Veteran 'All Things Considered' Host Robert Siegel Retires From An 'Honorable Trade'

This week, we say farewell to one of the most recognizable voices in radio. Robert Siegel came into prominence nationally when he began hosting NPR's flagship program All Things Considered thirty years ago. On Friday, the 70-year-old New York native will retire.

Siegel's career at NPR dates back to 1976 when he began as a newscaster. He later opened NPR's London bureau, before returning to Washington to lead the news department there.

He recently spoke with WFDD's David Ford about the art of interviewing, and the future of public radio in the Trump era.

Interview Highlights

Do you ever get nervous for interviews?

[Laughs] Yes, I've been nervous in interviews! I think a couple of times when I've interviewed a sitting president — that kind of makes you a little nervous, or more than a little. But I must say the typical interview with the senator or the film director, whoever it may be, I've been doing this for so long, it takes a pretty rattling guest to make me feel nervous at this point.   

What has conducting thousands of interviews taught you about people in general and about yourself?

The first thing that it's taught me is that people are surprising. If they haven't been prepared by a public relations professional or a press secretary, they might very well say something in response to a question of mine that I completely did not expect. And the challenge is to respond to the surprise rather than to the outline of predictable answers that I might have walked into the interview imagining. So, people are surprising.

What I've learned about myself? Sometimes I can be totally stumped for a question and I've remembered the advice of a teacher in journalism school who pointed out a brilliant Mike Wallace interview — Mike Wallace was a great CBS News journalist and 60 Minutes host —and doing a very important interview, he asked questions like a psychiatrist. He just repeated the last words of the previous answer, which is a way of saying, “Here, talk more about that. Let's pursue that.” So, when in doubt you can always repeat the last words of the person you're talking with.

On preparing for tough interviews:

Well, for nearly any kind of interview, I'm armed with lots of clips and articles about or by the person I'm about to talk to. If it's a writer, I've read the book. I've talked with somebody on the program staff or one of our reporters who might work in the area of the interviewee to find out what's interesting about this person. Sometimes I will walk in with questions that are really spelled out in full. Sometimes I'll just go in with the topic words that I should ask about, you know, “Ask about the music. Ask about the scene where this happens,” whatever it might be, and trust myself to frame a question around that topic. Sometimes I'll stick very closely to questions that I've written out and sometimes I'll walk in with quite a prepared script, and my questions will bear a scant resemblance to what I'd written out in advance. That's my life right there.  

What are your thoughts on the current anti-media sentiment going on in the country today, and how do you think NPR should respond to this notion of “fake news?"

I think the response would be for us to do what we do as well as we can, and certainly not to back down, and not to become a political movement in response to it. We're not. At NPR news, we're a journalism organization and that's an honorable trade. We have our flaws like everybody else who works at it, but we are not fake news and we should stand up to those who claim that we are. Unfortunately, a cranky tone of complaining and abusing has a national voice in the president these days. It did many years ago under Richard Nixon, and he actually did things that were more injurious to the media and to reporters than Donald Trump has done. But nobody has said as many things harmful to the practice of journalism or questioning the integrity of people who practice journalism.    

So, our role is to just continue doing good journalism?

Yes, and do better journalism. And take every false statement that's made about the media and put it to the test of truth and report it, and report what's wrong about it. I think we'll all survive this. The media are often criticized by politicians, [but] never so publicly and so cantankerously as by the president right now, but our job is to be confident in the task that we're engaged in and keep on doing it.

On January 17th, Siegel's replacement, Mary Louise Kelly, will take a seat as co-host alongside Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro.