP, the back bencher who had been at the heart of the story of Murdoch’s power over Parliament; he was dogged, he was clear and he was forthright. Tom Watson hadn’t allowed for Rupert Murdoch’s reaction to the questioning. A bald slumped eighty year old man, looking confused beleaguered and harangued, he cut a pitiable figure as he paused before each vague answer and seemed to know little of what his company had been up to. As the questioning went on Murdoch looked more like a care home resident who was regretting giving his son power of attorney. However, later in proceedings he appeared to have facts at his finger tips; the steel trap of a mind was still well oiled and catching people out. Had he just used the great defence of being too old and feeble to stand trial? As for that nasty Tom Watson, he’d just beaten up an octogenarian on live television.

Emotional connection is the Murdoch’s biggest triumph. After appearing in front of the Select Committee they have become human, they are no longer faceless monsters who have the morals of a tabloid journalist, they are human and they are very sorry*. Genius.

*no, I haven’t addressed any of the content of what they said. They wriggled and shimmied and seemed to say very little of use. The defence of hampering criminal proceedings was trotted out regularly.  The Tom Watson questioning about corporate governance was very interesting but will be remembered for Rupert Murdoch’s reaction, not the substance.

Cat Violence

A couple of years ago I made a terrible mistake.

I made one of those mistakes that you blunder blindly into, like congratulating a colleague on their pregnancy when they're not pregnant or deciding to buy a non-brand name condiment; Honze Ketchup really isn't the same.

I was presenting a programme that was the market leader at the time and one of the key elements was the muse. You know the sort of thing, have you ever wondered why toast lands butter side down? Have you ever noticed that policemen are looking younger these days? By the way I don't like Cats…


Yes. I said it, I don't like cats…

It was more along the lines that I don’t like cats leaving 'gifts' in the garden. I have a toddler who may find them and it's not nice. It was something that I'd tried out in the office. It was something that could be a talking point. It was something that I lived to regret.

Now there are certain things that you can't say in Britain, these are; Is Alan Bennet over rated? Have you noticed that Prince William is going bald? Wasn't Cheryl Cole found guilty of assault? And I don't like (insert name of animal here). I'd forgotten about this last bit. We are a nation of animal lovers and to go against this, even if you have supporting arguments, is just, well, blasphemy.

After being accused of inciting violence towards cats I was called a monster and told that I shouldn't be allowed on the radio ever again under any circumstance. After being abused by text and harangued over the phone I promised NEVER to mention cats again and my boss decided that I had been punished enough.

I felt like Gerald Ratner after his moment in the Albert hall. I'd just killed all the good feeling that I'd built up over the previous 5 years or so. It was not my finest hour.

After a fitful nights sleep, half expecting the local paper to be running with BBC Man In Cat Hate Shock, I went into the office. The atmosphere was subdued. I could see my cat owning colleagues looking at me with a sort of cold detachment that I hadn't seen before. They then decided that just before going on they would have their say about the cat incident… Bless 'em for that.

Bruised, friendless and depressed I went on air and let the audience know that after my conversation about cats I wouldn't be repeating it. I had chosen my words badly and I apologised… and then a call came… now, I always think that if you're going to ask for reaction then you should deal with it good or bad and that if someone has bothered to call then they should be given the chance to air those views. I had done that the previous day when I was the Pol Pot of the cat world… so when this call came through I read out the comment. It was something along the lines of 'I agree with you, and I hate cats in my garden.' I felt a little better about life and I moved on to the talking point for that day.

I don't remember what the talking point was because I then spent the next 3 hours being congratulated by everyone that wasn't listening the previous day, how I was finally going against the angry cat loving minority, how the scourge of cat poo was worse than world poverty and the threat to the ice caps.

After the programme we had a debrief. I reiterated that my apology was in no way a plea for people to agree with me.

The thing is, when you're going to be controversial, or even just a bit honest, you need to be prepared for everything to go wrong, you need to be prepared for shutting it down apologising and moving on, because on the day you decide to say that you don't like cats it may be that everyone who agrees with you is on holiday.

We're Going On A Weasel Hunt.

Let's play the great Weasel Word Game!

See how many phrases in the next few paragraphs that you should never use in an interview situation… Go on, print it out and see if you can find them all.

A growing body of evidence has shown that the vast majority of people have come to see that media training is of value. People say that up to 80% of what they learn can be used in practise. Now, critics claim that this isn't the case, but clearly it stands to reason that 4 out of 5 people would agree that they are wrong.

