Michael Calderone of New York Magazine interviewed Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes about her interviewing style in the wake of her talk with billionaire Elon Musk, who has criticized their talk.
Here is an excerpt:
You’ve spoken to some other controversial figures, like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Benjamin Netanyahu. Tell me a bit about what your goal has been with the interview series.
The goal with all of them is to have interesting extended conversations with leaders and people who are shaping our world. It’s all sides of the political spectrum — business leaders, technologists, political leaders, people who are of global importance and who matter, and people whose worldview The Economist would disagree with as well as people whom it would agree with.
The first person I interviewed was Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and then the second was Steve Bannon, someone whose worldview is completely different from The Economist’s. I thought it was important to sit down and try and understand it, probe it a bit, try and make sense of it.
We were set up in 1843 to champion classical liberal values. We’re pretty unashamed about the fact that we have a worldview. I’m an unashamed classical English liberal. I always have to say that in an American context. I come with a perspective, and The Economist has a perspective.
The whole idea of The Insider when we launched it last year was to give our subscribers through this weekly show a window into The Economist, to get to know us, get to know who we were, how we reached our opinions, how we did our analysis. And most of our shows are discussions with me and my deputy, Ed Carr, and a small group of journalists, and we’re talking about whatever the news of the week is. One out of five, something like that, is a big interview.
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