The method Paxman

What does the presenter covers with stars of a chain of television when he has to interview directly his maximum chief? It might do what Jeremy Paxman did on Tuesday in Newsnight with Mark Thompson, general manager of the BBC. But it is slightly probable. The third grade that Paxman applied to Thompson would be impossible in another chain than it is not precisely the BBC.

Thompson was in the program to realize on the due clipping of expenses that includes the closing of 6 Music, a digital broadcasting station of excellent musical programming (disclaimer: the one to that I usually listen) and in that even Jarvis Cocker presents a program every Sunday. The BBC has to cut his budget away but most of the press interpret that it is an attempt of ingratiating itself with the tories with a view to his possible victory in the next elections and of the blindfold rather than the wound putting itself.

The reaction in Facebook has been shining.

In the iPlayer of the BBC, it is possible to see the entire interview. For those who live out of Great Britain, here there is a small fragment of two minutes. Do not get lost the Paxman face when he inspects other radio channels or television of the public enterprise, asking him why the clipping is not applied in other parts of the programming.

Thompson (I weld: 800.000 pounds per year) he might be wondering: why do I leave that this type to which I pay a million pounds sterling to the year (at least, they say that that he receives Paxman) applies this correction to me? But the one who pays is not Thompson, but the taxpayer straight across a valuation.

The method Paxman is already famous in the BBC. The journalist takes his defects as anyone (the pedantic word sometimes does not come to him badly) and sometimes his aggressiveness is exaggerated, but it does not leave that the interviewees go away alive, especially in case of politicians, when they try to commit the worst possible sin: not to answer to the question.

This is what it spent in the almost mythical interview to the conservative minister Michael Howard in 1997. Repeatedly, it rose the same question to him twelve times followed.

Last year, it applied the same treatment to the leading Tory William Hague.