16 October 2003
Broadcasting Standards Authority
PO Box 9213
WELLINGTON
Dear Sir/Madam:
BROADCASTING
STANDARDS COMPLAINT
EDWARDS AT LARGE - 16 AUGUST 2003
This
is a formal complaint under the Free To Air Television
Code of Broadcasting Practice. My complaint is that the first segment of Edwards
at Large on Saturday 16 August, in which I was interviewed by Dr Brian
Edwards, breached the following standards of the code:
·
Standard 4 (Balance), Guideline 4a: Programmes which deal
with political matters, current affairs, and questions of a controversial
nature, must show balance and impartiality; and
·
Standard 6 (Fairness), Guideline 6b: Contributors and participants in any
programme should be dealt with fairly and should, except as required in the
public interest, be informed of the reason for their proposed contribution and
participation and the role that is expected of them.
In
summary, my complaint is that I was ambushed into taking part in an interview
that was no more than a sustained attack on my character and credibility, and
that in making that attack Dr Edwards did not act as an independent and
impartial broadcaster.
This complaint has been rejected by TVNZ.
I am enclosing:
·
My complaint to TVNZ, which comprised: a covering letter, a
transcript of the interview [Appendix 1]; extracts from a television review and
from comments posted on nz.general and nz.politics newsgroups [Appendix 2]; a detailed analysis of
the interview [Appendix 3].
·
The response from TVNZ’s Programme
Standards Manager, David Edmund.
In
essence, TVNZ’s argument is that I was not ambushed,
that Dr Edwards was using the legitimate interview technique of ‘playing devil’s
advocate’, and that he was not following a political agenda.
It is clear from Mr Edmunds’ response that TVNZ has not properly considered my
complaint. His letter does not address, or indeed even acknowledge, two key
elements of my complaint: the extracts from viewers’ comments (Appendix 2); and
my detailed analysis of the programme (Appendix 3). The existence of these
appendices is clearly indicated in my covering letter. They provide crucial
support for my complaint. Whether they were deliberately ignored or merely
overlooked, TVNZ’s failure to take them into consideration
is inexcusable. Also, while Mr Edmunds outlines what is meant by ‘playing devil’s
advocate’, he does not address the distinction - critical to this complaint -
between ‘playing devils’ advocate’ and ‘doing a hatchet job’. Furthermore, Mr
Edmunds’ account of the events leading up to and following the interview is
inconsistent with other accounts of these events given by Dr Edwards, and with
my own records.
THE INTERVIEW:
The comments quoted in Appendix 2 show that viewers regarded Dr Edwards interview
with me as a politically motivated hatchet job. The quoted comments are from a
published review, and from messages posted on the nz.general
and nz.politics newsgroups. Following the interview,
I also received a lot of personal mail - from acquaintances and strangers alike
- making the same point, but since these correspondents may have been
predisposed to be sympathetic to my views, I did not include them in my
submission. The significance of the comments from the newsgroups is that they
were unprompted by any pre-existing interest in the topic, or by any
pre-existing sympathy for me (some viewers could not even spell my name). Most
of these viewers had tuned in to watch the Edwards/Hide interview, and had
ended up watching the earlier interviews in the programme more or less by
default.
In his letter to me, Mr Edmunds states: ‘The committee noted that there is a
difference between a perception that an interviewer may [be] compromised
as far as impartiality is concerned (because of political links,
or connection with some cause or other) and the reality of that
interviewer’s performance.’ However, the viewers’ comments make it clear that
their primary concern was with the reality of Dr Edwards’
performance. Their references to Edwards’ political links appear to be no more
than an attempt to explain his otherwise inexplicable conduct.
TVNZ promotional material describes Brian Edwards as ‘New Zealand’s best
listener’ and ‘one of the country’s best interviewers’, and his programme as an
‘intimate talkshow’. His producer John Keir told the Herald that the show would ‘focus on
personalties, not issues’. ‘It will be relaxed, it will be probing but it
certainly won’t be aggressive,’ he said.
Yet viewers’ descriptions of Edwards’ interview with me included comments like:
‘openly partisan’, ‘very slick denigration’, ‘hectoring, sneering tone’, ‘poisonous’,
‘hostile’, ‘harassment’, ‘appallingly bad’, ‘attempted hatchet job’, ‘bullying’,
‘pathetic’, ‘stupid’ and ‘biased’.
With the unbalanced and unfair nature of the programme so blindingly obvious to
viewers, it is difficult to regard Edmunds’ claim that TVNZ’s
Complaints Committee ‘could not find any evidence that Dr Edwards was being
partial in his approach’ as anything other than disingenuous, self-serving and wrong.
