Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts

Is James Naughtie the most long-winded interviewer in broadcasting history?

At one point during one of this morning's interviews on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, I began wondering whether James Naughtie would ever get to the end of the question he was asking.

It reminded me of how often the garrulous Mr Naughtie has had this effect on me, and got me wondering whether I'm alone in wondering why the BBC lets one of their top interviewers ask questions that are often longer (and less coherent) than the answers he elicits from his interviewees.

So I found it quite reassuring to discover from a quick Google search that you don't have to look far to find comments about his long-winded style of questioning. Nor did it take long to come across some fine exhibits (HERE), and the following specimens are reproduced in ascending order of length.

I haven't timed how quickly Mr Naughtie speaks. But if we assume that it's somewhere around the average conversational speed of 170-180 words per minute, it would have taken him more than a minute to get to the end of the longest of these (184 words).

Is this another example, I wonder, of the BBC's apparent preference for allocating more time to its own staff than to the people we'd rather be listening to - that I blogged about a few days ago (HERE)?

Q: What's very interesting here is that we're very quickly back into the arguments, which are quite familiar about the reasons for war. And let me suggest to you, Secretary of State, that the reason these arguments are still quite fresh in people's minds a few years on is because they realize this has been a campaign attended by mistakes. Of course, there were people thought it was a bad idea completely. But even those who said, well, maybe this is the way to deal with Saddam. Look at John Sawer's, who's political director now of the Foreign Commonwealth Office, his assessment in May 2003 just after the invasion about what the American forces were doing there: no leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis. Now that was the Pentagon in Iraq. That was a mistake (140 words).

Q: But you see, the problem that we've got is that we know about Guantanamo and we know that Mr. Gonzales who is now the Attorney General has said in one famous remark in a previous incarnation with the White House that he thought the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and they didn't really deal with the situation we've got. And we know, talking about the American Administration, we know that 500 people have been for varying lengths of time in Guantanamo Bay without the trials and the protections that would normally be given under your jurisdiction and ours. And people say, well hold on, if this is a model war, if these are for high ideals, if this is for the spread of the liberal democracy of which you speak here, how can that be? You're breaking your own code of conduct? (141 words)

Q: To the Foreign Secretary in one second, but on the question of why we went to war, yes, it was said Saddam was a bad man who was a force for instability. No question about that. But the American people were told pretty straightforwardly we're in the business -- the American Administration -- of regime change. The British people were told something quite different and very distinctly different; that if it wasn't for the WMD than the whole game would be different. Now we know that those weapons didn't exist in the way that we were told they existed. And Mr. Blair tonight persistently -- that the argument in Britain was about regime change, and yet we now know don't we because of the arguments that went on and the leaks we've had from the discussions in Washington that Mr. Blair's party was regime change all along (147 words).

Q: But the question is not whether liberal democracy -- you talked about this in your lecture on the eve of this program -- is a good thing or a bad thing, as most people in this country, as in yours, think it is a desirable state. The question is how you go about bringing it. Now let me remind you and I'm sure you know these words from President Bush himself in the presidential debate just before he was elected October 2000. He said, if we're an arrogant nation, they will resent us -- speaking about the United States. Now the problem is that many people who try to look at this fair-mindedly, look for example at the question of extraordinary rendition, people taken to third countries where there may be practices that amount under international convention as to torture and they know that they go through our airspace. And the government said, well, really request every time -- a permission is requested every time this happens. Is a rendition flight only allowed through our airspace if the British Government has been informed? (184 words).

... and I bet no one's bothered to read all the way down to here!

What's 'news' about Gordon Brown not answering a question?

The silly season doesn’t get much sillier than when the leading story on all of tonight’s leading news programmes on radio and television was the apparently astonishing fact that that Gordon Brown had not answered a question about his position on the release of the Lockerbie bomber during today's Downing Street press conference.

It raises the question of whether all our top journalists have been asleep since Brown first emerged as a leading Labour politician more than a decade and a half ago.

Otherwise, they would surely have noticed that he has never knowingly answered any question ever put to him - and that more of the same hardly counts as 'news' (for more on which, see HERE).

