The Inquirer guide...

QUITE A FEW unscrupulous journalists make a lot of money out of media training while at the same time pretending they're journalists rather than PR flax or shills.

What is it?
Say some IT firm or other needs for some reason or other to speak to the unspeakable Mike Magee, for the purpose of generating "copy" which might bring their no doubt "admirable product" to the attention of a "waiting world", then it would be good if you had an unfair advantage and knew what to expect from said unspeakable hack, wouldn't it?

Answer? Hire a journalist who knows said Magee and is prepared to sell the remnants of his or her soul for quite a high price to try and brief the suit as to the kind of questions and the technique said hack uses to try and get answers to questions the IT firm doesn't want to answer.

These dirty tricks are often perpetrated by big firms and there are so-called "colleagues" only too eager to participate if the sum of money is big enough. The way to spot them is to ask them the question "Do you do media training?" As they sense a lot of money dangling on the end of such a question, the ones who would or do will always say "yes" or "maybe".

Does it help?
It can. Say the media trainer (journo) is paid a large amount of money by the IT company and also knows the journo that's writing a piece or interviewing a geezer or geezerette is able to dangle some small carrot in the direction of the interviewer, perhaps the firm will get an easier ride than normally she or he would expect.

NB This does not always work. Do not assume that the journalist interviewing you is a friend of the journalist who media trained you. There are many anecdotes of how people have come unstuck because they assumed that paying some hack one thousand sterling a day meant they'd get an easy ride. Even if one journo claims he or she is a friend of another friend and you have evidence they have had some kind of friendship, never assume that means 1,000 nicker won't get in the way of that relationship.

How does it work?
If you have lashed out money on press training or are just about to, test whether any of the following has happened or will happen.

1. The "media trainer" warns you against lunatics who are professional journalists but are also interested in the truth.

2. The "media trainer" warns you that some journalists are so incapacitated by drink, drugs, Buddhistic enlightenment, Nike desert boots, foreign trips or other transcendental reasons that they won't be able to ask you a single coherent question, will have forgotten your name five seconds after they've been told it, and will ask for the most expensive Armagnac on the menu on the grounds that they've had a funny attack of nerves.

3. The "media trainer" warns you that this particular journalist never writes about your type of company anyway and she or he is just a "makeweight" or "token journalist".

The results
1. The lunatic is interested in the truth but gets every single fact about your company wrong and the piece doesn't appear until eighteen months later anyway.

2. The journalist behaves exactly like the "media trainer" warned but also pukes into the waste paper basket/your briefcase, tries to pick up your secretary/company director/both, costs you $5000 for 10 Armagnacs, gets kicked out of the place you met, and then before you arrive back at the office has already filed a piece which has all your product plans, your name, your salary and other details you never told him/her but were accurate, up on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. 3. The journalist has written a story about you, your paramour and the menage a trois you never told your long term partner about in Private Eye, along with cheque stubs, incriminating DNA stains, and the contents of your dustbin. µ