Just watch this short video, that is from YouTube. Posted by @climatebrad, originally broadcast by the Today Show on NBC in the US.
Did you manage to see the major media mistake that Tony Hayward made?
It's one of the classic blunders in press interviews.
The incident was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill ion the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. 4.9 million barrels of oil ended up in the water, with 11 people losing their life in the disaster.
Tony Hayward, then the CEO of BP, who owned the oil, became the face of BP. He was the man who spoke to the press.
This was absolutely the right decision. This was a disaster of unprecedented scale, and a "spokesperson" or a random Director of BP would have looked weak, uncaring and dismissive.
At about 4 seconds in, there is a clip of an interview with Tony Hayward talking to the interviewer.
His response begins in precisely the right way.
"I'm sorry..." he says.
Now, whilst this isn't going to fix everything and, following an investigation, didn't make up for the safety corners that were cut - it's a great start. The man at the top of the company that is being help responsible by the press and the public is penitent. He is humble.
That all changes a couple of seconds later.
Tony Hayward goes on to say "...there's no-one who wants this thing over more than I do. I want my life back"
Ooh, so close!
Those 5 little words will come back to haunt Tony Hayward again and again and again.
"I want my life back"
There's nothing else he could have said in that interview which would make up for that sentinment.
Never mind the people who have died, never mind the tens of thousands of people who have now found themselves out of work and, potentially, out of a place to live too; the CEO of BP would like everything to return to normal, please.
At the time, his annual salary was over £1 million. He ended up leaving the company later on that year, walking away with an estimated £3 million.
He just wanted his life back.
The Media Training Lesson to be learned here is this:
No One Cares What The Boss Wants.
All that the people affected, and the press and viewers, want to know is this - how sorry are you, and what are you going to do to make it better?
Even if the interviewer had gone out of his way to ask him "And how has his disaster affected you, personally?", that still wouldn't have been the right cue to say 'I want my life back'.
A more correct response would be to say 'How I'm affected isn't important. We've got to help the thousands who are being negatively affected by this disaster, day in, day out'. Deflect the question away from you.
Any inwardly positioned answer is going to make you look selfish and arrogant - and that's never a good takeaway from any press interview.
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