Posts Tagged ‘ISIS’
Say What?
I just heard an interview where the interviewer was talking with someone who left Syria just before the group ISIS (or Da’ish) began their campaign of retributive kidnappings and murders. The interviewer asked why they stopped their humanitarian efforts of distributing blankets. It was a confusing question since the interview centered around the worsening conditions for aid workers in recent years as well as the just confirmed death of aide worker Kayle Jean Mueller of Prescott, Arizona. To a listener, it would make perfect sense why the worker stopped providing that aid and the question would’ve probably seemed unnecessary.
But in the follow up question, the interviewer asked the former aid worker if they were naïve for going to Syria in the first place. Again, it was a strange question since, as the worker pointed out much earlier in the interview, conditions were very different at the beginning of the conflict and distributing the aid was both easier and more accepted by local authorities.
Perhaps, as is the practice of many interviewers, this is an example of covering all of the bases by playing “devils advocate”. But to me, it’s less that than of the interviewer not listening to the answers or thinking through the history of a subject when preparing for the conversation. These kind of questions are maddening because poor preparation or inattention by the interviewer can confuse a good topic and a cogent interviewee and leave the listener with no clear takeaway.
I’ve talked about this before; questions that dilute or miss the point. It happens. I just wish it happened a little less often.
Rubber Hits the Road over Charlie Hebdo
As Charlie Hebdo prepares to print 3-million copies of its monthly magazine that is normally only a 60,000 print run, the news program BBCNewsHour reports that BBC management did not make themselves available to speak about the question of whether it would display an image of the latest Charlie Hebdo cover; a cartoon characterature of the prophet Mohammed holding up a sign that says, “I am Charlie” with a tear in his eye and a caption below saying “All is Forgiven.”
BBCNewsHour subsequently said the image is being displayed, but far down and deep within the BBC’s website. But since this is a blog about interviewing, I think it is very interesting that management of one of the most respected news organizations on the planet didn’t want to talk about a breaking news and key journalistic issue with one of their own journalists.
This, as I mentioned in my previous post about this, is where the rubber for journalists hits the road. All of the support for Charlie Hebdo is crashing head-on into fears by management and audiences alike, especially in European countries where Muslim populations are high, of how much will supporting the ethics of free speech incite?
I guess when you don’t share a border with a country who was a former colony and for whom now, emigration is a historical reality, you tend to be a little braver. And when you’re separated from some of those same countries that may be harboring terrorists by a couple of oceans, maybe you’re a little braver still.
In this country, if an indigenous ethnic minority, affiliated with some similar organization, employed radical, random and guerilla style insurgent tactics of terrorists with the frequency that they do overseas, we would likely be more sympathetic to what Europe is going through. And some American pundits might not sound so much like Ironman.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t, but there might not be so many of them.