The chief executive of RIM, the company behind BlackBerry, has become the latest interviewee to walk out of an interview. Mike Lazardis ended his encounter with BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones after the corporation's technology reporter asked about RIM's issues in India and the Middle East, where governments have challenged BlackBerry's encryption of messages.
The interview was set up to explain the new BlackBerry Playbook tablet, RIM's answer to the Apple iPad. But RIM's PR team must have known that Cellan-Jones would take the opportunity to raise other hot topics. At first Lazardis dealt calmly with the challenge. Had he stuck to that approach, viewers would have been reassured and left to focus on the Playbook. Instead, all the talk on Twitter and elsewhere was about the CEO who walked out.
The golden rule of media interviews is to answer the question but bridge to your key message. Cellan-Jones appears to have given Lazardis ample chance to respond and get back to talking about the Playbook. I can't help wondering how the RIM CEO would have fared against a truly aggressive interviewer, such as Jeremy Paxman or John Humphrys...
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