Controlling the narrative starts with how you answer the tough question. When a reporter loads a question with the opposition's language, dangerous criminals, putting communities at risk, releasing people back into our neighborhoods, the narrative is already up for grabs. The spokesperson who answers on those terms loses before they finish the sentence. The spokesperson who takes the terms back wins the next news cycle.
The problemThe frame is the trap
Pretrial reform advocates were walking into interviews on the most pre-loaded issue in criminal justice communications. Opposition groups had spent years training the public to associate bail reform with crime. And they had given reporters the language to ask the question that way. "Isn't bail reform releasing too many people back into communities?" "Money bail keeps dangerous people in jail. Why shouldn't we use it?"
Even technically accurate answers, delivered inside the reporter's frame, reinforced the opposition's narrative. The APPR Project Team didn't need better facts. They had the facts. They needed a method for refusing the frame without dodging the question.
The frameworkATMS
I built the training around ATMS (Address, Transition, Message, Sell) as the operational discipline for narrative control in a hostile interview.
Address the question directly. Yes, no, maybe, perhaps. A clean opening that signals you're not dodging.
Transition off the reporter's language and onto your own. This is the moment the frame changes hands.
Message is what's actually true and yours to own. The substance you came to deliver.
Sell with a forward-looking close. The call to action that moves the audience past the question and into your argument.
Worked exampleHow it lands in practice
Take the question the APPR team was getting hit with most often: "Isn't bail reform releasing too many people back into communities, putting dangerous criminals on the street and increasing crime?"
A spokesperson without ATMS answers the question as asked, on the reporter's terms, and loses. A spokesperson with ATMS answers like this:
Address. No. The PSA itself cannot and does not release anyone.
Transition. Laws, local policies, and judicial officers determine whether to release people pretrial. And let's remember, we're dedicated to protecting our community and operating our pretrial system with integrity.
Message. That's why we're adopting practical, research-based pretrial improvements that are effective, that prioritize community well-being and safety, and that reduce our reliance on financial conditions of release.
The reporter asked one question. The spokesperson answered a better, more accurate one, on their own terms, in their own language, without sounding evasive. That's narrative control happening in real time, in under twenty seconds, on the record.
The full toolkitBeyond ATMS
I paired the framework with techniques for the specific traps that get spokespeople into trouble: hypotheticals ("I don't have a crystal ball, but what I can tell you is…"), the paraphrase trap (don't accept a reporter's reframing if it's wrong; correct it without using their loaded language), the Jennings Rule (tell the public what you do know, not what you don't), and the "no comment" problem (comment without commenting).
I anchored the framework in a recognizable public example: Justice Amy Coney Barrett's response to the "partisan hacks" question. A textbook ATMS deflection in one of the most-watched interviews of the year. If you can see her do it, you can do it.
Why it mattersDiscipline beats personality
It's tempting to treat answering tough questions as a personality skill: confidence, poise, presence. I built the training on the premise that it isn't. It's a discipline. It can be taught. It can be practiced. It can be applied under pressure by anyone who learns the moves.
That's what made the training repeatable across a seven-state initiative. The framework didn't depend on charisma. It depended on a method.
Controlling the narrative is not about avoiding hard questions. It's about answering them on terms you set. ATMS is how that happens. Turn by turn, interview by interview, news cycle by news cycle.
This is the work I do at Control the Story.