Fotos: Taigi, donatas1205/Shutterstock.com; privat64 Spotlight 1/2020 I ASK MYSELF
or my college newspaper, a friend and I conducted an
interview with a campus official that didn’t generate
enough news to fill the empty space on the page. So,
we decided to use a Q&A format, short for “question
and answer” — a word-for-word transcript of our con-
versation with the man.
“This was stupid!” a reader wrote to the paper, and
he was right. It was a tedious, long-winded showcase
of our own basic, ignorant questions. Maybe we had
to ask them, but we didn’t need to show them off.
I think of this every time I tape-record an inter-
view. I hear myself ramble, interrupt myself, talk in
circles. I get the information I need to write a story,
but I am glad no one else has to hear it. And I thought
of this again recently when Bob Woodward, one of
the greatest investigative reporters alive, was heckled
during a live interview on stage before a Washington
audience.
The topic was sexual harassment, and Woodward
was interviewing Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey,
the journalists who had revealed that Hollywood
producer Harvey Weinstein had abused the actresses
who had worked with him for decades. It was a stun-
ning story that encouraged women to come forward
with reports of abuse by other powerful men — what
became known as the “Me Too” movement — and
the audience was largely made up of women who felt
empowered by the new awareness of sexual harass-
ment.
Woodward interrupted them. He asked them to
analyze Weinstein’s psychology, and when they said
that was not their concern, he kept asking. He ques-
tioned the credibility of some accusers. But he espe-
cially angered the audience when Kantor said Wein-
stein’s offenses were all about power, and Woodward
insisted they were “also about sex.” (“No!” someone
shouted from the audience.)
Part of the problem was Woodward’s insensitivi-
ty to the subject. His past writing has been focusedon what motivates presidents and other powerful
men. Kantor and Twohey, though, feel the victims
are more interesting, and their audience wanted af-
firmation.
When I interview people, I can choose their
quotes and rearrange them in a way that tells a com-
pelling story in print. I appreciate that what televi-
sion and radio journalists do is a completely different
art form — a harder one. They must ask their ques-
tions in a way that sounds elegant, and in an order
that tells the story right at that moment. That’s the
kind of journalist who should have been picked for a
live, onstage interview.
Bob Woodward is a very gifted interviewer. But
he is in the business of asking tough questions —
polite questions don’t always do it. Sometimes, it
takes a provocative question to get your subjects
really to think about the answer and to articulate the
sentiments we need to hear from them. And Wood-
ward got some very smart answers from Kantor and
Twohey. If only we could have turned down the vol-
ume on his questions.F
affirmation [)Äf&r(meIS&n]
, Bestätigung
compelling [kEm(pelIN]
, fesselnd
conduct [kEn(dVkt]
, durchführen
empower [Im(paU&r]
, stärken
gifted [(gIftId]
, talentiert
harassment [hE(rÄsmEnt]
, Belästigung
heckle [(hek&l]
, durch Zwischenrufe stören
long-winded [)lO:N (wIndId]
, weitausholend, umständlichoffense [E(fens]
, Angriff, Verfehlung
ramble [(rÄmb&l]
, umherschweifen
reveal [ri(vi:&l]
, enthüllen
showcase [(SoUkeIs]
, hier: Darstellung, Beispiel
stunning [(stVnIN]
, spektakulär, faszinierend
tape-record [(teIp ri)kO:rd]
, etw. auf Band aufnehmen
tedious [(ti:diEs]
, langweilig, ermüdend
turn down [t§:n (daUn]
, leise stellenI ASK MYSELF
What went
wrong?
Ein renommierter Journalist gerät in Teufels Küche,
weil seine Interviewfragen zu unsensibel sind – was
wieder einmal zeigt, dass nicht jeder mit dem heiklen
Thema „sexuelle Belästigung“ umzugehen weiß.ADVANCED USAMY ARGETSINGER
is an editor at
The Washington
Post, a leading
daily newspaper
in the US.