Carol Marin, our town’s journalistic triple threat (WTTW-Ch. 11 moderator, WMAQ-Ch. 5 investigator and  Sun-Times columnist),  yesterday called out Chicago Department of Revenue Director Bea Reyna-Hickey for refusing to sit for an on-camera interview about parking ticket revenues.

Instead,  Marin wrote, Reyna-Hickey agreed only to respond to questions submitted in writing:

Requests for questions in writing rather than face-to-face interviews are cropping up more and more….

Written Q&A’s violate NBC policy because, among other things, they don’t allow for follow-up questions. And they don’t allow a viewer to see, hear, or judge the quality of either the question or the response.

That, of course, is the point.

In fact, written answers to written questions do allow for follow-up questions, just not immediate follow-up questions.

And just because viewers can’t see or hear the question or the response doesn’t mean they can’t judge the quality of both (print journalists almost never quote their own questions verbatim and have long relied on the written word to convey information).

Do sound and pictures help viewers reach conclusions? Usually, yes. Just as in-person interviews usually help print journalists gather their information and reach their conclusions.

Experience tells us that face-to-face is the best way to get at the truth, which is why our court system requires witnesses to give oral testimony and encourages jurors to consider their demeanor and manner of speaking in assessing their credibility.

And there’s no doubt that some sources — particularly those who find themselves on the hot seat — insist on answering questions in writing precisely to avoid harsh judgments based on their presentation and preparation.

Yet certainly there are also some sources who prefer to answer questions in writing because they’d like a few minutes to consider what they want to say and how they want to say it — to do some research if necessary, to weigh every word and check every fact — so they don’t blurt out something ill advised or mistaken.

Such sources may also find it useful to have complete written records of exchanges with journalists as insurance against being misquoted, misunderstood or taken out of context. Or they may simply feel more comfortable writing than they do speaking.

One need not be a crook or a weasel to want to answer reporters’ questions in writing, and Marin and the rest of us are seeing more and more such requests/demands because e-mail has made them seem reasonable.

Before e-mail, written Q&A’s were preposterously slow and impractical for anything other than long-term reporting projects. Now, it’s often faster to get information and responses from sources if you reach out first and perhaps exclusively by e-mail.

Face-to-face or at least voice-to-voice interviews by phone will always be optimal. They allow for instant follow-up questions that can lead interviews into surprising and fruitful areas and can produce telltale gaffes or expose glaring gaps in knowledge and preparation.

And the interviewer can be reasonably sure that the answers actually come from the subject and not from a public-relations spokesman or a lawyer.

Message-to-message interviews, for all their drawbacks, have the advantage of precision and they allow the questioner time to study the answers carefully and ask surgical (if delayed) follow-up questions.

In all, written interviews can be an acceptable compromise not only with the demands that time places on both journalist and source, but also with the reality that reporters don’t get to make all the rules.

If a source or subject offers a response only on his or her terms, the reporter ought to include that fact in the story along with the response and let the viewers/listeners/readers make of that what they will.

“We contacted the source for her side of the story but she would only agree to answer written questions so we’ll just mark her down as `no comment’” is a petty, irresponsible abdication and disrespectful of the audience.

For my views on this subject I was labeled “The Anti-Journalist” earlier this week by blogger Steve Rhodes: