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	Beat the Press will help you survive the glare of unflattering media attention.
	It will prepare you for those instances when you find yourself facing difficult, painful or embarrassing questions. Or for when you are blind-sided by hostile, biased, relentless, or dangerously ignorant reporters. In a controversy or crisis, you will doubtlessly encounter each of these.
	Sometimes you may be lucky and face only softball questions from reporters on simple and harmless subjects. "How did you feel when the tornado ripped the roof off your house?" kind of questions. But in a society where the media is increasingly negative and sensational, where networks and tabloids frequently trample over the same stories, thousands of people are catapulted daily into instant notoriety of the negative kind.

	Out of the thousands of people forced onto the field every day, many will suffer trampled careers, lost business, slaughtered reputations, and failed goals. And not because they necessarily deserve that kind of treatment, but they simply didn't understand how this game is played.
	That's like being handed the ball on a football field, knowing absolutely nada about the sport, and told to "score." You look downfield and see several thousand pounds of life-threatening mass running at you, and you have no idea what to do. So you naturally turn and run the other way. Guess who scores?
	How do you win on an unfair playing field when the other team controls most of the shots? Sounds impossible, doesn't it? But it’s not. The trick is to keep control of the ball for as long as you can, as often as you can. The most important thing to remember is that no matter what tactics or tricks reporters use, you are in control of what you say, not them.

Why? Because news is largely about conflict. Few of us communicate well during conflict and even fewer are experienced at publicly dealing with the chief components of many news stories: accusations, lies and distortions. (Heck, most of us don't handle these things well in private!).

Our natural adrenaline reactions defend, lash back, stonewall or blame others, are not behaviors that will make us look good either on the evening news or in the daily paper. It certainly doesn't help that pack journalism encourages reporters to focus their stories on issues of blame, guilt or fighting. Also, most people feel powerless when dealing with reporters. If you are distracted by fear, you won’t have much chance of coming across as a reasoned, intelligent, caring person. And how many of us are accustomed to boiling down complicated issues, even deeply personal ones, in 15 seconds or less? Not many. Yet, it can be done with preparation and practice.

Great Risks and Great Paybacks
Saying something careless to a reporter is terribly risky. A single negative story can take a tremendous toll on your personal and professional life. At best, you may come across as simply inept; at worse, you may seem uncaring, irresponsible, derelict, or guilty.

	These images can threaten things that are very important to you, your reputation, your organization's reputation, and everything that happens as a result: customer confidence wanes, stock prices plunge, sales plummet, lawyers start wringing their hands, etc.
	But just about every day's newspaper and every night's broadcast carry examples of missed or botched opportunities. People regularly say risky, ludicrous, mediocre and just plain dumb things to reporters. Like the mayor of a major US city who was quoted in the paper as saying, "People blame me because these water mains break, but I ask you, if the water mains break, would it be my responsibility to fix them then? Would it?"
	That’s certainly a statement to remember around election time. However, if you can learn to hold your own in a media interview, you can greatly increase the odds of getting a balanced news story. Then the interview becomes a tremendous opportunity to sway people to your position. Corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the kind of attention one positive news story provides.
	Refusing to be part of a news story has the opposite effect. You lose a precious opportunity to sway, convince, or move people to action. And you give your adversary, or the reporter, the power to define the issue in his or her own terms. That's like taping a sign on your back that reads, "kick me" and running through a playground with the expectation nothing bad will happen to you.
	In other words, a media interview is not an opportunity to be missed, under most circumstances. As this book will show you, you can come across as rational, confident and authoritative, even under the direst circumstances. It's not complicated, and it shouldn't overwhelm you. What's key is that you practice these techniques, and be patient with yourself. It's a different way of communicating for most of us.
	Most people feel powerless when dealing with reporters. If you are distracted by fear, you won’t have much chance of coming across as a reasoned, intelligent, caring person. And how many of us are accustomed to boiling down complicated issues, even deeply personal ones, in 15 seconds or less? Not many. Yet, it can be done with preparation and practice.

You Need To Do A Little Work, But Not Too Much
When you examine the model responses in this book, you will find they are similar in many respects. They don’t dwell on negatives. They often bridge to positive future efforts and skirt confrontation or conflict. Learning these three points alone will give you an advantage over most interview subjects.

	But that’s frankly not enough knowledge if you really want to bolster your interviewing skills. You need a basic knowledge of the media, particularly the personality traits and professional nuances that influence how they cover stories. You also need an understanding of the tactics they use to coax information from a reluctant source. Most important, you need to grasp some essential techniques for steering the direction of questions.
	Being absolute about almost anything in life is foolhardy, and these comments aren't meant to apply to all reporters, all circumstances or all news mediums. But they are generally relevant to most media, in most situations.
	This book is not meant to draw conclusions about the state of journalism, nor examine its influence on society or offer suggestions for improvement (though a little judgment is unavoidable). There are plenty of excellent books on these subjects. This book explains how things are, and offers ways you can protect yourself while getting your key information across to the audiences you need to reach.
	Thoughts In Your Head, Not Words In Your Mouth.  This book isn't intended to help you deceive the media– that's a game you'll lose for sure. It is meant to help you frame your viewpoints in a highly effective, intelligent, sincere, truthful and confident manner, and not be led down a path to say something you didn't intend to reveal.
	This book is meant to help level the highly uneven playing field by giving you the right equipment and training to score your own goals and win more often. Remember, their goal is to get a great story. Your goal is to make sure it's not at the expense of you or the things you care about.