Steven E. Clayman

Displaying Neutrality in Television News Interviews

This paper examines the nature and practice of journalistic neutrality in television news interviews. The aim is to describe the underlying speaking practices through which neutrality is regularly conveyed by news interviewers in interaction with their guests. Data are drawn from a variety of U.S. news interview programs, emphasizing Nightline and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Three procedures are analyzed: 1) embedding statements within questions, 2) attributing statements to third parties, and 3) mitigating. While interviewers use these procedures routinely, they also invoke the first two in specifically hostile environments, suggesting that they serve a significant defensive function. Throughout this analysis, attention is also directed to the actions of interviewees to determine how they may preserve or undermine the interviewers neutral stance. I conclude that neutrality is not inherent in interviewers or their actions considered in isolation, for the visibility of this “trait” is a collaborative achievement in which interviewees play a significant role.

Gatekeeping in action: Editorial conferences and assessments of newsworthiness

The authors study how newspaper editors, in conference meetings, jointly determine which stories will appear on the front page. Previous research on editorial gatekeeping has identified various standards of newsworthiness that serve as selection criteria. They focus on the actual practices through which gatekeeping decisions are rendered. They provide an overview of the primary phases of activity in conference meetings, identify various practices for promoting stories as page-one material, and analyze in detail one particular practice - verbal assessments of newsworthiness. They find that editors display a systematic preference for mildly favorable assessments over both stronger and weaker ones, apparently because restrained support enables them to maintain solidary relations with reporters and editorial colleagues. Moreover assessment favorability is significantly associated with gatekeeping outcomes

Reformulating the question: A device for answering/not answering questions in news interviews and press conferences

When responding to questions from journalists, public figures sometimes answer straightforwardly, but they may also attempt to evade the question. This paper analyzes one particular response practice that can play a r öle in both processes. Before answering, public figures may first paraphrase or reformulate the preceding question. Question reformulations may serve to indicate how a complex question will be dealt with, but they may also enable the public figure to sidestep the question. Journalists have the capacity to recognize and counter evasive reformulations when they occur, while public officials can employ such reformulations in ways that resist detection. Question reformulations are more common in press Conferences than in news Interviews, largely because press Conference turn-taking arrangements (particular ly the absence offollow-up questions) embody the specific conditions that give rise to question reformulations.

When Does the Watchdog Bark? Conditions of Aggressive Questioning in Presidential News Conferences

In theories of the journalism-state relationship, the watchdog model of journalism competes with other models emphasizing either subservient or oppositional relations. Since actual journalistic practice is circumstantially variable, this study isolates the social conditions associated with aggressive journalism. Data are drawn from presidential news conferences from 1953 to 2000, and the focus is on the aggressiveness of the questions asked therein. Through multivariate models, four sets of explanatory conditions are explored: (1) the administration life cycle, (2) presidential popularity, (3) the state of the economy, and (4) foreign affairs. Results show (1) no evidence of a firstterm honeymoon period, but significantly more aggressive questions during second terms, (2) the presidents Gallup job approval rating is not a significant independent predictor of aggressiveness, (3) both the unemployment rate and the prime interest rate are positively associated with aggressiveness, and (4) questions about foreign affairs are significantly less aggressive than questions about domestic affairs, and this differential has been stable for at least a half-century. We conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of these findings, which show that journalists modulate their conduct in complex ways that do not readily map onto any single model.

The Production of Punctuality: Social Interaction, Temporal Organization, and Social Structure

Social occasions can be distinguished by the degree to which their temporal length is locally variable or predetermined. Using the live television news interview as an extreme example of the latter, this paper describes how an interactional encounter is brought to a close at a prespecified time. The larger aim is to explore linkages between the organization of interaction and institutional forms generally regarded as social structural in character. The closing process is first examined in casual conversation, which has a variable duration. News interview closings are then examined and are shown to adhere to a systematically modified format that provides for closing at a prearranged time. It is suggested in conclusion that sociotemporal and institutional structures are reproduced through the situated adaptation of generic interactional mechanisms, and that this formulation preserves the integrity of both interaction and social structure while providing for their interconnection.

Tribune of the people: maintaining the legitimacy of aggressive journalism

Public service is both an ideal that journalists aspire to, and a resource that they invoke strategically to maintain the legitimacy of their more aggressive conduct. Using a database of transcripts from broadcast news interviews in the USA, this article examines the circumstances under which journalist-interviewers present themselves as asking questions on behalf of the general public. Journalists deploy the practice selectively, most notably when engaged in aggressively probing or adversarial lines of questioning. This is because aligning with the public neutralizes and legitimates a question, and thereby increases the pressure on the interviewee to be forthcoming in response. This practice tends to be effective in inducing public figures to acquiesce to aggressive forms of questioning. Moreover, recurrent use of this practice affects the public image of journalism itself, giving it a distinctly populist cast.

Sequence and solidarity

This paper develops a conversation analytic perspective on social solidarity, focusing on the organized practices through which solidary relations are maintained within interaction. Previous research on preference organization is reviewed and synthesized, and it is demonstrated that this robust mode of organization tends to suppress discordant actions while promoting solidary actions. The suppression of discordant actions involves practices that: (1) mitigate such actions, as well as; (2) minimize the likelihood of their occurrence. Conversely, solidary actions tend to be: (1) not mitigated; and (2) delivered in ways that maximize the likelihood of their occurrence.

When the medium become the message: The case of the rather‐Bush encounter

(1988). When the medium become the message: The case of the rather‐Bush encounter. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 22, No. 1-4, pp. 241-272.

Caveat orator: Audience disaffiliation in the 1988 presidential debates

This paper examines the intersection between speech and the collective behavior of the audience in the 1988 U.S. presidential debates. More specifically, it concerns those audience responses which were unfavorable or disaffiliative in character: booing and disaffiliative laughter. Each response type occurred regularly in a delimited range of speech environments. Booing was restricted to environments in which a candidate was derisively criticizing the opposition; specifically, booing occurred only when a criticism could be regarded as somehow improper or when others had begun to respond favorably to it. Disaffiliative laughter occurred when the candidates were talking about themselves, most commonly when a candidate was responding inadequately to criticism voiced earlier. Various rhetorical maneuvers were thus differentially vulnerable to specific forms of audience disaffiliation.

Address terms in the service of other actions: The case of news interview talk:

In broadcast news interviews, interviewees will occasionally address the interviewer by name. As a method of establishing the directionality of talk, address terms are redundant in this institutional context because the normative question/answer activity structure and associated participation framework make the direction of address transparent and knowable in advance. But address terms can be deployed in the service of a variety of actions beyond addressing per se. Some of these involve disaligning actions such as topic shifts, non-conforming responses, and disagreements. Others involve the presentation of views as particularly significant or sincere. Address terms are thus a resource for managing certain expressive properties of talk, as well as its disalignment from prior talk.