In Taiwan, most broadcast news interviews with politicians covered by newspapers are conducted during election periods; thus, the research focused on news coverage that reported on TV interviews with candidates in vital elections including the elections in the five municipalities in 2010 and the presidential election in 2012, for which campaigns began in 2011.
The data in this study were gathered, from June 2012 to October 2012, through in-depth interviews with 13 political journalists (coded from A to M), who were responsible for the coverage of the above election candidates, comprising two journalists from the Apple Daily, four journalists from the China Times, two
journalists from the Liberty Times, four journalists from the United Daily News, and one journalist from the Central News Agency to which was often referred by other interviewed journalists. Ten of the journalists had been working in news more than ten years, two journalists had done news work for more than seven years and one
journalist had more than three years of news experience.
Each interview lasted from 1.5 to 2 hours. Typically, interviews began with the researcher prompting the journalists to describe the news production process
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including how they acquire, watch, and memorize broadcast news interviews, and then asking them to explain their considerations of selecting news materials such as how to decide the words represented in a quotation mark and when to subsume interviewers’ questions, and their news writing habit. Before conducting the research interviews, the researcher collected the journalists’ news coverage of TV political interviews as illustrations on which they can elaborate.
Results
The context of covering a broadcast interview
The time constraint
All interviewed journalists emphasized that broadcast interviews with prominent politicians, such as the president, heads of the five Yuans, and political party
chairpersons, are important media events which can’t be missed. Particularly, during election periods, political candidates are frequently interviewed on TV and they usually become the primary media message which can provide print reporters with more stories, as Journalist H said, “they [TV political interviews] can meet the demand for newspaper because print reporters require behind-the-scenes stories or in-depth coverage.”
While a broadcast political interview becomes a subject of news coverage, the time point which print reporters access to the broadcast interview greatly influences their material selection and writing process. Journalist H continued:
The difficulty is to write a complete news report in a short time…and make it vivid …with great political importance.
Broadcast news interviews may be prerecorded or broadcasted live, but TV news interviews with prominent politicians are typically broadcasted after 8:00 p.m., which is close to the deadline for daily newspapers (i.e., 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.). Under this circumstance, journalists can only “write what they [the interviewed politicians]
said and organize their words into a news report” (B), failing to enhance the value of news. Four journalists in this study took the initiative in suggesting that press coverage of TV political interviews should enable readers to understand the background and implications of politicians’ statements and provide readers with in-depth analyses.
All print reporters in this study emphasized that to make a valuable news report, they need to access to the broadcast interview in advance in order to confirm and
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verify the information, and further, to formulate a writing plan which may include a feature article or a sidelight on the interview. Journalist L said:
At the studio, we can watch a live interview and simultaneously contact the
newsdesk…. We can construct a better news angle and find controversial issues that is what print reporters should do…. However, if we can’t start dealing with the interview until 9:00 p.m., we only can release a single piece of news…and are unable to process the interview on a large scale.
Accordingly, the print reporters in Taiwan will unite to exert pressure on the TV news organization or sources, urging them to make broadcast interview open to the journalists as early as possible. In other words, although the news
competition is fierce in Taiwan, when covering broadcast political interviews, print reporters cooperate, rather than compete, with each other. It is also obvious in the following aspects: (a) while watching TV interviews, the reporters are used to have small talks during TV commercial breaks to discuss the novelty and importance of the contents of interviews, which is particularly vital for junior reporters; (b) journalists who miss the interviews or feel uncertain about the information generated by the broadcast interview can ask for other journalists’
assistance. The principal reason why such cooperation occurs is that broadcast interviews, which can’t be exclusive, are open to everyone, and therefore, according to Journalist B and F, newspaper political journalists can “take what they need” which meant they can select those utterances in accordance with the newspaper’s political stance.
