A television interviewer looks at his craft

Press, 8 July 1976, Page 20

A television interviewer looks at his craft

Alan Grant, a Christchurch lawyer and a television critic for “The Press,’’ reviews “Day by Day: A Dose of my own Hemlock," by an English television interviewer. Robin Day.

Television is not just a purveyor of news, but is also the source or cause of news. “The Press,” like other newspapers, devotes a page or more to reviews of and information about television. News about television appears frequently in the national and international news pages. When the Prime Minister has a row with an interviewer, or refuses to appear on a programme which employs a television journalist he dislikes, the matter is treated as a major story. So the television journalist, like the medium he serves, often finds himself in a double role; putting the news before the public and, at the same time, finding himself the subject of news. Television journalism is thus a novel, peculiar and difficult craft. One man who has practised it successfully for more than 20 years is Robin Day. His book, one of the few examinations of television journalism to be written by a television journalist, is therefore important; It is also unsatisfactory in some respects; highly satisfactory and indeed excellent in others. Day, after a very brief career as a barrister, started as a newscaster with Independent Television News in 1955. He and Chris Chataway were T.T.N.’s first newscasters. The last part of “Day by Day” is simply a cannibalised reprint of an account by Day of his career with 1.T.N., published in 1961 under the title, “Television: a Personal Report.” It is, of course, interesting, and no doubt when it was first published it was very interesting. But it takes Day’s career no further forward than 1959, and the reflections it contains as to the nature of television in general and television journalism in particular are more maturely and cogently expressed in the first part of the book. Day devotes only two pages and a half to the 15 years of his career which have passed since the publication of “Television: a Personal Report.” The second and third parts of the book consist respectively of a reprinted article

which first appeared in “Encounter" in 1970, entitled “Troubled Reflections of a TV Journalist," and a reprinted pamphlet, “The Case for Televising Parliament," which first appeared in 1963. Here again, however, what Day has to say in “Troubled Reflections of a TV Journalist” he says better and at more length in the first part of his book. “The Case for Televising Parliament” is not perhaps as interesting a case for a New Zealand reader as it would be for an English one, since our Parliament has been broadcast, though not televised, for years, without either the millenium arriving or the institution collapsing. However, Day writes and argues his case well, and the question of whether Parliament should be televised is one with which our politicians and television authorities will have to grapple sooner or later. When they do they should find Day’s article of considerable value in clarifying their thoughts. Day calls the first part of bis book “A Dose of my Own Hemlock,” and it takes the form of an interview by Day with himself. The reference to hemlock arises from his choice of what he calls “The Socratic method . . . the conducting of argument and imparting of information by means of question and answer ... the object is a dialogue by self-exam-ination.” The technique works very well indeed, and this part of the book is very good. It express s everything that there is to be said on the subject and says it very well. For example in a passage which is, in fact, quoted on the dust jacket Day expresses the interviewer’s duty thus: “It is one thing to sit down in your office with notebook and compose a strongly-worded question

which goes to the heart of an extremely important issue. It is quite another thing to put that question in those same words when you are face to face with the person being interviewed, not least if he happens to be the Prime Minister sitting in Number 10 Downing Street. “In the presence of a statesman who bears the enormous burden of governing the country a question which previously seemed fair and relevant may suddenly seem glib and unseemly. You are liable to feel how trivial is the interviewer’s responsibility compared to that of a Cabinet Minister. “At such moments the interviewer must stiffen his resolve and remember that out there, in millions of homes, are people who are angry, or discontented, or who want certain questions to be put. He must also remember that while due respect should be shown to those who hold high office, history reminds us that they often make errors of judgment and sometimes appalling blunders. They have also been known to speak with less than total frankness. If an interviewer loses his nerve and fails to put the crucial questions he betrays the public who are relying on him.” Now that passage ought to be made into a sampler and hung on the wall of every New Zealand television interviewer’s home, because life is much tougher for him than it 's for his British counterpart. This is largely because New Zealanders, far from being the sturdy, self-reliant, independent creatures they like to think of themselves as being, are riddled with quite inappropriate reverence for authority. Because of this the politicians have succeeded to an alarming extent in con-

vincing the public that an interviewer who insists on putting questions which the politician does not want to answer is an impertinent young pup. and probably a pot-smoking communist, as well. Thus the New Zealand interviewer has to be braver than his British counterpart because the public, whom he is serving when he presses a politician for an answer, quite often resents him for doing sc. One reason why this part of Day’s book is so satisfactory is that he is fully aware and fully in command of .the converse side of any proposition he puts forward. Thus, having stated the interviewer’s duty as above he goes on to say: . . the television interview is rarely what it has been built up to seem. It has acquired a cliche image in people’s minds which is wholly misleading. Television interviews have so often been described as 'ordeals’ or ‘gladiatorial combats’ or ‘grillings’ that the public and the critics are too ready to assume that an interview is tough and searching when it may in fact have been soft and superficial. Thus may the public often be misled into thinking that the subject has been thoroughly handled." The essence of the objection to many television interviews could not be better put. So often, because the public are assumed to desire confrontation in an interview, : t. is provided, and the dust of the battle obscures the fact that the person being interviewed has got clean away with saying nothing about his subject. At a time when the constitution and structure of New Zealand television are undergoing one of their ritual triennial transmogrifications, (we can safely assume that Mr Jarden’s N.Z.B.C. would not survive a return to office by Labour in 1978, and that whatever Labour did would then be undone by Colleen Dewe’s government when it swept into office in 1981), almost everything Day has to say in the first part of

his book is of the greatest interest to anyone remotely connected with television, whether as one of its servants, one of its critics or one of its viewers. Day’s book is constructed of four parts, three of which do not always justify their resurrection. But the cogency and force of Day’s observations in the first part,

based as they are on the operation of intelligence on experience give his book an important place in television literature. (Day by Day. A dose of my own Hemlock. By Robin Day. William Kimber. 224 pp. Index. N.Z. price, $11.45.)