Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- The news interview as a genre -- The news interview in disciplinary context -- Analyzing the news interview -- Methodology: conversation analysis -- Levels of analysis -- Speech exchange system -- Action sequences -- Actions and their accomplishment -- The news interview and society -- The database -- The game in action -- 2 The news interview in context: institutional background and historical development -- The "interview contract" -- Controlling the playing field: regulatory constraints on news -- United States -- Britain -- Participation -- The evolution of the broadcast interview -- The United States: development by fits and starts -- Britain: the growth of adversarial interviewing -- Conclusion -- 3 Openings and closings -- News interview openings -- Headline -- Background -- Lead-in -- Comparisons and institutional circumstances -- Interviewee identities and interview genres -- The interviewee as participant and the "newsmaker interview" -- The interviewee as expert and the "background interview" -- The interviewee as advocate and the "debate interview" -- News interview closings -- Terminating -- Winding down -- Prefaces to the final thanks -- Earlier efforts at winding down -- Micro-managing the final answer's length -- Cutting the IE off -- Warning in advance -- Interspersed response tokens -- Contested closings -- Conclusion -- 4 Basic ground rules: taking turns and "doing" news interview talk -- News interview turn-taking: basic preliminaries -- Interviewer questions -- Prefaced questions and their interactional construction -- Answers as a joint construction -- News interview turn-taking in context -- Producing talk for an overhearing audience -- Talk for overhearers: interviewer conduct.

Talking for overhearers: interviewee conduct -- Maintaining neutralism -- Turn-taking norms: departures and their management -- Interviewer initiated departures from questioning -- Interviewer assertions that buttress a question -- Playing devil's advocate -- Interviewee departures from answering -- Intervening in ongoing talk -- Attacks on interviewers -- Attacks on question prefaces -- General attacks on interviewer conduct -- Conclusion -- 5 Defensible questioning: neutralism, credibility, legitimacy -- Speaking on behalf of a third party -- Neutralism as a collaborative construction -- Neutralism and credibility -- Tribune of the people -- Neutralism in jeopardy -- The differential vulnerability of question prefaces -- The residual vulnerability of third-party statements -- A note on defending against attacks -- Discussion -- 6 Adversarial questioning: setting agendas and exerting pressure -- A historical case -- Analyzing question design: some preliminary observations -- Simple and prefaced question designs -- Dimensions of questioning -- Agenda setting -- Tightening question agendas: using prefaces -- Questions and presuppositions -- Questions and "preference" -- Conveying preference through interrogatives -- Conveying preference through question prefaces -- Hostile questioning -- Negative formulation as a "coercive" feature of question design -- Accusatory questions -- Splits, forks and contrasts -- Conclusion -- 7 Answers and evasions -- Conceptual preliminaries -- Doing "answering" -- Dimensions of resistance -- The negative dimension -- The positive dimension -- Overt practices -- Deference to the interviewer -- Justifying the shift -- The special case of refusing to answer -- Covert practices -- Unmarked transitions beyond answering -- Subverting the trappings of "answering" -- Operating on the question -- Two case studies.

Dan Quayle and the succession question -- The affairs of Bill Clinton -- Conclusion -- 8 The panel interview: discussion and debate among interviewees -- Setting the scene -- Inviting disagreement -- Expressing disagreement -- The distinctiveness of interviewee disagreements -- Escalation: from disagreement to confrontation -- Neutralism redux: the problem of balanced treatment -- Preliminaries and introductions -- The first round of questioning -- Inviting interplay between panelists -- A note on facial expressions -- Cross-examining one panelist -- The closing -- Conclusion -- 9 Conclusion -- Appendix Transcript symbols -- Temporal and sequential relationships -- Aspects of speech delivery, including aspects of intonation -- Other markings -- References -- Subject index -- Index of names.