Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
– Napoleon Bonaparte
“Nowhere else are the threads of scientific enterprise more tangled with economic, political, personality, and social values than in medicine and the related health sciences.”1 When Professor Warren Burkett wrote these words in his 1986 book News Reporting: Science, Medicine and High Technology to which we have referred previously, he was reflecting on a trend of the 1980s, a trend that has continued into the new century. Medicine and health care are news – in fact, they are big news. As a result, anyone involved in the management of healthcare facilities or services is likely to find that involvement with the media is an inevitable part of getting the job done – a part that cannot be ignored.
Medicine is front-page news. Not a day goes by without some news of a medical drama, health care and the economy, or health care and politics. Medical news does, indeed, have everything that makes for a good news story: human interest, science, personalities, politics, economics, and social values. And with the increasingly blurred lines between information and entertainment – what some commentators refer to these days as “infotainment” – healthcare stories play well, as they say in the media. Although the numbers vary slightly from study to study, and are confounded by coverage of health and medical stories in new media, it is widely accepted that somewhere in the vicinity of 40 per cent of what passes as news is medically related. Add to that number the array of television stories, both fictitious and real, that portray some aspect of health care, and you can safely conclude that many people develop their knowledge and attitudes toward health care largely from mass media – a conclusion that has been supported time and again by research on media consumption habits.
What this means to healthcare managers is that the media are both a conduit through which your organization may need to get its message to a wider public, and also the gatekeepers controlling what does and does not get a wide audience. The relationship that your organization has with the media can have an effect on both your image and the relationships you have with your community, clients and potential clients, government, donors and potential donors, and even your employees and volunteers.
Some healthcare managers, just like most administrative personnel in other industries, believe, mistakenly, that if they simply ignore the media, it will either go away or not affect them. This could not be further from the truth. Regardless of your level within the healthcare hierarchy, there will come a time when either you must face media questions or, at the very least, should use the media to your best advantage. Thus you can take either a reactive or a proactive stance toward your relationship with the media, but I suggest that you consider developing the attitude that the media needs you just as much as you need its goodwill. Furthermore, it can be a very valuable tool for the development of your organization and even of your own career. If you feel confident about your understanding of the media and in your own personal media relations skills, then you are likely to have a considerably decreased fear of dealing with this often powerful ally (or foe).
There is an old saying that you have probably heard before and that every business person worth his or her salt takes very seriously: perception is reality.
What the public (or individuals) believe is true is true for them in all its consequences. Whether or not this perception reflects in any way the actual truth of the situation as you see it, the reaction from the public will be based on their “truth” and not yours. How the public comes to develop their perceptions is often a result of media-generated images. In health care, this is even more likely to be true. A successful health-care executive has learned that the one who can communicate messages best to large groups of people is more likely to have those messages received as they were intended.
Whether you like it or not, the public is learning about health care from newspapers, magazines, radio, television, Web sites, and social media tools. They are receiving images from hard news stories, human-interest dramas, advertising, and reruns of television programs like ER and House (and even afternoon soaps like General Hospital). Whether or not you as a healthcare manager consider these appropriate sources of information upon which to base opinions doesn’t matter – it is the truth. If you and your healthcare organization have cultivated a beneficial relationship with the media, you may find that you have a degree of influence over how the messages are conveyed and interpreted, at least in your immediate geographic area.
Media relations, then, implies the development of long-term relationships between your organization and the media for mutual benefit. This mutuality means that media cooperation can be very important for you, but your cooperation can also be very useful for the media. The two main benefits of good media relations are (1) being able to use the media to get a needed message to the public, and (2) increasing the likelihood of balanced coverage in times of crisis or difficulty.
For example: you are the manager of an emergency department or the administrator of a hospital whose overworked emergency department had to send an incoming ambulance patient to another hospital, and the patient dies. The media will begin covering the story from the perspective of the “poor little guy” – in this case, the patient and his or her family—versus the “big bad guy” – you as a representative of the hospital. A hospital that has cultivated good relationships with the media, and a healthcare manager who is known and trusted by the local media, will have a better chance of a fairer, faster hearing before the story mushrooms out of proportion. But before you can handle an impending crisis like this scenario well, your organization needs to have a well-developed media relations policy.
