Talking Point

Angry Julia loses it for a minute

By Craig Regan

It’s a blip in the scheme of things but a clear case of Do As I Say, Not Do As I Do. I’m talking about Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s ticking off of a journalist at her Adelaide media conference this morning.

Press Gallery journalists rightfully praised Gillard for giving one of her strongest performances ever in front of a media throng. That was until the final moments when The Australian’s Michael Owen asked about her role in the downfall of Kevin Rudd.

"So you just fell into the leadership?" he said at one stage – and kept going. Her response showed what not to do in front of an otherwise benign media pack.

"I’ll answer your question but, ah, just ... I’m not listening to this rudeness, I’ll answer your question and then I’ll give a question to your colleague, thank you very much... “I’m not going have you just speak to me like this. End of sentence. I’ll answer your question and I will take a question from your colleague.

"Your question is internally inconsistent. Let me answer it...well, I’ll answer it thanks very much... If you stop talking then I’ll give you an answer, but I can’t give you an answer if you keep talking.”

The appearance of Angry Julia not-so-deft sidestepping an issue might have been a play aimed at presenting her as a PM with renewed authority, but went dangerously close to portraying her as out of control.

That the reporter has since apologised doesn't quarantine footage fo the incident making the nightly news. 

It wasn't quite on the scale of K Rudd’s Unhappy Little Vegemite YouTube video, mind you, but it's still not a good look.

At Lighthouse, we use media training to enable clients to handle questions exactly like this. So here's some free advice.

The most graceful response is to pause, stay silent until the questioner has run out of steam, acknowledge the question and answer or re-direct it, on your own terms.  

Remember, it’s a reporter’s job to ask hard questions and probe. Ripping strips off them just distracts from the messages you were trying to convey.

Whitney funeral will be media- managed to keep the peace

 

By Craig Regan

 

The news that Whitney Houston’s publicist has arranged footage of the late singer’s funeral service to be distributed throws a spotlight on a lesser-known media management practice called “pooling.”

Pooling is where one media outlet is chosen to film an event and shares the footage with competitors. It’s commonly used to limit media attendance where space is at a premium or their presence might be upsetting.

Witht he Houston story, squeezing a herd of American TV crews into a small Newark church wouldn’t have made much sense.

Barring attendance point-blank would have encouraged ultra-competitive reporters to push the envelope and sneak in a camera. The footage will be made available to TV news and sent all over the Internet.

Pooling is usually a good compromise even if it goes against the grain for many reporters.

Back when I was working as a go-between in media-police relations, pooling was sometimes used at funerals or at open-air crime scenes where evidence had to be preserved.

It’s a little-known fact that police find it useful to have access to TV crews’ unedited footage at events like homicide victims’ funerals . The rationale is that killers are often known to their victims - their behaviour might provide evidence to build a case – so cops often do some kind of deal with the media to maintain their distance.

A pool camera closer to the action can quietly provide the better footage that TV needs.

I went to biker funerals where allowing TV crew access would have been like throwing petrol onto a smouldering fire. If access for one crew (on the condition that they shared their footage) kept the peace, that was a good outcome.

PM shows she's not listening or atrociously advised

By Peter Laidlaw

Roll-up, roll-up, roll-up - The great Australian Labor Party circus has hit town and you are sure to be entertained by a wonderful team of entertainers - including a few clowns, a number of knife-throwers, invisible men and tightrope walkers, led by not one but two ring masters who can't tame the lions behind them.

Yes for at least the sixth week in a row (though I must admit I have stopped counting), the "phantom" challenge by the former PM, one K.Rudd, to topple the current PM continues to dominate newspapers and the airwaves.

We have seen media reports about who is backing whom.

We have heard party colleagues claim that it was not possible for Rudd to return as a leader having previously led and failed (despite those same colleagues being around when Kim Beazley was returned as the ALP leader in 2005 after having held the throne four years earlier).

We have listened to carefully crafted words from Rudd and Gillard and their supporters to dismiss the challenge as simply being a media speculation ....and wondered if Mark Latham would introduce his Conga Line of Suckholes descriptor to the current situation.

And then we read that the riot act had been read to the party – Stop Talking - it's only giving oxygen to the story!

With that, I was not holding out much hope for any explosive revelations coming from Four Corners story on the only battle taking place in federal politics - Rudd vs Gillard (Tony who?).

But being a political junkie, I removed myself from the family room - having just lost a debate with one of the kids over whether Kev vs Julz's would be more entertaining than the new Channel 7 US import Revenge - and flicked on the box in the bedroom to hear the old familiar Four Corners theme and Kerry introducing "The Comeback Kid?".

I was interested but not surprised when a line-up - including a former Rudd staffer (who got some good PR for his new book), a right wing union bod, two former ministers (now lobbyists) and another political staffer-turned-lobbyist - gave their views on Rudd and what happened.

In reality it was a bit ho-hum and in my view would not really give much fuel to the leadership fire. Any newsroom would be scratching hard to get much out of the story to give the "challenge" more life.

But then came the PM!

And to much celebration within newsrooms around the country came a very poor response to the question of whether her office had prepared her speech accepting the role two weeks prior to Kevin being shafted. If this was the case and she knew about this, there would be a huge question mark over the credibility, already tainted by her "no carbon tax" pledge and commitments to independent Andrew Wilkie regarding pokies.

