McCain "Twitterview" not a journalistic high point

ABC's George Stephanopoulos is an excellent reporter and Senator John McCain has given some great interviews. But while yesterday's "twitterview" may have been a watershed moment for Twitter, it was far from a high point for either journalism or politics.

After reading a transcript of the interview, I have to question whether the 140 character format makes any sense as an interview technique, especially when dealing with life and death questions such as "What worries you more: Pakistan or Iran?" to which Senator McCain responded, "Both. The challenges are different but both significant."

Senator John McCain

(Credit: mccain.senate.gov)

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a little more depth in my interviews. While brevity has its place, I found both the questions and the answers to be artificially short thanks to the limit of 140 characters per "tweet."

In an age where we get much of our political information from sound bites and commercials, I appreciate the tradition of a well-seasoned journalist sitting down with a politician to ask in-depth questions, get candid responses and be able to ask equally in-depth follow-up questions. In most cases, in person or at least telephone interviews are a better way to do that than short bursts of typing.

Having said that, I do like the fact that Stephanopoulos used Twitter prior to the interview to get his followers to submit questions for the Senator and I would like to see more online forums where politicians answer questions not just from journalists but from citizens as well. But asking the likes of Stephanopoulos and McCain to reduce their dialog to 140 characters per question is, in my opinion, an interesting experiment but a bad precedent. Twitter is fine for casual conversation and occasional punditry, but when it comes to the affairs of our nation, we need to hear a lot more than 140 characters from our leaders and our leading journalists.

[tsullivanx22]

"George Stephanopoulos is an excellent reporter" is an interesting way to characterize a recycled Clinton hack who jumped ship bringing no formal training or reporting skills into the media. He has been highly marketed and reinvented as a journalist . . . if he meets the standards for journalism that explains a lot.

[wotten-1]

Good job stripping away that "excellent reporter" vaneer. George S. is alleged to have acquired any reportorial skills he does possess by watching re-runs of Gerardo Rivera specials over and over. That school of journalism has spawned yet another alum as well---the redoubtable Joe the Plumber. J the P, rumor has it, nowadays is a War Correspondent for some blogsite covering the dangerous Middle East crisis. Despite that heroic news, some unkind souls have suggested the closest to Gaza, the Golan Heights, etc. he's been stems from maps he googled and printed--- but then, I understand no one expects too much these days...

[swattz101]

It was interesting to see, but I have to agree that 140 char is just not enough to convey a detailed answer to most questions. On the other hand, having some sort of limit could help people stay more to the point. :-)

[SantaFeDave]

In the very early days of the web, when bandwidth was very limited, my company created software to convert speech to text in real time to deliver live interviews via the internet. It was great at the time, we did celebrity interviews, sports figures and hi tech company seminars, etc., but it didn't last long due to audio becoming available over the net. So why are we now going backwards? Is Twitter really necessary? Is this popular due to the whole text messaging craze? Fine for talking to friends, but political interviews? Let me hear what's going on, not read short text messages.

[baigge]

I thought it was an interesting interview & format. The concise nature was an added benefit--each word had to matter! I'm particularly glad that Stephanopoulos chose McCain as the subject of the "twitterview," since McCain is the public figure I most admire, and his views are particularly relevant given the difficult decisions our nation is facing.