1. Tessa, what was your experience in journalism before you joined the world of PR?
I started off my career in journalism as a reporter for Channel Television in Guernsey. I then moved back to London to freelance, as a reporter for GMTV and a producer for ITV News. More recently I worked as a producer for Al Jazeera. I was part of the news team at Al Jazeera English’s headquarters in Qatar when the channel was launched in 2006, then I moved back to the London Bureau to work on European news stories.
2. You’ve worked on both sides of the fence – PR and journalism – it can be an uneasy relationship at times, can’t it?
It can be a tricky relationship, but in my opinion it’s a very important one. Journalists do love to PR-bash. When I told my colleagues I was moving into PR there was a collective gasp. However, as a journalist I often used strong, newsworthy, PR stories and I would regularly call PR’s to help get me access to people for interviews. If a PR team can provide journalists with a relevant and media friendly spokesperson who performs well in interviews, it can make the difference between your story making it onto the news that day or not.
3. In your opinion, what makes a story interesting to a journalist?
Human stories are what journalists are after because that’s what their audiences want to hear about. For example, a report I did at GMTV on knife crime would not have worked with statistics alone, however shocking those figures were. I needed to speak to a family that had been affected by the crime to make people empathise.
If a charity is launching a new campaign, I want the charity’s spokesperson to tell me why I should care by using human examples, not just percentages. Spokespeople need to be armed with anecdotal evidence of why we should sit up and listen to what they are saying and PR teams need to provide them with that information.
4. As a journalist why would you drop a story you’d decided to run earlier on?
It can be really frustrating for PR teams and I’ve been in this situation myself often enough. If something big has happened that day in news terms, there is nothing you can do about it. But if a story has been dropped because a PR can’t come up with the goods, then that represents days – if not weeks – of hard work wasted for everyone involved in the campaign. Quite a few times I haven’t been able to interview a spokesperson about a story because they were unavailable for the entire day. Comms teams need to make sure their diaries are clear. I’ve also had interviewees be rude to me because they didn’t like the questions. In both of those cases the story simply didn’t run.
5. What do you think the best way to stop the journalist taking control of a story and using it for their own agenda?
It’s every PR professional’s dream to get their story on a national news or radio station as an entire report or feature. But that rarely happens. Instead, a single soundbite may be used as part of a report on a wider issue. If a journalist knows what they want their story to be about then it’s very easy for them to manipulate an interview to make it fit their agenda. It’s difficult, but spokespeople need to have certain techniques to avoid this happening. They always need to answer a question – politicians often blatantly ignore the question and say something entirely different. This just angers journalists. Spokespeople can disagree with journalists, but they need to do so in a measured way and have examples of why it’s not correct. From my experience, media trained spokespeople can cleverly answer or acknowledge a journalist’s question, then subtly move on to what their media campaign is about, without you even noticing.
6. Without naming names, are there any interviewees you remember for all the wrong reasons?
Absolutely! When I was at Al Jazeera, a spokesperson from a law firm came to our studios to give an interview. They were there as an expert to explain a complex legal matter in simple terms, so our viewers could understand. I was shocked when they got out a pile of notes and refused to do the interview without reading from them. There was rustling, stuttering and they never once looked up at me. I felt very sorry for them because clearly they weren’t the right person for the job. Needless to say, the interview was axed and another law firm was called to provide an expert. That was their opportunity to show off their expertise on international television and it was wasted.
On the flip side, the spokesperson must make sure they don’t over-reference a brand or their company name. If they have time, journos will clip out that reference. If they don’t have time then they just won’t use the soundbite at all.
7. On that note, have you got any brief tips for PR teams whose spokespeople are about to face a media interview?
Spokespeople must know their story and the angle that their Comms team’s campaign is aiming for. That sounds simple enough, but it’s a huge mistake not to take a media interview seriously and make the very best of it. So preparation is key and time must be put aside for it. But a spokesperson must not be bombarded with too much information. It’s the role of the PR team to filter the information they need and provide them with simple and succinct key messages that are easy to remember under pressure. In my opinion, your spokesperson must be chosen carefully. Your media campaign is in their hands for that brief moment they’re on air.