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Abstract
This study quantitatively establishes the centrality and importance of interviews in news and current affairs broadcasts. We show how segments of interviews (from soundbites to longer recorded, or live, question-and-answer interactions) are deployed as communicative resources in the construction and presentation of news in various ways. The data allow for a cross-national comparison between the United Kingdom and Sweden which points to differences in practice between the countries. We argue that our findings may be used critically to examine various conceptualisations of broadcast interviews in general and political interviews in particular. We also show how journalists outnumber politicians as interviewees in the news, a finding that is in need of further exploration from a range of perspectives. We also believe that our study provides solid ground on which to base future critical studies of the authority of journalism, dialogical and soundbite journalism, and the alleged fragmentisation of news.
Notes
1. If weather reports are presented as a non-autonomous item in the news (i.e. the weather presenter is in the studio and may interact with the presenter before delivering the report), they have been included within the coded “interviewable time-frame”. If presented as autonomous pieces, possibly pre-recorded and/or produced by another desk and separated from the regular news presentation by commercials or jingles, they have not been counted as items where interview exchanges are possible.
2. Kroon Lundell (Citationforthcoming) investigates what Montgomery (Citation2007 ,Citation2008) labels “the affiliated interview”. Using the concept of “intraprofessional interview/dialogue” she analyses the various forms of journalist-to-journalist interactions in the news and argues that they constitute a communicative genre of their own.