So, the reporters get a tip about the patient who died after being turned away at your emergency department, and they start calling – or worse, arrive on your doorstep. The first person a reporter looks for is a nurse in the emergency department. She starts talking. Then everyone the reporter encounters on his or her way to the official sources talks as well. By the time the reporter reaches you, the story is already juicy-enough to go with – never mind that few of the informers had any firsthand knowledge or even the facts. And the advent of social media has resulted in even more opportunities for the media to collect stories.
Do you let just anyone in your institution talk to the media? Have you even thought about it? Do you let reporters into your long-term care facility to begin filming residents any time they like? Do you try to avoid reporters or give them the official “no comment” response? Do you ever tell a media person something that is really not true to get them off your back? Do you have social media policies governing employee behaviour?
All of these issues must be considered, and organizational policies developed to address them. Media relations policies for the following five very important areas should be developed and fully communicated to all internal groups.
A healthcare organization needs one media liaison as the first point of contact with the media and to designate others as spokespersons on specific issues as the need arises. Both the individual’s position within the organizational hierarchy as well as that individual’s media presentation skills should be considered in the selection of this person. In a large organization, this official liaison is often a member of the public relations staff whose title reflects his or her position as media relations officer. Anyone working in such a position should have his or her media presentation skills already examined prior to being hired. In smaller organizations, the liaison is often the administrator or another director if that person’s skills are more fully developed. Just because you are the head honcho doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the best person for the job. The problem here is that reporters often don’t want to talk to the media liaison: rather they want to hear from a doctor, nurse, or researcher at the front line of the story. The liaison is then responsible for briefing that other person, who is then designated to speak about a particular subject, and only that subject. As a healthcare manager, however, you should be cultivating and nurturing your own media skills so that you are never in a position where you feel intimidated by the media when you are the spokesperson.
The second area of concern in the development of media relations policy is taking the view that your organization and its representatives will always be cooperative and honest with the media. The issue of honesty cannot be stressed enough. Any organization that has ever lied to the media has found itself with a very difficult task of rebuilding any trust that might have existed previously. Being cooperative means returning calls when you say you will and providing as much information as is reasonable and ethical, given the situation.
The third area of policy derives directly from the issue of openness and honesty, and is of particular concern in healthcare organizations: confidentiality of patient information. Although you need to have a clear confidentiality policy that is lucidly and calmly related to reporters and media outlets, this cannot be the rule that you continually hide behind in an effort to avoid giving out information to the media. Your policy needs to be very clear about what can and cannot be divulged as a matter of organizational policy.
The next aspect of policy is ensuring that internal audiences receive any information that is being communicated to external audiences before that external communication takes place. No employee or volunteer should ever find out about internal activities via mass media – whether traditional (e.g., newspaper or television) or social media (e.g., blogs, online news sources, videos, Twitter). As a matter of policy, you need to find a way to put the internal groups first, and new media can be your ally in this effort. Obviously, in times of crisis, this communication may have to be simultaneous, but the policies and procedures for considering those closest to home first need to be in place.
Finally, you need to have a way to communicate these policies to all internal publics. It isn’t enough to have a policy that says any employee contacted by the media about any organizational matter must first contact the media liaison if the employees don’t know that such a policy exists. One of the best ways to communicate these kinds of policies is to develop a media training workshop that provides background information on the media and how to handle situations as they arise. Not everyone needs actual training on how to give a media interview, but everyone could benefit from a better understanding. (See the end of this chapter for a basic outline of what should be covered in a media training workshop.)
Healthcare managers constantly deal with policies of all kinds. Why shouldn’t a good media policy be one of them? Most often, such an omission can be attributed to a lack of understanding of what the media really do and how they do it.
Isn’t it helpful to know something about what that person on the other end of the phone does? Enhancing your understanding of a reporter’s job and the environment within which he or she works helps you to improve your ability to get the right message out at the right time – and can greatly enhance your comfort level. Let’s begin by looking in general terms at the reporter’s media environment and then more specifically at whom that person is and how that person’s work is accomplished.
In very general terms, it is important to understand that today’s media are largely event-oriented rather than issue-oriented when it comes to health-related content. By definition, issues are broader, deeper, and have more long-term influence over our lives. There are many important health-related issues, from healthcare delivery methods to funding and medical research priorities. The media, however, are far more likely to hone in on a specific event as it relates to the issue, even if that specific event is not representative of the broader concerns. This one piece of information can help you to understand why reporters sometimes ask you questions that you think are relatively unimportant. Our understanding of this aspect of the media has been bolstered by research.
