Guy Clapperton, Author at Clapperton Media

At Clapperton Media Training, one point comes up in training sessions more than almost anything else: the first proper answer in a media interview still matters enormously. In fact, it probably matters more now than it did twenty years ago.

Attention spans are shorter. Journalists are working faster. Podcasts, broadcast interviews, online articles and video clips all reward clarity and immediacy. Within moments, an interviewer is already forming a view about how useful, engaging and quotable a spokesperson is going to be. And despite that, many spokespeople still get the opening badly wrong.

Usually, it happens in one of two ways.

The first is the defensive approach. A spokesperson wants to get through the interview quickly and reveals as little as possible. Answers become clipped.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Mm-hmm.”

There is a well-known interview with a former leader of the British Dental Association that demonstrates this perfectly. The awkwardness people remember from the clip is not really about the later confrontation. The tone is set much earlier. The interviewer quickly realises they are dealing with someone defensive and unwilling to engage. From there, the interview becomes tense and combative.

Short answers are not the problem in themselves. Uncooperative ones are.

The second mistake is almost the reverse. A spokesperson genuinely wants to help. They know their subject well and can immediately think of multiple points, examples and explanations connected to the question. So they try to include all of them. In their own mind, the answer is thorough and useful. To the journalist, it often feels sprawling and difficult to follow. At that point, the interviewer has to decide what matters, what gets cut and what gets reshaped into a usable quote.

That is rarely a good position for a spokesperson to be in.

Journalists and their skills

Journalists are highly skilled at storytelling and editing. But their expertise is journalism, not necessarily the specialist field your client works in. The more editing they have to do, the more control the spokesperson loses over how their point is presented. A useful thing to remind clients is that journalists are listening for material they can use quickly and clearly in a story.

That usually means a concise answer, a clear point and a quote that can stand on its own. If they need more detail, they will ask for it. Too many spokespeople assume they must fill every silence with additional explanation. In reality, that often weakens the answer rather than strengthening it.

The bridge

One structure we frequently recommend in media training is very simple.

First, answer the question directly. Sometimes this really can be “yes” or “no”. Then add brief context. This is where the spokesperson demonstrates expertise and shapes the interpretation of the answer. Then stop. A spokesperson does not need to keep talking simply to avoid silence. If the journalist has a strong, clear quote that requires minimal editing, the job is done.

Journalists make decisions about interviews very quickly. Within the first exchange they are already assessing whether the spokesperson understands the topic, whether they can communicate clearly and whether the interview is going to produce useful material.

That judgement affects the tone and direction of everything that follows. A strong first answer does not need to be long or overly polished. It simply needs to be clear, relevant and controlled. Get that opening right and the rest of the interview becomes much easier. Get it wrong and the spokesperson can spend the next twenty minutes trying to recover.

Want to confuse a journalist? Tell them everything you know about your top subject, don’t worry about focus, just come out with all of your experience. That’s what a number of our media training delegates do in the first interview practice sessions we run with them and it almost never helps.

It’s like this. Journalists are experts in many things: storytelling, interviewing, maybe editing a video or audio package together, collating quotes into a written article. As they progress they may become superb managers and developers of young writing and interviewing talent. They are superb at working to deadlines (or they won’t last long).

They might – just might – also be an expert in your client’s field. Equally they might not. So let’s say your spokesperson has been doing whatever they’ve been doing for 20 years and the journalist uses a light opener like “tell me about yourself” – and the well-intentioned interviewee comes out with everything they can think of that might help.

It comes from a good place and a wish to help. But without focus it’s going to damage an article. If someone is not an expert in your field already, telling them 20 things about it is more likely to end up in confusion than clarity. And that’s when mistakes and factual errors creep in, not because anyone is stitching anyone up but because the interview just wasn’t clear.

Focus is essential

The classic picture of a media trainer is someone who tells you to pick three things and come out with those whatever the question might be. This is extreme and likely to offend journalists who know when they’re being ignored. It’s worth going into interviews with three prepared messages, though, for three reasons. First, you need some area of focus just to stop yourself rambling. Second, if the interview goes off piste then you’ll have something to get back to. Third, it’s actually courteous to the journalist to think about what you want to say in advance.

Stick to a few core messages and try to ram them home. By all means answer the rest, the politician’s trick of ignoring the question is something the listeners and viewers will spot at some distance and it makes the spokesperson look arrogant – but there’s noting wrong with having an intention and a focus for every media interaction.

If there’s one lesson that has refused to age over nearly 25 years of media training, it’s this: the first answer is still the sell.

In fact, it matters more now than it did in the early 2000s. Attention spans have tightened, interviews move faster, and journalists are making snap judgements earlier than ever. Yet despite this, people continue to get those crucial opening moments wrong.

The Two Classic Opening Mistakes

For PR professionals preparing clients, the pitfalls tend to fall into two familiar camps.

