Seventeen years separate two of the more unusual public statements in the history of crisis comms. One was behind a late night desk. The other in front of a wall of NFL sponsor logos. Both men facing questions about their personal conduct. Both attempting to close the matter with a prepared statement. One of them succeeded.

Whether someone in Vrabel's camp pulled up the David Letterman clip from 2009 and said ‘this is our play’ is impossible to know. But the similarities are close enough that coincidence feels like a stretch.

What David Letterman Actually Did

On October 1, 2009, David Letterman walked onto the Late Show stage and told his audience he had been the target of an extortion attempt.

A CBS News producer named Robert Halderman had discovered evidence of Letterman's relationships with female staffers and demanded $2 million to stay quiet. Letterman went to the Manhattan District Attorney's office, cooperated with investigators, handed Halderman a phony $2 million cheque and watched him get arrested that same morning.

That evening Letterman told his audience the whole story himself. The same day as the arrest. Before anyone else could frame it.

His full monologue ran nearly ten minutes that night. For the first seven or eight, he told a gripping story about a mysterious package in the back of his car at six in the morning, a threatening letter, a sting operation and an arrest. By the time he got to the admission, his audience had been on a journey with him. He had framed himself as the target of a crime before he framed himself as someone who had done something wrong. That sequencing was not accidental.

When the confession came, it landed on a silent room. "I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. My response to that is: yes, I have." He was careful to say the women involved had their own decisions to make about coming forward.

Then the audience laughed. The kind of laugh that happens when a room doesn't quite know what to do with information it just received. Letterman read it immediately. "I know what you're saying. I'll be darned, Dave's had sex. That's what the grand jury said also." The room found its footing. He brought the audience back into their normal relationship with him and said that’s the last he would publicly say about the matter. He closed the door.

The next week, Letterman’s ratings went up 19%. CBS issued one sentence: his comments speak for themselves.

What Vrabel Did Instead

For context, New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel spent several weeks at the centre of persistent and increasingly documented speculation about a personal relationship with ESPN NFL reporter Dianna Russini. Photos emerged in multiple locations. Eyewitness accounts surfaced. The story wasn't going away. On April 21, 2026, Vrabel stepped in front of cameras to address it.

There are two distinct issues with how he handled the situation. The first happened before he said a word.

For weeks, there was nothing from him. And into that silence poured everything else. Photos. Eyewitness accounts. New locations. Each new development gave social media new content and gave media outlets a fresh reason to run the story again. The vacuum became the story's oxygen supply.

The history of high-profile personal scandals is full of cautionary tales about what silence produces. Tiger Woods said nothing for 84 days after his story broke in November 2009. By the time he did his tearful press conference, the story had consumed his sponsorships, his marriage and battered his public image. Instead of protecting him, silence gave the story room to grow into something far larger than the original incident. A vacuum will always be filled by someone else.

Vrabel wasn’t silent for 84 days. But he kept his head down long enough for competing narratives to take hold, for speculation to morph into assumption and for the photos to keep popping up. By the time he stepped in front of cameras, he wasn’t breaking the story. He was responding to a version of it that had already been written by other people.

That’s the most fundamental difference between what he did and what Letterman did. Letterman's audience heard the story for the first time from him. He controlled every element of the first impression (the framing, the sequence, the tone and the closing). There was no competing version to push back against. Just him and his audience and a story nobody else had heard yet.

Vrabel had none of that. His statement was not an opening move. It was a response to a game that was well underway.

Which brings us to the second problem…what he actually said.

The first word of his statement was “Again…”. The choice of that word (in my opinion) was to imply we were somewhere in the middle of an ongoing conversation when, in reality, there had been no previous public conversation at all. From there, it wandered. He spoke about accountability without specifying what he was being accountable for. He referenced ‘previous actions’ without describing them. He mentioned a distraction ‘to the people I care most about’ without identifying what the distraction was. He used the phrase ‘the best version of me’ twice. Accountability language assembled in roughly the right order but attached to nothing of substance.

Then, there was the body language. Shifting weight. Limited eye contact. A man who clearly didn’t want to be standing there.

He then attempted, as Letterman had done, to close the door. Out of respect for his family, he stated there would be no further comments.

