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A few times now I have seen American spokespersons and politicians interviewed on the main British news programmes. I have noticed that the ones who are there as representatives of the current administration have a peculiar attitude to the interviewers.
Often the interviewee will make some statement of fact (such as the existsence of WMD) or some intimation of facts ( linking 9/11 with the war in Iraq) which then gets picked up on by the interviewer. The response to being challenged is often to switch to what I can only presume to be an attempt to intimidate the interviewer. I've noticed it a few times now. They seem to adopt a tone that seems vaguely threatening and make some attempt to turn the legitimate challenge into a vocal support for terrorism or they seem to take grave offence at what's been said to them and with that comes a vaguely threatening undertone that to me seems designed to make the interviewer back off.
I can only assume this is because in America these people are very very powerful and could if they so chose wreck an interviewer's career fairly effectively. Either that or the accepted norms for interviewing are very different in the two countries and they are genuinely offended.......Either way it generally doesnt result in our journalists backing off. Maybe because that particular set of frontmen and dreamweavers have little power over this particular set of journalists and interviewers. Thus far attempts to exert such power over the press here have resulted in very public battles that have shaken the foundations of Downing Street and the British press.
I hope that the journalists and interviewers over here manage to hold onto that independance and adversarial style. There's nothing especially great about the british journalists and there's nothing especially weak about their American counterparts. If your people can have their teeth drawn then so can ours.
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