A few days ago I ranted about the lack of skill or apparent desire on the part of the media.
This article talks about the other side of the coin: the training that almost everyone has nowadays in how not to answer the media's questions.
In light of my complaints that, in the old days, the interviewers and reporters were much tougher and more persistent, I found this sentence interesting:
Media training was largely a dual response to the tough questioning of Mike Wallace and others on 60 Minutes ...
and here's the key section, as far as I'm concerned:
Increasingly, follow-up questions, which ideally should plug the gaps in an answer, are becoming casualties in the verbal joust between journalists and their well-trained guests...There are many reasons for the lack of follow-up questions. News interviews are brief and interviewers may have four or five questions the show's producer expects them to ask. Extra questions may mean the interviewer can't stick to a pre-determined script, perhaps leading to second-guessing by higher ups. With broadcast organizations now profitable members of business conglomerates, interviewers may be unsure how far they can go. One media trainer says that in the time of Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, journalists could bully their guests because they knew CBS was behind them. "They can't be as abusive as they used to be," she says. So unwritten rules now dictate acceptable behavior. Ask questions too harshly, and you're outside the club. Says Columbia's Carey: "These people are not adversaries who pretend to be friends. They are friends who pretend to be adversaries." Bob Schieffer explains, "You don't want to appear rude even though the guest can be filibustering and killing time, and you can't ask what you want." Schieffer's colleague Steve Hartman says interviewers must be careful not to cut the guest off too soon or "you're going to be perceived as someone who has a bias. Everyone is concerned about how they come across in this game." They also know unhappy guests can complain. Indeed, The CommCore Observer suggests that clients meet with editors "when a reporter is not being fair or balanced." If journalists stray out of bounds, they risk embarrassment or ostracism, like one reporter at a White House press conference in early October who asked press secretary Scott McClellan five times whether the Bush administration had a double standard when it came to investigating leaks -- until an exasperated McClellan cut him off, effectively signaling: I've had enough of your behavior. Says Ronald Sims, a business professor at The College of William and Mary: "The good questioners are marginalized. Everyone knows the bulldog that doesn't let go. Word gets around. Colleagues give looks. There are unwritten rules that this is not how you act so you go with the flow." Few questioners want to be known as a bulldog. The hot guests, the "big gets" as they are known in the business, will go elsewhere. Few p.r. executives want to book someone on a show where the interviewer has a reputation for rough questioning. Most would rather have their clients interviewed by Larry King than by Mike Wallace.
There's more on this and other things. It's well worth reading.