By Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London Ltd
“Ho, ho, ho “cried Santa. He was in his traditional jolly mood as he heaved his bulk out of bed and into his Santa dressing gown and furry red Santa slippers thoughtfully left out for him by Chief Junior Elf. “Another jolly day “ he boomed as he thought about where to park his sleigh when he swooped down onto the TV studios for his first ever television interview later that morning.
“You’re booming very well this morning Santa” said Senior Elf, deftly removing some elf-made wooden toys thoughtlessly left behind on the wooden floor by the very junior elves who forgot that Santa could easily trip over them due to not being able to see his feet beneath his big stomach. “I saw that“ said Santa. “You must have a word with Elfin Safety. She’ll put those pesky little very junior elves in order.”
“Now what about your TV interviews - aren’t you going to prepare some things to say? “ asked Senior Elf. “ You know they always say you don’t know how blank your mind can go until you’re on live TV? “ he added in a worried tone.
“No, no , no said Santa rather crossly, “ I don’t need to prepare. I’ll just see what they ask me. I‘ve been doing this job for years. I know my stuff.”
“Yes but talking on the TV is different from normal talking, you need to prepare for the questions“ said Senior Elf, who took modern life seriously, unlike Santa, whose only concession to the 21st century so far had been to fit a seat heater in his sleigh. “No Satnav needed for Santa“ he would tell anyone who would listen. “I know my way round the world without the help of space satellites. I was here long before they were. In fact NASA and NORAD track me. I don’t need their help. ”
“ And what do you mean interviews?” Santa added tetchily . “ I thought I was doing just one.”
“Well you have to cover the world’s TV networks so you’ll be doing one interview face to face and one down the line. They’ll all be pooled, “ said Senior Elf precisely, very proud of knowing the TV jargon. “Down the line means talking to the camera , not to an interviewer. It’s also called a remote interview. ” he added proudly.
“Pooled – what pool? “ asked Santa even more crossly, and feeling his jolly TV interview mood fading fast.
“Doing a pooled interview means you only have to do two interviews and all the broadcasters get one or the other. Otherwise you’d have to do hundreds of interviews. You’d be in the studio till next Christmas” Senior Elf added with a bright, little, know-it-all elf smile that Santa wanted very much to wipe right off his face – right now.
“Anyway don’t forget I’ve got a very important meeting this morning about appearing in next year’s X Factor as a special guest”, Santa beamed, recovering some of his jollity at the prospect of another starring role. “And I’m not doing it unless they get Beyonce to dance with me. I know you think I’m out of touch, but I do know that Simon Cowell is almost as powerful as I am, so, after my first TV appearance today, the X Factor is the place for me next year.”
Santa’s meeting with Syco dragged on. At last it was finished. “Go, go ,go “ cried Santa to the reindeer. He was late for his arrival at the TV studios. Having parked with some difficulty on the roof, which he had not expected to be crowded with antennae, satellite dishes and air conditioning and heating machinery, he rushed down to the studio. It was in the basement, which he also hadn’t realised, and when he got there he was sweating and hot and bothered and he couldn’t remember anything he wanted to say.
“Would you like some make-up?” asked a slim woman with very tidy hair and a selection of small brushes in her hand. “Oh no, no, no “ said Santa briskly. “Just take me to the studio please.” It was very hot in the studio because there were lots of lights, so Santa didn’t cool down at all. In fact he felt even more hot and bothered and he knew he was red-faced and sweating. Also, when he sat down, he noticed, too late to change before the interview started, that the buttons on his Santa jacket were straining to keep in their buttonholes.
“I do believe I’ve put on a little weight since this suit was made just a few years ago” he thought to himself as the interviewer, who was thin and very smartly dressed in a suit and tie and didn’t look hot at all, began by introducing him as ‘Someone who really needs no introduction’ then getting very excited and shouting at him “I can’t believe it’s Santa. Your first ever TV interview, what’s your message to the children of the world? ”
“Eh, well, “Santa was a bit stumped. He hadn’t really expected that sort of question. “Well” he said quietly and without any of his usual booming tone, “ It’s very hot here. I’m not used to heat – I’m more of a cold weather chap myself.“ “Yes but what’s your message?” said the interviewer, kindly giving him another go at making a good impression, but to Santa, unprepared as he was, the interviewer appeared to be a threatening inquisitor, definitely out to get him. “Ho , ho , ho? ” said Santa feebly. He was surprised to find he actually felt very nervous. This wasn’t going well.
“All children should be good or they won’t get presents? “ , the interviewer suggested helpfully. “Oh ,yes definitely, that’s how the system works “ said Santa. Uncharacteristically, he didn’t seem able to speak more than one short sentence at a time. And he could feel his mind was going blank – very blank. “I just want to survive this and go home to the nice cold North Pole”, he thought.
