Success in the arts; TV and radio commentary

Success in the art is a recorded program produced by Chicago undergraduate division of the University of Illinois under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. Today success in the art of television and radio commentary. The participants the commentator Len O'Connor of the NBC News staff in Chicago as critic Janet Kern radio and TV editor for the Chicago American and radio and TV columnist Brian asked the moderator for the series of Studs Terkel. I am Alfred Partridge supervisor of radio and television for the University of Illinois. Well with the reduction introductions over here this does Turkle to open the discussion. Well let's reverse the usual procedure in this instance and start with the teacher. How do you teach radio TV communications to your classes. What specifically do you teach your students in terms of becoming a defter practitioner in this medium.

That's tough question because I don't think you can teach them to be a deft practitioner in this medium and I haven't taught this particular subject for some time. But I think that the things that I would emphasize to a student. Are one that he should prepare. By knowing exactly what it is he's trying to do. If he is going to go into an interview or interview a person or be on a panel that is he trying to get just information. Anyway you can get it. Or is he trying to provoke the person into making revelations that he wouldn't normally make. Or is he really giving just a pitch for a given. Interesting personality on radio or television. So I think the first thing at least that I would suggest is that he very carefully decide what it is he's after what he's trying to do. And I'll leave it there and you can throw it open to the rest of them and we can come

back to it. Let's toss this into a couple of practitioners in the fields a little Conner here and Janet Kern did want to take up the ball here if you will. Well the feeling I get from your question is how the family gets into the field of radio and television to begin life. And assuming that. Most of the people listening to this are college kids who are interested in it. I think it's kind of an accident that's flavored with their own inclinations and their sense of knowledge and their own curiosities. Somebody who aspires to get into this field Well he's got to have a background of general things. I think that there is room in the news business for somebody like that. Thought of the New York Times as a scientist actually. That's just field guys by Scotty Reston of The New York Times who specialize in politics. But before they did that when

they did other things and they got into it slowly and I think by the time we get into this field of reading on television whether you want to specialize in news is not exactly of your own choice it is decided for you by the management. You know it is a matter of specialization has it might be in some other fields. Yes it does I think that land passed over rather quickly an important point and that is that your radio and TV news people come from one of two backgrounds. Either they are news man first meaning they have a good background in reporting and in coping with new is and they then move from print media into radio and television which is the same as changing jobs from one publication to another. Are there people in radio on television who through accident are managerial dictum. I put into news coverage and you have two entirely different types of people there because on the one hand you have what

those of us in the news trade may admire the most and that is your good well-trained experienced practitioner of the newsgathering art. And on the other hand you have something which is very valuable in radio and television. The proficient person that what they project are the good performer in the field of news and you get two entirely different types of job. I think from these two backgrounds that only rarely do you come across somebody as if you're part of a small plug my friend Mr O'Connor over here who happens to be a very fine newsman. A good reporter a good interviewer a good experience news gatherer who is also incidentally blessed with the kind of personality which attract an audience. Because don't forget that already on television a commentator or news caster who has his own show operate under his own name is as much bound by ratings and sponsors as is a performer which is not the case

whether with reporters and other media bringing up the you have a reading here or you don't have a sponsor. Well that's a consideration and that's somewhat what I had in mind but I think that. Speaking to college people who aspire to get into the news and the radio and television. The basic requirement is a disposition toward this kind of work. That's the first I this kind you need ready on television I mean use words I mean you and I was working on a news commentary and he was gathering. I mean any phase of the news business I think you've got to have an inclination to it you might have somebody alongside of you in college or sharing a room with you was a biology major. He certainly is no good at going out to the morgue to cover a story although pursuing his own field what he can tell you more about what's going on in the morning reporter never would be able to assume that a great many listeners have the inclination are in college and would like very much to enter the

field of radio and TV commentary. A question comes up Janet raised the point both used the phrase a newsgathering. Now what about this matter of gathering news and offering it. Where does his point of view allowed. Or must one be objective. May I answer that and then one can disagree with me. I'd say that has two answers. Like every coin it has two sides on the one hand. I don't believe that there is any human being who is devoid of a point of view on any subject which is important. Everybody has a point of view you can't avoid them. But when it comes to expression a point of view I think that there is a point at which it is allowed and a point at which it is not. And here you fall back on the thing which I consider is most vital in this field. After you have the inclination and such other things. Experience when your point of view is an educated point of view educated both in new is and in the field that you're covering. And by being educated in news I mean knowing the difference between viewpoint and bias and prejudice.

