The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Are Politicians Being Over-coached?

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

When politicians hold a news conference to make an important announcement, then take questions from reporters, only to not answer the questions, then what? Four guests from all sides of the experience join Steve Paikin to discuss whether ministers and other politicians are being over-prepared for their public interactions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. How often have you watched a politician hold a news conference, make some lofty, wonderful

announcement, then take questions from reporters and totally ignore all the questions? We see it all the time. Overcoached ministers giving rote answers that are totally unresponsive to what's being asked. It's annoying. Why do they do it? Do they know how ridiculous it looks? But does it work?

We've got four guests ready to dive in on this with experience on all sides of the issue. Let's welcome in Grand Bend, Ontario, Jennifer Mossop, former news anchor, former MPP who now runs Mossop Media. And here in our studio, Will Stewart, former progressive conservative staffer, now senior vice president with Enterprise Canada. Aaron Morrison, longtime NDP strategist, now running Morrison Comms, Inc. And Jessica Smith-Cross, editor-in-chief of The Trillium, a digital news service covering Queen's Park. And it's really good.

And we thank everybody for coming here to TVO tonight. Jennifer, great to see you on the line from Grand Bend. And I'm going to start with you. OK, when you are advising a client on how to deliver a message to the media or when you yourself were in politics as an MPP and doing a press conference, for example, what's the key piece of information that you either send people out or got sent out that you think is helpful to them as they negotiate those rough waters of a news conference? So probably four fast things off the top. It's not about the surly reporter.

It's about the audience and keep them in mind. It is all about the space and time you have to fill and about the headline these days because we're all scrolling for millions of them. So get to that headline right away. And if you are asked an unwanted question, then address it briefly and get back to the job at hand, which is filling that space and time with what you came to tell people. Will, how does that sound to you?

I mean, it's relevant, right? It's bang on. I think, you know, what we're talking about here is a policy announcement. And I think at that point, it depends on what the policy is, right? If it's heavily controversial, you're sending your minister out with different advice. But on a regular funding announcement like this, that, you know, led to your article on this in this space, it's really about reminding them to communicate effectively, to communicate directly, to be human. You know, I work for a politician that was very excitable. So one of my last pieces of advice for him was always calm down. Think of your grant. You're talking to your grandmother. of advice for him was always calm down. Think of your grand, you're talking to your grandmother.

Get focused on that image in your head so you can communicate to that grandmother on the other side of the television camera. Who is the politician? John Baird. Yeah. John Baird. Very excitable. I think I could say that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Erin, what would you add to that so far? Yeah. One of the last things I tell politicians right before a news conference is what's our tone today? What's the tone we're going out with? Are we excited? Are we calm? Are we worried? Are we scared? How do people feel? And can you reflect back their feelings towards them? If they know the topic at hand, if they know how to answer the questions, then that should be on their mind going out. What's my tone? When you are at a press conference at Queen's Park and you ask a question, or anybody does for that matter, and the minister is obviously

skating, obfuscating, trying really hard to, what Jennifer suggested, be responsive and then pivot to something else, what are you thinking at that moment? Can I shake them off it or am I not going to be able to? And with some ministers, you know, you have no hope. Like, I'll give an example, name names if that's okay. The finance minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy, he's very hard to shake. So when he does the same thing that Minister Dunlop did and take your question and answer something else, you're not going to get him off it. But he also doesn't look scared or uncertain. He does it with authority and you just sort of give up and move on. Well, OK, you've just referenced Minister Dunlop and that's what I presume you were referring to, Will, in your first answer. So, I mean, that's a bit of the inspiration for this program here is that several weeks ago, the colleges and

universities minister, Jill Dunlop, who let me say for the record, is a lovely person, is a good person, but who went into the media studio that day and did not have a great day. Here was the first question that she was asked and her response. Sheldon, please. Yes or no, do you disagree with the federal government's decision to cap international students? Well, thank you very much for the question. And absolutely, the decision was made by the federal government. It was a unilateral decision with absolutely no consultation with the provinces or the sector. That's not an answer. Now, reporters don't, I have to say, I don't think we usually do that,

