James Cleverly last week added his name to a long list of senior politicians who said something unwise, only to find it had been caught on microphone and made it to the front pages. It all began when Labour MP Alex Cunningham asked Rishi Sunak at Prime Minister’s Questions, ‘Why are 34% of children in […]
‘I don’t want to be like one of those politicians that never answers a question.’ It is something we hear from almost everybody we media train. And we understand why so many would hate to feel they were behaving ‘like a politician’. In fact, once trained by us, any spokesperson will know that one of […]
One of the key components of preparing a presentation, or messages for a media interview, is to find and then communicate key numbers. If you are at a dinner party or down the pub it is fine to have opinions without numbers. But, if you step into the world of professional communication, my advice is […]
A very old member of our extended family was on her death bed when my father-in-law went to see her for the last time. She was one of the last of several generations of women who had mostly been, what she would have called, a housewife. As she lay in hospital there was no stepping […]
A client alerted me to an uncomfortable interview on Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday. New Transport Minister, Mark Harper, ‘took one for the boss’ and accepted an interview on Radio 4’s Today Programme, despite the fact that the media is awash with rumours about cancellations or delays to HS2. The boss, Rishi Sunak, was […]
In my view, the seven-bin policy – which we should all theoretically support – was never going to hit the mainstream. [If you are not familiar with this news story, check out BBC coverage here.] And that is because of a simple but remarkably resilient rule: all lists should be three, at least in the […]
I know which I prefer. SEXI is apparently a mnemonic device used by university debating societies. I only know this because someone pointed out to me that this had featured in a recent Guardian article by Simon Usborne entitled: Don’t steamroll, and go easy on the stats: how to win an argument – without making […]
A moving account of the death of a 13-year-old in an NHS hospital aired for 22 minutes on Radio 4’s Today Programme on Monday morning. The teenager who died was Martha Mills and her mother Merope Mills is spearheading a campaign to change NHS rules so that calling for an urgent second opinion is the […]
‘The Kiss’ has dominated news headlines around the world, sadly overshadowing the remarkable and laudable victory of the Spanish Women’s football team in the Women’s World Cup. As ever, we comment on the media lessons rather than the rights and wrongs of an argument. And the media lesson from this debacle is as old as […]
Playing with one of the generative AI apps last week I put in: how to run a good press conference. In a few seconds it generated a creditable if bland 500 words which basically covered be prepared, maintain your composure and be respectful to the journalists. Three protocols that were exactly the opposite of what […]