Spring competition: where, when and to whom should our politicians read their 'press releases'?
Regular readers of this blog know that I've been getting exasperated by the growing obsession of leading British politicians with making important speeches at strange times and at peculiar venues.
David Cameron's much heralded speech on Europe was given at 8.30 a.m. in the morning at the London headquarters of an American news agency and was, in effect, a press release thinly disguised as a 'speech' (on which, more HERE).
A week or so later, George Osborne turned up to read another press release at the offices of JP Morgan in Bournemouth (on which a bit more HERE).
Today, Mr Osborne's aides excelled themselves with the selection of a venue - a Morrisons supermarket distribution centre somewhere in Kent - for another important 'speech'/'press release' on the government's latest benefit changes - most of which had, as usual, been available in all this morning's newspapers and/or online long before he arrived to read out the 'speech' (see extract above).
As with the earlier two by Cameron and Osborne, there was no coughing, sneezing, applause, cheering, booing or indeed any other evidence that there was actually an audience there in the warehouse (or was it a corridor?) listening to his every word, or indeed any of his words...
Which brings me to announcing our next prize competition.
WHERE, WHEN AND TO WHOM?
Contestants are invited to propose exactly when, where and to whom any UK politician of their choice should give his or her next major 'speech'. They may also, if they think it relevant, add what the subject matter of the speech should be.
PRIZES
The lucky winner will receive a signed copy of my book Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations and the runner-up will receive a signed copy of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy (also by me).
CLOSING DATE: midnight, 15th May 2013
The results will be announced on 16th May 2013 at the International Speechwriting Conference in London.
Boris Johnson's Sunday morning meeting with Eddie Mair
On several occasions, I've asked whether interviews are ever capable of delivering good news for politicians and wondered why our political leaders appear content with the deal that appears to have been done with the media - in which news interviews have more or less taken over from speeches as the main means of political communication in Britain (see links below).
Vivid evidence of the damage a politician can do to himself was provided yesterday morning on a TV show in which interviews play a major part, and where the producers' best hope is that an interviewee will say something - or, better still, say some things - that will attract much wider media attention than the show normally enjoys.
This time, the interviewee was Mayor of London Boris Johnson, for whom at least three of Eddie Mair's questions caused problems (from about 7 minutes 20 seconds into the above): was he fired from The Times for inventing a story, had he told former leader of the Conservative Party Michael Howard a 'bare-faced lie' and had he talked to a friend on the phone about having someone beaten up?
Not news on the BBC?
A curious feature of this story was the way in which it didn't become a story on the BBC, whose news broadcasts later in the day carried on as if the Mair-Johnson interview wasn't news at all, even though other media outlets thought differently:
ITN
Daily Mirror
The Guardian
Daily Mail
Huffington Post
Short-term irritant or longer term damage?
The interesting question now is whether these few moments from a Sunday morning TV show will have any more lasting impact on Mr Johnson's reputation and political career.
If nothing else, I suspect that I won't be alone in watching tonight's Michael Cockerell documentary that prompted Eddie Mair's quetions (at 9.00 p.m. on BBC2).
Related posts on televised interviews
Related posts on media coverage of speeches
Ten exceptional interviews from my archives
Did the cardinals have a hidden agenda in electing another old man to the to the papacy?
Now that Benedict XVI has shown the world that a pope can retire when he feels a bit past it, the cardinals must have felt liberated to hand the top job to another old man.
And how very polite commentators have become. There was a time when the advanced age of the new Pope would have been a major focus for comment and complaint. But there doesn't seem to have been much of either (yet).
Since qualifying for bus and rail passes, I don't feel at all inhibited about saying that I think there's something vaguely barmy about cardinals electing a 76 year old to take charge of an organisation as big and complex as the Roman Catholic church.
Unless, of course, their hidden and hush-hush agenda was to accept the implicit change in job specification decreed by Benedict - i.e. that popes can now retire whenever they feel like it.
By opening the papacy up to anyone below the age of 80 (males only, of course) the cardinals are giving more of them a chance to become infallible. And, if old fogeys are now to become the norm rather than the exception, the Roman Catholic church won't have to suffer for too long from any mistakes the 'electorate' happens to make (as, for example, the pope emeritus?).
