Sometimes. Only on the client’s terms, only with counsel’s written approval, and never about what a witness will say. The question is not whether the story is sympathetic. It is whether the client can tell it once, accurately, and be left alone afterward. When the answer is no, the story can still be told. It is told without them.
When the story is about the institution and the client is the proof. A survivor who says what happened, in her own words, puts a face on a complaint that a defendant’s statement is trying to make abstract. On the Johns Hopkins matter, reporters were briefed on background, under embargo, before the complaint was filed, so thorough stories ran the day it was. The people at the center of the case were heard without one of them being exposed again.
When anything the client says on camera can be read against a deposition. When the interview drifts toward a witness, a document or an opinion about the outcome, all of which the trial publicity rule puts off limits. When the client is not ready, and no amount of preparation will make a first interview feel like anything other than a second injury. Counsel decides. I prepare, and I say no when I should.
Consent at every step, including the right to stop mid-interview. Twenty minutes, not a day: the three points they want remembered, the questions this reporter is likely to ask, what to leave unsaid while the case is pending, and that “I need a moment” is a complete sentence on camera. A pause reads as human. Media training for survivors and grieving families →
The story runs anyway. In one matter, a defense team pitched a true story about my client to 60 Minutes. I showed the producers why it was not news, and the segment did not run. Some clients in that matter never spoke at all, and their story was still told, because it was told through the record and the institution, not through them. That case →
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Text Karen — 415.359.4454 or call or email Karen