Basic TV Reporting, 2nd Edition

Tricky Customers and ‘Spin Doctors’

Although the advantages might appear to be on the side of the professional interviewer operating on familiar ground there is a common belief among journalists that the initiative is passing to experienced interviewees. Many of them know how to exploit the medium. Many of them are trained by experienced broadcasters and there is no reason why they should not be entitled to know more about the way television and interviews operate. They are coached and drilled to deal with certain questions. Advice is offered on dress, posture and delivery. An aide to a politician once asked a well-known interviewer how his boss could do better in his television interviews. ‘Tell him to just be himself. Be natural,’ was the ...