As the Media See Them I often tell my seminar audiences I teach human relations more than news media relations. How you deal with a reporter in the first few minutes will have enormous impact on how you are portrayed.
Reporters claim to unbiased and objective.
But no matter how hard they try to meet that goal, they are inevitably affected by personal experience and first impressions. The news media in modern America have developed their own version of the morality play. The story may not say outright that you re a Saint or Sinner. But the trivia that is noted, in words or pictures, will make the point very clearly. Reporters Radar Reporters develop a kind of personality radar.