But the door doesn’t close just because you say it does. Letterman could make that declaration credibly because he had confessed the mess. There were no unanswered questions on the other side. Vrabel made the same declaration while the central question remained entirely untouched.

Here’s the core of the problem. Once you decide to break your silence, you have to go all the way. A half-measure is worse than either extreme. Say everything, address the elephant directly and close the door properly or say nothing at all and let the story find its own end. What Vrabel did was neither. He broke his silence without saying anything meaningful, which gave the story a new headline without giving it a conclusion. Every outlet that had been covering it had a legitimate reason to run it again with a fresh angle attached.

Why It Might Not Matter

And here is where 2026 is a very different world from 2009. Investigative newsrooms have been hollowed out. The volume of content competing for attention at any given moment is staggering. Scandals that would have defined careers 10 years ago now struggle to survive a single news cycle. In that environment, running out the clock sometimes works as well as doing it right.

Which raises an obvious question: if that's true, why did this particular story drag on for weeks?

Because it kept getting new fuel. It wasn't one story that refused to die. It was a series of new disclosures, each one resetting the clock. New photos. New locations. New accounts. Every fresh development gave outlets a reason to run it again. Without that ongoing supply of new material the story would have faded on its own, as most do now.

Which is precisely why Vrabel's statement was a miscalculation. It was, itself, another log on the fire.

The most effective play would have been the Letterman approach. Address the story head-on in the first 24 hours. Address the elephant in the room, close the door and give the story a proper ending. That option closed when more photos started appearing.

The second most effective play would have been to say nothing and let the story exhaust its own fuel supply. That’s what podcaster and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman did when a lengthy magazine profile detailing his personal life generated significant attention. He said nothing publicly, kept producing his content and the story lost oxygen within days.

What Vrabel did was a bit of both. He broke his silence without saying anything meaningful, which gave the story a new headline without giving it a conclusion. In crisis communications, that’s essentially a half-measure that satisfies nobody and keeps the story alive without resolving it.

Vrabel called the Letterman play but couldn't execute it. The better options were always at either end of the spectrum. He picked the middle. And the middle, in situations like this, is where stories go to keep living.

As for what it says about the state of media accountability in 2026, that’s a conversation for another day.

I was in a media training session last week with a group of smart, thoughtful and empathetic people. Each was a leader who could potentially be called upon to speak publicly if something went wrong. And in the industry they work in, things occasionally go wrong in ways that affect real people and make big headlines.

We were working through the messaging component of the workshop. This is the part where each person, working with a unique crisis scenario, tries to put into words what their organization would say via the media. It's one of the most revealing parts of the day.

Their first drafts came back the way they always do. Polished, careful and corporate. Lots of four and five syllable words. And woven throughout, the phrases I've been hearing in media training sessions rooms for years:

• "The safety of our customers is our top priority."

• "We take these matters very seriously."

• "Our thoughts are with those who have been affected."

Just to be clear...every person in the room meant every word they wrote. The intentions were genuine. The problem is that those phrases no longer land the way they used to.

The "Thoughts and Prayers" problem

For a long time, the phrase 'thoughts and prayers' was a sincere, widely accepted way to express sympathy following a tragedy. When something terrible happened (a natural disaster, a sudden loss, an act of violence), the instinct to offer thoughts and prayers was a genuine, human response.

Then, something shifted. This isn't a post about firearms or politics. But it's difficult to talk about this trend without acknowledging the context. In the years following repeated mass shootings, "thoughts and prayers" became the reflexive public response of those who were unwilling or unable to say anything more substantive. It was offered so consistently, in such similar circumstances, that over time, it stopped meaning what it once did.

For many, "thoughts and prayers" has come to mean something close to the opposite of what the people saying it intended. It's become a signal of an organization going through the motions of caring. That's what happens to language when it gets used as a placeholder for genuine thought.

Back to the training room

I pushed back on the group and asked them to reconsider some of their language. I didn't rewrite their messages. The crafting of your own messages is one of the most important parts of the media relations process and it's best when people discover it for themselves.

Instead, I asked each of them, "How would you say this to someone over coffee? If you were sitting across a table from someone you trusted and you needed to explain what happened and what your organization was doing about it, what words would actually come out of your mouth?"

The answers all changed. And each response was significantly better than what they had written down. More human. Less like a press release.

