Every difficult interview is won or lost before the camera starts rolling. A spokesperson and their press team should know the hardest questions they will face – and have a strategy for handling them – before anyone sits down. That is much of what good PR does: we anticipate the questions journalists will ask and advise clients in advance how to handle them, whether that means a full answer, a careful one or a clear reason for saying nothing.
This October, Vanity Fair published an interview with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. Near the end, editorial director Mark Guiducci began a question about a young woman who died after confiding in ChatGPT. An OpenAI publicist cut in from behind the camera: “Mark, we have two minutes left. I want to be respectful, but I’d like to move on.”
Altman said he could run over, and answered, calling these “some of the hardest questions that we face”. It was a reasonable answer.
But the clip that spread was the publicist’s interruption. Viewers had already decided what they had seen: a company that did not want the question asked, let alone answered. With a strategy agreed in advance, there would have been no reason to step in.
“No comment” feels neutral, but journalists and readers hear something else: the allegation is true, the company does not care, or there is worse to come.
Experiments at the Kellogg School of Management back this up: an engaged crisis response beat both defensiveness and “no comment” every time.
That does not mean every question deserves a full answer. Sometimes good judgement means knowing when not to speak. But what you do say should be a considered decision, not a reflex. The story will run anyway, and a bare “no comment” leaves it to your critics.
Neutrogena shows what happens when silence is the default. The actor Hayden Panettiere fronted the brand from 2005 to 2015. She later said she believed the relationship ended after she spoke about postpartum depression. Neutrogena did not respond.
When she died in August, her comments resurfaced and the backlash began. Four days later, the brand finally admitted it had made her “feel unsupported”, promised a “significant investment” with an unnamed health partner, and switched off comments on its post. It read as a company that spoke only when it had to.
So what can you say when you can’t say much?
There are good reasons not to answer in full: live litigation, an unfinished investigation, someone’s privacy. But be careful of “no comment”.
- Say why you can’t say more. “This is before the courts, so we are limited in what we can say” is a comment.
- Say what you do know. Confirm the undisputed facts.
- Say what happens next, and when. A date turns a refusal into a commitment.
If you don’t know what the press will ask or how to answer, talk to keithbishop.com before you reach for the “no comment” card.
Sources and read more
People/Yahoo: OpenAI publicist interrupts Altman interview
HuffPost: OpenAI publicist crashes interview
NBC News: Neutrogena addresses backlash
Kellogg Insight: The Sounds of Silence