It has been mentioned that more people are using training as a way to improve their working lives and nothing will give the results that training can. Even though popular wisdom comes down on the side of more training as often as possible, common sense has it that just an increase of 50% can benefit businesses; experience shows us this.

It stands to reason that you will be better off after changing the way that you work. By replacing existing personnel with more flexible working practices then you're able to streamline the whole process, whilst reducing ill feeling by nearly three quarters.

In the past, mistakes were made, and those mistakes are being studied. We are aware that there has been a lot of research in this area. It was noted, however, that almost 30 of the people who responded were satisfied by the action taken. Studies show that number is more than enough people to be officially recognised.

So there you have it. How many weasel words did you spot?*

If your answers, press releases, posts or tweets contain any of those phrases without then going into specifics then you need to have a re-write. If you inadvertently rely on these phrases in an interview be prepared to back them up, any journalist worth their salt loves to go weasel hunting.

*29... probably.

Fireman Sam

Over the last few months I have been watching a lot of Fireman Sam. It's not out of choice it's because my son who's 2 and a half watches little else. He loves Fireman Sam with a love that appears to out-weigh the love he has for his parents. The problem is that as you sit with your child engaging with them and talking about what's happening on the television you start to question things.

Fireman Sam (if you're not familiar) is set in the coastal town of Pontypandy somewhere in south Wales. The town itself has around 150 houses (that's a ball park figure culled from many images of fire engines driving through). It has a supermarket, a fish and chip shop, and a fire station... and yet we only ever see 15 residents, and a sheep. 15. That's all. It seems that the Welsh Assembly haven't had their attention drawn to the town where 4 of the 15 residents are in the Fire Department, or, that the other 145 households are too scared to venture out of their houses due to the antics of the 11 pyromaniac residents.

Every week there is another fire emergency started (generally) by Norman Price, a ginger haired psychopath who endangers life and limb and eventually gets a stern talking to. He deserves to be placed into a youth offender's institution. These emergencies happen invariably on the watch of Sam Jones, the titular Fireman Sam. Sam has a firm chin, a nice line in payoff gags and a simple way of dealing with life; if in doubt point a hose at it.

The recent debacle of "The Great Fire Of Pontypandy" is a great example of the worry I have for the residents of the town. Sam and his cohorts allowed a forest fire to threaten the town, causing a mass evacuation. The only people to turn up at the quay side to be taken safely out to sea were the usual 15 people (apart from Tom Thomas the random Australian helicopter pilot). Where were the others? Were they locked in their houses by the blood thirsty ringleaders left to burn in some sort of pre teen massacre?

So what is the point of all of this? Am I really that bored that I have to analyse children's programmes? No, doing something like this can really help us when we come up against the media. You may well have written a splendid press release that tells a story of light and love, possibly involving a benign fire safety obsessed welsh man and when you walk into the interview, you realise that they have really been thinking about it far too much.

How do you counter a journalist who has over thought it? Be honest, be clear and be kind. The popping of the over blown intellectual bubble that they have produced could shock both of you.

Just remember, sometimes the answer is... it's just a cartoon.

Soundbite

"A day like today is not a day for soundbites, we can leave those at home," Tony Blair 1998

Sorry Tony, but every day is a day for soundbites. Every day! The importance of the soundbite can't be underrated even if talking about them just seems a bit 1997, a bit Labour Landslide. It's a shame really because as soon as the word soundbite is mentioned people turn off or stop reading jolly helpful blogs...

Still here? Good.

Think of the soundbite this way; during the day we are exposed to far more headlines than the articles that we read, there's the web, printed news papers, scrolling bars on the news channels all of them are tiny bits of news poetry distilling the most meaning from the least number of words. If the headline is right then the eye is drawn into what the story is. It is, however, really very difficult to find the best soundbite for a press release that's being blanket sent to all of the print journos in the world. So what do you do? Do you jiggle with it for every publication and present them with a nice niche line? No. No you don't. You know full well that your average PR person has hundreds of other things that they have to do during the day, so why don't you take advantage of the cross pollination that news organisations perpetuate? Everybody steals off each other. If a press release is versioned for one mass market outlet, The Daily Mail for example, then you have a short hand for what the other outlets can version for themselves. Hit 'em with something that they can copy and paste into their house styles. If you want to know more have a look at this splendid site all about the world of Churnalism.

http://mediastandardstrust.org/blog/go-explore-churnalism/

They are decrying the lack of what they see as "proper journalism". From your commercial point of view take advantage of the situation and get the publicity.