Mrs Clinton's gem for interview collectors

A number of previous posts have featured classic interviews with top politicians, including
A labour leader with no interest in spin
A prime minister who openly refused to answer a question
A Tory leader’s three evasive answers to the same question

Whether or not Hillary Clinton’s reply to a Congolese student who seemed to have asked her what her husband’s opinion was (though apparently the translator had mistakenly said ‘Mr Clinton’ instead of 'Obama’) qualifies as another classic remains to be seen.

But it's already had more than 50,000 views on YouTube and generated a good deal of heated debate.

In case you missed it, here it is, followed by a sample of positive and negative reactions from YouTube viewers.

See what you think:



SELECTED REACTIONS FROM YOUTUBE

FOR:

Hillary, it's about time these sexist assholes got a piece of American common sense. WHAT THE HELL DOES BILL CLINTON THINK? WHO GIVES A SHIT? what assholes! GREAT RESPONSE!

Are these students STUPID?she is right why should she answer for Mutombo or mr clinton, she said the record straight

Hillary has lots of good reasons to be pissed. A philandering husband who has humiliated her, a wet behind the ears newcomer who took the presidency from her, and the fact that even though she is Sec of State, Obama has severely crippled her authority by naming others to diplomatically handle other parts of the world.

if i asked a question that was so disrespectful of her intellect and position, yes. but i also wouldn't consider an honest answer a problem. she said, directly, i'm not going to tell you what my husband thinks. I work i a professional and public capacity and people are publicly direct all the time. This is nothing new. But when Hillary does it, everyone changes the standard and caps on her for it. I don't get why CBS has to frame that as a "snap." It's not and CBS is being sexist by doing so.

AGAINST:

"Rude" question or not (and I do not think the question was rude), Hill is representing the our nation. She should sit up straight, behave in a gracious manner and answer the question with a touch of class and humor versus arrogance and bitchiness. Ugh.

what a bitch! does she even stop to think about difference of culture??

Her true colors continue to shine through that fake 'serve our country' attitude she cultivates for show. If anyone can't handle a simple provocative question from a student without looking like a nasty villain, they don't need to be our head Diplomat. What is she doing, trying to start another world war with her attitudes?
Can you imagine her in the White House with all the pressures of the first 200 days? She can't even handle a student. We need to keep her far away from our Capitol.

what am embarrassment to the USA!

OTHER POSTS ON MRS CLINTON'S COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS:

Televised interviews and political communication

If you’re a new reader of this blog and are interested in the problems associated with the growing importance of interviews as the major form of political communication in the UK, there are a number of posts, both serious and not so serious that you might like to catch up on.

They include the following, most of which are illustrated by short video clips:

Why it’s so easy for politicians not to answer questions - and what should be done about it
Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them
Gordon Brown’s interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?
A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s question
A Tory leader’s three evasive answers to the same question
A Labour leader with no interest in spin
Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule

And here’s another classic from the early 1980s BBC series Not the Nine o’clock News:

No flies on Obama!

After recent posts about how British politicians behave in interviews, I couldn't help being impressed by President Obama's cool and skillful dispatch of a fly whilst being interviewed.

Whether or not the ASPCA worries about insects, I do not know, but I can imagine the RSPCA, not to mention the anti-hunting lobby, getting very steamed up such heartless behaviour!

Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them

It’s almost impossible to watch or listen to a media interview without coming to a positive or negative impression of the person who is being interviewed.

This is very clear in the following exchange between Andrew Neil and cabinet minister Yvette Cooper – watch the whole thing first and see what you think before reading on:

I deliberately didn’t use the original YouTube version, because its title – ‘Yvette Cooper’s worst interview yet … probably (and that’s saying something)’ – might have influenced your own personal reaction.

The video a splendid example of something I’ve mentioned in a number of previous posts, namely that a major reason why the interview is such an unsatisfactory form of political communication is that it’s so easy for politicians not to answer questions and so difficult for interviewers to extract answers from them (without coming across as unreasonably hostile or biased, on which see HERE).

In this case, the interviewer's difficulties in getting an answer out of the interviewee and her determination not to provide one are even more evident than usual, because of the extraordinary amount time that both of them spend speaking at the same time as each other – which is a such a flagrant breach of the most basic rule of conversation of all, namely ‘one speaker speaks at a time’, that it’s bound to be noticed by any competent speaker of the language (i.e. viewers and listeners).

