Be Aware of the Power of Editing

It often comes as a surprise to us how many interviewees fail to realise that a pre-recorded five, ten or even twenty-minute radio or television interview is often likely to yield only a couple of 20-second clips at most. Even then, the producer may decide to use the very answer you like the least, perhaps because it is the one that is most revealing or gives the game away. Therefore it’s always worth repeating your key points a few times, so they don’t get lost within all the other material. Try to make them self-contained and pithy, rather than intertwined with other points, making it easier for the journalist to extract them to put in his or her report. If there is an important piece of context for any of the things you want to get across, ensure this contextual background is interwoven with the main point itself. Otherwise it may be all too easy for the reporter to miss out the context, and make you appear much more controversial than you meant to be.