Interviewing the minister of transportation

We did an impromptu demonstration of western-style journalism interviewing for our reporters recently. It seems that our way of talking is more direct, far less deferential. And it elicits more information from government officials.


Our local consultant posed as the Minister of Transportation and one by one we had reporters take a crack at quizzing him about the delayed road construction that has snarled traffic in Algiers. Our consultant is a graduate of Ena, a highly prestigious college for administrators set up here by the French colonizers. This is where, he told us, he learned the phrases and mannerisms of a proper minister. His performance was applause-worthy and made us all laugh.


Rocking back in his chair, his legs crossed, his hands steepled in front of his unsmiling face, he listened impassively to questions designed to get from him any information about embarrassing construction delays. He listened to these questions impassively, then paused and told the reporters in proper minister-speak:

"Thank you for coming to my office. I am one of the readers of your newspaper and I respect the work of the journalist. What is your name? " or, my favorite:
"It is my pleasure to deal with a journalist from your newspaper and a one who is also a woman."

He shut down reporters with deadly passivity, flattery and stultifying rationalizations of the sort real ministers feed to them to avoid answering hard questions:

"Thank you for this very good question."

"I thank you for giving our ministry an opportunity to talk about these important topics and to tackle issues that are of importance to our citizens. This project has a long history that begins in the 1980s."

Groan, yes, let's go back 25 years and not talk about the problems right now.

"There is no country in the world that could solve this problem..."

"...working with foreign partners, you know, we must coordinate..."

"I feel comfortable to personally meet you and the answer to your question is very easy. Studies predicted it would take five years when this project began, but then buildings has to be removed and the earthquake, you remember several years ago...we are doing our best to..."

After the Algerians Del took a crack at breaking the minister and it was funny how quickly the minister was shifting forward in his seat, paying attention and stuttering out some information. The reporter controlled the flow of the interview. The reporters then analyzed the differences. Del cut through the verbiage, interrupted, informed the minister of a looming deadline, hurried him, pressed.

The next day a young culture reporter told us she had tried an interview with "your system." She had to talk to an Algerian singer who has fallen into political disfavor and been barred from participating in a festival. He apparently didn't want to compound his troubles by going to the press so he refused to talk to her, saying reporters had caused him problems " It was hard," our pleased reporter said, but she said she just kept talking. " I said I just have some few questions. I have to be objective in writing my story. Why were you replaced? And he got stressed. He started to get angry, but it worked."

She told us she got all the details she wanted from him.