Dealing With the Press

Posted by Cyn

Over the last five years, I’ve done inter­views with many dif­fer­ent national and local tele­vi­sion shows and pub­li­ca­tions about inter­net safety, cyber­stalk­ing and “reg­u­lar” stalk­ing. I’ve also done one Swedish TV show, one show for the BBC, and one inter­view with a British mag­a­zine, .Net. I’ve learned some things about deal­ing with them the hard way, and after I posted some­thing about them to a mail­ing list, one of the read­ers asked if I’d write them up as an arti­cle to which she could link. Here it is.

My expe­ri­ence with the press in the US is just this: they lie. They will do what­ever it takes to get the story they’ve decided they want, no mat­ter what the facts are, no mat­ter who they have to deceive, no mat­ter how much decep­tive edit­ing they have to do. Period.

The BBC folks were the only ones who were hon­est, who did what they said they’d do, who actu­ally did a rea­son­able amount of research on their own, and who didn’t edit my words out of con­text. They made some minor mis­takes, but noth­ing mate­r­ial. Every other show, from 20⁄20 Down­town to the local news, did twist things around to get the sound bites they wanted. Okay, Oprah didn’t, but that show is live (actu­ally, I’d have to say that my expe­ri­ence with them was the best I’ve had with any US media entity).

I’m very, very picky about who I’ll grant inter­views to now. I have very strict rules that the reporters must agree to up front, and if they push, I cut off all con­tact. I get noth­ing from these inter­views — I don’t NEED to do them. They ben­e­fit an orga­ni­za­tion I work with and increase vis­i­bil­ity for an issue that’s impor­tant to me, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let reporters vio­late my bound­aries. I didn’t have these rules in place early on, and I believe I would have avoided sev­eral bad expe­ri­ences if I had already estab­lished them.

The media doesn’t talk to or meet our chil­dren. It is unlikely that they will speak to my part­ner. They don’t get my street address or come to my home or, when I was work­ing out­side the home, my place of busi­ness. They don’t usu­ally find out where I’m work­ing, in fact, because I don’t trust them not to give that infor­ma­tion away some­how. They don’t show any of our vehi­cles on film. They find a neu­tral shoot­ing loca­tion or loca­tions for their shots — I did make an excep­tion in tak­ing two film crews to the range where I did most of my tar­get prac­tice at the time, but I fig­ured that was a fairly safe place that the stalker is likely to avoid any­way (and the range owner was com­pletely happy to coöperate and get some free adver­tis­ing). I don’t change fam­ily plans to do an inter­view, and these days they have to come to Atlanta — it’s too upset­ting to our fam­ily life for me to fly else­where with­out lots and lots of notice and planning.

Most of the reporters/​producers I’ve dealt with are just com­pletely shocked that any­body would even men­tion, much less main­tain, bound­aries. They expect any­one to be so blown away by being HONORED by the fact that they want to inter­view us that we’ll do absolutely ANYTHING to make it hap­pen. Nope, not so. Not here, at least.

Before agree­ing to any kind of media inter­view (espe­cially regard­ing any topic that might be con­sid­ered con­tro­ver­sial), decide what you do and do not want to accom­plish. What pur­pose is served in doing this inter­view? What will you gain, if any­thing, either for you per­son­ally or for an issue that is impor­tant to you? Is the media out­let you’re deal­ing with a respectable one, and is it going to be a good venue to dis­cuss the topic at hand? (Hint: Jerry Springer isn’t a good venue for doing any­thing that you won’t regret hor­ri­bly for a long time. The National Enquirer is not the place to explain your home life or your reli­gious views. And “free­lance jour­nal­ists” can sell what­ever you give them to who­ever they like, with­out any input from you. Don’t bother.)

Find out the scope and focus of the arti­cle. Yes, they’re likely to lie about that, too, but if you don’t ask, you def­i­nitely won’t know. If you want to talk seri­ously about your reli­gious beliefs, and they’re just look­ing for a local witch to inter­view on Hal­loween, you won’t be happy with the results. If you want to encour­age peo­ple to avoid being a vic­tim of crime by think­ing ahead and pro­tect­ing them­selves and their fam­i­lies, and the pro­ducer wants a scare story to encour­age pas­sage of restric­tive leg­is­la­tion that you don’t agree with, you need to tell the pro­ducer to find some­one else to inter­view. If you want to talk about polyamory as a respon­si­ble way to bring more love into your life and show them how healthy and secure your kids are with hav­ing four par­ents instead of two, but the reporter can’t give you an exact time because they aren’t sure how long it’ll take to fin­ish shoot­ing some film at the local swinger’s club, can­cel the inter­view. The focus is on sex, not rela­tion­ships, and will not help your goals at all.

Sit down and estab­lish your own bound­aries. If you have a part­ner or part­ners, you should prob­a­bly include them and think seri­ously about any poten­tial impact on your fam­ily. If you’re talk­ing about, say, polyamory, and some of your SOs aren’t out to their employ­ers or fam­i­lies, is it going to cause trou­ble for those SOs? If you’re doing inter­views about a topic like stalk­ing, as I have, is any­thing said or shown in the inter­view going to com­pro­mise your family’s safety fur­ther? Will doing the inter­view cause any harass­ment you’re expe­ri­enc­ing to worsen (and yes, that’s hap­pened to me every time I’ve done an inter­view — I accept that fact when I agree to one) — or even cause oth­ers to tar­get you for harass­ment due to non-​​mainstream reli­gious beliefs or lifestyles? Is what­ever you’re talk­ing about going to cause trou­ble with your your cur­rent employer, or make it more dif­fi­cult for you to gain future employment?

Once you have your bound­aries estab­lished, stick to them. Firmly. Don’t be pres­sured. Reporters are used to get­ting peo­ple to talk about things they might not want to dis­cuss. They are accus­tomed to manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple. They can come across as your very best friend, and might even promise that some par­tic­u­lar infor­ma­tion is “off the record.” Don’t believe them. Every­thing you say and every­thing they can learn from you, your asso­ciates, and your sur­round­ings is fair game as far as they’re con­cerned. They might claim that it was a deci­sion made by a producer/​editor/​other minor deity later, and that they can’t help it — but still, the dam­age will be done and you’ll have to deal with it while they move on to the next story. I’m sure that some­where out there, there’s an eth­i­cal mem­ber of the press — I just haven’t really encoun­tered them, so I tend to believe that they’re rare. You can­not regret what you do not say, and you can­not ever take back any­thing you do say or any infor­ma­tion you make avail­able. Think first!

Don’t wait to “see how things go” before estab­lish­ing your bound­aries. Media peo­ple are charm­ing. It’s their job. They will be sym­pa­thetic and acco­mo­dat­ing and friendly and oth­er­wise just won­der­ful until they get what they want. You will not want to say no to them. You will want to be coöperative and acco­mo­dat­ing, too, and before you know it you’re doing things you wouldn’t have agreed to if you’d truly thought about them before hand. The time to decide what you will and will not do and say is before the reporter or pro­ducer is in your home or office.

The bot­tom line is that you need to think defen­sively. It isn’t glam­orous to be inter­viewed. There’s no acclaim. Unless you’re wired utterly dif­fer­ently than I am (which might well be, I know), the ego-​​boo just isn’t a big deal.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished 2001

Permalink | July 1st, 2012

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