If You’re a Public Company, Here’s How Not to Do Media

AT&T’s CEO blows a Wall Street Journal interview

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

When you run a company and do press, you — obviously — want to come out looking good. You answer questions to quell uncertainty and message a clear path forward, particularly when investors comprise the target audience. If you run a company that’s under-performing amid chronic ambiguity, even more so.

Either The Wall Street Journal left out a lot of what AT&T CEO John Stankey said in the interview he did with the paper or Stankey had little of substance to say.

Stankey’s WSJ Q&A appeared online Sunday and hit Monday morning’s print edition. Stankey offered very little except be patient:

That is not an error. There’s nothing populating the space where you’d normally find a quote excerpted in a Medium article.

I didn’t include a quote in this article’s introduction because I believe in strong introductions.

I couldn’t find anything from Stankey worth including in at the outset of this article.

In the WSJ piece — AT&T CEO Says HBO Bet Will Pay Off in Long Run — Stankey barely even said that much. Again, maybe much of what Stankey said hit the cutting room floor, but WSJ reporters tend to be competent. If he said anything of…