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I have never been comfortable in front of the camera; point a camera at me and I usually knee jerk react and turn away. I was asked to do an interview a couple of years ago, on topic I feel strongly about and on which there is a great deal of misinformation. I was willing to talk to the journalist until he wrote me and asked for a time when I could come to the studio for recording.

Then I came up with an excuse about the topic being difficult for me to discuss without it being a career limiting move, because my opinions, regardless of how well informed, could be construed as representing my employer without their consent.

I’ve been asked to provide information for media lines once or twice. That’s not hard; I write better than I speak publicly.

Last January I attended the All-Staff meeting for the group who pays my salary, but which I am ironically not working for.

Long story there. Not part of this story.

Anyway, at that meeting, a communications person from our department gave a talk on media communications. Afterwards, over a drink in the lounge, she and I were talking about the types of proactive educational stories we could work on to get our program’s stories out into the public, so people would know more about the really cool things we do.

Somewhere in the conversation she mentioned media training and I asked her to consider me if another session was organized in the future.

A couple of weeks ago she reached out and said she was setting one up for a small group of DFO staff and would I like to participate.

Hmmm….. there were a few different ways to answer that.

Yes, I want the training, because it would be a useful skill to have.

No, I don’t want to do media training because I might be called on to actually talk to a journalist at some point.

I went, of course.

It was a valuable experience, but I hated being miked and having a professional news cameraman film me while a news journalist asked me hard questions and tried to trick me into offering personal opinions or making speculative statements.

I hated it.

It was a great experience.

And I learned to appreciate the job that they do.

They are time crunched, underpaid, and are trying to get the story out before someone else does. They don’t go out to make anyone look bad intentionally (at least most of them don’t), and they usually don’t know a whole lot about the topics they are interviewing on.

It’s up to those speaking to the media to ensure that the message they want to get across is actually well communicated. And it’s harder than one might think. No one wants to be taken out of context, everyone wants to be understood. But if the interviewee can’t make their point in short, clear, concise statements that are easily quoted, they risk having their words and intent lost. For those working on complex topics…. it can be a challenge to be understood well.

Anyway, it was a good experience to have, but I still like being behind the camera instead of in front of it…and I’d rather stick to written interviews.

(72/365)