It's a subject I've covered before on this blog, but Tony Benn has written an incredibly perceptive article in the Guardian Media Section this morning on the art of political interviewing. You can read the article HERE. He rails against the aggressive interviewing tendences of Messers Paxman, Humphrys, Snow and Robinson..."I disagree with that approach - I strongly believe that a belligerent manner inhibits the person interviewed. Feeling under siege, they struggle to get their case across, retreating to the safety of repeating the same things time and again or entering the fight in the hope he or she may emerge the victor - which is rarely the case."
I'm hopefully about to embark on a new career which will test my skills as an interviewer, so I read Tony Benn's words with a more than passing interest. Whenever I have done interviewing in the past I must admit I have found it a challenge - and completely exhausting. At first I tended to over-prepare, but I found that if I wrote pre-prepared questions down I'd ask them rather than let the conversation develop. I soon changed my approach!
I agree with Benn that you get far more out of people by being civil and polite and actually allowing them to answer the question. But John Snow and Nick Robinson correctly point out that in today's television there just isn't the time to do that. Snow even says that if you can't say it in 30 seconds it isn't worth saying.
Tony Benn's article was written to publicise his Channel 4 documentary this Saturday at 7pm called Interviewing the Interviewers.
23 comments:
Surely the problem is that if a politician is asked a question they don't like, they don't answer it, or give an answer to a question that hasn't been asked, regardless of the attitude taken by the interviewer. Jolly Jack Straw, that Buckket woman and 'The Clockwork Orange' Hain are prime examples.
Our Beloved Leader's "I'll answer the question the way I want to answer it" sums them all up.
'A shower, an absolute shower'
I agree that the problem is not the interviewers - their approach is merely a reaction to the way the politicians behave. Paxo asked that question 14 times because Mad Michael Howard was being evasive.
Humphrys interrupts because the pols are playing a game of going off-topic and he is trying to keep them on it. They also use the old time-wasting tactic to better effect than any football team.
Nick Robinson has pointed out the problem. In TV Land, viewers have the attention span of a gnat, so if one does't get the point across concisely, succintly & quickly, they've zapped off somewhere else.
I don't condone rudeness, but most interviewers are assertive, but not aggressive.
Iain - Congrats on your new job - do hope this will not result in your blog being seriously curtailed.
It's all happening for you at present, are we allowed to ask for whom you will be working or is this still a State secret?
PS In your thread, shouldn't the fourth word in the 2nd para read their instead of that, otherwise it reads as though you disagree with Tony Benn?
I agree withn you Iain. What passes for political interviewing is merely bear baiting. Entertainment rather than information. I would like to see some politician tell Paxman "that is a "have you stopped beating your wife type question to which you know there is no sensible answer. Next question please".
Some years ago Brian Walden got 3 fairly heavyweight politicians (Hurd was one, can't remember the others) to discuss why politicians lie. They actually tried to seriously answer (basicly because the public would rather have a comfortable lie than a brutal truth) but he kept overriding them pointing out party terminalogical inexactitudes & forcing them on the defensive. It was a complete waste of what had the potential to be a really interesting discussion.
I think the same applies online - I hate the vicious, bullying, violent language found in many comments and am sure they must subconsciously inhibit say - just for the sake of argument - Guardian comment writers saying anything that is going to get that sort of response. A lot of the edge has gone out of Guardian journalism since the advent of the pointless 'Comment is Free'. Yes, go on you big tough alpha males put the boot in!
Chicken and egg stuff perhaps. Which came first aggressive interviewers or obfuscating politicians?
Seems to me that the broadcasters do have a trump card which they don't seem to play, which is to refuse to interview politicians who won't answer questions. They could have a gentleman's agreement (or the political equivalent - just a joke Iain)that the interviewer would ask fair questions (no "have you stopped beating your wife" stuff) and in return the politician would refrain from resorting to the tricks learned from the media coaches.
I agree with Neil. It's just theatre.
Then again, I've reached the point of not listening to political interviews. No-one interviewing digs down into a policy to ask complex questions. Instead, they just want to scalp someone. So, a bad policy is not systematically taken apart on fact.
I think the solution is a happy medium. Like many others I deplore fawning questions, particually when the interviewee is a Tory or Lib Dem! ;)
But in all seriousness, there can be bullying in interviewing politicians as well and a friendly, but critical approach is what is best needed. Tough to get that style though
The very fact that we know who the nast interviewers are lets the cat out of the bag. We expect them to be aggressive and so they are.
Perhaps Tories like the boot stuck into Labour politicians and vice versa. Perhaps it makes us feel that at least someones tying.
Personally, I prefer the laid back approach and let liars catch themselves out.There is one TV interviewer who is very polite and follows it up with a very polite killer question at random. It makes for great embarrassing TV for the Politician who'd prefer not to answer.
Doom.
To give Paxo credit, after all these years, it remains very difficult to suss where his own political sympathies lie. Compare him with Andrew Marr and his pathetically weak interviewing of Prezza a couple of weeks ago.
Recognise this.. ... (from the indie's media column today, written by the insufferable Stephen Glover)
Rusbridger bonus is a bad move
May I offer the Guardian Media Group some friendly advice?
In 2005, for the second year running, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, was paid a bonus of £175,000 "in recognition of his leading role in the successful launch of the new-format Guardian and Observer newspapers". This has goneinto his pension pot, along with a further employer's contribution of £134,000. His salary rose from £272,000 to £312,000.
