Interviewing and the Ground Rules

An interview is a conversation with a purpose: get facts, explanations and words you can quote accurately. The person across the table has their own purpose. Preparation is how you keep yours.

Before the interview

Do the reading first

Read the records before you talk to the people in them. If you're interviewing a highway district commissioner about a paving contract, read the contract, the bid tabulation and the minutes of the vote first. Then your questions start from the facts. "The low bid was $1.42 million and the board picked a $1.61 million bid. Why?" gets a better answer than "Tell me about the contract."

Write your questions, then cut them

Write every question you can think of. Then sort them. Put the one question you must get answered near the top, after a couple of easy warm-ups. People get tired, get called away and get cagey. Don't save the important question for minute 45.

• Ask open questions. How, what, why, walk me through. "Did you vote for it?" gets a yes. "Walk me through how you decided" gets a story.
• One question at a time. Ask two and they'll answer the easier one.
• Don't load the question. "Don't you think this is unfair to seniors?" invites a fight or a dodge. "What happens to a resident on a fixed income when the rate goes up 18 percent?" gets information.
• Ask for documents. "Can you send me that spreadsheet?" Many people say yes, and it saves you a records request.
• End with these. "What didn't I ask that I should have?" and "Who else should I talk to?"

Tell them who you are

Identify yourself as a writer working on a story and name where it will run. Don't pose as something else to get an interview. The SPJ Code of Ethics says to avoid undercover methods except when open methods won't yield information vital to the public. For beginners: just don't.

Recording: what Idaho law allows

Idaho is a one-party consent state. Idaho Code 18-6702 makes it a felony to intercept a wire, electronic or oral communication, punishable by up to five years and a $5,000 fine. But subsection (2)(d) makes it lawful for a person to intercept a communication "when one (1) of the parties to the communication has given prior consent." If you are part of the conversation, your consent counts. Subsection (2)(e) adds that it's unlawful to intercept any communication for the purpose of committing a crime.

Federal law works the same way. 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d) lets a party to a conversation record it, unless the purpose is a criminal or tortious act.

The limits that matter in real reporting:

• You must be a party. One-party consent lets you record your own conversations. It does not let you hide a recorder in a room you've left, or record two other people talking. Idaho defines a protected oral communication as one where the speaker expects it isn't being intercepted, under circumstances that justify that expectation (18-6701).
• Other states differ. Washington requires the consent of all parties to record a private conversation (RCW 9.73.030), and several other states have all-party rules. When a call crosses state lines, it's not always clear which law applies.
• Legal isn't the same as fair. Secretly recording a nervous source can wreck the relationship and your reputation.

Open public meetings are a separate matter. Idaho Code 74-203(6) protects recording them, as covered in the previous lesson.

Ground rules

The terms below are used differently by different newsrooms. That's exactly why you define them out loud with each source.

Assume on the record unless you've agreed otherwise. If a source wants different terms, settle them before the information comes out, and agree on the exact wording of any description. "A county employee" and "a person familiar with the budget" protect someone very differently in an office of eight people.

When a source says "that was off the record" after the fact, you have a choice, not an obligation. Most careful reporters will talk it through, especially with people who aren't used to the press. A trained spokesperson playing the game is different from a nervous clerk who didn't know the rules.

Once you agree, keep the deal. Breaking a confidentiality promise destroys trust with every source who hears about it. So don't promise lightly. Ask yourself whether you can get the same fact on the record from someone else or from a document.

Notes you can defend

• Write the date, time, place and the person's name and title at the top.
• Mark exact quotes with quotation marks in your notes. Paraphrase without them.
• Note the ground rules and when they changed.
• Back up recordings the same day. A phone can die with your only copy on it.
• Keep notes and recordings after publication. If a story is challenged, they are your evidence.

If you're recording, run the audio through SoundStudio to clean up noise before you transcribe. The theory page section on noise explains what you can and can't fix.