Between interview, interrogation and a PR man’s albatross

There is an old professional refrain among journalists: a dog does not eat dog. It is usually invoked as an instinct of fraternity, sometimes as a plea for restraint, and occasionally, as all professional codes can be, as a convenient shelter from scrutiny.

 I do not intend to invert the prescription. This is not a call for journalists to feast on one another. But perhaps the rule itself deserves a little interrogation.

 Interrogated? Yes. Because there is a thin, sometimes almost invisible, line between hard journalism and hard-headed journalism; between the interviewer who insists on an answer and the interviewer who has already decided what the answer must sound like. Somewhere along that line, Nigerian television appears to be negotiating a new and occasionally uncertain identity.

 The immediate argument has centred on political interviews and on the increasingly recognisable style of some television anchors. Names have been mentioned, clips circulated, sides chosen and familiar ideological trenches occupied. But that is too narrow a way to understand what is happening.

 This is not fundamentally about Rufai Oseni. Neither is it about Lere Olayinka. They are, at best, the latest dramatis personae in an older argument about journalism, power, performance and the strange chemistry that occurs when a television camera is switched on, and everybody in the studio becomes conscious that millions of invisible people may be watching.

 The real question is larger: when does an interview become an interrogation, and when does interrogation cease to be journalism and become theatre? Olisa Agbakoba has an idea. And, I guess, Dr Reuben Abati and most probably Seun Okinbaloye.

 But take the now familiar controversy around an appearance by the SDP presidential candidate, Adewole Adebayo, on ARISE TV’s The Morning Show. The opening exchange, as reported and widely circulated, was unusually combative.

 The language was sharp enough to provoke the larger question of whether an interviewer should merely challenge a political proposition or proceed to attach a character judgment to the people making it.

 Ah! So we have arrived at that curious point in our peculiar democracy where everybody is entitled to free speech: the interviewer, the interviewee and, apparently, the adjective.

 But this is where the conversation must become more sophisticated than a simple scolding of television anchors or an intolerant interviewee.

 Journalists are not public relations officers. Their duty is not to make politicians comfortable. Presidential candidates should not be wrapped in cotton wool and handed soft questions like bouquets. Ask the difficult question. Challenge the contradiction. Expose the lie. Interrupt an evasive answer. Return to the question when the guest attempts to escape through a side door. Demand evidence.

 Yet there remains a distinction worth preserving. There is a difference between asking, “Why should Nigerians take this promise seriously?” and declaring, “You people are unserious.” The first interrogates an argument. The second risks becoming an argument with the guest.

 Television magnifies this distinction. A raised eyebrow can become a political statement. An interruption can become a viral clip. A sarcastic laugh can travel farther than the substantive answer that preceded it. Increasingly, the interview itself is no longer the product. The clip is.

 Jeremy Paxman’s famous 1997 interview with British politician Michael Howard has become part of the folklore of political journalism. Paxman repeatedly asked Howard whether he had threatened to overrule the head of the Prison Service. Howard repeatedly avoided a direct answer. Paxman returned to essentially the same question again and again, famously, 12 times.

 Was that persistence rude? Perhaps to those who believe an interviewer should move on once a guest has spoken. Was it journalism? Undoubtedly.

 The repetition itself became the evidence. The more Howard avoided the question, the more the audience understood that avoidance was the story. That is the point at which persistence earns its place in journalism.

 Contrast this with the gladiatorial styles of Piers Morgan, Sean Hannity, or Mehdi Hasan. Each has made confrontation a genre of its own – sometimes meticulous, sometimes ideological, sometimes theatrical. But the existence of confrontational interviewing elsewhere does not mean confrontation itself is the gold standard of journalism. Outrage gets attention. Conflict produces clips. Anger has algorithms working on its behalf. The temptation is obvious.

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But journalism must resist becoming captive to its own distribution technology.

 The moment an interviewer begins to think primarily about defeating the guest rather than illuminating the subject, the centre of gravity shifts. The interview is no longer about what the public needs to know. It becomes a contest over who appears cleverer, tougher, louder or more dominant. And then something curious happens: the journalist, who began by holding power to account, may inadvertently make himself the centre of the story. That is not accountability. That is celebrity.

 Democracy needs robust journalism, certainly. It does not necessarily need rude journalism. Nor does courage require discourtesy. But the other side of the microphone carries its own burden.

 Politicians and their spokesmen have perfected evasive arts. They complain about hostile questions when what they really dislike is being asked a question for which they have no convenient answer. They accuse journalists of bias when their talking points collapse under examination. They demand respect when what they are actually requesting is deference.

 Here lies the spokesman’s albatross. Unlike a PR manager who can design strategy and control timing, the political spokesman’s role is decidedly messengerial, reactive, tethered to a principal who may have too much to hide, even from his own subordinate.

 Too often, the spokesman is sent into the arena to defend opacity, to spin evasions, and to absorb hostility. Their credibility is perpetually at risk, not because of their own words, but because of the truths their principal refuses to reveal. They are delegated to clean up what the principal will not own, and blamed when the defence collapses.

 The political spokesperson’s job is not to defeat his or her interviewer. It is to reach the viewer sitting at home. If a reporter or online air personality says, “Your party is incompetent,” don’t answer, “You are incompetent.” Too bad. You have just surrendered the interview. Say to him or her: “That is your characterisation. Let us deal with the facts.” Then give the facts.

 If the anchor interrupts, say to him or her: “Please allow me 20 seconds to complete the answer.” If s/he persists: “I have answered the question. Let me explain the evidence.” If the question contains a false premise: “I don’t accept that premise. Here is what the record actually shows.” No shouting. No insults. No wounded ego. No Twitter-sized tantrum. The audience is watching.

 That is the great secret of television politics: you are not really debating the anchor. You are speaking through the anchor to the country. So should political candidates boycott programmes hosted by difficult interviewers? Not necessarily. That is a poor political strategy. A serious candidate cannot spend an entire campaign moving only through friendly newsrooms, answering only sympathetic questions and appearing only before audiences that have already agreed with him. You aren’t winning new converts.

 Democracy is not a comfort zone. The better strategy can be reduced to three words: prepare, prepare, prepare. Know the numbers. Know the record. Know your opponent’s record. Know your own candidate’s weaknesses. Anticipate the uncomfortable question. Prepare the answer before the question arrives. And, above all, never allow the interviewer to determine what your moment on television will become.

 If the interviewer wants: “Spokesman explodes at anchor!” give him: “Spokesman calmly dismantles allegation.”

 The journalist’s freedom to ask hard questions is sacred and very elastic. So, too, is the guest’s right to answer them. An interviewer who asks a difficult question and then repeatedly prevents the answer from emerging has not necessarily won the argument. He may simply have transformed an interview into a monologue with an unwilling supporting actor.

 There is a difference between interruption as a journalistic instrument and interruption as a performance. The first serves clarity. The second serves ego. One is interrogation. The other is theatre.

 This campaign season will test all these boundaries. There will be candidates who lie. There will be candidates who dodge. There will be spokesmen who mistake indignation for argument and walk into studios with talking points but without the temperament to defend them under pressure. There will be journalists who grandstand, anchors who mistake aggression for courage, and principals who hide inconvenient truths, leaving their spokesmen to clean up the mess in public view.

 Our job is not to silence any of them. Our job is to insist on something better. Ask harder questions. Give fuller answers. Challenge ideas, not human dignity. Defend positions, not egos.

 Democracy is already a noisy business. Journalism should not add noise where what the country needs is signal. Otherwise, we will have plenty of Democrazy, and very little democracy.