Introduction
A media interview is a conversation between a reporter and a person who has an interesting story that can be used as the basis for publication or broadcast. Although interviews are usually used by NGOs/CBOs for education and awareness-raising work, media interviews can be used for advocacy work too.

Media interviews are an advocacy method when:

• The general public has been identified as an ‘indirect target’ who will go on to influence a direct target – for example, voters who will influence a minister

• Influential people are the targets of the article or broadcast item – for example, ministers reading a newspaper.

In this way, the journalists are merely a means to an end. They will usually ask the questions that they think their audience might want them to ask.

Interviews may be reactive or proactive. A reactive interview is when a reporter approaches a person for an interview, particularly if there is large public interest in an issue they are involved with. This kind of interview often takes place when an issue arises which is related to your work or the work of your organisation. A proactive interview is one in which a person or organisation approaches a journalist directly about an issue that they think is important and would be of interest to the media. A proactive interview requires greater preparation. However, it is an important method for doing advocacy work.

The key to giving a good interview is knowing your subject well and preparing carefully for the questions that you may be asked.

Advantages

• It can help you get your information to the public, which will help you address the issue.

• It can provide profile for yourself and/or your organisation.

• You can reach a wide audience with relatively little effort with your key messages.

Disadvantages

• All exposure can potentially go wrong and expose the person or organisation to problems.

• It is important that the person being interviewed knows and uses the organisation’s point of view as the basis of their answers – otherwise the organisation may be discredited.

• Those inexperienced at being interviewed or badly prepared can be caught out by being asked difficult or unrelated questions; this can lose support for our organisations and our advocacy work.

Skills-building activity
Objective: By the end of the session participants will be able to explain the key factors in successful media interviews for advocacy work

Preparation time: 2 hours
Resources:
Instructions
Timing: 2 hours

1 Explain the objective of the activity to the participants.

2 Invite participants to describe any experiences of being interviewed by journalists, especially as part of advocacy work.

3 Explain to the group that they are going to practise media interviews. Ask the whole group to agree on an HIV/AIDS advocacy issue, an advocacy objective and a target audience of influential people.

4 Divide the group into pairs; one person will practise being an advocate, the other person will practise being a TV journalist.

5 Ask the interviewees to prepare responses to possible questions on the issue and journalists to develop a series of questions for them.

6 Ask the pairs to practise doing a TV interview. Pay attention to:

• Delivering key messages

• Answering questions clearly

• Appearance.

7 Go around the room and listen to the pairs. Offer feedback and advice on how the interview could be improved.

8 Select random pairs to perform an interview for the group.

9 Help the whole group to discuss the interviews in relation to key messages, questions and appearance. Include this question:

• What are the differences between interviews for TV, radio and newspapers?

Facilitators’ notes

• Make sure that any feedback is constructive (helpful), particularly concerning other people’s appearance. Make sure positive feedback is also provided!

• If this is the first media skills activity of the workshop, ask participants to do Instructions 2 and 3 from the activity in the Advocacy in Action Card 7.

• If there is time, you could arrange for two people to role-play a very bad media interview at the start of the session, followed by a discussion of what the advocate did wrong.

• You may want to ask some pairs to do a different activity – preparing some advice (for example, ‘Try to...’ and ‘Try not to...’ tips) for being interviewed by the media.

• This skills-building activity is most effective if it can take place with real journalists at a radio or television station. Usually the interviews would not be live, as inadequate preparation and planning will have been carried out. However, some ‘friendly’ journalists can provide technology to record interviews. This allows the participants to see or hear themselves being interviewed, to have the feeling of being interviewed by a real journalist and to visit a media station.

Example: Carrying out a media interview
Participants attending an advocacy workshop held in India practise giving advocacy radio interviews at a local radio station. The interviews were recorded and played back to the other participants and facilitators who provided feedback.

Reference: Photo taken at an advocacy skills-building workshop for HIV/AIDS Work, India HIV/AIDS Alliance and International HIV/AIDS Alliance, India, November 2001.

Advice

• Try to practise responding to questions; role-play with your colleagues!

• Try to show some emotion for radio – it shows you care – but keep it under control!

• Try to sit upright with your hands on your lap for a TV interview.

• Try to sit still and make sure you do not fidget or swing in your chair.

• Try to look happy to be there, and try not to look nervous.

• Try to answer the interviewer’s questions wherever possible – it is their interview.

• Try to be respectful and patient with the interviewer; they will not necessarily know the subject well – but then neither, perhaps, will the audience.

