Television has forgotten the art of the interview
It is a commonplace that politicians lie when interviewed. This was famously expressed in the question Jeremy Paxman allegedly asked himself, “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” His phrase is the title of a new book by Rob Burley, a distinguished former BBC producer. The book’s subtitle is Searching for the truth on political TV.
I recommend the book. It is a well-informed and funny account of the subject, starting with Margaret Thatcher’s ill-fated interview with the usually admiring Brian Walden after Nigel Lawson’s resignation as chancellor in 1989, and ending with Boris/truss/rishi.
Burley is a true believer in the “long-form” interview, which politicians now eschew. He thinks it is the perfect way to help the public understand what our politicians are up to. He wants it back.
I like such interviews too. In my youth, I particularly enjoyed those conducted by Robin Day, always in his bow tie – challenging, yet not unfriendly or self-righteous; humorous, almost histrionic, yet also at ease with a serious subject such as nuclear missile systems.
After becoming a journalist myself, I came to know Day, and was fond of him. Like so many people “on stage” (actors, broadcasters and politicians have quite similar temperaments), he was egotistical, lonely and disappointed, yet also touching.
Day understood that being an interviewer is a lesser role than being a senior elected politician. He was probably more capable and certainly more famous than most of those he interviewed, but he recognised that he had lesser responsibilities. He had not been chosen by the ballot box. He did not make decisions. He was not answerable to the public.
Fearless in interrogation, Day nevertheless knew his place. He is the only famous TV journalist I have known, other than political editors for whom it is part of the job, who would often sit in the gallery of the House of Commons just to observe. The result of the choice of the people, might be (in his own famous phrase) “a here today, gone tomorrow politician”, yet he deferred to that choice.
Brian Walden, whom I also knew, thought similarly. He genuinely wanted viewers to learn how his interviewee thought and how she (Walden was at his best with Mrs Thatcher) ticked. He would not shy away from challenging her, but his purpose was to elicit, not to defeat.
In a parliamentary democracy, this approach is constitutionally correct. No important political interviewer believes this today. Burley does not really recognise this problem and so he does not investigate its consequences.
Look at a television interview from a politician’s perspective – particularly that of a serving minister with a policy and colleagues to protect. If he or she knows, before the interview even begins, that the interviewer has no respect for the position they hold, why bother to go on air?
The answer to the question “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” is contained in the question itself. If the interviewer sees his victim as a “lying bastard” what will it avail the interviewee if he tells the truth? He is condemned already.
If you believe you are interviewing a lying bastard, it follows that your main purpose is to “get” that bastard. Interviewers are scored by how well they achieve this. Burley writes thus about when Beth Rigby asked Boris Johnson on air whether it had been appropriate to make whoopee in 10 Downing Street on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral: “Johnson looks broken. Rigby is in complete control. It’s a brilliant interview.”
I don’t seek to defend Johnson here. I simply suggest that if the definition of interview success is a prime minister “broken” and the interviewer “in complete control” this may not be an unmixed blessing for our polity.
Once the exaltation of the “gotcha” moment takes hold, then the television interviewer’s career requires more of the same. This inflates the ego of the journalist, reduces public understanding of politics and makes politicians avoid the programme.
Interviewers trade on the expectation, usual in normal conversation, that people should answer the question they are asked. Politicians therefore look shifty if they don’t. But why should they answer a question designed to trap or misrepresent them? If they agree to be interviewed, they are entitled to try to turn the moment to their advantage. It is not their democratic duty to give interviewers another scalp.
The word “media” describes the means by which viewer and subject communicate. Interviews about gardening, the natural world, science, medicine, sport etc understand this. Political interviews don’t: they are up themselves. Therefore politicians avoid the long-form interview. They have other, less obstructed ways of reaching voters.
That is why the BBC’S Newsnight lost almost all importance and programmes such as Walden or the long interviews of the Day-era BBC Panorama have vanished.
Burley is right that politicians often lie. They should not be protected when they do so. But he is wrong to assume that we in the media always seek the truth.
We have our own biases, rivalries and career paths. Occasionally, we lie outrageously. When we do so, we are much likelier than elected politicians to get away with it. Look at how the BBC hid the truth about Martin Bashir’s interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, for a quarter of a century. If there are no long-form interviews now, it is because television has killed the thing it loved.