This Workshop is tailored for key spokespeople within Police Services.

We will help you with those tricky live interviews for both radio and, television as well as local newspapers, at the scene of a major incident. We will help you with:

• What you can and can't say to the media.
• How you present yourself, both visually and in terms of what you say about your Police Force.
• Overcoming nerves, while you are pre-occupied with saving lives, but need to speak to the media.
• Practice both routine incidents (street crime, RTAs, stop and search) as well as more controversial incidents such as racist attacks, a firebomb through a letter box, or something involving a terrorist bomb — whether you know the full details or you don't — such as the major incidents and series of explosions in London this week.

We will fully explore the range of incidents you may have to comment on to the media, including:

• When disaster strikes
• Major incidents
• Emergency Planning
• Role of the Local Authority
• Damage limitation

We will tailor training to the individual delegates and ensure that we include scenarios from all areas you cover.

This Workshop will be a mixture of theory and practical with the emphasis being on the practical. The quickest and most effective way to "get up to speed" with the media is by actually doing real-life media interviews and we will spend most of the day doing this.

Having learnt the theory behind this, we set out to put this into practice and make a filmed recording of each and every interview throughout the day. We give constructive feedback on every interview and tailor each interview to scenarios relevant and applicable to your Fire and Rescue Service.

The media skills and media empowerment work through a steep learning curve, which each course participant experiences by doing first one interview (print), receiving feedback, then another interview (radio), receiving feedback and finally a third interview (television) and receiving feedback. They also learn almost as much from each other (active listening) as from the media trainer.

Each Workshop will start with a presentation of the basics of media training

Aims and objectives of media relations. Demystifying the media-identifying your local media outlets. What is news? What does the local media want from a story? Reacting quickly to the media after an incident. Giving media interviews with minimal preparation time. How to present a positive view of the Fire Service at a major incident or time of crisis. How to look and sound confident and overcome nerves. Crisis management-how to respond to a crisis or media negativity. General rules for interviews-how to handle a media enquiry. How to take control of the interview and achieve your objectives. Preparation for interviews — even in two minutes. Strategy and tactics-including key messaging. Success stories and crisis management. Print, Radio and TV interview techniques. Down the line, OB, telephone interviews, doorstepping, panel i/v's. Using your voice and how to present yourself visually. Do's and don'ts.
Practical session including three individual interviews per participant per day-print, radio and TV.

The Workshops will help demystify the media for those people who are not very experienced at dealing with the media as well as those who are. It will show them what the media wants at the scene of a major incident and what makes a good story for them.

It will provide a set of tools for handling enquiries from journalists and answering journalists' questions. It will help you become more comfortable and confident when speaking to journalists.

We also want to get away from a stock response "No Comment" type reply to genuine interview requests from the media - as this is very damaging and passing on interview requests to "the same old faces".

The learning tool is do learn do - where the difficult skill is acquired by actual practice - following on from an initial level of theory.

Here is a sample of scenarios:

• Major incident involving the Police Force
• How to respond quickly for requests for live and pre-recorded interviews.
• Response to a major disaster.
• Controversial incidents such as a racist attack, or a firebomb placed through a letter box.
• Damage limitation to property.
• Road Traffic Accidents where the Police Force is attending.
• Interview where you are asked to "blame" someone — a person, the Local Authority, another Emergency Service, such as the Ambulance Service.
• Something more controversial — such as an enquiry about going on strike, or the threat of strike action.

Agenda

Morning:

Afternoon:

Form more information please use the contact form below.