When you have achieved something in your field then you are entitled to express your point of view. When you were a neophyte or a cub you were not. If I can just cite one example when I was in school and thinking in terms of news I had a great yen to start out at the top as everybody does. And when I was a junior in Northwestern University if you don't mind my plucking the competition I one day grad Mr. Carroll Binder who at that time was the foreign editor of The Chicago Daily News my competition now and told him that I'd like a job as a foreign correspondent or a columnist and he told me then you don't start from there. And my father very wisely said don't expect to go out and foist your opinions on the public until you become somebody whose opinions they're interested. And I think that this is an important thing when people start out in the news field. They are not entitled to opinion public opinions or public viewpoints when they become established and people know them as authorities in their field.

Then they are entitled to express their opinions. You're saying that point of view was a privilege to be earned and that's something you. Oh right off the bat get the idea. I don't call it so much a privilege just as when you meet somebody for the first time studs you don't greet them with. I hate jazz I love classical music. I'm a Republican and I hate the Democrats. This is something you discussed with people when you know them well. So I feel that a newsman does not start expressing opinions until his readers or his listeners know him well and therefore can evaluate his opinions. How do you feel about this man as a practitioner. Well the bulk of information that's put up by radio and television stations and networks. Is based upon wire copy. This is supposed to be objective copy comes from the AP the UPN and US and other sources. A man who rewrites this material for broadcast either by himself or by somebody else. I think he has the obligation to retain that objectivity. The

other side of the coin is the father who goes out and actually covers stories as they develop. And talks to people who are making the news or who have some influence upon it. And when he talks to those people and he sees the situation right first hand. And if he's a guy of some intelligence he may see a lot of things that never creep into that object of wire because objectivity and news coverage can become sterile. And in presenting the objective point of view many stories. You are neglecting the truth of the issue. You're not telling the story actually you're being so object of that you might just as well have stayed home and this interests me and I'd like to pursue it a moment if I might studs because I think this is essentially one of the things which we neglect many times in this business learn when you are preparing for an interview or for a city desk or one of the programs where you're going to be

asking questions. How do you go about preparing for it. Well it depends upon who the victim is going to be. If you if you take my particular case I cover local matters but I also talk to national figures and I cover Mundine things and spectacular things till I obviously and spot news you don't and you don't prepare much fart. Although I think when the father goes out to cover a file on fire he at least ought to know where the fire as and who occupies the building and other essentials of that kind. When you talk to some political figure particularly in an election year. I think you would kind of insult the guy if you didn't know exactly what he stood for. And you get a question. When you take Mr Benson the secretary of agriculture. You may differ with him personally. But your objective viewpoint

makes it mandatory that you at least know what his viewpoint is and that's your starting point and from that basis yes you have to do some have to do some homework you have to do a little bit of it before you go out. It's ridiculous when when you go to interview somebody or you see somebody interviewing somebody or you hear it and obviously the man asking the questions can ask any questions because he doesn't know what he's talking about. Let me pursue this if I may just one more point. I watched you operate many times land and the thing that interests me most is the way you can change something that is you don't let him get away with Rog statements you're going to go after him. When you prepare to interview this person do you for instance find things where you think Kelly's hero is where he is soft or weak. Get those things so that if you want to open him up you can probe him at that point and get him angry or upset enough so that he isn't guarded in what he said as you go about it that

way. Well Al I I personally am kind of a guy who charges that the one with a microphone and I do feel a certain obligation as a person and as a fellow in this business. To get the truth out of somebody whether he wants to acknowledge the truth or not. Not in that regard. I will pursue a man if. If you get a political situation. Where a national figure starts to give you double talk I think then you have a sympathetic field if I can call it that. The listener knows that you're getting double cocked and he doesn't like it and he gives you a little bit of latitude in his own judgment to go after this fellow. So if you start putting the squeeze on him and saying that's not what you said yesterday and he said oh yes it is and then you say oh no that's not what you said yesterday yesterday you said and you quote it

and then if he says he said well I really didn't say that. Well here it is in my pocket and you pull out a clip and you want to look at it. You see with tape which is what I work with a great deal. I don't care what he says whether it's a decent expression or not. A lot of people. Confuse you by getting a little blue or small when you're getting close to them they figure that you can't use this. Well certainly you can't buy that easy to edit tape so I just let them talk. And as far as man that you want to use 2 minutes talk for 30 minutes he can talk for 3 hours if he wants to keep talking because eventually we'll get around to what I want to discuss. And this is what i'll never quote anybody out of context. But this is really what I want to me to prove. Yes that's right so you do go after most of these people with a certain idea I don't want to talk to somebody who gets off a train and I am saying we got a beautiful city in Chicago it's realized a your mare is a great mare and

