Reddit reviews How to Sell Yourself: Winning Techniques for Selling Yourself, Your Ideas...Your Message

There are books explaining how to handle a confrontational media. The one I read was "How to Sell Yourself" by Arch Lustberg. It had a chapter on dealing with the media. One of piece of advice I remember most is how to take a loaded question, and instead of answering it, answer the question you would have preferred instead. Here are some examples from the book:

>• "Why are you killing and maiming?"
>
>Becomes: “Tell me about your company's safety record.”
>
>• "Why are you ripping off the customer?"
>
>Becomes: "Tell me about your pricing policy."
>
>• "Why are you cheating our kids out of a decent
education?"
>
>Becomes: "Tell me about the progress the schools are
making."
>
>• "Why are you promoting a risky tax scheme?"
>
>Becomes: "What does your tax plan do for me?"


Here's a good example of how the media tries to get you to say something so it can be used in a headline the next day or twisted to look worse in a particular context.

>6. Agenda
>
>This can really be called “Persistence with a specific goal.” Instead of “let’s see where this will take us,” the agenda says “let’s get there at any cost.” The reporter is working to get you to make a specific statement. Your comments will help make the story “correct” from the reporter’s standpoint, give the story the right slant. In this case, the reporter’s need and goal is to get you to say it. This relieves the reporter of having to say it—you already did.
>
>Examples of “agenda”
>
>A reporter told me that her first Washington, D.C. assignment for a major television network was to interview a high-level government official who had just announced that he was resigning his post in the Nixon administration. The assignment editor told her, “Get him to say he’s leaving because of Watergate.” She described the interview to me and it went something like this:
>
>Q: Isn’t it true that you’re resigning because of Watergate?
>
>A: I’ve been working 16-hour days. I haven’t had any time for my wife and three young children. I decided that the time had come to be a real husband and father.
>
>Q: Well, but Watergate helped you reach that conclusion didn’t it?
>
>A: I was motivated by a need to keep my marriage together and to get to know my kids.
>
>Q: There’s a lot of talk that it was really Watergate. Didn’t it influence you in the slightest?
>
>A: My wife needs me. My kids need me. They’re the real reason I’m leaving.
>

>The reporter felt defeated. She had failed. She went back with her videotape and cried. She couldn’t force her editor’s agenda on the subject. The interview didn’t make it on the air. But consider this: Had the interviewee reacted in anger and said, “I’m not resigning because of Watergate,” the segment would have aired with the anchor saying, “Nixon aide denies resigning over Watergate,” then during the interview we’d have heard:
>
>Q: Isn’t it true that you’re resigning over Watergate?
>
>A: I am not resigning over Watergate.
>
>We’d have heard “resigning over Watergate” three times and that’s the weed the audience would be left with. Score one more for the press

http://www.amazon.com/How-Sell-Yourself-Techniques-Ideas-Your/dp/1564145859