TJ Walker explains why media interviews are different from normal conversations: reporters edit ruthlessly, so every sentence must stand alone. A phrase pulled from context can make you look bad, which is why you need specific strategies for answering questions on camera.
Chapters
So you know how to look comfortable on camera, that's great. You know how to shape a message, that's great. You can deliver the message, that's fine. But you can't just go to a reporter and say, here's my message, take it or leave it. Bye. It doesn't work that way. You have to subject yourself to questions. You have to answer questions. Now, this should be easy because after all, you've been answering questions from people your whole life. Your parents, family, friend, teachers, people you work with, perhaps investors, board of directors. This is the same thing, right? No, it's not the same thing. It is completely different from any other question answer session, from any other conversation you've ever had in your entire life. Why is that? Is it because reporters are just strange, exotic beasts? No, it's because the absence, this lack of context of how your words are going to come out at the end. Because a reporter can interview you, talk to you, have a conversation with you for 10 minutes, an hour, two hours, two days, two years, and only one three or four word phrase is all that gets in the final story. So your ideas are going to be pulled out of the context of the whole conversation. Now, you can't complain about that because you know in advance it has to be done that way. Unless someone tells you it's a live interview or it's going to be a full transcript, you know, it has to be edited down because of that. It changes every aspect of how you answer questions. Because it's not enough to have an intelligent answer, it's not enough to have a thorough answer. Every part of your answer has to stand on its own and not make you look bad, but also help advance your cause. So you have to look at your answers through the lens of not how does the whole thing sound from the standpoint of a conversation, not how does it stand up in terms of the intellectual composition of should be good for both of those things. But it also has to still come out okay, sentence by sentence. Because if there's even one sentence, even half of a sentence that can be taken out of context, that make you look bad, stupid, foolish, ill informed, insensitive, then it's not a good answer. So that's what this next section is going to do. It's going to give you strategies, tactics, tips on how to answer questions in a media interview.
