Successful media performers usually combine instant availability ( don’t these people have lives to live, work to do, children to feed, elderly relatives to take care of????) with the ability to get their point across in a naturalistic way; neither too concise, nor too rambling. Too short an answer and you risk looking like Clement Atlee, the post war Labour leader, about whom one BBC producer said, ‘Feeding questions to Clem is like throwing a dog a biscuit.’
It’s a fine art, there’s no doubt about it, and much harder than it looks. From the odd discussion I have taken part in over the years, I have learned a few things, particularly the importance of deciding beforehand what broad points I want to make plus learning to answer at greater length than possibly feels natural.
Even so, I was quite shocked to discover, while watching myself take part in a recent pre recorded TV discussion, that, while I had made my points reasonably well and not too briefly, all the other (male) panellists spoke at three times the length. In short, they just kept….. talking and talking……..elaborating on their argument and were allowed to do so by the female presenter whereas each time I finished making my first main point, she immediately looked over to one of the men to gauge their response.That meant I had to interrupt her or one of them in order to get my fair share of time.
Put another way, a lot of these debates suit a certain kind of insensitive smug masculine thruster (and a few women fit this description); the person who is convinced his point is not just more important than everyone’s else’s but really, the only point worth making; a self starter who will happily answer his own questions, cut other people short and generally speak with a smooth authority that can come across as instrinsically demeaning to more impassioned or less confident speakers.
Body language comes into it too; there is a way of sitting rock still, without moving a muscle or turning-towards, a failure to engage with other participants that suggests outright dismissal of their contribution.
This is exactly what happened to Sarah Churchwell, the academic, on Newsnight last night , during a discussion on university tuition fees. Churchwell appeared with David Starkey and the historian and the MP Tristram Hunt, both of whom were given ample time to make their argument.…