The news space constraint
Journalists’ material selection is constrained by the news genre and required word lengths. It was found that except two journalists from Apple Daily, who were asked by the company to write vivid and dramatic news reports, all
interviewed print reporters typically cover the content of broadcast interviews in the form of straight news and represent the background information or interaction between interviewers and interviewees in the forms of feature articles, sidelights, or behind-the-scenes stories, which can be written “from a first-person perspective, expressing reporters’ opinions” (E). Through the distinction between straight news and the other news forms, journalists can, on the one hand, maintain the
objectivity of straight news, and on the other hand, cope with the word-count limitation, as Journalist L asserted: “The word count for news is strictly limited. A [straight] news report cannot include many of such things [interview backgrounds
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and interactions].”
Generally speaking, when print reporters covered broadcast political interviews, they determined a news frame of straight news based on the broadcast news interview, which is consistent with the arguments of Kroon Lundell and EkstrÖm (2010) and Chiang (2012). For example, in an interview in October, 2010, King Pu-tsung, who is President Ma’s closest aide, criticized both DPP Chairwoman and Xinbei mayoral candidate Tsai Ing-wen and DPP Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chu. Journalist D framed the news in terms of “the rivalry between blue (KMT) and green (DPP),”
and therefore, chose King’s criticism of Tsai rather than criticism of Chen as the main point.
Further, press journalists first establish the main point (in the lead) on the basis of the broadcast interview and subsequently select materials for the body to support the lead. For example, after losing the 2012 presidential election bid, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen revealed in a TV interview conducted in the middle of May, 2012 that she “continued to make herself an option,” implying she may take a second shot at the presidency in 2016. Journalist H put this account in the lead:
Because this was her first time to drop a hint publicly of bidding for the presidency in 2016, of course it received people’s attention. In addition, this remark showed prospects, meaning that the news could be continued and developed further.
After determining the main point of the coverage, Journalist H selected a story Tsai told in the interview and put it in the news body as example 1 showed:
Example 1: Previously when she [Tsai] visited Ping-tong, an aboriginal saw her and told her “Sorry! I voted for the wrong candidate this time!”
For Journalist H, this extraction not only had political implications but also can support the lead, specifically, “Tsai Ing-wen indirectly expressed her intention to join the 2016 presidential election with an attitude of ‘no exclusion.’”
Material selection
Filtering through news intertextuality
Most of the interviewed journalists agreed that print reporters tend to select the same interview segments. The first reason for this homogeneity is that, the vast majority of broadcast news interviewers are senior journalists with expertise in
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making news (Chiang, 2009, 2011), and therefore, it is easier for print reporters to focus on the interviewed politicians’ answers with newsworthiness. The second reason is that journalists have acquainted with the politicians as chief sources for a long time, and therefore, they understand the personal characteristics and concerns of a politician.
B stated:
TV interviews in Taiwan are structured in a large political context with some preceding contexts. Therefore, politicians are willing to be interviewed on TV. The questions raised [by the interviewers] are those that have been discussed or
addressed previously; therefore, our [newspaper reporters’] focus is similar…. If politicians had nothing to say or did not have any needs [to say something], they were not willing to be interviewed in public....We [newspaper reporters] directly extract the statements which they want to convey to the public.
The journalists in this study emphasized the essentials of understanding the purpose of the politician to be interviewed. It was found that print journalists detect the interviewed politicians’ purpose sometimes by the amount of remarks they made in a broadcast interview. In a TV interview conducted in November, 2011, PFP presidential candidate Soong Chu-Yu’s criticism of President Ma’s meeting with a bookie Chen Ying-chu was regarded by Journalist C as
unimportant (and therefore was placed in the fourth paragraph of his report), not only because it lacked the timeliness and Soong was not the primary rival of Ma but also because “His [Soong’s] criticism was not his focus and the criticism did not account for a large proportion of the interview.”
Moreover, to know a politician’s key points in a broadcast interview and determine whether the information is old or new, it is important for a journalist to process previous relevant news to realize the politician’s thinking pattern, behavior style, and campaign strategies. For example, covering a TV interview with KMT vice presidential candidate Wu Tun-i on November 16, 2011, Journalist D was sensitive to the term “cabinet reshuffle” mentioned by Wu, because he recognized it as a campaign strategy frequently deployed by the KMT campaign. In addition, when the interviewed politician said something that he or she has usually avoided, even if the utterance is short, it can draw reporters’
attention. For example, when President Ma mentioned of his wife Mei-ching Chow, of whom he seldom speaks, it could easily become a news point (J and L).
