One media interview has been on everyone’s lips this week.
We’ve blogged about Dianne Abbott’s now infamous performance on LBC; it has been the subject of numerous newspaper and website stories; and has resulted in countless memes on social media.
Apart from her apparent lack of interview preparation, the other problem Ms Abbott faced was that nightmare interviews are no longer restricted to one television or radio station’s audience.
Now any interview which stands out for the wrong reasons is likely to be picked up by other channels and trend on social media – particularly if you are a politician putting your foot in your mouth in the build up to a general election.
Consequently Ms Abbott’s performance became the lead news item on the BBC, which had nothing to do with the interview in question.
Not all nightmare interviews, however, have received the same amount of media coverage, particularly if they took place overseas.
So, with Ms Abbot’s performance still in our mind, we have gone through the archives at Media First towers and dusted off some other terrible media interview performances that you may have missed.
‘I’m eating my cookie’
On our crisis media management courses we often put participants through a doorstep interview exercise. This ambush style interview can be one of the most stressful scenarios for a spokesperson and we talk about the importance of them buying themselves a little thinking time to quickly collate their thoughts before speaking to the media. Saying ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’ to the journalists, for example, can be useful. One phrase we would suggest you avoid, however, is ‘I’m eating my cookie’. This was the strange approach adopted by the then Alberta Health Services president and chief executive Stephen Duckett when he was approached by reporters as he left a meeting. Mr Duckett used the phrases repeatedly in response to questions and even took to waving the cookie to the TV cameras. This particular cookie crumbled, however, a short time later when Mr Duckett lost his job.
‘You’re not saying anything Tony’
Sometimes spokespeople can be scared of saying the wrong thing in a media interview. However, saying nothing at all is not the answer. But that was the bizarre approach taken by Tony Abbott, the then Australian opposition leader, when he was asked in an interview about a flippant comment he had made when discussing the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan. But instead of saying anything, Mr Abbott seemed to completely zone out and just stared at the reporter while nodding his head. The bemused journalist found himself in the unusual position of needing to remind his interviewee that he needed to speak, saying ‘you’re not saying anything Tony’.
The pop quiz
Plenty of politicians have fallen victim to the pop quiz style interview over the years. Former Prime Minister David Cameron, for example didn’t know how much a loaf of bread costs and went on to claim it was because he baked his own. More recently, Zac Goldsmith got a host of London general knowledge questions wrong during an interview he gave as part of his campaign to become the capital’s Mayor. But arguably one of the most memorable pop quiz failures dates back to 1999. George W Bush, who at the time was governor of Texas, was unable to name the prime ministers of four foreign countries. The key media training lesson here is preparation and ensuring you know what format the interview will or could take.
The interview walk out
Walking out of an interview or accusing a reporter of asking ‘inappropriate’ question makes for certainly memorable viewing and gives journalists the element of trouble the look for in a story. The then Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson managed to combine both when he was questioned about his private tax affairs. A visibly uncomfortable Mr Gunnlaugsson first left his seat when he said the journalist was asking him about things he had not ‘acquainted’ himself with, then accused the journalist of asking him about ‘nonsense’ and trying to ‘trick’ him, before claiming the interview was totally inappropriate and leaving the room.
The interview which made a crisis worse
As United Airlines can painfully testify, getting your response wrong during a crisis media management situation can make the situation a lot worse. One of the worst crisis interviews we have seen was provided by Gary Southern of Freedom Industries, a company which was responsible for a chemical leak which contaminated water for 300,000 residents in West Virginia. Mr Southern bizarrely decided to sip water throughout an interview about residents being without water. He complained of having had an ‘extremely long day’ and speculated on what may have caused the leak despite having previously said there was no point ‘hypothesising’.
When the media training took place during the interview
The chances are if you are in the UK you have not heard of Ken Starr. But don’t let that put you off because Mr Starr was involved in a remarkable media interview. And not in a good way.The problem for Mr Starr is that his media training somewhat awkwardly took place mid-interview. The former Baylor University president was being interviewed on a Texas TV station when he produced a response which was not to his PR advisor’s satisfaction. The advisor, Merrie Spaeth, asked the reporter’s news director off camera not to use that part of the interview. And when he refused she took Mr Starr away from the camera for some impromptu media training. But the saga didn’t quite end there. When the filming resumed Mr Starr answered the question again before immediately turning to his advisor for approval as if he was still on a course practising answers. Unsurprisingly it was the interruption rather than the message which took the headlines.
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