News Interviews

In this article I examine the differences between broadcast political interviews in commercial
and public service broadcasters in Spain. The study focuses in particular on political interviews
broadcast on ‘morning show’ type programmes. The analysis distinguishes the characteristics
that make up the news interview turn-taking system in order to explore the degree to which
information and entertainment come together in political interviews broadcast on morning
shows. The results show, primarily, that political interviews shown on public service broadcasters’
morning shows adhere to the journalistic standards of neutralism and adversarialness. This is
precisely how they strive to make the politician publicly accountable. In political interviews
broadcast by commercial broadcasters, however, these rules are followed intermittently. The
aim of these interviews appears to be different: to penetrate politicians’ personal sphere with the
discernible purpose of entertaining. These differences reflect different interview styles which, in
turn, reveal different conceptions of journalism, politics and society. This investigation utilizes the
research tools developed in conversation analysis (CA).

MA Dissertation. School of English Language and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1999.

This dissertation analyzes a particular type of institutional interaction, the news interview, from the point of view of Conversation Analysis. Drawing on the analysis of news interviews by conversation analysts such as John Heritage, David Greatbatch and Steven Clayman, the dissertation examines the ways in which the news interview is organized by a distinctive turn-taking system that is associated with specific tasks and constraints. It analyzes the activities of both questioners, that is, interviewers, and answerers, that is, interviewees. As regards interviewers, the analysis focuses on the ways they organize their conduct so as to elicit talk that is produced for an overhearing audience and maintain a stance of formal neutrality. On the other hand, the analysis of the activities of interviewees deals with the ways interviewees attempt to control the topical development of the interview as well as the ways they furnish their disagreement with co-interviewees. Throughout the dissertation, it is stressed that the institutional character of news-interview interaction is collaboratively achieved by both interviewers and interviewees.

The objective of this study is to show how conversation analysis, a sociological
discipline, approaches the study of social institutions. Social institutions are conceived
as the crystallization of members’ communicative, interactional practices.
Two institutional domains—psychiatric interviews and broadcast news interviews
—and a specific interactional practice—‘formulations’—are examined in this study.
The results show that (1) in psychiatric interviews the psychiatrist uses formulations
to transform the patients’ avowals and establish a psychiatric problem. (2)
In broadcast news interviews, formulations might help the interviewer to clarify
or transform the statements of the interviewee, or challenge his assertions. The
comparison of formulations in two different institutional settings serves the purpose
of (1) demonstrating how communicative conduct is adapted in particular
settings in ways that invoke and configure distinct social institutions and (2) inspect
the knowledge, practices, logic, etc., mobilized by members of the epistemic
communities of psychiatry and journalism.

This study examines news interviews with scientific experts for the stories they occasion so as to present their research to media audiences. Interactions between scientists and hosts are examined in a corpus of interviews with scientific experts broadcasted live on Israeli television with the “small stories” approach that looks at storytelling as talk -in-interaction that is tailored to participants’ agendas. Popularization is typically studied as a form of translation or diffusion of scientific knowledge adapted from academic sources for popular consumption. Popularization studies have examined how academic knowledge is disseminated and contextualized in different formats and genres and the role of professional or amateur mediators in making science public. While previous studies have looked into popularization narratives as packaged for popular consumption, this article looks at their occasioning in relation to the agendas of researchers and journalists. Experts are found to structure many accounts as tellings of ongoing events or hypothetical scenarios and reference their research, practices, or the entities they study. These stories are shown to support a positive presentation of the findings communicated while distancing the experts from exaggerated or future-oriented claims that their hosts are understood to be drawing.

This investigation is a conversation-analytic study of Mexican Spanish news interviews. It focuses on the question-answer adjacency pair in which the interviewee (IE) is questioned, directly or indirectly, by the interviewer (IR) about the legality of their wealth in the light of corruption allegations. The questions examined display strategies to generate news: content questions elicit a contrast; statement formulated questions followed by a request for confirmation give the opportunity to accept or deny the allegations, opposite to statements which create a confrontational context. Non-type-conforming answers evade answering and type-conforming answers contain resistance elements. The IE minimises the allegations by repairing and providing a downgraded version of them or uses other resources to suggest that their activities are of common order hence not newsworthy. The IE displays evasion by addressing only certain elements of the question. The IE counters the allegations by casting doubt on the professionalism of the IR.

The present paper is framed within the methodological basis of Conversation Analysis, specifically, is the analysis of a news interview as institutional talk. Similar to Schegloff’s (1988/89) and Clayman and Heritage’s (1988/99) analysis, this study examines a news interview that brakes down. The aim of the study is to analyse and describe the development of the interview performed by the journalist Rubén Luengasto the ex-president of Mexico, Vicente Fox. That is, this wok analyses the actions within the talk that anticipate and follow the moment when the interview breaks down.
The paper is divided in two main parts; first we start with an overview of what Conversation Analysis is, its principles, methodology and theory; institutional talk as a restricted mundane conversation and news interviews as institutional talk. Then, we proceed to the analysis of the encounter; it is divided into five sections according to the development of the interview. We study how the participants carry out interview talk, the preliminaries to the confrontation, the attacks from one of the participants on the other, the closing of the news interview event, the actions that continue and our conclusions in general and particular.

