The governor of Montana is really ticked off.

 “You can’t get past the liberal press with a bucket of ink,” she is reported to have said (a quote which doesn’t really add to this story, but how do you pass up one like that?)

Gov. Judy Martz is so mad, in fact, that she has slammed the lid on giving interviews to certain reporters. According to an AP report out of Helena, Martz told the Montana Logging Association on Friday (May 17) that instead of giving interviews to some of the reporters who cover her she will take only written questions and provide written responses.

The story goes on to sample the reactions from various media outlets covering the Montana Governor’s Office, but the real question is whether this is an acceptable form of “discipline” for the news media.

Ignore, for the moment, the fact that this example is the holder of a political office. No doubt we’ve all given the Daily Oracle an exaggerated snap of frustration as we opened it up to follow the jump from a front page story that was already going in a majorly wrong direction. Here, we’re talking about problems on a grander scale than the occasional out-of-context quote.

Pulling the plug on interviews can work to get the attention of a recalcitrant news media outlet, but it should be considered only as a last resort and only after lengthy efforts to turn the situation around through less dramatic means. Reporters should be talked to and errors and omissions pointed out. Then editors should be contacted, then managing editors, then publishers. Only when you’ve really run out the string, should the ultimate weapon be considered, let alone used.

Also, notice that the governor did not entirely sever the lines of communication with what she perceives as the offending media. According to the article, she takes written questions and provides written responses, a process which continues the flow of information, but changes the whole dynamic of the information gathering process.

From the AP article alone it is impossible to say whether the Montana governor’s new media strategy is warranted. We can say only that, theoretically, under extreme conditions and after repeated efforts to generate accurate, balanced coverage, the measure is an appropriate last resort.

But long before beginning to think about denying interviews, there are numerous, more positive steps that can be taken:

• Force yourself to look at your coverage with a truly unbiased eye. Is it really as bad as you imagined, or did your emotions kick in and allow you to exaggerate the problem?
• Examine your relationships with members of the news media. Do this on a personal and organizational level. Do you, in fact, have relationships with reporters and others in the media? If not, why not?
• Take an inventory of your news media interview skills. Again, do this on the personal and organizational level. Do you have a process for preparing for interviews? Do you work from an agenda with specific messages during the interview? Do ever really think about your audiences and the messages you need to convey prior to and during an interview…or do you just “wing it?”
•  While you’re doing inventories, make an honest assessment of your attitudes and opinions about the news media in general. Think back on previous interviews. Did these emotions creep into your answers? Did you feel personally attacked or threatened when the reporter’s questions got tough?
•  Have you really considered the value of having an aggressive news media in terms of the credibility it provides for you and your messages?

Don’t wait for your experience with the news media to go nuclear before you begin the steps to put the relationship on a more positive path. If you think your case is different and it just can’t be done with the media troglodytes you’ve been saddled with, then consider the thousands of other spokespersons who successfully walk the media tightrope every day. What do they have that you don’t have?