Content Strategist and 13 Times Associate Michelle Davies, draws on her 30 years in journalism to share examples and experiences of cancel culture – and to explain how media skills training can help your business navigate the modern media landscape.
When the then Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg agreed to an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2005, he did so safe in the knowledge that his company was America’s number one telecommunications firm and a leading mobile phone provider in the UK thanks to a partnership with Vodafone.
The interview was to discuss Verizon’s £3.5bn takeover of a rival company. However, as sometimes happens, the journalist veered off the main talking point to solicit Seidenberg’s views on a related subject, namely San Francisco’s hopes to build a municipal Wi-Fi network that would provide cheap or free Internet service through the city.
As head of a company with its own wireless network that would be impacted by such a move, Seidenberg should’ve anticipated the subject being raised and had a response ready.
Instead, he branded the city’s Wi-Fi aspirations as “one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard” and then launched an astonishing broadside at Verizon’s customers for daring to wish for better mobile coverage. “Why in the world would you think your [cell] phone would work in your house?” he commented. “The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement.”
Media Skills Training
How to Engage with the Media
Criticising Verizon’s customers for daring to expect mobile coverage indoors was an incredible own goal and, unsurprisingly, Seidenberg’s comments were widely panned. While he weathered the storm and stayed with the company until his retirement in 2011, the interview remains a salutary lesson in how not to engage with the media, up there with Gerard Ratner wiping £500m from the value of his eponymous high street jewellers’ chain after calling his own products “total crap”.
Of course, the sensible response to the Chronicle reporter’s question would’ve been to focus on how well Verizon already served San Francisco’s citizens. Accentuate the positive, in other words, and bring the interview back to the main talking point of Verizon’s takeover success.
Really, Seidenberg was lucky.
The interview happened at a time when social media was still in its infancy and being cancelled still meant a friend ditching plans for a night out at the last minute, rather than being erased by the court of public opinion. Had it been now, you can guarantee “Verizon” and “phoning indoors” would be trending negatively and the firm’s share price would’ve adjusted accordingly.
It’s why, more than ever, media skills training is essential for anyone in business who has to engage with the press. Instead of winging interviews and stumbling blind into “gotcha! Moments”, media skills training gives participants solid grounding for how to anticipate and deflect tricky questions, how to steer the conversation back to the talking points you want and need to get across, and how to determine if you should agree to a particular interview request in the first place.
The Modern Media World
It also helps participants navigate the many different media formats that exist today.
Print, radio and broadcast no longer dominate the landscape: podcasts, social media, video and websites have just as much clout, and any brand dealing with the media needs to know the separate approach each one requires.
For example, doing a pre-record podcast interview can actually require more consideration and prep work than a live news appearance in a TV studio. Despite the high-stakes nature of live TV, interviewees are more likely to get caught out saying something controversial on a podcast, because podcast settings tend to feel less confrontational. The more relaxed the interviewee is, the more unguarded they can become.
It’s something British baker Richard Hart learned the hard way last year after he appeared on the PopFoodie Radio podcast to talk about The Green Rhino Bakery he co-founded in Mexico City.
During an hour-long chat about how to bake the perfect bread, Hart, who made his name as head baker of iconic bakery Tartine in California, described tortas, a wildly popular form of Mexican sandwich, as “white, ugly rolls that are pretty cheap, industrially made”. His comment caused an outcry and Hart had to publish an apology to the people of Mexico for insulting their bread.
Cancel Culture
Media skills training also teaches you that, despite a reputation to the contrary, journalists aren’t actually trying to catch interviewees out.
I say that as a journalist of more than 30 years who has interviewed people from all walks of life, from pop stars such as Beyonce to Fortune 500 CEOs and London mayoral candidates. A good journalist’s goal is to produce an absorbing interview with great insight and shareable quotes that readers/listeners/viewers will enjoy.
If the interviewee makes a contentious comment that goes viral for the wrong reasons, that’s down to them.
“Will saying that get me cancelled?” moments can be mitigated though. The thing to remember is that the journalist will research you as their subject matter ahead of the interview so they can craft compelling questions to get you to open up.
The trick is to do the same in reverse.
Research the journalist you’ll be speaking to by reading past interviews and any public social media posts and you should be able to gauge the kind of questions they’ll ask and the tone in which they’ll ask them – so you can have a reasonable clapback ready for any that might come across as a bit thorny.
If you’d like to learn how to navigate the modern media landscape and avoid getting cancelled, we offer media skills training and coaching, virtually and in-person. Get in touch to find out more.