Some years ago (and it is safe to say that little has changed), a media researcher in Britain analysed the content of 1,397 health-related articles in seven national newspapers. The results pointed directly to the media’s orientation toward events rather than issues. The researcher found that 58 per cent of the articles were about an event and gave light details of the surrounding issue. A further 16 per cent of the articles focused on the event as well, but provided enough information about the related issue to give readers some background. Only 26 per cent had a discussion of the issue as their main focus.2 We might conclude that even if the event is reported objectively, the reader, viewer, or listener is likely to receive a skewed image of the real situation. It is especially true in health and healthcare reporting that one event is never representative of the entire surrounding issue.
So, how are these decisions made? Why does one story get printed or aired, while another is buried? Why is one story front-page news and another left out entirely?
Every basic news writing textbook used by student journalists has its own list of news values: the criteria used to determine the newsworthiness of a particular story. Generally, these values include the following:
• Timeliness. “News” is related to “new.” If it happened last week, it is not likely to be news unless the remainder of its news values overcomes this. Indeed, this search for timeliness explains why reporters are on your doorstep before you even know there is a story, and why they always have deadlines to drive them.
• Currency. This is related to timeliness, but allows for more leeway in when an event actually happened. If the situation is related to an ongoing, current consumer and/or media interest in a particular topic, it has a high level of newsworthiness.
• Prominence. The more prominent the individuals involved, the more likely that something is newsworthy. If your next-door neighbour has quadruple by-pass surgery it is not news – unless he happens to be the mayor (or a congressman, or a movie star, etc.).
• Proximity. The closer to home an event occurs, the more newsworthy it is. A small story nationally may be a huge story locally. This is also related to prominence. If the chief executive officer of a small, Midwest hospital is accused of sexual harassment, the story likely has little news value for national outlets, but it may be front-page news in the local media.
• Consequences. If the situation will have significant consequences, it is more newsworthy. If something small that happens in a long-term care facility is likely to have some public policy outcome, it is now newsworthy.
• Human drama. We used to refer to this news value as human interest. More and more, however, there also has to be a dramatic component to the story. Health care is rife with human-interest stories, as well as human dramas.
• Controversy. Many journalism textbooks fail to identify this as a real draw for reporters, but anyone who has ever been on the other side of the microphone knows that controversy is compelling to reporters. Indeed, many of us have had the experience of a reporter seeking out a controversy where no apparent one existed.
Knowing about these news values is important to you in two ways. First, it helps you to understand why some stories that you think are important never make it to the front page. Second, it helps you to understand the direction of the questioning that you will inevitably face when a reporter comes calling. In the end, decisions about what plays in the media on any given day are affected by the gatekeeping role of the media outlets and their employees
Once you understand a bit about the environment that guides the work of the media that you see every day, dealing with the media as a health-care manager requires you to understand something about that person who is asking all the questions.
The face of journalism has changed considerably. Fifty years ago, you would probably have faced a man who had learned his trade by coming up through the ranks. He was probably a bit left-wing in his political leanings, and if we are to believe the kernel of truth in any public stereotype, perhaps he was just a bit ill-kempt.
Journalists today are well educated. Most have studied journalism, among other things, at college or university. The person holding a microphone in your face today is just as likely to be a woman, and she may be representative of even more diverse backgrounds than you would have faced years ago.
It can sometimes be difficult when, as an executive, you are faced with a person who believes that he or she has a mission as a seeker of the truth. You need to ensure that you are not put off by the possibility that this person might just take the moral high ground, and it may be difficult for you to reclaim even footing. But the reality is that while it would seem that the traditional value of objectivity in reporting would make that moral high ground unnecessary, today’s journalistic imperative is closer to taking the side of the so-called little guy against the big guy and seeking the story’s balance from that initial stance.
This potentially slanted view is an interesting dichotomy for reporters today as they deal with the conflict between their desire to represent the truth as they see it, and their need to be loyal to their profit-seeking bosses. Keep in mind that media outlets (apart from public broadcasting) are not nonprofits.