But what still hasn’t dawned on politicians (and the media advisors who train them how to perform in interviews) is that coming across as evasive or as someone who ‘hogs’ the conversation’ invariably creates a negative impression.

So, if your reaction to Ms Cooper veered towards the negative end of the scale, you shouldn’t be at all surprised. You are not alone – as you’ll see from these samples from the 117 comments posted by some of the 8,000 people who have so far seen the interview on YouTube:

“I watched this today as well, and couldn't believe my eyes. Every time I see her being interviewed she always tries to speak over the interviewer and never answers the question directly. She has this 'I don't care how stupid I look' kind of attitude which doesn't do her or her party any favours. Just answer the question you silly woman!”

“All Labour ministers go to the same school where they learn to ignore the question, talking over the interviewer and acting in a supercilious arrogant manner. No wonder the public hate them.”

“This is Bliar's real legacy. The complete triumph of waffle and spin over unpleasant facts.”

“I'm surprised the leftist BBC allowed Andrew Neil to press Cooper like this. But he did a good job and still got no answer. As other people have said on here, she is just a pre-programmed robot reading from a script embedded in her brain.”

TWO TECHNIQUES FOR WINNING AND HOLDING THE FLOOR

The video also provides some excellent illustrations of what the late Gail Jefferson, one of the founders of conversation analysis, referred to as ‘overlap competition’.

The argument, briefly stated, goes like this. So basic is the ‘one speaker at a time’ rule that we get uneasy when we find ourselves in situations where it is being violated, whether by ourselves or by someone else. As a result, one or other of the speakers will always eventually give way, thereby enabling a return to orderly turn-taking where ‘one speaker speaks at a time’.

Jefferson also noted that there are two techniques available to interrupters, one of which is always far more effective than the other when it comes to winning and holding the floor.

To win, all you have to do is to carry on speaking and ignore anyone else’s attempts to ‘get a word in edgeways’. And it’s no use just trying to get the odd word or two in - e.g. ‘but- but- but' - and expect that the other person will give way, because, so long as you proceed no further than that, they won’t.

For the purposes of what follows, let’s call these truncated attempts to get the floor the ‘staccato’ technique.

But if you’re more persistent and launch unhesitatingly into producing a fully-fledged sentence, the power of the one speaker at a time rule will start to weaken the other person's determination and knock them off course – by making him or her feel just as uneasy and inhibited as you felt when you were breaking the rule.

So long as you carry on speaking as fluently as you can (or dare), you’ll eventually force your competitor to back off and leave you in the clear to say whatever you like.

For the purposes of what follows, let’s call this the ‘continuo’ technique).

I’ve edited this interview into five consecutive sequences, in which you can not only see both speakers using both of these techniques, but also how whichever one persists with the ‘continuo’ technique always wins.

Episode 1: Neil's initial use of staccato fails and he only wins when he uses continuo to assert that he's asking her a question:

Episode 2: Neil’s several initial attempts at staccato are defeated by Cooper’s persistent use of continuo:

Episode 3: Neil’s initial attempts with staccato fail but he wins through as soon as he opts for continuo:


Episode 4: Cooper’s persistent use of continuo wins through and frustrates Neil to the point where he explicitly complains that she is preventing him from asking his question.


Episode 5: Having got the floor, Neil makes the most of it by asking a much longer question than usual, which Cooper seems to treat as an invitation to produce an even longer answer. Initially, her use of continuo successfully holds Neil’s staccato efforts at bay. Then, very unusually, both of them start using continuo at the same time, and Cooper only backs off when she gets to the end of her sentence, leaving Neil in the clear to carry on and get his question out.


THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Next time you find yourself in a situation where you’re competing to get a chance to speak, remember that the staccato technique is unlikely to succeed, but that you're almost certain to win if you’re prepared to use the continuo technique.

But remember too that the only thing you'll win is the space to say whatever it is you want to say and that such victories come at a price - namely that people will not only notice what you're doing but will also use such behaviour as a basis for drawing negative conclusions about you and the kind of person you are.

Sooner or later, politicians may actually wake up to this brutal fact of life and realise how little there is to be gained from talking over their interviewers and ignoring the questions put to them.

And as a footnote, on this evidence from Ms Cooper (AKA Mrs Ed Balls), one does have to wonder who wears the trousers in the Balls household?

