Hey! TV Folks! Ask A Question!

Good thing there were no print reporters there using the answers to your questions!

 

If you seriously are frustrated about this, you have a bigger problem than lazy broadcast journalists.

In my experience, and Coco sums it up pretty well, broadcast reporters tie up things far too often with banal questions that could easily be answered if they bloody well just paid attention. I know they need audio and/or video, but come on.....ask something of substance.

That said, this isn't like you wrote a story and the radio guy read it verbatim on the next day's newscast. If you honestly have a bug up your ass because you attended a "major presser" and asked questions pertinent to your job and someone else is going to use the answers "for their gain," I'm sorry, but you really should take a step back and ask yourself what the hell you're still doing in this business.

 

No offense, Pete, but at a "major presser" they aren't "your" questions. They are everybody's questions and answers in a public forum.

Get over it.

 

Whenever anyone starts a sentence with "no offense," offense will be taken.

 

I take offence to the notion that offence will be taken where no offence was offered.

No offence. ;D

 

Did somebody say "No offense?"

 

Particularly like the pressers that are aired live, with the questions writers ask -- for publication hours or minutes later -- used as programming and entertainment. By being broadcast immediately, their stories on the Web or in print seem old before they see the light of day, and almost as if the writer freeloaded on the broadcasters rather than the other way around.

Only solution that worked for me: Ask nothing until it's over and you get the person(s) on the side. If that's not possible, ask nothing until the things almost over. And it never fails, the fewer questions the print people ask, the shorter the presser. Lots of broadcast types come expecting the print people to carry the ball for them.

 

And bear in mind, a large percentage of the time the reporter and photog are told to go to a certain address for a news conference with little to no explanation of what it's about. That's particularly true in the morning. Half the time they're coming back to the station and dumping the tape on a producer's desk before they go out to their real story of the day.

It's particularly true if it's sports related, because they'll send a photog out alone to get interviews from an athlete they've never heard of who plays a sport they've never seen.

 

Save your best questions for off camera. That's where you'll get your best responses.

 

If I'm at a presser where I know I'll have access afterward to the subjects, I rarely ask a question. Let the TV people get their own soundbites, although I'm certainly not above using their stuff if they get a good response to something. Fair game. But usually, the best stuff comes after the subjects step away from the lights.

 

I'm with Moddy, if the TV people weren't wasting everybody's time asking all kinds of stupid questions, consider yourself lucky.

I'm usually pretty quiet at press conferences. If nobody asks the question I want answered -- and there isn't going to be a time to talk to the person one-on-one later -- then I'll chime in, but if somebody like you is asking all the right questions why do I need to?