In The Wizard of Oz, the Great and Mighty Wizard is exposed as a fraud when Dorothy and Toto discover him hiding behind a curtain frantically manipulating levers and pulleys. That moment reminds me of making television. What viewers see on the screen is only a fraction of what’s really happening behind the scenes.
A few times, I’ve considered using this blog as a way of being more transparent about my own TV reporting. A recent Lateline interview with the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given me a good place to start: the compromises involved with celebrity interviewing.
Major stars usually only grant interviews when they have something to spruik, such as a new book or project. But often what they want to sell has little to do with what the interviewer would really like to ask about. Both sides have to make compromises, although on air, it’s meant to look like a spontaneous conversation that’s engaging both parties.
Of course, it doesn’t always work out like that. One of the best examples of things going wrong is a testy encounter between Channel Nine’s Peter Overton and movie star Tom Cruise in 2005. Cruise wanted to promote his film ‘War of the Worlds’. Overton, in addition to the film, tried to discuss scientology and Cruise’s relationship with Nicole Kidman. Cruise blew up and told Overton to ‘put his manners back in’.
Overton was absolutely justified in asking those questions. Any Sixty Minutes viewer would have wanted those subjects canvassed. And I believe that any fair-minded person would conclude that Overton broached those subjects in a reasonable manner. The surprising thing was the way Cruise reacted, as if he could not believe Overton’s audacity. It was stunning that Cruise imagined he would receive a fifteen minute free plug for his film without having to face a single question about some of the topics the public finds most intriguing about him.
Wrangling over the subjects for discussion is something I also faced in my Blair interview. The contrast between Blair and Cruise though is a basic lesson for all interviewees. Blair – like the seasoned media performer he is - used charm and good humour rather than anger and irritation to deflect the questions he preferred to avoid.
Lateline had been trying to secure an interview with Tony Blair for years and he finally agreed because he wanted to talk about his Tony Blair Faith Foundation beginning a partnership with the University of Western Australia. His minders decreed we would have ten minutes.
While Mr Blair wanted to discuss his project, I preferred to discuss the Middle East peace process, British politics and the recent election, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Europe’s financial woes, the legacy of the Blair government, his upcoming memoirs and his relationship with George W. Bush.
Straight away, you see my problems: I wouldn’t be able to get to everything I wanted in ten minutes and amidst competing priorities, I wasn’t that interested in Mr Blair’s preferred topic. It’s not that his Faith Foundation isn’t engaged in interesting work or that it’s not valuable. In a different context, say in a format such as Conversations on ABC Radio, I’d love to explore the subject. But on a current affairs program such as Lateline, I would look ridiculous not to focus on the major news issues at hand.
So what to do? If I didn’t agree to ask about the Faith Foundation, Blair wouldn’t do the interview. But if I made the interview solely about that, I’d damage my own credibility.
What happened is what usually happens in these cases. The journalist pays lip service to the agreed topic and moves on as quickly as possible. The talent then tries to steer the conversation back to the original subject. Given the limited time allocated, the journalist will also usually stretch the friendship and keep asking questions after the clock winds down.
That is exactly what I did with Tony Blair. I asked one question about the Faith Foundation and used the second question to segue into the Middle East. About halfway through the interview, when I tried to draw Mr Blair on British politics, he attempted to calmly shift things back where he wanted. I pushed him several times to answer and he kept politely ducking.
Eventually, I had no option but to move onto a new topic. At the end, when I asked him one final question about the Faith Foundation, Mr Blair showed his media skill by talking for almost two minutes straight, no doubt realising that the more time he used up, the less time I would have to push him back onto my preferred ground.
These type of interviews aren’t ideal for either party. In order to secure such a big name for the program, I had to compromise to secure only about three quarters of the interview I actually wanted. Tony Blair also had to compromise to get about four minutes out of fourteen for his message. But for both of us, and in celebrity interviews generally, the calculation is made on both sides that something is better than nothing.
Here are this fortnight’s ten interesting things to read, watch or listen to:
1. Here’s Tony Blair’s appearance on Lateline.
2. Without doubt, the best piece of writing I’ve ever read about celebrities and journalists is a 2005 Walkley Award-winning feature by Jack Marx entitled ‘I was Russell Crowe’s Stooge’. It’s a sensational piece of work.
3. For you World Cup fans, The Simpsons demonstrates why Americans don’t get the big deal about soccer.
4. In The Guardian, Some of the world’s best authors ask themselves the questions that journalists never do.
5. In The New York Times, William Kristol writes about two men both named Wes Moore and the very different lives they’re living.
6. The recently-announced divorce between Al and Tipper Gore generated a lot of stunned disbelief that the pair was separating after forty years of marriage. This piece in Salon argues that late divorce isn’t always tragic.
7. Relations between Israel and the United States have been tense during the Obama administration, particularly after last month’s Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. This piece by Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies has captured attention in the US. It argues that some in Washington think that Israel is acting as a strategic liability, rather than an asset.
8. What do Broadway actors do backstage between scenes? (Thanks @nadine_lee on twitter)
9. Martin Gardner recently died after a fascinating and diverse career, including famously annotating Alice in Wonderland to explain all of Lewis Carroll’s riddles, as this obituary in The Washington Post explains.
10. The London Mayor, Boris Johnson, reflects in The Spectator on who holds the power in the relationship between politicians and journalists and who should.
Leigh Sales is the anchor of Lateline on ABC1. You can follow her on twitter @leighsales.
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