We’ve written a few blogs in the past about doorstep interviews and how they can trip up even the most experienced of media spokespeople.
Previous examples have included spokespeople refusing to acknowledge the reporter’s presence; completely ignoring all questions and even pushing cameras away.
The resulting damaging footage can make a crisis media management situation much worse. So it was refreshing this week to see a spokesperson deal with this challenging interview situation pretty well.
It came as Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary was approached by a Sky News journalist at his offices as the story broke that the company will be cancelling 50 flights a day over the next six weeks.
"It is clearly a mess" admits Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary as 50 flights a day will have to be cancelled over the next six weeks pic.twitter.com/HpwwDKpEee
— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 18, 2017
So what did he do well?
The key thing is that he didn’t run away from the journalist. All too often spokespeople in this situation appear to panic and either opt to walk away from the reporter as quickly as possible or decide to go for ‘no comment’ answers.
In any crisis, it’s crucial that the media response does not become part of the problem and both these options look defensive and can inflame the situation - as well as creating some pretty bizarre footage of a spokesperson trying to flee from journalists and their questions.
Apologised
Mr O’Leary started by admitting customers had faced a lot of disruption and he quickly apologised for the problems this has caused.
He followed this up by trying to put the situation in some context before highlighting some of the action his company has taken to resolve the situation.
He said: “We are working very hard at the moment to make sure we finalise the list of flight cancellations, which will affect less than two per cent of our customers, and also look after those customers who are disrupted.”
Exit strategy
The key thing to remember about doorstep interviews is that journalists are only looking for the spokesperson to say a few words in this situation. They just want something to help them move the story forward.
The best approach is to give them a quick sound bite and promise to come back with something fuller.
This is exactly what Mr O’Leary did, telling the reporter at the end of his answer that there will be a ‘full press briefing’ later in the afternoon.
No clean break
Unfortunately, Mr O’Leary did not see it through at this point. Instead of moving away once he had told the reporter about the press conference, he continued to answer further questions while starting to back away.
And once he did finally make his escape, he made the error of turning back to shout a response across the office to one last question.
This slightly messy end aside, overall this was one of the better recent doorstep interviews I have seen.
Instead of falling into the trap of appearing defensive and even aggressive – you may remember Sir Phillip Green squirted water and scuffled with reporters when he faced a doorstep interview last year – Mr O’Leary came across as being polite, courteous and even helpful.
He also appeared to be honest. Instead of relying on corporate lines, he admitted his company had ‘messed up’. That same honesty was even more evident at the subsequent press conference where he described the crisis as ‘not my biggest cock-up’ and said ‘I never give a rats a** about the share price. I couldn’t care less’ – which actually made him sound a little indifferent to the issue.
This crisis looks set to run and Ryanair will need to do more than rely on Mr O’Leary’s larger-than life character, colourful language and brutal honesty.
But there is much crisis media spokespeople can learn from the way he handled the doorstep interview.
And if you want to see the power of those types of interview, it’s worth highlighting that Mr O’Leary’s words during his brief appearance on Sky News were not only beamed into living rooms across the country, but also went on to form the basis of stories in The Sun and the Irish Independent.
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