This is a general question but as I type CNN’s John Roberts on This Week at War is interviewing three main people. Barbra Starr, Christianne Armanpour , both CNN correspondents, and also a New York Times correspondent John Burns.
I can see how Armanpour and Starr might just be assigned but Burns doesn’t work for CNN.Or does he?
Also several experts like University professors are constantly being interviewed. Does CNN just pay a flat rate to have these folks answer questions?
Hows that all work?
Is it the same for all networks?
Dan Rather while he was still anchoring for CBS would sometimes be seen answering questions from a CNN anchor. Hows that work?
There might be formal agreements between different companies - in your case CNN and the New York Times - about borrowing the other party’s experts. That way, both sides can benefit from the partner’s expertise and contacts without having to set up their own network of experts for each and every area. Besides formal agreements, it could also be just courtesy - CNN asks New York Times for interviewing one of their correspondents, and New York Times agrees, knowing that they could be in need of a CNN guy soon.
Regarding university experts, my guess is that they do the occasional short interview for free. After all, they benefit from it as well - they get media attention and acquire a reputation among the general public. If not for themselves, then for some institution or think tank they’re working for. Some university experts might also have permanent contracts with the media, so they are steadily available for interviews at call, so to speak.
It’s also worth noting that The New York Times and CNN don’t compete with eachother (NYT is a newspaper, CNN a cable news televeision network), so that probably makes it much easier for them to decide to work together or pool their resources.
Another one would be MSNBC-Newsweek-The Washington Post. MSNBC is part of NBC and thus owned by GE (with a small part-ownership by Microsoft), while Newsweek and The Washington Post are both owned by The Washington Post Company. So they get all the resources of NBC’s news division, the regular contributors and editors of Newsweek, and the same for The Washington Post.