reporters

Dunno, but I agree with you; some reporters can be total pratts.

#1 - I agree. The very worst example I've ever seen was a channel 10 tv reporter in Australia asking a young champion swimmer, who had won a silver medal in the Olympic Games, "What does it feel like to have lost?"

The report was a total pratt. The champion shortly after that left swimming forever and took up a carpentry apprenticeship.

It's that total lack of sensitivity that annoys me. But I saw one who got his comeuppance, years ago after the attack on a US navy ship in - the Straits of Hormuz? forgot exactly where - by a group of Saudis. The reporter (American) was interviewing a Saudi prince and asked him, pompously, what kind of country could produce terrorists like that and I'll never forget the prince's classic response - "the same type of country that gave rise to the uni-bomber." The reporter was actually at a loss for words after that.

It is common for reporters to ask foreigners questions in a level of English they can't respond to. But it is also usual in such cases to have a translator to hand. If you don't, you are just daft.

I also get annoyed when reporters manage to get access to people like senior Saudis, and ask them grandstanding questions that can be brushed off, when there are telling questions of detail that would be much more challenging to them. They ask "Why do you still torture suspects and pin involuntary confessions on them?" which can simply be denied. "Why, if you are so insistent that suspects are not in fact tortured, do you not allow them to have a lawyer and a camera present at interrogation, a safeguard that has been found necessary in even the most human rights-conscious countries, so that fact of them not being tortured can be clearly demonstrated, both to you and the wider world? Would it not be better for your police to concentrate on collecting actual tangible evidence of what happened, and presenting that evidence to the court, rather than relying on confessions, which have been routinely shown to be unreliable in all jurisidictions?" These questions would be harder to dodge.

iviehoff, i hope you mean it was daft of the reporter not to have a translator, rather than the marathon race winner not having a translator waiting.

i hope you mean it was daft of the reporter not to have a translator

Indeed. Getting translator is reporter's problem.

Same issue in the olympic men's road cycling race. The favourite to win was Bradley Wiggins from UK, but in the end Alexandr Vinokourov from Kazakhastan took gold. The TV interviews were painful to watch as the interviewers made no allowances for Vinokourov's limited English. I bet Bradley Wiggins couldn't give an interview in Russian either.

My guess would be that a) the reporter had little or no experience dealing with non-English speakers and b) the reporter was told "no problem,he/she speaks English." The reporter took that to mean there would be no language barrier, and missed the cues that there was indeed a barrier.

then the reporter kept banging on with his questions and all this little poor girl was able to say was what she had just said, that she was very happy and that she had trained very hard.

This kind of badgering really does sound like the reporter thought she was being evasive, not that she had no idea what he was asking. It also sounds like the assignment was "hey, Fred, I know you usually cover City Hall politics, but I need someone to interview the marathon winners and since you run marathons, I want you to do it."

None of which excuses being an insensitive idiot.

Yes, getting a translator is the reporter's problem. Then the translator's problem is that the reporter is not used to working with one, and does not give the translator time to work, or thinks that the translator's short-term memory is infinite. Been that translator, done that.