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Journalists need interesting spokespeople, so those who are bland and say nothing of any real interest are unlikely to be asked to come back again. So if your spokespeople are so fearful of media interview mistakes that they are missing the opportunities they present, what can they do about it?

It’s that time of year where much of the news coverage is filled by exam results. Students across the country have been receiving their A-level, GCSE and BTEC grades. TV screens, radio airwaves and newspapers have been full of students and teachers reacting to the results.

We love it when we hear and see excellent interviews we can highlight in this media training blog.

We've reached day four of our guide to the spokespeople and interviews that stood out for the right reasons this year.

It has been a year like no other. But it is not going to stop us from taking our annual look back at the spokespeople who got it wrong over the past 12 months and the media training lessons that can be learnt from their performances.

Delegates on our media training courses often fear a Jeremy Paxman style interview. The former Newsnight presenter’s reputation for challenging interviews and fearsome questions remains intact despite his retirement.

Have you ever wondered exactly what you would learn on a media training course? Would it be beneficial to hear from some recent delegates about what they took from the training and how they believe it will help them in their daily work?

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to take part in one of our media training courses? Well, one of our clients, Lymphoma Action, allowed us to shadow their course so that others could see how they felt, what they found most challenging and what they learnt.

Passion is an important quality for an effective media spokesperson. It helps to draw the audience in, maintain their attention and keep them listening.

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.

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

“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?

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.

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

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.

It’s everyone’s worst nightmare. You’re in the middle of a presentation or coming to a critical point in a media interview and suddenly your mind goes blank.

“I don’t do statements. Statements are no good to man nor beast. Come on and say it yourself.” Not our words.

Earlier this week we mentioned in this media training blog how media spokespeople need to be prepared to face questions about the coronavirus even if they are talking about something completely unrelated.

If I had to name a journalist that I would be reluctant to face, Nick Ferrari would be right up there. The LBC presenter has a pretty ferocious reputation and has posed the forensic questions that have led spokespeople to produce some recent memorable media interview disasters.

“What are you doing wrong?” Perhaps not the nicest of questions, but should it need to be asked eight times before a spokesperson provides any semblance of an answer?

Radio, print and TV interviews all have their specific requirements. But there is much more to it than those three categories, with each medium throwing up a range of different interview formats, each with its subtle nuances, which could trip up or unsettle an unsuspecting spokesperson. That’s why we offer every conceivable media interview format on our media training and crisis communication courses.

Live v pre-recorded: What is the best interview format? Instinctively the majority of spokespeople, given the choice, would always opt for a pre-recorded interview over a live one. But does that mean spokespeople should always opt for pre-recorded interviews?