It’s clearly early days for newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
But now he has settled on his shadow cabinet he may want to turn his attention to his media handling skills and in particular how to deal with the dreaded doorstep interview.
Mr Corbyn’s new job will see him faced by increasing pressures on his time from reporters, which will include demands for impromptu comments and interviews, and is he is going to need to adjust to this very quickly.
Whether he loves them or loathes them – and we suspect it is the later - the answer is definitely not to run away from journalists. After all he will ultimately need them to get his messages across to the electorate.
Sadly this was the approach he chose earlier this week when confronted by reporters as he left Westminster.
Asked a relatively straight forward question about criticism of the number of women in senior roles in his shadow cabinet, his response was to simply ignore the gathered reporters.
Eyes fixed firmly ahead he walked as fast as he could towards a waiting aide, while being pursued by hacks and their questions, before complaining that ‘these people are bothering me’. The farcical scene was only ended when he got into the back of a waiting car.
The result was an excruciating video shown on Sky News and circulated widely on social media, as well as negative press coverage in even the left leaning newspapers. His reaction created the impression he was running for cover and left the audience thinking he did not like the questions and wondering what he has to hide on this issue.
No-one likes a door step interview, particularly when the journalists are taking a negative angle or you are in a crisis media management situation, and they can be truly daunting. But there are much better ways to handle them than pretending the reporters are not there and running away like a frightened animal.
Mr Corbyn may not have wanted to say much at that stage and may have been caught off guard but he should have given them a very short sound bite. This would have brought him and his team some time to develop a fuller response to the criticism.
Address them briefly and let them know you will coming back to them with more information shortly.
Of course, Mr Corbyn is far from the first politician to fall foul of this media approach and there have been some memorable fails in recent years. For example, who could forget UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom bashing Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick over the head with a conference guide?
At least Mr Corbyn’s aide ‘Tommy’ did not feel compelled to try to prevent the journalists asking questions.
However, Mr Corbyn is now a senior figure in British politics now and will need to learn how to manage the media quickly to avoid further embarrassment.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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