Aftermath Of An Interview
This is National News Literacy Week. In that spirit, here are some thoughts on the journalistic ethics surrounding the interview that NPR's Mary Louise Kelly conducted last week with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the aftermath, prompted by questions to my office.
A quick recap: Kelly, co-host of All Things Considered, interviewed Pompeo at the State Department on Friday. Seven minutes of the interview centered on the Trump administration's Iran policy. Two minutes at the end were devoted to questions raised about Pompeo's stewardship of the State Department in the wake of Congressional hearings about the administration's Ukraine policy. As the interview shows (listen here) Pompeo objected to the Ukraine questions at the time they were asked, but then continued to answer them until Katie Martin, deputy assistant secretary for the State Department, politely ended the interview.
Had their interaction ended there, I might not be writing about this. It's what happened afterward that thrust this event into the limelight. As Kelly reported, Martin asked her to come to Pompeo's private quarters without her tape recorder, but, as Kelly told All Things Considered, Martin "did not say we were off the record, nor would I have agreed." She continued:
I was taken to the secretary's private living room where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about the same amount of time as
