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
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.
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