Don’t get stonewalled: How to interview people who don’t want to talk
It’s one thing to interview friendly sources and guests. But what about those who don’t trust you? Part 1 of a two-part issue on interviewing the reluctant source.
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Hi storytellers —
The first thing Heath Druzin did when he got a job with NPR was to buy a couple of guns.
He didn’t fear that working in public radio would be dangerous.
It was 2018, and Druzin, a former newspaper reporter, would be reporting on militias for an NPR collaboration called Guns & America.
He knew militia members would be unwilling to talk with him if he didn’t know the difference between one weapon and another.
Learning how to handle a gun was a job requirement, as Druzin saw it — table stakes for covering the kind of community he’d be reporting on for the next two years.
How do we interview people who don’t want to talk to us?
I’ve discussed interviewing skills often but have rarely addressed the problem of reluctant sources. These are the kinds of people from whom we may get the most interesting and important stories. This is true if we are reporters attempting to hold power to account — but it’s also the case with personal stories, where getting to the elusive emotional heart of a matter makes the difference between a forgettable and a memorable piece.
There’s quite a bit to say about reluctant sources, so I’m breaking the topic into two. This is Part 1.
I turned to a few in-the-trenches reporters, including Heath Druzin, for their hard-won advice.
Today, Druzin is the host and creator of the NPR series Extremely American, about the rise of extremism.
But in 2018, the year he bought the guns, Druzin was new to reporting on militias. He needed to build trust. At a minimum, that would mean avoiding easy mistakes that would instantly label him as a lazy outsider.
“If you’re talking to people who are very skeptical of the press, it’s important to spend some time learning about their world,” he says.
Without any firsthand knowledge of guns, he knew he risked asking questions that would reveal ignorance. For instance, had he asked about machine guns, he worried that sources would have responded dismissively that most machine guns are illegal. He imagined an interviewee saying, “We’re not talking about machine guns, we’re talking about semi-automatic rifles.”
“It’s an important distinction and one that the vast majority of Americans don’t know about,” Druzin says. “I really tried to learn enough about that world to at least speak about it and not sound like a moron.”
It worked. For two years, he successfully reported stories for Guns & America, interviewing sources like the famous extremist Ammon Bundy.
But boning up on important pieces of the culture, like guns, is only a first step toward persuading recalcitrant sources to talk. Druzin developed other techniques as well.
He would need them for Extremely American — especially for its second season, on the rise of Christian Nationalism.
Heath Druzin interviewing a musician at the Yellow Pine Harmonica Festival. Courtesy: Heath Druzin
That investigation took him to the college town of Moscow, Idaho. There, Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church, a leader in the Christian Nationalist movement, has been on a 50-year quest to replace democracy with theocracy. Wilson has centered that effort on “taking over” Moscow and remaking it into his ideal version of society — one in which women can’t vote and only Christians can hold elected office.
Clearly, reporting on Christ Church would be a nerve-wracking and tricky enterprise.
Druzin tread lightly. Before approaching Wilson or other Christ Church figures, he spent time in Moscow seeking out former church members, church critics, and people acquainted with Doug Wilson, like Wilson’s college philosophy professor.
He wanted to gather as much information as possible, quietly, before Wilson or church members found out about his project, and definitely before he approached them for interviews.
Moscow is a small town. News travels fast. Druzin wasn’t trying to hide anything, he says — he was preparing for the possibility that when he did request an interview with Wilson, it could happen fast.
“Sometimes if they say yes, it’s now or never,” he says. “You don’t want to screw it up by not being prepared.”
Before sitting down for a two-hour narrative interview with Wilson, Druzin needed a clear understanding of the complex history at play, including Wilson’s decades-long initiative and his motivations as well as accusations of abuse and complaints about Christ Church’s business practices.
High Anxiety
While it wasn’t hard to find ex-church-members and critics, they were nervous to talk, especially given the exposure they’d have to NPR’s large audience.
Still, Druzin managed to create a relationship with one particularly outspoken critic, Sarah Bader. She’d already been quoted in a couple of local articles and was actively speaking out on Facebook.
“She is an ex-Christ Church member and grew up in an evangelical family,” Druzin says. “She is no longer in that world. She always carries a gun. She said she's gotten threats. She [said she’s] been harassed out in Moscow and even at her job.”
Druzin first offered to chat on the phone, off the record, to introduce himself. Then, he proposed visiting her in Moscow — again, informally, so she could meet him and decide whether she wanted to go forward as a source.
