Interview Voyeurism

Buried inside the Department of Defense’s website is a journalist’s gold mine.

Since Sept. 11, the department’s daily briefings have become must-follow events for any journalists covering the war on terrorism. DefenseLink, the department’s website, has a wonderful archive with complete transcripts — a great reference when you’re compiling your Sept. 11 anniversary stories.

But what I love about this site is that it not only posts transcripts of the daily media briefings and speeches, but of every interview given by top Defense Department officials.

This means you can read the complete transcripts of interviews by journalists at every major media organization, from CNBC’s Brian Williams to The Washington Post Editorial Board to U.S. News & World Report. This includes even the parts not broadcast or published.

Since all of these interviews are a matter of public record, you can even use quotes from these interviews that the media organization that conducted them passed on.

Reading them is a fascinating learning tool — you can basically sit in on interviews conducted by some of the best journalists in America and study their techniques. And you can even learn about their writing by examining what information they chose to include in their stories and what they left out.

I particularly enjoyed reading The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward and Dan Balz interview Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld earlier this year for their eight-part series, “10 days in September.”

The site even posts transcripts of the questions and answers at the informal media stakeouts that occur after interviews or briefings — like this one in which Rumsfeld tells the press to go do push-ups. And interviews with the American Forces Press Service even include audio and video, like this one.

At the very least, these transcripts will give you a few good laughs: try reading the ones where the press interogates spokeswoman Victoria Clarke about Rumsfeld’s sense of humor — or where she’s forced to explain how a goat forced the briefing to be delayed.

If you know of any other sites that post the complete transcripts of journalists’ interviews with officials, please e-mail me at tips@jondube.com and I’ll print them here in the future.