From a viewer's perspective awkward interviews make for great television or radio, but they are also a guaranteed way for spokespeople to ensure their key messages are not heard.
The awkwardness becomes the story and everything else is largely ignored, meaning the great opportunity an interview presents is lost.
Viewers of Newsnight will have seen a particularly uncomfortable encounter last week, which can be viewed here at 28 minutes and 38 seconds.
American journalist Keli Goff appeared on the programme to speak to presenter Kirsty Wark and provide an insight on the latest developments in the American election, and in particular on Hilary Clinton.
The problem for Ms Goff was that she was under the impression she was being interviewed about a column she had written on Bernie Sanders.
So the producer who booked her was at fault?
Well, actually blame is fairly irrelevant. With 24 hour news channels and other live outlets on both radio and TV minor mistakes will happen.
The problem for Ms Goff is that while she had a lot to say about the election and some serious points to make she refused to move on from this ‘mistake’.
This is what she says before a question has been asked:
“I’m not sure why you introduced me as an intern, when I interned for her (Clinton) when I was in college 15 years ago.” And adds: “I thought I was booked to discuss my column on Bernie Sanders.”
With the situation explained, the presenter tries to get the interview back on track, but Ms Goff is not budging.
Here’s what she says in response to the first full question: “I have to be honest I was under the impression I was here to discuss a column I wrote for the Daily Beast about race and Bernie Sanders. I was not aware I was here to talk about the reality show nature of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump wanting to have a verbal wrestling match.”
And here we go again in her answer to the third question: “Well, the column I wrote which I was under the impression I was here to discuss….”
And then the column gets a mention in the next answer as well.
Among all of this were some serious points but they became lost in the awkward battle between presenter and interviewee.
Clearly, Ms Goff felt she was in an uncomfortable position but there were better ways to handle the situation.
She was absolutely right to raise her concern at the start but once she had made that point she needed to move on as she was invited to by the presenter. This was live TV and the over-arching subject was clearly something she could comfortably comment on.
Alternatively, she could have ignored the slightly unexpected subject area and used the bridging technique, which we teach on our media training courses, to get to what she wanted to say in her first answer.
The body language could also have been better as Ms Goff’s exaggerated bemusement was another distraction for viewers.
These approaches would have removed the awkwardness which surrounded the interview and would have enabled viewers to concentrate on the insights and messages she wanted to get across.
How would you advise your spokesperson to handle a situation like this one?
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