Category: Media Mastery Tips



Noteworthy and Quoteworthy

Flight to Oblivion

Air Force One’s stand-in 747, shadowed by two jet fighters, caused panic by flying low over Manhattan for a photo op; a $300,000-plus exercise that reminded New Yorkers of 9/11. There was scant advance notification: the President and New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, were not told up front. The photo op was approved by Louis Caldera, head of the White House Military Office, who resigned in the aftermath. But not before Fran Townsend, an advisor to former President George W. Bush, got off this trenchant quote in a CNN interview: "I'd call this felony stupidity. This is probably not the right job for Mr. Caldera to be in if he didn't understand the likely reaction of New Yorkers, of the mayor."


The Offending Photo. As Jon Stewart asked on The Daily Show, “Didn’t you ever hear of Photoshop?”


Apparently, some have heard of Photoshop. This is the image the Statue of Liberty photo was supposed to replace. It sure looks as if it's been fixed in Photoshop, if not completely created using the software.

Banned From Britain

Jacqui Smith, the British home secretary, banned 22 people from entering the United Kingdom. Ms. Smith said, “Coming to the UK is a privilege, and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life. Therefore, I do not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views, as I want them to know that they are not welcome here.” In fact, she named only 16 of the 22, so presumably the other six will learn they are banned only after they’ve arrived at Heathrow. The list included violence-espousing Muslim clerics and neo-Nazis (including two who are in German jails where international travel opportunities are sorely lacking). Also on the list was Michael Savage, the San Francisco right-wing radio ranter who regularly broadcasts his extreme distaste for a wide range of minorities, including Hispanics and Muslims. Savage’s reaction, playing to stereotypes of England, was widely quoted: "My first thought was, damn, there goes the summer trip where I planned to have my dental work done."

Interestingly, some of those who rose to defend Savage’s right to express his views were targets of the shock jock, including the ACLU and the Council for American-Islamic Relations. Their spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, condemned both Savage's anti-Islamic comments and the ban. Hooper said: "Usually, these types of things just give people like this publicity. I don't think Savage will be too upset. It will give him something to talk about on his show for the next six months. 'I was banned in England.' "

Pirate Perils

The New York Times scored a major coup by getting an interview with a top Somali pirate. Over a lunch of spaghetti and camel meat (guess they ran out of the wild boar ragu), the pirate, Abshir Boyah, told the reporter, Jeffrey Gettleman, that pressure from an international flotilla of naval vessels at sea and from Somali religious sheiks on land was making the buccaneer business too hazardous and he was contemplating going into some other line of work. The pirate’s priceless quote: “Man, these Islamic guys want to cut my hands off. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

Debt Duel

With mortgages and credit cards in the news, debt has become a focus of many news stories. Here are a couple of dueling soundbites on the subject:

Chuck Bentley, CEO, Crown Financial Ministries and host of the “MoneyLife” radio show: "If you have self-control, the credit card can be a very meaningful tool to manage your money wisely.”

Dave Ramsey, author and host of “The Dave Ramsey” radio show: "Debt is not a tool; it is a method to make banks wealthy, not you. Debt is dumb."

Foot In Mouth Quote

Deborah Solomon, who does a weekly Q & A in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, last week quizzed Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. A very strange question yielded a foot-in-mouth answer followed by a clumsy alibi. Here’s the initial exchange:

Solomon: “With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that?

Specter: “I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner. [Coleman, a Republican, has refused to concede and is challenging in court Democratic candidate Al Franken’s narrow lead in last November’s election. Minnesota has been served by a single senator since the beginning of the year. Oh, and for the record, in case the religion of a senator matters to anyone other than Deborah Solomon, both Coleman and Franken are Jewish.]

The New York Times released the Solomon interview several days before the Sunday paper hit the newsstands and Congressional Quarterly followed up. Specter told CQ: “In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates.”

I never thought I’d have to give this piece of media training advice, but for the record: if you’re a politician and you’re going to do an interview, check your party registration in advance. And during the interview remember your party affiliation.


