2 - The news interview in context: institutional background and historical development

Summary

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “interview” entered the language in 1514, from the French entre voir (meaning “to be in sight of”), hence referring to a “meeting of persons face-to-face, especially one sought or arranged for the purpose of formal conference at some point” (p. 1740). These first interviews were normally between high ranking individuals and, in a world where travel was difficult and most diplomatic communication was conducted by letter, they were rare events accompanied by high ceremony. The extraordinary 1520 extravaganza, when Henry VIII of England entertained Francis I of France so lavishly that the event (and its location) came to be known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, may have been one of the first “interviews” ever to be so named.

By the end of the nineteenth century and the rise of modern journalism, the term interview came to have a different and more current meaning. Webster's dictionary of 1913 defined an interview as “a conversation, or questioning, for the purpose of eliciting information for publication,” noting that this is a “recent use, originating in American newspapers, but apparently becoming general” (Webster 1913:781). A more recent Webster notes that the term “interviewee” emerged in 1884. By this point, the term had lost its older ceremonial associations, and acquired its primary modern meaning as a journalistic practice.