It’s probably petty, I admit it.

In President Obama’s riveting interview on “60 Minutes,” he said that watching the SEALs storm Osama bin Laden’s lair and ultimately kill him was the second most tense time he ever experienced (the first was when his daughter Sasha was thought to have meningitis). His life and death decision to order the raid resulted in the execution of the worst mass murderer on the planet.

And yet, while I was engrossed in hearing his description of and feelings about the operation, I couldn’t help being put off by all of the “ahs” in his answers.

“Ah” is habit that the President has regularly exhibited in his presentations and interviews. Because he’s usually such a competent and articulate speaker, he can almost get away with it. But not totally. “Ahs,” “ums” and other fillers lower presenters’ credibility, even Obama’s. People using them seem hesitant and unsure of themselves. A silent pause, on the other hand, project confidence and control.

Now on to what Obama did right. First, his overall tone was pitch perfect. No gloating, no machismo, but instead honest, straightforward explanations, admitting real human emotions. Even though Steve Kroft wasn’t particularly hard on the President, he did set a a couple of traps.

One was trying to put words in Obama’s mouth and get him to repeat negative language saying he didn’t trust Pakistan:

KROFT: You didn’t tell anybody in the Pakistani government or the military…or their intelligence community?

OBAMA: No.

KROFT: Because you didn’t trust them?

OBAMA: As I said, I didn’t tell most people here in the White House. I didn’t tell my own family. It was that important for us to maintain operational security.

KROFT: But you were carrying out this operation in Pakistan.

OBAMA: Yeah.

KROFT: You didn’t trust ‘em?

OBAMA: If I’m not revealing to some of my closest aides what we’re doing, then I sure as heck am not going to be revealing it to folks who I don’t know.

Obama’s last answer in the interview was the best of all, and perfectly summarized the event: “As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn’t lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn’t deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.”

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/08/60minutes/main20060876.shtml#ixzz1LshhcXm6

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke knows that without transparency there’s little chance for trust. Thus his wise decision to hold the first press conference ever given by the Fed.

No one will accuse Bernanke of being Mr. Personality (he smiled at least twice I think), but he did show a calm, assured, confident presence in front of a large group of reporters, without any arrogance or annoyance with the questioning.

Bernanke’s newfound accessibility may not immediately translate to a better relationship with the American public, but his openness will help build relationships with the media, which ultimately will lead to better, perhaps more positive coverage. That, in turn, will ultimately affect public perception.

Today’s performance, with no headline producing missteps, has served Bernanke well and will give him and the Fed confidence to continue more open communication.

I can imagine Tiger Woods talking to one of his advisors, hopefully someone who understands PR:

Advisor: Tiger, we have to say more about what happened. You’re being criticized everywhere and people are making up bizarre rumors.

Tiger: It’s nobody’s business but mine and I refuse to give in to all those people who want to know my dirty laundry. I can rise above all this. I’m not about to sink to their level.

Advisor: The truth is the only thing that’s going to shut this down. The longer you stonewall the longer the speculation will go on. In the meantime, your image is being tarnished.

Tiger: My image is fine. I make those advertisers millions and millions of dollars and nobody would dare to drop me as spokesperson.

Advisor: I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Unfortunately you’re not a normal person. You’re the best golfer in the world making huge amounts of money because the public worships you. You can’t have it both ways. If you want the their attention during good times, you have to fess up and be open when things go wrong.

Tiger: I’m Tiger Woods. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. Screw them.

No, Tiger, you’re the one who’s screwed. The truth will ultimately come out, one way or another. If you had been ahead of the story, you could have had some control of the message. Now, despite your mansion and millions, you’re at the mercy of “them”.

The 16 members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are researchers, scientists, and healthcare professionals. I doubt any of them has ever crafted a communications plan or formulated key messages. I would guess few if any have gone through much media training. Their skills lie in other areas.

So where were the PR professionals who should have helped prevent the stumbling, bumbling results of the Task Force’s recommendations on mammograms?

