Print & Broadcast Media Tips: The Ten B’s
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Every Monday we will focus on Print & Broadcast Media Tips – beginning this week with The Ten B’s to bear in mind when dealing with the media.
- Be Realistic: the press is not your PR machinery! It faces time and space limitations. Before you peddle news to journalists, try to think like a journalist. Does the story have a human interest angle? Is it genuinely relevant to the newspaper’s readers? Or is it parochial and irrelevant?
- Be Prepared: make sure you know who the editors and reporters are! You must also only ever give an interview when you are ready – if you need time, ask for the reporter’s deadline, tell him you need to collect information, offer to get back to him at a certain and then make sure you do so. If you upset a journalist, be prepared for the consequences…
- Be Accessible: media relations is about human relations. You should never simply say “no comment” as this suggests you are hiding something. Explain why you cannot comment, discuss general policy instead of specifics and/or switch the topic to something you can say.
- Be Honest: never lie to a journalist. Ever. If you have bad news, admit it and move on to corrective action. Lying will come back to haunt you. Just as Bill “I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman” Clinton.
- Be Quotable: if you are dull journalists will not come back to talk to you again. Make your quotes memorable. Put your issues into plain English in a way that connects with voters. Rather than giving an unmemorable quote because you are in a hurry, delay putting out your message so that it is properly crafted.
The next five of The Ten B’s will be revealed next Monday. Make sure you bookmark this website in the meantime!
[...] on from last week’s post identifying the first five of the Ten B’s, here are the remaining [...]