20110512 Good Interview and Bad Interview

Good Interview and Bad Interview

Through the movie, ‘All the President’s Men’

The movie, ‘All the President’s Men’ is a story of the two reporter in the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who discovered a Nixon’s Watergate scandal. This movie describes a course how they investigated the truth and report it. This movie shows us what the role of Journalism in society is. In addition we can see that what the good interview skill is or the bad interview skill is through the two reporter’s interview ways.

For good interview, Journalist should mention his or her identity and the purpose of the interview before beginning of the interview. In this movie, Bob Woodward always mentioned his name and his position as the Washington Post journalist. Moreover, good journalist is full of curiosity so he or she keeps ask question to find out the source and proof of the new. When the thief case in the democratic office happened, Bob Woodward went to the court to investigate this event. At that time he interviewed a lawyer with a curiosity of this case. Although a man did not want to answer, he kept asking questions and then he became to doubt on this case that in this case the former CIA member was also involved. As shown in this scene, Bob Woodward has an ability to gather the sources from interviewing people with detail.

There are also some bad interviews in this movie. When journalist interview, they should make an interview in the quiet place discovering the coverage. However, when Carl Bernstein interviewed a woman, he interviewed her in the open place that is noisy with the sound of driving cars without telling the coverage. Carl Bernstein is very impromptu, passionate and emotional person. Therefore when he interviewed people, it is hard to gather the sources logically. When he interviewed a woman who was a former secretary and knew a lot of hidden truth of the Democratic Party during the election period, he had an interview for 6 hours in her houses. Although she was afraid of answering his questions, he did a speculative interview. It is not a good interview skill. Interview time was too long and he forced to keep this interview going. Also when journalist make interview, they should confirm the interviewee correctly. Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein had a woman Evert. During the interview, they found some weird answers and asked her name again and they found out that they did interview to wrong person. They were supposed to interview Judith Evert, but actually they interviewed Carol Evert. For a good interview, journalist should confirm the source is right or not.

Although two journalists in the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had a totally different style and character as a journalist, they mixed different abilities and made a harmony as a good journalist called Woodstein. They became the pioneer of the investigating report in the journalism.