For the last time (it won’t be the last time), you (talk radio hosts, news anchors, pundits) are not campaign workers. Your job isn’t to make your political guests comfortable.
I don’t know how many times we have to go over this, but in the wake of the stories about how a couple of hosts were fed questions by President Biden’s team in advance of an interview, I guess we have to go over it again,
First, it’s your show. You ask the questions, and you don’t have your guest write them. You do not work for them. Over the years, I’ve had interview subjects send me talking points or suggested questions, and I pitch them directly into the trash. You want to ask questions for which your audience wants answers, not the same answers you’d see everywhere else. You ask tough questions because that’s what a good host or anchor does.
And it doesn’t matter if you like the guest, or want them to win their election. The President shouldn’t get softball questions. Neither should his opponent. Sometimes, I suspect that those who interview Trump are just excited to have him on the show; nobody ever follows up when he doesn’t answer a question or flat-out lies. Biden doesn’t get the same adulation from his inquisitors, but he, too, gets off the hook when he should be challenged. No matter who your guest might be, or how much their publicist wants you to stick to the talking points, you should ask the hard questions and keep repeating them until you get an answer.
But, you say, ‘If I do that, the guest might walk off. The guest and publicist will get angry. You might not be able to book some other guests because you’ll get a reputation.’ If that concerns you, it shouldn’t. Guests who don’t want to answer your questions aren’t worth having. That goes for the President and his opponent as well.
What good is promoting a Trump or Biden interview if the segment doesn’t generate news or controversy? Are listeners going to be talking about that interview the next day or instantly forget it happened? The latter is how most radio interviews go, and that’s not worth all the sucking up to publicists and communications directors it takes to get them.
(A special place in Hell is being reserved for the radio and podcast hosts who charge the guests for interviews. If you’re doing that, you’re doing an infomercial. You might as well be Billy Mays demonstrating a super glue. Speaking of which, Billy Mays passed away 15 years ago; who decided, hey, we have these commercials in the can from 2009, let’s not waste them? Is it not creepy to have a dead guy pitching a product 15 years after his untimely demise? What was I saying?)
Oh, yeah, don’t sell your guest spots. It turns your show into a commercial, and you won’t ask any questions that might offend the paying client. Also, who wants to hear an infomercial? (There are exceptions, but that gets into the whole branded content thing, and we’ll deal with that some other time).)
To be clear, the Biden question situation is far from unique. Public relations and communications people have been fed talking points and questions for decades; I’ll date myself by noting that when I was a news/talk program director, we’d get the week’s Republican and Democratic Party talking points by fax. As I mentioned before, they did not get past the swift justice of my trash can. We did our own research, to borrow a phrase that means something different these days.
It made for better radio. You should strive for nothing less.
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A little housekeeping note: This is my last Thursday column. Next week, this thing will appear every Monday, so you can get every week off to a slightly irritated start. Fun for the whole family! Also, thank you to the folks who wished me a happy birthday last week. I’ll try to get back to all of you. It might take a while, not that I have a lot to do anyway.
Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
