How should academics handle communication with the media? I'm not famous enough of a scientist to be frequently solicited by the media* (plus my field has little political/social controversy around it), but I had a few encounters with local newspapers and one with a public national television. The results were not entirely bad, but the general sentiment given was significantly different than what I would have wanted it to be.

It seems like I'm not alone, I just got back from a conference in my field where more senior scientists discussed their relationship with the general media. It came out that more often than they would like, the relationship was bad.

Problems stated, among others†:


Misquotation, or words taken out of their context significantly changing their meaning (this is the most frequent). 
A general difficulty for the media to understand, and convey, uncertainty ('we think, it might be so..' or 'we are rather confident that ...' becomes 'it is so')
Difficulty to apprehend results, applications, consequences that may or may not appear 10-20 years down the line.
Exaggeration of the conclusions


etc.

These are not without consequences, at the personal level, as it can give the impression that you don't know what you are talking about.

My first thought was to ignore the media attention and advocate that scientists should do the communication themselves to bypass the regular media (having a blog, entertaining a profile on social media, etc.), but it is extremely time consuming and would distract from the actual research work. I think there must be something to do, on our side, to help with that.

I understand that it is due to how media works, and I don't believe it will change by a lot. But the question is then: are there any strategies that would help reducing this effect, at least to protect oneself against the consequences?

*newspapers, television, magazines, etc. i.e. not scientific journals.

†anyone who has items to add to this list is welcome to do so.
I've had one paper I wrote garner significant media attention, so while I'm not a practiced hand at it, some things I learned along the way:


Be able to convey the idea behind your paper simply. A brief, non-technically "What happened", and why this matters. Don't oversell, but if you provide good information, you have some more control over how it gets conveyed, instead of forcing a non-expert journalist to translate your work into words.
Keep it short. It's harder to misquote or provide out-of-context soundbites if you keep things short and to the point. Don't pontificate.
Make the caveats of your work clear, but don't over-hedge.
If it's clear they're trying to get you to say something in particular, decide if you're okay with saying it. If you are, just do it. If you aren't don't go anywhere near it. Don't dance around, or try to add qualifiers - just don't approach.
Be prepared for rage-inducing discussion of your work online after it hits the air. Learn to have a thick skin, or purposefully ignore it.
Remember that, in the grand scheme of things, even a fair amount of media attention is a flash in the pan, and the odd story that makes you wince is just that - a single story.


While I think you can help mitigate some of the problems around media coverage of your work with an active social media presence and a blog, it's only by engaging the audience. It's not going to let you "stand aside" from the media - no website or news paper is going to go "Oh, Dr. X has a blog. On second thought, lets not bother with the story..." If anything, an active social media presence will probably raise your profile among science communication types, and increase the odds of getting a bit of media attention.