She agreed to meet. She chose a wine bar where she wouldn’t run into church members.
In those first meetings with Bader and other church critics, Druzin was careful. “I try to be sensitive to the fact that I don't have much on the line. In the end, I don't live in Moscow, and I'm visiting a place where people have to live when I leave,” he says.
“I told Sarah and everybody else, ‘I understand it's a really sensitive topic, but I'd really like to learn about it from you. I want to do the story justice. Please help me understand what's going on there.’”
Ultimately, Bader went on the record with her story; you’ll hear her in the series.
But Bader also did one other extremely important thing. She became Druzin’s guide in the community, introducing him to sources who claimed to have been abused in the church.
(For more on the necessity of a guide who will make introductions and vouch for you, listen to the first episode of Sound Judgment with Lemonada’s Stephanie Wittels Wachs, ironically about how she reported on gun culture in Montana.)
Much of Druzin’s reporting with abuse victims and church critics became content for Extremely American. But even conversations with people who chose not to speak on the record helped prepare Druzin for his biggest task: approaching Pastor Doug Wilson for an interview, armed with facts.
I’m leaving that story, and a discussion of how to interview potentially hostile sources, to Part II.
As a reporter, Druzin employed a sincere blend of compassion, sensitivity, and toughness to get a gripping — and truly astonishing — story.
Since much of what we do as interviewers is unique to who we are as people, I was curious to learn whether other enterprise journalists’ methods felt similar to Druzin’s — or if he’s simply an empathetic guy.
Luckily, reader Shannon Lynch reached out to me about her podcast, The Alley: DC’s 8th and H Case. Lynch turned out to be the perfect complement to Druzin.
The Alley is a series about the wrongful convictions of eight men for a murder they didn’t commit.
Like Druzin, Lynch waded into an unfamiliar culture — but she didn’t have to go anywhere to do it. In fact, the story that became The Alley occurred right in her own neighborhood back in 1984, when Catherine Fuller, a Black woman, was murdered in Northeast D.C., on the corner of 8th and H streets. Seventeen Black men were arrested for the murder; eight were given life sentences.
None had committed the crime.
Lynch, who was born in D.C., first heard about the case in 2021. “I was shocked that, first of all, I didn't know about it,” she says. “Second of all, the more people I talked to in DC, they didn't know about it.”
Lynch wanted to understand what had gone wrong. But, also like Druzin, Lynch was an outsider whom the wrongfully convicted men had no reason to trust.
When she started, she had only a couple of things on her side: no deadline and a level of patience that’s hard to comprehend.
She reached out to an author who’d written a book about the case. He agreed to introduce her to Chris Turner, who’d been released from prison in 2010.
Then came the conundrum: How to break the ice with a traumatized stranger.
Lynch was disarmingly simple.
“I just expressed to him that I didn't have an ulterior motive. I was just generally concerned about the story. And it was disturbing to me that there had been no in-depth audio coverage of it,” she says, “He took me at my word. He could see how enthusiastic I was about hopefully allowing more people to hear the story.”
Find a guide
In Moscow, you might say that Heath Druzin got lucky when he tracked down Sarah Bader, because she was the kind of person who knew everyone. He wasn’t looking for her to become his guide, but she did.
The same serendipity happened for Shannon Lynch.
“Chris Turner is an incredibly friendly man,” she says.
“In this group of men, they call him the mayor because he’s the one who groups everyone up.”
Turner’s gregariousness may have helped him become Lynch’s guide. But so did two other factors.
First, he got out of prison years before the rest of the group. In the 11 years since, Turner had become more trusting and willing to talk with people, Lynch says.
Second was Lynch’s willingness to first find common ground as a human being.
“I remember him feeling connected in the sense that I lived in that neighborhood where it happened,” she says. Moreover, she’s a devoted D.C. native, as is Turner — rarities in a transient city.
Over time, her connections with the men grew as she shared personal stories about her life with them and vice versa — Lynch typically sharing first. She often asked them how they were faring physically, emotionally, and mentally.
“I don’t think there’s been a ton of people who have asked them that before,” she says. “It allows a person, over time, to be more comfortable with you when they know you’re interested in who they are as a person, and not just interested in what happened to them.”
If you’re thinking, “Who has time for this?” the answer may be: not many journalists. Those early conversations with Turner, and then with the others, were just that — conversations without microphones.
Lynch waited two years before she invited them to sit for recorded interviews in the studio at New America Foundation, where she works. (By 2023, the progressive think tank had taken on her independent podcast as their own, but they didn’t demand a publication deadline.)