Another way to understand a journalist’s perspective is to determine if a specific journalist takes an “audience advocate” role (little guy versus big guy as noted above) or a “skeptic’s role.” Journalists who take on the role of audience advocate seem to be more open to information generated by the healthcare organization, rather than feeling that this information is biasedAQ1.3
Finally, however, journalists are people who are just doing their jobs. As media trainer and former journalist Ed Shiller once said:
Aside from the stereotype of the reporter as ill-groomed and ill-clothed, one of the most persistent perceptions of your local reporter is that he or she is either out to get a story, no matter whose toes are trampled, or is an unprincipled sensationalist who wants to nail you to the cross … but most reporters are not out to get you. They’re out to get a legitimate story.4
If Marshall McLuhan was right, and the medium is truly the message, then it behooves anyone who plans to have any dealings with mass media to understand how each medium differs and how that medium can alter the message you intended.
Consider this situation. Some years ago, I had a position heading up the communication program for a large multiorgan transplant service. The nature of organ procurement and the fact that organ transplantation was still a media darling at the time meant that I spent many hours giving interviews, appearing on television, and answering the public’s questions on radio call-in shows, among other things.
I received a call one morning from an enterprising young reporter from a local affiliate of a national television station. It seemed that the reporter had been contacted by the leader of a grass-roots community group that had been lobbying for the implementation of an organ donor registry. I was very familiar with this group, having met with them several times to determine how we could work together. This collaborative approach was tempered by my own research on organ donor registries, focusing on where they had been tried in the past. There were no success stories. However, it was not our habit to squash a community effort to enhance organ donation without a genuine attempt to work together.
The reporter arrived in my office with her cameraman, and before we began my on-camera interview, she told me that she had already interviewed the head of the citizen’s group and would be using portions of each interview. We started with a general discussion of the organ donation process, yet again, and the notion of an organ donor registry. I related to her some of the information I had gleaned from my research on the topic. When she asked about our apparent lack of action on the development of the registry as this group of concerned citizens wished, I assured her that we had been meeting regularly, and although these registries had never worked in the past, we were interested in cooperating in any way we could with citizens who supported our work. There was no fight here.
I sat in front of my television at six o’clock that evening to see the results of this interview. My twenty-minute interview resulted in two twenty-second clips that had been craftily edited and juxtaposed with remarks made by the leader of the citizens’ group so that the story seemed to be one of conflict between the “big hospital complex” that was being noncooperative and the “good guy” citizens who just wanted to help. Had the interview been live on the radio, the message would have been quite different. Clearly, understanding the differences between the various types of media can help you to hone your media relations skills and anticipate possible misrepresentation.
Print media, the granddaddy of all the mass media we are familiar with today, is still an important part of how a large proportion of your publics will receive information about you and your organization. These days you can also expect that the story will have a life in cyberspace since most newspapers have an online version. Once the story is posted online, it can take on a life of its own: a life that is forever. Therefore, for better or for worse, the potential reach of your message is even greater than it used to be.
In general terms, the newspaper is looking for what they call “hard news.” They want just the facts because the news story has a short life span (here today, gone tomorrow). This is still generally true, although many newspapers are increasingly including longer, more in-depth pieces to feed the information needs of their readers, and to compete with other sources of information such as magazines and television.
Magazines, although increasingly electronic in nature, but still an important print medium, have a longer story life, their stories involve more research on the part of the writers and researchers, and they can present an analysis. A reporter interviewing you for a news story may ask you about some of the background so that he or she can understand, but much of that background will never make it into the story. Magazines as well as feature articles (as opposed to hard news) in newspapers can take a more creative approach as they fill up considerably more space.
An interview for print media can be either via the telephone or in person, or even via a Skype™ call these days. Although the telephone interview generally takes up less of your time, you are at a disadvantage (as is your interviewer) since you can’t see their body language and facial expressions. Either way, you can make your points (we will get to that).
Television (and online video) is almost endlessly varied these days. News broadcasts tend to use short stories, much like a newspaper in that they want just the facts, but they prefer to have a visual context and the story is subject to aggressive editing, as my case suggested. The visual aspect of television news stories can sometimes present a challenge to health facilities whose primary responsibility is to protect the privacy of their clients or patients. While a TV crew may wish to walk around and creatively take footage of anything they like, this is impossible. Therefore, your policies must not only cover this possibility, but must also be conveyed to the appropriate media personnel.