Does the TVNZ Complaints Committee really not know the difference between ‘playing
devil’s advocate’ and ‘doing a hatchet job’? Lest there be any confusion on
this matter, I shall spell it out.
If I were a journalism lecturer explaining this point to students, the lecture
would go something like this:
Doing a hatchet job is not the same thing as playing
devil’s advocate. These two types of interviews differ in several fundament
ways:
AIM:
* The aim of playing devil’s advocate is to
challenge your subject to explain and justify his/her life and work to viewers.
* The aim of doing a hatchet job is to undermine the credibility of your
subject.
BACKGROUND PREPARATION:
* To play devil’s advocate, you need to do your homework. Familiarise
yourself with your subjects’ life and work. Read it, and read about it.
Identify areas that viewers will find puzzling, interesting, or upsetting.
Familiarise yourself with any areas of controversy and be prepared to explore
them.
* To do a hatchet job, you don’t need to worry about what your subject
has done, or why he or she has done it. All you need to do is pick out a few
superficial points - the more irrelevant and trivial the better.
PREPARING THE QUESTIONS:
* To play devil’s advocate you need to ask challenging questions that
encourage your subject to provide information and engage in debate. Questions
starting with ‘How..’, ‘What...’, ‘When..’, ‘Why...’
and ‘Who...’ work best. Avoid questions that invite simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’
answers, or require no answers at all. To be a credible interviewer you need to
remain scrupulously neutral, so make it clear that you are asking the hard
questions on behalf of other parties, or on behalf of viewers. e.g. ‘X says
that your results have been disproved .... What’s your response to that?’ or ‘There’ll
be viewers out there saying that you.... What have you got to say to them?
* To do a hatchet job you don’t need to ask questions at all. Just
prepare a series of accusatory statement with which to bombard your subject. If
you can’t find anything to attack in the irrelevant and trivial points you have
selected, misrepresent those points and then attack the misrepresentations.
Construct your accusations using denigratory language.
Present your statements as matters of fact (e.g. ‘You claim that....[even if your subject has claimed nothing of the
sort]),or as the interviewer’s own opinion (e.g. ‘What concerns me about
your claims is..’). A hatchet job is an
attack by the interviewer on the subject, so you don’t need to worry about
representing viewers.
CONDUCTING THE
INTERVIEW
* When playing devil’s advocate it is important to listen carefully to
your subject’s answers to your questions. Ask clarifying or follow-up
questions if the answers are unclear, incomplete or contradictory. Challenge
your subject with opposing views, but remain scrupulously neutral and courteous
while doing so. Make it clear that you are not picking a fight with your
subject, but are asking questions on behalf of other parties, or on behalf of
your viewers. If your subject fudges his/her response, or refuses to answer,
point this out. Invite your subject to give a clear answer. Clarify the
response, or lack of response, for the benefit of viewers. Then move on to the
next question.
* When doing a hatchet job, fire your accusatory statements at
your subject. Repeat each accusation several times for emphasis. Ignore, talk
over or reject your subject’s answers (unless your subject stumbles over a
reply, in which case you should seize on the stumble as an example of your
subject’s inadequacies).
When
considered against these criteria, Dr Edwards’ interview with me falls into the
hatchet-job category (see Appendices 1 & 3 [A1 & A3], and the analysis
below). Because Edwards’ is an experienced interviewer, I am bound to conclude
that he knew what he was doing, and that he set out with that purpose in mind:
BACKGROUND
PREPARATION:
Some of the assertions Dr Edwards made in the course of his interview with me could
indicate that he had read A City Possessed and the related reviews and
feature articles, but had chosen to ignore or misrepresent them (e.g. in his
claim that I was biased in my approach [A1- p.2-3], or in his bizarre
misrepresentation of my comments about Christchurch [A1- p. 2-4]). However, his
claim [A1- p.6] - ‘You have I think seven children who say they were indecently
assaulted... Seven kids say that’ - was not a misrepresentation, it was a
mistake. If Edwards had read A City Possessed as part of his
preparation, he would have known that one of those children had fully retracted
her allegations. Also, the points on which Edwards chose to base the interview
on were for the most part trivial or irrelevant [see A3].
