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1. The interview I watched was Jeremy Paxman BBC TWO televisioninterview with Christopher
Hitchens. Hitchens was a British American author, philosopher, polemicist, debater, and
journalist. The topic of the interview is reminiscing Hitchens life because at the time of the
interview Hitchens was suffering with cancer and died soon after the interview. This makes
the interview a hard news interview, because of all the talk of regrets and dying. Although
the interviewer did try to make it a little more light hearted with all the reminiscing of good
times.
In the interview there was hardly any introduction mainly because the interviewer knows
that the subject is used to being interview and knows he will be confident and comfortable
straight away. The very first question is a hard hitting and key question, Paxman asks the
Diagnosis of Hitchens cancer. It has the feel of a question that had to be done and got out of
the way by the way Paxman asks it. It then goes on to more developmental questions such
as questions like ‘does (Hitchens Illness) make him regret saying or doing anything?’ to
which the response created a lot more developmental questions because of the nature of
the answer Hitchens replies with no he doesn’t have any regrets, he only regrets not being
more ruthless, which obviously creates more questions.
Paxman used multiple communication skills throughout the interview, such as the use of
body language, when asking Hitchens about his cancer he put both of his hands to his
mouth which made the interviewer look sympathetic and caring to Hitchens situation he did
this obviously because it shows that you at least slightly care about the person you’re
interviewing and it also will make Hitchens feel more comfortable talking about it because
he know that Paxman is empathetic to his situation. There isn’t really any building of
rapport I expect because Hitchens is a veteran interviewee and Paxman has already
interviewed Hitchens so both people are already comfortable enough from the beginning to
dive straight into the proper questions instead of having to warm up the interviewee. The
use of active listening is also used simply by Paxman just nodding when he says something
he agrees with whilst Hitchens answers or smiling whilst he speaks.
Paxman knows that Hitchens is a great debater and speaker so most if not all the questions
are answered as if they were open. Even if they were intended to be closed questions. For
example an open question would be when Paxman asked ‘famously a man of strong
convictions and a very persuasive form of argument do you have any reason why?’ This
could be perceived as a closed Yes/No question but when asked to Hitchens he gets an open
answer. Another example of an open question is ‘Who needs to attack mother Teresa’
which obviously receives a long persuasive reason why.
The purposes of the interview are to allow audience insight to Hitchens illness and how is he
feeling, which obviously makes the interview have an emotional feel to it also. It also
provides information for the audience on subjects such as religion, politics and religious
leaders.