Ep 149 What if Other TV Panelists Are Attacking Your Positions - Media Training May 28, 2016

If you're a part of a panel discussion on a television program and one of the other panelists is wildly attacking your positions and spouting all sorts of inflammatory stereotypes and caricatures.

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This question comes from Gabriella. She says, TJ, often we're invited and she is a United nations official. You're invited to TV programs together with one or more guests. It may happen that another guest is expressing strong opinions completely opposite to what we stand for. Maybe bringing up stereotypes which are negative and affect the topic. For example, negative rhetoric about refugees, stereotypes detrimental to refugees, accusations, demonization, etc. What's the best strategy for dealing with this? Respond by saying you disagree and say why? That is deconstructing the stereotypes. Should you respond by focusing on your messages and not openly contradicting the other person's message? Of course not repeating the negatives like you did not hear what was said. I've been in these situations and I've said things like this is how we see things and went on with messages that maybe there's a wiser or more strategic way to do things. Well, Gabrielle, thanks so much for the question. Here is my approach, as always, as many things dealing with the media training and presentation training. It depends on the context. Since you are a United nations official, you're working with a huge huge organization, you're supported by huge governments all over the world. So my strategy for you is different than if you are say a candidate for a political office and you are startup situation where you have very little funds. That would be a completely different strategy. You are a big player in the scheme of things, so that affects your strategy. I think that your general approach was actually on track and that is to say here's how we see things and state what you want to in a positive way. That's much better than rebutting someone point by point and repeating all their negatives. So let me use an example different from yours. If someone writes in and says TJ you're fat, bald, ugly and boring, I don't want to start off with saying, well, James says I'm fat, bald, boring and ugly. I'm actually not fat, bald, boring and ugly. And I've got a letter here from someone saying, well, T.J. you're not fat, bald, boring and ugly. You're actually interesting and useful. The problem in that situation is someone has now heard three or four times, TJ is fat, bald, boring and ugly. It reinforces it every time. Even though intellectually my argument is that I'm interesting and useful. What people hear is the negatives attacked again and again and again. And that's why it's not a good strategy. So I think you need to take the high road. Rather than getting angry and fighting back, interrupting or screaming. When you do represent a large institution, whether it's a government entity, a United Nations, a huge non government organization, a huge political operation, you need to take the high road. I wouldn't interrupt. Someone says something you think is obviously patently full of baloney or devoid of a factual basis, then as you stated in your letter, starting off with something actually and going right to what you want to say. So in my hypothetical example, if someone wrote in attacking me, I would say, actually I've been very pleased with the response to this program and I've received letters every day. Here's one from Samantha saying, tj, your daily podcast is very helpful because of an X, Y and Z. I wouldn't repeat the negatives because I don't want to reinforce the negatives. Now it's a different strategy if you are a smaller player and you're battling against someone really big. In that case, I might interrupt, I might even repeat it to put a spotlight on something I think is patently absurd. More tips and tactics on this issue in just a moment.

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So here's the real challenge, and I've certainly faced this. Having been a political talk show host and as a guest on literally thousands of Talk radio and TV shows discussing political issues over the last 30 plus years. There's always the danger when you are on a panel discussion that there is someone who is an extremist of some sort who is just spouting off such complete, utter nonsense, defaming things, vicious stereotypes, that if you spend all your time correcting them, you're essentially letting them win because they are defining the terms of the debate and you have to be very, very careful about that. It is an unfortunate part of our political process. If you are rational, logical, linear thinker and you respect facts and you're debating someone who just doesn't care and they're going to slam you, slime you, attack you, vilify you, it is a very tough situation. Now you can win. Humor comes in very handy in situations like this. You have to be strategic though. You have to figure out exactly how to puncture that. So for example, if I'M debating someone in my own field who I consider to be a complete nincompoop, for example, and they are spouting off the old saw and it's not true. But there's this old saying that there was a study done in 1972 at UCLA that shows that 55% of all communication is body language, 37% is your voice, and only 7% of communication is what you say. Now it's not true, that's not what the study says. But that's what basically ignorant people who profess to be public speaking experts and body language experts constantly spout that. So my response to that is, and this is not an original observation for me, others have pointed this out, I forgot where I first saw this is okay, if that's the situation, get up here and give a speech to people on a serious subject and use a different language or don't use any words and let's just test and see how much comes through. Let's make sure 93% is still communicated. That of course shuts them up because it shows the complete utter absurdity of that. That can be persuasive when you can ask a question or focus on one thing that shows the absurdity now as it relates to the question from Gabriella who wrote in with respect to the refugee crisis, rather than saying, well, no, refugees are not all murderers or terrorists or violent criminals, you don't want to repeat the negatives. You can say things like actually all the statistics show that the highest rates of crime are coming from domestic, from people within that country who were born there and were citizens there. Or all the statistics show that you have a much lower crime rate from refugees. But start off with something positive. The human brain unfortunately tends to remember negative. So if someone is attacking you and you're repeating the negatives, it's just a lot more memorable than if you say something positive. But if everything out of your mouth is positive, specific to your message, your issues, and the only negative is puncturing the illogic or the absurdity of your opponent, you're much more likely to be effective. So please keep those tips in mind. More final comments in just a moment.

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The other big issue that I find is important when you are on some kind of a panel discussion on TV or radio and perhaps there's just one other guest is your overall demeanor. If you constantly act like you're incredibly annoyed and this person has gotten under your skin emotionally, it sets a vibe that they're winning and you're losing. So something I like to do is to sort of exude the sense that I can't believe how well I'm doing. I almost feel sorry for this person because they're so ill informed. Now the key is you got to be very careful about this. You don't want to seem condescending because you respect your audience. You don't necessarily respect your opponent, but you're going to be respectful of your opponent. There's a huge, huge difference. And you're simply going to have to let the audience make up their own mind. But you don't want to be reduced to sort of a sputtering, blubbering mass of rage where you keep on saying, well, I can't believe you said that. It's not true that, that it's not true that you can't simply focus on what your opponent is saying that isn't true. You have to focus on what is true. That first and foremost has to be your priority. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life and your media interviews in life be a success.

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