Comment by JoshTriplett

3 days ago

People need to treat PR like they do AIs. "You utterly failed to answer the question, try again and actually answer the question I asked this time." I'd love to see corporate representatives actually pressed to answer. "Did you actually do X, yes or no, if you dodge the question I'll present you as dodging the question and let people assume the worst."

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JoshTriplett

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pndy  3 days ago

I'd guess that unlike AI a PR person would just simply stay silent or demand to continue with a different question or end the interview/talk and leave

MathMonkeyMan  3 days ago

This is why I stopped watching American presidential "debates." If I wanted that kind of entertainment, I'd listen to a rap battle.

refulgentis  3 days ago

Challenging or even characterizing the PR line is usually treated as an unjustified attack to justify inflated claims of bias.

  • duped  3 days ago

    It's worse actually. These are repeated games so the outcome of any current interaction affects the next one. Journalists can't be too hard on the people the cover or else they won't have the access to cover them in the future.

nosianu  2 days ago

> People need to treat PR like they do AIs. "You utterly failed to answer the question, try again and actually answer the question I asked this time.

I'm going way off topic, and off on a tangent here.

Anecdote, famous public broadcaster TV talk show in Germany (Markus Lanz): The invited politician failed to answer, so the host did what you asked. Three times. Then he just stopped and went to the next topic like nothing happened.

For anyone thinking this is reasonable, what else could he have done, after all?

This method is utterly useless for the public watching the dialog, but has benefits for both the show and the politician. The public won't learn a thing. The host can pretend to be super tough in evading guests. The politician is let off the hook very easily - he just have to deflect the question(s) with canned standard responses three times, easy enough, no consequences.

Next day, the very critical people on reddit wrote highly upvoted comments celebrating how "tough" the host was on the politician.

But the whole scenario is always the same, every single time, almost like it's scripted: The guest only has to deflect the "tough" question a few times and then nothing else happens, they just move on. It's also eerie to see the change in the host and their questions, from acting tough three times to changing back to acting amiably and forgetting about the unanswered question.

At this point this is all just part of the "act tough but don't upset the guest" show.

You may ask, but what can they do?

Well, how about throwing the guy out? What's the use of them as an interview partner if the interview is used as a mere PR piece? They should just have replacement guests on standby. That won't be a high-level person, but it does not need to be. Yes, they will have trouble getting politicians in if they have to fear actually having to answer. So what? Is the show being a one-sided PR piece any better? They could just interview normal non-Berlin-politics-bubble people instead. There are soooo many who have interesting things to say, much more interesting than some politician's prepared statements.

Unless there are actual consequences, like ending the interview right there and letting the viewers or readers know that answers were refused, acting tough does not matter if it can just be waited out.