certainly put up a lot of belly since I was here last. She certainly got a lot of pretty girls here. This is not in my soul to avoid cliches then it's question more than fine with you mentioned homework earlier too Jenny was about that I guess I want to say one thing here and that is that. The question that Mr Partridge raised the prep the preparation and also the technique I think is pretty much determined by the story not vice versa. In other words the difference between a reporter who is experienced in his area and one who is not. It boils down to many things but one of them is you know your customers. Now you will know that one man will not tell you the truth. Then tell it unless you get a man he's so polished. If ever another man you know if he gets mad may clam up or walk out and you don't want to make him mad so that all reporters pursue the truth. But they have to use different techniques with different people. But along the line of what Len said about doing your homework and knowing what a person stands for

I'd say the first thing that any reporter must know is not to insult the interviewee right off the bat. And there's nothing more insulting I have found in a prominent person than I have somebody I know nothing about them. If I can throw in just one anecdote here I remember a number of years ago there was a great deal of talk that Arthur Godfrey was very rude to the press and in one case he had walked out on an interviewer. And we were talking about it one day and I said did you do it and he said yes and I said why and he said I will always walk out on any interviewer who can make an appointment with me takes my valuable time and opens the question with Mr. Godfrey when were you born. Because I feel whatever is a matter of record in official biography is available in any newspaper morgue. They have a good reporter has no business wasting my time asking that he should read and come in and ask me something nobody ever asked before. And I think that's true. So a couple of Credo come out of this immediately one avoid cliches avoid that which is available elsewhere publicly.

Research you mentioned homework. I bet we should touch on that just a bit. Well as you know if you have a question of a legislative measure. I think it's incumbent upon you. To read say the New York Times that's the third time I've mentioned Thank you. But I mean it was that on CBS I would not have. Well I do too. You have to have a background of information. And as far as insulting anybody is concerned. I never necessarily insult anybody I certainly don't belittle them but to me it's really believe it or not. My my feeling toward the guy is total disinterest. I mean all I want is information. I don't care what he does in his private life. If it's not pertaining to the story I just don't want anybody standing up there and lying to me. That's what I don't like. That's the essence of good reporting really. But as far as homework is concerned I think both the word background that you used and the fact of homework that in the long

run and this is a purely personal opinion and one with which Len may disagree given three or four equally able equally experienced reporters. The difference between a bad one a good one and extraordinary one is the amount of homework that he does and the amount of background that he assimilates because a reporter's questions are good and effective in direct proportion to how much he knows about the field which he is discussing. You can't fool a man who knows his subject you can fool a man who doesn't know it. And in addition to that if you take a very simplified example if 20 articles have been written in 10 years about a man. The reporter who has read five of these will have a pretty good idea of what the man's viewpoint is what he stands for. The man who has read 10 of these articles will come up with a couple of things that make good questions. The man who has read all 20 really knows this man and from these statements and previous interviews he gets leads for

questions. He gets additional facets on the person so future type of things are things we have a time for preparation. I would say the more preparation you do the more homework you do the better your story is going to be. But spot new is where a story breaks you can't do preparation of the formal type and there your preparation has to be your years of experience and background in the field. How much of these facts about the situation or the individual do you already have in your own mind. Well if I may put in two cents you have to have an appetite for information and you've got to have it as a steady thing. You've got to read a good deal even when you're doing the kind of work I do because today you may be talking to the mayor of a city about a specific thing relating to a political problem in his city or maybe to something in the city itself.

Then the next day you might be talking to somebody from the Far East Middle East who has a great. Contribution to make if you can get it out of them about the Suez problem. In the next day and maybe time to time. No my argument is that you cannot do this and an hour's notice I mean is it's a way of life you either follow this or you don't and if you do in a brief period you can get yourself sharpened to go after anybody you know. Actually this to me if anybody could get through and it really explain to the young people who want to come into news gathering the deep truth and the broad truth of the one phrase that land used and that is that the entire field of news and reporting is a way of life and it is not an eight hour a day job it's a 24 hour a day job seven days a week. And since this is going to college students and our bosses won't hear it I think we can tell the truth. In my experience the only really good reporters are the

