In media interviews, words count, but their delivery often matters more.
Angus Taylor’s turn on Melbourne radio station 3AW last Friday morning was a neat reminder of that brutal truth.
OK, the Federal Opposition Leader has the hardest job in Australian politics. His base is shrivelling like a pappadum in a monocultural microwave oven. Voters are peeling away from the major parties, and One Nation is vacuuming up protest votes.
So off the back of an earlier speech, Taylor came out swinging and turned the blowtorch on One Nation. Host Heidi Taylor pushed back hard. And the more she pressed, the more Taylor sounded irritated.
The giveaway was not any single answer. It was the accumulation. For example, he told the host “look” 17 times. He reached for “well, let’s be clear, let’s be clear here”. He complained: “Heidi, you’ve just verballed me and I’ll push back on this”. And then came the media-training death rattle: “with all due respect”.
That phrase is meant to sound polite. It almost never does. More often, it lands as the verbal equivalent of rolling your eyes.
In another week, it might have cut through, but the media oxygen had already been swallowed by the Prime Minister’s loose-unit podcast performance, criticism of which was drawn-out because his indiscretions took days to register with an inattentive press pack.
Reality is that Taylor’s interview was only a blip in the news cycle, but it made a larger point perfectly; handling hard questions while dragging the conversation back to your message is not instinct. It is craft. And under pressure, command of the craft shows.
Primary Comms Group’s media training builds that craft before the cameras roll. If your next interview needs to go better than Taylor’s did, talk to us about media training.
Craig Regan, Senior Account Director
