ideas: on media

A great interviewer, or human

About 45 million Americans tuned in for the first of a series of interviews between British TV personality David Frost and disgraced former president Richard Nixon. Watching Ron Howard’s thrilling film Frost/Nixon, an adaption of Peter Morgan’s play, it’s not hard to see why.

Frost/Nixon is a great piece of journalistic drama (watch the trailer below), built as an intellectual battle to the death, yet ironically focused on the fact the prosecutor was not a journalist. I found some interesting parallels and morals.

Political interviews, particularly on television, can be great theatre. The best inquisitors – I’m thinking the ABC’s hard-headed tag-team of Kerry O’Brien and Tony Jones – can extract something from a politician so wound up in spin any truth can come as a revelation as much to themselves.

Perhaps because there are so few in the class of O’Brien and Jones, the commercial networks effectively abandoned political interviews long ago – convinced their audience will switch off as soon as the politician appears on screen (and the ratings figures confirm this, they insist). Witness former Today Tonight (and now, miraculously, CNN anchor) Anna Coren’s embarrassingly impotent interview of John Howard and Peter Costello on the eve of the last federal election. It was a free ride for the Liberals, and excruciating television – and not in the good way that a political interview can be.

Frost was more celebrity playboy than hard-hitting journalist, motivated by the fame and fortune of cracking the lucrative American market with the interview everyone wanted (but refused to pay as much for). There’s some great moments of debate between Frost, his ally/producer John Birt, and hired guns political journalist Bob Zelnick and researcher-with-a-grudge James Reston Jnr. Would Frost be able to match the wily disgraced former president out to restore his credibility and return to the political scene?

Not really, as it turned out. But that hardly mattered when, after dozens of hours of filming, he extracted a confession from Nixon nobody expected. The question rambled awkwardly, but made a direct appeal to Nixon’s morals and love of the country he led (The Guardian has the full transcript of the final interview). Asked by Nixon which word he thought would be appropriate to explain his regret over Watergate, Frost said:

“My goodness, that’s a … I think that there are three things, since you asked me. I would like to hear you say … I think the American people would like to hear you say … One is: there was probably more than mistakes; there was wrongdoing, whether it was a crime or not; yes it may have been a crime too. Second: I did – and I’m saying this without questioning the motives – I did abuse the power I had as president, or not fulfil the totality of the oath of office. And third: I put the American people through two years of needless agony and I apologise for that. And I say that you’ve explained your motives, I think those are the categories. And I know how difficult it is for anyone, and most of all you, but I think that people need to hear it and I think unless you say it you are going to be haunted by it for the rest of your life.”

And then it flowed. Frost may not have been an expert on the Watergate scandal, but he had come to know his interviewee. By relating to his adversary on a personal level, he made Nixon accountable to an American people who desperately needed the closure, and even more remarkably made Nixon accountable to himself. Said Nixon finally:

“…for all those things I have a very deep regret.”

In the film, Reston, the researcher who wanted Nixon brought to justice more than anyone, delivers a final monologue that sums up the power of television in interviewing:

“You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, and getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing in defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.”

So do you have to be a journalist to ask a great question? No. The incomparable Andrew Denton won a Walkley for broadcast interviewing a few years back for needling everyone from movie stars to world leaders. But if you can’t prosecute the subject matter, you better know how to get under the skin of the spokesperson. The best do both.

© 2009 importance of ideas….