A spokesperson for the Basel Zoo in Switzerland is trying to take back what she told the Swiss media and what eventually was printed in the March 13th edition of the Wall Street Journal. If only she could.

The story involves Farsi, a baby hippo at the zoo who has become so popular he was named “Swiss of the Year” for 2008, beating out tennis star Roger Federer. Because a zoo cannot have two male hippos, even father and son, because of territorial issues, Farsi will  have to go.

Zoo spokeswoman, Tanja Dietrich, said he will be put up for adoption. And if he can’t be adopted, zoo policy is to “put down excess animals and feed them to carnivores.”

That unnecessarily blunt statement has inflamed the passions of animal lovers across Switzerland, and now the US.

In reality, the zoo doesn’t have to worry about getting rid of Farsi for one to four years. So why was Dietrich bringing this up now? And why in such inflammatory words?

Now she’s backtracking. Dietrich says Farsi will stay in the zoo until they can find somewhere else for him to go. “We’re confident we’ll find a place for him.”

That’s what she should have said in the first place.

Dan Abrams has garnered lots of publicity lately. The former MSNBC anchor and top exec is launching a new PR/Media Training company. He will use actual working journalists to help his clients learn to deal with the media.

There’s been mild criticism about the idea of participating journalists having a conflict of interest by playing both sides of the fence. Five years ago, there would have been a major outcry. Maybe the low level of concern means that today the traditional rules of media ethics are obsolete.

But one thing that isn’t obsolete is the importance of spokespeople not volunteering or repeating negatives. The media is so drawn to negativity that you could say 99 positive things, but the one negative will end up in the title or the pull quote.

Add Dan Abrams to those who’ve been burned. No, don’t say, “I’m not training business people on how to deceive the media.” Try instead, “I’m training business people how to be clearer and more focused when doing interviews with the media.

The reaction to Arizona Cardinals star player Anquan Boldin’s temper tantrum during the NFC championship game was predictable. And it all happened because he didn’t want to stick around and talk to the media.

Once again, someone learns the heard way, you can’t run and you can’t hide from the media, (especially when you’re playing in a down-to-the-wire football game and arguing with your coach in front of the world).

Like many before him, Boldin thought if he didn’t make himself available after the game, the story would go away. And like many, he found out that his actions only magnified the incident. He admitted after practice on Thursday that his abrupt departure “made it worse.”

“The attention has grown,” he said. “Do you have to be careful? I guess so, but at the same time you can’t alter who your are.”

So during a week when Arizona was giddy about being in the Super Bowl for the first time ever, and when the national media should have been talking and writing about the Cardinals’ amazing season, their coaches and players, they instead focused on the one negative. Would Anguan Boldin be a distraction? Would he play for the Cardinals next year?

Yes the media are sensationalizing the incident, blowing it up out of proportion. But that’s what they do. It’s up to us not to add fuel for the fire.

If you were going to appear on a show called Hardball, what would you expect — softballs?

Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was so bad at hitting host Chris Mathews’ pitches that she’s at risk of losing her re-election campaign. After she said that Barack Obama “may have anti-American views,” the backlash was so great that her opponent raised a million dollars in one day.

Bachmann admitted she had never watched the show before agreeing to be interviewed by Chris Mathews. That was her first mistake. (Of course, the show’s name might have given her pause.)

She claims Mathews trapped her. Actually, what he did was use a typical reporter tactic. He got her to repeat a negative, “anti-American.” He said the word over and over, until she finally said it herself.

Lessons learned: First, never go on a show, (especially a national show!), without watching it and learning about the interviewer’s style. The same is true for print interviews. It always helps to understand as much as you can about the publication and the reporter before you do the interview.

Second, repeating negative or loaded language almost always backfires. The problem is, it’s so easy to do.

What should she have done?

Mathews: “So you’re concerned that Barack Obama might have anti-American views.”

Bachmann: “That isn’t what I said. What I said was that I don’t understand why he had such a strong association with a known terrorist. It calls into question his judgment.”

And if Mathews kept asking, she should have kept giving the same answer.

There’s just something about Sarah Palin that makes me want her to succeed. Not because I’m a staunch Republican or agree with all her positions on the issues. I guess it’s because she seems so normal and unaffected, because she seems to be so comfortable with who she is and what she believes.

