The truth in interviewing

This week we've examined the ethics of interviewing. That's right another subject that's loaded full or moral questions.

As part of demonstration of the difficulties we face with interviewing Alex played us an interview with the lead singer of 3 foot ninja who name is Jordan and had difficulty putting across some sound byte suitable responses to his questions. He came off as uninformed and mumbled and stumbled throughout the interview.

Alex then played us the edited shorter version of the interview which then made Jordan sound like he just had a poor connection.

Three points to consider when editing an interview are:
1. Is the interview going to embarrass anyone ?- Has the interviewee slipped and maybe they deserve some kind of gate keeping to avoid unnecessary ridicule. An example of when this could have been avoided but because it was live was David Blaine interview with Eamon Holmes on GMTV after one of his recent stunts. He came off as dazed and confused and thus Holmes further probing made his come of as very dim witted.
2. A total P/R failure ? Does the interview come off as a complete P/R disaster and could be damaging to them or the station ?  An example of this could be Lady GaGa's interview with Johnathan Ross in which she was unclear and difficult when she asked about the nature of her lyrics.
3. Right person ? Is the interviewee even the right person to be interviewing, Jordan displayed that maybe he wasn't the most vital part of the band as he was unable to answer a lot of questions fully referring to another band member who seems to hold all the answers.

However sometimes these points have to over ridden in the public interest. An example could be the Richard Nixon and David Frosts interview which effectively destroyed the public image of Richard Nixon and exposed his illicit activities while he was President. Breaking it down with the three point system:
1. The interview was highly embarrassing for Nixon who arranged the interview and didn't expect such a probing nature from Frost. However this was about exposing his corrupt nature and failures in office.
2. Nixon had planned for this to be a P/R event which would sway public opinion in favour but Frost decided to stick to his ethical code and fairly conduct the interview.
3. Nixon was the right person to interview in a sense, however one of his subordinates may have more details on how the Watergate scandal was implemented. Though in a sense he was the architect of the scandal however secondary interviews could have cemented his point.

To conclude the nature of editing is influenced by the soft or hard news status of the interview. Maybe it doesn't matter that Jordans interview was cut down to remove some of the more dazed answers but it still put across the point he's possibly not the best interviewee. On the case of Nixon editing it was less of a finer tool helps to put across the sheer nature of the interviewee and expose in a sense the completely uncensored truth.

Again maybe the P/R nature of stations coming in again, the desire not to incur the wrath of a popular interviewee could reduce ratings of they can never get that person again due to poor interview. The fact is very few interviews are displayed to portray someone in a negative spotlight, people like Chirs Brown however displays very poor media training and allows his anger to dictate his behaviour adding to his already poor image.