Journalists often get an unfair rap for letting bias seep into their work, but two recent interviews have deserved the criticism they’ve received.
Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates on CBS News and Bret Baier’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris on Fox News were both flawed to the point of being perfect fodder for a class on how not to conduct tough interviews.
Dokoupil and Baier both claimed they were just asking hard questions. But, in fact, they both structured their questions in ways that indicated they weren’t really interested in the answers. Instead, they seemed more interested in trying to score points with a subset of the audience who share their particular beliefs. In doing so, these journalists sacrificed the opportunity to have a genuine conversation that would reveal depth, nuance and possibly a surprise.
The first step for any journalist is to be genuinely interested in the people they interview and to ask questions that they actually want to hear the answer to, even if they disagree with their point of view. The fundamental job of journalism is to ask good questions, listen to the answers and then package the information for the audience in a way that allows them to learn something too.
Dokoupil’s interview had promise. On the one hand, it was one of the most intellectual conversations I’ve ever seen on morning television. But it could have been much more meaningful if Dokoupil hadn’t been so bent on winning a debate.
Baier had a harder job in his assignment to interview Harris. Politicians have the irritating habit of not answering the question that was asked and instead launching into campaign speeches, which is exactly what Harris did. It’s deeply unsatisfying for news consumers. But good interviewers know how to cut through the prepared remarks. (I’ve often wondered what would happen if an interviewer started out, on camera, by asking the politician not to do that and instead really listen to the questions and engage in a genuine conversation for the benefit of the audience. It’s just a thought.)
Even when interviewers have a strong point of view, they bring well-prepared questions to the table if they are good at their job. I’ve transcribed a few of the questions that both Dokoupil and Baeir asked to demonstrate the flaws of their approach. As a helpful exercise, I’ve rewritten them to include the same substance without all the baggage.
One of the best ways to diagnose a weak interview technique is to look at the length of the questions.
Here was Dokoupil’s opening question to Coates:
I have to say when I read the book I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away, the content of that section (on Palestinians) would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. So then I found myself wondering why does Ta-Nahesi Coates — who I’ve known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented and smart guy — leave out so much? Why does he leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why leave out so much? Why not detail anything about the first intifada, the second intifada, the café bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?
That question is 165 words long. And it involves six separate questions. When an interviewer is too wordy and asks multiple questions, he opens the door for his subject to go anywhere with the answer.
If Dokoupil had really been interested in Coates’ response, he could have asked the question this way:
I was shocked to see that the section of your book on Palestinian suffering completely ignores the extensive suffering of Israelis. That suffering of its people is how Israel justifies its actions. Why did you leave out all the terror attacks, the first and second intifadas, the many bombings that have claimed the lives of so many people, including children?
My rewrite is not a short question, it’s 60 words long. It doesn’t eliminate Dokoupil’s personal attachment to Israel. It succinctly captures the critique and directs Coates to describe his editorial choices.
Baier was also guilty of asking wordy questions, weighted with unnecessary baggage. His first question of Harris wasn’t so horrible, but he threw in just enough extraneous material that Harris could conveniently ignore the question and start campaigning. He asked:
Voters tell pollsters all over the country, and specifically here in Pennsylvania, that immigration is one of the key issues they are looking at, and specifically the influx of illegal immigrants from more than 150 countries. How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country over the last three and a half years?
It’s short enough — 56 words. But Baier wasn’t really interested in the answer, because after Harris diverted into a lengthy journey through her talking points on immigration, Baier came back and said:
So your Homeland Security secretary said that roughly 85% of apprehensions, so rough estimate of 6 million people, have been released into the country.
But that wasn’t a question. He then launched into a very long windup before getting to the topic he really wanted Harris to address:
So let me get to the question, I promise you. When you came into office your administration immediately reversed a number of Trump border policies, most significantly the policy that required illegal immigrants to be detained through deportation, either in the U.S. or in Mexico, and you switched that policy. They were released from custody awaiting trial. So instead, included in those, were a large number of single men, adult men, who went on to commit heinous crimes. So, looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate “remain in Mexico” at the beginning of your administration?
Including his rough estimate, that question was 121 words. Here’s my rewrite:
Your administration reversed two Trump immigration policies, the requirement that immigrants seeking asylum stay in Mexico while their application is processed and the requirement that immigrants caught here illegally be detained while awaiting deportation hearings. Why did you do that?
