I recently worked with a group dealing with an unusual problem. It seems that a local city television reporter known for his aggressive reporting style has a bad habit of lying. Let’s call him Jack.

Whenever a sensitive issue comes up, Jack requests an interview with a spokesperson for the group. The spokesperson knows that if you disagree with the interview, Jack will ambush you in a parking lot, a grocery store, or outside your home.

So before accepting the interview, the spokesperson asks Jack not to broach certain sensitive topics. Jack agrees. With the basic rules established, the spokesperson agrees to conduct the interview. The interview begins.

But the moment the cameras start recording, Jack ignores the rules and asks the same questions he promised not to ask. Jack asks them in a way that makes the spokesperson look as bad as possible. The spokesperson is caught off guard and deviates from the message. It looks bad and damages the reputation of your group.

Let’s back up for a moment. Jack has every right to refuse any conditions imposed on the questions he may ask during an interview. Furthermore, if a spokesperson requests certain conditions, Jack has the right to report that request, whether or not he agrees with them. But if you agree to those terms beforehand and break them, well, Jack is just a liar.

Now, let’s add one more element to this equation. The Jack Town media is addicted to tabloid style news. Sensationalism sells, and local reporters have a bad habit of making harmless stories appear as shocking as possible. Your goal is to attract an audience at any cost.

You may think a solution is to simply avoid the reporter, but remember, Jack will show up when you don’t expect him, and if you refuse to talk to him, he will play the videotape of your hand covering the camera for weeks.

So what should you do in the most egregious cases when a reporter lies? The following three tips may be helpful:

1. Get media training: Okay, it might seem a bit selfish for a media trainer to advocate for media training. Still, media training, especially individual training, is made for circumstances like these and can help a spokesperson answer difficult questions with relative ease.

ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson was right when he joked: “Questions don’t hurt. Only answers do.” Spokespersons shouldn’t have to request that certain topics be banned. Instead, they should prepare in advance for the more challenging questions. Doing so will help them seem almost delighted that a journalist has finally given them a chance to talk about themselves.

2. Write a letter to the station manager: The station manager may not know how much his reporters are breaking the rules to get a story. Here, you can use reporter codes of conduct to your advantage. For example, you can write:

In exchange for agreeing to an interview with Jack, several of our spokespersons have requested that certain questions be kept off limits. Jack has agreed. Despite those agreements, Jack has always broken his word, asking those same questions the moment the camera starts recording.

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists says that journalists must “Clarify the conditions associated with any promise made in exchange for information. Keep promises.”

Also, Jack is treating his sources with blatant disrespect, in one case yelling at a senior official and calling her nasty names. This is a violation of the Poynter Institute’s Guiding Principles for Journalists, which establish: “Sources [are] human beings deserving of respect, not simply a medium for their journalistic purposes. “

We are happy to cooperate with your station’s future inquiries, even if they are unfavorable to our group. But in exchange for continued access, we only ask that you abide by the basic rules of journalistic fairness going forward.

Will this help? Maybe, maybe not. But in desperate circumstances, it might be worth a try.

3. Prepare a canned response: In the most desperate circumstances, you can blacklist a reporter entirely. This heavy artillery piece should only be taken out on rare occasions; in other words, if you ban more than one reporter per decade, that’s probably too much.

In Jack’s case, however, it could be justified. That doesn’t mean you ignore him when he ambushes you. Instead, prepare your spokespersons, all of them, for your ambush. They should stop in front of your camera. They should take your question seriously. And they should output a response like:

“Your question deserves a serious answer, not one delivered in a parking lot. If one of your colleagues would like to schedule an interview with a member of our group, we would be happy to answer your questions. Thank you, and we look forward to the opportunity to express our point of view on this matter. “

Then, with a little nod or a smile, the ambush should walk with a sense of purpose, but without a hint of defensiveness, toward their destination.

One last point: if a news organization is determined to write something unfavorable about you, there is little you can do to stop them. But you can control your response, and a well-planned media strategy can help neutralize a negative story.