A TV reporter recently Tweeted how someone honked their horn when she went on air apparently to disrupt or throw her off balance. This reminded me of a story I covered years earlier about an Arizona Cardinals football player.
The story took us to the player’s neighborhood. Shockingly, no one opened the athlete’s door. The photographer set up the live truck on the street so we could deliver the story in a timely fashion to a desperately waiting public. When I started speaking during my live shot, a car alarm behind me sounded off. After tossing to my edited story, the alarm went silent. When I appeared live again, the alarm returned. Before leaving the scene, I found a pen and paper and wrote something such as “Is that the best you can do?” I wedged the paper into the vehicle’s windshield wiper. I assumed someone inside a nearby house watching me on TV disagreed with our editorial decision to cover the story and decided setting off a car alarm was more effective than leaving a voice mail on the station’s comment line.
On a different day, I covered a breaking news story on the streets of Tempe. Upon arriving on the scene, we quickly went live with yellow police tape flickering in the background. Someone watching in a nearby apartment ran downstairs, jolted into the street, jumped briefly between me and the camera, shouted at the top of his lungs on live TV and ran back home. It happened so quickly, it was a blur and I didn’t miss a beat. An officer witnessed the incident, tracked down the culprit and asked if I wished to press charges. I declined.
Attempts to disrupt reporters on live TV go much deeper. I’ve seen people attack reporters, throw items at them and engage in obscene gestures in the background. These are simply members of the general public who haven’t discovered the benefits of strategic media relations.
For a low fee, someone should offer a personal, media relations product for people who seek a more effective method in expressing their disgust with the media. This would assist the media in fulfilling their duties without disruption and allow angry citizens (like the grandmother I once thought would beat me) a more civilized response. I appreciate the comment line or the voice mails of concern forwarded to specific reporters, but the public probably doesn’t realize how some journalists forward those messages to each other for a good laugh.
Personal media relations when you need it could expand into other areas. Consultants could advise neighbors not to appear in TV interviews without wearing a shirt. Experts would recommend others to tidy up their homes so reporters wouldn’t confuse the living room with the garage. I remember when a co-worker visited a home with such a messy front yard, the reporter mistakenly asked the homeowner about her garage sale.
Media relations is not simply for corporate America. It’s an effective strategy, even if only employed once, for the average American who wishes to wage war against the media without hollering bad words or honking the horn.
Subscribe via email to our blog, join us on Facebook & follow us on Twitter.