And she started out soooo well —  with a fantastic speech at the convention. The interview with Charlie Gibson was okay. Just a couple of missteps. But then she sat down with Katy Couric and looked like what Chris Beam from Slate Magazine called “a high-schooler trying to B.S. her way through a book report.”

What happened? For someone who practiced three days for her nomination acceptance speech, and who obviously had been heavily prepped for Gibson, how could she have so underestimated, or so underprepared for Couric?

Palin has a steep learning curve. She has to be an immediate expert on dozens of topics both nationally and internationally. She can’t do it before the election. Obviously, that’s why the McCain campaign is keeping her away from any potentially unfriendly reporters who tend to ask pesky questions about McCain’s campaign manager’s conflict of interest or her views on the financial melt down.

But Palin can’t be sheltered forever. The best advice I can give her — prepare, prepare, prepare. And come up with some specifics for all those platitudes about McCain is a “maverick,” Mc Cain is a “reformer.” Without concrete examples, it’s just so much hot air.

Many analysts are saying Maple Leaf Foods of Canada has done a good job of responding to a deadly outbreak of listeria bacteria linked to its products, one PR expert even comparing it to Johnson and Johnson’s response to the Tylenol crisis.

At least four people have died and dozens of others have gotten sick. The company did the right thing by voluntarily expanding the recall from two types of cold cuts to include 220 products made in its Toronto plant. In addition, the CEO Michael McCain, stepped forward with a candid and sincere apology in newspapers and TV. (However, he could have been coached on how to be less stiff and wooden while reading the TelePrompter.)

“We have an unwavering commitment to keeping your food safe with standards well beyond regulatory requirements, but this week our best efforts failed and we are deeply sorry,” McCain said. “Tragically our products have been linked to illnesses and loss of life. To those families, I offer my deepest sympathies.”

At a news conference, McCain adroitly pushed aside questions about monetary concerns. “This isn’t about money. It is about public health and that is why we have expanded our recall … the last people I am listening to are lawyers and accountants.”

Unfortunately the accountants, or at least Maple Leaf Foods’ CFO, wasn’t listening to McCain. Here’s what Michael Vels was telling analysts. “Maple Leaf products have not been directly linked to illness and death.”

In another part of his statement, Vels expressed a positive company message, but buried it inside overwhelmingly negative language. “Damage control and financial minimization at a time like this has not even been considered,” he said. “Certainly as an investor that may not be what you want to hear, but 100 percent of our actions and focus over the weekend has been to notify consumers and ensure our products are returned.”

Geez, get the guy media training or rein him in!

So many of us think “it won’t happen to me.” Maybe it’s a survival instinct—If we admitted just how vulnerable we are in the world, we’d never leave the house.

Take Jesse Jackson. He knows how many high profile people have been burned by open mics they didn’t think were open. Yet there he was, lavaliere on his lapel, sitting in front of a camera, dissing Barack Obama.

And no, Jesse, whispering doesn’t make it any better.

Even his fellow guest on Fox News, Reed Tuckson, whom Jackson was complaining to about Obama, knew enough not to say anything back. And he has a lot less experience in front of a camera than Jesse.

It’s not just open mics we have to be careful of. Anything you say within earshot of a reporter is fair game, whether in an interview, at a trade show, on an elevator, or at the airport.

And yes, it can happen to you.

After years of telling others how to do their best in media interviews, I had a chance recently to “put my money where my mouth is.” A local TV station wanted to interview me about my critique of Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s presentation skills. The experience pretty much reinforced many of the things I’ve been telling my clients.

As is typical, they called at the last minute, wanting me to come down to the station within the hour rather than them coming to me. I hurried up — and then cooled my heels in the lobby waiting for someone to get me. When the reporter finally came, he didn’t even introduce himself. I guess he figured because he was on TV, everyone knew him. I didn’t.

We went through the newsroom (not much changed from the newsroom I worked in 20 years ago), back to where the videographer was setting up the camera and lights. I chatted with the reporter for about five minutes and then, without any warning, we were taping. That didn’t throw me, but could easily have rattled someone less experienced.