The corporate phrases so many reach for in a crisis ("the safety of our customers is our top priority") have been used so often, by so many different organizations, that they've been drained of the sincerity that once made them useful.

Give yourself permission to sound human

This doesn't mean any spokesperson should abandon prep or speak carelessly. The goal is to prepare so thoroughly that when you speak, it sounds like you mean it, because you do. It's about choosing words that reflect how your organization thinks and feels, rather than what an organization is supposed to say.

The people you need to reach in a crisis aren't looking for polish. They're looking for honesty. And honesty has a sound that doesn't come from a template.

By now, most people in the business world have seen or heard about GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen's CNBC appearance this week, in which he attempted to defend his company's $56 billion bid to acquire eBay. The interview didn’t go well. There were long, uncomfortable silences. There were dismissive responses to legitimate questions. When pressed repeatedly about a perceived gap in financing for the deal, Cohen told one of the anchors he didn't understand her question and directed viewers to the company website. The stock dropped 10%. It became a meme by midday.

To be fair, two alternative interpretations are worth acknowledging. Some of Cohen's supporters in the GameStop community saw the interview as an act of defiance. A refusal to play by Wall Street's rules. And a small number of observers have floated the theory that the awkwardness was intentional, a kind of strategic ambiguity designed to keep the market guessing. I don't subscribe to either of those interpretations, but they’re worth mentioning.

What I do think is worth discussing is what this interview illustrates for anyone who has to defend a high-stakes position in front of a camera.

A media interview of this magnitude isn’t a scripted interaction. In the aftermath, some of Cohen's supporters posted on X that CNBC had blindsided him by asking different questions than the ones they said they would ask him. Maybe that's true. But a CEO defending a $56 billion acquisition bid on national TV should be prepared to answer any question a journalist might reasonably ask. And the question of how you intend to pay for the deal wasn't a tough question. It was the most obvious question in the room.

I doubt Cohen has lost any sleep over this interview. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was a lost opportunity. A CEO is making a moonshot bid for a company four times the size of his own and he’s going on a prominent business program to explain it. That’s a huge opportunity. Getting ahead of the financing question and using the interview to lay out a compelling vision for the deal would have led to a more successful media relations outcome.

For any executive preparing for a high-profile media appearance, the lesson isn't that the questions will be friendly or that the format will be comfortable. The lesson is that the most important questions are often the most predictable ones. And smart preparation is what allows you to meet them with mic-drop answers rather than silence.

The 6 a.m. Email

Oracle laid off up to 30,000 people on April 1st of this year. Employees across the US, India, Canada and Latin America woke up to find an email had arrived early that morning. Their computer access was already gone before they'd read it.

That's how you find out you no longer have a job after years (in some cases decades) of service to one of the world's most profitable technology companies.

This Is Becoming the Norm

Oracle isn't an outlier. Block laid off 40 percent of its workforce in February (about 4,000 people) citing AI as the reason. Jack Dorsey announced it publicly on X before many employees had been personally notified. Snap cut 16 percent of its staff. Amazon let go of up to 30,000 corporate employees over recent months. The method in most cases: an email, a severed login and silence.

These are not small companies with limited HR resources. These are some of the most profitable organizations in human history. The choice to communicate this way wasn't a resource constraint. It was a decision.

The Calculation

I co-host a podcast called Reputation Town with John Perenack. When we discussed this recently, John made a point that's stuck with me. These companies have probably done the math. The bad press lasts 13 hours. The news cycle moves on. Nobody's going to cancel their Amazon Prime account because of how the layoffs were handled.

They might even be right.

But the math has a variable they're not counting.

Who's Watching

When you lay someone off at 6 a.m. via email, you're not just communicating with the person you're letting go. You're communicating with every person who's still there.

You're showing them exactly what kind of organization they work for. You're telling them what they can expect if their number ever comes up. You're answering, in the clearest possible terms, the question every employee is always quietly asking: does this place actually value me?

The best people (the ones with options, the ones competitors are already calling) notice this. And they act accordingly. Sometimes immediately. More often six months later, when a better offer arrives and they find it very easy to say yes.

That's the real cost. Not the press coverage. Not the LinkedIn posts from affected employees. The quiet exit of people who weren't on the list but decided they didn't want to be around for the next one.