PREPARING THE QUESTIONS:
During the entire interview, Dr Edwards asked only one genuine
information-seeking question. It also happened to be the first question in the
interview (A1 - p.1: ‘Two of the young people ... have now come out ... What is
your response to that?’). Throughout the rest of the interview, he moved from
one accusatory statement to the next (e.g. ‘You have this absolutely curious
view of Christchurch [A1 - p.2]’, ‘..you were not
present at any of these trials ... You weren’t there. [A1 -
p.4]’). Some accusations were presented in the interrogatory form, but
were accusations nonetheless (e.g. ‘You wonder how much is going to happen
before people like you are going to be satisfied ... How much more do you need?
[A1 - p.2]). Many accusations were gross
misrepresentations of my findings [see A3]. Many accusations were couched in
the language of derogation and personal attack (e.g. ‘..it
seems to me you started off with an absolute mindset’ ‘You started off with
that mindset didn’t you?’, ‘...there was this mindset before you started
writing.[A1 - p.2-3]’; ‘..another thing that concerns me about your book is the
amount of which you might call ad hominem attack on people you disagree
with ... this is a personal attack on the people giving evidence [A1- p.7-8,
see also A3]’).
CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW:
Throughout the interview, Dr Edwards talked over, ignored or rejected my
responses to his accusations [see A3]. While several examples could be quoted,
the most egregious was his failure to allow me to respond to the accusation that
I had made an ad homininem attack on the Crown’s
expert witness, Dr Karen Zelas. This accusation is blatantly untrue, and a
defamatory attack on my professional integrity.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO AND FOLLOWING
THE INTERVIEW:
Dr Edwards has now given several, often conflicting, versions of the events
leading up to and following his interview with me (in his conversation with an
acquaintance following his meeting with Phil Goff; in Phil Goff’s response to a
parliamentary question; in TVNZ’s response to my complaint; and in Dr Edwards’
guest lecture to students at the University of Auckland). These various
versions address a wide range of issues, including, among other things: when Dr
Edwards met Phil Goff and what they discussed; whether Dr Edwards has read A
City Possessed, and, if so, when, and how many times; what influences were
brought to bear upon Dr Edwards prior to his interview with me; why Dr Edwards
thought I wanted to appear on his show; what he thought I was expecting; and
why he thinks I laid a BSA complaint.
To avoid muddying the waters any further, I shall confine my comments to two
issues: Dr Edwards’ political agenda, and my concern that I had been ambushed.
In the light of his role as media advisor to government ministers, the
importance of conducting a scrupulously fair and balanced interview on such a
politically contentious issue as the Christchurch Civic Creche case should have
been obvious to Dr Edwards. Yet - as viewers’ comments and my own analysis demonstrates - it was a hostile and unprofessional
interview. My BSA complaint is based on Dr Edwards
conduct of the interview. His motivation for that conduct is another matter.
All things considered, and in the absence of any other satisfactory
explanation, it is seems reasonable to suppose that his conduct was politically
motivated.
It is common ground that Dr Edwards invited me onto his talkshow
and I accepted enthusiastically. The reasons for my enthusiasm are outlined in
my original complaint. I had written one of the most praised and talked-out
books published in New Zealand in recent years. Over the almost two years since
my book was published, a steady stream of authors of potboilers,
bodice-rippers, cookbooks, travel books, sport books, gardening books and every
other sort of book you could mention had been interviewed about their life and
work on TVNZ. But I had not. When Edwards asked me on his show, I thought the
drought had broken.
Edwards appears to believe that I wanted to use his programme as a platform to
argue the case for a commission of inquiry into the creche case. This sounds like the sort of concern a politician opposed to
an inquiry would voice, but it had no basis in reality. I had no expectations
of that sort at all. First, because I understood Edwards at Large to be
a chatshow, not a current affairs show. Second,
because I just wanted to talk about my book (it’s an author thing). Also, had
Edwards done his homework, he would have known that in all the talks and media
interviews I have given nationwide, I have discussed the issues raised in A
City Possessed (moral panics, scapegoating, the
justice system and so on) but I have not campaigned for a commission of
inquiry. Of course, if people ask me what I want to happen, I suggest that a
commission of inquiry is required. But if they ask me what I want them to do, I
explain that the whole purpose of writing A City Possessed is to get
people to think for themselves, and that telling them what to do would defeat
that purpose. Go figure, I say. So they do.
So my expectation of the Edwards interview was of a chatshow
discussion of my work (albeit with Edwards playing devil’s advocate to give it
an edge). I did not expect Edwards to attempt to do a hatchet job on me. The
fact that his efforts backfired, and he came out of it looking like shallow,
ignorant bully, while I came out of it looking composed and authoritative, does
not alter the fact that it was a shabby, unprofessional interview.
I trust you will give my complaint your serious consideration.
Yours sincerely
Lynley Hood