Interview Ethics 101

THE INTERVIEW is both a method journalists use to elicit information and/or opinion, as well as a journalistic form in itself. Some individuals are interviewed because they’re in the news and are the focus of wide public interest. But on a daily basis, journalists interview sources either to obtain new information or to verify the truth of information they have obtained from documents or other human sources.

Whether method or form, and over TV, radio, print or online, the interview’s value lies in the interviewee’s being a source knowledgeable enough for the information and opinion he or she is providing to be both relevant and reliable, perhaps because he or she is an eyewitness to events, a participant, or has certain qualifications. Who to interview in those instances when what’s needed is a particular level of knowledge and expertise is therefore the first and most important decision the interviewer has to make.

Two incidents have underlined some media practitioners’ apparently mistaken understanding of both the purpose and the ethics of interviewing.

Although he has grudgingly apologized for it, GMA7’s Arnold Clavio berated an interviewee two weeks ago for his refusal to comment on something he was not qualified to say anything about. Pressed by Clavio to comment on the plunder charge against Janet Lim-Napoles, lawyer Alfredo Villamor declined on the grounds that he was representing Napoles only in the illegal detention case against her, not in the plunder charge. (Businesswoman Napoles is accused of illegally benefiting from congressional pork barrel funds and of detaining a staff member of her company to prevent him from revealing the details of how she allegedly amassed billions of pesos in public funds over a ten-year period.) Clavio insisted that Villamor answer his questions, and when the latter still refused, berated the lawyer, declaring at one point that he was useless and should not have been interviewed at all.

In another, earlier instance, Maki Pulido of the same network, when interviewing geologist and Project Noah  Executive Director Mahar Lagmay last August, asked him to describe what the weather would be like. (Project Noah is a government program currently mapping areas in the Philippines susceptible to storm surges during extreme weather conditions). Lagmay demurred, saying that he isn’t a meteorologist, and referred Pulido to the Philippine weather agency, PAGASA. Pulido was apparently offended enough to send Lagmay a text message berating him for “arrogance.”

In both instances, it was the network that made the fundamental mistake of arranging interviews with people whose knowledge and expertise, it should have known from the very beginning, would fall short of providing the information the interviewers wanted. But the interviewers themselves were still guilty of blaming the interviewees for their own network’s error, and for presuming that the interviewees were simply refusing to answer their questions out of spite or arrogance, despite their respective explanations.

What’s disturbing about Clavio and Pulido’s reactions was the assumption that an interviewee, when prodded, is duty-bound to answer the interviewer’s questions despite his having declined because he doesn’t have the information being solicited, or out of ethical considerations. (Legal ethics prevents lawyers from commenting on what their colleagues are doing in a case with which they are not involved, while academic collegiality demands that scientists acknowledge a colleague’s expertise.) It’s an indication of how deeply rooted in the media is that sense of entitlement and power that forgets, or has never  realized, that it’s the  interviewee who’s doing the media organization and the journalist a favor by  giving them the benefit of his or her time and knowledge.

Berating an interviewee whether on the air or off also has a bearing on the fundamental ethical and professional task of truth-telling. Although it’s counterproductive from a practical standpoint, it also creates enough bad feeling in the interviewees involved as well as in potential interviewees for them to refuse interviews in the future, thus denying the media the benefit of their knowledge when it’s needed for the sake of public information.

The media could do worse than to review the ethics of interviewing, which among others includes not arguing with the interviewee (it’s his views, for which you’re interviewing him, that are important, not yours), and asking intelligent questions (an expert shouldn’t be asked the ABCs of an issue that could easily have been researched on.)

Include in this shortened list the need for the journalist to hold his  tongue and to refuse to yield to the temptation to blame interviewees for his failure to get the information he wants. It’s both a matter of common courtesy as well as a practical necessity and an ethical responsibility.