Identifying Your Audience and Your Interviewer’s Agenda (3)
You should make every effort to familiarize yourself with the interviewer’s work. If your interviewer is someone who’s free to express opinions—like a columnist—try to gauge her position vis-à-vis your messages.
Does the reporter, the publication, or the broadcast have a point of view? Is the outlet looking for facts or for fun? Is it accurate and factual or sensational? By doing your research, you will know as much as possible and you’ll be able to avoid surprises.
Speaking of surprises, I can recall a stunning example from the early days of “Good Morning America.” Back then, we staged a daily six- or seven-minute debate that we called “Face Off.”
We would select a hot topic and, with David Hartman moderating, we would have representatives of opposing points of view argue about it. The goal was to shed some light, and maybe a little heat, on a subject that viewers would find important.
One such “Face Off” featured Ron Kovic, the Marine Corps Vietnam veteran who had been paralyzed in combat and had written about the experience in the extraordinary and passionate antiwar book Born on the Fourth of July.
The subject was government truthfulness, or lack of truthfulness, during times of war. Kovic’s adversary was retired general William Westmoreland, former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Normally on “Good Morning America” we pre-interviewed our guests.
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