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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.  

In the column he accuses Judy and me of having “a rather last-century view of the media interview as a battle of egos rather than a forum for the extraction and dissemination of information important to the public.”

The wonderful irony of this assessment is that it is an almost word for word description of the attitude to the interviewer’s job that I have accused him and other interviewers of his stripe of having.  In several posts on this site I have quoted the doyen of British interviewers, Sir Robin Day’s 10-point Code for Television Interviewers. Points 9 and 10 could have been written specifically about and for Sean Plunket:

“He should press his questions firmly and persistently, but not tediously, offensively, or merely in order to sound tough.

“He should remember that a television interviewer is not employed as a debater, prosecutor, inquisitor, psychiatrist or third-degree expert, but as a journalist seeking information on behalf of the public.”

Plunket, who  has of course never attended one of our media training sessions, goes on to say:

“Their approach seems to be that it doesn’t matter if you answer the questions as long as you win the interview.”

That is of course an outright lie. In all of our teaching and writing on handling media interviews our first principle has always been: Be straightforward, tell the truth, admit your mistakes. Less politely put: Fuck up? Front up! Fess up!

But perhaps more surprising than what he has to say about  us, is what he has to say about the Wellington mayor:

“After my last radio interview with Ms Wade-Brown on Newstalk ZB, I remarked to my producer that I thought she had been media-trained, probably by Edwards… She just seemed more, well, I hate to say it Brian, fake.”

Oh come on, Sean, you just loved saying it. But this does set an interesting precedent for radio and television interviewers: after the interview publicly criticise the guest’s performance. So perhaps we can look forward to, “Well, that was Minister X. That guy couldn’t lie straight in bed!” Or, “Thanks Opposition spokesman Y. Boy, has he had a charisma bypass!”

But Plunket’s main gripe seems to be the waste of money sending someone to Auckland for one of our highly priced media-training sessions. Well, just for the record, a half-day course for one person costs $2,900 + GST, which includes the hire of a broadcast quality, fully crewed television studio complex.

It does sound a lot, but here are a couple of questions which I’d like Sean to answer:

Have you ever charged clients $10,000 for a one day media-training session?

Were you at that time employed as a current-affairs interviewer on National Radio’s Morning Report?

Did you interview those clients on Morning Report on several occasions both before and after their media training session with you?

Do you see any conflict of interest or perceived conflict of interest in media-training people whom you are also paid to interview on radio or television?

How many clients of yours would have fallen into this category?

I actually already know the answer to most of these questions, Sean, since one of those clients came to us to be re-trained. But Dominion Post readers, your current radio and television audiences, the people who follow your blog and, well, Judy and I might like the answers from the horse’s mouth.

Oh, and just one more thing: immediately after your  interview with Celia Wade-Brown on June 28 (one week after her training with us), in which you now say she sounded “fake”, did you not tell your listeners:

“I actually thought the mayor sounded somewhat more positive and onto it than she has since taking office. I don’t know if something’s changed in her life, but I thought she was incredibly competent this morning, if I could hand out that wee bouquet.”

Did you, Sean?

Hard Talk's Stephen Sackur

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.

The question then arises: If all you need to do is tell the truth, why do people need media training? This is the answer Judy and I give in the Foreword to our book  How to Survive and Win with the Media:

The best piece of advice you could give someone about to be interviewed by the press, radio or television, would probably be: relax and be yourself.

Unfortunately, the advice would be wasted on 99% of those to whom it was given. Very few people can relax or be themselves when faced with a reporter’s notebook, a microphone or TV camera. If it were otherwise, there would be no need for media training courses or books like this. They are necessary because the interview is an unnatural and specialised form of communication, quite different from normal conversation, however formal. It has its own traditions, its own conceits, its own rules of conduct and sometimes of war.

One of the critical differences between the interview and a normal conversation is the brevity of the exchange. The interviewee is required to state his or her position in a matter of minutes – or seconds in the case of television – regardless of the complexity of the issue. Very few people have the verbal skill, the confidence or the presence of mind to present a reasoned and persuasive argument in one or two minutes, let alone in an alien environment, confronted by a hostile professional interviewer and in the unseen presence of perhaps hundreds of thousands of other people.

Not surprisingly, most people find being interviewed an extremely nerve-wracking experience. Their nervousness in turn produces both physical and psychological akinesis, like the possum caught in the headlights of the oncoming car. They freeze, become wooden, defensive, monosyllabic, monotonous, lost for words, incapable of coherent thought. So much for relaxing and being yourself!

Most interviews, then,  are conducted on a very uneven playing field. The purpose of this book is to level the ground somewhat, by providing you, the reader, with an insight into the rules of the game and some invaluable coaching tips, designed to give you a more than even chance of surviving and hopefully winning the game.

Over the last 25 years we have been media advisors to several thousand prominent New Zealanders, including the chief executives of many of  our largest companies, the country’s most senior public servants and a couple of Prime Ministers. In every case our advice to the client has been the same: if you can’t tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you must not agree to be interviewed. That is the advice which we give to you, the reader of this book. This is not a manual for those who wish to dissemble or deceive; it contains no recipes for evasion, no clever tricks for pulling the wool over the interviewer’s eyes, no intellectual sleight of hand. The truth is the best weapon in the interviewee’s armoury.

And there you have it. And you don’t need a Kim Hill, Mike Hosking or even a Stephen Sackur to get at the truth for you. The television close-up will provide all the information you need. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears and  think.

Photo: kiwiblog.co.nz

Photo: NZ Herald/Richard Robinson

 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. 

When David Lange had his stomach stapled, there was adverse comment that this was part of a makeover which also included changing his glasses. The reality was that the stomach stapling was essential to his continued health and that he had accidentally stood on his old glasses and broken them.

From the time she became Leader of the Opposition, Helen Clark was constantly being told to do something about her hair, her voice and her teeth, but wisely resisted the advice. Her first words to Judy and me when we met in 1996 were, ‘I do not intend to be deconstructed.’ Her hair, voice and teeth subsequently proved no impediment to political success. Voters saw past these superficial matters to the leadership qualities within.

It was in any event too late. The time to change your image is before you have mounted the national stage and become familiar to the public, not after. A gradual and subtle makeover is virtually impossible when you are already well known.

Helen Clark was to experience this herself when Monty Adams’ flattering portrait of the PM was used in the 2005 election campaign and attracted widespread derision. People were happy with the way she looked before and saw the photograph as an attempt at deception. ‘Helen doesn’t look like that.’

John Banks’ problem now is that if he stops wearing a tie, starts being more chatty and begins introducing the topic of his difficult childhood into speeches and interviews, these departures from  his previous appearance and demeanour, far from being gradual, subtle or subliminal, will stand out like a sore thumb. He will be seen as trying to sell the Auckland voters a bill of goods.

This is not to say that the advice he was given was necessarily bad advice; nor is he to blame for the fact that that advice was all over a Sunday newspaper days after it had been given. But someone with Banks’ political experience really ought to have known that absolute discretion is the sine qua non of public relations and sought assurance that everyone involved in the training session, from trainer to tea lady, had signed a watertight confidentiality agreement.

Still, it will be fun  to speculate on which occasions John will decide to wear or not wear a tie, to score each of his public appearances for their ‘chattiness’ quotient and to keep count of the number of times he manages to work his difficult childhood into the Super City debate.  Local body politics have never been so interesting.