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"Off
The Record"
What
Does It Really Mean?
It has got to be the most
frequent question asked in media training: “Should I ever go off
the record?”
There appears to be a huge
amount of confusion about what it actually means and plenty of
apprehension about the consequences of telling a journalist
anything in confidence.
The recent case of The
Australian newspaper reporting the supposedly off-the-record
comments of embattled senator, Ross Lightfoot, illustrates the
potential for background briefings to go awry.
So here is a background
briefing on speaking off-the-record.
Firstly what does it mean?
The trouble is that it can mean two very different things. If
there’s confusion about which form of off-the-record is being used,
then inevitably it will end in someone’s tears – and usually not
the reporter’s.
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“Unable to respond to a Journalist?”
How to minimise the damage
One of the
hardest parts of the job for media spokespeople and their
communications gatekeepers is being unable to respond to a request
or question from a journalist.
The reasons
for declining may be authentic and varied but this is a time when
you risk relationships which are valuable and may have been built
over a long period.
Whatever the reason
- inappropriate timing at a strategic level
- unwillingly or unsuitable spokespeople
- commercial-in-confidence
Avoiding a question or declining to reply has the potential to
damage your relationship with a journalist, or to cause that person
to hold a negative attitude towards you - but it doesn’t have
to.
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“Journalists
just make it up : I didn’t say that!”
How
to avoid being misquoted
Many people, experienced and
inexperienced, speak of times when they believe they have been
‘misquoted’ by print journalists – usually when the words
attributed to them cause, rather than solve, internal or external
issues.
As with many media
communications skills, it is a tricky area and there are fine lines
between what is and isn’t a ‘misquote'.
In attempt to illustrate
this, let’s look at where the lines are.
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Do Your
Media Releases Have Punch?
Changing
from the Passive to the Active
Journalists
often complain that the releases they receive are boring, verbose
and altogether, uninspiring. Far from the objective of stimulating
a story!
Active
verbs breathe life into an otherwise dead press release. Strong
verbs dance on the page and leap off the computer screen. Although
there are times when passive verbs are unavoidable, shun them at
all costs.
Let’s start at the basics. A sentence is essentially a subject -
something performing the action, followed by a verb - which is the
action, and usually there is an object - something that receives
the action. For example, “She twirls batons.” She is the subject,
twirls is the verb, and batons is the object.
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