Piers Morgan may be able to edit tabloids, judge talent competitions, and host talk shows, but he sure seems to have a hard time using his restaurant voice during an on-air argument with British Parliament Member, Louise Mensch.

The Setup

During a Parliamentary session about the NEWS OF THE WORLD scandal, Louise, in making a general point about the pervasiveness of phone-hacking by British tabloids, apparently misquoted something from Piers’ autobiography. She went on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show to discuss her statement, and Wolf brought Piers to tell her how he felt (Piers arrives around 1:45):

What Piers Says

In case you didn’t watch the above video, basically Piers tells Louise she got the quote wrong and then nitpicks over the details rather than addressing her bigger-picture intent; he follows up with some name-calling then talks both loudly and over her before wrapping up by minimizing the value of her responses.

Back Up And Tell It Right

Piers essentially has one thing to say – “I’m angry and you’re wrong!” – and he repeats it for roughly seven minutes. He’s certainly right to be angry about having been misquoted, and I can imagine that it was frustrating that Louise, for legal reasons, couldn’t get into details with him over the air (of course, if he’d genuinely wanted to get into a discussion with Louise, he could have simply absolved her of all legal claims right then and there and had a real discussion). However, Piers was playing an emotional shell game that many people play when involved in conflict: communicating with tone rather than content. If you’ve ever gotten into an argument with someone whose idea of conflict resolution comes down to “he who shouts loudest must be right” and seems to be in it to win rather than resolve then you’ve experienced this very issue. A shouted lecture is never going to lead to resolution. When you throw tone at people, all they hear is the tone; if you want them to hear your words… then you need to lose the tone (and if you’re having problems losing the tone, then take a break from the conflict until you can get your emotions under control). Remember, the point of conflict is to resolve conflict; if only one party “wins” then both parties have lost. So take a breath, cool the tone, and talk rationally.

Piers, here’s hoping you add tone-lowering to your resume…