I'm going to make a few enemies here, but I have to call it like I see it. In many corporations when the CEO or some top level manager is doing an interview over the phone with a reporter, trade publication reporter in particular, there's this sense that it's okay to have the in house PR person, the corporate communications person on the line, or they're in the room and it's on speakerphone. Horrible policy that people do this because they think it's safer, the executive will feel safer because the PR person's there to protect him or her. Wrong, wrong wrong. If you say something stupid. The reporter has the right to use it.

The time and the place for the PR person to protect the spokesperson the person being interviewed is before the interview ever started. That way you can rehearse with the executives make sure that they actually have good messages. Can they say the message is convincingly? Do they have great sound bites? Can they answer the questions bridge to their sound bites and not accidentally say stupid things that are quotable. That's where the PR person has value.

But it's an illusion of safety, to have that PR person sort of sitting in on the call and monitoring it because there's nothing legally, ethically or any other way you can do something if the spokesperson says something stupid, so I recommend that you don't even have the corporate spokesperson listening in. The other thing is it just makes some reporters nervous. It makes them feel like you know, big brother's watching or that they have to have extra approval to use so they don't like that they resent that. And they're human beings. If you're doing something to make them resentful. There are ways they can not give you the benefit of the doubt when putting Gather the story.

So that's why I do not like corporate communications people sitting there on the line during the call.