Margaret Thatcher’s legendary former press secretary Bernard Ingham has died at the age of 90. Whatever your views on his politics (or the politics of his boss), he was a formidable operator. I love this quote attributed to him:

“Always feed the dogs at the front gate or they’ll scavenge from the bins at the back.”

Keep that quote in your mind as you prepare for media engagement. Journalists will generally want to seek out a news line and if you don’t feed them one they’re more likely to pursue paths you might not want them to head down.

Good content leads to control and direction. A lack of content means you will always be on the back foot in interviews.

Incidentally Ingham was very generous with his time. At university I (smugly) wrote my dissertation on whether his power and influence undermined our democracy. Despite this premise he agreed to meet and we ended up talking for over three hours. I was determined to get a decent news line out of him…and failed to get even remotely close.

Respected science journalist Jonathan O’Callaghan tweeted the following last week:

“Someone declined an interview with me because they said their discovery was “too small and not worth reporting.”

He went on to insist, “I told them it was cool!”

Where do your sympathies lie? You might applaud the honesty of the academic, heroically turning down the chance of headlines and column inches.

It just leaves me frustrated. Journalists don’t chase stories “too small and not worth reporting”. Often researchers absorbed in the detail and the process can’t see the bigger picture and the impact their work has (or might have) on the audience.

To be fair there’s a chance something else is going on here. O’Callaghan may be pursuing an unspoken angle that might portray the science in a negative light, but I very much doubt that’s the case.

If a journalist you respect (and that word is crucial) thinks what you are doing is newsworthy then go with them. They know how to do their job. Don’t sensationalise, don’t distort, and root what you’re doing in the audience’s world.