traininganswers

established 2008

Media Training

Questions The Media Will Most Likely Ask You

by Joreth Innkeeper © 2009

Sometimes talking to the media is like playing a broken record ... everyone asks the same questions. Every once in a while, a reporter might surprise you and ask something totally novel, but when it's truly novel, there's no way to prepare for it. However, you can prepare responses to the questions you are most likely to be asked. Here are a list of the most commonly asked questions. You may want to copy and paste these somewhere and then write out short responses to them (more on how to answer questions in the following sections), and practice answering these questions. You can even find a partner to ask the questions to you so you can respond back.

Franklin Veaux, co-writer of More Than Two offers his experience on the repetitiveness of questions that the media asks that you may find of interest as well.  He discusses what asking those kinds of questions means, and with that knowledge in mind, you may be able to better craft your responses to circumvent being taken out of context by addressing the meaning rather than the words of the question.  Understanding the bias of the person asking you questions goes a long way towards answering those questions in ways that are better understood and harder to take out of context, as we'll get into in the next section.

© PMA 2008