Why do interviewers on news outlets sometimes abrubtly cut off their subjects, even though nowadays video storage is abundant and editing is relatively easy? I mean you’d think they can just let their guests finish their sentence and edit the interview down to whatever time they want to spend on it right?
I was watching [this interview with Naomi Klein](https://youtu.be/NDWrHd-izFg?si=Yi4hTx9ikgocQLhv) about her book. It was quite long about 40 minutes but at the end she is still abruptly cut off mid-sentence with a quick “okay we have to leave it there”
I mean couldn’t the interviewer at some point just say some house-keeping stuff like “okay please make your closing remarks now”, and then edit out those house-keeping parts in post, and cut the interview down to whatever time length they want to allot to it?
You could say it was because it’s a smaller media company and they don’t have as many editors on staff. However I’ve seen it happen on numerous bigger outlets as well, MSNBC, CNN and other news outlets.
In: Technology
I’m not in that profession, but I’m going to guess anyway because I’m at least aware of how greedy and lazy human beings are, no matter how big or wealthy they are.
Basically hiring a bunch of people to edit videos to absolute perfection is time consuming and expensive. If the interviewer wants a specific answer or answers in the interview they will press them on the person they’re talking to but beyond that they will just allow them to ramble on until it’s time to move on to something else.
They have a time table to follow. Especially if it’s live. The need to hit certain points and segments. They need to make sure there is enough time for commercial breaks etc.
I don’t work on live TV but I do run events and there is nothing more infuriating than when someone starts going over their time. Because then I don’t have enough time to prepare the next event.
probable deniability.
if i catch you saying something i disagree with on camera and willfully edit it out of the video, than i’m not being academically honest or acting with journalistic integrity.
but if i stop you before you say the no no word, its all good!
The end of the interview is one thing, but in the middle of interviews, some very good interviewers steer the conversation to a more relevant, interesting, or controversial topics and try to get the interviewee off their script to have a higher likelyhood of getting a sound-byte or headline.
You’re probably watching interviews that were live, or recorded live to tape (meaning they treat it as live) and aren’t going to be meaningfully edited or can’t be if it’s live
The studio may have been booked for another program. The crew is paid hourly and may have other assignments.
Because people go off. They totally go off for 20 minutes.
For a skeptic viewer, frequent cuts *severely* detract from the credibility of the interview. You don’t know what they are cutting out or why, but you do know that only one side truly has control over what is removed. The best interviews are “one shot” or at least close enough: any cuts include at least brief before/after pauses to signal that somebody is not being edited mid-answer and that this was just a natural break in the interview that otherwise allowed the interviewee to give complete answers.
If you see the interviewer forced to verbally “cut off” their subject, this is a far more honest way to manage things. It is a verbal battle and a subject could essentially override being cut off by refusing to stop their answer and/or raising their voice to signal that they feel strongly enough about this particular answer to refuse to be stopped until they finish. In such a situation they are willing to trade the cost of losing their composure in front of the audience for the benefit of being allowed to get their point across (which hopefully was worth the cost). You are allowed to see the facial expressions of either party in such a battle which signal how they feel about having to cut someone off or about being cut off. If an interviewer frequently cuts off their subject’s answers, the audience is aware of it and can infer bias or manipulation in a way that editing the footage would obscure. All of this is important to show the audience so they can draw more informed conclusions.
In short: heavy editing of an interview is dishonest or can at least be perceived as such.
Sometimes it’s Becuase of time requirements, like we’re live and have 20 minutes before the next thing we have to do, we need to wrap up.
Other times it could be because the interviewer has a thing they need to get around to. So lets say I ask you about your volunteer work and you give an impassioned answer for 27 minutes about your work in Eritrea. I was lobbing you that question expecting a quick soundbite that I can then say “Spngiven your volunteer work, how did that inform your performance in the new movie “Retreat to Eritrea”? (Note, we’re getting paid to talk about the movie, not your passion project).
Other times it may be because you’re going into territory that the station doesn’t want. Ie you’re talking about how you needed to build water wells in Eritrea because Monsanto poisoned the water supply and refused to fix it, but Monsanto owns the station and doesn’t want that talking point coming up.
As for just letting them talk and editing out the excess, that doesn’t mean your interviewer got any time back, so a one hour interview allowed to run 2.5 hours means your paying theninterviewer, camera crews, lighting, sound and production staff an extra 1.5 hours, And now a team of editors, and then the approval on any cuts made, which can be complicated as you don’t want a choppy, heavily edited interview.
Think about the viewer if one minute I’m in the middle of an impassioned story about drinking water then we’re in a flat wrap up section discussing a new movie, it creates a question of what’s being hidden, or have we altered the speakers message which could create blowback.
Easier to have the host say “I’m sorry, we’re out of time, thanks for coming, and I look forward to seeing your new movie.”
It all boils down to time constraints.
Scrubbing through the interview you linked, it appears to be a live news/current events show, in which case they have a time slot that they need to fill, and in this instance they used a pre-taped introduction piece along with a live interview. The show had a defined end point, and if the interview extends to that point the host will need to cut the interviewee off.
Even if a show is pre-taped they usually don’t have an unlimited amount of time because:
1. Many networks will often have multiple shows sharing studio space and crew. So even if you have all the time in the world to edit a piece, you don’t have unlimited time in a studio.
2. Most news/current events programs are filming and editing content in the span of hours, not days. In the news world you need to be fast and accurate. Sometimes polish comes at the expense of those two criteria. You can’t always sit on a story for two or three days to perfect an edit. Everyone else has already beaten you to the story.
Finally, there are often constraints on the interviewee’s time. In my younger years I worked in marketing and PR for a big film studio. When we were promoting a new film we would have a press junket, where we would invite dozens (sometime hundreds) of newspapers, websites and TV networks to the studio or a hotel to interview the film’s stars. But when you have dozens of outlets to get through in a short span everyone is limited to 5-10 minutes. There were people like me in every room that were giving the interviewers warnings to wrap things up because we had a schedule to maintain. These types of things typically are edited out in post, but sometimes they make a segment seem to end abruptly.
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