As a media training coach, I'm often asked if it's okay to ask a journalist for a correction. The answer, of course, depends to an extent on the seriousness of the error. Was it a genuine mistake? Did they get something in the story wrong? Or were our feelings hurt a little bit because we didn't like the story? If it's the former, then yes, a request for a correction could be in order. But often, it's the latter. A company is on the receiving end of media coverage they don't like. There's nothing factually incorrect about the story - it just doesn't portray them in a positive light or it isn't what they were expecting.

First things first: Happy New Year!

I know many of you are in a reflection/resolution state of mind this week so I thought I would use today's newsletter to share/recommend some tactics I've used to ramp up my communications skills over the past few years (and a few I'm planning to start for 2023). You may already be doing some or all of these. But if not, I can tell you these activities have been game-changers for me and I hope they bring you success as well.

Leaders who don't understand the ins and outs of issues/crisis management often bring an element of wishful thinking to their media interviews. Even though they know, on an intellectual level, that a reporter is almost certain to ask them an obvious, important and potentially controversial question about the issue or crisis at hand, they prepare for the interview as if that question can't possibly be asked. And when it does invariably get asked, they try to dance around the question, weasel out of it or they get flustered and crash and burn.

My media training program is called The Art of the Great Media Interview. And that's obviously the goal: to make every interview opportunity -- whether it's on a positive development or a crisis scenario -- the best version of that interaction that it can be. But that's not always the case. Sometimes, for any number of reasons, the interaction and the resulting media coverage can fall short of our expectations. This can be a disappointing or even a devastating experience. Here are a few ideas about how to handle negative media interactions and/or disappointing media coverage.