The Media Interview

A fascinating new trend in interviewing has emerged during the course of the US presidential primaries: the live-to-web editorial board interview. Sitting around the table with editors of a media outlet is a long-standing tradition, but the idea of streaming it live over the internet adds some interesting new dimensions.

Take the editorial board meeting between Hillary Clinton and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader on May 23, 2008. The ensuing controversy over Clinton’s reference to the Robert Kennedy assassination came, not from the Argus Leader, but from the NY Post, which was monitoring the interview via the web and picked up on the line.

Argus-Leader Executive Editor Russell Beck put it this way:

…we asked her about the mounting national pressure on her to withdraw from the race for the Democratic nomination.

Responding to our questions on that point, Clinton offered historical context (and justification) for staying in. Among her comments: “You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere around the middle of June. …We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. Um, you know, I just … don’t understand it.”

Sitting just a few feet from Clinton, that didn’t seem like news to me.

Ditto for Argus Leader publisher Arnold Garson, editorial board members Greg Robinson and Barb Facile and Voices Editor Nestor Ramos. Out in the newsroom, editor Jeff Martin, viewing the live stream and filing news updates to our Web site, didn’t see a story out of her reference to Kennedy either, focusing instead on Clinton’s strenuous denial minutes earlier that her aides were negotiating terms of her exit with Obama’s campaign.

The New York Post, viewing the interview live, apparently picked up on something I didn’t. Minutes after the Q&A was over, that newspaper posted on its Web site a story that began this way: “Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.”

Just as the posting of interview transcripts on the internet after the fact has been revolutionizing the ability for the public and other journalists to assess context or find other stories, the idea of live-streaming interviews makes that possible in real time. It also opens up more possibilities for misinterpretation and misuse of statements - it’s no longer the small group of people in the editorial board meeting who can use what you say.

So watching what you say becomes even more important these days.