So what about the broadcast media? There your aim should be the "news clip".

If you are interviewed on a local radio Breakfast Show then you'd be lucky to get a few thousand listeners. The radio station may say that they have 100,000 listeners but that's across the week for the whole station. A good breakfast show could only peak at 6000 listeners at any given time. If you're not on at the peak you may get 2000 if you're unlucky. So what can you do about it? You give good quote, you get out the big guns and have a lovely soundbite that can be run across the news bulletins for the whole day. If there are 20,000 listeners for the day then you may get all of them. Now that's worth your while aiming for the news clip isn't it?

What makes a good news clip? If it's a slow day virtually anything, from "local business man says cheese is lovely" to "local business man says cheese is horrible" but you need to aim a bit higher than that. You can't always hope for the slow news day. You want a new figure, to go against the perceived wisdom, to challenge a truth, to have some very good news, or some very bad news, and you need to do all of that in about 15 seconds, with the ability to write some bits round it. Simple eh? That's why Tony Blair had a team of writers all looking for what the soundbite was going to be.

Just being aware of some of the ways organisations get their headlines and how important a soundbite can be could be the little bit of extra focus that you need.

Smug.

If you really want to give "good interview" then you need to be aware of your flaws, for me it's verbosity; why use one word when a florid collection of thirty will do?


My colleagues in the radio industry still talk (in hushed tones) about my fascinating, beautifully crafted and intricate link that went on for five and a half minutes. That's right, five and a half minutes, without hesitation and still with a coherent train of thought. It was, however, five and a half minutes when I could have done it in less than one. My boss pointed out the behemoth and since then I have always been aware that I can just go on a bit when the wind is behind me and it's something that I now watch very carefully.

Francis Maud MP Cabinet Office Minister has a problem with smug, and someone ought to tell him. I don't just want to pick on The Rt. Hon. Mr Maude, there are many others from all works of life that suffer from 'the smugs' it's just that this morning on BBC Breakfast he showed himself to be patient zero.

If you want to avoid the same fate as Francis Maud here are some tips...

1 - Do not steam roller over the end of questions. You may be eager to put your view to the nation but stepping on the end of the question gives the two pronged impression of being so clever that you don't need the rest of the question, and that it doesn't matter what you're being asked because you're just going to say what you want any way. (And in this case you make Sian Williams look cross and no one wants that)

2 - The kind voice, oooh the kind voice, if you're wondering what I mean then have a look at this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13773800 (this is the news clip not the Sian Williams live but the effect is the same) it's that tone that's a cross between the Doctor explaining that you're going to have your leg off, and the Headmaster who's terribly disappointed in you but doesn't want to be discouraging. Tone of voice is a hugely difficult thing to manage, and there seems to be a trend, probably since Thatcher to adopt a 'the Government really does know best' tone when talking about difficult issues. So how do you get around this? Being aware of it is a very good start...

3 - Careful with the eyebrow action. It's interesting to see that there are a number of research papers looking at eyebrows and the amount that they are raised, and they point to eyebrows being raised as a form of facial emphasis. In this case it's the sections starting '...cross party consensus...', '...proposals made by Lord Hutton a former Labour Secretary of State...' and then on '...asking their members to give up a days pay...'. The result of these dramatic eyebrow raises is to communicate a passing of the blame for the decisions and the subsequent hardship to someone else.

The problem is that when you're being smug, pompous, bolshie, cross, baity, snide, sarcastic, all the things that you should avoid in interviews, especially filmed interviews, you need someone looking at the tape to tell you what you're doing, and after that someone to work with you to stop doing it.

Good Morning!

Here is an imagined scene that takes place in a radio studio near you.

Presenter - Good Morning it's 8 o'clock, I'm Smug Pratley, coming up the campaign to stop saying good morning all the time, first the news with Rich Reading-Voice.

News reader - Good Morning, lots of things have happened of great importance... (fade to 'and finally') with the sport here's Nerdy Statlington.

Sports reporter - Good Morning, it's been a great morning of sport... (fade to 'racing tips')

(jingle plays)

Presenter - Good Morning, it's 5 past 8, I'm Smug Pratley and you're with 'Pratley in the Morning' on the way lots of things that have happened in the local area that we've found out about, but first a campaign has been launched to stop wasting time saying good morning to everyone on the radio, the head of the campaign says that we waste a massive 12 hours a week listening to people on the radio saying Good Morning to each other; that statistic incidentally is made up.

