Answers and Evasions

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the dynamics of answering and resisting or evading questions in broadcast news interviews. After a preliminary examination of the practices through which answers are recognizably constructed, the analysis turns to the practices through which interviewees manage responses that resist the agenda of an interviewer’s question. When resisting overtly, interviewees engage in various forms of “damage control.” When resisting covertly, interviewees take steps to render the resistance less conspicuous. Both sets of practices facilitate resistant responses by reducing the negative consequences that might otherwise follow. Such practices demonstrate that, although interviewees have developed practices for resisting questions, the norm of answering remains a salient feature of the contemporary broadcast news interview. (Interview, news interview, questions and answers, interrogation, broadcast talk, political communication, Conversation Analysis.)* When Albert Gore was Bill Clinton’s vice presidential running mate in 1992, Gore’s position on abortion became the focus of controversy. As a legislator, Gore had opposed federal funding for most abortions, but now he was expressing support for it as part of Clinton’s health care reform plan. In an aggressive interview conducted by Sam Donaldson, Gore received a barrage of tough questions exposing this apparent contradiction. He was momentarily rescued by a commercial break, at which point he was urged by his media advisor to sidestep questions of this sort: “Don’t be afraid to turn their questions. If they ask you about [abortion], just say . . . ‘I want to talk today about the new direction that Governor Clinton and I want to take the country.’ ” 1