Ashdown can still rouse the party faithful
It's good to see an old dog who hasn't forgotten what were new tricks to him when he first gave a leader's speech to his party conference 25 years ago.
Speaking to the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in Brighton, chairman of the party's next general election campaign and former party leader Paddy Ashdown made the most of his chance to rally the troops again in what Patrick Sawyer of the Daily Telegraph referred to as 'a rousing speech'.
And what was the line that caught the media's attention?
Surprise, surprise - it was a simple contrast: “I don’t want being in government, to be a blip for the Liberal Democrats. I want it to become a habit."
What do Nigel Farage MEP and Gordon Brown MP have in common?
I'm grateful to @HadleighRoberts for tweeting a link to this clip of Guy Verhofstadt MEP pointing out that Nigel Farage's participation in the European parliament fisheries committee rivals that of Gordon Brown's participation in the House of Commons since the last general election.
I was also interested to see that this attack on Mr Farage prompted three bursts of applause in less than two minutes, and has now been seen by nearly 100,000 YouTube viewers.
Some of the comments posted under the YouTube clip, and especially that by 'britboy4321', are well worth a read by anyone who might be thinking that Mr Farage and UKIP are worthy of so much attention (e.g. Westminster Village media reporters, editors of BBC Question Time, BBC Any Questions, etc.)...
Was the Conservative candidate gagged after losing Eastleigh?
Maria Hutchings, defeated Conservative Party candidate in yesterday's Eastleigh by-election, has provided another remarkable video-clip for my collection.
What's so peculiar about it is the 'interviewees' determined refusal to say anything at all, accompanied by an unchangingly static facial expression.
Opening questions fishing for her view on what had gone wrong, such as "Why did you do so badly?" and "You came third in a two-horse race - what went wrong?" quickly gave way to her silence as the main focus of reporters' attention: "Why won't you say anything?"; "Have you been gagged?" and "This is unbelievable."
And there was indeed something very 'unbelievable' about it, as it's so rare for a politician to refrain from speaking to the media, even in the face of such difficult questions, that I too was left wondering whether Ms Hutchings had been 'gagged' by her party machine...
State of the Union Address, 2013: Surfing applause to bring about better gun control?
One of the things that impressed me when writing Our Masters' Voices (1984) was former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn's technical ability to carry on speaking after his audience had started to applaud. It created the impression that he had not been attempting to trigger applause and that he was now having trouble making himself heard because what he'd just said had gone down so well with the audience that they couldn't wait any longer to show their approval.
It's a technique referred to in American English as 'surfing appplause', a phrase that sums it up so well that I wish I'd known it when I first started writing about it. When done well, the audience reaction comes across as unequivocally positive, with speaker and listeners sounding as though they are on exactly the same wavelength.
It was therefore fascinating to see where President Obama took to surfing the applause during this year's State of the Union address - at the point when he starts to identify groups of people and individuals who have suffered from gun violence and who "deserve a vote".
Although it would be nice to think that the president's technical skill at rhetoric and oratory might be enough to get the job of gun control done, I fear that this will never happen - and will be thwarted by the peculiar (and peculiarly) American obsession with 'the right to bear arms'...
Other posts on surfing applause
Waterbottle gate: a reminder about drinking and speaking from Senator Marco Rubio
Since Senator Marco Rubio, an early favourite for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination according to some newspapers responded to President Obama's State of the Union address a few hours ago, he's attracted a good deal of flack on Twitter for the way he grasped for a bottle of water during his speech (about 23 seconds into the above) - in a sequence that's apparently going viral...
Yet all of us who do any public speaking at all know that a glass (rather than a bottle) of water close at hand (rather than a few feet away and nearly out of reach) is an essential part of your backup equipment.
The awkward, even shifty, way in which Rubio reached for his water may not have been very elegant or well-timed. But it came nowhere close to the disaster I saw some years ago at a Labour Party annual conference.
The speaker was making a long and boring speech about a long and boring composite motion that he was proposing. A cutaway shot of the audience showed that some were reading newspapers, some were audibly chatting to each other and very few were paying attention.
So when the speaker paused for a drink of water, the audience must have thought he'd finished and promptly started clapping.
