This presentation was given at the AAFP Family Medicine Congressional Conference (FMCC) on May 14, 2013. The goal of this presentation was to help attendees understand the relationship between media relations and advocacy, their role in an interview, and how reporters work.

1. Family Medicine Congressional Conference
Washington, D.C.
May 14, 2013
Leslie Champlin, Senior Public Relations Strategist
The Fourth Estate: Working with the Media
to Advance Your Advocacy Agenda

2. Today’s Goals
• Understand how reporters work.
• Understand the relationship between media relations
and advocacy.
• Practice.
• Understand your role in an interview.

3. Legislators’ Sources of Information

4. What is Media Relations?
• A planned strategy in which you identify
your message and communicate it to
the public via the news media.
-- Medicare Physician Payment
-- Graduate Medical Education, Title VII
-- Family Physician Workforce
-- Physician-Led Team-Based Care
in the PCMH

5. Plan an event
Sources of Advocacy-Related News

6. Sources of Advocacy-Related News
Poll your members

7. Sources of Advocacy-Related News
Community outreach

8. Sources of Advocacy-Related News
Demographic, socioeconomic, census reports on health topics

9. Clinical, public health data
Sources of Advocacy-Related News

10. Physician workforce,
education issues
Sources of Advocacy-Related News

11. Who are reporters?
• They are on increasingly short deadlines.
• They are motivated to help their
communities.
• They don’t know what they don’t know.
• They need stories because they need
bylines.

12. • Who else is being interviewed?
Preparing for any interview:
• Who is the audience?
• What kind of reporter is this?
• What is the story angle?

13. Block
Your job:
Talk about what you want to talk about.
And Bridge

14. • Useful phrases
– The real issue is…
– The important thing is…
– We were surprised to learn…
– That’s why you need to know…
– The point that needs to be
made…
– We need to remember that…
Building the Block,
Constructing the Bridge

15. • Focus on the message, not just the question.
• Think before you speak.
• Headline your answers.
• Speak simply.
Putting it into action

16. Putting it into action
• Don’t fill the silence.
• Don’t repeat a negative.
• Never go “off the record.”
• Respect the reporter

17. Putting it into action
• Tell the truth – even if it’s “I don’t know.”
• Localize, personalize, humanize.
• Repeat your message. Repeat it
• Repeat it again.

18. Putting it into Practice …