Preventing Media Embellishment Posted on March 19, 2007 Consider your statements carefully before you speak to media, suggests Laurence Steinberg (bio).

Well, I think there are times when the media takes your work and twists it, or presents it or sensationalizes it in a way that you’re not comfortable with. It hasn't really happened to me. I think there are ways to prevent it from happening. And the main one is to think in advance, how can this be twisted around, and then to make sure that when you're interviewed by somebody, you say, "Now, I want to be clear that what the study doesn't mean is this," so that you head off right from the beginning the opportunity for the person to twist it or to sensationalize it.

If your work is misrepresented in the press, you have a responsibility to try to correct it. Whether you'll ever have an opportunity to do that is a different thing; rarely, I think, would you. I think the best thing to do is probably to let it die and to learn what you did wrong and to not repeat the mistake the next time. I think when you try to go back to the press and say, "I want to correct something here," you're only going to draw attention to the sensationalized coverage that began with, and it's not a debate where you get to correct the record. The reporter has moved on to something else and you don't get a chance to fix it.

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