What is media training and why is it necessary?
Most people will go through life without being exposed directly to the media. Most people don’t give a second thought to the interviews they see in the papers or on TV, other than of course to believe most of what they see. After all if you gave an interview willingly, the journalist would have captured what you said or meant – right? er.. wrong! This is not always the case! Sometimes you mean to say something; you don’t quite convey it in the right way and voilà it appears in print and suddenly you are getting phone calls from friends or business associates asking you why you went there!
Media training is meant to prevent those kind of situations and to present you in the best light possible. It is supposed to arm you with the wherewithal to answer correctly and calmly as well as understand what is being asked of you. Media training is used for all kinds of situations but probably the most popular usage right now comes after the proverbial ‘sh*t hits the fan’. Don’t you love watching those press conferences where the unfaithful politician husband has to address the world and tell them he made a ‘mistake’ (ten times) and is going into rehab for a month to cure his addiction? Scripted, planned, trained – right down to how he looks directly into the camera lens and asks the nation for forgiveness.
Obviously in Nigeria we never get to see this sort of thing because what is termed as a ‘mistake’ abroad is the norm here.
Subsequent write-ups will feature essentials of media training and why any company or individual in the public eye should be trained.