Aside from news stories on television, there is a vast array of other types of pieces and shows in which you might become involved. Feature broadcasts, such as news magazine shows, can use either short or long stories, but they always include both visuals as well as talk. The continual, uninterrupted “talking head” is really past its day as audiences have become more sophisticated and visually demanding. These kinds of broadcasts are carefully scripted, and the editing is creative, to say the least. An interviewee generally has no idea how this will come out on the other end.
Some kinds of television interviews that you might be asked to do include
• The talk show. These range from your local noon-hour, in-studio discussion with a broadcaster to the confrontational style of talk show that has become popular in recent years. Generally, however, these interviews involve actually sitting down in a studio with an interviewer. As you are being interviewed in this situation, you need to ensure that you talk to the interviewer, not to the camera.
• The headshot. The camera will look directly at you while you talk into it apparently to a host whom the audience cannot see. The interviewer’s questions are usually edited out. This could be taped in your office, on the street outside your hospital, in the hallway, or, less likely, in the studio.
• The news magazine. This will be a more in-depth interview. The crew might even follow you around for a while. They will want to see you in action. Then they will go away and shoot others and edit them together into a television magazine story.
• The scrum. This happens when you are confronted with a number of reporters, usually just as you walk out a door from a meeting of one sort or another. It happens to politicians all the time, but it can also happen to you. If you are negotiating with a union for their new contract, if you have made an on-camera presentation to a government inquiry, or if something controversial is happening inside your institution, you will inevitably run into reporters waiting for a comment.
• The ambush. This comes from an individual reporter (although it could be more) who waits somewhere (like around a corner as you are walking to your car) to surprise you, usually shoving a microphone or digital recorder in your face to get a comment from you.
• The double-ender. This happens when you are actually being interviewed by a broadcaster whose voice you hear through an earpiece and whom you cannot see. To the viewers, it seems that the interviewer is looking directly at you through the magic of a screen beside him or her and that you are looking directly at the interviewer. In fact, you are looking directly into a camera lens. Shift your eyes away for a split second, and the audience will think you are not to be trusted. The greatest difficulty posed here is the need to focus intently on the interviewer’s question. In TV outlets using older equipment, there can even be a delay between the time that the audience hears the question and when you hear it, causing you to look just a bit stunned as you listen intently to what the audience perceives as dead air.
Media opportunities for radio come in almost as many varieties as do those for television. There are similarities in some of the interviews, like scrums and ambushes, except that the audience can’t see you. News broadcasts on the radio are very short. Each story runs thirty to sixty seconds, and they have an extremely short lifespan. It is a fast-paced, information-oriented environment.
Documentary-type radio shows come and go in popularity. Just now there seems to be resurgence in audience interest, frequently on public broadcasters. Radio documentaries vary considerably in length and depth of coverage. They do, however, rely heavily on ambient sound. If they want to do a story about an intensive care unit, for example, they will want to record sounds of ventilators swishing, heart monitors beeping, even the loudspeaker if you still have one. These documentaries are carefully scripted, and you could be interviewed not only by a broadcaster but also by a background, off-air researcher.
There are essentially four types of radio interviews:
1. The studio interview. This is usually for a radio talk show. It will entail a discussion between you and your interviewer. While it might be aired in its entirety, parts of the interview could be taken out for additions to related news stories.
2. The sound bite. This is the brief clip of a memorable few words craftily put together that says it all for the interviewer. It is taken from a larger interview, which could be long or short, on the phone or in the studio, or on the street into a digital recorder.
3. Phone-in shows. These are obviously live broadcasts, where you are the invited expert in a particular topic area, and listeners are asked to call you with their comments and questions. This is especially fertile ground for health-related topics. You need to be careful what you say, especially if you are being asked for health-related advice. You also need to know if the station has a broadcast delay: can they bleep out a person’s comments before they get onto the air? You can do this in a station with a host, or you can do it in your living room on the telephone for an hour, which will sound just like you are sitting beside the host. (I have done call-in shows while on the East coast, for a live broadcast on the West coast.)
