TJ Walker shares how to stay focused during media interviews. Ignore distractions unless it's a serious emergency, keep your eyes on the questioner, and stick to your message points. He recalls a live NBC interview derailed by crew arguments and a media training in Lebanon that lost power mid-session.
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So what do you do if there's a distraction during a media interview? Obviously, if something literally falls on your head and you're in pain, stop the interview. Deal with the issue at hand. You could be bleeding. There are bigger issues at hand, but anything short of that, my advice is ignore your surroundings. Just follow the lead of the reporter, the anchor. It's not bothering them, it's not bothering the sounds engineer. Just keep doing it. Now, I've had situations before where people start screaming next to me while I'm doing an interview where there's people distracting, tossing papers behind me. Once I was at NBC being interviewed by MSNBC by remote, had an earpiece. The two camera people start yelling at each other over whose turn it is for a smoke break, right as I'm being asked a question live on national tv. Distracting. I had to just deal with it. Now, I've seen some people who have a lot more discipline than I do and a lot better ability to focus. Last year I was doing a media training in Lebanon, and I'm training a United nations official. All of a sudden, all the power goes out. Now, my camera and a little teeny light on my camera had. It was powered by a battery, so I was able to keep recording. And there was still a light. And all the lights in this giant hotel and this giant conference room were going flittering and then went completely dark. I'm thinking, oh, no, is there an attack? Have we been. I'm a little bit scared, frankly. But the person I interviewed in the mock training just kept on going, asked him a question, and he just hit all of his message points, had his sound bites, kept on going. We kept on going. We finally stopped. And I said, wow, what amazing discipline you have. And focus. He's like, what are you talking about? I said, you kept on doing that interview. All the power went out, all the lights went out. He said, oh, you know what? I didn't even notice. He was. He was based in Syria, so for him it's unusual if the power doesn't go out constantly. That was his norm, that was his world. So it didn't bother him a bit. I'm not suggesting you have to take hardship assignments to get tough for media interviews. But the lesson here, when you're in an interview, give it your total focus. Don't be checking out your email, even if it's a radio interview. No one can see you because you're on the phone. Don't be looking at the people around you or the camera person or the monitor. Just focus on the questioner. The questions, your message and your sound bites and let other people worry about the other stuff.