where we actually say to the minister in question, that's not an answer. That's a little cheeky. But okay, Jennifer, you're advising the minister in that case, let's say. And she gives what is quite obviously a completely unresponsive answer to the question. What's your advice at that point? Advice to the minister for having given that answer. Exactly. A little hard to advise them when they're alive in the situation, right? So they're on their own. Once they're up there, they're on their own. But the reason why they do it is because so often it works. And that was the point that was just made is that sometimes they give up if you just doggedly continue to stick to

that message. Going back to the other point that was made about policy is really if you're bringing your communications team in early in the policy development, then you're going to actually troubleshoot a lot of these policy issues or funding announcement issues by having your team in place and saying, you know what, you might want to modify something and you'll end up with a better policy and a better rollout. But sometimes you do have to really try to address the question, albeit briefly, because often it's an opposition agenda question maybe that's being put to you and you don't want to engage in the opposition agenda for your few seconds of fame there. So just address it, have a way to address that question meaningfully and

move on quickly back to what you want to say. Yeah, well, let me follow up with you on that. I mean, it was pretty obvious that she was coached, that if you are asked A, B, and C, make sure you don't answer A, B, and C, just pivot to X, Y, and Z. Now, is that useful advice to give a minister? So look, let me, I'll answer that two ways. One, I think anytime you're doing any type of public communications, you need to sound like a human. You need to be relatable. You need to be approachable, and it helps if you have some empathy. You know, I think that's one piece of it. The other piece of it is, though, frankly, she probably has been coached. The minister has been coached. I mean, I do this type of coaching. And it's also a product of the way in which this press conference will be covered, knowing full well that whatever she says is going to be clipped for the evening news at about 10 seconds. So if she just keeps saying the same thing over and over again, she knows what's going to be on the clip that evening. There's very few long-form public policy shows like The Agenda where you can actually have that fulsome discussion about all of the back and forth. That doesn't make it right,

but I can see how you get to that point in the minister's, to give the minister a little bit of defense here. If, Aaron, you were watching that press conference live on, let's say, an all-news channel, or if you're a real Queen's Park keener, you know, on the legislative feed or something, you would have seen a minister in trouble. Do you, as a communications advisor, worry about live in the moment, or is it all about the clips on the news at the end of the day? You have to think about both.s absolutely right you do tell your politician It's a 10-second clip. This is the 10-second clip we want so make sure you're saying it lots of times in lots of different ways But you do worry in in the moment

If you have media who are not buying what you're selling if they they don't like what you're saying, and more so they're getting annoyed, now you have to go into damage control mode. That's when Queen's Park staffers will spend the rest of the afternoon running around, visiting journalists in their offices, maybe handing out statements to try to make up for what she said, answering questions that they didn't get answers to. And that is bad news. It's bad news for what's going to happen in between that minister and the press gallery for weeks to come. Did you have somebody at that announcement? I imagine you did.

We did. Yeah, Aiden was there for us. Aiden was there. Okay. And when he got back to the shop and you guys talked about how you wanted to handle it, was there any kind of discussion about it? So we had two options. We could have just said, okay, we'll take the clip and use it and move on. We had tons of voices from the sector saying why this was a problem. The whole issue was she was announcing

funding for post-secondary education, and it was like $2 billion less than her own panel had recommended. She didn't have an answer for that. She didn't have an answer for the questions about how Ontario got to this place with international students, which is one of the things the reporters were trying to get her to say something, sort of anything at all about. So we ended up sort of mostly ignoring her and giving a voice to all of her critics. He could have been a little bit spicier and said, you know, the minister had no answer when asked if colleges would be able to stay afloat with this level of funding, which is true. She was asked that question, is this enough? And she gave an incomprehensible answer. So Jennifer, let me follow up with you on that, because the minister clearly had marching orders

to go out there, and I'll be a little colloquial here, put lipstick on a pig, right? She's got a panel that's recommending X investment into the post-secondary sector, and she has to announce that it's going to be X divided by two. So she knows everybody's going to be upset with her. What advice do you give a minister to go

