I found this post on James Fallows' blog today (via Coates) about Terry Gross' recent interview with Bill Ayers.
At the most obvious level, Terry Gross succeeds in this interview simply by avoiding the two most common, and laziest, styles of today's broadcast interviewers: surplus aggressiveness, long ago made familiar by Mike Wallace and now lampooned by Stephen Colbert; and lapdogism, most recently on display in Greta Van Susteren's sessions with Sarah Palin and the default mode of Larry King Live.
[...]
What she does instead, and what she shows brilliantly in this interview, is: she listens, and she thinks.
[...]
If you have this standard in mind -- is the interviewer really listening? and thinking? -- you will be shocked to see how rarely broadcast and on-stage figures do very much of either. But listen to this session by Gross to see how the thing should be done.
Sadly, I was unable to listen to the
ReplyDeleteTerry Gross interview at the link: it refused to play the audio. Are you able to access it alright?
S from F-n-S
Hey S, the audio does play for me. Here's the link - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97112600
ReplyDeleteHope it works!
For some reason, the player pops up, but then doesn't play the interview. :(
ReplyDeleteMaybe I have too many protections set up on my browser now.