“You'll need a miracle to win this election” (J. Paxman 2005): Interviewer assertiveness in UK general elections 1983–2010

In several recent discussions of different forms of ‘news interview’, some principles, previously thought to be fundamental to this genre, have been called into question. In particular, the concept of ‘neutralism’, central to the analysis of interviewer (IR) strategies in the UK and USA, has been found to be both internationally variable and not necessarily adhered to in some contemporary political interviews. On occasion IRs have been found to use strategies of ‘assertion’ in which they state their own opinions and argue with interviewees, and it is further suggested that these practices are becoming increasingly prevalent. To investigate these questions, this article presents a survey of IR strategies in a particular sub-species of news interview, the ‘set-piece’ election interviews with party leaders that have been a feature of British broadcasting since 1983. In this context it is found that adversarial interviewing has always involved some use of IR assertion and that this practice did indeed increase in the late 1990s, but it is also suggested that IRs might have felt justified in these departures from ‘neutralism’ by changing definitions of their role as ‘tribune of the people’.