Curious little monkies?

I have linked to a new blog. This one is by a student of linguistics, one of my favorite hobby topics (as opposed to the ones I have to know something about in order to earn my bread). She seems to write well, and to have a mind that produces something worth writing about. I don't ask for much.

Anyway, what got me interested today was a post she had about The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air by Steven Clayman and John Heritage. She posts two interesting quotes from it, detailing an attitude towards interviewing that I for one would endorse. It is good during the Bush years, was good in the Clinton years, and will be good when the Greenland glaciers are gone and my Florida relatives have to come live with me in the mountains:

"The working hypothesis almost universally shared among correspondents is that politicians are suspect; their public images are probably false, their public statements disingenuous, their moral pronouncements hypocritical, their motives self-serving, and their promises ephemeral." (Epstein 1973: 215)

Jeremy Paxman of BBc Television's Newsnight: "When he started as a young man on The Times Louis Heren was given a piece of advice by an old hack. He was told you should always ask yourself when talking to a politician: "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" I think that is quite a sound principle from which to operate."