Sen. Arlen Spector (REP DEM, PA)

The Fundamentals VIII
Bridging to Your Agenda

Previous posts have dealt with creating your interview agenda and making the agenda points come alive by using grabbers and other compelling language techniques. All well and good to have an agenda and the language to deploy it, but what if the reporter’s questions don’t address your agenda. You want to talk about A and she wants to ask about B. Of what use is that agenda if you aren’t asked questions that lead to your agenda points?

There’s a technique for switching the interview locomotive from the reporter’s tracks to your tracks; it’s called Bridging. It’s a four-step process and the illustration below -- part of the slide presentation I use in media training class -- illustrates it:

Let’s go over the four steps:
Acknowledge. You must answer the reporter’s question. You cannot do what Lyndon Johnson used to do when he was president (and Henry Kissinger did as secretary of state) and say, “No, you should be asking.....” Today even a president (or secretary of state) cannot get away with that sort of evasion. Even worse is to pretend no question was asked and to just make a statement. Condoleezza Rice vexed the 9/11 Commission when she repeatedly ignored questions during her testimony. Several panel members snapped angrily at her, calling her out for being unresponsive. You must acknowledge the question with an answer of some sort -- the shorter the answer, the better for your purposes. (“Yes” and “No” are the two shortest answers I know of.)

Bridge. Now you build a bridge from your answer to your message point. Bridges need not be excessively long. “As a matter of fact....” “On the other hand.....” “Because....” are all relatively short bridges.

Message Point. Deliver your message point, illustrated with a Grabber to make it compelling.

Shut Up! Stop there. Don’t go back and revisit the original question. If you do, you’re inviting the reporter to pursue her agenda. If you shut up, you are inviting her to follow up with a question about your agenda.

That’s the theory. Here’s an example of it in practice. President Obama’s 100th Day prime-time news conference followed close on the heels of Sen. Arlen Specter’s departure from the GOP to the ranks of the Democratic Party. The president had to know he was going to be asked about it, but could not know what form the question would take. He likely decided to use any question about Sen. Specter to warn the opposition party against a policy of negative partisanship. Here’s the Q &A, marked with the Acknowledge, Bridge and the Positive Point:

QUESTION: Is the Republican Party in the desperate straits that Arlen Specter seems to think it is?
OBAMA: [Acknowledge] You know, politics in America changes very quick. And I'm a big believer that things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem.
[Bridge] You're talking to a guy who was 30 points down in the polls during a primary in Iowa. So I never -- I don't believe in crystal balls.
[Message Point] I do think that our administration has taken some steps that have restored confidence in the American people that we're moving in the right direction and that simply opposing our approach on every front is probably not a good political strategy.

I’m confident that no matter how the Specter question had been asked, he would have wound his way to his caution against negative partisan responses to his bipartisanship overtures.

The easiest questions to bridge from are those you can’t answer. For example:
[Acknowledge] “I don’t know. That’s outside my area of expertise.
[Bridge] “But what I can tell you is.....
[Message] Deploy an agenda point.
[Shut up]

The follow-up will likely be about your agenda point. But if the follow-up is, “How can you not know?” Your response is:
[Acknowledge] “That question isn’t in my area of expertise. I can get someone to help you with that.
[Bridge] “I can tell you however.....”
[Message] Deploy a second agenda point.
Shut up.

The reporter is likely to quit at this juncture, but if he doesn’t he could well accommodate your entire agenda just by repeatedly asking a question you cannot answer.

A Bridge Too Far

It is possible to bridge too far afield from the original question. When you do this you induce what I call “segue whiplash.” In other words, you’ve transitioned so far from the original question that it’s extremely obvious what you are doing and you appear to be evasive. If a reporter asks you about the toxic spell in the laboratory, you should not try to bridge to the company’s affirmative action program.

Be Judicious

If you use this technique in answer to every single question in an interview, you’ll look evasive and you risk having the reporter become hostile.

For more on bridging and other media mastery techniques, read “How to Master the Media.”

Next time: Finding your way out of the thicket. What to do if you get lost in an answer.