The PM had repeatedly stated that she was not behind a planned campaign to dispose of her old boss and that she only made the decision to challenge for the leadership the day before.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get a straight answer to the questions, we heard "I have just given the best answer I can." If that was the best answer that could be given by her, one has to ask the question: Why on earth did Gillard grant the interview in the first place?

As I have long believed and advocated with clients - you don't always have to say yes to a media request. If Julia had taken such a position, we may have been saved at least a day of leadership talk in media and Julia may well have saved some face before the public.

Wiggling away from trouble: Three lessons for reputation management

By Craig Regan

As odd as it might be to devote double-page spreads in daily newspapers to a changing of the guard in The Wiggles, it’s still the silly season in Australia. The Wiggles are the country’s highest-earning entertainers and stories like these do sell papers.

There are some great take-outs for guardians of brand reputation. Cutting through the PR-speak, they are:

Never do a media interview inadequately prepared.

There’s a link to the Today Show interview with three of The Wiggles here. They also did Sunrise.

Not to have an answer when asked how a freshly-unemployed Sam Moran felt when your media release stressed he was fine was a stumble that sent the wrong message.

So was Blue Wiggle Anthony Field saying he and Sam hadn’t spoken. It was at odds with the public position that this was an amicable departure.

Anthony  agreed with an on-air statement that Sam had been a hired hand. It might have been factual but it looked insensitive and if well prepared he could have easily sidestepped it.  

You can’t take it back.

If you make a mistake, fix it as soon as possible.

The Wiggles’ Facebook page has 86,000 people liking it. The announcement about Sam’s departure attracted 6000 comments in two days - many of them furious.

Anthony made an apologetic and measured clarification of the ”hired hand” issue. It has so far attracted 1800+ comments and the tone seems much more positive.

Correctly responding to social media is a judgement game. Respond too late or at all, sometimes, and you can keep an issue alive. In this instance it was the right step.

Build the story, own the narrative.

The Wiggles have great access to media. They need not to have been on the back foot.

It would have been far better to have selectively released the news that Sam Moran was leaving to pursue other opportunities and create some positive PR about the hunt to find someone to replace him.  

Manage the story. Run an online campaign and then drop the bombshell that Greg was back. He could have wished Sam well and set the agenda on the group’s future.

There needed to be some distance put between Sam’s departure and Greg’s return. A joint media conference with all five Wiggles would have been a good look.  

The turn of events that occurred led some to compare the situation to the coup that installed Julia Gillard for Kevin Rudd. Ouch!

 

While on the Wiggles, can you identify the member of the Lighthouse
Communications team who appears in this clip? 

PM's delivery causing messages to mis-fire

There's a great analysis of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech patterns by the director of the University of NSW's Voice Research Laboratory online that provides insights into the way the public perceives its leaders.

The Centre's Kate Madill observes "a lack of spontaneity (and) a highly controlled delivery...are likely to induce perceptions that Julia is being unnatural, rehearsed and disingenuous – that is, we think it’s all spin".

Kate says "trying too hard to get the message across may be getting in the way of the real message...when Julia tells us she feels passionately about an issue, we don’t hear it in her speech."

It's a first-class analysis of what media trainers and commentators have been saying since Julia Gillard came into the job. The Opposition cottoned onto her ill-ease with media durign the last election campaign with taunts about "real Julia" assisted by some loose messaging.

Before you get all uppity about this sort of analysis being at the heart of an unhealthy obsession with style over substance, ask yourself this: "What's wrong with enhancing skills that make you a better communicator when you're communicating with millions of people?"

More from Kate Madill here but it's a thought worth considering whether you're the PM of Australia or the chairman of an internal meeting. If you want your message to stick, make it easier for your audience.

Don't shed a tear for Tony - it's all his own work

People die in natural disasters and the Prime Minister cries in Parliament. A Digger dies in Afghanistan and the Opposition Leader declares “shit happens”. Of course they’re reactions to separate issues, but could there be a sharper contrast in the images being projected by our political leaders?

Just a few days before her tearful speech to Parliament Julia Gillard was being derided as a “robot”, devoid of empathy. The Real Julia was a term of derision. She was being compared unfavourably with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, whose textbook media performance in the face of natural disaster belied her own woeful public opinion polling.

Gillard’s reaction looked, and undoubtedly was, entirely un-staged. It led the evening news and was plastered all over today’s newspapers. It underlines that what occurs in the cold glare of cameras in the Federal House of Representatives still counts in setting public agendas.

Outside the Parliament, what a difference a Tony Abbott stumble and abjectly ill-advised attempt at recovery makes.

Yes, Abbott was confronted with vision of himself making an off-hand remark that Channel Seven had obtained under FOI, but it wasn’t an ambush if his advisers had been told about it before he agreed to be interviewed. Yet his response to seeing himself on film was protracted, uncomfortable silence before a terse, defensive statement that he’d already given the answers Mark Riley’s questions deserved.

The claim that his comment was taken out of context only flies so far, and anyway is a hazard of his trade.

The first question anyone should ask when given an opportunity to speak to the media is: “Should I be doing this interview?” Of course Abbott had to front Seven. It defies comprehension that he didn’t have an answer ready.

The even more basic rule that applies to public figures is that the microphone is always on. Anything you say or do may be taken down and used in evidence, even if it’s being shot by a supposedly “tame” Defence Department camera crew.

Tony Abbott’s leadership is no more in free-fall than Julia Gillard’s has suddenly found direction, but the dynamics of “contrast and compare” between the leaders are much sharper today.