Former press secretary for the Clinton administration Mike McCurry spoke at AU on Friday. McCurry, who was press secretary from 1995 to 1998, spoke to Alice Walker's "Art and Science of Interviewing" class in the Battelle Atrium
McCurry was known for his genial manner, and quick wit, saying things like "I guess old press secretaries never die-they just get double parked in the no comment zone," according to Walker. Other McCurry antics during his tenure at the White House included entering into a press conference with a brown bag over his head and telling the assembled reporters that he was an "anonymous source."
McCurry focused on the changing aspects of the communication industry, and said that readership of print media is down because the current generation doesn't get their news from big newspapers anymore.
"The 30-second spot is going to become a dinosaur soon," McCurry said, referring to political campaigns. "In the world of political communication enormous changes are taking place, I think it's going to morph in an interesting direction," he said.
McCurry said media today lack credibility because of how fast news is being put out without questioning its validity or waiting to see how the story might unfold. He cited his decision to allow live coverage of White House press conferences in 1995 as being part of this problem with journalism today. He said he didn't anticipate it becoming a live reporting session, which is what it became then and is today.
"Watching one of those things is like watching sausage being made," McCurry said. "The reporters like to bore into the press secretary and get the press secretary upset. Watching this [as a viewer], you don't see that it's a tactic [of the reporter], you just think wow that guys [the press secretary] an asshole," he said.
Boring press secretaries in an attempt to get them to talk is a common tactic in journalism, McCurry said. The posturing isn't seen, and the audience merely sees raw coverage and not the finished story, which is important for understanding and making an informed decision, he said.
McCurry's advice for interviewing was to keep questions simple. He said that there is a value in yes-and-no questions because they get straight facts. He said that lawyers and detectives ask yes-and-no questions to get the straight facts and then build questions based off of those to force the rest of the information out of the interviewee.
"Good reporters look for the Perry Mason moment," McCurry said. "They walk the subject through questions and then look for that a-ha moment."
Counter to these poor television journalism tactics, McCurry stressed that a journalist should let their subject know ahead of time the topic of the interview is so they can prepare themselves with the necessary information and make intelligent responses.
"[The interview is] not a sparring match, nothing much transpires there," he said.
When he counsels someone on answering questions during an interview, McCurry said that he advises them to write exactly what they want to appear in the newspaper the next day on an index card. When asked what he had written on his index card for this speech, he chuckled saying that his main point was about the direction of journalism today and how it is exciting to be a young journalist today and see where the industry
goes.
One student question involved Congress' plans to review the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which is the basis of regulation for the telecommunications industry. The student asked McCurry what his opinion was. McCurry said he hasn't officially stated a position or decided whether he was going to participate in lobbying efforts.
