OPINION: Questions to be asked about celebs’ right not to reply

WE stand between two significant television moments. One happened last week, the other is due later today.

Last week’s was the contretemps on Channel 4 Evening News between film director Quentin Tarantino and TV presenter Krishnan Guru-Murphy.

Tarantino sat down with Guru-Murphy to discuss his new movie, Django Unchained. Halfway through, the movie-maker baulked at a question about the links between cinematic and real violence. And “baulked” is putting it mildly.

“Don’t ask me a question like that — I’m not biting,” said Tarantino.

The presenter politely asked him why.

“Because I refuse your question,” was the response. “I’m not your slave and you’re not my master. You can’t make me dance to your tune. I’m not a monkey.”

Inevitably, the interview immediately went viral.

What’s important is that this short interview sums up so much of the corruption and ineptitude of television at the moment. Mr Guru-Murphy defended his question on the basis that his programme was a news programme. Oxymoron, anybody? Wild fires in Australia are news. Violence in Northern Ireland about the flying of a flag is news. The shooting dead of an eight-year-old holiday-maker is news. However, a film director who delivers product every couple of years delivering a new product is not news. But don’t trust me on this. The director himself made it perfectly clear it wasn’t news.

“I’m here to sell my movie,” he said. “This is a commercial for the movie, make no mistake.”

Truth in the news: It isn’t news at all, it’s just an infomercial. You would expect the presenter, personifying the station that employs him and given that his programme is positioned as news, to challenge that characterisation. He did not. It was repeated several times and each time, he let it pass.

Of course we know why he let it pass. Because it was true. Tarantino was there, just as 80% of the famous guests on chat shows are there, in order to sell. The product varies. It can be a movie, a sponsorship, a TV series, a book or a music tour, but the celeb is present for one reason and only one reason — to flog something.

Presenters never honestly introduce the celeb by announcing: “Here’s X and he/she is here to peddle their latest bit of stuff”.

Instead, they engage in a ritual dance, the steps of which are usually agreed in advance. The programme-makers must guarantee not to ask questions about the interviewee’s shoplifting, drug habit, reputation for being unprofessional and obnoxious or recent loss of the custody of their offspring.

It’s pretty much a one-way street, the pre-programme deal. No conditions apply to the celebrity. All they have to do is turn up and talk. Merely to have a Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Tiger Woods, or Lee Child is such an enormous “get” that most programme-makers simply roll over and let them deliver the usual drivel. Even if the forbidden questions are the only currently interesting point about the celeb, and even if viewers can work out that the entertainment, sport or popular fiction star is high as a kite or drunk as two newts.

The usual drivel, in the case of this particular interview, consisted of Tarantino talking tripe about slavery. His claim seemed to be that he was the first person ever to make a film about slavery, despite Spielberg and others doing precisely that.

Tarantino’s stated view was that nobody talked about slavery until he came along to open our minds and mouths on the topic. Now, you may remember the Obamas visiting one of the African ports from which abducted human beings were loaded aboard ships taking them to a life of servitude on plantations in the southern states of America, and the enormous coverage and comment that ensued, but clearly Tarantino was too busy to register that or any of the other discussions of slavery over the past decade.

Shockingly, the presenter didn’t challenge him on that porkie pie either. Possibly because the presenter had a massive folio of reminder notes to get through. Viewers could see him leafing through it, looking for his next question. Once upon a time, girls and boys, TV presenters facing formidably famous interviewees would prepare in advance and then proceed through the interview without blocks of cards or sheaves of notes prepared by diligent researchers. But then, once upon a time, great interviewers did basic stuff like listen and set out to find something new about the celeb. These days, most interviewers just want to get their stars to repeat material that has worked on other TV stations.

None of which is to suggest that Tarantino was wrong to baulk at the question. He was absolutely right. His views on the link between cinema violence and real life violence are on the record and have been for 20 years. They haven’t changed. As he furiously pointed out, all anybody has to do is google it and they’ll find out what he thinks, and, as he even more rattily stated, his views haven’t changed “one iota”.

When I prepare people for TV programmes, a crucial part of that preparation is visiting the worst possibility that could happen, live on the airways, and I’m constantly struck by the assumption held by programme guests that they must answer any question put to them. Not so. Everyone has — or should have — areas in their life that have no place in mass media.

Those areas are governed by a right called privacy. If, for example, you are a recovering alcoholic and a card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and if no public good will be served by your announcement of your drink problem, then you have a perfect right to refuse to expose that aspect of your life. Similarly, if you are child-free by choice or because you wanted children but didn’t get lucky, then you may choose not to get into that issue on air.

A good performer will offer the interviewer enough interesting material to obviate the necessity for them to get to the invasive issues. Which, significantly, Tarantino did not do. Apart from the segment of the interview when he mutinied, the interview was as riveting as setting cement.

HE then got offensively shirty over a totally predictable question which he could have preempted by stating that his views were on record and he wouldn’t revisit them. That said, he did, albeit tastelessly, revive a right which has almost been lost to the righteousness of the Jeremy Paxman impersonators throughout media; the right not to answer needlessly repetitive questions you’ve already answered countless times.

Today’s television event is rather more important. It is the ultimate “get”; the 90-minute interview by Oprah Winfrey with Lance Armstrong wherein, according to advance publicity, he will do a “limited” confession. Limited in whose interests?

Armstrong should not be allowed to tailor his admissions so he, rather than his sport, gains as a result. All questions should be put, answered and followed up.

Viewers will not forgive Winfrey if she has done a deal to get the interview, predicated on collusion with a ruthless cheat.