Why Surprise The President?
Seems we have a kerfuffle among journalists and bloggers or whatever about the possibility that the Obama administration "planted" a question. You can read about it here. The details don't matter to this post, though. I'm more interested in the mechanics of how we should question the president or any journalistic subject. I've mentioned before that I'm a journalist, so this stuff is of particular interest to me.
Very often when you want to interview somebody their PR people will want to know what you want to ask about. They'll sometimes ask for a list of questions. When I was younger this really bothered me but not so much anymore. I know it sounds wrong, to submit questions in advance but I'll do it under the condition that I'm not expected to adhere to the list, that I can add or subtract questions at any time and that the conversation can go where the conversation goes with everything on the record unless we mutually agree that it's not.
But yes, I'll give an idea of what questions I want to ask. Why? Because there's little value in the interview as pop quiz. Most of the time if people don't know the answer to something they'll say they have to get back to me anyway, so it's no good to me to stump them and while you can catch people not knowing stuff that maybe you think they should know, that's not the stuff great stories are made of.
A presidential presser is different because it's not a one on one conversation and you only get to ask one question. So why a journalist would want to surprise the president is totally beyond me.
At issue here is that the Obama administration asked a reporter who had been gathering questions from Iranians to pick one and ask one. There's some accusation that Obama's people "planted" a question. Well, that's not what happened (they asked for a type of question -- one from Iranians, from a reporter they knew had been gathering them, not a specific question) but... what if they'd asked for a specific question? Would it have been a tragedy?
I generally end my interviews by asking "Is there something I should have asked you by now or that you wish I'd asked?" I often get the best answer to that. But I am inviting the subject to interview themselves. I am asking them to plant a question. Obviously, we don't want all the questions written by the White House but to have the White House suggest what it would like to discuss is not awful. For one thing, it's very revealing of the administration's priorities and for another thing, it happens anyway so it might as well happen in the open.
The point of an interview is to get information out. That's not always best done with surprise questions that function to make journalists look clever but often don't reveal useful or important insight.
That writers and bloggers are having the fight detailed in Swampland suggests that everyone's missing the point about what journalists, writers and cultural critics in every medium are trying to do -- we should be trying to bring clarity to a Byzantine system.
Very often when you want to interview somebody their PR people will want to know what you want to ask about. They'll sometimes ask for a list of questions. When I was younger this really bothered me but not so much anymore. I know it sounds wrong, to submit questions in advance but I'll do it under the condition that I'm not expected to adhere to the list, that I can add or subtract questions at any time and that the conversation can go where the conversation goes with everything on the record unless we mutually agree that it's not.
But yes, I'll give an idea of what questions I want to ask. Why? Because there's little value in the interview as pop quiz. Most of the time if people don't know the answer to something they'll say they have to get back to me anyway, so it's no good to me to stump them and while you can catch people not knowing stuff that maybe you think they should know, that's not the stuff great stories are made of.
A presidential presser is different because it's not a one on one conversation and you only get to ask one question. So why a journalist would want to surprise the president is totally beyond me.
At issue here is that the Obama administration asked a reporter who had been gathering questions from Iranians to pick one and ask one. There's some accusation that Obama's people "planted" a question. Well, that's not what happened (they asked for a type of question -- one from Iranians, from a reporter they knew had been gathering them, not a specific question) but... what if they'd asked for a specific question? Would it have been a tragedy?
I generally end my interviews by asking "Is there something I should have asked you by now or that you wish I'd asked?" I often get the best answer to that. But I am inviting the subject to interview themselves. I am asking them to plant a question. Obviously, we don't want all the questions written by the White House but to have the White House suggest what it would like to discuss is not awful. For one thing, it's very revealing of the administration's priorities and for another thing, it happens anyway so it might as well happen in the open.
The point of an interview is to get information out. That's not always best done with surprise questions that function to make journalists look clever but often don't reveal useful or important insight.
That writers and bloggers are having the fight detailed in Swampland suggests that everyone's missing the point about what journalists, writers and cultural critics in every medium are trying to do -- we should be trying to bring clarity to a Byzantine system.
