Chapter 1: What is the focus of today's episode regarding political interviews?
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And good morning. This is the Daily Oz. This is the Daily Oz. This is the Daily Oz. Oh, now it makes sense.
MUSIC
Good morning and welcome to The Daily Oz. It is Friday the 22nd of May. I'm Sam Kozlowski.
I'm Billie Fitzsimons.
Billie is usually the person asking the questions on our big political interview podcasts.
Prime Minister David Littleproud, Susan Lee, Angus Taylor, Jim Chalmers, thank you for joining The Daily Oz.
Thanks very much, Billy, for having me on. But today I wanted to flip that because this week she interviewed the Federal Treasurer of Australia, Jim Chalmers, and we want to know how she actually did it.
From the research to the questions that she cut to what it's like when somebody won't give you a straight answer, I want to get into all of the behind the scenes on how you actually interview somebody at the top of the political game. But first, here's a quick message from Emily, who works in TDA's partnerships team.
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Chapter 2: How does Billi prepare for a high-profile political interview?
And in order for us to get that interview, we had to tell them the topics. And then when we got off the call and we were talking amongst ourselves, I presume you know who I'm talking about. We said there is one topic we have to ask and we cannot do this interview if we do not give that topic. And we went back to the team and said, by the way, we also will just ask one question on this.
And it came back to us saying that person is no longer available.
Hmm.
So it's always a fine line.
Maybe we can have that as a separate episode in its entirety because it's an amazing story.
It's an amazing story and one we have never spoken about.
And I would say this would probably have been the highest profile interview of your career.
If we were able to get it. And in the end, it was because we did tell them that we did want to touch on one subject that we no longer had that interview. So it's a fine line between telling them the topics and And wanting them to have some sort of, security is not the right word, but they need some steer in order for them to even agree to do the interview.
But you don't want to give them too much because otherwise it's a PR interview and you don't want that.
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Chapter 3: What strategies does Billi use to handle evasive answers during interviews?
What do you do when you start to notice that they're simply being a politician and giving answers that might be really long or dodging the question that you've put to them?
It's a good question. If they're going on for a long time and that has happened and they start to talk about their childhood or something that does feel completely irrelevant to the question that I asked, I will interrupt and just say that because we have limited time, I do have to interrupt and I'm sorry to get us back on course.
And if they don't answer the question, which sometimes or some would say often they don't,
I think you can just say I'm not sure that that answers the question or Zara laughs at me because I always use the phrase just to be clear and she says that's a tick of mine that I'm always like just to be clear, just to be clear to kind of try to sum up what they're saying because sometimes they can say it in a convoluted way.
But, yeah, I just try to recentre the conversation back to the original question. And you can say... just to go back to the original question, it was about this. And then I think that does force them back on track. Doesn't mean that they're going to answer it, but it means that they will hopefully say something that is at least somewhat in relation to that question.
How do you define a gotcha question? And what's your relationship with gotcha questions?
That's a great question.
Thank you.
Not a great gotcha question.
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Chapter 4: How does Billi ensure her questions remain relevant and engaging?
So the kind of the political persuasions of the people you're interviewing is a big part of how you make sure that You've got that balance.
Yes. We're not only speaking to one side of politics. Yeah. You always talk about a body of work. Yeah.
And I think that- Just define that for the listeners.
Sam is always saying that we can't, we won't just be judged on one piece. Yeah. We are judged on the thousands of pieces that we have done over many years now and that that is is the thing that we should be most proud of.
Love that.
Is that right?
He sounds great. Okay, I do have actually now two more questions, but we'll make it quick because people want to get on with their Friday. There's a lot of strong views that you've just said about journalism and the way that journalism should be conducted. That must lead to... Did I say that?
I don't think I shared the opinions. I just said I have them.
You said you have them. But we can tell that there's a lot of passion that you bring into what you're doing. How do you feel emotionally after one of these interviews?
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Chapter 5: What does Billi do to maintain neutrality during interviews?
I love Jonathan Swan if he's listening.
We can tell.
And you know what's the fun fact about Jonathan Swan?
Yes, I know what you're going to say. This is actually a tidbit. This is actually a tidbit. Tidbit volume two.
He is the son of Norman Swan, who is a health reporter at ABC, who became very popular during the pandemic. So if you didn't know, his son is a political reporter now for The New York Times, but he was previously at Axios, which is where he did the interview with Donald Trump, and it was a brilliant interview.
I reckon we'll get there one day and you'll be sitting across from President Trump in no time. Billy, thank you so much for taking us through that and for actually giving us an understanding of what goes into what was a really big week.
Thank you. I hope it wasn't too self-indulgent.
That was good. It was good. I think there's a lot there for just people who are really interested in how something like that actually comes together.
Thank you. Thanks for taking me to coffee all those years ago.
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