“And how many elves do you have working for you? “ asked the interviewer trying to put Santa at ease by asking him a simple factual question. “Eh, I’m not sure”, Santa began another feeble answer. “There are lots and lots of elves”. If only he’d looked at the factsheet that Senior Elf had thrust in front of him before he left for the studio. Santa stuttered on. The interview finally ended after what seemed to Santa like a very long time and he got up to go.
“Santa, Santa, That was wonderful, super, just terrific” said a thin bossy looking woman with frizzy hair and a clipboard who was speaking very fast. “I’m the producer for your remote interview and we’re going to put you in another studio." Before he knew what was happening Santa had been fitted with a radio microphone, with a pack squeezed into the very tight waistband of his red Santa trousers and an earpiece had been put in his left ear, and he was staring at a camera. “You’ll hear the interviewer through your earpiece in about a minute” the producer told him. She seemed to Santa to be very speeded up and he wasn’t really taking in much of what she said. “Oh and don’t look at anything else but the camera for the whole interview” she added over her shoulder as she left Santa alone in what he now realised was a padded sound-proofed cell.
Santa got a bit bored as he waited and waited for what was definitely much more than a minute. Finally just as he was wondering whether to leave, he heard a whooshing noise in his ear and several people shouting about something and then a voice said very fast “Can you hear me Santa – can you hear me? “ “Yes “ said Santa looking around for someone to talk to . “Can you look at the camera? “ said the voice in an urgent tone. “Yes” , said Santa again. “Look at the camera now” said the voice bossily, adding “You’ll hear the interviewer in ten seconds. “
Suddenly Santa wasn’t sure what to do next. Why should he talk to the camera when he could now see the interviewer on a TV screen on a table to the left of the camera? He decided to talk to the monitor. He felt this second interview went better than the first as he did manage to get two sentences out in a couple of his answers.
“Snow, snow, snow. How I love it “ Santa told his reindeer as they made their way back through an Arctic blizzard to the lovely frozen North.
“How did it go?” asked Santa. “So so “ said Senior Elf diplomatically. “By the way, Simon Cowell’s people called. They think you’re not right for the X Factor. They think you should try Blue Peter. That’s BBC TV's Blue Peter,” he added helpfully, “ the children’s programme where they make things and say : ’And here’s one I prepared earlier’. That’s good advice for TV interviews too.”
“Doh, doh, doh” said Santa briefly turning to Homer Simpson for aid in expressing himself. “ Where’s that email you mentioned from the media training people?” “TV News London? “ said Senior Elf . “I’ll book you a session right now.”
Published
14 December 2011
By Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London Ltd
Remember how the Romans used to enjoy watching Christians and slaves being thrown to the lions and torn apart in front of huge crowds for sport? It’s become increasingly clear to me that what the UK’s Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press is now showing us is the extraordinary sight of today’s version of the Christians and slaves fighting back with public statements of how much blood the newspapers have drawn from them in recent years.
Listening to the complaints of celebrities like Hugh Grant , Sienna Miller, Charlotte Church, and J.K. Rowling, we can all now understand more of the price of fame in the modern media world and get glimpses of the huge media pressure famous people can face in their personal as well as their professional lives.
Should we be sorry for them? Should we feel as much sympathy for celebrities – and their families - as we do for Kate and Gerry McCann, parents of still missing Madeleine, pursued by crowds of media, private diaries published without permission, and subject to unfounded speculations about them having a role in their 3 year old daughter’s disappearance ?
Are celebrities to be pitied and/or in future protected as much as Sally and Bob Dowler, parents of murdered teenager Millie, whose mobile phone messages were hacked into after her death, giving false hope to her parents that, as a message had been deleted, Millie might have deleted it and therefore might still be alive. Plus what Sally Dowler described as ‘ such an intrusion’ when the News of the World ran a picture taken with a long lens of a walk she had her husband took which they had thought was private.
Intrusion – that’s a key word. When I started in journalism, we were told there was a code of conduct for journalists. We should not intrude on private grief, not upset or involve children etc.. I’m lucky enough never to have worked at the mucky end of the journalistic market. Tabloid journalists have always taken a more robust approach to these issues. But what’s gone wrong to make journalists think they can hack into private mobile phones, or photographers bang on the doors of cars and frighten children – as both JK Rowling and Kate McCann testified to the Leveson Inquiry?
Newspapers used to be first with news, Now the press has lost this role of news primacy to first radio, then TV 24 hour news, and now social media pictures and rumours as well. So why buy a newspaper? The answer is for comment and background, and also for celebrity gossip. You only need to look at the online websites of tabloid newspapers to see the power of the pull of celebrity news. But of course a lot of celebrity news isn’t really news. It’s manufactured events and opinions, sometimes with the co-operation of the celebs themselves, and sometimes not. But it does sell papers and magazines and the numbers of media in pursuit of for instance Sienna Miller when she had her on-off relationship with Jude Law– especially the numbers of photographers literally chasing her down the road like a pack of wolves - has grown hugely in recent years because there’s money in exclusive pictures. And of course exclusives are increasingly hard to find when so many are pursing the same aim .
