anders deutsch

The Young Media Summit is a meeting of journalists, organised by journalists and reported on by journalists. So there is much opportunity to think about journalism, how it works, what representations are made, etc.

Yesterday I overheard a conversation between two journalists. The first told the second that s/he wanted to interview him/her, but that actually s/he did not need to really interview him/her, because s/he had already written the interview from things s/he had heard him/her saying in different conversations during the summit. So the second journalist only needed to read the interview and see what corrections were needed. And thus the interview was concluded.

But if it is an authorised text, not a transcript of an interview, why frame it as an interview? As a reader I have certain images, what an interview should be. And this production process does not fit with it. I would feel cheated, if I was presented by such an interview. It very much reminded me of the discussions around this years Kisch-Preis in Germany.