(An interesting follow-up to yesterday’s CBS4 Denver Romney interview “Akin off limits” story – promoted by Colorado Pols)
Talking Points Memo reports that the Mitt Romney campaign told an Ohio TV station yesterday that it preferred not to answer questions about Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin.
“They were chatting and it came up and I believe [a Romney staffer's] wording was that they prefer not to talk about it,” [WHIO-TV] assistant news director Tim Wolff told TPM. “But we didn’t care because we were going to talk about Ohio stuff.”
If I’m a journalist, and a campaign tells me it prefers not to talk about something, that’s immediately what I want to ask about.
But Wolff told me that the preference was expressed by a low-level logistical person in the Romney camp, and so it didn’t matter to the station, which wasn’t interested in the topic anyway.
I asked Wolff if his station would have conducted the interview, with some questions banned outright.
“We’ve never agreed to any kind of stipulations and never would,” he said. “So it wouldn’t be an issue for us.”
Dave Price, a reporter at WHO-TV in Iowa who also interviewed Romney yesterday, told Talking Points Memo that he also would not have agreed to the Romney interview, if he’d been told that Akin questions were banned.
I asked Wolff what he’d do if forced to reject an interview, due to unacceptable preconditions.
Would Wolff report that the interview invitation was declined?
“I’m not sure, just because I’ve never had it happen,” he said. “There are many variables in how it can happen. We may or may not report, depending on how big a deal it was, that we did not do the interview because of these circumstances.”
Normally, I’d think a reporter should tell us, if he or she doesn’t accept an interview because of banned questions or the like.
Transparency is key, and that’s why CBS4 did the right thing by going ahead with the Romney interview and reporting the ban on Akin/Abortion questions.
Rejecting the interview would have been an over-reaction, because, as CBS4 News director Tim Wieland tweeted, there’s a lot of other questions that can be asked–and you can still report that certain questions were banned, as CBS4 did.
But, at some point, and I’m not sure where it is, an interview gets so restricted that a reporter has to say no, and report what happened.
Or if a topic was so important at a particular moment, a reporter might decline an interview, just because one topic was banned.
So I think it just depends, but CBS4 made the right call yesterday.
Full story: Should journalists decline interviews if questions are banned?
Agreed CBS4 did the right thing by doing the interview and reporting the ban. But it’s imperative the interview is done with that disclaimer. Let the silence speak for itself.
It looks like an overzealous staffer went too far, that’s all. The reporter should have checked with someone higher up the line.
…may well have said the same thing.
Rmoney and his team absolutely do NOT want to talk about anything other than Obama. Because when Americans learn particulars where he may have left some record, they bolt.
Unless they are the 1%’ers. Like you, right?
I agree wholeheartedly….see my suggestion below for how it should have been handled. Check with the candidate himself…on camera.
Let’s be honest here. Not every reporter is either a good one or an ethical one. In fact some reporters have very clear biases and they let those biases color their interviews and their writing.
But having said that the burden is on the candidate to handle bias and a lack of fairness. After all should the candidate win the election, he or she is going to have to deal with a variety of people, organizations and interests that are manipulative and even dishonest. Officials and candidates simply have to learn how to deal with it.
As a citizen I would rather the candidate respond to a reporter even if that reporter is biased and unfair. I think that I can tell when that happens and I’m more interested in how the candidate handles it than in sound bites.
If the reporter is so over the top biased, then the candidate should have a visit with the reporter’s bosses in order to set the ground rules.
Not to pick on Boyd in particular but I have seen several of her stories and reports. She has pretty clear agendas and I have found several of her stories to be less than objective and less than factual. So, I don’t listen to her any more. That’s also a way of supporting the freedom of the press.
There is a very simple way to handle this: Agree to the restrictions and then stick to them….don’t ask anything about the “forbidden issues”, but disclose during the interview what those forbidden issues are. For instance, “Thank you for agreeing to this interview Governor Romney. Per your campaign’s demands, I will not be asking you about abortion or Representative Akin’s recent comments. Before we get started though, just so we are clear are there any other issues you are afraid to talk about?” And then turn the floor over to him.
“There is a very simple way to handle this: Agree to the restrictions and then stick to them”
No!
There is a very simple way to handle this: Agree to the restrictions and then make your 3rd question one in the forbidden area. Get the whole thing on tape so you can embarrass the politician.
Declining the interview would be like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Reporters are paid to report. Not doing so does a disservice to their public, and it won’t improve the chances of the reporter getting any more future interviews anymore than breaking the “gentleman’s agreement” not to ask certain questions once the interview began.
But silently acquiescing to the restrictions is what gave us a “Lapdog Press”. Equally serious, is when a reporter lacks the support of his editor and/or publisher to have leverage over powerful organizations and individuals in the public eye. Reporters simply wanting to hang on to their job, or maintaining access to sources can lead to self-censoring behavior that goes unnoticed by the reading public.
So obviously, some balance (do we really want a British-style scandal rag press?) should be expected. But transparency (which would reveal reporter bias as much as the interviewee’s sore points) is also crucial.
If a reporter says “they won’t reveal deeply hurtful and private matters” before a cream puff interview, that tells the audience one thing. But if the reporter, like Ms. Boyd, indicates that it was either: no topical, but embarrassing questions allowed, or no interview — then that will have the intended effect on future inteviews — a clarification of what the campaign can or cannot hide from.
And then of course, you have the Coffman option of just hiding in his bunker.
I agree that CBS4 did the right thing. Declining the interview would be dumb and immature.
Saying “So-and-so didn’t want us to ask about this subject, so we didn’t” is no different than So-and-so saying “No comment” when the subject is brought up.
Transparency is the key.