What Is Media Training? | Public Speaking

So what is media training? Media training is something to help prepare you for media interviews. And what's different about a media interview is you can be edited. Your ideas, your words can be sliced, diced. Not only can you be quoted out of context, you will be quoted out of context. They will pull a quote out of the context of the entire conversation you had. When you go through media training, a good trainer will help you with four very specific areas. The first is how to look comfortable, confident, relaxed, authoritative. Anytime you have to be in front of one of these, a video camera. The second skill you'll learn is how to shape a media message. If you're going into a media interview, that's not the time to give people a bullet point speech. With 89 points, you've got to narrow it down to three parts. Something you can say in 30 seconds. A clean, clear, crisp message. The third thing you'll learn in media training is how to answer questions in an interview. It's not like a normal conversation. Now, a good media trainer is not going to teach you to be a phony baloney politician dodging questions. You can't dodge questions, but you have to answer them in a specific way where you're not repeating negatives and not giving complex answers and are answering in a simple, clear way and bridging back to your message points. The fourth skill, the final skill, and in many ways the most important thing you'll learn is how to package your messages with sound bites, with quotes, so that you know before the interview even starts, exactly word for word quote you're going to see in that story or the sound bite you'll see on the evening news. And that's what you'll learn from media training.