• Try to make sure you get your key messages across; if you are not asked relevant questions, add your key messages to the end of one of your most relevant replies.

• Try not to bluff! If you don’t know the answer to a question – say so or avoid it.

• Try not to agree to interviews that could stray off topic that might lead you to make statements about issues you do not know about.

• Try not to get angry if a journalist tries to unnerve you – your message will become unclear and the audience will assume you are in the wrong!

• Try not to let a journalist ‘put words in your mouth’ – say firmly, "That is not what I am saying…"

• Try not to look at the camera during a TV interview – look at the interviewer.

• Try not to use extreme facial expressions during a TV interview.

• Try not to wear jewellery or glasses if possible as these can distract the audience from what you are saying.

• Try not to try to cover too many points or give too much new information.

• Try not to wear patterned clothes on TV.

How to...carry out a media interview
Preparing for the interview

Find out the answers to the following kinds of questions before any interview:

• Where and when will the interview take place?

• How long will the interview be?

• Who else, if anyone, is being interviewed?

• Will the discussion or interview follow a film or be linked to another story?

• Why have they chosen the subject to address and selected you for the interview?

• Will the interview be broadcast live?

Find out about the journalist who will be interviewing you and:

• Investigate their audience – who are the targets amongst their audience and what kind of information do you need to get across?

• Contact them and agree the subject to be discussed. Remember that the interview starts as soon as you begin talking to a journalist. There is no such thing as ‘off the record’. Define the issues clearly. Ask the journalist what kind of questions they will ask and whether they will be supportive or argumentative. Prepare appropriate information beforehand – for example, statistics, facts, a personal story, etc.

• Make a list of key messages you want to get across with three or four key points for each.

• Prepare catchy sentences (‘sound-bites’) that summarise your message.

• Check that you have up-to-date information on your issue.

• Work closely with your colleagues to develop a draft list of possible questions. Prepare answers to these and practise developing responses to them.

What to do during the interview

• Try and keep calm and composed.

• Remember that the journalist is not your advocacy target – the target will either be influential people listening or watching or the general public as indirect targets.

• Remember that you have the facts you need and that you know more than the journalist does about your area. Keep your answers concise and short, using simple language, without jargon or acronyms. Do not get side-tracked – keep to your key points. If a question strays from your topic, try to move back to the area you want to talk about – for example, “I think what you are asking about is important but the main issue is...”

• If you need time to think about a response, repeat the question before responding.

• Always bring the journalist back to your key messages/points, repetition is a way of getting your message across.

Differences between media

Press interviews tend to be more relaxed than radio or TV interviews. If you make a mistake, say so and answer again.

Radio interviews: In a studio, the studio manager will give you specific instructions about where to sit, how to use the microphone, etc. Sometimes this is done with little time to spare. However, take your time and be sure you understand the instructions. Ask what the first question will be to help you concentrate. You can take notes with you – but try not to rustle the pages. (Brief notes on postcards are often more helpful.) If you make a mistake during a recorded interview, you can ask to try the answer again. If it is live you can say, “Perhaps I might explain that answer”, and continue.

TV interviews: The same rules apply as for the radio interview but you can be seen! TV interviews are usually shorter than radio interviews. The interview may be pre-recorded or live.

Source: Advocacy in Action
This is an extract from Advocacy in Action: a toolkit to support NGOs and CBOs responding to HIV/AIDS, developed in collaboration with the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO) and published by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in June 2002.

To view the whole report follow this link.

To download this section, complete with graphics, in pdf format (which requires Adobe Acrobat software to read it) follow this link (file size 1.0 Mbytes).

 

Resources for working with groups

Advocacy toolkit

• Advocacy toolkit - Contents
• Advocacy toolkit - Introduction
• Advocacy toolkit - Introducing advocacy
• Advocacy toolkit - Planning and implementing advocacy work
• Advocacy toolkit - Planning and implementing, steps 1-4
• Advocacy toolkit - Planning and implementing, steps 5-8
• Advocacy toolkit - Planning and implementing, handouts
• Advocacy toolkit - Including advocacy in an organisations work
• Advocacy cards - Introduction
• Advocacy card - Analysing and influencing legislation or policies
• Advocacy card - Preparing a briefing note or position paper
• Advocacy card - Working from inside the system
• Advocacy card - Lobbying or face-to-face meetings
• Advocacy card - Writing and delivering a presentation
• Advocacy card - Persuading through drama
• Advocacy card - Writing and using a press release
• Advocacy card - Carrying out a media interview
• Advocacy card - Preparing a press conference
• Advocacy toolkit - Other advocacy resources