Interview with Ron Longinotti

My partner and I took the interview in the office of Ron Longinotti in the city of San Francisco. We did this interview in the financial district of San Francisco in the headquarters of CBS Bay Area. Ron Longinotti is the General Manager of CBS and is more or less the head of the Bay Area branch. Ron Longinotti spent many years working in the financial and administrative sections of CBS. We arrived at his office after school and were promptly ushered into his office. In his office, we turned on our recorder and began asking questions. We alternated asking him our questions from our prewritten question list. After asking our question and hearing a response, we would occasionally ask a clarifying question. We learned in the interview many pieces of new information. He had the opinion that we needed to make a clarification between local news stations and the 24 hour news stations. He believed that it was the development of the 24 hours new cycle that leads to news bias. He also showed us that opinionated news programs do not create the bias but simply react to the desire of the public to have opinions in the news. He forced us to look inwards at the consumer’s fault instead of blaming the media solely.
We were received very well by our interviewee. He seemed very relaxed during the interview and set the tone of the interview to be very casual. He actually ate his lunch while we talked so that we did not feel pressured by his job title. Throughout the interview, he showed great respect for us and also gave us advice for moving our project in different directions. He was the one who made us differentiate between local news and the 24 hour news cycle.
In the interview, we expected to learn about the basics of the news industry. I somewhat thought that he would be unable to provide information about the action of news bias because the nature of his job makes him deal with more administrative aspects of the media. I expected him to show us the economic and administrative aspects of bias such as how to deal with a biased news reporter and whether or not he would choose to fire the reporter.
We were pleasantly surprised in the interview that Mr. Longinotti was a valuable resource for our project. He gave us invaluable insight into the news industry and how it works. He also somewhat changed the direction of our project. We entered the meeting expecting to blame the news media for bias, but we left the interview with the impression that we should look at the consumers and why we created a demand for a biased media. He showed us that organizations such as Fox News didn’t simply exist and create a severe media bias towards right wingers. He made us see that those right winged people existed before Fox News and that they created their station to fill a void that the consumers made.
My overall impression of the interview was that it went over very well. We entered the interview having our project plan somewhat planned out but we left the interview with a fresh perspective from a professional in the news industry. I realize that Mr. Longinotti did not have to do our interview but that he chose to do it. We were both grateful to Mr. Longinotti as much as he was happy to have us. Overall the interview was a very informative meeting and gave us a new perspective for our project. I believe that future students doing this project should do the interview or miss out on a valuable opportunity.