Is media training getting it right?
Posted by Barbara Gibson, ABC on June 26, 2006
My very first experience with media training was in the first year of my professional career. It was a group training session, with a half-dozen other people, and it started (as many do) with one of the participants being singled out for a mock interview, in front of the group, with a videocamera rolling. I was enormously grateful that I wasn’t the one chosen, especially as the interview unfolded and the poor guy under the spotlight clearly had been set up to fail. I remember his face getting redder and redder, the answers getting longer and ramblier (I know, it’s not a word). Of course, by the end of the day, we all did our time in front of the camera, but at least the rest of us had a bit of preparation first.
On the IABC Media Relations Commons, Eric Bergman discusses “The fallacy of the ambush interview.” He raises some good points, and I think it’s high time for the discussion. But I’d go even further, and say that even the non-ambush mock interviews that are a staple of most media training are of questionable value. It seems to be used for one of two purposes: to add a glamour-factor to the training, or as Eric puts it, to intimidate.
Over the years, I’ve gone through about a dozen media trainings, all fairly similar in content, all using the mock-interview technique. Later, in various corporate and PR agency jobs, I became the trainer. So I’ve seen this from both points of view. The problem with the mock interview is that it’s generally more mock than interview. Both parties are pretending, both unprepared, and the interview rarely lasts more than a couple of minutes. It also tends to put the focus on a television-style interview, on soundbites and survival. But the vast majority of corporate media spokespeople will never do a television interview. Training them for the television soundbite does nothing to prepare them for the job ahead of them, which will likely be print media-focused, where interviews last 30 minutes or more, and the journalist is likely more knowledgeable on the topic than you.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think videotaping can play a productive role in evaluation and training. And certainly if the trainee will work in broadcast, they should receive broadcast-focused training. But from what I’ve seen, the media training industry is over-relying on the glamour factor of television, and neglecting the full range of skills needed to be an effective spokesperson.
