The Media Interview

Larry King gave a good demonstration last night of what not to do as a guest. He was on Anderson Cooper 360, being interviewed by John King about Dr. Jan Adams walking off the Larry King Live show.

Larry King was constantly looking away from his interviewer and at the camera. Breaking eye contact in order to look at the camera creates a bad impression; suddenly you’re no longer in a conversation - you’re playing to the lens and it feels disingenuous. Perhaps King was still in “host mode” and forgot that he’s the interviewee talking with someone in a studio (as opposed to via satellite). Whatever the case, I’m sure he doesn’t like it when his guests do such a thing.

The plastic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mother the day before she died, walked off CNN’s “Larry King Live” during an interview tonight.

Larry King opened the hour by saying that it wasn’t clear if Dr. Jan Adams would appear as promised. King said that West’s family had formally asked Adams not to go on the show, but that he was still conferring with his lawyers. King then proceeded to interview several entertainment reporters who had been lined up for later in the show.

Then came word that Dr. Adams would in fact appear, so King broke for a commercial. When they returned, Dr. Adams was seated across from King and it looked like everything was fine, until he proceeded to explain why he wasn’t going to do the interview. Dr. Adams then removed his mike, shook King’s hand, and walked off the set, leaving Kin to hastily go to another commercial:

Interviewed later on Anderson Cooper 360, King discussed what it was like having a guest walk off his show:

..I used to say ‘nothing has ever happened before that hasn’t happened before’, in other words I’ve had everything happen to me in fifty years - except THAT! I’ve had fires in the studio, I’ve had people fight… but I have NEVER had a guest rip off the mike and walk - and remain friendly; he stayed til the end, he was there at the end of the show; he was very friendly to me - he was - he took out - he said he was taking my producer to dinner because she had gone through so much over this.

Perhaps for halloween I’ll go dressed as a “famous interviewer,” as the costume companies carefully describe him.

And the winner is - well, maybe “winner” isn’t the word because I personally don’t see getting an interview with Paris Hilton as anything to be proud of - CNN’s Larry King.

After ABC’s $100,000 offer for Hilton’s first post-jail TV interview was rejected, and NBC pulled out and denied any deal had been made, and the Hiltons started denying that they were seeking any money for any interview… the NY Times reported over the weekend that Paris will do an hour-long segment on Larry King’s show this Wednesday:

A spokeswoman for his program, Bridget Leininger, said yesterday that no money had been paid for the interview. “Larry King never pays for interviews,” she said.

What was interesting was that even after the Hilton’s said they would not take any money for photos and videos, including a $300,000 deal they’d set up with People magazine, ABC and NBC still turned down the interview.

The trick these days is that deals are made to purchase materials such as photos and videos that accompany an interview - that way, no one is technically paying for the interview. And where does Larry’s King’s show stand on that?

Ms. Leininger said she was unsure whether the program was going to use any photos and whether any fee would be paid to Getty Images, a photo agency that had previously made a deal to acquire rights to the first pictures of Ms. Hilton home from jail.

It’s easy for journalists to get caught up in the quest for more information and to lose sight of what people might be going through during a crisis. But a Virginia Tech student made it clear where his priorities lay, as he spoke with Larry King last night about the campus shootings:

VOLTMER: Yes, we stayed in the dorm for a while until we heard that the situation was completely over and then I went to see a friend at the hospital who had been shot.

KING: And how did he come out?

VOLTMER: She’s doing good. It was really reassuring to see her. She smiled and the first thing she said was, “How are you guys?” And it was really good. She was really appreciative we were there….

KING: And your friend, the girl, will be OK?

VOLTMER: She’ll be fine. She’s recovering nicely….

KING: Danny, did your girlfriend tell you how it happened to her?

VOLTMER: No, I wasn’t going to ask her any questions like that.

KING: Obviously.

VOLTMER: I didn’t know what to say when I walked in the room. I just wanted her to rest.

[emphasis added and conversation condensed from the transcript]

Perhaps not so obvious, eh Larry?

Tonight was to be the first of CNN’s week long celebration of Larry King’s 50th year in broadcasting. One of the hallmarks of his Larry King Live TV interviews has been timeliness, so it was fitting that everything was cancelled so he could provide coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre.

I’ve spoken before on this blog about the work of John Sawatsky and the influence he’s had on the interviewing skills of many journalists. Well, his Technorati score is way up this week after a big story about him on the popular NPR show All Things Considered. He’s reaching guru status.

The Art of the Interview, ESPN-Style, by David Folkenflik has been widely quoted since it aired August 14 and a lot more people are discovering the important lessons that Sawatsky has for interviewers (the ESPN part refers to the fact that Sawatsky was hired by the sports network to train its reporters to do better interviews). I’ll just quote a couple key points from the NPR piece:

Sawatsky says the big-name reporters are failing to plan meticulously how to extract information from their sources, calling their process “haphazard.”

“You are hoping that the person being interviewed is a good talker,” he says, “and knows how to do something with your inept question.”

Sawatsky’s rules are simple, but he says they get broken all the time: Don’t ask yes-or-no questions, keep questions short and avoid charged words, which can distract people. In his seminar, Sawatsky points to Mike Wallace of CBS’ 60 Minutes and CNN’s Larry King as examples to avoid. In Sawatsky’s illustrative clips, King favors leading questions that generate curt answers, while Wallace’s rapid patter fails to get a subject to speak candidly.

But the NPR website has far more than Folkenflik’s story on Sawatsky - you can listen to Larry King and Mike Wallace comment on Sawatsky’s criticisms, you can hear Sawatsky critique Folkenflik’s methods during their interviews (how’s that for daunting!), there are some additional pieces from Sawatsky and about Sawatsky, and finally there’s the famous clip from the movie Bull Durham about all the cliches in sports interviews.

And there are some interesting follow-ups:

David Folkenflik examines Mike Wallace’s highly-publicized interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and gives it a Sawatskian critique (Wallace’s interview aired the day after the NPR piece on Sawatsky).

And you can see public reaction to Wallace’s interview on Public Eye, the recently-launched CBS blog about their news department and journalism in general (thanks for David Fokenflik for pointing me to it - another subscription for Bloglines to handle!).

And this story sure brought interview fans out of the woodwork:

Yes, yes, yes — it’s nice to hear others interested in this topic. I enjoy a good interviewer, but have also been amazed that many of the most famous ones are not very good. [from a comment posted on Fokenflik’s blog]