It’s unlikely Dokoupil and Baier would adopt my style of questions because they were both trying to set their subjects up for a gotcha moment. It seemed like Dokoupil wanted Coates to question the legitimacy of Israel’s statehood. And Baier wanted Harris to dismiss the deaths of women who were assaulted and killed by men who came into the U.S illegally.
This is a sophomoric debate tactic frequently modeled on partisan cable shows and podcasts. It only works as a slam dunk when the opposing point of view isn’t present to add nuance or complexity to the argument.
This doesn’t mean that an interviewer shouldn’t acknowledge these arguments. But to fairly bring them into the conversation, a journalist can first state the argument and then follow it with a short, open-ended question, one that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no.
If I were interviewing Coates and truly wanted to explore his thoughts on Israel’s existence, I would have asked:
Some of the people who ignore or minimize Israel’s claims of self-defense do so because they don’t believe Israel has a right to exist. How do you feel about Israel as a nation-state in the Middle East?
If I were interviewing Harris and I truly wanted to explore how she thought about the immigrants lacking permanent legal status who killed U.S. citizens, I would ask:
A small number of bad people got into the United States and killed innocent people. How do you balance our government’s responsibility to protect its own citizens with the goal of making our border policies more humane for immigrants who want to come here?
Sometimes interviewers want to tap into their deep and personal connections to the stakeholders involved in a particular conflict. This too is better accomplished with skill, rather than passion. The secret is to once again craft a genuine, open-ended question.
Here’s Dokoupil doing the exact opposite. With this question, he first accuses Coates of undermining Israel, and then assigns to Coates the belief that Jews don’t have any status as a group that has survived the Holocaust.
But you write a book that delegitimizes the pillars of Israel. It seems like an effort to topple the whole building of it. So I come back to the question, and it’s what I struggled with throughout this book, what is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?
Rather than declaring that Coates was offended by Israel’s modern origin story and accusing him of wanting to eliminate the country, Dokoupil could have simply lined up the two ideas next to each other and asked Coates to respond. Like this:
Israel was created and continues to exist as a safe place for Jews, a historically persecuted people. Yet you see Israel as the persecutor. How do you reconcile those two ideas?
Baier had more time for his interview, which ran close to 30 minutes. And he used that time to ask even more ridiculously unfair questions, including:
Why is half the country supporting (Trump)? Why is he beating you in several swing states? Why, if he’s as bad as you say, why is half of this country supporting him?
So are they misguided? Are they stupid? What’s wrong with them?
You’ve called Donald Trump misguided, you’ve said he’s unwell, he’s unstable. When did you first notice that President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?
After George Clooney met with President Biden at a fundraiser, he thought that this was not the same Joe Biden. You met with him weekly for three and a half years. You didn’t have any concerns?
It’s legitimate to pursue questions about whether President Biden currently has the mental acuity to handle the weight of the office. And asking the people closest to the president about their impressions is a valid line of accountability journalism. Just ask the questions in a straightforward manner:
You are running for president because your boss, President Biden, stepped away from his campaign for a second term after an onslaught of people questioned his mental sharpness. You’ve met with him every week since you both were sworn into office. What changes have you noticed?
As a solo interviewer with a lot of time to fill, Baier had to rely on himself to keep the conversation productive. Dokoupil had two colleagues that he could have leaned on. Instead, he elbowed them out of the conversation, at one point refusing to let his co-host Gayle King ask a question. In a subsequent podcast interview with Trevor Noah, Coates pointed out that this might have been the true tragedy of the exchange.
“The thing that went wrong in that interview more than anything, as far as I’m concerned, is Gayle King is a great journalist and a great interviewer and Gayle came behind the stage, before we went, and she had gone through the book. I’m not saying we agreed. But she was like, ‘I’m going to ask you this and I’m going to ask you that,’” he said. “It was her handwritten notes, her handwritten notes were there. She had all these things. And I think while, on the one hand, (Dokoupil) probably did me a service … by commandeering that interview, I don’t think he did Nate (Burleson) and Gayle a service.”
Ultimately, a skilled interviewer wants the audience to walk away remembering what the subject said, not how the questions were asked. Journalists who seek to be remembered for their cleverness or their ability to match wits will inevitably resort to performative behavior.
Playing to the portion of the audience who agrees with you will make that audience happy. But good questions will make everyone in the audience smarter.
Whether we are covering a divisive war or a divisive presidential race, asking good questions is our job as journalists. We aren’t here to drive people deeper into their beliefs. Instead, we want to make them more informed.
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