The legendary
Commander Burt of The Yard extracted numerous confessions from Nazi war
criminals with barely a word being said or a question asked. And a colleague of
one of the Sunday Times’s most successful investigative journalists tells me:
‘He just used to sit there making sympathetic noises down the ‘phone.
It’s a powerful tool
because we don’t like silence between strangers (hence the inconsequential
drivel that is talked at dinners and parties) but if a journalist uses it on
you there is a very simple set of rules for coming out on top.
Say what you want to
say in response to a question; then stop.
If the journalist/interviewer
just sits there nodding and smiling, nod and smile back and see who cracks first.
A long silence might
be an opportunity to deliver a new message
If you don’t have
something to say, don’t say it.