RELATED POSTS

· Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it

· Gordon Brown’s interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg

· A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions

· A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question

· A Labour leader with no interest in spin!

· Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation

· Applause for Dimbleby’s questions on Question Time

Lord Mandelspin strikes again

The bloggers' verdict on this morning's interview of Peter Mandelson by Andrew Marr seems to be that the former ran rings around the latter (e.g. HERE).

But it's hardly surprising given that the only proper job Mandelson had before he went into politics was as a back room boy on LWT's Weekend World for Brian Walden, one of the finest interviewers ever seen on British television.

As for whether or not it's a good idea to allow spin doctors to migrate from behind the scenes to centre stage is arguably much more debatable than Gordon Brown seems to think. Or perhaps the P.M. is the only person in the country who has forgotten the troubles associated with his new deputy's various departures from Blair governments.

My problem, whenever I see Lord Mandelson on the screen, is that it always reminds me of Rory Bremner's brilliant impersonations of him, and I'd be very surprised if I'm the only viewer who can't get this image out of my head.


'Pre-delicate hitches' from Brown as he avoids answering a question about the Queen

I’ve already posted some observations about ‘pre-delicate hitches’ coming out of the mouths of Gordon Brown and Hillary Clinton.

The general point is that such ‘hitches’ (e.g. ums, ers, pauses, restarted words, etc.) tend to happen when a speaker is about to say something that he or she knows is likely to come across as ‘delicate’ to their listeners.

And they came thick and fast on Sunday morning as Mr Brown tried to deal with Andrew Marr’s challenging question about why the Queen hadn’t been invited to attend the D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Needless to say, he didn’t make any attempt to answer the question, but the number and frequency of 'hitches' suggest that he might actually have been finding his own evasiveness more uncomfortable than he usually does.

MARR: It’s a disgrace, is it not, that the Queen is not going to be representing us at D-Day at those commemoration services in France. How did that come about?

BROWN: I-I think-uh-eh you have to uh-ask-uh th-the palace to get their statements uh-u- on this.

Uh I have simply done what is my duty as a – as a Prime Minister – I’ve-uh accepted the u-personal invitation of Mr- Mr Sarkozy.

I think you know that Mr Harper, the Canadian prime minister, i- is going, and I think in these circumstances, this particular event uh-was-uh this one of the events was –was –was one that the president wanted to be for prime ministers and presidents, but if the Queen wanted to attend these- these- these events, or if any member of the Royal family wanted to attend these events, I would make that possible."


Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?

It used to be the case that the prime ministers only went on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme during general elections (when they appeared in one of the slots for party leaders), or when they were visiting some foreign country.

That was certainly the rule in Mrs Thatcher’s day, and I don’t remember hearing much of Blair on the programme (except during elections) either.

So I was very surprised, not long after he’d finally made it into number 10, to hear Gordon Brown being interviewed on Today. And he seems to have made a habit of it and was at it again this morning, less than 24 hours after doing a TV interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday.

What’s even more surprising is that Mr Brown (and/or his aides) seem to think that it’s a smart move to inflict more and more interviews with him on a mass audience.

If his interview performances had a proven track record in winning friends and influencing people, they might have a point.

But, as I’ve noted before (e.g. HERE), Mr Brown is not as smart an interviewee as he seems to think he is – unless, of course, I’m completely wrong in believing that there’s nothing like repetitive evasiveness and undisciplined verbosity when it comes to alienating listeners and viewers.

Disputing the meaning of applause

In an interview broadcast yesterday about a meeting with his constituents in Bracknell, Andrew MacKay made much of the fact that three quarters of the clapping was in favour of him and only a quarter was against him (see HERE).

Given that my research into political speeches started by using applause as a gross measure of approval, I always find it fascinating when its presence or absence becomes an issue in a media interview.

The MacKay sequence reminded me of a gem from my collection in which Peter Snow tackled Francis Pym for not applauding vigorously enough during a Tory Party Conference speech by the then Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe – in an effort to use it as evidence of a split on economic policy in the cabinet:

The liveliest Question Time ever?

Not long after yesterday's post suggesting that interviews with politicians would be much livelier if they were conducted in front of an audience and that audience reactions can liberate interviewers from being constrained by their professional obligation to be neutral, on came a stunningly lively edition of BBC's Question Time that rather proves the point.