So what does our local MP Lord Nicking of Snatch think of this? Good Morning Lord Nicking.

Guest - Good Morning to you Smug and Good Morning to all your listeners.

Presenter - Good Morning, so what do you think you'd do if I just started asking you a question, keeping the flow and rhythm of the programme going, without saying Good Morning?

Guest - Well Smug, I'd automatically say Good Morning to you, then I'd pause for a fraction of a second too long, fooling you into thinking that I'm waiting for a response. When I hear you take a breath to do that, I'd then carry on regardless. This would make you angry and therefore less inclined to be nice to me during the rest of the interview, but I'd feel delighted with my feeling of self satisfaction.

Presenter - well, that's fascinating... (fade to hand over to slightly manic morning presenter)

So what should you take from this?

Firstly, Breakfast presenters say 'Good Morning' far too much.

Secondly, if the person about to interview you doesn't greet you on air just get on with answering the question. They have probably already said Good Morning to you off air and if they haven't don't let it worry you; It's a stylistic thing, it makes the presenter sound more in control and the programme sound slicker, that's all it is. When you start the answer with 'Good Morning' you annoy the presenter (who's trying very hard to be fast paced) and an annoyed presenter has many, many ways to make you look bad... trust me on this.

Obviously

Language is defined by its usage; Gay rarely means light hearted and fun, Genius now means everything from second rate rapper to nerd who helps you in the Apple store and Obviously means, well, whatever you want it to mean.

Poor, poor, poor, obviously; what did it do to deserve this?

You only have to look at the abuse this simple and easily definable word* gets in the mouths of politicians to understand the depth of the problem...

Mr Cameron was asked about the period before the general election when he treated Mr Clegg as a joke. The Prime Minister said with a gleam of wicked amusement: "We've obviously had to get used to each other's jokes over the last year."

Andrew Gimson Daily Telegraph 12/05/11

Here i's thrown in for emphasis, without it the almost joke would be even smaller. So in this context it has no meaning.

The PM then threw in a mildly amusing remark about how Mr Miliband, just like Michael Foot, was being 'undermined by someone called Healey'...The House laughed. By the standards of Commons oratory, it was not a bad crack, even though it was obviously pre-fabricated.

Quentin Letts Daily Mail 12/05/11

Err, Ok, same thing here only in this case it adds a splendid frisson of smugness too.

Danny Alexander, the Treasury chief secretary, (commenting on the PM’s 'Calm down dear' gag) "Obviously, if something has caused offence, obviously that was not right. I hope it has not caused offence, because it was a joke".

I honestly didn't do this on purpose these quotes are randomly pulled off Google. The problem is that no one really knows what they're doing when it comes to things being obvious. Poor old Danny Alexander sounds like a petulant child when this quote is written down. Let's take this quote and take the 'O' word out of it.

"If something has caused offence, that was not right. I hope it has not caused offence, because it was a joke".

It's startling just how more sincere and pleasant it reads.

The most common crimes against this otherwise blameless word are emphasis, condescension, and self flagellation. We've covered the emphasis section, how about condescension. Take this completely made up response to an angry journalists question about NHS cuts.

"Obviously we are all having a tough time financially that's why we're closing all our hospitals and putting our patients in the capable hands of Keith the Aroma therapist"

Or in other words "How dare you question your betters, you jumped up little pencil pusher. We will do what we feel is for the best and you can just lump it"

It may be that the fictional government official is worried that he's going to be held accountable for a terrible horlicks but the first word out of his mouth immediately annoys the consumer and the interviewer and removes any sympathy for the messenger. 

Self flagellation is forgivable but again smug. Try it tonight. Stand in your house and start an argument. A good vicious argument, something along the lines of "goodness you're putting on weight dear" have a really good row and go to bed very, very, very angry. In the morning just see if this works, say in a loud firm voice "obviously I'm sorry, and I obviously didn't mean it" you may want to start ducking as you say it head wounds aren't worth proving a semantic point.

If you're being interviewed, if you're being quoted, if you have a point to make in a presentation avoid being obvious. It's obvious that you don't need it, and if you need to say it's obvious then it isn’t and if it isn't then you didn't in the first place... obvious eh?

*Easily perceived or understood; quite apparent. I did tell you.