Layoffs Are a Communications Event

I've spent three decades preparing executives and spokespeople to communicate clearly, credibly and with integrity under pressure. Layoffs are one of the most consequential communications events an organization will ever face. Not because of the press release or the media coverage, but because of the signal they send to the people inside.

How you treat the people you let go is a direct statement of your values. And your values are never more visible than when things are hard.

A 6 a.m. email is efficient. It might even be legally defensible. But it sure ain’t a communications strategy. Unfortunately, it's what happens when you stop thinking about communication at all.

The organizations that handle these moments well understand something simple: how you end a relationship matters as much as how you built it. And the people who watched you end it will remember exactly what they saw.

I co-host a podcast called Reputation Town with my friend and fellow communications pro John Perenack. In our most recent episode, we spent a good chunk of time on two stories that, taken together, paint a troubling picture of where Canadian journalism is headed.

The Tina Yazdani Story

On April 13th, CityNews Queens Park reporter Tina Yazdani sent out a tweet. It said she was no longer employed by CityNews, that she stood by her reporting and that she would have more to say later. The tweet got a million views.

Yazdani had been covering Ontario politics for CityNews since 2018. By most accounts, she was tough but fair, which if you know anything about journalism, is about the highest compliment you can pay a reporter. She was terminated without explanation.

What made this story bigger than a routine media industry layoff was what happened alongside her firing. At least two of her stories about the Ford government quietly disappeared from the CityNews website with no explanation. One of them included an on-camera exchange with Education Minister Paul Calandra that, by all accounts, was pointed but legit journalism. The next day, she covered the provincial budget. That was her last on-air appearance.

The dots aren’t hard to connect, even if we can’t say with certainty what happened. But it’s worth noting that the Ford government reportedly spends about $100 million a year on advertising with media outlets. Whether that kind of financial relationship creates pressure, conscious or otherwise, on editorial decisions is a question worth asking. And the fact that two stories critical of that same government vanished from the CityNews website the same week their Queens Park reporter was fired is curious to say the least.

What I will say is this: a journalist asking uncomfortable questions of a government spokesperson isn’t a problem. It’s actually the job. And the spokesperson's job, in turn, is to stay composed, stay on message and not take the bait. That’s what media training is for. The fact that it apparently escalated to the point where someone, somewhere, allegedly made a phone call, tells you something went wrong long before any of this became public.

The Bigger Picture

On the same episode of the pod, we played opening remarks from Sheila Gunn-Reid, president of the Independent Press Gallery of Canada, delivered to a Heritage Committee meeting on April 16th. Whatever you think of Rebel News, her remarks were measured, specific and damning. She described a two-tier media system in Canada where government-subsidized outlets get preferred access and independent journalists get turned away, blocked from press conferences, denied accreditation and, in some cases, have police called on them simply for asking questions in public spaces.

Her best line, and I think it deserves to be repeated: “Government money in journalism is political contamination.”

She’s not wrong. When a news organization depends on government subsidies to survive, the incentive to hold that government to account is quietly, gradually compromised. It doesn’t have to be a phone call or a directive. It just…happens. And year by year, the temperature in the pot goes up just enough that nobody notices until the frog is cooked.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Canada has fallen from eighth place in global press freedom in 2015 to 21st in 2025. Not great.

What This Means for Anyone Who Deals with the Media

I have been training executives and spokespeople for three decades. I’ve watched the Canadian media landscape change dramatically over that time. There are fewer reporters covering more ground with less resources and, in some cases, less editorial independence than there used to be. That changes the dynamic of the media interview in ways that are not always obvious.

It means the reporters who are left are often more overworked, under more pressure and sometimes more aggressive because they have to be. It means the outlets doing the most tenacious accountability journalism are increasingly independent, underfunded and operating outside the traditional structures. And it means that the lines between journalism, advocacy and entertainment are blurrier than they have ever been.

None of that makes media training less important. If anything, it makes it more important. Because the media environment your spokespeople are stepping into is more unpredictable, more fragmented and less forgiving than it was even five years ago.

Prepare accordingly.

Warren Weeks is Canada's most experienced media trainer, based in Toronto, Ontario. He co-hosts the Reputation Town podcast with John Perenack. New episodes drop monthly wherever you get your podcasts.

