By Sarah Murnane
Podcasts have slowly transformed into the under thirty-five’s radio stations. With the advent of social media and the transition of news to digital media, in general the media form that felt this change the hardest was radio. Radio is not obsolete, but it is progressively becoming pigeon-holed into a demographic of older individuals and has failed to capture younger audiences. Podcasts have managed to fill this gap, where people can consume news, interviews and content in a similar form to radio but more curated to their particular tastes.
Despite this, there are some podcasts that have established themselves as the most popular and profitable that are consumed by a significant amount of people. The most notable is Call Her Daddy currently hosted by Alex Cooper that generates approximately twenty million listeners per-month. The popularisation of podcasts has understandably led to the increase in celebrity guests and notable figures being invited or attempting to be featured on these podcasts to access this younger audience. Here is where the problems start.
In a Substack article by Tobias Hess entitled “Why Are All Pop Star Interviews Like That?”, Hess comically lambasts the latest generation of successful podcasts such as Call Her Daddy, Therapies and Las Culturistas by calling them “The Girls and Gays Pop Star Sit Down”. He argues that while these hosts claim to be interviewers and their guests an interviewee, they do not engage with their guest in this context. He states, “What unites all of these pieces of media is a giddy sensibility where the host has the affect and enthusiasm of a super fan”.
This sentiment is echoed in a YouTube video essay by Mina Lee, who uses the celebrity media of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s to draw distinct comparisons between the culture that exists today. She points out that the way pop-stars and people in the public eye were treated during this time in interviews was actively hostile. She uses examples such as Brittney Spears being invasively questioned about her sex life at the age of twenty or Courtney Love after the death of her husband, being asked about her drug use around her children.
The interviewer in this case was attempting to draw as much out of their guest as possible, with little consideration beyond making a good show. This has not only been acknowledged in the form of podcasts but also in other media. The New York Times published an article a few weeks ago about the “death of critique” and how music, film and TV journalism is suffering as critics no longer care or matter in the world of media. In essence, criticism is rarely given and critics are afraid to give a harsh opinion leading to a swath of mediocrity.
The base conclusions here are that the way that the media treated celebrities in the 90s and 2000s was wrong. It was vindictive and lacking in compassion for the privacy of the interviewee and encouraged a system of sexism and abuse for these celebrities in many cases. However, Hess points out that there appears to have been a complete overcorrection. Now it is impossible to conduct a proper interview with someone in the public eye. Nearly all questions are pre-arranged and signed off by management, a publicist or in some cases the interviewee themselves. Interviewers cannot go off-script or present any kind of argument towards the celebrities they interview. It is not only boring, but it brings into question what the point of these interviews is besides being yet another form of advertising for these celebrities.
Ultimately in this case these people are celebtbiies, mainly singers, actors or creatives. It is not wholly necessary that they conduct in-depth interviews into their personal opinions. What is imperative about this initial discourse around celebrity interviews is the realisation that all interviews are like this now. Political figures are realising that they can adopt the same methods, not answer off-the-cuff questions and pre-approve their interviews. This did occur to some degree before, but now it is almost every structured interview we see.
Ian Katz spoke about this subject at length in an article for The Financial Times entitled “The Death of the Political Interview’ where he complains about a Rachel Reeves interview that he described as “boring snoring”, going on to critique politicians from avoiding interviews as a way of preventing bad press. However, now politicians tend to give more interviews but they edge for this structured nature. Kamala Harris went on Call Her Daddy during her campaign, Donald Trump who previously gave extensive interviews with the press has fallen out of the habit. Even in instances where journalists can ask questions unprompted, Karoline Leavitt, the current US Press Secretary, has completely ignored reporters after prompting for questions at press conferences.
When the figure-heads of our society are no longer willing or pushed to be truly questioned on their beliefs, our media becomes an advertising campaign for their agenda. Someone needs to step up to the plate and start to regularly and effectively begin to question political figures without their prior knowledge of the interview questions.