Word: paleys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Robert J. Paley '78, a Winthrop House senior with experience in survey methodology, said yesterday that the question "should give the advantages of both sides." He added that if the question were handed in as part of a survey for a research methods course, the student would "get a C- because the question is obviously biased...
Since William Paley invented CBS, you'd think he would know most of the tricks of the trade. But in 1962 he had to learn from Daniel Schorr about one of television news' more dubious subterfuges...
...book Clearing the Air, Schorr tells of a luncheon in Paris during which Paley congratulated him on a CBS documentary about East Germany. "Its dramatic climax," writes Schorr, "showed Walther Ulbricht, the East German Communist leader, upbraiding me for my questions and finally storming out of the room in full view of the camera. 'What I admired most,' said Paley, 'was the coolness with which you sat there and looked at him while he was yelling...
...Breaking into laughter, I said, 'Surely you understand that the shots of me looking cool were "reverses," filmed after Ulbricht had left the room!' No, Paley had not understood, that ... I proceeded to explain in detail the conventional post-interview procedure for shifting the camera and focusing it on the correspondent to repeat the principal questions, plus a gamut of absorbed and skeptical poses, all of this to be spliced into the interview to add variety and facilitate editing. Paley was fascinated. 'But isn't it basically dishonest?' he asked finally...
That very day Paley ordered staged reverses stopped. But his stern edict has since been relaxed, so that if a Mike Wallace interview now takes place with only one instead of two cameras, Wallace can be photographed afterward asking the same questions again or reacting angrily, moodily or laughingly-so long as these reverses are "made in the presence of the interviewee" or with his consent...