How To Be Interviewed
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz ensured the headlines had been set before his ORF Sommergespräch had even gone to air
Servus!
The public broadcaster ORF’s Sommergespräche, its summer conversations with the country’s leading politicians, came to an end on Monday with an interview with chancellor Sebastian Kurz at an ostensibly precarious moment for his premiership. There is instability within the coalition over environmental and immigration policy. Kurz remains under investigation by anti-corruption authorities over possible false statements made to a parliamentary investigative committee. COVID-19 case numbers are on the rise, the vaccination rate had stagnated, and intensive care units are reaching capacity in certain states.
All of this atonal background music could have made for a stormy prime-time interview. It was not to be. Once again, Kurz demonstrated one of the reasons why he remains Austria’s premier politician, one who has, since 2017, left his rivals in the dust: his ability to command, control, and manipulate media appearances to his advantage. His interview on the ORF did not generate any headline news, but in part, that was because Kurz did not intend it to.
The chancellor understands certain things about the television interview that his political opponents, it seems, do not. The first is to never answer the question the interviewer poses but rather the one you heard or the one you wish they had asked. This form of evasion is made easier—as was too often the case on Monday—when the interviewer poses questions that are too long or have too many facets, giving the interviewee the opportunity to pick out the aspect they wish to address, discarding or overlooking the ones they do not.
If the interviewer puts a multi-part question to you about the flat-lining vaccine rate, for instance, now is the time to roll out your pre-worked and -agreed line about the importance of getting the jab and leave it at that. Therein lies another thing Kurz understands: do not allow the interviewer to set the agenda, but rather bring your own. This is to say, from the point of view of the politician, the 55 minutes allotted to the Sommergespräch is a chance for you to trot out the phrases and messages you want to use and publicize rather than address and thereby acknowledge the substance of the criticisms leveled by the interviewer.
The third thing Kurz is excellent at is padding. On Monday, not once did he allow himself to get flustered. He spoke slowly and clearly, often vaguely, often becoming platitudinous, usually talking around and about a topic as opposed to getting into anything too substantial. Once Kurz had finished talking about whether or not he would take paternity leave after his partner gives birth to their baby in the coming months, there was barely time to discuss anything else at all. Kurz’s answers were those of a politician who understood that, if the interview can only be less than an hour in length, one can try and run out the clock and get out of the bear pit without any scratches. Kurz did just that. The interview was a total bust.
Indeed, the only headlines Monday evening came before the interview had even aired when the country’s newspapers received a communique which reportedly came from the chancellor’s office detailing his five-point plan for handling the fourth wave of the coronavirus in the fall1. These include de facto lockdowns for the un-vaccinated and stricter controls on and oversight of vaccine passports. Kurz also wants to keep schools open and use the intensive care bed occupancy rate instead of the seven-day incidence rate as the guide for measuring the seriousness of any further outbreak. The message and the news agenda, then, were set before the interview had even aired. The Sommergespräch was just a performance.
Bis bald!
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