Lean slightly forward to appear engaged and prepared.
>> Avoid quick, jerking movements.
>> Take an athletic stance, feet staggered, back straight.
Quotes from a high school wrestling coach? Words of advice from a physical therapist on how to not wrench your back when lifting a heavy suitcase? Lessons from the Dog Whisperer on house-training your schnauzer?
Nope.
These are tips to members of the Honolulu Police Department for dealing with the media.
Oh no wait. It gets better.
“Keep hair out of your face; for women, no touching, swinging or play with your hair.”
For real. They went there.
Bennett Group Strategic Communications, a public relations company, was paid just over $100,000 to teach HPD officials how to better communicate with the media and the community. This included training sessions over the last year for top HPD officials, a communications plan and a seven-page guide titled “HPD MEDIA TRAINING: CRAFTING YOUR MESSAGE.”
The document assumes a sharply adversarial relationship between journalists and police. It lays out how cops are looking for facts while reporters are looking for drama. Law enforcement officers may have had extensive training in dealing with armed conflicts, murderous psychopaths and colossal natural disasters, but the underlying tone of the guide makes it seem like talking to a reporter is the most threatening thing they could face.
These lines in particular make journalists seem like rabid yet vapid wolverines, hungry for blood but easily distracted:
“Reporters feed on emotions. If they sense you don’t want to be there, they will push even harder.”
“Never tell a reporter, ‘That’s a good question.’ They think all of their questions are brilliant.”
“Let the reporter know how much you loved his/her last story. Be sure you have actually read it, however.”
There’s also the line about how reporters “want to save the world.”
While that may or may not be true — some days, a reporter just wants to file a cogent story so they can go home and cook dinner for the kids — what’s wrong with wanting to save the world? Isn’t that at the heart of police work, too?
Tarnished by scandal, with multiple stories of bad cops doing bad things, the department needs more than a PR makeover. There is no amount of body language training, vocal coaching and hairstyling that will make failure or incompetence or lawlessness look like triumph. Conversely, if it’s good news, it’ll come off as good news no matter how much a spokesman plays with his hair.
And then there’s this line:
“Answer with an agenda and a framework of operating principals, focusing on what you came to say.”
Journalists might be looking for drama, but we also look for misspellings.
Pro tip: Get a copy editor to read everything you write so you don’t spell it “principal” when you mean “principle.”
A hundred thousand dollars for HPD media training, and can you guess what word is missing from this guide?
Truth.
It advises to “be transparent” and “be open with everyone,” but it never says, “Just tell the truth.”
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