The above examples indicate that reporting this type of news is easy for senior journalists because they have immersed in news intertextuality, being able to
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understand the context of politicians’ statements, to know whether a politician’s statements or responses are new and to eliminate information that has been covered previously. Further, it also explains why the more a political candidate appears in broadcast interviews, retelling the same story, the less media coverage he/she will get. For example, in 2011, Soong Chu-Yu, as PFP presidential
candidate, was interviewed several times by Era TV, and “the news coverage had continued to decrease, because what he [Soong Chu-Yu] said was repetition” (C).
Even a candidate’s criticisms of his or her opponents can be ignored by reporters, if the substance is highly repetitive.
To sum up, journalists’ selection of broadcast interviews as news materials is rather referred to as material filtering by news intertextuality comprising the broadcast interview, previous news coverage, and the politicians’ behavior in both public and private. They eliminate old information and seek the most up to date information, or the first publicly release of it, on the basis of the available news space, as F said, “We just keep filtering, and the remaining information is what we consider as newer and more important.”
Focusing on interviewed politicians’ utterances with public declaration, political impact and unusual performance
Since radio and TV news interviews are broadcasted publicly, the interviewed politicians’ performance has a significant effect on reporters’ news selection. First, politicians’ remarks in broadcast interviews are regarded as formal declarations, in particular the apologies, appeals, protestations made by politicians, especially during election periods, generally attract reporters’ attention and are selected as news
messages, even though the information is not new. For example, in a TV interview in the middle of October, 2011, it was the first time that President Ma Ying-jeou apologized “publicly” for failing to accomplish his “633” economic goals, and therefore, it became a news focus (B and J).
Second, news stories not only cover past and current events but also anticipate the future happenings (Jaworski, Fitzgerald, Morris, & Galasinski, 2003; Thornborrow &
Fitzgerald, 2004). Journalists tend to select an interviewed politician’s remarks that can effectively predict or make an impact on the political situation. Taking the remark on “cabinet reshuffle” mentioned previously as an example, as Wu mentioned
“cabinet reshuffle” again in an interview on November 23, 2011, Journalist D chose to ignore it because at that time, “this news reached its end several days ago; I was sure that the cabinet would not be reshuffled… His mention of cabinet reshuffle could not be developed further.” The same consideration can be found in Journalist C’s news coverage of a joint interview of PFP presidential candidate Soong Chu-Yu and his
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vice presidential candidate Lin Ruey-shiung. Journalist C noticed that the interaction between Soong and Lin was interesting and able to manifest their relationship during the election period, but since “Soong’s possibility of winning was low,” which decreased its influence, she did not select the segment.
Further, it is worth noting that the impact of what interviewed politicians said partly relies on subsequent news coverages. Print journalists devote to add value to the news release, making their news reports more influential, as Journalist H noted:
What we need to do is to absorb the large amount of information unsaid in the interview in order to figure out the order of events and make interpretations for the general public…thereby to enhance the value of news…. It is difficult for me to judge whether the news reports I produce are influential and have political impacts.
Finally, although Taiwanese print journalists placed much more emphasis on the substance than the form of broadcast interviewees’ utterances (Chiang, 2012), all journalists in this study stressed that they are used to pay attention to the interviewed politician’s facial expressions and gestures, especially when politicians make mention of some key words, speak hastily, or respond to sensitive questions. The above
information, on the one hand, can prompt journalists to notice implications of politicians’ answers and sequent responses, and on the other hand, can be used as news messages, particularly when a broadcast interview “does not have any
interesting points to report, which is common; interviewees’ reactions are useful filler”
(B).
Selecting interviewers’ questions to clarify interviewees’ answers, pinpoint interviewees’ actions, and make better news texts
Through the research interviews, it became evident that the interactions between interviewers and interviewees are deemed by political journalists as an optional element in the news story and always excluded when news space is limited. These findings are consistent with the result of a text analysis of four major Taiwanese newspapers conducted by Chiang (2012).