out there knowing that she has to deliver bad news, but wants it to look good? I would tell that minister to make sure her communications team has armed her well before she goes out there. She needs to have the answer. And I would say, all right, we have a problem here. We need to have an answer. We need to be able to address this because you can't just often with the media it works if you just doggedly stick to your message that's what ends up on the air because that's all they have to work with and that's all they can use but you do get these situations where they'll they'll call you out on it and a minister's not going to feel comfortable she's not going to look confident she's not going to be able to be human and relatable if she is being asked to do something that's really impossible and everybody in the room is going to know it's not going well. So that's where the minister really does have to

demand, hey, we have to have something better to offer here. We have to have an aid. I'm going to pick up on that human and relatable because I know Minister Dunlop was trying to be human and relatable when she politely thanked reporters every time when they asked a question. Sheldon, Mr. Director, if you would, top of page three, let's roll this clip. Thank you very much for the question. Thank you very much for the question. Well, thank you very much for the question. Thank you very much for that question. Well, thank you very much for the question. Thank you very much for that question. Well, thank you very much for the question. Well, thank you for the question on international students. Thank you very much for the question.

Well, thank you for the question. And thank you for the question. And thank you very much for the question. Thank you for the question. Thank you for that question. Well, schools are autonomous. Thank you very much for the question. Thank you very much for the question.

Okay, let's fess up. That's a little smartass-y on our part to do that. Schools are autonomous. Thank you very much for the question. Thank you very much for the question. Okay, let's fess up. That's a little smart-assy on our part to do that. And it looks worse when you edit it all back to back to back. But we did not use the same statement twice. She actually said it that many times. Erin, is that a good idea? No, it's not.

She said it every time. And I love when she started to answer and then realized she forgot to set it. And she backed up and she was like, oh, right. Thank you very much for the question. She's very clearly been coached to say it. We're going to start every question this way. I think sometimes that might come from inexperience, a communications or media person telling her, well, this is a good way to start your answers. It's not. And I think it may just come from discomfort. She's deciding for herself, I need to control

the pace of this press conference. I need to be in charge of how to start my answer. And I need to give myself enough thinking room before I launch. And this is how I'm going to do it. It's a terrible idea. It makes you sound like a broken record. I mean, post-COVID, every press conference is live. It's on the 24-hour news channels. You can find them all on YouTube. So we do see them as a whole now. And it is not flattering. It is not flattering to continue to repeat yourself, and journalists get annoyed by it. Well, let's find out. Do you feel when a minister says to you, thank you very much for the question, do you inside think to yourself, wow, they're grateful for my question. Isn't that lovely? Well, no, especially not when it's routine and it's every question. It seems kind of patronizing and, you know, it doesn't make you feel good about your

question. So, Will, what happened there? Well, I mean, she was overcoached by the sound, by the looks of it, that they, you can tell when someone is repeating their lines, just like a stage actor, they're repeating their lines. They're playing the role of a cabinet minister in a press conference announcing money. And what you really need to focus on when you're coaching these individuals, coaching CEOs or coaching politicians, is how to let them be authentic in their own voice. One of the tools and tricks to avoid what we just saw in your clip there is, you know, I advise clients to keep a little sheet beside them. Just 10 different ways to change the subject. 10 different ways to start a conversation.

10 different ways to maybe pivot slightly. And that's what's more authentic, right? Saying thank you for the question. You're not really thanking someone for the question. I see that when we have speakers too. It's like, thank you for those wonderful remarks. Well, that's how no one speaks. Thank you for those wonderful remarks.

It's an emotion. It's in delivery. And it's in being a human. It's an emotion, it's in delivery, and it's in being a human. And that, unfortunately, was not very humanistic. Yeah. You want to say? Speaking of being a human, I have a lot of empathy for her. She's not a very experienced minister. I think this was the first time she really faced the media in such aggressive way. You can tell that she was nervous. I get nervous when I face the cameras. I'm a print person. So that came through. But it also meant that it looked like she didn't know what she was saying because she was nervous.

