prepare-a-media-briefing

name	prepare-a-media-briefing
category	write
description	Prepare a spokesperson for a factual, bounded, and useful media conversation. Use when an interview or background briefing requires current evidence, source availability, sensitive boundaries, and disciplined follow-up.

prepare-a-media-briefing

Help the spokesperson explain what is known without guessing under pressure.

Procedure

1. Confirm outlet, journalist, format, topic, timing, recording terms, audience, participants, and on-record convention.
2. Research recent coverage and likely questions without assuming the intended angle.
3. Build a fact pack with claim, evidence, source, date, caveat, approval, and public status.
4. Write three core points and examples in the spokesperson's natural language.
5. Prepare difficult questions, truthful short answers, bridging context, non-fit questions, and follow-up commitments.
6. Define confidential, personal, security, legal, customer, employee, financial, and unverified boundaries.
7. Confirm quotes, names, pronunciation, figures, visual demonstrations, and source availability.
8. Rehearse realistic questions, interruptions, corrections, silence, uncertainty, and the right to say “I need to verify that.”
9. Assign note-taking, fact-check, logistics, recording, correction, and post-interview follow-up owners.
10. After the briefing, record claims made, promised materials, errors, deadlines, and publication monitoring.

Guardrails

• Never train a spokesperson to evade a material truth or misrepresent uncertainty.
• “Off the record” and similar terms require mutual agreement, not unilateral declaration.
• Do not disclose another person's private information without authority.
• Correct material errors quickly through the agreed contact.

Done

• A media briefing document contains verified facts, messages, boundaries, and likely questions
• Spokesperson rehearsal is completed and recorded
• Logistics, attribution terms, sources, and follow-up owners are confirmed
• Claims made and corrections remain traceable