It’s worth bearing in mind journalists frequently ask blindingly obvious questions they already know the likely answer to because you can’t assume what the answer is.
I had a memorable story once where I was interviewing a local volunteer who’d been awarded a sort of C. Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement In The Field of Excellence for their volunteer work. So I said “You must be pretty pleased to have received this award, right?” and they said “No, actually, I don’t deserve it at all” - completely seriously. Turned out they thought the people helping them deserved the credit and felt their role was purely organisational and wanted the people who did the actual work acknowledged instead.
So yeah, 99% of the time, the person is going to say “I was very pleased to win/It was really unexpected/It shows all the hard work was worthwhile/It feels great/etc,” one per cent of the time they’ll say something different - and that one percent of the time is why the journo is asking, just in case.
Or to break the ice or just keep people talking. That said, I’ll be happy when sideline reporters stop asking the ‘you just won the championship, how do you feel?’ questions.
Not from a TV reporter but in writing:
Reporter, to a man who grew up in a time and place where every single high school available for male students was a seminar: “you attended seminar, yet you’re a socialist. Do you believe in God?”
Answer: “you’re not from around here, are you?” (there’s more to it, but yeah, a local guy would have found nothing unusual about the interviewee having attended - a local high school)
A TV reporter to one of their sports correspondents: “how’s the weather in the Czech Republic?”
Answer: “I don’t know, I’m in Poland!”
Dedicated to Marley23
A TV reporter: “your team’s victory means that you’ll be staying in Primera, how do you feel?”
Soccer player: “right now, tired”
I’d like to know what internet news source you use that contains no photos. Maybe you get news via braille? Trust me, I am not searching for these images.
Back in the 80’s, there was an accident in the Caldecott Tunnel in Berkeley; the tunnel goes under the Berkeley hills. Long story short, a tanker truck jackknifed just inside the west-end of the tunnel and began spilling fuel, which filled the tunnel with an air-fuel mix which eventually ignited and killed everybody in it. One of the guys who got out had parked his car because he couldn’t see through the smoke and left his mom to go find an emergency phone; he was outside the tunnel when it went boom.
Reporter: Can you think of anything you’d do differently?
Guy: pause Well, I don’t think I’d have left my mom behind to die.
The thing is, that’s actually the sort of response the reporter wants. They’ve probably already mentally written the story with something like “Striker McGoalkicker said the team were in high spirits after their championship win.
“Full credit to the lads, they gave it 110% on the field and pushed the ball around with determiniation and resilience. It was a game of two halves and at the end of the day, football was the winner,” he said…” in it and would probably like something more, well, interesting to work with.
So, to get something like “Right now, tired” as a response to “how do you feel about winning?” is actually helpful. It gives the journo an opening to go with questions like “So it sounds like a tough, hard-fought game; what was the most challening thing to contend with on the pitch?”
Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet?
You know the boys in the newsroom got a running bet
Get the widow on the set! We need dirty laundry
Dirty Laundry by Don Henley
This reminds me of one of my favorite sports quotes. A reporter asked Bills coach Marv Levy if an upcoming game was a “must-win”. Levy answered “This is not a must-win. World War II was a must-win.”
In your initial post on this subject you were talking about interviews. You also mentioned photos, but that wasn’t the key point of your post. Further, all you need to do is see a headline somewhere saying “Tornado kills heaps in OK” and you know any story associated is going to be intrusive sensationalist dribble. Just don’t click further. You don’t need to know more.
Is there more context here that I’m not getting? I don’t see the issue with asking Bill Nye why there isn’t volcanic activity on the Moon like on Earth. Bill Nye made career out of explaining science stuff. It’s kind of his thing.
I dunno - while they’re obviously happy, there’s also a whole other range of answers that I can quite easily imagine to such a question
a) Lucky (as in, something broke their way)
b) Relieved (that some sort of gamble paid off)
c) Looking forward to retirement now that I’ve achieved my goal
d) Un-deserving (perhaps the better person didn’t win, and they know it)
So while we can laugh at the “stupid” question, as Martini has pointed out, the answer is not always that obvious
Although you have way more experience (and skill) than me, I’ve also used this technique - as in, asking the question with the obvious answer, as a lead in to a second, less obvious question which will build on the first answer.
Of course, there’s also the favourite “expository” questions that the reporter might ask to give the viewer some piece of information - like “first touchdown”.
Then there’s also questions where you’re asking the obvious to get an “interesting” response (for example, I could imagine asking Grant Fox how he felt after his first and only try in a test match)
Because the Moon has most certainly cooled off? Here’s the video - it’s worse than I remember. The guy tries to get Nye to explain why climate change on the moon happened when there’s no fossil fuel up there, so how does that explain global warming on Earth.
On one hand, I’d be very surprised if Wolf Blitzer is a deeply religious man. So, why did he keep asking questions phrased in such a way as to elicit a religious response? My guess is (and, obviously, it’s only a guess), he figured “I’m in the Bible Belt, and everybody I talk to is going to give a ‘Praise Jesus’ spiel, so I’ll just anticipate them and set that up.”
In reality, he had no business doing that. He should just have asked tornado survivors for their reactions, thoughts or anecdotes and then let THEM say what they wanted to say. No doubt some (maybe many) tornado survivors would have thanked the Lord, but it wasn’t any reporter’s place to put words in their mouths.
Incidentally, it looked to me as if the Oklahoma ahteist wasn’t particularly eager to refute Blitzer- it’s just that Blitzer wouldn’t let the God angle go!"
Right after Super Bowl 6, Tom Brookshier asked Dallas Cowboys running back Duane Thomas (who’d run for something like 120 yards against the Dolphins), “Are you really that fast?”
Thomas looked at him blankly and replied, “Evidently.”
