I think in newspapers those two roles are blurred. To give a recent example, we had Paul Kelly on the front page [of the Australian] with a news story based on an interview with the Prime Minister. It was about the prospect of war with Iraq. But Kelly's commentary was in there as well. We have a lot of that in Australian journalism. Certainly, when it comes to the role of the TV interviewer, I'd say absolutely both those roles are crunched.

You are always looking to get a news line out of it – I am anyway. What I find far more problematic is the tedious sort of formulaic posture of interviewer as almost feral aggressor, which results in the interviewee becoming defensive and saying nothing. I think the more productive middle ground is the interviewer as information seeker, prepared to be combative and who will come back, with alternate views, or press for a direct response. I find that much more likely to yield fresh information which the viewer can take away, and say:‘Yes, I got something out of the ten minutes’. A lot of radio interviews irritate me because it's a case of: ‘We're now going to have X who is going to interrupt Minister Y for the next seven and a half minutes’ and not a shred of information comes out of that.