In his role as Channel 4 News and News at Noon anchor, Krishnan Guru-Murthy asks tough questions without being hostile.
Guru-Murthy was 18 when he began working in broadcasting.
“The temptation when you start out is to be really aggressive,” he says. “You think it’s the way to get noticed. But the more you do it you realise that’s not very wise.
“With some interviews you have to be confrontational and authoritative, other times you have to tease. There is no point in being a one-trick pony. You see that with Paxman himself. It’s a misreading that he is always tough, he doesn’t always duff people up.”
“I spent the first 10 years of my career trying to prove to people running newsrooms that I was a grown-up”, he recalls. He went to Kashmir as a 19-year-old to do a BBC documentary and at 22, was sent to Croatia and Bosnia to cover the war. “I think it was quite hard because I was essentially a kid. I had to work hard to be taken seriously.”
Two years later he persuaded BBC bosses to let him work as a producer on Newsnight, for which he took a massive pay cut. He established himself as a political interviewer during the 1992 elections, and moved to Channel 4 in 1998.
Tough interviews
He admits that some of the toughest interviews are with ideologically strong people who have a very clear idea of what message to communicate.
“They’re a challenge but fantastic fun,” he says. “Animal rights activists are a classic example and Abu Hamza, the now jailed extremist Muslim preacher, also had a very strong idea of what message he wanted to get out.”
Another tough interview was Holocaust denier David Irving, who he interviewed around the time he had made racist comments about Trevor McDonald. “When you’re dealing with someone like Irving, who is no fool, you’ve got to be on your toes and not let the interview veer off.”
Who is media savvy?
According to Guru-Murthy, it is not just public figures and politicians who have become more media savvy. It’s also the public, who can spot tricks and ploys on both sides. “If you stick to one particular interview technique it can become terribly stagnant,” he says. “You constantly need to think of new ways of putting the questions.”
One interview that stands out was with Labour MP Jim Devine, who was barred from standing at the election after reports that he claimed expenses for work on his home by a non-existent firm. Guru-Murthy interviewed him on 5 February, the day he was told he faced two charges of false accounting for submitting fake receipts for the sum of £5,500. This was claimed for stationery but actually used for staff wages.
“I decided to take him through exactly what had happened. I wasn’t trying to be hard on him, just find out exactly what he had done, and quite remarkably, he told us. That is quite rare.”
Dreaming of Obama
His dream interview would be with President Obama: “He’s such a pivotal figure. I have never seen an interview where he has said something that surprised me, but you’d probably get more candour out of him after the end of his presidency. I’d like to do a Frost/Nixon – sit down with him for days and go through the life and times of his presidency in great detail.”
Guru-Murthy would like to do the same with Gordon Brown. “What we haven’t seen yet is him talking about his real position within the Labour movement and his popularity. That’s what everyone wants to get to but he doesn’t want to discuss that.”
He almost managed it when he quizzed Brown about the bullying allegations made by Observer journalist Andrew Rawnsley two days after our interview. “Do you get angry with your staff, do you swear at them?” he asked. Brown denied the allegations.
He continued: “Do you throw things? Have you ever hit anyone? Pushed? Shoved them?” His technique was enough to make Brown attempt that awkward smile.
by Lisa Kjellsson