Seat at the Table

I’m voting for Campbell Brown as the most important media person this year in the 2008 elections.

When Campbell Brown of CNN asked McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds about Palin’s experience, Mr. Bounds did what he was trained to do - he answered the question he wanted to answer and not the question asked.  But instead of doing what political media often (sadly) do and moving on to the next question, Ms. Brown pressed Mr. Tucker to answer the question he was asked.   Mr. Tucker was woefully unprepared and looked like he was avoiding the question (Watch the video and judge for yourself - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxMCp1vydEI).

Now, the McCain campaign has canceled a Larry King interview supposedly as punishment.    The result is risking a reputation for looking like they can’t or won’t answer the tough questions which opens up another “just like Bush” line of attack.

The problem was that Mr. Tucker, like most people in politics, was only trained to answer the question he wanted to answer.  While this is a well established and practiced media relations practice, it shows an incomplete media relations training.   Mr. Tucker was obviously not trained on what to do if a journalist presses on a tough question. 

We work most often with business and trade media.  While we do train our clients to get their message out by redirecting to answers they want to give, we also train and prepare them to make sure they answer the question asked in the most direct way possible.  It’s not simply to avoid a Tucker Bounds situation but to show transparency and create goodwill both with the audience and the journalist.  Whether it is a politician or business executive and regardless of whether a journalist pushes or not, people see when the person being interviewed is avoiding the question.   For audiences, avoiding the question reinforces the lack of transparency and truthfulness in politics.  Just imaging if a CEO avoided answering a question on explaining why the company missed earnings and simply talked about their vision?  One word - skewered. 

Beyond the PR lessons, my main hope for this political season is that, regardless of who wins, more journalists take note of Campbell Brown and realize that when they ask a question they should get an answer to that question.  And when they don’t, it should be noted publicly.  If this was standard practice, we would start seeing the transparency and truthfulness from politicians we all seek.