Time to front up. I did about five years journalism, and I think someone earlier in this thread put it together perfectly; negativity evokes emotion. The cause and effect of that is emotion sells newspapers, newspaper subscriptions sell advertisements.
You only have to look at where, to a large degree, our journalistic history comes from. The United Kingdom. People talk about finding the 'middle ground' in this particular thread, it does not sell. The UK system shows that with the tabloids. The tabloids sell left right and centre because people demand to be interested. You can broaden this out to various other avenues - professional wrestling, again an emotion evoking industry, you very rarely see wrestlers who are not either extremely bad or extremely good. Take a look at the Australian Touring Cars a couple of years ago, where there was a massive dust up between two of the drivers, viewership figures went up exponentially.
Craig is right in one respect and I raised it elsewhere, as a professional in the media limelight, particularly the tunnel vision that's created from a one team environment like the Warriors, you are going to be subjected to 'interesting' questions, either very positive, or very negative. In a normative sense, it is common respect not to ask the very bad, but in the media, your job is determined by how many subscriptions you sell or how many viewers you bring in to up your demand for advertisements and therefore the charge rate. There are far better ways to handle it than the way both Monty Betham and Wade McKinnon handled it, no disrespect to them at all, but it just is not 'media savvy'. Let's look at a past master of the best response, 'the sporting cliche`'.
"Full credit to the opposition."
Yes, Sean Fitzpatrick. In practically every post match interview, even when not asked he would land in the full credit comment. What you will find the All Blacks over the past 10-15 years are very good at in interviews, even Richie McCaw himself, they take the question and then answer with something else that does not really answer the question but satisfies the home viewers.
Another way to respond to it is be completely and utterly honest. One only needs to look at how Ken Rutherford handled his captaincy and his media liaisons to understand that. People loved 'Rudders' because he epitomised the Kiwi fighting spirit, against all odds. Here was a man who as a boy was subjected to a barrage of torment by the fearful West Indians, but had the ticker to keep coming back for more. People responded to that, so he gained the respect necessary to gain the top job. When the results were not going his way, Rutherford was brutally honest and up front. All of a sudden, a fairly mediocre to good player was being heavily favoured in the media and in the community as this nation's cricket captain, over one of the world's great batsman, a certain MD Crowe.
What was the contrast? Crowe was elite. No disrespect to Martin, but he did not quite hit the people in the hearts the way Rutherford did. In fact, I find it unbelievable to hear the U-turn in Crowe's cricket commentaries where he seems quite down to earth and excitable, Martin was just a cricket professional striving for professionalism and perfection in a country perhaps not ready to accept one man standing out on his own like that.
In my very limited experience, and from studies of some of histories charismatic leaders, you do not have to be completely honest per se`, but perhaps accepting of the situation and the media's need to serve the community with interesting situations. Take JFK, the man was the rival of Hugh Heffner in one respect, but was it common knowledge in the media? No. Why? At the time there was a certain unwritten guideline that these sorts of things that could unstable the national way of life were not reported firstly, but secondly, because JFK was one of them. He was a straight forward, confident man with the ability to inspire. And who would want to be the catalyst to over throw that?
Just a few thoughts, no criticisms intentional at anyone who has been grated by the media, but unfortunately, it's a very harsh piece of reality for professionals who are in a marketable commodity. If you do it right, you can become adored like Rutherford, if you do it perfectly, you can make people follow you even if it's unbelievable, like John F. Kennedy.