People who don't truly understand the media interview process or how journalism works will often bring an element of wishful thinking to their interviews. Even though they know on an intellectual level that a reporter is almost certain to ask them a very obvious, important and potentially controversial question about a given story, they pretend that it doesn't exist. They prepare for the interview as if that question can't possibly be asked. And when it does invariably get asked, they try to dance around the question, weasel out of it or get flustered and crash and burn.

You've obviously heard the expression 'the elephant in the room'. But if you don't know where it originates from, it's from an 1814 fable by Ivan Krylov (well, that's what Wikipedia says, anyway). The fable was titled, 'The Inquisitive Man' and tells the story of a man who goes to a museum and observes all kinds of tiny details but who fails to notice an elephant in the museum. Apparently people liked the phrase and so it stuck around. 

Where media relations is concerned, this idea is more prevalent when you're dealing with a reactive or issue/crisis situation. We've all seen executives or celebrities make this mistake of ignoring the elephant over the years (the BP oil spill, the Rob Ford crack scandal, the Tiger Woods scandal, United Airlines, Boeing...the list goes on). To me, this doesn't come down to how smart someone is, how nice they are or what a great person they might be. It comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the media relations process. 

Key Takeaways:

• If there's a glaringly obvious core to the story that you want to gloss over or distract reporters from because you fear it will be unpleasant, understand that the instinct to hide it or minimize it is your brain playing a trick on you. It's a trick because avoiding it won't make the reporters stop asking questions about it. It will only make them more determined to get to that core.

• If you're going to introduce the elephant in the room, do it early. Lead off the interview with it. Do it on your terms. A great example of this is the Maple Leaf Foods listeria crisis from 2008. Very early on, the company's CEO Michael McCain did a short YouTube video where he very much introduced the elephant in the room (that some kind of mistake had led to customers becoming sick and dying). You can check out that video by clicking here.

• If you want to see what happens when you avoid introducing the elephant in the room, check out this story about XL Foods' response to an E. coli crisis. A very different response than Maple Leaf Foods and a very different result.

• Introducing the elephant early can change the tone and outcome of a media interview for the better. You can't always prevent negative things from happening but you can control your company's response to those things. Introducing the elephant helps your company to come across as transparent, empathetic and responsible.

• When introducing this topic, always try to connect it to some positive action or response. For example, outlining the problem is great but providing a proposed solution, action plan and/or apology is better. Always connect the response to your audience.

Learn how to crush your next media interview with my new online, self-guided media training workshop. This course is a deep dive into the art of the great media interview. Take advantage of more than 50 lessons, including 30+ video lessons, downloadable PDFs, checklists and a community element, including office hours and more. And the content never expires. It’s like having a world-class media training session on your phone or computer 24/7. There’s also a full money back guarantee. You can check out the course overview here.

Executives and entrepreneurs dedicate their lives to self improvement. They vie for the most prestigious schools. Many pursue post-graduate studies. They go on retreats, read books, listen to podcasts, attend conferences, do cleanses, meditate, do yoga, try intermittent fasting. They’re constantly on the lookout for a hack. An edge. Something that will make them smarter, more agile, better prepared, more successful.

But so many of these leaders share the same glaring vulnerability: They don’t actually know how to prepare for and conduct a great media interview. Many of them think they do. They think so because maybe they’re good at giving presentations, or they have a lot of self confidence or they’re great at networking. But media interviews are their own unique animal and to be great at them demands focus and training.

I was doing a media training session a few months back with a man in the financial services industry who was also finishing his studies in a graduate business program. As we were wrapping up and I was packing up my equipment, he said, “You know…they didn’t teach us any of this in business school. The people in my class are leaders at billion-dollar companies and I don’t think any of them would be able to excel at what we did here today. They’re not preparing us for this.”

Media interviews matter. Whether they’re proactive or reactive. Whether they’re about a product you’re launching or a crisis you’re managing. Media interviews are part of the public record. And thanks to the Internet, they’re there forever for everyone to see. Your colleagues. Your shareholders. Your employees. Your great grandchildren. The quality of your media interviews can impact your share price, your employee morale, your chances at getting funding, the perception of your brand.

