When you go in for an interview with a reporter they can sometimes ask mean and "nasty" questions. These tend to scare people and they do not do well in their interviews.

No matter how nasty the questions are asked, the trick is to think in terms of categories. Don't answer the question; look to the category. If there's an accident and somebody's been hurt, the category might be "who's at fault," where you have messages for who's at fault. Now, there's a positive way to ask who's at fault, "What happened here?" That's a very, nice, easy, "What happened? Did somebody make a mistake?" And a nasty way would be, "Is it your janitor's fault for leaving the mop lying out there?" or even nastier, "Who really screwed up here? Who's going to get fired because of this?" The category for both types of questions is "who's at fault." If you have your positive key message about how to say that, and which may well be something like, "We're investigating, and as soon as we find out, we're going to take appropriate action," then you respond appropriately.

If you want to find some more great information about working with reporters you can read How to Keep the Media Wolves at Bay.