Good and Bad about a NewsHour Interview
In a television news world turned upside-down by propaganda, shouting and sensationalism, the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer remains focused on clarity and solid, level-headed journalism. One reason is the NewsHour spends more than a minute to report news of the day. There is more substance, better background and often, better expertise … but not always.
Newshour interviews tend to run longer to provide more depth and understanding for both sides of an issue or story, presenting either an opportunity or a challenge for the person being interviewed.
The good news is that as a newsmaker or someone providing expert perspective, you are given a fair amount of time to present your case provided you heed interview rule #1 – listen to the interviewer’s questions and answer those questions before bridging or transitioning into your own agenda.
The bad news is that if you are not prepared for the interview or obsessed with trying to remember rehearsed talking points or simply lack adequate knowledge of the subject, you may flounder live on national television.
The latest person to flounder on NewsHour was Rosetta Jones, VP for corporate relations at VISA.
NewsHour’s Ray Suarez was interviewing Jones and Kim Zetter of Wired.com about a case of record-setting cyber theft of credit card numbers. The Justice Department had indicted three men for stealing more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers by hacking into the computer systems of five major companies. Jones and Zetter were billed as “cyber-security experts.”
Zetter’s side of the interview was superb and informative. Zetter knew her stuff. But when it came time for Jones to take a question, she stumbled, did not answer the questions from Suarez and delivered rehearsed and unrelated talking points. She clearly was not prepared or over her head. Here’s an excerpt from NewsHour.org:
RAY SUAREZ: Rosetta Jones, the program, according to the government, that these fellows were using burrowed into the systems and then started exporting the data they were finding there to places outside the United States, to some places inside the United States, but also to Latvia, Russia, the Netherlands. Why?
ROSETTA JONES, Visa: Your question was why they were exporting data?
RAY SUAREZ: Well, why to those places? Is it harder to investigate, harder to prosecute once you ship the data off to somewhere else in the world?
ROSETTA JONES: We think there’s ample opportunity for the government to be involved to help international cooperation in catching the criminals. We think that is an important opportunity and a significant area where the government can be involved.
RAY SUAREZ: Have the two sides been learning from each other, the hackers and the institutions that are trying to fend off these attacks? Do they look for breaches and then exploit them and then your side tries to build new defenses?
ROSETTA JONES: Well, I think, as long as card data remains valuable, criminals are going to continue to seek that information. What we have to do as an industry is to work with financial institutions and with merchants to protect that card information. And we have to make sure that they’re adhering to strict industry data security standards.
I think as an industry we also have to explore new ways to make that card data not valuable to criminals. And we’re looking at things like the introduction of dynamic data into the transaction. We think that has a good opportunity to help prevent fraud.
And, so it went, painfully, as Suarez tried to extract specifics from Jones who apparently was not an expert but rather a corporate PR person who had memorized some general talking points. It did not reflect well on VISA, and the company should have better and more professional spokespersons.
You can read the interview here … or, better yet, watch it.
Incidentally, Jones was only the latest so-called expert to bomb on NewsHour. A fellow named Robert Faris was on the program in June to talk about Twitter even though he had little knowledge of Twitter and was not using the mini-blogging service.
The real issue, I believe, is that by having such non-experts on the program actually hurts the credibility and reputation of the NewsHour.
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As always, this is a great post, David. It’s fun to get an insider’s view of the media relations world.
Absolutely, alleged experts who either don’t know the answers or evade them on purpose are part of the News Hour’s weakest link — who it’s interviewing today. There are quite a few pitfalls along the road to quizzing “experts” or, just as often, merely advocates. As a viewer, I too often wonder what story the advocates have been chosen to tell. Is it “both sides,” which seems to be the mantra — in which case, a side that may be out-and-out wrong has to be given equal time? Or — opposite problem — do the panelists represent only one side of a story with two or three sides that need telling? (Or are they simply the two or three people who happened to be available today?) And finally, a question the networks rub in your face, but I want never to ask about PBS — why these choices? So go my thoughts while watching the News Hour, and so, alas, I’m watching it less. The program’s long suit, I think, is that whoever’s sitting there, its enviable team of smart interviewers will probably ask the right questions.