Why are more leaders not taking action to address this vulnerability? Because whether you’re doing a media interview or driving down a busy highway, a blind spot isn’t a problem until it is. You can speed along, blissfully unaware of the danger lurking in your blind spot. On the road, that vulnerability can lead to an accident. With the media, it can lead to underwhelming interviews, lost opportunities, doors left open for your competition and, in the worst instances, the need for damage control or for you to work on your resume.

So while you’re downloading that list of books that Bill Gates recommended or signing up for that leadership conference in Idaho, make a point to get proper media interview training for you and the members of your executive team and eliminate that blind spot once and for all.

When companies let their PR or marketing agency facilitate their media interview training sessions, they’re taking the path of least resistance. They’ll say things like, “It’s included in our monthly retainer" or “We already have a relationship with them”.

Maybe so. But the reality is that getting your PR agency to do your media training session is a mistake. It’s the easy move. After all, every public relations and communications company lists some sort of media training service on their website. However, that doesn’t mean their training will adequately prepare your spokespeople to safeguard your company’s brand in their dealings with the media.

Many people who don’t have a lot of experience with media training tend to think of it as a binary service offering. Their company’s spokespeople either got media training or they didn’t. If they check the box, the thinking goes, they’re all set and their people are ready to meet the press.

But that’s not the case. Media training isn’t binary. There are many styles, approaches and levels of quality that all fit under the umbrella term ‘media training’.

To be fair, any media training is better than no media training. However, if you’re going to make the investment in dollars and your executives’ time, doesn’t it make sense to arrange the best quality training you can? The difference, both in terms of impact and quality of media coverage, can be significant.

This isn’t about taking a shot at agencies. They absolutely have their areas in which they excel. It’s just that when it comes to the preparation of front-line spokespeople to handle media interactions, there’s a better option: experienced pros who make media training their full-time career.

I realize, gentle reader, that there could be the appearance of an inherent bias in this post. “But HE’S a full-time media trainer!” Valid observation. So please note that I’m not saying that these companies need to hire me instead of having their agency do their training session. I’m happy to throw my hat in the ring and let the market decide, so to speak. But there are probably about a half dozen or so (that I’m aware of, anyway) dedicated media training coaches in Canada who would be more than capable of delivering a great training experience for your spokespeople. I’m not going to list all of their names here (after all, this is a business, it’s not Wikipedia). But a quick Google search should provide you with at least three names from whom you can ask for proposals.

So why is your agency the wrong call to conduct your media training session? Here are a few specific reasons in my opinion:

• It’s not a core service for them - If you check their ‘services’ page on their website, it will include a list of about 20 things ranging from media lists to influencer relations. Media training is usually near the end of the list. How much effort do you think they’re putting into that training program?

• Agency turnover - Agencies have notoriously high rates of employee turnover. Their ‘go-to’ media trainer today probably won’t be working there 18 months from now. It’s hard to master something like media training in a short stint with an agency, especially when it isn’t your core day-to-day job.

• They will be reluctant to do anything to damage the ‘relationship’ - When you hire a media training pro to facilitate a session, you’re going to get the Simon Cowell treatment. They’re going to tell you, hopefully in a tactful and empathetic way, exactly where you stand in terms of your skills and what you need to do to improve. They won’t pull any punches. They’re there to make you better. Your agency reps, generally speaking, may be reluctant to provide frank, honest feedback because of a fear of bruising egos or hurting the client relationship.

• Their simulated interviews will be lacking - Because of a combination of all of the other reasons listed here, the simulated interviews probably won’t be as challenging as they should be to give your spokespeople a great workout. There’s an art to conducting a tough but fair simulated interview (and providing relevant feedback).

I appreciate that all of this is just one person’s opinion. If you work for one of those companies, however, that has its PR agency do its media training, I would suggest that the objective proof of this hypothesis is in your media coverage. Audit your media coverage. The quality of your quotes. The placement of them. The tone of the stories. The amount of ‘interview regret’ or the number of times you and your colleagues were emailing about how to manage or respond to coverage that wasn’t what you hoped it would be. If, after an honest assessment, you realize there’s a gap between where your company’s media coverage is and where you’d like it to be, the culprit probably isn’t the journalists you’re working with. Chances are it’s that when someone in your company arranged media training, they took the path of least resistance.