I tell my clients that a TV interview is a sprint. It’s over before you know it, so you can’t wait to get “warmed up.” You have to be ready to go full force from the very beginning. My race lasted about three minutes.

I also advise my clients to go into the interview armed with a couple of clear, concise, colorful soundbites to use in their answers. I figured I should take my own advice, so I started my first answer with this: “If the election were about who is the best speaker, Obama would win hands down.” Sure enough, he used it in the finished story.

I spent 15 years as a reporter and anchor, asking the questions. But answering them with the lights and camera on you is an entirely different, and in some cases, much more daunting task. Like many challenges in life, it’s all about getting practice and experience.

You’re exhausted, you’re distracted, you’re angry. Not a good time to do an interview. Samantha Power, former free-lance journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner, foreign relations expert and adviser to Barack Obama, had to resign after making one of the most common mistakes in the media relations handbook — forgetting for a second that you’re talking to a journalist.

In an interview focused on her most recent book, not the Obama campaign, Power let her guard down and told The Scotsman reporter, Gerri Peev, “We f**** up in Ohio. In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win. She’s a monster too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything.”

We can imagine Power’s horror at hearing the word “monster” come out of her mouth and then desperately trying to save herself by declaring the statement “off the record.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Going off the record is always a dangerous proposition, but if you decide to risk it, you must declare the rules ahead of time and get the reporter’s agreement.

Many people have been in her shoes. You’ve been talking for awhile, in person or on the phone, and start feeling you’ve developed a relationship with the reporter, that they’re your friend. Then comes that unguarded remark, after you forget that every word you say can be in the paper tomorrow, and you expect your “friend” to save you. Sometimes they do, but when it’s a highly visible, cutthroat political race, that’s unlikely.

Besides remembering that reporters aren’t your friends, I think a couple of other lessons come out of this example. First, interviews don’t have boundaries. Yes, the story was supposed to be about Power’s new book, but that doesn’t mean if a journalist hears something juicy (or asks a question) on another topic she won’t write about it.

Second, just because you know how to ask questions doesn’t mean you can answer them effectively. As a former free-lance journalist, Samantha Power knew media relations from the reporter’s perspective. But even former reporters aren’t automatically good spokespeople. They have to learn the “rules” and practice them.

As a side note, while I realize why Power had to resign, I’m sorry it had to happen. I agree with CBS newsman, Bob Schieffer, who says, as name-calling goes in politics, “monster”is pretty mild.

Good coach, bad coach — both in the sports section. First the bad:

“Patriots’ Belichick Apolgizes, but Does Not Explain.” Well at least he apologized for breaking NFL rules by videotaping the opposing coaches’ signals, or we think he did. In his written statement, the coach didn’t really say what he was apologizing for. “Although it remains a league matter, I want to apologize to everyone who has been affected, most of all ownership.” Nothing about the fans or the Jets, the team he cheated against (and the one who lost the game).

But then during his daily news conference, Belichick refused to answer questions about the issue, and walked out when pressed by reporters. Even worse, in his statement he claimed he had misinterpreted the NFL rule. Yeah, right.

Now, some Eagles players and another from the Steelers are questioning past games they played against the Patriots, and whether they cheated in those games as well. Other teams are sure to follow.

So now the man who has led his team to three Super Bowls in the last five years is a cheater waiting for his punishment. The super genius has become a super cliche: The higher they go, the harder they fall.

Thank goodness for the good: “Coach, QB take blame for loss.”

It’s been a long time since professional football fans in Arizona have heard their home town coach blame himself for a loss. (And there have been a lot of losses — The Cardinals have had only one winning season since moving to Phoenix in 1988). During his three years of running the team, the ex-coach, Denny Green, blamed everyone and everything — except himself — for the team’s 32 losses.

That’s why today’s headline was so surprising — and refreshing! Ken Wisenhunt, the brand new coach in his first year as a head coach, with tons of pressure on him and lots to prove, willingly says he made a mistake. His offensive game plan had too many passing plays, he said, with not enough time for quarterback Matt Leinart to practice them.

For fans who haven’t had much to cheer about in a long time, that’s a glimmer of hope.