Interview

An interview is a conversation between one or several interviewers and one or several interviewees, usually for a publication or broadcast of any kind. The job of the interviewer is to ask questions. Politicians, celebrities, spokespersons and experts on certain subjects are frequently interviewed. Sometimes interviews are aborted (usually by the interviewee); one famous example is the interview of Charlton Heston by Michael Moore in the film Bowling for Columbine.

Interviews can be accommodating or confrontational; in investigative journalism, it is generally expected that the interviewer makes every reasonable effort to get the answers he is looking for, whereas celebrity magazines often simply give the interviewee an opportunity for self-promotion. Jeremy Paxman once asked the same question fourteen times on the UK television programme Newsnight to the then Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard in an attempt to adduce a truthful answer.

Some interviewees require a copy of the interview text to be authorized by them before allowing the publication. In the Internet age, interviews are often conducted via e-mail, but that fact is usually not mentioned in the published interview. Questions and answers are frequently modified for printed interviews to make them more readable, and some interviews have been completely invented.

Some politicians, notably Helmut Kohl (Germany), have avoided giving interviews to the press, whereas many others consider this a necessary aspect of political campaigning.

An interview is also a meeting between an applicant and a person in charge of recruitment. Unlike interviews with politicians, for example, the power between applicants and interviewers is unbalanced; interviewers have complete control over the whole interview and basically can choose. Because of that, sometimes sexual harassment by the interviewer is a problem. This kind of interview occurs in school admissions, jobs and auditions.

In a police station, an interview is also a conversation between police and crime suspects. To avoid fabrication by police in the UK, interviews are audio recorded whereas in many other countries such as Japan and the United States, they are not.