Robert McNamara Quotes

In an ideal world, everybody would find it easy to talk to the press... but not everybody is so excited.

The more media interviews you do, the less any one interaction matters.

Every media appearance is a learning experience about the media outlet and their journalists and their feelings about you, so treat it as such.

I don't do media training. I don't do that.

I think for more than half of my career, I have refrained from talking to the media.

I engage with a lot of journalists, some of them have history and some of them don't, that's not my concern. My concern is to make sure I represent the views I want to represent on those shows.

I get along fine with the press.

It was really weird dealing with the media. I had no idea how to handle it.

In my first company, Seer Technologies, where I was chief technology officer, we shied away from the media. We watched every word and were guarded in front of journalists.

My New Year's resolution is to make sure I genuflect appropriately before the Chicago media on everything I do.

If you open yourself up to a wade variety of press questions, the press sets the agenda, not you.

I'm not afraid of the media. I think I know how to handle them because I've been around them enough.

Anyways, trying to express yourself to the press is often like arguing with a hysterical person.

Actors should never give interviews.

The informed, unmanaged question. That's the most dangerous thing at a press conference anywhere.

Press conferences are good. I have my own philosophy about press conferences. I usually think that when they don't like the movie, they ask about other things.

I think it's important to keep things private, and there are certain boundaries I feel very particular about drawing. It may seem fastidious, but my experience of talking to the press is that I need those boundaries to remain very clear.

I'm envious of people that can handle the press. No matter what I say or how articulately I say it, it always comes back to the same issues. And it's getting kind of old.

I've been dealing with the press for 45 years. You need a very long spoon to sup with them. While you are always grateful, they are like badly trained dogs. They smile and wag and bite your arm off.

Facing the press is not easy, but because you have to go, you have to try to take a lot of positive things for yourself from these face-to-face meetings.

In all my life I have treated the press with marked contempt and had remarkable success.

You can take a position with the media, but don’t necessarily get in their face.

Politicians generally don’t volunteer for press encounters they can’t control.

If the press doesn’t get the proper care and feeding, you don’t get the proper spin on your story.

Other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming. It's about coordination.