Welcome back everyone to our third session on speaking to the press. Today we're going to talk about the do's and don'ts while you're on TV with Dr. Bob Arnot. Today's session is brought to you by the SECM lead. Thank you for joining us. Bob, thank you for joining us again today. Let's start with the do's. What should we do when we find ourselves on TV? You know, I always, on television, I mean, like our little exchange here, right? It's very friendly. We've known each other for a long time. It's very affable. And that's what you want to do with the anchor. Always know their name. Call them by name at the beginning of every interview. I do Chinese television as an example. I do Russian. I do Al Jazeera, Middle East, as well as domestic. And they're surprised. I always make sure I know their name and call them by their name. And I always compliment. That's a really good question. That's an interesting take. That's a great way of framing it. Because what you want to do is you want to pull them into your core so that it's a good emotional relationship. Because, you know, I used to say there's, you know, you have what I would call emotional broadcasting. And that is, you want a positive emotion so that whether or not the interviewer is that friendly or not, at least the audience is going, that person seems warm. And after all, look, we're doctors. The whole thing is bedside manner, right? You want somebody to go, oh, you know, they're talking to me. They're a doctor. And I trust them. Oh, yeah, I think I think I do that now. So that's incredibly important is that there isn't going to be a gotcha question because unless it's 60 minutes, nobody has the time anymore to go and dig and read this stuff. So they may have one little thing they found, which they think is gotcha, but it really isn't because you're going to know so many myriad other facts there that there's no possible way they're going to trap you. Anything that we shouldn't do, like any don'ts when we go on TV? So, uh, don't be grim. Don't look down. Do try to be your best. A lot of people, doctors and professionals sort of eschew the media like it's sort of beneath them, you know, like I don't really watch any television, right? But you can't do that. I mean, this is how most people communicate. And, you know, you really have to acknowledge the medium and, you know, that you can't just don't be above it. I see interviews with famous Boston doctors, they're kind of above the whole thing. Why am I doing this? And why am I here? And, you know, they put me in front of the camera, uh, you know, enjoy the moment and really do try to bring energy and enthusiasm and knowledge. You know, I was, uh, uh, just, uh, out of residency. I was very interested in public health. And I asked this guy, Ron O'Connor, who had started this wonderful charity that was operating in Afghanistan. He says, Bob, public health is the biggest failure in American medicine. What you should do is live commercial television. That's how you're going to get rid of people. And that's what I did. And I did that for a couple of decades, you know, with CBS news and NBC news and today and dateline, all those shows. And then years as a war correspondent over, uh, Afghanistan and Iraq and all throughout Africa and the Middle East. You know, 30 different conflicts, every major America conflict and whatnot. Uh, and now I probably do, I do two or three interviews a day across the world. And what I love about many of the international broadcast is they ask you a question because they actually want to know the answer. Right. And they take your advice as opposed to here where they're kind of waiting to see what side of the political spectrum you're on and then pounce on you. Right. And don't get lured into that. In other words, when they ask you to take a political stand, uh, you know, don't, uh, is this, I think we were saying earlier that someone was asking about the anti-vaxxers, you know, and I kind of wanted to say, well, you know, in fact, there was this great quote about someone said that we had, we have an obligation to be intelligent. There's an ethical, moral obligation to be intelligent, which is not true, you know, in a lot of places anymore. So, but I stopped, I said, well, you know, it was a very interesting study and show whether you're, you're a Caucasian, Asian, African or Hispanic. Uh, if you have been to college, there's a much higher likelihood that you would have been vaccinated. And if you haven't, or if you're from a state that has very low education levels, uh, it's less likely to have, and that's not a slight against people with a lesser education. As someone with a greater education, probably reads the New York times, the wall street journal, Washington post, they may read across the political spectrum. You know, they're reading medical journals, they have professional colleagues, their whole circle brings to them all of the facts. So if you're down in, you know, the sort of deep red South, you don't believe the media, you don't trust them at all. You don't trust the government for sure. You don't trust government scientists. You don't trust pharmaceutical companies. And honestly, you don't blame them. Right. I don't blame them. Uh, but then who do you trust? Joe, the barber, or you trust some local pastor. So it's, it's not as if they're bad people, it's a bad thing. You have to look at where you get your information from, which is why television is such a great way to be able to break through on this. And the toughest, the most Nelson question of all is of course, the whole vaccine thing, because what do you say, you know, you're not going to convince any anti-vaxxers by getting angry at them or telling them they're stupid or that they don't know or whatnot. I just, I, this is, this is a 75 year old lady who's down at the local Slater mill here in Vermont. And she has a plastic mask on to this far from the base. And I said, well, that's not going to really help you. Um, I said, why don't you, you know, why are you wearing a mask? He said, well, I haven't been vaccinated. So why not? Well, I heard that, you know, young men might get myocarditis. I go, yeah, but you're 75. Well, then I heard it may change your menstrual cycle. And I go, yeah, but you're 75 years old. I can't stop you or anything. So I brought her down some N95 masks and I said, you know, at least be safe with this, but consider there are always arguments back and forth. And there are a lot of things in the vaxxer camp and the anti-vaxxer camp, but the bottom line is you at your age, you get go, you could well die. And, you know, high likelihood that you really could die without a vaccine, which you should consider. And if you were in fact, young school children who came in here, they can become very, very sick as well and end up in an intensive care unit or infect other people in your school. So in weighing those back and forth, here's what you might mind. So you always want to be reasonable and think of some way to be convincing. That's great. No, thank you, Dr. Bob. I will definitely use many of these tips.

TV press

speaking tips

positive emotional relationship

knowledgeable facts

vaccine controversy