Conversation can bear more fruit than endless confrontation

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

On the first morning of your first day at journalism college, a lecturer will stand there and tell you there’s only one golden rule to a perfect news story – you have to include the five w’s and h.

That’s who, what, when, where, why and how, and while there isn’t always a ‘why’ or a ‘how’, once you’ve gone through your checklist and confirmed to yourself that they don’t apply, then you’re good to go.

I know of one national broadcaster who still uses that as his only guide to a good interview; not that he doesn’t do loads of preparation because he does – but he knows that if all of those five points have been hit, he’s covered all bases.

The late David Hanly was a man who cut to the chase, and his growly Morning Ireland interviews with journalists or commentators often started with the simple question: “Tell us what you know.”

Which they duly did.

And because he Conversation can bear more fruit than endless confrontation was listening, as opposed to working his way through a list of clever questions, he got to the kernel of the story because he was working as a listener with the additional right to query.

Political interviews are a different matter of course, because if you started out asking them to tell you what they know, you might either fill the next hour with incessant rambling – or the sound of silence.

In that case, you have to pin them down – and yet it still comes back to the five w’s and h.

The problem is that too many broadcasters think it’s actually a debate and that the politician or representative on the other side of the table is their adversary. Sometimes they are of course, but often they’re not – and if you let them talk you might find that out.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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