What a waste. (Charles McQuillan / Getty)
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Towards the end of his life, the great Robin Day gave an interview in which he reflected on the impact that his style of interviewing had had on some of his successors. The great interrogator had led the way in the emergence of the new interviewing style, helping to haul Britain out of the era of deference towards politicians and ushering in an era of greater accountability.
Like all changes, there were some people who regretted them, feeling that Day’s interrogative style went too far. They felt that the relation between interviewer and interviewee could do with taking a step backwards to those deferential times. But it never happened. The move away from deference turned out to be a one-way street – albeit one that Day himself ended up worrying about.
Latterly, people would blame the interviewing styles of Jeremy Paxman, John Humphries and others on Day. Where he had led they had merely followed. But the man himself clearly felt unhappy about this.
In that late interview, he explained his problem with that style. It was, specifically, when broadcasters would accuse their interviewee of lying. If you believe that your subject is lying, Day said, then your job is to show that they are lying. It is not simply a matter of saying to them, to their face, “You are lying”.
As she delivered the annual MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival this week, the head of Channel 4 News demonstrated that major figures in the television industry certainly no longer see things that way. In her remarks, Dorothy Byrne said that television producers should be more willing to directly accuse politicians. “If we continue to be so polite, how will our viewers know that politicians are lying,” she asked.
There is quite a minefield of presumptions in that one question. First, it assumes that politicians regularly lie – a presumption that we may allow to pass for now. Byrne also assumes that the viewer is unable to notice when a politician lies and cannot (without the intermediary of Channel 4 or others) understand what politicians are and are not saying. But thirdly – and perhaps most problematically – Byrne assumes that it is the job of the interviewer or journalist to be ‘impolite’ and to point out that the politician is lying. Is that such a good idea?
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