The (ever)changing face of news, with broadcast interviews in focus

Abstract

In this paper I intend to shed light on broadcast news interviews with a focus on the increasing role of video-mediated platforms. To do so, I first overview the rules of conduct journalists are required to follow, pondering on whether the shift to video-platforms has made substantial changes to what recommended in manuals and posited in scholarly studies. Then, I illustrate a corpus-based case study of news interviews carried out by professional journalists with Chinese and Russian diplomats. Similarities and differences between face-to-face and video-mediated interviews as well as between Chinese and Russian interviewees have been identified, with special reference to (a) the format of the questions posed by the journalists, (b) their degree of compliance to the traditional ground rules of conduct in the Q&A interface, (c) the role of the interviewees’ lingua-cultural background and (d) reference to the audience.