Long before political Bush-bashing became popular, or even widely accepted, critics still jabbed him repeatedly for his speech. Books of "Bushisms", videos of Bush's misspeakings spliced together, and comedic reproductions of the man's halting, confused language have always dominated the pop culture reception of the President. I use the word…
Is it just me, or are the interviews you see on television getting worse and worse? There are exceptionally good interviewers, of course (such as Bill Moyers). Bad interviews are the norm, however. This is a shame, because most bad interviews could be cured if only the interviewers would follow a few basic rules
Before I go further, I should make it clear that my frustration is with interviews that are serious attempts to discuss a topic with a guest in order to inform or entertain the audience. I am excluding from this critique interviews on comedy shows (such as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert), where the interviewer is expected to interject his or her personality with more gusto or even to toy with the guest.
Without further ado, here are 10 basic rules for conducting effective interviews:
1. The interviewer needs to shut up and let the guest talk. How often is it that an interviewer just can’t hold back and ends up dominating the interview, failing to allow the guest a fair chance to talk? I’ve often watched interviews by Charlie Rose that remind me of this point. Although Charlie books some terrific guests and does some excellent work, he is one of those interviewers who is often incapable of staying out of the way. Many interviews end up being “about Charlie.” In the legal field, the trick to effective direct examination of a witness is to ask brief questions that allow the witness to “bloom” in front …
Think Progress reports on these findings from Free Press and the Center for American Progress: – In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was…
Glenn Greenwald links to Josh Marshall, who published an e-mail from a reader “who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government ‘reporting’ yet”: It's a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as…
This is a detailed article by Expose, starting off with some of the excuses reporters hear: In 2005, the Associated Press collected and published a list of novel excuses government officials used to deny FOIA requests, many of which failed the "my dog ate my homework" test. The list included,…