4. Telephone interviews. These are very common types of radio interviews, and they can be either live or taped. Live ones are obviously used in their entirety, and you need to be immediately available when the producer calls to get you on the line. Taped phone interviews usually allow you to have a brief chat with the interviewer just before you begin. Sometimes you can even start over if there are any problems at the outset.
So, now that you know something about the backstage aspects of the medium that you will be facing, you are ready to answer that call from a reporter. Or are you?
Even if you have little interest in being interviewed by a member of the media, the day will come when you can no longer avoid it. When the reporter calls …
• Stay calm.
• Write down the caller’s full name, position, and affiliation.
• Find out the specific purpose of the call.
• Find out what he or she already knows about the issue at hand.
• Ask about the story’s deadline.
• If you don’t have all the information you need, arrange a call-back.
• Write out your central message and two or three important points.
• Ensure that you have the right to be talking to the media about the topic. Contact your public relations department or your media liaison if you have one.
How are your skills in dealing with the media? Even the most seasoned public speaker who can absorb audiences in person, or a personable manager who has terrific rapport with his or her employees, often has difficulty in translating those skills to the specialized area of media presentation. Let’s examine general aspects of both your verbal and nonverbal presentation and then look at the specifics of what to do when the media call.
The goal of your verbal presentation is to state your message as clearly as possible so that the audience understands and remembers your message. Here are some guidelines that might help.
• First, know your subject. Never agree to a media interview on a subject that you know little about. Ensure that you are, indeed, the person to whom the media should be speaking on this subject. Unless you are the CEO, you will need to determine that you have permission from your organization to represent it in the media.
• Use plain language, and speak in relatively short sentences, each of which should contain only one point. You may think that this is important only when speaking on television or on radio, but it is equally important when giving an interview to a print journalist. Keep in mind that the writer of the story has far less background in this subject than you do and will need to be brought up to speed. Avoid industry jargon and medical or technical terms. If you need to use one, explain it briefly before going on.
• Overall, make only one to three points, which should have been prepared before the interview. Do not try to make things up as you go along. If you make numerous points, you are essentially leaving it up to the reporter to decide on the priorities and his or her decision may not resemble yours at all. You run the risk of diluting your message.
• Don’t spoil the reporter’s “quotable quote” or “sound bite” by either numbering your points or using the reporter’s name (in fact, try to avoid using the reporter’s name at all). This is obviously more important in broadcast than in print interviews, but it is easier to be consistent.
• Never lose control of the tone of your voice. You may be saying more than you intend, and the reporter will interpret your comments on the basis of both what you say and how you say it.
• Never actually say “no comment.” It is useless to everyone and when reported verbatim implies to the readers, viewers, or listeners that you are trying to hide something. Instead, indicate that you are unable to give an answer at this time because of … and give a reason.
• Never say anything to a reporter “off the record.” There is no such thing. Even though a credible reporter will not actually use your comments, the fact that he or she knows something will slant questions he or she may ask you or others. In fact, one of the most interesting reporters’ tactics is to seek corroboration from someone else for a fact that cannot be attributed to the original source because it was “off the record.” Thus, your comment can end up in the story anyway, even though it may not be attributed to you.
• Don’t ever guess. Never, never, never. If you don’t know the answer, offer to find someone who does. Guessing can lead to misinformation and place you and your organization in a negative position.
• Be as honest as is possible without compromising your organization’s need to protect the privacy of patients, clients, staff, board members, physicians, or anyone else to whom you owe this obligation. Simply stated, never, ever lie to the media.
Whereas all of these suggestions will improve your verbal presentation in an interview situation, your nonverbal presentation has its own issues. Your goal here is to ensure that how the interviewer and/or the audience sees you is congruent with the message that you are trying to convey, as well as the image that you need to project as a representative of your organization. While nonverbal presentation is critical in television interviews because the audience can see you, don’t forget your nonverbal communication even when only the interviewer can see you. Here are some mostly visual-medium-related suggestions for your nonverbal presentation.
First, avoid extremes of dress. This includes colour, pattern, and style. Avoid white as it is too reflective for the camera, red because it shimmers on camera, and stripes because they look hallucinogenic to the viewers. Men who are being interviewed late in the day should shave before appearing on camera. That so-called five-o’clock shadow can make you look sinister. Women should avoid short skirts, and both men and women need to remember to pull the back of their jackets down (even sit on the end of it if you can) to avoid that quarterback look. Wear only conservative jewellery, and avoid anything that will clink.
