Journal #3 NPR Interview

Journal #3 NPR Interview

I listened to the interview with NPR’s Jim Zerollie about the economic bailout and the stocks that the Federal Government will be purchasing. The interview started with an excerpt from a recent President Bush speech regarding the recent pass of the Bailout Bill. After the excerpt was played Jim was given some questions to answer to clarify what the bailout and stock buying will mean for our economy.
The interviewer did her homework on the topic before the interview. She knew about the passing of the recent bill and that the Federal Treasury was going to help some of the largest banks in the U.S. get their credit flowing again. She asked mainly clarifying questions. What I mean by this is that she seemed to have a good grasp on the direct, and cross-examination questions. The interviewer was very good at taking what was publicly announced and then formed her question to get the important deeper issue into the interview.
The interviewer would build up her questions with quotes and excerpts from press releases and then mainly just looked for the statements to be interpreted by the political and economical correspondent. The follow up questions seemed a little rehearsed or scripted but that did help the flow in the interview and helped the listener stay on the topic with the radio interview. She did ask the questions that were the most obvious in terms of what should logically come next in the line of questioning.
The interviewers strategy seems to be bi-partisan and just looking to get the facts out in her broadcast. She did not try to trip Jim up or make him choose a side. She stayed in the middle and let the interviewee have the floor to bring some clarity to a somewhat “foggy” subject for most Americans.
Jim was not very evasive of any question posed to him. Jim knew that he was there to shine some light on the topic so for every question, he just tried to answer with the facts and his own base of knowledge. The relationship seem to me as two friends that have been in this position before together. This is true seeing how the interviewer was an anchor for the radio station and Mr. Zerolli was the senior economic correspondent.