Before the internet came along, a bad TV interview performance could haunt you for quite a long time.
TV stations might keep running your embarrassingly poor interview responses until – eventually – they would typically tire of replaying them.
These days a media encounter – where the interviewee effectively sets fire to his or her reputation – routinely finds its way onto the internet to lurk there forever!
Such disaster interviews linger for anyone who seeks them out – and for those who just happen to stumble across them.
This issue focuses on two such atrocious interview performances which fall into this dreaded “out there forever” category.
One such interview is with a man who set out to lie his way to win the so-called ‘reality’ TV show “The Apprentice”.
The contestant was caught telling untruths so blatantly in a screening interview that the video is still being sought out on YouTube six years after it was recorded.
The other “out there forever” interview is with a man who – when he recorded it with BBC’s Newsnight programme in 2019 – was a duke and a prince…. and also a resident of Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
These days he’s neither a duke nor a prince and – as of this week – has been forced out of his old life as a resident luxuriating in the grounds around Windsor Castle.
We are guided to refer to him nowadays merely as “Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor”.
But the appalling interview he did while still a prince and a duke remains out there to haunt him – even while he carries on in disgrace with his new diminished status.
Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s primary sins were doings that flowed from his relationship with the late paedophile American businessman, Jeffrey Epstein.
But by not getting himself properly trained and prepared for that Newsnight interview, then-Prince Andrew contributed significantly to his public downgrading and notoriety.
With an avalanche of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal released to dominate the news over the past week, the interview is again being replayed over and over.
If you need to be reminded of how dodgy some of his answers were, this NBC compilation will refresh your memory of the most embarrassing moments.
If you ever find yourself or your company in any predicament – though hopefully it will never be as bad as the one Prince Andrew set up for himself – media interview response training can help you prepare to convey your best planned honest persuasive explanations.
In media training interviews, after careful practising, you benefit from seeing playbacks of your test-out answers.
Such sessions would have helped Prince Andrew to realise how damaging and pathetic it looked to rely on his dubious claim not to remember the woman who was making credible allegations against him.
Media training may have enabled him to understand that explaining why he stayed several days at Epstein’s residence – when he was in New York to supposedly call off his damaging friendship with the paedophile – would never win over the audience.
And playbacks of his pathetic defence that “it was a convenient place to stay” should have prompted anyone with some intelligence to understand that such a justification is neither persuasive, reasonable nor believable.
Media interview response training helps team members and individuals to plan, prepare and practise formulating and delivering great answers to tough questions.
You can find out more about effective media interview response training sessions at:
https://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/media-master-classes/
Participants in media interview response training sessions are confronted with ‘blowtorch-on-the belly’ questions to benefit in a way that helps them realise the importance of thoughtful, credible truth-telling.
This process just might have prodded Prince Andrew to avoid making the false claims on TV that have been rebounding on him badly ever since.
In the Newsnight interview he suggested that the infamous photo of him with his arm around the woman who became his most prominent accuser, the late Virginia Giuffre, had been partially or completely faked.
Alas it’s never too late to be caught out for old lies!
Amidst the mass of documents just released by the U.S. Department of Justice is a crucial message sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 by his jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
In a document – headed “draft statement” – Maxwell makes reference to the genuine nature of the infamous photograph being taken in 2001 when Prince Andrew was in her London flat.
“A photo was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family,” Ghislaine Maxwell explained.
The name of the person next to Prince Andrew has been redacted in the published version of the statement.
But journalists sifting through the Ministry of Justice documents agree that other details within the document indicate Maxwell was discussing Virginia Giuffre.
This latest disclosure underlines the vital media training lesson that interviewees should only utter exact truths.
Media training participants also learn to avoid saying anything which could become a so-called “hostage to fortune” that could come back to bite them at some point in the future.
The importance of speaking truth in all professional situations is further underlined in another “forever out there interview”- as promised earlier – from The Apprentice.
This example concerns a contestant called Daniel who clearly struggled to realise the importance of truth-telling.
The BBC show put Daniel and his fellow contestants through a rigorous business conversation with a man called Mike Soutar who is highly experienced at asking “blowtorch-on-the-belly” questions.
Like all good interrogators, Mike Soutar benefits from meticulous research done in advance.
He deployed evidence that Daniel’s fledgling business career in the real world was not nearly as effective as he was publicly claiming.
Armed with this intelligence, Mike Soutar – after being subjected to a series of evasions and falsehoods – eventually squeezes the truth out of Daniel.
But if you watch through to the very end, we learn that Daniel is so wedded to misrepresentation that he even claims to his fellow Apprentice contestants that his encounter with Mike Soutar was both “smooth” and “easy”.
You can judge this description for yourself by checking out the video here:
Sessions on “Give Great Answers To Tough Questions” can empower everyone who needs to perform effectively and honestly in professional situations.
These can be in challenging conversations with clients, prospects, business partners, suppliers, officials and during public inquiries.
There are more details at:
https://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/give-great-answers-to-tough-questions/
And Great Answers sessions can even help prepare you for reality TV shows – where unsuccessful interactions can potentially remain on the internet to bedevil you forever!