Political interviews: Pushing the boundaries of ‘neutralism’

Abstract

Ekström and Tolson focus on how the credibility of politicians and the professional norms of journalists are discursively negotiated in adversarial interviewing in election campaigns. The comparative analysis includes styles of interviewing in news and current affairs programs in the UK, Sweden, France, Greece and Italy. Conversation analysis is used to explore how journalists push the boundaries of impartiality in question formats, footings and sequences of questioning. Interviews in which politicians’ credibility was seriously challenged occurred in all countries. However significantly more aggressive and face-threatening questioning, than the typical accountability interviewing, occurred in three contexts: in forms of live interviewing performed by celebrity journalists; in specific program formats such as political talk shows; and in interviews with politicians whose views are positioned as deviant and outside the political mainstream.