Media interviews can be stressful. After all, there’s a lot on the line. And while no two people are exactly the same, as someone who helps coach people to do better media interviews for a living, I can tell you that there are some very common sources of interview anxiety. Here are the most common reasons people are stressed out about their media interviews (and some tips for minimizing that stress so that your interview goes well) and you can get that great coverage you’re hoping for:

Worry #1: They could ask me anything

This is the biggest source of anxiety prior to an interview. Your mind starts racing with all the things they ‘might’ ask you and you spiral down a rabbit hole of terrible hypothetical topics. In reality, a media interview is a negotiated interaction. If it’s a proactive story you’re pitching, you know what the topic is. If it’s a reactive story where they’re calling you, the reporter should give you a clear overview of the focus of their story. Once you know the focus, it’s your job to craft some high-quality remarks that cater to that focus and tell an actual story that the reporter’s audience would find interesting. Could they go off script and ask you something totally out of the blue? Well, sure. Hypothetically. But in most cases, the questions should be fairly predictable. And if they do ask you something way off base and unrelated, you don’t need to feel compelled to serve up an answer. This isn’t a police interrogation. You can say something like, “That’s not my area of expertise so I’d be hesitant to comment on that.” or “It would be inappropriate for me to comment on behalf of….” or “That’s a bit outside what we agreed to speak about today. We could certainly look into setting up another interview but we’d have to run it through our media relations people again to make sure we’re getting you the answers you need.”

In almost all cases, however, if you simply provide three or four great answers that are related to the focus of the story, that will be the end of the interview.

Worry #2: I won’t have the interviewer’s questions in advance

I hear this a lot. I also hear the flip side of this, where people become very excited when they get the reporter’s question in advance. I would recommend that you spend more time thinking about your answers than the reporter’s questions. Again, we know what the focus of the story is. We can predict what most of the questions will be. Spend your time creating high-quality answers - answers that are short, concise, contain examples, points of view, stats, etc.

Henry Kissinger had this great line way back in the 1970s: “Who’s got questions for my answers?” It’s a line that makes people chuckle. But that’s the right approach.

And when people DO get the questions in advance? What happens almost every time is that the reporter’s questions change once the interview starts. This isn’t a malicious tactic. You probably just said something they found interesting or wanted to follow up on.

In my experience, a more useful thing to ask a reporter prior to an interview is: Can you please give me a sense of the types of questions you’d like me to answer for your readers/listeners/viewers. The information you get can then help steer you in a direction. But always spend more time writing answers than sweating about questions.

Worry #3: I had a bad media interview experience before and it’s got me doubting myself

We’ve all had a bad experience. But get back on that horse! If you go back and study the interaction and your coverage, I’ll bet you can figure out why the bad experience/coverage happened. Did you not prep enough? Did we not anticipate key questions? Answers that were too long? Too short? Not enough examples? Did we repeat the journalist’s negative words or speculate or speak on behalf of another person/group? These are some of the most common missteps but the list goes on. Figure out the specific reason your interview went off the rails and then make a point of working on that to fix it for next time. Practice interviews and media training can help.

Worry #4: Reporters are out to get us

No, they’re not. Well, most of the time. Unless your company is doing something offside and/or trying to hide unethical or inappropriate behaviour, the vast majority of journalists are just trying to get some quotes from you to tell their story. A lot of times, though, organizations have a defensive mindset when it comes to media relations, thinking that it’s going to be adversarial or antagonistic. Guess what happens when you treat the interaction as if they’re trying to get you? Your answers are probably going to come up as short, curt and defensive. Which is going to prompt them to dig and may make them think you have something to hide. Vicious circle ensues.

Try wiping the slate clean and creating your story/messages based on your audience and your understanding of the outlet and the stories they typically cover. Don’t think of the reporter as your enemy. Think of them as a filter through which you’ll pass your content for your ultimate audience.

At the same time, it’s important to understand that while they’re probably not out to get you, they’re also not out to help you. Journalists are not there to promote you or be your buddy. If you say something you shouldn’t, chances are that’s going to be very quotable.

So they’re not out to get you. And they’re not out to help you. Where does that leave you? As the architect of your interview. Don’t take a passive role. Figure out what you want to say and do your homework and prep in advance.

