Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [77]
Governments, too, routinely give press conferences. City governments, for example, may schedule them to allow the mayor to: field questions from the press; explain why the police chief is quitting after one year on the job or why the students’ test scores are so high this year; announce a new employee policy; invite the press to tour a new library or hospital; or discuss crime statistics.
Celebrities such as actors, athletes, and authors hold their own press conferences to explain their divorces, scrapes with the law, libel suits, fights with press photographers, or anything else that they want to give their side of to the press.
When dealing with reporters, remember that they have been assigned by their editors to bring back some solid information. Television reporters need to tape a brief sound bite that can be used, perhaps, on that evening’s news. Radio reporters may be attending your press conference only for background information or a quote; or they may ask you afterward to do an interview or come to the studio to appear on a talk show. Print journalists may need background information from which to do a story or a column.
All reporters are after terrific, newsmaking, to-the-point quotations.
Prepare carefully for your press conference. Have a prepared statement that you can distribute and read over a microphone to the assembled press. In your statement, always present your most important points first. (Think of tomorrow’s headlines.) After you have read or distributed your statement or press release, you can take questions from the reporters.
Anticipate the questions you will be asked, and rehearse your answers. Decide in advance the pertinent information you wish to impart or see in the next day’s newspaper. Assume a leadership role, answering questions with authority and confidence. Also decide in advance what you are not going to say, and stick to your decision.
Gauge your audience and dress to fit the situation, using the style best suited to your message, whether it be formal or conversational. Whatever your style, keep your answers to questions smooth, credible, and brief.
Regard the press conference as an opportunity to inform the public of the truth. Honesty is sometimes painful, but the truth will inevitably emerge, so it is better to level with reporters from the very beginning. Remember you are seeking credibility, which is hard to earn and even harder to keep. Stubborn silence destroys public confidence and ends up having reporters seek other sources and delve deeply for hidden or potentially embarrassing revelations. Do not try to lie or misrepresent the facts.
Lying to the public or media simply doesn’t work. When you stretch or distort the truth, it takes multiple statements to cover the falsehood. You just can’t remember how to keep all of those false statements straight.
The public must trust you and believe in you. That trust cannot be abused or betrayed. The highly prized balance of faith and trust is fragile and must be nurtured and defended. Once that trust is lost, it is difficult to regain it.
Do not treat the reporters themselves with contempt—as though you think you can tell them anything you want and they will believe it. Do not attempt to put a “spin” on the truth for the sake of public relations. Do not assume that the public will buy double-talk because you think it is gullible; the public deserves and wants correct information.
Before your press conference begins, you should have decided what you want the press and the public to hear. Think in advance about a concise statement. Get your point across with few words. You might rehearse with a stopwatch and a tape recorder to determine how much you can say in ten, twenty, thirty, sixty, and ninety seconds. Literally write a telegram-type quotation in advance, so that the prepared statement will come to you when you need to remember it. Answer the questions directly and without hesitation.