The Importance of Having the Right Words

Broadcasting is a highly specialised area, and few people are really comfortable with a tough radio or television interview, no matter how senior and how skilled they are in their specialist fields. That isn’t surprising: exposure to the sharp end of the media is usually infrequent and the studio environment can seem strange and intimidating.

Any interviewee, however experienced, is dealing with a professional interviewer who is operating very much on his or her home ground. They are masters of all the techniques needed to coerce their guest into giving them a good story. And as we all know, a ‘good’ story in their terms can mean a disastrous one from the interviewee’s point of view.

Just cast your mind back to a couple of classics: British Rail wasn’t a complete laughing stock until a spokesman came out with that immortal line, “It was the wrong sort of snow”; and Ratners the jewellers didn’t have to change their name until Gerald Ratner described his own products in less than glowing terms!