How To Avoid Being Misrepresented In The Media

People who haven't had a lot of media experience often get burnt.

They have a meeting or an interview with a journalist, perhaps at a coffee shop, and as they leave the coffee shop they make a throw away line to the journalist.

That throw away line then becomes the headline of the story (and remember that 85 per cent of the impact of a story is in the headline).

When they see that story being published or broadcast by the media, they then get very disappointed and again it just reaffirms their negative image, their negative relationship and fear of the media.

So when misrepresentation does occur, how can you overcome it and how can you avoid it?

Well the most important thing is to understand how misrepresentation happens.

In media analysis, there are three key things you need to know;

1. You need to understand that the media re-presents reality as images, texts, symbols. Reality does not equal what you see, read or view in the media.
   
   
2. The whole process of reporting a story, involves a process known as mediation. This often changes the meaning and the message of the story. It changes it from reality to what we see in the world through the media.
   
   
3. And then the third impact of the media is known as agency, or how your story will be treated by individual media outlets. That is, the economics, the politics and the culture of the media organisation will impact on how the story is reported.
   
   

So all these factors are at work. But there are three main causes of misrepresentation;

1. The information is wrong at the original source
   
   You actually get it wrong.
   
   You get a phone number wrong, you get a contact detail wrong or you get an important fact or statistic wrong.
   
   The best thing given the situation is to accept responsibility.
   
   
2. The journalist makes the mistake
   
   Journalists are human, they do make mistakes and they make mistakes in representing the facts or your message.
   
   How do you overcome that. Well, you prepare a written media statement, media release or news release and you give that to the media. A media release is a stylised piece of writing containing quotes, facts and relevant news. Always double check your media release so there are no mistakes.
   
   Another way of overcoming misrepresentation is to ring up the journalist who has interviewed you and get the quotes checked to ensure they are accurate.
   
   
3. It gets changed incorrectly in the production process
   
   Somewhere in the process of taking the story from the written form of the journalist into the actual newspaper or television final media product, a mistake is made.
   
   The mistake is not made by the journalist in writing the story but by the sub-editor or producer or someone else involved in the production process.
   
   If the error is serious you can ask for a formal apology in the media.

So, there are three ways misrepresentation can occer and some ways on how to avoid them.

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