“For a number of years I was relentlessly pursued by about 10 to 15 men almost daily Anything from being spat at or verbally abused. I think the incentive was to get a as strong a reaction as possible. They seemed to go to any lengths to try to upset you. I would often find myself, I was 21 being chased down the road by a pack of men.
“It’s really terrifying” she said adding that if she had been pursued at midnight down a dark street by men not carrying cameras, the police would have been involved.
Should there therefore be tighter controls on the British press? Lord Hunt, who has just taken over as Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, the self-regulating body for the newspaper industry, has speculated that he may well be the last chairman of the PCC.
He said on the BBC’s Politics Show recently:
“PCC is a mechanism for dealing with complaints. It is not a regulator. It has power to reprimand an editor or a journalist. It can have an apology put on the front page. What I am worried about is that there is no-one independently regulating the press.”
It does now look as though the public and political mood is for the press to face official regulation, just as TV and radio already have regulations under Ofcom. Even a celebrity photographer told BBC Radio Four’s Media Programme that the paparazzi should be licensed. Although he did point out that even if professional photographers were licensed there would still be nothing to stop a member of the public snapping a celebrity on their phone and publishing it to the world on Twitter or other social media.
So in terms of regulating the print media in an age of social media, shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted may well be the place we are now in. Just as the press is losing its audience to unregulated social media the press will be more regulated while rumours spread unrestrained on the social media. The Christians and the slaves, today’s celebrities and families of murder victims, are now rightly fighting back against today’s media audience – we are the equivalent of the Roman audience in the arena.
Sections of the media may have given up on basic decency such as not intruding into private grief, either physically through their presence or through phone hacking, but shouldn’t the rest of us be less willing to be an audience baying for blood?
Published
12 December 2011
By Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London Ltd
You might think that poor old Rick Perry - his hopes now sinking fast as he’s painted as the most phenomenally forgetful US presidential candidate of all time - is really unusual. After all how hard is it to remember a list of just three things?
Perry was going really well on CNBC's Republican presidential candidate debate when the curse of the TV rule of three struck him. Trust me it really isn't that unusual. As a TV interviewer and media trainer for many years I know that it can often be a recipe for disaster - or a debate debacle as the US media are calling it - to go for a list of three when you're being interviewed on TV. And people who go for a list of four or five points are definitely setting themselves up for a fall.
As that famous sage Anonymous once said: "You never know how blank your mind can go until you're on live TV." It can happen to anyone. In my experience, many people giving media interviews will say they have three points to make and say 'Firstly' and then 'B' and then stop after two points.
If an interviewer wants to land a killer blow, they just very politely and helpfully say " And your third point? " It's sounds kindly, but it's a killer because they know that, with the stresses of the TV lights bearing down on them, the interviewee has completely forgotten their third point.
That's why often, in the interests of keeping the flow of the interview, the interviewer will ignore the missing third point and just keep the interview going. But these things are always a tougher game for politicians. For them there is no mercy.
After all you would normally would expect a politician, and especially a man who wants to be President of the United States, to be able to recall a list of three names and not go blank - at all - ever. Rick Perry has come out fighting with a message that 'Everybody makes mistakes-- - If you're looking for the slickest debater, it's not me etc..etc..
But the damage is done - and I think he's not just undone by the memory lapse, but by the fact that he didn't deal with it professionally once it had happened.
"I will tell you that's it's three agencies of Government when I get there that are gone" he said confidently " . Then he continued: "Commerce, Education and the .. um what's the third one there let's see..." Then he made another mistake - he was in a pit and he didn't stopped digging. He asked his opponent what the third point was - they suggested the EPA - perhaps ironically. The interviewer pressed him. Perry floundered on, said it's not the EPA and just collapsed on air.
What should he have done? Obviously first he should simply always remember what his policies are and have them at his fingertips. Having failed on that he should think on his feet and not go on for nearly a minute digging himself deeper and deeper into a black hole so that even the dimmest US voter is thinking " I really don't want this guy with his hand on any nuclear button." (Or something more direct and unprintable.)
There are a number of basic simple rules we media trainers follow when advising people on how to give effective interviews on TV and one of them is 'When you're in a hole, stop digging.' Perry should have One - seen the blankness coming. Two - sidestepped it very fast by rushing on to the big issue here is too many bureaucrats - always a winner with most American voters - and voters in most other countries too, Three - kept going on this and then chucked in a controversial idea that the interviewer would have to ask him about and which would speed him on leaving the uncompleted three points way behind.
However he couldn't do all this without being on top of his ideas and the phrases he wanted to use to get them across to the public. The bottom line is he sounded unprepared and when he came unstuck he couldn’t get himself back on track. Preparation is the key to successful TV interviews. Having something to say that you know you’ve thought through and are secure with is more than half the battle
Or to put it in another folksy American way that Rick Perry and other American presidential hopefuls might care to remember: If God wanted everyone to look stupid on TV he wouldn't have invented media trainers.
Published
14 November 2011