Learn how to use an ear piece as a TV news reporter with expert journalism advice from an experienced broadcast journalist in this free television career video clip from ehow.com. By the way, Ehow has some other good short articles and videos related to TV, so browse around the site for some other gems. Here is the clip:
http://www.ehow.com/video_4401410_use-ear-piece-as-tv.html
In this clip we see the interviwer become annoyed at a bystander who is ruining the shot, and the interviewer beats the annoying person(dressed in a gorilla suit). I find it interesting that the person being interviewed seems to take the whole thing in stride.
http://www.ugoto.com/video_annoying_interview.html
Here is a clip of Larry King interviewing Jerry Seinfeld in which Jerry gets testy over one of the questions . Situations like this are hard to anticipate because the question itself seemed unlikely to set anyone off. Be aware that this can happen anytime and begin the think of ways you could handle this if it comes up in one of your interviews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfUgVSfKdQ&feature=rec-fresh+div
Here are four parts of an lecture Lisa Martin gave that do a great job of covering the basics of interviewing.
In this www.artistshousemusic.org clip, veteran news person and interviewer Lisa Martin talks about interview techniques to a class of Music Business students at Loyola University New Orleans and does a nice job of covering the basics.
Lisa Martin-Interview Techniques Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNbkyKdTI8s
Lisa Martin- Interview Techniques Part 2
http://video.asterpix.com/v/361147791/lisa-martin-interview-techniques-part-2/
Lisa Martin-Interview Techniques Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoiYjWITOLQ&feature=related
Lisa Martin-Interview Techniques Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-szujvoF5pE&feature=related
While it helps to be an expert in the field you are doing an interview in, it is rare that you will have true expert knowledge in the area you are covering for the show. Certain specialized shows such as sports or politics usually have a host with in depth knowledge of the area, but many general shows do not. You will have trouble if your audience is an expert in the field you are covering and you are not. On the other hand, if your audience is not an expert in the area being covered you will be safe. Try to find out what you audience is interested in as far as the subject goes as a way of making sure you cover the subject adequately.
As an interviewer, you must constantly walk a tightrope in terms of seeking the right balance of confrontive/non confrontive questions. Your going in position should be to air on the light side in most cases, as this usually works best to keep the guest open and responsive. However, there are times where you must ask hard question that the guest would just as soon avoid, in order to make the interview interesting to your viewers. For example when interviewing political figures, most hosts take a light approach and do not ask “hardball” questions. This is because the host usually understands that their audience has a certain political leaning and schedules guests and questions that cater to that audience. On the other hand someone like Bill Maher schedules guests with views different than his own and builds the show around making the guest look bad. So you need to analyze your viewers and show type before making any decisions on what type of questions to ask.
Sometimes no matter how well you are prepared, things just happen as this video will show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dZeqgW28T0&feature=related
Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews just got booted from MSNBC due to being dead last in Nielsen ratings during the political conventions. They did not hide their very left wing views on air and they were too much for even MSNBC viewers that skew left anyway. The lesson here is you need to match your target audience’s views, not yours. MSNBC leans left viewerwise, so setting the issue of it being news aside, they went even further left and thus were out of sync with their viewers. They would have fit Air America but not MSNBC. MSNBC will probably not replace them with center or right wing people, but proably a somewhat left leaning anchor to have a better fit with their target viewers.
Campbell Brown recently did a bad hatchet job interview on her CNN show when she had a McCain adviser as a guest. She came off poorly but that was not the end of the damage. McCain was scheduled to be interviewed by Larry King on the same network, but McCain pulled out after Campbell Brown botched her interview. So CNN which would have gotten great ratings and made some nice ad money on the McCain interview lost it all due to the Campbell Brown foul up. The lesson here is that you have to take your interviews very very seriously because they reflect on the entire network you are on and have far reaching repercussions. As much as you may have personal feelings on a subject, your job is to get the facts without getting in the way. Be professional in everything you do and say.
Here is one more example of someone getting in trouble because they said something when they thought the mic was off. Never, never, never, say or do anything you don’t want to whole world to witness, until you are totally off the set and have taken the mic off. Check out this link: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/09/jesse-jackson-apologizes-for-obama-remarks
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