The Media Interview

Ahh, such promise for freedom of the press during the 2008 Olympics in this headline from the Guardian: Beijing promises open media environment for Olympics Then we find out that it means this: “BOCOG will apply a zero refusal policy for interview requests, which means that all requests for interviews will be replied to,” the [...]

Barbara Walters was on CBC’s The Hour recently to talk about her new book Audition, and host George Stroumboulopoulos asked her: Stroumboulopoulos: Who would you like to be your last interview? Walters: (long pause) Osama bin Laden… [banter] …I have said that I don’t want to get any more big “gets,” but if Osama bin [...]

Barbara Walters on one of the main reasons she stopped doing the TV newsmagazine 20/20 back in 2004: …it seemed that every celebrity, every murderer…had a lawyer or a press agent all interviewing the interviewer to determine where they could get the most airings for their clients, what kind of questions would be asked, and [...]

Since taking office in 2006 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been known for almost complete control of media access to his government. The Hill is the latest to run a story about these practices: When [national] reporters request interviews, the minister’s office passes on the request with its recommendations to the Prime Minister’s Office. [...]

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker on paying for media interviews. From MediaBistro’s transcript of an interview with FT.com managing editor Chrystia Freeland in June 2007: ZUCKER: Well look, I think the key thing is, anytime you do an interview with anybody is that you disclose what you’re doing. FREELAND: So if you say ‘we paid [...]

And we thought the idea of airing an interview with OJ Simpson about hypothetical murder was bad. German TV network has just aired the first TV interview with a convicted cannibal. All we can hope for is extremely low ratings.

A lot of people, including me, have mentioned that People magazine paid $300,000 for the first print interview with Paris Hilton after she got out of jail. I did say that the Hiltons had withdrawn all request for money, but I wasn’t very clear that this included People magazine. Here’s an exchange between Anderson Cooper [...]

In Cindy Adams column in the New York Post today, she quotes Barbara Walters on why, when Paris Hilton’s people withdrew demands for payment for the heiress’s first post-jail interview, Walters turned down a free interview. After all, ABC had originally offered $100,000 for the “get”: Look, I’ve done prison interviews before, but people like [...]

Busy day in the gossip mills as rumors flew about which American TV network would first get to interview Paris Hilton (and pay dearly for it) when she’s released from prison. Following a detailed story in the NY Times this morning about ABC losing out on it’s bid of $100,000, reportedly to NBC, the omnipresent, [...]

Found this interesting observation about paying for media interviews. It’s from Don Hewitt, creator and producer of 60 Minutes, in his 2001 book Tell Me A Story: The truth is that reputable newspapers and reputable news broadcasts pay for interviews all the time, not in cash but in something more valuable – newspaper space and [...]