It wasn't delivered with confidence. It didn't look like she had an answer to give. Jennifer, I presume, though, that if you're, you know, if you're the premier's office and you've got a rookie minister that you need to send out there to deliver some bad news, there's a way to prepare the minister for doing that in a way that's different from sending a veteran out there who knows what they're doing, right? Is it pretty apparent that they didn't do that this time? It's hard to say. She definitely looked nervous.

And I think that's an important point, is that it is nerve-wracking going into the ring with the media. People would rather have root canal than actually do one of these things. I know that because I've been on both sides of the microphone i was a reporter i know what kinds of things that they can do and what kinds of questions they can ask and how they can set you up and my first interview when i was uh when it was announced that i was running for politics i knew it was going to be a story and the first interview that came in it was drive home radio and i got on the line with the reporter and i was worried about what questions they were going

to be asking i'd been working at the cbc i was my heads were in international news not really provincial news so i said how long do we have and and he said well we're going to go about three minutes i said okay and he asked the first question and I talked for three minutes. I did not draw a break. And in there, it's like, no, because even in the question, they can suggest something. And that was another point that was made is that you usually don't hear the questions, but now you do because you can see the whole news conference. But without hearing those questions, they can be putting words in your mouth. They can be very surly and aggressive and throw you off your game. So it is scary stuff. So you do need some good coaching.

You need to be grounded in who you are. You need to be grounded in what you're delivering. And sometimes you may not be 1,000% behind it, but you need to find that space within yourself that says, this is actually okay, we're doing this for the right reason, and get yourself grounded in that and be able to move forward. Erin, Jennifer has raised a good point, which is the issue of filibusters. Do you purposely send ministers, MPPs, clients out there to filibuster? Jennifer's experience is everyone's experience. Their first interview, you have to pull them aside after a bit and say, okay, we practiced 90 second answers. Your first answer was four and a half minutes. That's not great. That's not a clip. They can't put that on the news.

So you do work on shorter answers. You work on tighter answers. There is a little trick where if you really love the question, it's a good opportunity to tell your story. And if you really don't like the question, it's a good opportunity to answer it quickly, pivot onto something else, and get onto a different topic. Do you send them out there to filibuster? Well, again, it depends on what we're doing. Press conferences generally don't have a timeline. So filibustering is not going to help you very much. Your show has a timeline.

We could keep talking and talking, and eventually you would cut us off probably to get to the next question. But when I'm getting clients ready for committee hearings, when there is a very structured process of how many minutes you're allowed to talk, if they ask you what time it is, take seven minutes to tell them what time it is. Because that's a very structured environment. So I think, you know, we always say in public speaking, know your audience. But in this case, also know your medium, right? Is it television? Is it long form radio?

Is it a quick committee hit? Because all of those things can be used to generate stories, to be used to generate and push your ideas. But they should be handled in vastly different ways. Jennifer, excuse me, Jessica, this may be a good time to sort of get on the record what I suspect a lot of people believe about reporters who do their jobs in circumstances like this, which is I think they assume that you go in there with a hostile attitude to whoever is behind the podium with a view to tripping them up and embarrassing them. Is that, in fact, the case? To some extent, yes.

I do feel like it is our job to ask the questions where the holes are. They get to speak off the top and say what they want to say. What did they not say? What are the questions they haven't answered yet? What are the weak points? Like, we wouldn't be doing our job if we weren't going to poke a little bit, but that doesn't mean, like, taking people out of context. That's never the goal. That's never done on purpose, at least not from us, right? If that happens, it's because what they were saying wasn't clear and we thought they meant this. And, you know, yeah, that kind of fair, like we're fair play. Okay. You say we're fair play, but as we showed earlier in Minister Dunlop's first answer, some reporter piped up, that's not an answer.

