Shut up and let them answer!
Interviewers intent on scoring points would do better to listen and learn
The days when interviewers asked politicians easy questions in an obsequious manner are fortunately long gone. Until the 1960s, political journalists on radio and television were considered below the salt. Now they are far more highly paid than the ministers whom they interrogate, and are often better educated and more articulate.
This assumption of superiority is evident if you ever see members of the media aristocracy loftily holding court with deferential Cabinet ministers at a party. An illuminating anecdote was recently supplied by the very grand and knowledgeable Nick Robinson of Radio Four’s Today programme. He marvelled on air that when he was making a television documentary about the Prime Minister, she ‘didn’t have a single word in private with me off camera about the merits of her deal’. What? A political leader who didn’t want to ingratiate herself with a media titan! She must be mad.
As a journalist, though one who toils in the humbler realms of print, I suppose I am happy about this social revolution. I shouldn’t much like to live in a world in which politicians looked down on my kind. But I sometimes recoil when interviewers treat ministers as halfwitted recidivists. I also deprecate the growing habit of constantly interrupting politicians when they have barely embarked on answering a question.
It is rude and boorish, for one thing. And it doesn’t serve the listener (at the moment, it seems to happen more often on radio than television) if politicians aren’t permitted to complete an answer to what may have been an interesting question. I appreciate that they shouldn’t be encouraged to bang on for ever, or treat such appearances as mini party political broadcasts. A certain amount of interruption is desirable. But it becomes absurd when the person being cross- examined is barely allowed to get a word in edgeways.
For some reason, the Today programme is a hotbed of interrupters, though there are exceptions. Justin Webb is generally irreproachable. And rather surprisingly, the veteran presenter John Humphrys usually lets people talk. Perhaps time has mellowed him, but I’m not sure he was ever that bad. His speciality is the acute follow-up question that exposes a contradiction or inconsistency in the interviewee. Although he has occasional oldie senior moments, he’s still the best in the game.
Others are less good. The icy Mishal Husain is honing her skills of not letting a politician finish a sentence, while Martha Kearney, admirable as the presenter of The World at One, has become a serial interrupter in the cauldron of Today. But by far the worst offender is the aforementioned Nick Robinson.
His problem is that he knows he is cleverer and better informed than anyone he is likely to encounter. It must be a heavy burden. For listeners, though – or, at any rate, for this particular one – the level of irritation is high. In Robinson’s recent 14-minute interview with the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, I counted 15 interruptions or attempted interruptions. Actually, Gove made it quite difficult for him by speaking as though he was going for a world speed- talking record. At one point, having been unable to derail him, Robinson huffily invoked ‘the old-fashioned idea that I should ask a question’. Later, he grumbled that Gove was ‘endlessly talking, in trying to ensure there are no questions asked’. This wasn’t true. It was an unedifying tussle that shed little light.
Mercifully, there are some interviewers who are more interested in getting at the truth than trying to stop their subjects speaking. One is Evan Davis. Not long ago, he swapped BBC2’S
Newsnight for Radio Four’s PM. (By the way, Newsnight must fill the gap he has left. It has a lightweight feel at the moment. Might Radio 5’s feisty and politically savvy Emma Barnett be the answer?) Davis can be a bully, but on the whole he probes away forensically and good-humouredly. The laidback Paddy O’connell of Radio Four’s Broadcasting House is another exemplary, noncombative interviewer. In an admittedly very different role, Fiona Bruce, the new presenter of BBC1’S Question Time, is a calming presence in what had become a bear pit.
I suppose it is a question of character. Some presenters regard encounters with politicians as gladiatorial contests in which they must be seen to come out on top. If you can prevent a politician from answering a question by asking another one before they have finished, you are establishing your superiority. But you are unlikely to be serving the truth, or enlightening your audience, as well as you might.
To return to Robinson. I wonder whether my old colleague Sarah Sands, editor of Today, might have a word with him. She could call in Husain and Kearney at the same time. Sarah is a sensitive soul, and it is never easy to rein in rampant egos. But they would be better interviewers if only they listened.