Win Your Case: How to Present, Persuade, and Prevail--Every Place, Every Time

by Gerry Spence

Listen to the anchor persons on the evening news—the placid smiles pasted on their otherwise dead faces, their lips forming the words, their eyes glued to the teleprompters. They tell us in their singsong voices about murders and rapes and unspeakable horrors of every description, and even, occasionally, of joy. We are unmoved. We hear about thousands killed or maimed in bombings across the world. Nothing happens. We go on eating our popcorn. The flow of blood may turn the rivers scarlet and the dead bodies may well lie bloating in the sun, but as they read, the anchor persons provide us nothing more than the deadened sound of the written word. But put the reporter on the scene, the microphone in her hand. Let her look at the devastation and speak outside of the script and we begin to respond in kind. Television has learned to put the grieving mother and the irate citizen who was robbed or cheated before the cameras. The shocked passersby who have just witnessed a horror do not read from a script or speak a memorized line. Such persons broadcast a vivid, moving message. That which moves us is the inner voice that people hear in themselves and pass on to us.