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When Maggie Ogunbanwo's family home and business was the target of a hate crime, growing her profile couldn’t have been further from her mind.

A good apology can go along way to salvaging a reputation during a crisis. But, as regular readers of this blog will know, not all apologies are created equally.

Sometimes it is the shortest interviews that catch your attention. Listening to the radio the other day, it was not the endless reports and debates on Covid testing or the latest Brexit development on the Internal Markets Bill that stood out.

We’ve always prided ourselves on making our media training courses as close to the real thing as possible.

We’ve highlighted several media interviews recently where spokespeople have tried to manage difficult questions by answering something completely different.

Sometimes there are plenty of things for your organisation to shout about and use to try to gain crucial media coverage.

It is always great when you lovely readers and our social media followers let us know about interviews that you would like us to focus on in this media training blog.

Imagine you are in a broadcast interview and a journalist asks you something you simply do not know how to answer.

We’ve looked in some detail in this media training blog about how coronavirus has changed the broadcast media landscape.

“What do you think?” On the face of it, it is a simple enough question. But for many media spokespeople, it appears particularly unwelcome and they continually stumble over attempts from journalists to gain a personal opinion.

If you heard a media spokesperson talk about ‘being synonymous with circularity’, would you know what they were talking about?

Zoom has become a household name in the past few months. Media interviews, meetings with teams and clients, school lessons and even catch-ups with friends have been taking place online.

Radio might lack the glamour of TV. And it may not create the storms that newspapers can generate. But it can grab attention like nothing else and it presents a great opportunity for your organisation to get its message across.

“Guff.” That was the verdict of one journalist on a statement he was handed when a company refused to make a spokesperson available.

It is always interesting when we ask for delegates’ perceptions of journalists and the media at the start of our media training courses.

How would you feel about working from home until the summer of next year? That idea may fill you with dread if you’ve been longing for a return to the office. Others may have adapted to this new way of working and be pleased that it is set to continue.

Boris Johnson is on the lookout for a spokesperson to front live press briefings that will be televised to the country.

Do you have a Garmin watch? If you don’t, you probably know someone who uses the GPS and fitness tracking equipment.

Imagine a journalist turning around to you or your spokesperson mid-interview and asking ‘why are you answering the questions like that?’.

One day we are looking at the problems Huawei is facing in media interviews and the next we are analysing an interview about turning grouse moor into a nature reserve.

When we look in this media training blog at the mistakes that are made in media interviews, we often focus on the performance of individual spokespeople.

One bank has been giving its customers plenty of reasons to scowl in the past few days. Technology woes left them unable to access their accounts for days.

“What’s your favourite cheese?” Not the type of question you would expect to face from one of our current working journalist tutors during one of our media training courses.

The lockdown is gradually easing and more of normal life is slowly returning. Many businesses either have teams already back in the workplace or are planning for a safe return in the coming weeks and months.

We are all now using words and phrases every day that few of us had heard of at the start of the year.

If you tuned into the radio yesterday morning you may have heard a journalist repeatedly ask a spokesperson to provide an example to support a claim.

This weekend marks a significant next step in the easing of lockdown restrictions. Pub, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, hotels, caravan parks, theme parks and bingo halls are among the businesses and attractions that can reopen on Saturday (4/7) as the two-metre social distancing rule is replaced by ‘one metre plus’.

Have you stopped looking to gain positive media coverage because of the coronavirus pandemic? If you have, then you are not alone.

Without scoring a goal or even kicking a ball, Marcus Rashford became one of the heroes of the lockdown. The Premier League star’s campaigning has helped more than a million disadvantaged children get access to a free meal during the school summer holidays.

Little by little more normality is returning to our lives. We are now able to meet more people, play some sports and non-essential shops have opened their doors for the first time in months.