"Abstract
In this paper we focus on the use of extended repetitions in political news interviews. Drawing on conversation analysis and discourse analysis we examine a corpus of examples where particular forms of repeated questions and/or answers appear within two main practices of political interviewing. We refer to these as the spectacular live interview and the non-live interview. Our analysis shows that the design of repetitions, which we describe as either “stripped” or “embedded”, differs significantly in these practices as they are oriented to differing political/media communication work. We argue that the use of repeated repetition highlights a locally organized powerful form of control of the interactional event with implications for the professional status of the parties involved."

Metaphors play an important role in communicating research to professional and lay audiences and are frequently used by journalists to present research in familiar terms. Previous studies of metaphors in science news have examined edited press reports and the use of metaphors by journalists. However, this study looks into the use of metaphors by scientists interviewed in live broadcasts. Using conversation analysis, interviews are explored for the insertion of metaphors by scientists or their uptake of metaphors that their hosts introduce. Metaphor use is shown to respond to the interactional context and participants' roles in communicating the topic reported.

Au carrefour du divertissement et de l’information, l’émission télévisuelle, Les Guignols de l’info, parodie le monde culturel, politique et médiatique français par le biais des personnalités qui le composent. Créée dans une optique humoristique, l’émission pointe certains dysfonctionnements émergeant dans l’espace public. Elle dénonce ainsi une instrumentalisation du discours par les politiques à l’exemple des stratégies d’évitement déployées par Nicolas Sarkozy dans l’entretien analysé. Plus largement, cette dénonciation tend à révéler la présence d’un nouveau type de populisme dans les pratiques de communication médiatique actuelles. L’émission participe de ce fait à un commentaire citoyen sur l’espace public.

This paper presents a discursive analysis of a political news interview as a site for the interactional organization of the public constitution of recent past. In a context of commemoration and finding out the truth about the past, the focus is on how the collective memory of socio-political events and political accountability is managed and what discursive practices representatives of nation-states draw upon to understand and construct ideological representations of socio-political events, namely the Romanian ‘revolution’ of 1989. The analysis shows how the possibility versus the actuality of knowing the truth about the events, (political) accountability and stake for actions are discussed, framed and given significance by constituting the ‘events’ of 1989 as ‘revolution’. The analysis further reveals how this ascribed categorial meaning is used by the interviewee as background for delegitimizing critical voices and sidestepping responsibility for past actions and knowing the truth. Social and community psychologists can learn more about how individuals and communities construct ideological versions of socio-political events by considering the interplay between questions of political accountability and arguments over the meaning of political categories, and engaging with the accounting practices in which the meaning of socio-political events is being negotiated by members of society Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this article I examine the differences between broadcast political interviews in commercial and public service broadcasters in Spain. The study focuses in particular on political interviews broadcast on ‘morning show’ type programmes. The analysis distinguishes the characteristics that make up the news interview turn-taking system in order to explore the degree to which information and entertainment come together in political interviews broadcast on morning shows. The results show, primarily, that political interviews shown on public service broadcasters’ morning shows adhere to the journalistic standards of neutralism and adversarialness. This is precisely how they strive to make the politician publicly accountable. In political interviews broadcast by commercial broadcasters, however, these rules are followed intermittently. The aim of these interviews appears to be different: to penetrate politicians’ personal sphere with the discernible purpose of entertaining. These differen...

This chapter discusses a specific type of interactional ritual in ethno-political interviews, one that hinders their conciliatory potential. The ritual is performed by two types of participants: Jewish-Israeli interviewers demanding the condemnation of transgressions committed by others, and the respective response by Arab-Israeli political representatives in the role of interviewees. Negotiation over condemnations is examined, as this speech act is considered crucial to setting up models for civic behavior. The chapter demonstrates how interviewers' efforts to exercise interactional and social power through pushing their interviewees to adopt a consensual stance are rejected by resorting to indirect answer designs. It concludes by discussing the extent to which "do you condemn" questions may be perceived as a legitimate professional journalistic practice.