These hand-outs are causing angst on the shop floor. Few would dispute that Mr Rusbridger has been a successful editor. But the £100m relaunch of The Guardian has won precious few new readers, and the paper is making an operational loss quite apart from the cost of new presses. In such circumstances, a properly commercial company would not hand out bonuses.
My suggestion is that the GMG should pay Mr Rusbridger a salary commensurate with his job, and a decent pension, and not make unjustifiable extra payments that only enrage employees.
Dr Doom said:
"There is one TV interviewer who is very polite and follows it up with a very polite killer question at random. It makes for great embarrassing TV for the Politician who'd prefer not to answer."
Pray tell us to whom you refer Doctor and please, please don't let it be Kirst Wark!
First rule of political interviewing: the patronising use of the interviewer's first name by the interviewee should never, never be allowed, or vice versa for that matter.
What it all boils down to is that no matter what attitude the interviewer adopts the politico ain't gonna tell the truth. You've heard it before, 'You can tell when he/she's lying, their lips move!
Blustering interviewers serve no purpose. Listeners and viewers are intelligent enough to decide for themselves if a politician is disembling and there's no sport in hearing someone getting roughed up on Today or Newsnight. People are bored with it. Interviewers should really be aiming for exposition rather than exposé. So though it pains me to say it, Viscount Stansgate is right - as he so often is about other things.
"Snow even says that if you can't say it in 30 seconds it isn't worth saying".
Hmmm, the same goes for the question
If you are considering a career as a political(?) interviewer you could do worse than dig up a few tapes of Brian Walden in his prime on 'World in Action.'
His style probably led to the caveat, 'beware the informal interview.' Through a combination of flattery and open ended questions Walden would lead his victims into carefully laid traps from which he would slowly release them only to lead the saps into a slough of despond from which they would rarely emerge...
The tactic of Humphreys and Paxo is to trip up the interviewee with the very first question (rather like a boxer trying to knock out his opponent with the very first blow). As a result, the viewer learns little from the exchanges.
This approach is based on a complete misunderstanding of adversarial questioning. It does not mean beating up and humiliating the subjects. It means searching for flaws in their logic and inconsistencies in their arguments. In order to do this they have to be allowed to make their case.
The belligerant interviewer is just another facet of dumbed down broadcasting. I submit as proof of this theory the first question 'Thirsty Work' directed at a victorious candidate in a recent UK election.
'Don't you feel sorry for the person you beat?'(!)
(half a Mars bar for the poster who provides the name of the hapless interviewee)
Paxo a tough interviewer ! Andrew Neill was roughing up New Labour when Paxman was bending over backwards to protect Mandelson and letting Blair re-record bits of interview he (Alistair) was not happy with.
Yes, a very interesting artcle by Tony Benn, and as I live in Italy, I wouldn't have read it if you hadn't drawn my attention to it so thank you for that.
But what about when the interviewees are the agressive ones? Yesterday lunchtime SKY interviewed George Galloway, who came over as an insufferable bigot - and I write as someone who has, in the past, had some sympathy with at least some of his views - and he did nothing but shout at the presenter from the beginning. I thought she handled him very well - I don't know if she was being told what to say via earpiece or not - but he obviously had decided to "talk down" to her before the interview even started. Any points he had to make were obscured by this attitude. So what T Benn has to say is true for both interviewer and interviewee.
Ah yes, Nick Robinson, pull-no-punches journalism at its best.
*rolls eyes*
As much as I hate praising right-wingers, you gotta hand it to the late William F. Buckley. He used gentlemanly charm to lead many an interviewee into traps from which there was no escape.
If you can say it in 30 seconds it often isn't worth saying, as Snow demonstrates frequently.
I agree with many of the commenters that the problem is the politicians interviewed, who systematically evade any questions answered. Most interviewers aren't terribly interested in the subjects under discussion and don't give a damn whether or not the question is actually answered, so allow the politician to ask himself whatever question he wants and then answers it. For instance, when Bliar was asked to defend the Iraq war and whether he led Britain to war under false pretences, he answered, quite irrelevantly, that he wasn't going to apologise for ridding the world of a brutal tyrant. Nobody asked him to apologise for that, but rather for the lies he told in the runup to the war.
Yes Minister's eight ways to handle a political interview remains the best guide to watching the truly cringing interviews you get nowadays from Straw, Hain and others. Political interviews have never looked the same since I read it.
Also, whenever "real" people are interviewed, they answer the question straight (none of this "that's not the question" crap), and even Paxman doesn't treat them aggressively. Aggressive interviewing is a reaction to lying or evasive politicians. Nothing else.
Saw the show. Benn was to keen on pushing his own agenda.
His points that alternative views do not get on & that some words used to describe people are deliberately loadedd were perfectly good. But the examples he used (suferagettes, trade unionists) as such people, & "rebels" as a description showed how limited his worldview is.
Nick Griffin, anybody who doesn't believe in global warming, Fikret Abdic's supporters obviously have an almost infinitely smaller chance of getting on TV than any feminist trade unionist & "ectremist", "ultra-nationalist" & "hard liner", all regularly used, are infinitely more pejorative than "rebel" (just ask George Lucas).
In the 3 cases above "idealist", "popular nationalist" & "strong leader" can be & are substituted for those the powers that be support.
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