Interviewing

Abstract

Since Oakley drew this slightly provocative comparison, interviews have become something of a public spectacle. We live in a world where Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame has become almost a fact of life, where interviewers’ sights have extended beyond politicians and celebrities and into the private lives of those in the next street. It is a world where reputations are ruined by a phrase taken out of context and where private motivations are made the subject of explicit attention and public critique. Hardly surprising, then, that Oakley’s world of secrets is now also a world of dark suspicions.

Interviewing is rather like marriage: everybody knows what it is, an awful lot of people do it, and yet behind each closed door there is a world of secrets.

Oakley 1981:41