Worry #5: I talk too much when I’m nervous

The average media interview is way longer than it should be. And one of the reasons is that many spokespeople don’t know how to tell a story in a concise way. Think of the last paper you read or TV/radio broadcast you saw/heard. How long were the answers? They’re quite short. Often 10-15 seconds long. Sometimes double that for a live, studio TV interview. So why are we giving answers that are two minutes long? Before the interview, take a stopwatch and time how long it takes to read your messages. If any of them are longer than 20 seconds, you need to start chopping. Deliver your message, then stop. The reporter will ask you another question. It’s a great opportunity to breathe, to regroup and to think about your next answer.

Worry #6: I don’t want to have a ‘deer in the headlights’ moment

Fair enough. No one wants this to happen. But there are a few things you can do to prevent this unpleasant situation from bringing your interview to a grinding halt. First, prepare. Spend some time considering the topic, writing your content and doing a practice interview or two in-house. That will get you into the cadence and flow of a media interview.

Still, now and then, you can get a question you simply were not expecting and it can feel like a punch in the head. When that happens, ask yourself what the REAL question behind the question is. In almost every situation, the question that you might not be ready/equipped to answer will be related to a large issue/trend that you can comment on. Speak to THAT issue and you will be able to keep the interview rolling.

For example, if there’s a security incident at your facility and the reporter asks what time people will be let back into the building, some spokespeople would get stuck on this question since they don’t know the time. Cue deer in the headlights moment, stammering, etc.

But in this situation, what’s the issue behind the question? It’s about safety. So try this answer: “We want to ensure that everyone in the building is safe and accounted for. We are working with the authorities to make sure they have everything they need. Once they make the determination that it’s safe to return to the building, we will communicate that to our employees.” Next question please…

Much of the time, the anxiety people feel about media interviews is unfounded. You can usually trace their worry back to one of these points listed above. But if you spend some time really preparing and getting yourself in the mindset for an interview, you’ll realize that many of these worries will simply melt away. The result? Greater confidence and better media coverage.

I had a refresher media training session with a client last week - the CEO of a large not-for-profit. While we were chatting, I asked what she had thought of the video of her simulated TV interview that I had sent after our initial session back in the spring. She got this sheepish look on her face and said, “…I haven’t watched it yet.”

I’m guessing she’s not the only one. I just assumed that when I sent people the videos of their TV interviews from our training sessions, that they were watching them, analyzing their performance and looking for ways to improve. But I was ignoring one fundamental truth. For many people, watching/reading/listening to your own media coverage can be incredibly uncomfortable.

I get it. People - especially those who demand a lot of themselves (e.g. perfectionists) - often wish they had handled part of the interview differently. Some people just don’t like how they look on camera. Whatever the reason, they let their media coverage (or simulated media training coverage) sit in the cloud or on a hard drive, unread, unwatched, unlistened to.

If you’re looking to give the best media interviews possible, ignoring your coverage is a huge lost opportunity. As uncomfortable as it might be, revisiting your coverage with an objective eye is one of the BEST ways to improve your media interviewing skills.

When you don’t revisit your media coverage with a critical eye, here are the kinds of things you’re missing:

• Finding out which quotes the journalist actually chose to put in their story - this is arguable the most important reason to study your coverage. You can find out what resonated with the journalist and adjust/adapt accordingly for future interviews.

• Seeing if the quotes the reporter chose were in line with the messages you had written prior to your interview. Again - very important! This is the name of the game, after all. Figuring out the quotes you want to have in the story BEFORE the interview and then navigating the interaction in such a way that the journalist finds them irresistible.

• Seeing if you fell prey to any of the typical pitfalls of a media interview, such as physical tics (swaying, shuffling, wandering eyes), repeating negative language, speculating, making up content on the fly, being defensive, being boring, too much jargon, etc.

• Seeing how your quotes were used in the large context of the story. Did your competitor get better coverage (more quotes, a photo, quotes higher up in the story)? Did your quotes set the tone and even influence the headline?

Remember that famous quote from George Santayana? “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” This goes for media interviews as well. For 2019, I’m really going to be pounding on this idea with the people I get to work with. I will encourage them to force themselves to watch/read/listen to their media coverage in the spirit of self improvement and professional development.

Is watching your media coverage uncomfortable? You bet. But ask yourself what’s more uncomfortable? Spending a few minutes revisiting your media coverage and making notes so that you can get better? Or ignoring your coverage and staying at the same level of interviewing skill and making the same missteps time after time after time?