What finally persuaded the men to go on the record? The same message that Druzin would convey to his sources in Idaho: This is your story. You should be able to give it voice.
“When someone doesn’t believe you for your whole life,” Lynch says, “and then someone comes along and says, ‘I believe you and I want to help you tell this story in your own voice, that’s appealing.”
Thanks for reading Part 1 of Don’t Get Stonewalled. In Part II, we’ll look at how Druzin, Lynch and longtime investigative journalist Michael de Yoanna dig up hidden facts and persuade potentially hostile sources to go on the record.
Here’s a little taste from Shannon Lynch about the obstacles: “One of the detectives had passed and the other one had dementia, so they weren’t gonna be available. That was a dead end.”
Try this in your studio: How to interview reluctant sources
Be an anthropologist. Study your sources’ world before you approach them. Not only will your interviews be more fruitful, but taking the time to understand the culture is a critical sign of respect.
Get all the facts in hand before you request an interview with a potentially hostile source. Additionally, interview others who know them. You may have only one opportunity for an interview, and it could happen quickly after you request it. Be ready.
Move slowly and gently when working with sources who have experienced trauma or who fear retribution. Offer to speak with them off the record, but be honest with them that you will eventually try to persuade them to go on the record. Be clear, however, that you understand the risks and that it’s their decision.
Visit sources in person, at the destination of their choice. Safety may be an issue.
Use empathy when communicating with victims and people in danger. Make clear that you understand how much is at stake for them.
Tell them honestly that you want to do their story justice, that you want people to hear their story in their voice; and that you want them to help you understand.
Get a guide. It may be the only way a new-to-you community will “let you in.”
Show your curiosity and enthusiasm for pursuing the story when introducing yourself to a new source.
I hate to say “be vulnerable,” but be vulnerable. Share parts of your personal life and ask about the lives and feelings of your sources apart from the story you’re after.
Have as much patience and persistence as your circumstances allow, and then some.
To learn about trauma-informed reporting, visit the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma.
🏆 Learn from the best
Attend: A special event hosted by the New America Foundation in collaboration with The Alley: DC's 8th and H Case podcast. In the summer of 2024, the wrongfully convicted men submitted applications for a presidential pardon. You'll hear from The Alley team, the men, and their lawyers. You'll also hear exclusive clips from a forthcoming episode and learn how a presidential pardon would change the lives of Chris Turner, Russell Overton, Timothy Catlett, Charles Turner, Cliff Yarborough, and Levy Rouse.
When and where: Wednesday, December 4 at 4pm ET at New America in person and online.
Register here
Read: Margaret Sullivan on the critical importance of investigative journalism now. In her newsletter, American Crisis, she writes, “Less than an hour after CNN contacted [attorney general nominee Matt] Gaetz about additional and previously unreported allegations of sexual misconduct, the former Florida congressman withdrew. As John Nichols noted in The Nation, Gaetz’s downfall suggests that journalism is going to play a huge role in the weeks and months to come. [Nichols] called this “clear evidence that old-school reporting and a willingness to speak truth to the power of a new administration matters more than ever.”
Subscribe: I was fortunate to travel in India for two weeks last January. If you’ve been there, you know how otherworldly, rich, and varied the culture is, and how overwhelmingly difficult it is to thoroughly describe even its tiniest corners. Now comes the first “Indian Podcast List,” a free newsletter amplifying podcasts throughout the country. It’s sure to be fascinating and helpful. And if you’re an Indian podcaster, contact them to be added to the directory!
Kate Hoffman with the author. Photo credit: Elijah Knecht
My personal Sound Judgment
As I’ve glancingly mentioned here before, my husband and I are moving. In a few days, we begin the weeklong drive east from Colorado to our new home in midcoast Maine. We’re excited to be starting the next chapter of our adventure story. But I’m equally excited to celebrate the friends I’ve made in Colorado over the last dozen years, since I moved west (initially to work for Colorado Public Radio). Last weekend my dear friends Kate Hoffmann (pictured with me) and Sherry Glickman threw us a going-away party. You see my smile here, but trust me, there were tears as well.
On a journalism and podcasting front, I’m excited to be moving back to the east coast, in part to be within striking distance of so many events, organizations, and media friends in New York and Boston.
I can’t let this issue go by without saying thank you to all of you, my Sound Judgment readers and listeners. I really do feel like I’m writing a personal letter to you with every issue. You sustain me.
Happy Thanksgiving!
As always, it is a joy to be with you.
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