The Media Interview

That is, if there’s a recorder on. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper learned this the hard way recently, when a 2005 encounter with a journalist came back to haunt him. Tom Zytaruk was working on a biography about MP Chuck Cadman who had recently passed away, when he heard that Harper - at that time, Leader of the Opposition - was visiting the Cadman residence. Zytaruk managed to get there as Harper was in the driveway and did a quick interview.

When Zytaruk’s book was about to come out earlier this year, someone leaked portions of it to the media, including quotes from the driveway interview. Those quotes appeared to back up allegations that the Conservative party had tried to bribe Cadman - an independent - to get his vote and help topple the minority Liberal government.

A portion of the audio tape and its transcript remains on the internet at the website of the Toronto Star, to whom the tape was released.

The Hill Times has a good follow up interview with Tom Zytaruk.

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.

I was reading Where Do You Stand’s piece on Dick Cheney’s wife promoting her new book on The Daily Show. Justin calls Lynne Cheney’s chat with Jon Stewart “one of the most awkward interviews I’ve ever witnessed”. Even Comedy Central promotes the clip as “an extremely uncomfortable interview.”

Now it’s Daily Show guests who often appear a bit awkward, but this time it was Stewart himself who didn’t quite know where to go with things. Part of it I’m sure was that he was trying to restrain himself from asking some truly embarrassing questions. There were enough slightly embarrassing questions, and Lynne Cheney was well prepared for stepping into the lion’s den - unlike Paris Hilton on David Letterman. Cheney threw in some of her own jokes without waiting for Stewart to make them, and she steered things away from potentially sticky points.

This is part two of the interview (part one is here), with some of the more awkward moments - see what you think.

Finally got to see the much-talked-about Paris Hilton interview on Letterman last week. I’m no fan of Hilton’s public persona, but I felt for her to a certain extent. Letterman starts in with questions about her stay in prison, and never ever lets up. Even after 4 minutes, when Hilton says she doesn’t want to talk about prison, there’s another four minutes of prison questions and she gets closer and closer to tears.

The biggest problem here is that Hilton doesn’t take the bull by the horns - she just passively waits for the next question. After a couple of prison questions, she’s got to see where this is going, and that was her opportunity to go on the offensive, talk about prison on her own terms, make some jokes about herself, and turn things around. But she’s a deer in the headlights.

Don’t know who’s advising Paris Hilton these days, but she really seems unprepared for being asked questions about her time in prison. Could be they thought that this was an entertainment show and the focus would be on her new perfume and movie, etc., but Letterman? It didn’t even cross your mind that he’d at least make a joke about her jail time?

Lesson learned: Always be prepared when you know there’s something controversial about you - have some way to diffuse the situation, or in this case, a great chance to poke some fun at yourself.

According to Mollygood, Hilton broke down completely after leaving the set. I also liked Mollygood’s final comment:

Sad to know that she has to go onto a comedy show to get even slightly tough questions about her prison stay.

In an article entitled The King of All Media vs. the Shameless Marketing Guru, Debbie Allen talks about her unique way of preparing to be interviewed by shock jock Howard Stern:

Knowing the interview would be a challenge, Debbie asked a previous guest of the show to coach her before the interview. She soon discovered that by connecting with Howard’s interest and listening to other guests that she could not only survive the interview, but also thrive from the massive media exposure. [my emphasis]

I thought this was an excellent strategy for potentially difficult interviews: to track down a previous guest or two and pick their brains about what did and did not work with that host. As Allen noted elsewhere in the article, part of what can be difficult on Stern’s show is that there are at least two if not three people “hosting” at one time, which just adds to the difficulties.

How did Allen do on the show? According to her, she managed to “thrive”:

The interview started with a negative tone but soon Debbie turned it around in her favor. Howard Stern, a shameless self-promoter himself, wanted to share with his listeners more information on how they too can become famously successful. As Howard learned more about Debbie’s marketing strategies and strong belief system he began to promote the book and the Website.

Everyone is talking about the judge who wouldn’t stop talking - the unusual, eccentric, unorthodox style of Judge Larry Seidlin during the televised hearings into the custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s body. At one point, Judge Seidlin paused to assess his performance:

Ohhhh, I did a lot of talking. You know, the more you talk in this business the worse off you are, really. The less you say, the better. I mean, I knew that from the beginning.

Good advice for courtrooms and for media interviews. Don’t let yourself ramble; not only do you get off topic easily, but you can end up saying things you didn’t mean to reveal.

Journalists know that often the best course is to not say anything after the interviewee is done talking, so the interviewee starts saying more, thinking they should be filling the gap. Say what you want to say, and stop.

