Aggressive Questioning Quotes

What's an ambush interview? You walk up to a fellow who you want to talk to, and he hasn't been - he hadn't been willing to talk to you before. You've sent him letters, and you've tried to talk to him on the phone. So you walk up to him on the street and ask him a question - that's an ambush?

Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope.

Pummeling an answer out of someone never works. You cannot intimidate someone with aggressive language and think they'll be more forthcoming... that's a caricature of interrogation, part of the TV culture of what it looks like.

We had got as far as this, when who should walk in but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the taproom and had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous.

A lot of reporters don't have conversations - they just fire off questions. I'm going to listen to what you're saying. If you start giving me a pat answer, I'm going to challenge you. That's where my sports background helps, because athletes do it all the time. So you have to stop them... and sometimes they're going to yell back at you. So what?

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.

Have McNab take the edge if you need one. Can he handle bad cop?" "He does it really well during personal role-playing games when I'm the reluctant witness.

Journalists undoubtedly have a duty to push, cajole, and aggressively maneuver around campaign handlers in order for the public to see a candidate unscripted.

So I don't think that the default mode of aggressive interviewing is useful, because politicians just build a defence against it. In fact, they thrive on 'Today' because they know what's going to happen.

Of course, I'm not saying that news interviews can't be adversarial. Sometimes, you have to be nasty Columbo or we'd never get to the truth.

I would never interrogate a child or a spouse the way I would a litigant. People wouldn't want to be around you. You'd wind up all alone on an island.

If you don't have the smoking gun, then it's pointless to hector interviewees. Because you just shut people up instead of opening them up.

I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.

When you are being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman, you are the prisoner in the dock: assumed guilty unless proved innocent, under intense pressure, on the defensive. There are very few people who can look relaxed in that position.

I would love the chance to ask follow-up questions of Susan Rice because David Gregory apparently did not avail himself of that opportunity. Greta, I just listened to the clip - I get tougher questions in the Bojangles drive-through than he asked her.