Honorable mention for Henry Rollins, who had a very good show on IFC. He certainly put his own opinion in the interviews, but they were always entertaining, and typically better than I had seen his guests do with “real” journalists. Many of them expressed as much to him during their interviews.
He would’ve been better if they’d have given him more time IMO. Unfortunately he had to stick to the script for the most part but I don’t think it was his fault as he only had a couple minutes for the interview segment.
Most definitely…thanks! I’m going to his spoken word show in November.
I never get to listen to him. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, would you have a link to an example I could listen to?
I’m not going to go digging around for Howard Stern links from work but try to find his interview with Paul McCartney. It’s long and candid, and Howard tries pretty hard to get him to sign a prenup with Heather :smack:.
Thanks! Will do.
Another Australian Broadcasting Corporation person to go with mhendo’s Kerry O’Brien: Andrew Denton, both in Enough Rope and the occasional specials that he does.
Bill Moyers. Hope he’s around for a while longer.
I made an elected official cry yesterday. No foolin’. Vote me!
Part of the problem is that politicians won’t do an unscripted interview, even on a small scale.
I was very dissapointed when I went to see Obama speak when he was running for Senator and at a public forum we had to ask questions and only those approved by his campaign got to go to the mike and ask him a question.
Same thing for entertainment. Because Letterman and Leno (and now Kimmell) are competing they have to keep questions benign or celebrities will boycott them. With Internet and morning shows etc, celebrities can afford to only do shows which don’t require any effort.
Yeah, but have you ever actually been to an event that allows people to just go up and ask a question? Every single time, guaranteed, there will be some person who stands up, grabs the mike, and monologues for 5 minutes about their pointless, unrelated, and completely uninteresting bete noire. They then finish with “What do you think about that?” as if that makes their wankfest a question. I’ve been at events where the moderator says “nobody here wants to hear what the audience thinks, we want to know what this guy thinks, so if you ask a question, it had damned well better be a question” and within three question askers the pointlessness ensues.
That’s why they have people vetting questions. Even if you’re the most prepared and up-front and honest interviewee on the planet, you need somebody to keep the crazies from grabbing the mike. Because the thing is, once they get their hands on it they become fused to it, and tend to pitch an enormous fit when they get the brush off they so richly deserve, and then your event isn’t about you answering questions anymore, it’s about how some self-absorbed numbskull with a cause “spoke truth to power” about whatever space beams were getting picked up by their molars that day.
That’s a very good point and I agree with that.
But that’s my point, he did so very clumsily. He asked about the “Bush doctrine” and she wasn’t familiar with the term, and he acted rather condescendingly when he explained it. Analysts on both sides have said either that Charlie was wrong in his interpretation, or that there could be multiple interpretations, and it appeared that he was trying to trip her up on a catch phrase rather than something substantive. (I am not a fan of hers, BTW.) I just happen to think this was Charlie trying to artificially adopt an interviewing style that he did not do well.
Of course he didn’t tell me his agenda. But I’m free to make an analysis based on actually seeing the interview and having watched him for years. He didn’t come across as a hard-hitting journalist, he came across as wishing he were one.
There’s a pretty big excluded middle that you’re ignoring there, Tenebras.
On the one hand, we have KRSOradio’s complaints about the candidates vetting questions; on the other, we have your assertions about people who ask ranting or rambling or completely irrelevant questions.
But it seems to me that we could find a middle ground here, one in which the crazies and the soap-boxers are prevented from monopolizing the microphone, but in which people are also allowed to ask questions that are critical or challenging of the candidate’s positions.
You say that “they have people vetting questions” to avoid the ranters and ramblers, but the question is, who should be doing the vetting? In my opinion, it should not be the personal assistants or the handlers of the candidate. If a politician is in such a meeting, i have no problem with finding a third party to look at the questions and weed out the crazies. But this person should not be the politician’s political adviser, or personal assistant, or media relations person, or whatever.
As it stands, in most cases the people vetting the questions are people directly connected with the politician, and have a clear and understandable incentive to ensure that their candidate doesn’t get grilled too hard in public.
CookingWithGas, i’ll have to take your word regarding Gibson’s interview. Maybe i’ll go and find it on the web and have a look at it. Given the almost complete absence of tough political questions in American news and current affairs, i does not surprise me that a reporter who tries it might come off as ham-fisted and amateurish, purely from lack of experience.
That’s one thing i really like about the guy i mentioned earlier, Kerry O’Brien of ABC Australia. He’s been asking tough questions for years, and coming from him they never seem anything but natural and appropriate.
I agree that what you’re suggesting would be great, but the problem is that the people who put on the event also staff the event. So either the campaigns have a “neutral moderator” they drag all over the country with them, or they have to find such a neutral moderator in every town they visit. The first case has obvious problems and isn’t any different in practice, it seems to me, from the current system. The latter case just sounds like a logistical nightmare. You’re looking for a person you trust to screen the questions properly, one in any town you happen to visit, and you can’t choose anybody on your phone list because you know they’re already predisposed to like your guy. So you’re trying to find a person in town whose phone number you don’t have who is politically knowledgeable (so they know what questions actually make sense) and isn’t going to go on a power trip.
Or you could set up some kind of national organization of moderators. Unfortunately, both sides define “fair” as “doesn’t make my guy/gal look bad” and a good portion of the population thinks that Fox News has a liberal bias. Nobody is going to be happy with the questions.
I’ll match your Howard Stern & raise you a Don Imus.
I got hooked when he was on MSNBC, though after he got fired, I got hooked on Morning Joe & didn’t go back to Don when his new show started except for the first week & when MJ is not on.
Heh, yes. Google “Mr. Helicopter Pilot” for the greatest example of this.
And the other thing people will do these days is start ranting about the government being involved in or covering up aspects of 9/11.
DON’T TASE ME, BRO!
How about Harry Kreisler, from Berkeley’s Conversations with History?
Well Mr. Smartypants, esq. I’ll have you know that my molars, which have recently been replated in gold, have told me to vote for the candidate that understands the plight of the elderly who had to have their molars replated with gold and might now have to have them yanked out so they can convert the gold back to dollars to pay the mortgage so the Wall street bankers can live the high life in NEW YORK. So my question is:
“Which of the candidates is going to chew my food for me after I undergo a goldectamy so I don’t lose my house?”
ETA I am available for interviews by either side. 
I liked Tim Sebastian, formerly of BBC’s Hard Talk. Tough questions, well prepared, he let the guy answer and could take as much as he gave. He could interview people from opposite sides of a debate with the same passion (say Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley and and Uk government guy)
The new guy tries to be to too much of a star