In a fit of pique over criticisms made on this site of his interviewing style, Sean Plunket has made a rather unpleasant and, more importantly, uninformed, inaccurate and not entirely truthful attack on the media training which Judy and I have been providing to people in New Zealand public life for more than two decades. In a column titled “Frivolous spending, overzealous fines” in yesterdays Dominion Post, he presents himself as a civic-minded Wellingtonian concerned about unreasonable parking fines and the irresponsible spending of ratepayers’ money by Mayor Celia Wade-Brown on a trip to Auckland for media training by Callingham and Edwards.

Mr Plunket would have preferred the Mayor not to have “burned precious fossil fuel flying to another city for the training when any number of media trainers here could have done the job as well if not better.” While his concern for the environment is admirable, he may well have been thinking about himself as one of that number, since media training has been, and may well still be, a decent little earner for him. He has been, and may well still be, one of our competitors.   Read the rest of this entry »

The debate over Mark Hotchin’s interview with Mark Sainsbury on Close Up  has produced the usual shibboleths about Public Relations and Media Training. The practitioners of these dark arts are seen  either as miracle workers who can make sinners look like saints - referred to in the advertising world as ‘polishing a turd’ -  or as shysters making a killing from teaching people how to successfully lie in interviews and thus pull the wool over the eyes of the general public.  If either of these outcomes were possible, Judy and I would not be blogging about the Hotchins, we’d be with them in Hawaii, only in a much nicer spot in a much nicer house.

The “miracle-worker” version is rooted in the idea that readers, listeners and viewers are idiots who can be easily taken in by the practised sleight of hand of the PR/media trained interviewee.  But it simply isn’t so. And especially not on television.

This is what the great doyen of British interviewers, Sir Robin Day, had to say about the televised political interview:

“When a TV interviewer questions a politician, this is one of the rare occasions, perhaps the only occasion outside Parliament, when a politician’s performance cannot be completely manipulated or packaged or artificially hyped. Some TV answers can, of course, be prepared by scriptwriters and committed to memory, but not all. The answers cannot be on autocue as for an address to camera.

 “The image-maker can advise on how to sit, or what hairstyle to have, or on voice quality. But once the interview has started, the politician is on his or her own… Provided there is time for probing  cross-examination, the politician cannot be wholly shielded against the unexpected. The politician’s own brain is seen to operate. His or her real personality tends to burst out. Truth is liable to raise its lovely head.

 “In a newspaper interview, the politician may flannel or fudge, but in a TV interview the flannelling and fudging can be seen and judged by the viewing public, just as the jury in a court can form their opinion of the candour and the credibility of a witness.”

Our advice to clients has not changed in a quarter of a century. It is: Be straightforward; Tell the truth; Admit your mistakes. Why? Because that’s the only thing that works. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I see that John Banks has taken his media trainers’ advice and begun to appear wearing an open necked shirt. According to a recent story in the Sunday Star Times, the candidate for the ‘Super Mayoralty’ was also counselled to be ‘more chatty’ when he talks and to ‘speak up’ about  his difficult childhood.

Political makeovers are tricky at the best of times. To be effective they need to be both gradual and subtle, their effect on the electorate’s consciousness almost subliminal. Obvious makeovers  make the public suspicious and resentful. They suspect that someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes and are offended by the idea that they can be swayed by mere cosmetic change.  Read the rest of this entry »