The interview’s never over…
By Francis Moran
…until the reporter has turned off the mike, descended in the elevator, left the building and driven away. That’s what I teach executives when I do media training, but it’s amazing how tough a lesson it is to learn.
I have to admit I occasionally engaged in gotcha journalism when I toiled as an ink-smeared wretch, so I know how the game works. The reporter goes through her tough-but-fair questions and the interviewee responds, honestly but according to the script and messaging prepared so assiduously before the interview. (You did prepare assiduously before the interview, didn’t you?)
The reporter then starts packing up her gear and, ever so gently, in a manner that would make Columbo blush for his jack-booted incompetence, she asks just one or two more questions and the interview subject, relaxed now that the mike’s been put away, strays away from the script. Or maybe gallops away from it like a runaway horse.
So the perils of a traditional interview are quite clear. But they’re also quite easy to avoid with just a little diligence. Not so the scary new world of so-called “citizen journalism,” as this post points out. Anybody, anywhere can write anything and post it everywhere. So beware.
As a journalist, I reserved dirty tricks, if you want to call them that, for those who should have known better and from whom I was only going to get the truth if I defeated their legions of press secretaries and overseers. I like to think I subscribed to Pulitzer’s old dictum that the job of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and playing hardball was always part of my view of the latter.
As a blogger more interested in supporting my community of technology entrepreneurs, I don’t do drive-by interviews. I wrote previously about my operating philosophy of who I quote and how I seek their approval for doing so.
But just because I intend to be fair, don’t bet that everyone will be. So remember, the interview’s never over.