Adskillige studier har undersøgt hvilke praksisser der karakteriserer nyhedsin-terviewinteraktion. Studierne har overvejende fokuseret på kritiske interviews med politikere og andre offentlige personer, og interviews med såkaldt almin-delige mennesker er kun i begraenset omfang blevet beskrevet. Denne artikel undersøger med en konversationsanalytisk metode hvad der kendetegner ny-hedsinterviews med børn i morgen-tv. Med afsaet i en diskussion af hvordan man som analytiker kan godtgøre om barneidentitet er relevant for deltagerne, argumenteres der for at barneidentitet ikke blot bliver gjort relevant når inter-viewpersonerne eksplicit tilskrives identiteter som " 12-årig " og " elevrådsfor-mand " ; barneidentitet forekommer også at vaere relevant uden at kategorien eksplicit naevnes når (1) spørgsmålsdesignet indikerer at interviewpersonen ikke forventes at kunne svare fyldestgørende, når (2) interviewpersonens svar viser sig at vaere utilstraekkeligt, og når (3) det behandles som påfaldende at interviewpersonerne tilskrives identiteter som " ekspert " og " landmand " der almindeligvis forbindes med et voksent domaene. Der argumenteres videre for at den potentielle modsaetning mellem identiteterne " barn " og " ekspert " kan vaere med til at forklare hvorfor journalister oplever børn som vanskelige at interviewe. Mikrosproglige analyser af hvordan barneidentitet gøres relevant i journalist-barn-interaktion, er vigtige fordi de kan vaere med til at kvalificere debatten om hvad der karakteriserer gode nyhedsinterviews med børn. INDLEDNING Nyhedsmedier interesserer sig ikke naevnevaerdigt for barnets perspek-tiv på nyheder eller for barnet som nyhedsemne: Børn er sjaeldne gae-ster i nyhedsinterviews, og historier om børn er underrepraesenterede i forhold til historier om andre aldersgrupper (Fullerton 2004: 511).

The news media form major sources of information to the general public in matters of science and health. And yet journalists and experts differ in what they consider as newsworthy and relevant. This article analyses in detail a current affair interview with a health expert reporting on a new research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Applying Bamberg’s three-level model for positioning analysis, the interview is searched for the stories that speakers introduce, attend to their embedding in the design of questions and answers and examine how their tellers are positioned therein as knowledgeable regarding ADHD. The narratives identified are shown to enable the adopting and shifting between various expert positions including that of the scientific researcher, the advice-giving expert and the more specific identity of the public health clinician. Shifts between these positions are shown to reflect the claims and counter-claims that the interviewee and interviewers are making and backing. These findings are discussed for their implications regarding the use of narratives in presenting science to media audiences.

This article examines the issue of evasion in mediatized political interviews in the context of right-wing populist politics. As public figures, politicians are held accountable not only for their actions but also for their prior statements. Such ‘metalingual accountability’ applies to public contexts as well as utterances made in more private situations. Based on a case-study analysis of leaked conversations with a local populist politician and a subsequent follow-up media interview, the article identifies several metapragmatic strategies that are available to interviewees aiming to evade and deny utterances originally made in the backstage region. The findings indicate that equivocation and evasiveness arise from the politicians’ need to mitigate the degree of face threat. This need is particularly acute where backstage honesty can lead to frontstage scandal, as in racist comments against certain ethnic groups, whereby the speaker’s status as a publically acceptable politician is in danger.

Article highlights
• Politicians’ backstage talk often leads to frontstage scandal
• When accounting for prior scandal talk, politicians protect their face by means of various strategies of evasiveness
• Politicians invoke different standards of accountability in different contexts
• In cases of leaked talk, politicians apply the ‘inadmissibility strategy’ by excluding backstage talk from public accountability
• Populist politicians avoid metalingual accountability by claiming victim status

Cet article, qui s’inscrit dans une perspective pragmatique de l’analyse du discours, étudie l’établissement d’une grille complexe de positionnements dynamiques et réciproques par les intervenants dans une interview menée par le journaliste israélien Ari Shavit avec l’ancien président du parlement israélien, Mr. Avaraham Burg. L’étude met en avant les négociations du pouvoir discursif et social entre les intervenants, mettant l’accent sur les effets que portent les démarches discursives, notamment les tours de parole, les formes des questions et des réponses et les termes d’adresse, sur les fluctuations entre asymétrie et réciprocité, conflit et support. L’analyse démontre que le positionnement qui résulte du modèle asymétrique de l’interview confère un pouvoir discursif à l’intervieweur et un pouvoir social à l’interviewé. Par conséquent, la préservation de ce modèle peut fournir un positionnement protecteur qui ne dépasse pas les rapports de force attendus au préalable, tandis que les transgressions donnent lieu à des fluctuations dynamiques dans les positionnements réciproques des intervenants.

ABSTRACT This article deals with Danish journalist Martin Krasnik's use of interview techniques and how these techniques differ from the interview format as we know it as well as the possible consequences of this particular interview style. On the basis of John Heritage and Stephen Clayman as well as Emanuel Schegloff's extensive studies on how news interviews are commonly expected to unfold, the article concludes that Krasnik's question designs explicate a tendency for the questions of journalists to become increasingly direct, assertive and hostile. The article is based on my master thesis on presuppositions in news interviews.