"Journalists are not your friends"

Earlier this week, I met a friend and former colleague on the Financial Times. Like us, his wife used to be a journalist. She now does something else, and has a very high profile.

He told me she was on the phone once, soon after making the transition to her new role, talking to a journalist.

“She was saying things like, ‘Oh, I understand, I’m one of you…’,” he told me.

We were in a restaurant, waiting for the food to arrive. I hadn’t seen him for about 14 years.

“And I thought, ‘No! No, no, no!’,” he continued.

“I wrote a sign on a piece of paper and waved it at her. It said, ‘Journalists are not your friends!’”

I told him about my ongoing plan to write a book about interviews and interviewing.

I told him I was troubled by the transactional nature of interviews. Who wins? If the interviewer wins, does the interviewee lose?

If they both win, does that mean the interview is a dud - or, to put it another way, does it mean the viewer / listener / reader loses?

Does it really have to be a winning v losing thing?

I don’t know the answer(s) yet. I guess that’s why I really want to write the book.