All Kinds Of Shenanigans For A Big-Time Interview?
"Given that they're so rare, you might think there would be all kinds of shenanigans from the No. 10 side - you can't ask questions about this or that, you can only have x minutes, it has to be such-and-such a location or whatever. Actually, in my experience such negotiations aren't nearly as common or extensive as people think, and there certainly wasn't anything like that in this case: we were allowed to ask Mr. Blair whatever we wanted (although as viewers will have seen, he could still refuse to answer!)"In the past, we've spoken to those at CBS News who have handled the logistics of interviews with the American equivalent of the Prime Minister, President Bush. The rules with those interviews are somewhat similar.
For example, last summer, when Bush was visiting an Arizona border town and talking immigration, he granted all three networks interviews during the trip. While the White House chooses the order of each network's interview, and limits the time to five minutes each, there aren't any other editorial ground rules.
Producer Carter Yang told us at the time: "We would never agree to an interview in which the White House said there were certain topics that were off limits." Producer Tom Seem added that the White House will occasionally tell reporters that if topics outside of the primary premise (in this case, immigration) are broached, the president will likely just not answer them.