It's hard to believe that I've reached the end of the normal 10 week State Department internship period. This week I did further work on the Early Alerts, attended a multilateral meeting at NATO, and sat in on a media training for State Department employees.
Every day this week continued coverage of the Libyan crisis in the Early Alerts was joined by coverage of the crisis in Ivory Coast. A civil war broke out in the country in March 2011, and this conflict has its origins in a disputed election. An election was held in Ivory Coast on November 28, 2010, in which President Laurent Gbagbo faced opposition leader Alassane Ouattara. The election was characterized by a strong north/south divide in the country – Gbagbo has a strong base of support in the south, and Ouattara in the north. The various rounds of the election were characterized by increasing tension and some violence. On December 2nd, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) declared that Ouattara won the runoff election with 54% of the vote, but the Constitutional Court declared these results to be invalid and later declared Gbagbo the winner. As the dispute continued, sporadic outbreaks of violence increasingly took place between supporters of the two candidates, and by March the conflict had exploded into full-scale civil war. Well over a thousand people have been killed so far, and over 100,000 refugees have fled to neighboring, and also quite poor, Liberia. While Ouattara has greater legitimacy in the sense that it seems clear he was the legitimate winner of the 2010 elections, the European reporting I read made clear that forces on both sides have committed atrocities.
As tragic as the situation is, like our sections on Japan a few weeks ago we looked at Ivory Coast from a narrow angle. Our coverage of the conflict in Ivory Coast focused on calls for the West to take action in Ivory Coast and on the role of the UN there. On April 4th, in response to attacks by pro-Gbagbo forces on UN Peacekeepers, the UN retaliated with helicopter strikes, officially “in self-defense and to protect civilians.” The French military also intervened, launching strikes against pro-Gbagbo military installations. Given how passive the UN has been during past massacres, such as in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, this was quite the unprecedented development. By and large, the European press was quite pleased with the UN taking a stand. For instance, Financial Times Deutschland said, “There is a good side to this UN intervention. It signals to other despots on the [African] continent that they cannot cling to an office that they no longer have without impunity.” A handful of outlets were critical, however: for instance, Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta complained that "The peacekeepers, in effect, violated their mandate, and so did the UN Secretary General, if he ordered that attack.
On Monday, I had the opportunity to sit in on a multilateral meeting at NATO. While I did not understand all of what was being discussed, it was quite interesting to see how an international organization like NATO functions on a day to day basis.
After the Early Alert on Wednesday I attended a media training lead by a former journalist, which consisted of the correspondent giving general advice to several State Department officials on how to prepare and perform in broadcast interviews. The correspondent mentioned a number of ways one should prepare for interviews. You should first find out the background of the reporter and publication that is asking for the interview, to get a sense of whether they are a reputable outlet and what kinds of questions they might ask (i.e. a business channel might ask very different questions than a day-time news organization). More generally, he mentioned that you should do all the thinking about the interview beforehand, quoting a phrase that went something like “there are no original thoughts in the studio.” That said, he cautioned that you can’t rehearse everything, and you can only plan what ideas you want to leave people with. He emphasized that that you want to get those in right at the beginning of an interview and if possible again at the end. He also said that research on what people remember from TV says that 80% is what they see and 20% what they hear. Or, to use an image, you can’t point a camera at “an issue”, but you can, for instance, show a boy throwing a stone or film with certain backgrounds in mind (i.e. conducting an interview on economics with a stock market in the background, etc) to illustrate an issue.
Something that stood out to me was the correspondents’ emphasis on not giving your interviewer a sense of evasiveness (i.e. you shouldn’t say “no comment” in response to a question). If you do that, journalists will assume you are covering up something and will pursue it. To avoid this, you have to give a reason: perhaps the issue is still in progress, or maybe you say you aren’t going to speak about it because it is being discussed at an upcoming forum, or so on. You should then go on to stay “What I can tell you is …” to give the image of wanting to help. If asked a question outside your subject area, the correspondent said that if you’re asked in a one on one context, you can just simply say you don’t know. On a TV interview, of course, you don’t want to do that; rather, you can just say a brief couple sentences overviewing the topic. If the interviewer follows up with further questions on that subject, then you can say that you don't work in that subject area and as a result you simply don't know or aren't qualified to answer the question. Since you gave them what they expected, you give off the positive impression that you have both breadth and a particular expertise.
All in all, I’m really glad I had a chance to attend the afternoon media training session. Granted, broadcast interview skills aren’t really relevant to me, the intern, at the moment, but certainly someday I hope to be in a position where someone might ask me for a TV interview. Some of the tips I learned – especially to avoid giving an impression of evasiveness, and of the three colors not to wear on screen (black, pure white, and bright red) – I will definitely remember.
Friday the Hub and the Mission to the EU's public diplomacy department threw a farewell party for me and another intern who is also leaving. The party was great, though it makes coming in to help out for two extra days next week a bit awkward.
No comments:
Post a Comment