Imagine your spokesperson is asked questions in a podcast interview you don’t like.
Or that the interview strays into areas you feel are uncomfortable.
What do you do?
Could you ask for that part of the conversation to be removed or altered?
That was the approach taken by one company, and it offers plenty of media training lessons.
Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit – a company that specialises in financial software including the income tax software TurboTax – appeared on the Decoder podcast.
The podcast is run by The Verge - an American technology news website - and episodes feature interviews with innovators and policymakers in business and technology.
And the conversation went wrong when Mr Goodzari was asked about tax reform in the US and Intuit “lobbying” to stop Americans from filing their taxes for free.
Here, the exchange got a little heated, and the spokesperson and the presenter, Nilay Patel, spoke over each other.
But we have seen and heard more fiery interviews. And, at one point. Mr Goodzari told the presenter, “I love your question’.
Yet after the interview, Rick Heineman, Inuit’s chief communications officer, reportedly messaged the presenter calling the line of questioning “inappropriate”, “egregious” and “disappointing”. He also requested that section of the interview be deleted.
Mr Patel explained why the request was rejected at the start of the podcast. He said: “We never allow anyone to preview or approve our interview questions. And we certainly do not allow anyone to alter or review the work we publish.”
When Mr Heineman’s request was refused, he asked the podcast to “delete that which takes away from the conversation,” which he defined as “raised voices” or the presenter and guest “speaking over each other.”
Mr Patel described that as “one of the weirdest requests I’ve ever gotten.”
So, what was the result of all this? Anti-tax reform lobbying and the request to cut that part of the interview from the podcast have become its focus.
The podcast episode is titled ‘Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode’ – a good way of drawing in more listeners.
And it naturally starts with the part of the interview Intuit wanted removed before going into the rest of the interview.
Additionally, the interview was listed as the top story on The Verge website and has caught the attention of wider media and social media users.
Intuit Begs Journalists to Delete Part of Interview With Its CEO Futurism
Here’s What TurboTax’s Boss Doesn’t Want You to Hear Gizmodo
Intuit asked The Verge to delete part of a podcast Talking Biz News
Intuit CEO to @reckless: "I love your question" about taxes.
— Meghan Morris (@MeghanEMorris) October 22, 2024
Intuit head of comms after the podcast: delete the interview. “inappropriate,” “egregious,” and “disappointing”
nothing to see here! https://t.co/aYfDZLhWmA
Streisand effect. https://t.co/rXSAl8lMZb pic.twitter.com/nKORw7hSlZ
— Rex Salisbury (@rexsalisbury) October 21, 2024
We don’t know whether Mr Heineman intervened under internal pressure or off his own back.
Either way, the result is a pretty disastrous and messy outcome.
And the weird part is that having heard the interview, I don’t think there is anything contentious about what Mr Goodzari was asked or how he replied.
But what can others learn from it?
Firstly, it is a reminder of something we always stress when covering podcasts during our media training courses – make sure you listen to the podcast you are about to appear on.
It is a crucial, yet easily overlooked, part of podcast appearance preparation. It helps spokespeople become familiar with its format and style. And makes them more aware of the questions they may face and how long they will need to talk. All valuable insight.
As the host said about this interview: “We have exchanges like this all the time”. So, Intuit would surely have anticipated there would be difficult questions if its spokespeople and comms team had listened to previous episodes.
Let’s explore difficult questions in a little more detail.
Podcast interviews feel more relaxed and informal.
And you are less likely to be asked hard-hitting negative questions than in a radio, TV or print interview.
But a professional host will ask questions about timely, political and potentially negative subjects – like tax.
Podcast guests and comms teams must think carefully about the tricky questions they could face and plan how to respond.
Whatever you say, you need to ensure you don’t say something you subsequently regret and want removed.
Such requests are high-risk and unlikely to end well. It is not dissimilar from walking out of an interview or a PR adviser stopping an interview when they don’t like how it is going. It only succeeds in drawing more attention to the part you are unhappy about.
The other part of this story is that it again highlights the growing importance of podcasts in the evolving media landscape.
As we highlighted earlier this month in our media training blogs, it is noticeable how Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have targeted podcast appearances during the US election campaign.
Closer to home, more than 60 per cent of British people now listen to podcasts every month,
And according to Ofcom’s annual News Consumption report, 71 per cent of UK adults get their news online. The ‘online’ category includes podcasts, social media, messaging apps and other websites/apps accessed through a device – and it is the biggest news source.
So, it is little wonder that companies like Inuit see them as an opportunity – even if this one has turned into a self-inflicted PR disaster.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 35 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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