Heard this on CBC Radio’s The Current, yesterday, and it’s a good example of why people can be suspicious of being interviewed by the media. Peggy Thomas was on a committee of the Ontario Library Association which approved a book that several school boards later banned:

I got a phone call from a reporter… and he was quite adamant about the book, and he kept saying this one question over and over and over to me - ‘Do you believe this is an appropriate book?’ - and I kept answering him and finally I said you’re asking me the same question over and over and he said - ‘That’s because you’re not answering it’ - and I said, am I not answering it or am I not giving you the answer that you want, because obviously, as a selector, as one of the people who chose this book, I obviously think it’s appropriate.

Sometimes reporters will ask a question several times to ensure they get a consistent answer or to try and get someone to say something in a more quotable way, or in the case of evasion, at least show how the interviewee won’t give an honest answer. Things get dicier when the reporter is repeating a question because they’re not hearing the answer they want; perhaps they want things more black and white or more forceful or more controversial.

Even worse, this sounds like a case where the reporter can’t believe the person’s opinion and, what?, hopes they’ll change their mind after enough repetitions of the question? That’s turning into a (poor quality) debate and not an interview.

[Disclosure: The reason I don’t mention the book or the reasons for the ban or the name of the publication is simply that I don’t want people distracted by the details of the case; my focus here is on the method of questioning and those details aren’t relevant.]

I’m not sure how straight many of the answers were 20 years ago - questions were just avoided with less pinache perhaps - but this journalist makes a good point about the effects of media training on political interviews:

…twenty years ago you could interview people and ask them straight questions and have a reasonable chance that you were going to get a straight answer. Now you’re very, very lucky if you interview … in fact you will never interview anybody who has been in public life for any length of time who hasn’t done that first basic media training course in which they’re taught this one rule: don’t answer the question that you’re asked; answer the question that you want to answer [what’s often referred to as ‘bridging’]. And so our job has evolved from just asking questions and asking tough questions and you know, keeping on bashing away asking more tough questions; to very much trying to get through a series of stonewalling answers, in which a politician answers the question that he or she wants to answer, and you try to get them to answer the question that you want them to answer. And that can become like a fencing match. Sometimes the interviewer wins and sometimes the interviewer loses, but if you can get the tone right in an interview like that, and if you can penetrate that brick wall, then that’s the best that we can hope to do at the moment, I think.

- Mark Colvin, presenter for ‘PM’, ABC News and Current Affairs
on “The Art of the Interview”, Sunday November 13, 2004
a radio discussion panel which was part of the Cultures of Journalism series from Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National

Newsweek reporter Nicki Gostin tried to ambush interview former 90210 and Charmed star Shannen Doherty for the Aug. 21-28, 2006 issue:

NG: Hi, Shannen, how are you?
SD: I’m good, thank you. I’m unpacking from New York. I can’t stand unpacking.

NG: Can’t you get your maid to do it?
SD: No! I’m a normal person. My housekeeper has better things to do.

NG: Tell me about your new show.
SD: I help relationships come to an end or sometimes help them go to the next level. It can be boyfriend or girlfriend, or if you want to quit your job.

NG: Haven’t you had some bad breakups? You tried to run over a boyfriend a long time ago, right?
SD: No, and if that’s the way you’re going with this then I’d rather not even do the interview.

NG: I just think it’s funny.
SD: I am not going to have things rehashed from 15 years ago. I’m not going to combat lies. I can already tell what’s going to be in your article.

NG: But—
SD: Let me hang up and call my publicist and then we’ll reconvene, because I’m not going down this path.

—CLICK *

Doherty did not call back.

Lots going on here:

1. It shows you that nothing is off the record.

2. Check out the double question: “Haven’t you had some bad breakups? You tried to run over a boyfriend a long time ago, right?” It’s a sign of either sloppy interviewing skills or a desire to railroad the interviewee.

3. The reporter says it’s “funny” that an actress with real-life relationship problems is playing a character who deals with relationships… perhaps the word she’s thinking of is “ironic”, but even then, it’s ironic only if you think the personal life of an actor is relevant to their roles. Suppose, for example, the reporter failed English in college and now writes for a living… ironic, but irrelevant to their current work.

4. Why was this printed in Newsweek? Do they publish transcripts of all failed interviews?

Peter Himler, who put me on to this story via his blog, The Flack, credits Doherty for saying she didn’t like the line of questioning and hanging up. He also wonders if her publicist could have avoided all this with some homework on the reporter. But then again, he muses:

In the end, I suspect that the mere mention in Newsweek of the show’s title and network justified the effort in the minds of the interview’s orchestrators.