Dear Amy,

One thing we learned the hard way recently as my husband did an interview on
a national news network:  always try to restate the question they are asking
in your answer.  With my husband's interview, they asked him a question
during the interview, clipped out his answer and put it into the segment in
a different context entirely!  Seems unethical to me, but evidently it is
all too common, "... after all, you *did* say that, didn't you?"  I don't
mean to scare you, if we don't stand up for the truth, who will?  But, it
really pays to understand how the media works.

I agree with others who've said choose about three messages you want to
present, memorize some "sound bite" answers and stay on message!  It is
pretty dangerous to let the reporter lead the course of the interview in a
situation where the reporter may not know enough about the topic... the
interview can get stuck on silly questions, or shock-value, or irrelevant
stuff.

For those of you dealing with controversial interviews, my dh says to be
prepared to answer the same questions many times the same way.  If you are
not giving the answer the reporter wants, they may keep asking the question
again and again in the hopes of getting you off guard and getting what they
want.  If you stick to message you will be far safer, but this is hard to
do.

I hope you have a great interview!  Thanks for standing up there and doing
it!

Melanie

Melanie Young,
LLLL, IBCLC

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