How to talk to a reporter

After watching yesterday's market nosedive after Maria Bartiromo relayed that Ben Bernanke said the press misinterpreted his remarks about interest rate hikes in the future, I'd like to pass on to Mr. Bernanke some tips from the staff at DealBreaker.com that will help you in future interviews:

1. Speak to the reporter loudly and slowly, as if you're talking to someone who recently had a lobotomy.

2. If you don't want to answer a question, tell the reporter that you can't disclose that information because it would be a RegFD violation. If you don't work for a public company and RegFD isn't applicable, tell them it's a RegFD violation anyway. They won't know the difference.

3. If you're a private company and you get the sense that the reporter in question doesn't understand basic finance (very, very common), it's a good time to inflate your valuation. Insist that twenty times revenue is a perfectly reasonable multiple, and if the reporter expresses any skepticism, tell them you also put together a DCF using a conservative discount rate and arrived at the same number. You'd show them the model, but there's a buggy macro you have to get your analyst to fix, and... hey, maybe later?