Well, it's true. It wasn't an answer. She didn't answer the question. I think he's doing his job. That was Alan Hale. He's doing his job. I pointed out that she hasn't answered. Can she please try again to address the question? Because the question's an important one. Let me, okay, Jennifer Mossop, let me ask what may sound like a completely ridiculous question, but I'll try it anyway. It wouldn't be the first time. Would it be so terrible if when a politician were asked a simple, direct question, they gave a simple, direct answer? It would not be terrible. And it would be even better if it turns into a more authentic conversation where the media doesn't feel like it has to go in hostile and trying to find the tiniest hole and rip it wide open. And the answers can be more authentic i think what's happening in it it's it's a it's a real disservice and it's happening

globally is that we are having such conversations that are polarized that are almost theater and as a result people are becoming very disillusioned they're becoming disillusioned about government politicians and also about the media and the polarizations that happening with these short sound bite messages with a little emotional tug in them they get repeated and repeated and we're all kind of swimming in our ai fueled algorithms and we're becoming very polarized, and we're not getting much meat. We're scrolling through these soundbites, headlines all day long. Very few of us are reading the full articles. Very seldom are conversations like this had where you try to tease that out. I don't know that I have a solution for how we can bring these two sides together,

but both the media and politicians are losing out. We're our own worst enemies on this one. Well said. And Will, I want to go to you on that as well and get your take on this, because my sense is that the public so tunes out so much of what your clients say and so much of the work that we try to do because they just see the inauthenticity of all of it. They see road answers. They see gotcha questions. Can we not do anything about that? Yeah, I think we do, right? And it's incumbent upon these politicians

and us as trainers of politicians, if that's what we are, is to talk about being authentic. At the end of the day, their message is going to cut through better if people believe them as a human, if they've got a personal story that can go with it, if they don't repeat the same words

over and over and over again, if they have a a personal story that can go with it, if they don't repeat the same words over and over and over again, if they have a conversation with folks. And, you know, I look at Doug Ford on these things and, you know, probably not a media darling to be raising in this discussion, but when he's getting battered at the podium, which he has been battered a lot of times, he frequently goes to,

look, guys, I don't know about this. Like, tell me the information, right? Like, I'm just like you on this. We want to make everybody happy. And that disarms folks a little bit for now. Chris Stockwell, former Speaker of the Legislature, former minister before that, was very much the same. He always used to say, look, guys, I'm from Missouri on this.

Show me. Show me what you're talking about, and I'll take a look at it again. And I think that we've lost a lot of that. We've lost the ability for people to simply say, you know what? Maybe we got it again. And I think that we've lost a lot of that. We've lost the ability for people to simply say, you know what, maybe we got it wrong. We've lost the ability to backtrack on things. And frankly, as a political staffer, I would never encourage backtracking. But in our everyday lives, we change our minds, right? And I think that that lack of authenticity really makes it hard for people to follow the news and support anybody

because they can't identify with anybody. Jessica, I think one of the biggest changes I've seen is that we now have a premier who has very strict rules when he is behind the microphone. One question, one follow up and out you go. And I can remember going every premier from Bill Davis to probably Kathleen Wynne. those premiers found themselves in scrums with reporters with microphones in their faces asking question, follow up, follow up, follow up. That doesn't happen with Doug Ford. Is that a problem? Yes and no. He did two scrums at Queen's Park over the past couple of weeks. It hadn't been happening very much, but we found him inside like an event and waited for him to come. There was this press secretary. I said, okay, we're going to do this.

Ask your questions. And we did it. And he can hold his own. And when they give us that sort of respect, like we're going to have him out here, he's going to take the questions. We're not as rabid. Like when there's all of that control, when we're getting all those lines that seem kind of like an insult to our intelligence, reporters get angrier. They ask harder questions. If you do have someone who's saying, OK, I'll come, I'll talk, I'll lay it out as best as I can, we tend to be equally as respectful in our questions. See, I remember, you know, because you're a New Democrat, or you used to work for the New Democrats, I'll hearken back to Bob Ray.

