I recently worked with a group dealing with an unusual problem. It seems that a local TV reporter in town known for his aggressive style of reporting has a bad habit of lying. Let’s call him Jack.
Whenever a sensitive topic comes up, Jack requests an interview with a spokesperson for the group. The spokesman knows that if he doesn’t agree to the interview, Jack will ambush him, in a parking lot, at a grocery store, or outside his house.
So, before agreeing to the interview, the spokesman asks Jack not to broach certain sensitive topics. Jack agrees. Once the ground rules have been established, the spokesperson agrees to conduct the interview. The interview begins.
But the moment the cameras start rolling, Jack flouts the rules and asks the very questions he promised not to. Jack asks them for a way to make the speaker look as bad as possible. The spokesman is caught off guard and strays from the message. He looks bad and damages his group’s reputation.
Let’s back up for a moment. Jack has every right to decline any conditions attached to the questions he may ask during an interview. In addition, if a spokesperson requests certain conditions, Jack has the right to object to that request, whether or not he agrees to them. But if he agrees to those terms up front and breaks them, well, Jack is just a liar.
Now, let’s add one more element to this equation. Jack’s town media is addicted to tabloid-style news. Sensationalism sells, and local reporters have a bad habit of making innocuous stories seem as shocking as possible. Your goal is to attract an audience at all costs.
You may think that a solution is to simply avoid the reporter, but remember: Jack will show up when you don’t expect him, and if you refuse to talk to him, he’ll play the videotape of your hand covering the camera for weeks.
So what should you do in the most egregious cases when a reporter lies? The following three tips may be helpful:
1. Get media training: Okay, it might seem a bit self-serving for a media trainer to advocate for media training. Still, media training, especially one-on-one training, is made for circumstances like these and can help a spokesperson answer tough questions with relative ease.
ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson was right when he joked, “Questions don’t hurt. Only answers do.” Spokespersons should not have to request that certain topics be off limits. Instead, they should prepare in advance for the more challenging questions. Doing so will help them seem almost delighted that a reporter has finally given them a chance to talk about themselves.
2. Write a letter to the station manager: The station manager may not know how much his reporters are breaking the rules to get a story. Here, he can use the reporter’s codes of conduct to his advantage. For example, you can write:
In exchange for agreeing to an interview with Jack, several of our spokespeople have requested that certain questions be kept off limits. Jack has agreed. Despite those agreements, Jack has always gone back on his word, asking those very questions at the moment the camera starts rolling.
The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists says that journalists must: “Clarify the conditions attached to any promises made in exchange for information. Keep promises.”
Additionally, Jack is treating his sources with blatant disrespect, in one case yelling at a high-ranking official and calling her disgusting names. This is a violation of the Poynter Institute’s Guiding Principles for Journalists, which states: “Sources [are] human beings in the service of respect, not simply a means to their journalistic ends”.
We are happy to cooperate with your station’s future inquiries, even if they are unfavorable to our group. But in exchange for continued access, we ask only that you abide by the basic rules of journalistic fairness in the future.
This will help? Maybe, maybe not. But in desperate circumstances, it might be worth a try.
3. Prepare a canned response: In the most desperate of circumstances, you can blacklist a reporter entirely. This heavy artillery piece should only be withdrawn on rare occasions; In other words, if you’re banning more than one reporter per decade, that’s probably too many.
However, in Jack’s case, it might be justified. That doesn’t mean you ignore him when he ambushes you. Instead, I prepared his mouthpieces, all of them, for his ambush. They should stop in front of his camera. They should take your question seriously. And they should output a response like:
“Your question deserves a serious answer, not one handed out in a parking lot. If one of your colleagues would like to schedule an interview with a member of our group, we would be happy to answer your questions. Thank you and we look forward to the opportunity to express our point of view.” about this issue”.
Then, with a little nod or a smile, the ambushed person should walk with a sense of purpose, but without a hint of defensiveness, toward their destination.
One last point: If a news organization is determined to write something unfavorable about you, there is little you can do to stop them. But you can control your response, and a well-planned media strategy can help neutralize a negative story.