ones who while they want to be paid well do it for nothing if they had to if they could support their family some other way because this is in the blood. They love it and I don't want to buy that. And I know you would if you inherited a million dollars today and you were sitting on your porch out there in the suburbs and you heard a five alarm fire you'd be out after it. I can't even hear a fire engine at night. I don't think that we can expand on this just a bit. Len and Janet both you mentioned the matter of background of understanding the subject. When you spoke in terms of interviewing figures international nationally known recently you did a very remarkable series and you've been doing Quincy. They spoke to a stranger wasn't it was the doctor talking to a stranger they talked to a stranger. What about your preparation for this is a specific problem. One of the burning problems of our day. How did you know if you were a juvenile delinquent. Well you just talk you talk from a background of a knowledge of the city and you talk from a background I think a

certain human feeling toward people. And a certain understanding of poverty and the difficulties that arise. You talk from background. To Mama Jeanne thanks for that a little bit of it. How do you get them to talk. I think that the reason the kids talked to me was that nobody ever asked them any questions but. Sometimes it was rather difficult. And they were quite suspicious of me. I mean they had all served time and they were rather some of them were serving time when I talked to them and they weren't very sympathetic toward this thing. And I'd come out clean and I say it won't do you any good but it probably won't do you any harm or don't mean much good and it didn't. But here's a chance to say something. And so having asked them why then they got tough. You know once you get somebody talking the CDC has a question and I know you were jesting himself to the subject. I mean from here on this is that you have you know you

have to do. I'd like to say one thing if I could. There are really. In my opinion there are really three ways of interviewing. I'm not talking about specific techniques but the pencil reported the fellows who work for the wire services the newspapers they have a difficult job in one respect that the fellow won't sit still for what he tells you often strike things from the record that he already has set. And they've got to go back and they've got to get his editing what he said. If they're going to give a true report of what transpired when you get a man on tape. He's a little bit reluctant to say I didn't mean what I told you five minutes ago. I've got that wrong. However he still has a little room to negotiate and he's trying to run away from me he can do it pretty good because you can't leave a room where a man does reverse the field and cut him up and cut him out of

context. But I don't live television show panel show. Here you've got a guy who can't run. You ask him a question he's going to sit there. He can duck the question but I'm ducking the question. He's acknowledging a position. And if the questions are unfair he's got you. But if you've got fair questions and you can. You really want to know what I think of the interview it's nothing but syllogisms. That's the whole thing leads to another and you get into the first one and he's gone. If he's wrong he's got the immediacy of the thing. He likes it or not you know. And let's say the other side of the same coin that Len just gave in any kind of interviewing. I think basically one of the great weapons that any interviewer has is his ability in that given situation with that given person to inspire confidence. And there's no doubt I think you will

agree with this that Len O'Connor walking into a Chicago city hall or Janet Curren walking into the broadcasting network office will get more information from somebody that a total stranger when the interviewer does not know. However. When you get in there. Or when you're somebody that the interviewer knows on past experience has confidence in. Then you get. As Atlanta says before the live cameras you can't run before a tape. He has a little leeway and with the pencil reporter's lens for that he can. Edit himself. This is true in a sense and in a sense it is not because many people just people for instance are good enough skilled enough that they can handle an interview in front of a live camera fairly well and possibly they can handle cliches well enough that while they don't fool reporters they may fool the audience and they are limited in time and and in the public nature of the interview.

Whereas the pencil reporters so-called can go and sit down with somebody and has the great advantage. Being able to make the interview forget he is being interviewed which LAN is able to do with take a great deal more than many people can live to. Once you get a person started talking I don't think there's a human being alive who doesn't love the sound of his own voice and if he thinks he is a sympathetic listener as he gets wound up. He will be able to. He will talk more and the pencil interviewer who doesn't take out a pencil and just sits back and listens and lets them talk for an hour or two hours. We'll get his story eventually. Or curse the dangerous thing is that a man who is friendly to you is an enemy of yours actually. I mean I much prefer to work with people I don't know because there's too much of this off the record stuff. And if you watch watch the big wheels of this news business interview some national figure generally they're satisfied with a handout or whatever that man wants to say.

And to me that's not doing the job and I disagree with you and I must say I don't take off the record stuff except for background material when on this saucy peppery note I think during this this interview to a close on the art of interviewing my two very excellent practitioners in this field Connor and Janet Carey Snow thank you very much. This has been a discussion of success in the art of commentary. The participants the commentator Len O'Connor of NBC News staff in Chicago has critic Janet Kern radio and TV editor for the Chicago American and radio and TV columnist for ins. The moderator for the entire series is Studs Terkel. I'm Alfred Partridge supervisor of radio and television for the University of Illinois. Success in the arts is a recorded program produced by Chicago undergraduate division of the University of Illinois under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center. This program is distributed by the National Association of educational

broadcasters. This is the end E.B. Radio Network.