World's Worst Media Interview
by Rick Grant
In retrospect I wish I'd never read the Royal Commission Report on Aboriginal Peoples. If I hadn't, the phone wouldn't have rung the other night and I wouldn't have been subjected to the World's Worst Media Interview. (nominated in all five categories)
A couple of days before that appalling call I'd sent out e-mails to a couple of dozen Australian and New Zealand media outlets as an experiment.
In my foolishness I thought I could develop a media presence there by making parallels between the Commission's findings and some of the same problems south of the equator.
The only one to ever respond was a radio station in Sydney or Perth whose producer had such a sprawling Aussie accent and was so much in a rush to get me on the air that I never did catch the details.
Normally, a producer will chat with you for a few minutes to nail down just what the interview is about. It saves embarrassing mix-ups on the air.
Not this one. Within moments of answering the phone I was on air live with "Marcie" and it might have been "Timmie" or "Kenny" or something.
Right away I knew things were going wrong. The producer had put her phone handset down on the console without shutting it off. This meant I could hear every word in the control room, not loudly, but certainly clearly.
To this day I hope the audio level coming back through my phone was too low to be going out over the airwaves.
You see, Marcie and Timmie aren't the best interviewers by any standard, in fact they're quite dumb, something that their producer kept reminding them of right through the interview in a nasty snarling flow of invective.
Here's some of the stuff I was hearing all during the interview.
"Marcie! Just read the bloody questions. Don't try your own!"
"Timmie! I told you to ask what it'll cost to deal with the aborigines. Can't you damn well listen!"
And in one vicious low throated growl, "Jesus what a bunch of f*****g idiots you are."
Meanwhile things aren't going well from my point of view.
Timmie -- "Do you have any problems with your aborigines lying around in the streets drunk?"
Marcie -- "Why should the government give them any money? Can't they be given jobs and made to work?"
But the one that really stopped me dead.
"What do you think of white people -- are they racist to you because you're an aborigine?"
At this point I hear the producer make a sound like a rusty sword being pulled from a scabbard. "Marcie, you (f-word) stupid goddamn bitch, he's WHITE!"
I've since scrapped all plans to develop a media presence in Australia, in fact I've ripped out that page in my Atlas and burned it.
Table of Contents© Rick Grant 1999