Be constantly aware of your body language and facial expressions. How you physically present yourself can speak more loudly than any words that come out of your mouth. Even gestures or expressions you are not aware of can say volumes about you, so be aware of them at all times.
Avoid waving your hands around or moving them much at all. It is very distracting for the audience. If you tend to “talk with your hands,” practise being interviewed, and have someone videotape you. You may never have this problem again after you have seen yourself.
Even if you are not a hand talker, it is a terrific idea to have someone video record you anyway. You might be surprised by what you didn’t know about yourself. Do you ever begin your answers with any of these phrases: “I’m glad you asked me that …,” “Well, let me see …,” or any other cliché comments? Are you ever impatient at seemingly dumb questions? Do you ever lose your cool? Do you ever lose eye contact with the interviewer? Are your gestures too noticeable? Do you fiddle? Do you say “uh” a lot? You can learn a lot from the exercise.
The truth is that most of the time it is actually fun to be interviewed. Sometimes, however, especially when you are dealing with a controversial situation, it isn’t enjoyable at all, and, like Mother Theresa, you may feel that “It is harder to face the media than to bathe a leper.”
As you develop a good rapport with your local journalists, and they come to see you as a cooperative and effective interviewee, you will run less risk of facing a truly confrontational reporter. Some reporters, however, have this style about them even on the best days. In addition, a reporter may have a hidden agenda and attempt to get you to say something or corroborate something that isn’t immediately apparent. Dealing with these reporters can be a challenge.
First, remain calm. You are the expert, and the reporter needs your comments to be able to develop the story. Even if the reporter tries to put you on the defensive, it does you no good to take the bait. Never lose your cool. You can always turn a negative question into a positive answer. When the focus is on a crisis in your organization, for example, focus your answer on the positive steps being taken to deal with the situation.
If the interview is on the telephone, it is even easier to deal with a confrontational reporter. Be very polite and indicate to the reporter that you are out of time but that you would be happy to continue the interview later. This will give you time to prepare.
Many managers in healthcare organizations seem to think that all reporters are likely to be confrontational. This isn’t true at all – but from time to time you will face one who is, and you need to be prepared.
Most healthcare managers should be specifically trained in media presentation at some point in their careers. Certainly, it is necessary for high-level executives in health-related organizations to have more than a passing understanding of the media and how they appear in the media. But is media training cost effective?
In most cases, the answer to that question is yes. However, the training you need may be available to you from your own public relations staff. If you are part of an organization that is large enough to have such a staff, they should be able to do this. If you are flush with money, you might even consider hiring a specialist from outside your organization who can do this for you and a group of managers. It just might help you avoid public embarrassment in the future.
If you have less money, you might consider tracking down a faculty member from your local college or university public relations department or corporate communication program. These people often have a great deal of experience and are far less expensive than media training firms. They might not provide as slick a presentation, but it will be just as effective.
What should you expect from a media trainer? You might hire a media trainer for one-on-one counselling, but for a group situation you should have a presentation about the media and how to present yourself, as well as a role-playing experience. Each participant in such a workshop should have an opportunity to be interviewed, videotaped, and critiqued. This is the part that can make media training expensive.
Figure 11.1 suggests a typical outline for a brief but comprehensive media training session. It is also a reasonable summary of what you need to know to be personally ready to deal with the media.
Figure 11.1 Sample Media Training Workshop Guideline
Howard, Carol, and Wilma Matthews. On Deadline: Managing Media Relations. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2006.
Seale, Clive, ed. Health and the Media. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
American Medical Writers’ Association. http://www.amwa.org/default.asp?Mode=DirectoryDisplay&id=1&DirectoryUseAbsoluteOnSearch=True
Association of Healthcare Journalists. http://www.healthjournalism.org/
Foremski, Tom. Why Social Media Releases Are Moving in a Bad Direction – Questionable Ethics in Masquerading as “News” http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/10/why_social_medi.php
“Preparing for the Media Interview.” http://www.fullcirc.com/rlc/mediainterviewprep.htm
Thomas, P. Thirteen Tips for Great Media Interviews. http://www.pantaneto.co.uk/issue28/thomas.htm