But he hadn't finished and thanked them for the applause - before droning on for several more minutes.
UK Business Communicator of the Year, 2013
Background
The
UK Speechwriters’ Guild emerged in 2009 to raise the profile of speechwriters
and improve standards of speaking in public life. We now have over 100 members.
We have launched a prize to be awarded to an outstanding figure in the business
world who speaks well.
This
is the fourth year that judges from the UK Speechwriters’ Guild have selected
the Business Communicator of the Year. The winner in February 2010 was Sir
Martin Broughton, Chairman of British Airways. The winner in February 2011 was
Geoff Burch, the motivational business speaker and author. The winner in 2012
was Gillian Tett, the financial journalist.
The
Business Communicator of the Year receives a small trophy with an engraved
plate. This can be presented at the winner’s convenience but we do encourage
the winner to receive the award at one of our conferences (London 16 May,
Brussels 20 September 2013).
The
UK Speechwriters’ Guild hosts regular conferences to showcase top speakers and
share knowledge and ideas. Speakers have included Phil Collins, Tony Blair’s
former speechwriter, Edward Mortimer, former speechwriter to Kofi Annan and
Fred Metcalf, David Frost’s scriptwriter.
The Winner 2013
Most of the business news we’re
hearing is gloomy and dispiriting. The advertising executive, Rory Sutherland,
has emerged in recent years with entertaining anecdotes and ideas to give
entrepreneurs heart and make business fun.
David Ogilvy once said: “I only
make a couple of speeches a year but they’re designed to cause the maximum stir
on Madison Avenue.”: Mr Sutherland retains some of that provocative flair.
The UK Speechwriters’ Guild has
awarded Rory Sutherland the prize of UK Business Communicator 2013 for three
reasons:
The first is that he communicates
with style. He uses self-deprecating humour to talk about business. He makes
dull concepts, colourful, by drawing observations from familiar experience. And
he can craft smart one-liners, like: ‘Saving is consumerism needlessly
postponed’.
He has a schtick, but he’s always
funny, clear and thought-provoking. You don’t mind hearing many of his stories
over and over because he tells them rather beautifully. Politicians and CEOs
would be wise to copy his formula.
The second reason he gets the
prize is because his talks make him a great ambassador for his company. He has
expressed a fear of public speaking, but he has overcome it. As Vice Chairman
of the Ogilvy Group, he doesn’t make apologies about not representing the views
of his employers. His presentations to the Californian conference TED attract
millions of viewers, reaching audiences beyond specialists in advertising.
The third reason is because he
uses the ancient art of persuasion. His material can be challenging, but he is
likeable. He champions psychology over number crunching. He’s the first British
business leader we’ve heard quote Charlie Munger, who we think is one of the
best American business speakers.
Mr Sutherland‘s good example
illustrates how wasteful it is to try to engage audiences with Excel
spreadsheets and complex PowerPoint slides. He spreads optimism with insights
like, ‘recession is the mother of invention’ and ‘human understanding is the
future of business and Government’. These are the kind of sentiments that
entertain audiences. Business leaders like Mr Sutherland, who can inspire
audiences to try new things, will ultimately lead the way out of recession.
Brian
Jenner
Chairman
of the Judges, UK Speechwriters’ Guild
February
2013
Another extended press release disguised as a speech - and does it matter?
Hardly ten days on from seeing David Cameron reading an extended press release on Europe as if it were 'a speech' to an audience (HERE) and we have Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. doing much the same thing at the offices of JP Morgan in Bournemouth earlier today.
As with the PM's speech, the absence of any coughing, sneezing or applause left me wondering whether there was an audience there at all and whether this is yet another example of a politician reading out a long-winded press release as if it were a speech.
So what?
My blog on this after Cameron's Europe speech prompted an interesting comment on Twitter from speechwriter Sam Coates (@SamuelCoates):
"re: Cameron speech lacking non-media audience, are you in danger of being too purist? Better a speech than press conf/release?"
To which I admitted that perhaps I was being rather too purist and asked "but are you conceding that it was a press release?"
"No" he tweeted "a well-articulated speech seen live by many not in the room. But admittedly not one that had to worry about claptraps etc!"