All the questions were about MPs' expenses, and there were moments when David Dimbleby positively buzzed as he used audience interventions to press some of the panel harder than he would have been able to do had there been no audience.

I'm planning to post some edited highlights later today, so watch this space.

Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d once heard the late Robin Day complaining that the news interview had been ‘hijacked’ by politicians who had discovered that they could get away with ignoring questions and talk about whatever they felt like.

In the clip below, you can hear David Dimbleby making much the same point:



If interviewers as experienced as Day and Dimbleby can be so easily thwarted, there must be some quite deep-seated reason why it’s so easy for politicians to get away with it. And I think Dibmleby is on to it when he says that he doesn’t have a gun to point at them if they don’t answer a question.

The thing about pointing a gun at someone is that it is about as hostile and aggressive an action as you can think of. And the trouble is that the only conversational techniques available to us for trying to get someone to answer questions also come across as hostile and agressive.

HOSTILITY & NEUTRALITY
Consider, for example, the kind of thing that happens when a witness in court fails to answer a question during cross-examination.

Barristers can ruthlessly intervene and demand an answer:

Counsel: “Did you make any attempt to persuade the crowd to go back before you baton-charged them?”

Witness: “I don’t see how you could persuade them to go back.”

Counsel: “Never mind that – just answer the question first and then give your reason. Did you make any effort to persuade the crowd to go back before you baton-charged them?”

Witness: “No.”

Or they may refer the matter to the judge for a ruling, as in this sequence where the alleged victim in an American rape trial is being cross-examined:

Counsel: “Didn’t you tell the police that the defendant had been drinking?”

Witness: “I told them there was a cooler in the car and I never opened it.”

Counsel: “May the balance of the answer be stricken, your honour, and the answer is ‘no’”

Judge: “Yes - the answer is ‘No’.”


If the lawyers sound hostile or aggressive towards the witnesses, this is of course perfectly acceptable in an adversarial legal system in which barristers are paid to take sides.

But the insurmountable obstacle that our news interviewers are up against is that they are paid to be neutral, which means that appearing to take sides can get them into serious trouble - so that they are, in effect, barred from using the kinds of hostile conversational techniques used in other settings to force people to answer a question without also coming across as aggressive and, by implication, politically biased (unless, of course, they’re willing to court controversy and take the risk of losing their job).

A SOLUTION?
So here’s my formula for sparing us from having to watch the repetitive evasiveness of politicians in interviews: they would be conducted in front of an audience equipped with handsets that would enable them to press a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button, according to whether or not they felt a question had been adequately answered. These would be instantly added up and displayed on a scoreboard behind the interviewer and interviewee.

Whenever more than 50% of the audience felt that the politician had not answered the question, the interviewer would have the right and duty to press further on the same question – and to continue doing so until more than half the audience had rated the answer as adequate.

Such an approach would have three advantages over the present situation:

1. It would liberate interviewers from the risk of being accused of hostility or political bias, because they would merely be acting as representatives on behalf of a dissatisfied audience.

2. By making it more difficult for politicians to be so evasive, it would give viewers and listeners a clearer idea about where the interviewees really stand on a particular issue.

3. It would be much more entertaining television than the tedium currently inflicted on us (and might even have the added bonus of getting people more interested in politics than they are at present).

Did the media ignore Hannan because they think speeches are 'bad television'?

A knock-on effect of Daniel Hannan’s speech is that this blog has experienced a ten times increase in the number of hits since starting to post comments on it a couple of days ago.

New visitors are very welcome and, as many of you are presumably interested in political speeches and media coverage of them, you might be interested in some earlier postings on the subject. The easiest way to inspect the full menu and access them is from the relevant page on my main website HERE.

One thing I’ve been concerned about for years may help to explain why the mainstream British media were so late (and grudging) in picking up on the story – namely that there seems to be a tacit conspiracy or agreement between the British media and politicians that speeches don’t make good television.

As a result, sterile and evasive interviews between top interviewers and top politicians have replaced extracts from speeches as the main form of political communication. And, if they show any speeches at all, you're more likely to see the speaker in the background while the reporter (in the foreground, of course) tells us what the politician is saying.

If you’re interested in more on this, you might like to have a look at two earlier postings:

Mediated speeches: whom do we really want to hear?
Obama’s rhetoric renews UK media interest in the ‘lost art’ of oratory