Reporters under fire while trying to do their job

Journalists have had a tough week. First there was the reporter with The Washington Post who within hours of the breaking news that iconic basketball player Kobe Bryant (ooops, I had never heard of him!) had been killed in a helicopter crash, tweeted a link to a Daily Beast newspaper article from way back which detailed the charging of said basketball player with the rape of a 19-year-old girl in a hotel room; the reporter, Felicia Sonmez, was rebuked by her editor and suspended on the basis that she might have breached the paper's social media rules and damaged the paper's reputation. She has now been reinstated after the management decided she hadn't breached anything although the timing of her tweet was seen as unfortunate. Ha! My view? Truth will out, I'm sorry about the tragic death of a sports superstar but the rape charge, even though it was settled out of court with presumably lots of money handed over to the 19-year-old accuser, somewhat changed the glow of adoring words that appeared in every newspaper across the world. But Felicia could have waited 24 hours. Second there was the spat between National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly and Mike Pompeo, secretary of state. Pompeo was caught on the hop when she started asking him about Ukrainegate when he claimed he had only agreed to be questioned about Iran, and later took her to one side off-mike and berated her with four-letter words for daring to raise Ukraine. His role in the whole affair is still somewhat muddied. She then told the world what Pompeo had said to her, allegedly privately, in his burst of temper. Pompeo said his outburst was off the record and private but Kelly said he had never stipulated that his angry remarks were off the record. Oooops, Pompeo, you know the rules or should do by now. You have to state whether something is on the record, off the record, attributable or non-attributable or whatever, especially in the US where these ground rules are seen as of biblical importance. Ha again! My view on this one? Kelly claimed she had told Pompeo's staff that she would be raising Ukraine. I'm sure she did, but somehow Pompeo either wasn't informed or he wasn't listening. So he was taken by surprise by her questions on Ukraine. But hey, you're a grown-up politician, Pompeo, you should have answers to every question whether surprise ones or not. Being the secretary of state you must have known what Trump and Rudy Giuliani were doing in putting pressure on Ukraine's President Zelensky re the Bidens. So the questions were totally legitimate. As for the "private" scolding of Kelly after the interview, that smacks of heavyweight bullying. Not nice, and then the banning of an NPR reporter from joining him on his next foreign trip just underlined Pompeo's lust for revenge. Pretty unappetising. Then of course Trump had to weigh in by turning to Pompeo during the statement re his so-called peace initiative for Israel and Palestine and praising him for putting one on the NPR reporter. "You did a good job on her," he said with a smile. Yuk!! I don't know Kelly but I have had dealings with NPR. It's an excellent radio station with highly professional reporters. I'm sure Kelly is one of them. And third, there was the comment from Lord Tony Hall, outgoing BBC director-general, that the broadcaster's political journalists should be less aggressive when interviewing politicians. He said he didn't like it when interviewers tried to "catch out" politicians instead of allowing them to give uninterrupted answers. Well, he's right and he's wrong. It can be very irritating when a TV or radio interviewer constantly interrupts during a politician's answers, so much so that the interviwee never actually gets a chance to say what he/she believes he/she wants or ought to say. So, yes, slightly less of the "I'm the important one here and I want you to give me the answer I want you to give, NOW". But on the other hand, many senior politicians if unchecked just go on boringly with the Whitehall-agreed rubbish soundbites that mean very little and certainly go nowhere near answering the specific questions posed to them. Jeremy Paxman, the Great Interrupter, took his art too far and became so predictable every interview he did in his latter career tended to be about him and not the person he was interviewing. Other BBC notables have adopted the Paxman-style interrupting. My view? Provided the balance is right and the politicians can actually get across what they need to say, then robust questioning is both acceptable and necessary, and can be highly entertaining. Getting the balance right is key. Tony Hall clearly would not make a good political interviewer.