When Bob Ray was premier, this was back in the early 1990s, that poor guy got some brutal scrums where he would stand there and take question after question. And it was not Marcus of Queensbury rules. It was tough stuff. But at the end of the day, you know, I think it probably made him better and it certainly made us better. We don't do that hardly ever anymore. Is that a problem? It is a problem. And I think, I think, first of all, back in the day for much of my career, the premier of the day in every province across the country typically did a press conference every Thursday for 30 minutes or whatever. Just come ask me anything. We've really lost that. And also, on the other hand, it's not just, am I going to be accessible to media? Are we going to say one question, one follow up, then then back of the line, it's 21 minutes and then we're cutting it off? It's also calling the media, the lamestream media, or campaigning and saying, we're just going to do our stuff on TikTok and Instagram and we're

not going to talk to the press. Talking about no particular politician in particular here, there's been a trend towards that, towards saying the media is wrong, the media is the enemy. a trend towards that, towards saying the media is wrong, the media is the enemy. And we need to see mutual respect between politicians and media if we want to go back to the days of long, meandering, very productive press conferences. Well, Will, I remember it was a few weeks back, I went to Mississauga, I think it was on a Sunday, just to see a Pierre Poliev event. And after the event was over, he took questions from the media, and it was one question, no follow-up, and no going to the back of the line to coming back. That was it. Now, is that any rain or run a railroad, do you think?

I mean, yeah, I think it is. Look, everybody has a job in these items. I think the politician definitely has a job to be a human. By the same token, the politician doesn't want to sit and debate a reporter at a live microphone when the reporter can ask any number of issues from anywhere in the world on any policy matter. And if you don't have a robust, well thought out answer, you're going to be criticized for being a policy lightweight. So I do think that there are roles to be played on all on all sides of this. But I do think as well, you know, you mentioned Bob Ray and the crucible of the scrums. I think that makes you a better communicator. I think that makes you a better leader.

And I think that makes you better at what we're discussing today. But that is very, very, very high risk for that politician and by extension with Bob Ray for that government. The times have also changed though too. When Bob Ray was doing those scrums, that was the one opportunity reporters had to get answers, and that was the one opportunity a politician had to communicate items. Now we've got social media channels, we've got 24-hour news,

and long gone are my clips on the morning from the newspapers the next morning, seeing how the scrum went. I know how that scrum went within half an hour when people start tweeting about it. So the entire ecosystem has changed too. So we shouldn't be surprised that the way in which people communicate in that ecosystem has changed too. A couple of minutes left here. And Jennifer, let me go to you on this. I mean, as soon as that day, if we go back to the Minister Dunlop news conference, as soon as that day was done, I did check out how the evening news on a variety of channels played it out. I did check out Trillium. I

checked out other news sources. I went to the legacy media. Nobody gave her a hard time. Everybody actually just reported the clip that she wanted that she said over and over and over. And nobody, I think maybe except for me, I wrote a column the next day, did the whole anatomy of a disastrous news conference thing. Does that suggest, oh God, I hope it doesn for me, I wrote a column the next day, did the whole anatomy of a disastrous news conference thing. Does that suggest, oh God, I hope it doesn't, but I suspect it does. Does that suggest that we're just going to see a lot more of this kind of thing because they know at the end of the day, it works? It works. That's not the first time it's happened and it won't be the last time it happens. Maybe your article was the first time somebody actually called it out with such

uh detail but the thing is if you go back and this is not something new uh in in the late 1800s gustave lebon wrote a book called the crowd a study of the popular mind and he said there are three steps to creating a current of opinion first it's affirmation, which is our term for message. The second is without reason, which is our emotion. And the third is repeat, repeat, repeat. And then you get a turn of opinion. That's 1896. Oh, my gosh. How many other shows would Gustav, what was his last name, be quoted on? That's amazing. There we go. Thank you. That's Jennifer Mossop, the former liberal MPP. Now with Mossop Media, we also have here in our studio. Oh, you got the whole shot up there. Very good. Will Stewart, Enterprise Canada. Jessica Smithcross from the Trillium.ca. Erin Morrison with her own communications consulting company now. What's it called again? Morrison

Combs. There we go. Thanks, everybody, for joining us here on TVO tonight. That was Grant. There we go. Thanks, everybody, for joining us here on TVO tonight. That was Grant.