1. The Brusque Shutdown

Some interviewees just want to get through the process as quickly as possible. The result? Abrupt, minimal answers:

“Yes.”
“No.”
“Mmhmm.”

It’s not hard to see what happens next. The journalist quickly senses resistance and assumes the interview will be defensive. From there, the tone can turn confrontational, and the opportunity to create something constructive slips away almost immediately.

2. The Overloaded Answer

At the opposite extreme is the overly helpful client. They want to collaborate, to add value, to share everything they know. So they try to pack 20 ideas into a single response.

In their mind, it’s thorough and useful. In the journalist’s mind, it’s unfocused and difficult to use.

Remember: journalists are not just listening, they’re editing in real time. If an answer is too long or meandering, it will either be cut down heavily or ignored altogether.

And that introduces another risk. Once you hand over something unwieldy, you hand over control. Journalists will always aim to be accurate, but their expertise is storytelling, not necessarily your client’s specialist field. The more they have to reshape, the further the final quote may drift from the intended message.

What Journalists Actually Want

At heart, journalists are building stories out of usable quotes. That’s the key word: usable.

They are typically looking for concise, self-contained soundbites that slot neatly into their narrative. If they need more detail, they will ask for it.

So instead of trying to say everything at once, your clients should focus on delivering something clean, clear and quotable.

A Simple Formula for Strong Answers

There’s a structure that works consistently well:

Start with the factual answer
This can be as simple as “yes” or “no”.
Add context
This is where your client demonstrates expertise and subtly positions themselves as the authority on the issue.
Stop
This is the part many people struggle with. Silence is not a problem to fix. If the journalist needs more, they’ll come back.

A tight, well-structured answer gives the journalist exactly what they need: a quote that can be used without heavy editing.

Setting the Tone Early

Journalists make decisions quickly. Within the first answer or two, they will have a sense of whether the interview is going to be productive, insightful or difficult.

That judgement shapes everything that follows.

Land the first answer well, keep it focused, and resist the urge to over-explain. Do that, and you don’t just answer the first question effectively, you set the tone for the entire interview.

And in media work, tone is often everything.

At Clapperton Media Training, we spend a lot of time helping senior executives navigate media interviews. Often, the biggest challenges aren’t about confidence or messaging. They’re about assumptions.

One training session from the past year illustrates this perfectly. During a media training session with a senior executive in the financial transactions sector, a particular phrase came up in a practice interview:

“Fiat currency.”

For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to currencies such as the pound or dollar that derive their value from collective agreement rather than being backed by a physical commodity like gold.

It’s a standard term in financial circles. Nothing unusual there.

However, when the client’s PR adviser suggested that not every journalist would be familiar with it, the response was blunt:

“Why would I want to talk to morons?”

Let’s park the tone for a moment. There is, arguably, a point worth considering. If every journalist covering that executive’s sector fully understands terms like “fiat currency”, then simplifying language might feel unnecessary. But that’s not how media works in practice. Journalists are not a uniform group of specialists. Even within business and financial media:

Some are new to the beat
Some are covering adjacent sectors
Some are generalists with a wide brief

The journalist who reaches your ideal audience may not be the deepest technical expert in your field. And even if they are, their readers or listeners may not be.

The “first day” problem

Every journalist has a first day. At some point, they are covering a topic they don’t yet fully understand. That doesn’t make them incapable. It makes them exactly what they are supposed to be: curious. And that curiosity is what drives good interviews.

If an executive assumes knowledge that isn’t there, two things happen:

The message becomes harder to follow
The journalist starts to shape the story themselves

That’s when control of the narrative begins to slip.

Not knowing something is not the issue

Describing someone as a “moron” for not understanding specialist language is obviously unhelpful. More importantly, it reveals something deeper: A lack of empathy for the audience.

Journalists are experts in:

Asking the right questions
Finding the story
Communicating clearly to their audience

They are not necessarily experts in your sector. Nor do they need to be.

That gap is where the opportunity lies.

What this means for spokespeople

The most effective spokespeople understand one simple principle:

Your job is not to demonstrate expertise. It is to make your expertise usable.

That means explaining terms without patronising, avoiding unnecessary jargon and meeting the journalist where they are Crucially, recognising that clarity is not a compromise. It is a skill.

Where preparation makes the difference

This is exactly the kind of issue that benefits from proper preparation.

A well-briefed spokesperson understands: who they are speaking to, what that person is likely to know or not know and how to address them fluently. Better still, structured media training allows executives to experience these moments in advance and adjust their approach before it matters.

The bottom line

The problem in media interviews is rarely the complexity of the subject. It is the assumption that everyone else understands it in the same way.

Executives who recognise that gap and bridge it effectively are the ones who:

Get their message across
Build stronger relationships with journalists
And ultimately see better coverage

And it all starts with a simple shift:

From speaking to impress, to speaking to be understood.