The Preventive Services Task Force is part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Its website lists a press contact as well as an Office of Communications and Knowledge Transfer. Knowledge was transferred all right, but it was cold, calloused and confusing. Shouldn’t someone have helped these people plan their strategy before going public?

Granted the task force should have known better and asked for help. Its members were naive and stupid about the impact their recommendation would have. From their perspective, they’d done a yeoman’s job, spending weeks and months focusing on facts and figures to come up with a surprising result.

Unfortunately, they forgot about the human faces behind those facts and figures.

New (social) media may give us more channels for communicating but they also give us more ways to bore our audiences. Take video, for example.

Many companies, especially large ones, have used it for a long time to talk internally to employees around the world, as well as telling their stories externally on national or local TV.

Now with the advent of easy, inexpensive cameras and YouTube, any organization can take advantage of the power of visual communication by putting their execs on video, posting it on their website, and emailing it to anybody who might be interested.

It’s a good strategy—if the execs are any good on camera. Unfortunately, most aren’t. So audiences can’t get to the stop button fast enough.

Four ways you know your so-called “talent” is boring everyone in sight:

1) The Teleprompter Stare (aka “deer in the headlights” eyes)

(This can happen with or without a Teleprompter.) Reading a prompter is a skill that looks easy but  isn’t. It takes instruction and practice to get good. Most don’t take the time. Much better to just “talk” to the camera.

2) The Endless Drone (a monotone voice with no inflection)

3) The Mannequin Delivery (stiff, no energy, no gestures, no smiling or any other facial expressions)

Equally as bad, are the hunched over posture while sitting at a desk or table, and/or leaning back too far.

4) Non-Conversational Gobbledygook (Too many words and sentences that are too long)

TV/Video is the medium least forgiving of anything that’s boring. If you’re using video and your execs don’t know how to deliver, you’re simply wasting your time.

When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke. What columnist—especially one with 22 years of experience—would write a story about all of the sports events Jaycee Dugard missed during 18 years of captivity and rape by a sexual pervert?

But that’s exactly what Orange County Register sports columnist Mark Whicker did.

“She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn’t high fived in a while.”

He then proceeded to list 20-some things Jaycee didn’t get to see while she lived in a hell-hole, from Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record, to the Anaheim Ducks winning the Stanley Cup.

He ended with “Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.” Funny, huh?

To add insult to injury, after readers started sending in angry emails, Whicker issued a lame apology.

“For Tuesday’s Register, I wrote a column that clearly offended and outraged large portions of our readership. It was not my intention to do so. But it’s obvious that I miscalculated the effect the column on Jaycee Dugard, and the events that she might have missed during her captivity, had on those who read, buy and advertise in our newspaper.”

Yeah, and what about Jaycee and her family?

“For 22 1/2 years at The Register, I feel like I’ve had a good and direct relationship with our audience and I think most of the regular readers know how I go about reporting and commenting on sports. This column appears to have disconnected that bond with at least part of our readers. For that I apologize.”

He goes on to call it a “lapse in professionalism.”

How about calling it extreme bad taste, an outrage, an insult, arrogance, and a dozen other things I could think of?

At least the deputy editor, John Fabris, (one of many who should have stopped the column before it ran) posted an apology that seemed sincere and contrite.

“The past few days have been the kind that make an editor’s heart ache. We ache thinking about the hurt we have caused, and we ache knowing it was preventable.”

Maybe it’s time for Whicker to issue his own honest apology.

Don’t you just love a good scandal? Especially one that’s so blatantly hypocritical?

Mike Duvall, a pro-family values member of the California Assembly, got caught talking with a fellow committee member about his extra-marital sexual exploits.

Duvall and the other Assemblyman, Jeff Miller, were waiting for a meeting to begin and apparently didn’t realize their mics were open. Duvall went into lurid detail (TMI) about his sexual activity with two women, including a lobbyist 18 years younger than him.

“So, I am getting into spanking her. Yeah, I like it. I like spanking her.”

“She wears little eye-patch underwear…the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. So we had made love Wednesday—a lot!” (Ewwwwww)

Another irony—Miller, the one who was listening, is a member of the Assembly Ethics Committee, which is investigating whether he should be punished for not reporting Duvall. Miller claims “he wasn’t really paying attention.” Ah, yeah, right.

