Yeech

On the dividing line between “funny ha ha” and “funny strange”, radio sometimes dangles toes on both sides.

This morning, on NPR’s “Here and Now”, host Jeremy Hobson was talking to reporter Steve Chiotakis of KCRW in Los Angeles about a recent escape of three inmates from the Orange County Men’s Central Jail near Santa Ana, California.  The three pulled off a daring escape, “Shawshank Redemption” style, and now may possibly be harbored by members of the nearby Vietnamese community.

Anyway, in the course of describing the break, Mr. Hobson says something like, “And these men have committed crimes that we probably wouldn’t want to describe on the radio” in that manner of radio hosts where they make a statement into a question by hanging a big empty space on the end of it.

And Mr. Chiotakis, taking his cue, begins to describe the crimes the men committed.

This is one of the many things about reporting and journalism that I think listeners can sometimes find annoying.  Don’t be cagey or cutesy or self-impressively clever about how you skirt lines you draw, please.

Say or don’t say, but don’t be “yeech” about it.

Media Questions About Charlie Hebdo Not Naval Gazing This Time

Media is a human institution, just like every other institution on this planet.  It is not perfect.  The media has been accused of everything from under focusing on the right thing to over focusing on the inane thing.  But sometimes, it gets the hard look at itself right.

NPR’s Here and Now had a discussion with Eric Wimple, Media Columnist for the Washington Post on whether there is a level of hypocrisy amongst the media regarding the reprinting of debatable political cartoons by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.  Two and possibly three terrorists involved in the killings of Charlie Hebdo staff and French police were killed in and outside of Paris by French police.  The hashtag “#Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) has popped up as a sign of solidarity with the right to free speech as expressed in their political cartoons.

But there has been a counter hash tag, “#Je ne suis pas Charlie Hebdo” (I am not Charlie Hebdo) as a way of saying although the killings were unacceptable, some of the cartoons the magazine published were purposely incendiary and equally unacceptable to some.

This has landed some media smack in the middle of the question of how much support they will give Charlie Hebdo.  It should be noted that the publication itself has already said they will meet their next printing deadline on time and publish as usual.  But the New York Times and Slate are revealed to be on opposite sides of that intention of support.

Here and Now reported that the New York Times will not re-publish any of Charlie Hebdo’s more controversial cartoons, esp. those that depict the prophet Mohammed.  Slate, by contrast, will.  And the question for journalists is, where is the line separating the brotherhood of the pen from what their audience (including advertisers) will bear?

Charlie Hebdo does not need other publications to carry their water.  They have hoisted their own load onto their own shoulders, terrorists be damned.  The ink still pulses within them and that makes anyone who truly is a “journalist” proud.  But journalists don’t make the business decisions where stockholders and cultures with fickle morals compasses are concerned.

But at least this time, the conversations within the Fourth and Fifth Estates are actually rocking the houses.

When Will They Ever Learn?

Yesterday morning, Jeremy Hobson of the NPR Program Here and Now was interviewing Cardiff Garcia of the Financial Times.  The conversation was about drug company Pfizer trying to again acquire drug company AstraZeneca.

At the end of the interview, no doubt because Mr. Hobson was running out of time, he asked Mr. Garcia for a one word answer as to whether recent mergers in the drug industry represented a healthy or unhealthy environment for the companies.

Mr. Garcia gave Mr. Hobson exactly 78 words.

By telling an interviewee to answer a question in a single word, phrase or sentence, professional interviewers like to think they have total control over interviews and interviewees.  But professional interviewees know how to play this game too.  And often, they will talk just as long as they want until they themselves hear the cue music loud in their headphones, indicating that the host is experiencing a panic attack, trying to end the interview on time.

This tactic represents a kind of insincerity in the interviewing profession.  Maybe interviewers assume they won’t get a one word answer.  Maybe it’s a”wink wink, nod nod” kind of thing between the two.  When I say one word, it means you need to wrap it up.  We all know issues can be complicated and sometimes to protect their own credibility, a guest can’t or won’t try to boil down a request to answer an impossibly complex question into a one word answer.

But sometimes, when interviewers say, “one word”, interviewees do respond with “one word”.  So, there is a consistency problem that might not completely set with some listeners.  Interviewers probably sense somewhere that it is, to some extent, unfair to expect an nterviewee to boil something down to a single word.  If an interviewee can do it, then they should.  If an interviewer is asking them for a one word answer, it’s because they are out of time but want to put a bow on the point of the conversation.  Or maybe it’s because they know the interviewee can be long winded and they don’t want to find themselves out of time.  Besides, it certainly makes it more likely that an interviewee will be invited on other programs if they can show that they can summarize in a crunch.

But the interviewer can’t cram every second of the interview with questions and then leave the interviewee no time to answer the final question “lightning round” style.

It reminds me of a sign I used to see inside a lot of office cubes; “A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”.  That applies to interviewing too. Each side should to be aware of and sensitive to the needs and limitations of the other.

It’s About the Story, not the Calendar

I just heard Robin Young of the PRI program Here and Now interview Ann and Nancy Wilson of the band, Heart.  She interviewed them in October 2012 and replayed the interview because of their recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  This again, speaks to the necessity of a good interviewer knowing how to conduct a good interview.  Ms. Young was able to remind listeners of why Heart made it into the Hall of Fame with a six-month old interview because her questions were essentially timeless.

She asked Ann and Nancy about their relationship as sisters and got them to talk about the strong roots of their military family.  She asked them about the timeless notoriousness of the record industry and they talked about their hit, “Barracuda.”  And she asked them about trials outside of the band that orbited the band, like their fiasco with Annie Lebowitz, and about other work, like decades of film scoring.

That’s why a good interview has no expiration date, because it’s not about events as much as it’s about people.  And even if the people change between when you last talked to them and when you next talk to them, they’ll probably be glad to update you on the changes, which only makes the conversation more true to what it means to be human, which is why people listen to interviews anyway.

Good job, Ms. Young.