When it comes to dealing with tough questions – in media interviews and other professional conversations – there are two pathetic things which are particularly bad to be caught doing.
The first is to be spotted deviously avoiding giving an honest answer to the question.
The second is to try desperately distracting your audience by saying something dramatic and irrelevant on a completely different topic which is wrong, silly or damaging.
Together, these features make up what’s known as the “Dead Cat” strategy.
It’s not pretty.
Never, never, never use this strategy!
When people deploy “Dead Cat” distractions, it becomes very, very, very obvious that they are trying to avoid answering an embarrassing and/or difficult question.
It can get them into big trouble!
If you have any doubts about this, just examine what’s happened to two high profile people who’ve put the “Dead Cat” approach into action.
One is a British politician called Boris Johnson who tried it very recently – and is now finding that it’s making it even harder for him to cling onto his job as Prime Minister.
The other is an Australian politician called Bob Katter Junior who tried his “Dead Cat” approach – involving crocodile attacks – five years ago.
He was laughed at so much that it became ever-harder for many to take him seriously.
We’ll look at the specifics of both examples shortly – with an additional exceptionally paranoid-style “Non-Dead Cat” bonus interview near the end of this column!
But first, let’s be clear how “Dead Cat” strategy is defined.
Alas it’s so ingrained in the dubious underworld of backroom dark arts that it even has its own Wikipedia entry.
According to Wikipedia, “Dead Cat” strategy involves “the introduction of a dramatic, shocking or sensationalist topic to divert discourse away from a more damaging topic.”
Through the eyes of any truth-seeking questioner, when they spot a “Dead Cat” answer, they will typically suspect that the “Dead Cat” thrower has something to hide.
The more obvious the “Dead Cat” the more desperate the “Dead Cat Thrower” appears to be.
BORIS JOHNSON AND HIS “DEAD CAT”
Boris Johnson deployed his “Dead Cat” strategy in a non-answer to (yet another) parliamentary question about the now the infamous – and numerous – rule-breaking parties at 10 Downing Street.
These parties breached the government’s own Coronavirus rules designed to keep people safer through “social distancing” – making the Prime Minister and his staff highly vulnerable to voter accusations of “one set of rules for us and different rules, or no rules, for them”.
The particularly bleeding obvious Boris Johnson “Dead Cat” was used to try to distract attention from the potentially politically-fatal partying issues he’s being asked about in parliament.
The “Dead Cat” he deployed involved claiming that the PM’s chief questioner, Opposition Leader Sir Kier Starmer, had – in his previous role as Director of Public Prosecutions – avoided prosecuting the disgraced dead celebrity paedophile, Jimmy Savile.
No publicly available evidence has emerged to support the Prime Minister’s claim.
And as Jimmy Savile died in 2011 – after having sexually abused as many as 500 young people – his crimes clearly had nothing to do with Downing Street parties in the 2020s.
You can check out the video of Boris Johnson’s “Dead Cat” claim regarding Jimmy Savile at:
The “Dead Cat” claim has become far more damaging to Boris Johnson than it has for Sir Kier.
The Prime Minister’s “Dead Cat” miscalculation has became even harder to shake off as some of Boris Johnson’s ministers have refused to publicly support his claim.
It became even worse when one of his long-term senior advisors, who says she had urged him not to use the unsubstantiated slur, criticised her boss over it publicly as she resigned in disgust at the fact that he would not take her advice to apologise.
If you’re asked a professional question – and you give a non-answer which is as distanced from relevance as the Boris Johnson “Dead Cat” reply was – it will not serve you well.
If you’re asked a professional question and you give a reply which is as far removed from truth as this answer was, it will harm you more than anyone else.
If you’re not protected by what’s called “parliamentary privilege”, as MPs are when speaking in parliament, you could even end up in court seeking to try to defend the indefensible.
THE AUSTRALIAN “DEAD CAT”
The best known Australian ‘Dead Cat” answer was thrown by the colourful North Queensland politician, Bob Katter Junior.
However, many found his distraction efforts – involving killer crocodile attacks – laughable.
Even this Australian crocodile pictured below seems to be laughing!
The Australian Federal MP deployed his “Dead Cat” to explain why he had not wanted to devote time to the then hot issue of legalising same-sex marriage in Australia before it became law.
Bob Katter’s logic – explained at the time in 2017 – was because the gay marriage debate was supposedly distracting attention away from the more pressing issue of people being killed in crocodile attacks in North Queensland.
So Bob Katter’s Queensland variation of the “Dead Cat” strategy became something of a “Dead Crocodile Victim” strategy.
And seriously scary though crocodile attacks are, Bob Katter’s blatant distraction attempt was laughed at when highlighted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – and has been laughed at ever since.
You can check it out here at:
And just as Boris Johnson’s “Dead Cat” was not supported by evidence, Bob Katter’s was also inaccurate – perhaps something of a trade mark among “Dead Cat” hurlers.
Figures kept by Australia’s National Critical Care & Trauma Response Centre showed that at the time of Bob Katter’s infamous “Dead Cat” utterance, it was a gross exaggeration to say that one person was being killed in a crocodile attack in North Queensland every 3 months.
In fact, the rate of human casualties from crocodiles was, for the whole of Australia, measured at one death every 10 months.
So the “Dead Cat” thrower has been badly bitten by his own “crocodile tales” – my own personal exquisitely badly mixed metaphor for the situation!
GETTING HELP WITH YOUR ANSWERS
When facing any tough professional question, what you should be doing is giving an immediate honest reply – before going on to convey an important “message” on the same topic.
You can learn precisely how to do it in this book after clicking here:
You can also find out how to give the best possible answers by booking individual or group sessions on “Give Great Answers To Tough Questions” at:
http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/give-great-answers-to-tough-questions/
The secrets of giving great answers – and other communication-boosting guidance – can also be conveyed in conference keynotes… face-to-face and online:
http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/speaking-at-your-event/
DON’T INTERVIEW YOUR INTERVIEWER
Learning how to give great answers to tough questions can also stop you looking unnecessarily inept in front of a large media audience.
If you do want to look paranoid in a broadcast interview, one of the best things is never try to interview the interviewers when they ask you a question.
This cringe-worthy approach is demonstrated in the following video by the British Minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries, as she tries to defend her embattled Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
Do be aware that if you want to look competent and well-balanced in a media interview, never say: “Why are you asking me that question?”
Very occasionally it may be necessary – and perfectly acceptable – to ask for clarification to ascertain what exactly the interviewer wants to know.
But for most of the interview time you should be looking for opportunities to get across an important relevant message – just as a striker in football will seek to find every chance to kick a goal.
If a football striker fluffed as many opportunities as Nadine Dorries missed in this interview, a competent football manager would take her off the field.
Keep smiling as ever – but never smile at a crocodile disguised as a “Dead Cat”.