For print reporters, broadcast interviewers are neither the main character in the news story nor the information focus. When the answers interviewees provide are clear enough, under the consideration of limited news space, journalists do not need to restate interviewers’ questions. Therefore, interviewers’ questions are reported in the news for a reason (Clayman, 1990). As Clayman(1990) argued, Taiwanese print reporters’ reasons for stating the questions asked in a broadcast interview are as the following: (a) to clarify interviewees’ answers and attitudes. Journalist A reported the
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question of example 2 to explain that it is impossible for President Ma to sign a peace agreement with China in the next 4 years:
Example 2: The host probed whether the conditions [of signing a peace agreement]
will be ripe in the next four years. President Ma answered that “It is unlikely….”
(b) to pinpoint interviewees’ evasive actions, as Journalist K stated that, “the question must be reported so that we can see how he [the interviewee] tried to avoid giving a direct answer.” Therefore, newspaper reporters tend to pick up sensitive questions to which the interviewed politicians don’t respond directly. For instance, regarding the interview in which President Ma described his relationship with Soong, Journalist J said:
The relationship between Ma and Soong was a focus at that time, but Ma would not take initiative in discussing it unless he was asked by the host. Therefore, we have to describe the interaction in the interview [to indicate] how Ma responded to the question. Ma did not necessarily provide a long answer, but we wanted the reader to understand the context in which Ma made this remark.
In fact, print reporters do not typically report the interaction of a broadcast
interview, unless interviewers have a quarrel with interviewees. In particular, when a politician was interviewed by a TV company that holds a political stance different from that of the politician, as Journalist M pointed out that “People will pay attention to [the broadcast interview] and examine the interaction in more detail, then, the interview will be assigned different political implications.” This is especially crucial for Apple Daily journalists because as the above mentioned, they are not encouraged to write news in other forms but straight news, and Journalist L said:
One crucial requirement in our company is that the news must not be dull. We have to quote people’s utterances, and describe scenes to create a vivid news report.
Moreover, the research interviews showed that print reporters select interviewers’
questions because of the consideration of the news text. According to Journalist B, adding interviewers’ questions in a news article can make the coverage look like a report on broadcast news interview rather than a political speech; meanwhile, Journalist J stated: “Sometimes I must present interviewers so that [readers can recognize that] it is a news article about some broadcast news interview.” In addition, reporters divide a news article into paragraphs using interviewers’ questions, and by
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this, the press release can be prevented from being monotonous and dull, as Journalist I said, “We cannot start each paragraph by using ‘xxx (an interviewee) said,’ because it would make our news articles dull.”
Specifically, print journalists tend to report particular questions such as the three following types: (a) questions that are unexpected, controversial, or well asked. That is, as Clayman (1995) noted, rhetorically formatted utterances can attract reporters’
attention easily, in particular proverbs. For example, Journalist I chose to write that
“[Wu Tun-i] was asked whether Soong should ‘回頭是岸 (repent and be saved)’”
because she believed:
This is a special and well-asked question. It occurred to me that the phrase ‘repent and be saved’ was used vividly.
(b) questions asked by the broadcast interviewer on behalf of the audience that address the general public’s concern, as Journalist J illustrated, “Why should the people support him [President Ma] to be president for another four years [a second term]? [The question asked by the TV news interviewer]I think this is important, that is, it is the question that many people would like to ask him;” and (c) what the interviewer asked is neither widely recognized by the public nor a social consensus.
For example, Journalist C decided to present the question regarding “whether Lin Ruey-shiung [Soong’s vice presidential candidate] was the key person [causing Soong]
to lose [people’s support]” because she thought that “this was not a question recognized by the public.”
Choosing words represented in quotation marks
As noted in the literature review, direct quotations can be used to highlight key elements, strengthen the sense of factuality, convey a speaker’s feeling and attitude,
As noted in the literature review, direct quotations can be used to highlight key elements, strengthen the sense of factuality, convey a speaker’s feeling and attitude,