Category Archives: Working with the media

Quote, unquote

Working with the media

The New York Times has apparently banned the practice of allowing its sources to check quotes before they’re published http://bit.ly/Q08kvR. Supporters of a free and balanced press will be delighted and, perhaps surprisingly, there’ll be quite a few PR people happy to see the back of this invidious trend.

In media training, reminding the interviewee not to request quote approval is always high on the list of ‘things not to do’. Not only can it offend the interviewing journalist but it devalues the whole process if the interviewee thinks he/she will have a second go at ‘tidying’ up their comments (it also makes for a tedious toing and froing for the PR and the journalist).

Piers Morgan recounts a cautionary tale in his diaries of some quotes arriving back from approval following an interview with erstwhile chatshow celebs Richard and Judy. So annoyed was he that he printed the original quotes together with the amends requested by the couple – making them look ridiculous.

The lesson of course is to prepare properly, get some media training and trust yourself to say it right first time.

2012: there are some good news stories waiting to get out

Communicating in a crisis, Working with the media

Ahead of the greatest celebration of sporting achievement this country has ever seen (Ipswich Town’s 1981 UEFA Cup win aside), the country’s media are in meltdown it seems; scrabbling desperately for absolutely anything that can fill their pages/screens with tales of London 2012 incompetence, disaster and failure. As a country we don’t just accept failure, we positively wish it up on ourselves.

Pick a pocket or two
Of course, the G4S debacle doesn’t help, but the BBC’s News at 10 I thought plumbed new depths last night with a feature on hoards of foreign pickpocketers ready to descend en masse to relieve the luckless ‘unfortunates’ attending the Games of their handbags, valuables, phones, wallets…

The media do of course love a bad story and in terms of managing that, there isn’t much you can do other than hope that Team GB starts to deliver on the gold medals. Surely then they’ll have something to celebrate.

Of course there’s the whole bun fight on legacy to come next. You just can’t keep a bad news story down.

Car crash PR

Uncategorized, Working with the media

Anyone who read the Gordon Ramsay interview in the Observer last Sunday http://bit.ly/Kv2NIy would have enjoyed some spirited sparring between a spiky journalist and a prickly chef. From a communications perspective though, the role of the legion of PRs that Ramsay apparently brought with him was fascinating but ultimately did more harm than good.

Does an opinionated, forthright character like Ramsay really need a public relations team with him to guide the conversation? Of course he should have someone along to make sure the interview happens and that there is someone to listen in and make sure facts are recorded accurately, and any necessary follow-up takes place (or even post interview damage limitation, although it’s rarely effective – just look back at the Observer piece where the PR’s comments on Ramsay’s football injuries also get used in a slightly disparaging way).

Keep anonymous
In my book, if the journalist has to refer to the PR in their piece then the PR has failed. It’s a bit like the referee in a game of football. If you get to the end of a game and you don’t know the referee’s name then you know they’ve had a good match; they kept control without having to overly draw attention to themselves.

At one point in the Ramsay interview, the exasperated journalist turns to the PR and asks if they would prefer to conduct the interview. It’s not reasonable to pitch Ramsay for an interview ostensibly on his latest project and expect the conversation to stick firmly to the PR’s preferred topic – especially someone as colourful as Ramsay. To then repeatedly try and blunderingly guide the interview just makes it worse. Having said that, it does make for great reading!

When research led PR backfires…

Working with the media

There are lies, damned lies, and then there are, of course, statistics. A recent press release from an insurer has drawn a certain amount of ire from commentators for extrapolating up a statistic from research on people fiddling their expenses. See the Guardian’s comment:  http://bit.ly/JzMFZb

It’s tempting to try and draw out some big numbers from this type of research, but as ever it comes down to your gut feel and common sense: if you think it’s stretching the integrity of the research then journalists will almost certainly come to a similar conclusion and you could find the whole thing back firing.

x+x = the best news coverage ever (apparently)

Working with the media

Next time you have that press release in front of you, check how many of Johan Galtung’s and Mari Ruge’s boxes it ticks?

Deep thinkers

Never heard of them? Well, neither had I until stumbling on their research the other day. In short, they’re two Norwegian academics who, in the 1960s, identified 12 factors which determine whether an event would be covered in a newspaper.

Does your press release include the following?
These factors included frequency, unambiguity; meaningfulness; unexpectedness; reference to elite nations or elite people; reference to people; reference to something negative.

So, the answer I suppose is, if you haven’t got a President or a Prime Minister to quote, make sure you can tick as many of the other boxes for the perfect, news coverage guaranteed, press release.