Speeches as press releases - and does it matter?
From this, it seems that Mr Coates is rather more relaxed about this trend than I am - which gets me wondering whether my unease about politicians reading out what are, in effect, extended press releases to non-partisan audiences is a further reflection of my advanced years (and the relative youthfulness of Mr Coates).
As I asked in my last blog on the subject, "are we going to have to put up with more and more such non-speeches as the stock-in-trade of contemporary political communication?" - to which I'd add "does it matter?"
I'd be glad to hear what others think...
Is a lecture by Bill Gates (or anyone else) good television?
I don't often repeat blogs verbatim, but watching Bill Gates giving this year's Richard Dimbleby Lecture (HERE) reminded me of a question I asked two years ago that still baffles me and is still awaiting an answer, namely:
Why does the BBC commemorate Richard Dimbleby with a televised lecture?
My thoughts from two years ago remain pretty much unchanged:
'Last night's Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC 1 was delivered by Michael Morpurgo, the latest in a long and distinguished line of famous people to have done so every year (except four) since 1972 (full list HERE).
'But what baffles me about this annual event is how and why the BBC ever decided that the most suitable memorial to a celebrated broadcaster would be something as ill-suited to television as a lecture.
'Wouldn't an annual Dimbleby Documentary, Dimbleby Debate or Dimbleby Interview have been a more fitting way to remember a current affairs journalist? After all, these were not only the kinds of things he was best known for, but would have come across better on television than celebrities, many of whom have little or no experience of lecturing, standing behind a lectern and talking for rather a long time.
'So far, I've been unable to find out anything about why the BBC (or who) decided in the first place that a lecture would be the best way to commemorate his life - and would be interested to hear from anyone who knows something about its history.'
Cameron on Europe: a press release thinly disguised as a speech
Finding out when and where David Cameron's much-trailed speech on Europe was taking place today posed at least as much of a challenge as working out what the point of it all was.
What I eventually discovered was that that both the when and the where of the speech were quite unusual - unless it's suddenly become fashionable for our politicians to deliver major speeches at 8.00 a.m. in the morning on the off chance that the American news agency in central London (where the speech was being given) would be able to drum up an audience at a moment's notice to listen to it - or, to be more precise, to prepare reports on what he said for the rest of the day's news programmes.
Who was there?
From the above, there's very little evidence that anyone was there at all: no coughing or sneezing and not so much as a hint of applause at the end of the speech.
Yet there were, of course plenty of people there, not supporters who might have cheered or clapped, but representatives of the media busily writing notes on what he was saying - while he was saying it (which keen 'listeners' could follow live, as the words came out of his mouth, on the BBC website HERE).
Speech or press release?
So does this really count as a political 'speech' delivered by a leading politician, or was it merely a case of a leading politician taking the trouble to read out a press release - on the grounds that no one would take any notice of it unless it were disguised, however thinly, as 'a speech'?
And are we going to have to put up with more and more such non-speeches as the stock-in-trade of contemporary political communication?
Should we have the right to bear arms during a speech?
Yesterday's news that someone had interrupted a Bulgarian politician's speech by mounting the stage and pointing a gun at him made me realise how little I know about Bulgarian politics - as well as how unusual (thankfully) it is for audiences to respond to speeches in this particular way.
I also realised that I have no idea as to whether or not the Bulgarian constitution enshrines the right of its citizens "to bear arms", or indeed to beat up anyone whose gun fails to go off at point blank range.
Needless to say, I hope that neither of these rights is enjoyed by Bulgarians, and, more importantly, that such trends do not catch on in the USA...
Lance Armstrong's 'straight' answers to Oprah's Yes/No questions
Having never previously seen any Oprah Winfrey interviews, I've no idea whether her interviewees have to agree beforehand to answer any "Yes/No" questions she might ask with a straight "Yes" or "No".
But that's what disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong did in this sequence from his interview with her.
Whether or not it was not the way she had expected him to confess, as she'd said in her trailers for the show, I do not know. I do know, however, that to my English ears, such apparently straight answers to a series of "Yes/No" questions definitely qualifies it for a place my collection of unusual TV interviews.
Examples of Other Unusual Interviews
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