One of the roles of the President of the International
Association of Fire Chiefs is to serve as the principal spokesperson for the
association of matters of interest to its members. My own preference is to let our members who
are the true subject matter experts on the issues do the talking, but there are
times when it just has to be the President.
I don’t mind doing media events, but I would prefer to give others the
opportunity when it happens.
I thought I would share some of my media experiences so far
in my term as President. First, as I
have already written, we have an extraordinarily talented staff at the IAFC and
have a great number of partners in the corporate world. It’s a fact of our business (it’s a secret –
don’t tell anyone!) that some correspondence is prepared by staff, signed using
my electronic signature, and sent on my behalf without me ever even seeing it
or knowing about it. A good example of
this is that the IAFC has had a partner with Energizer (the battery folks) for
more than 20 years around the topic of changing smoke detector batteries. Every year, Energizer and IAFC staffs prepare
a letter from the IAFC President to Dear Abby and Ann Landers (the advice columnists) asking
their help in getting people to change their smoke detector batteries. The letter is from whoever is the current
IAFC President and just happens as a regular course of business. I didn’t even know that it had gone out. Sometimes they run the story, sometimes they
don’t. This year, out of the blue, I
woke up one morning to a flurry of e-mail and Facebook posts congratulating me for my letter to Dear Abby . I think my
wife got even more than I did – from folks asking if it was really me! I have to confess to being a bit surprised
that the Dear Abby column is still out there (it runs in more than 400
newspapers every day) and even more surprised at the number of my friends who
read it!
A second example of media work occurred when I visited
Minnesota for the Minnesota Fallen Firefighters Memorial event in late
September. As I wrote in a previous
blog, the Minnesota fire serve has gone to great lengths to identify all
Minnesota firefighters who have ever died in the line of duty. To generate press coverage and public
interest in the event in the Minneapolis area, I had the opportunity to appear
on a morning TV talk show in Minneapolis.
I got to speak about the issue of firefighter line of duty deaths and I
also had the opportunity to meet a very special Minnesota firefighter. She works for the Hibbing (MN) Fire
Department and her grandfather was a firefighter who died in the line of duty a
long time ago. She is the only member of
her family in the firefighting profession and it was neat to meet her. I think her grandfather would be VERY proud. Appearing on a talk show like this is a
whirl. I was given a heads up that it
was going to happen…..we showed up at the studio 15 minutes before we are
scheduled to go on. The show was already
underway, so we didn’t meet the host in advance. When the commercial break started before our
segment, we entered the studio, got miked up, took our seats, met the host for
the first time, and….we were on. 3
minutes later and it was over and we were ushered out the door. I was told that
it turned out well, but the whole thing is pretty quick and anticlimactic.
As a final example, yesterday I appeared on a network Sunday
morning news show – Fox and Friends – talking about the impact that Obamacare
may have on volunteer firefighters and fire departments. Click here to see the video. This has been on again and off again for a
couple of weeks. We were all set to go a
couple of weeks ago….then the authorities found a family that had been missing
in the snow in Nevada and that ‘breaking news’ pushed us off. Then a week ago, they literally called on
Saturday and wanted to do it on Sunday morning.
I wasn’t available, nor was anyone else from the IAFC at that short
notice. This week, we got a bit more
notice. We knew that I would be
appearing alone on the issue. I studied
pages and pages of briefing material to be prepared for any question….I
reviewed websites, blogs, and got the latest status report from the IAFC’s excellent
government relations staff. I was all
set! For those of you who don’t know,
Fox and Friends is a live morning new show from 6 – 9 AM Eastern time. That meant that I would have to be at a San
Diego studio VERY early! I got up at
3:30 AM, drove to San Diego to arrive at the studio by 5 AM. Talked to the camera guy for the next 30 minutes. At 5:30 (Pacific), I got miked up, took a
seat in the chair in front of a beautiful video shot of San Diego harbor (good
thing it wasn’t live…..it was still VERY dark outside). At about 5:40 the producer in New York spoke
into my ear to let me know that it would be Tucker Carlson who would be doing
the interview and at 5:45, we were on.
For those of you who haven’t done this, it is difficult. Tucker asked about 3 questions and it was all
over in about 3 minutes. It was supposed
to be longer, but they had a live interview with the mailman who caught the
babies dropped by their father from a burning building – much more important
;-). For those of you who haven’t done
this, it is a challenge. You’re in a studio….just you, the cameraman, and the
wire in your ear. You are talking to the
camera. You can’t see the TV that you’re
appearing on (I guess they don’t want you to be distracted) or the person you’re
talking to. All of those visual cues
that we depend on to tell whether we are getting our point across aren’t
there. You just have to hope that it is
working. Oh….and I learned that next
time I don’t need to wear my full uniform.
Since they only showed me from the shoulders up, I could have worn
shorts and tennis shoes on the bottom and no one would have known! After the 3 minutes segment, I was back in
the car and home before 7 AM.
Dealing with the media is always a challenge, but they are
an important method for getting issues out to the public. If any of us are going to be successful as
fire service leaders, we need to develop the skills to be effective. I hope I was, but I’ll let you be the judge.
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