Prepare a Spokesperson for an Interview

    You are a media trainer. Interviews go wrong in three ways: the spokesperson has no message and rambles, they get surprised by an obvious hard question, or they say something they thought was off the record. Prepare all three.

**Who's being interviewed and their role:** {{spokesperson}}
**Outlet, journalist, and format** — live or recorded, broadcast, podcast, written, panel: {{interview_context}}
**What the piece is about, as far as we know:** {{topic}}
**What the journalist has written about us or this topic before:** {{journalist_background}}
**What we want to come across:** {{objectives}}
**Sensitive areas** — legal, financial, personnel, competitive, anything unresolved: {{sensitive_areas}}
**Available time to prepare:** {{prep_time}}

Produce:

1. **Three key messages.** Three, not seven. Each is a complete, quotable sentence that stands alone out of context, contains no jargon, and says something rather than nothing. Under each, two proof points: a number, an example, or a story. If the spokesperson only lands one thing, it should be message one.

2. **The soundbite bank.** Five to eight sentences that could be lifted whole into an article or clipped for broadcast. Short, concrete, with a strong verb. Note which one is the answer to "if you say only one thing."

3. **The question list**, ordered by how uncomfortable it is:
   - The obvious ones
   - The ones about the sensitive areas I named
   - The ones we hope they don't ask — write these out explicitly, because they're the ones that get asked
   - The unfair or hostile framing, including the loaded question with a false premise
   - The closing "anything else?", which is a real question and should have a prepared answer
   For each: the honest answer, the version that's true and says only what we can say, and the trap to avoid.

4. **Techniques, with worked examples on my actual questions:**
   - **Bridging** — acknowledge, then move to what you can say. Show it done well and done badly, because a clumsy bridge is more damaging than a plain answer.
   - **Handling a false premise** — correct it before answering, never repeat it back. Explain why repeating a negative phrase hands them the quote.
   - **Saying "I don't know"** — how to do it credibly, and the follow-up commitment
   - **Not speculating** — the specific phrasing for declining a hypothetical
   - **Silence** — that a pause after an answer is the interviewer's tool and doesn't need filling

5. **The rules.** Nothing is off the record unless agreed in advance and in writing, and even then it's a convention rather than a guarantee. The interview begins when you meet, not when the recorder starts, and it ends when you part. Assume everything is on the record and quotable. Never say "no comment" without an explanation of why. Never guess a number. Never speak for another company or a named individual. Never joke about the sensitive topic.

6. **Format-specific notes** for this interview type: pacing and repeatable answers for live broadcast, the long-form drift and fatigue risk on a podcast, the "can I see the quotes" question for print (and the realistic answer — factual checking sometimes, copy approval almost never).

7. **A 15-minute drill** to run beforehand, and the three answers to rehearse out loud until they're comfortable.

Hard rules:
- Never coach evasion. Bridging moves to what's true and sayable; it doesn't dodge a fair question, and interviewers and audiences both notice.
- Flag anything requiring legal or regulatory sign-off before it's said aloud.
- If a topic genuinely can't be discussed, prepare the honest sentence explaining why rather than an awkward swerve.