The pre-interview
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The pre-interview is John Kiriakou's name for a television booking practice he says all the American networks follow.

The sequence

By Kiriakou's account, a producer asks whether he can come on that evening and talk about a given subject. He always says yes. The producer then says they just need to do a quick pre-interview, and asks his opinion on the question. He gives it. The producer says they will call right back, and does, a minute later, to say that they have decided to go a different way on the story and will not need him that evening. 

Kiriakou says this happens to him a lot; his interviewers said the same had happened to them. 

The related complaint

The practice sits alongside two others Kiriakou has described in the same conversation. The first is the set of suggested responses he says Fox producers once emailed him before an appearance.  The second is the promised subject that turns out not to be the subject: his fellow guests described being booked to discuss one cartoonist's controversial work and then being confronted on air with their own. 

Kiriakou's own instance of the same manoeuvre ended with him walking out of an NPR studio five minutes into a half-hour booking. 

See also

- Suggested responses
- The Npr Walkout
- The Convicted Felon Introduction