Duvall is married (at least for now) and has two children. He resigned from the Assembly yesterday.

Chris Casacchia’s column in the Phoenix Business Journal on Friday, September 4 showed a striking contrast between a communicator who doesn’t know how to write a press release quote and one who does.

Alliance Bank of Arizona had great news about reaching a critical goal: $1 billion in total assets! The president and CEO, obviously excited by his bank’s achievement, was quoted from the press release sent to Casacchia: “Reaching the $1 billion dollar milestone in total assets, driven by our exceptionally strong deposit growth, continues to illustrate the value of having a strong capital position.”

Can’t you just see him spouting that gem while toasting his company’s success!

In another segment of the column, Jacob Gold was quoted in a press release about his book “Financial Intelligence: Getting Back to Basics after an Economic Meltdown.”

“You would think that with the abundance of readily available financial information, people would know which path to take with their money,” he said. “In reality, the exact opposite is the case.”

No, it’s not perfect, but at least it’s conceivable that those words actually came out of someone’s mouth.

So who cares? Both got the publicity they were asking for. Even the lousy quote from the bank got ink.

The problem is, many reporters will go out of their way to NOT use a quote like that. And even when it’s used by a journalist who doesn’t take the time to call to get something better, it bores readers. They either don’t understand it, or it they do, they’re so turned off, they stop reading.

At least I did.

A print reporter comes to your office to do an interview for a story she’s writing. When she walks in, she pulls out her handy Flip video camera and asks if it’s okay for her to record the conversation. “Sure,” you say.

The next day, you go to the publication’s web site to see if your story is posted yet. Not only did the reporter write about what you said, but she also posted the entire video of your interview.

This has happened recently to a couple of my clients. The good news is they got more visibility and publicity. The bad news is they did the interviews as if they weren’t being taped so they didn’t come across as well as they could have.

What’s the difference? The first is how they sat. On my clients’ videos, they were hunched over a conference table with what looked like sloppy posture. One was wringing his hands during part of the interview.

When you’re on video, you want to sit with good posture, leaning about 15 degrees forward and using the front 2/3 of the chair. That way you look engaged and in control. And yes, use gestures, but don’t play with your pencil or wring your hands.

Second, they rambled with unfocused, lengthy answers. If it were just a print interview (or even an edited TV interview), the reporter could boil it down for her story, just using a quote or two. But on video, it was there for everyone to see and hear.

Third, they lacked energy and enthusiasm. They seemed bored with what they were saying. It might not have come across that way in person, but because TV absorbs energy, we have to be a little more animated than we are during a normal conversation (especially one done at the end of a long, tiring day).

Today, everybody is a journalist, TV reporter, and photographer. And, you always have to be “on.”

Funny thing about anger. We all have episodes of it, unfortunately not always in private. We all know it’s part of the human condition. Yet, when we witness someone else losing their temper in public, we tend to judge them harshly: “what a loose canon,” “what a hothead,” “gee, he/she has a real anger problem.”

We all have certain buttons that are easier to push than others. Often, the media (and our significant other) is adept at pushing them. New York Governor David Paterson is a recent example.

In an angry rant during a radio interview last week, Paterson seemed to say that his political problems and the media’s attacks of him were due to racism. “The next victim on the list—and you can see it coming—is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than try to reform a health care system,” he said.

The reaction wasn’t good, even from other African Americans. The President’s aides were so upset that Paterson had dragged Obama into the issue that they sent him an angry message.

Yesterday Paterson took it all back, claiming that what he said wasn’t what he really meant. The root of the problem, he said, was anger at something else (kind of like when you have a bad day at work and you come home and yell at your husband or the kids).

Paterson says what he was really upset about was the accusation by a local TV reporter that he was a bad parent because he let his underage daughter (who in reality is 21) stay out late clubbing.

Major button pushing for a person who views himself as, and prides himself as, a good father. But then you cool down (and get scolded by the President) and realize your mistakes: Letting anger prevail over reason and criticizing the media. Bad combination.