Practitioner Experience Notes (PENs)

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Media training is a duty of care

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Attribution: SCUK Alumna
PEN Type: Field Experience (Programme Delivery)
Main country: Viet Nam
Other countries: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada
Project Themes: Advocacy & Campaigns, Communications & Media
Role: Field nurse not a media pundit
Mission brief: Raising both awareness and funds after my contribution in Vietnam, found myself volunteered to present at a wide range of media events in the UK and Canada
Audience: Frontline / Field, Programme / Project, Country or Regional Management
Geographic applicability: Global / broad applicability
Dates: 1967 → 1981
Advice Summary: You MUST have proper Media Training as a field-worker if you are meeting the media. No excuses, it's not an admin course.
Key words/phrases: media training, returnee, interviews, editing, fundraising tours, spokesperson risk
Operational snapshot
  • Workload: ‘busy schedules’ of speaking/fundraising to large groups
  • Environment: protests/riots calling for the end of the war; ‘chaos in London, Paris, New York’
  • Support: effectively none — ‘in the middle of it unprotected’
The story When I returned from Vietnam, it was ‘a huge story’ at the time — the ‘pretty young nurse back from war’ angle drew attention. I felt vulnerable. Even before I left, there were press scrums: ‘look pensive… look this way… smile.’ A Daily Mirror photographer had me sitting on a low wall asking me to arrange my skirt a little higher. It sounds daft now — but it didn’t feel daft then. Then Canada. STC Vancouver used me to fundraise. I ended up on CBC with an experienced interviewer. It was just him and me in a room in front of a big green screen; it felt like a good interview. Then two days later, prime time: I was super-imposed into a programme about American GIs dodging the draft, footage of flag-tearing and ‘baby killer’ rhetoric — with me apparently endorsing it. ‘Clever editing’ had me saying stuff I did not say — or mean. And this was before the world of deep-fake AI! Lessons learned
  • Media training is not optional. It’s duty of care — and I had none (twice).
  • Assume your words can be cut, re-ordered, and placed in a new narrative.
  • Returnees need:
    • a handler/escort for intense schedules,
    • pre-briefed key messages,
    • clear lines on what not to discuss.
What I’d tell today’s returnees (and their managers) You can be street-wise and still be used. Protect people properly — before you put them on a stage or a screen.