Interview with Brain Flynn

Why did you choose to work in investigative journalism? 

“umm because I went into journalism too see things that I wouldn’t ordinarily  learn things that I wouldn’t ordinarily get to learn things that I wouldn’t normally get a change to get involved in, and it gave me the opportunity to do that. And it’s also challenging and you know just very interesting it’s the sort of thing that interests me, you just see a side to life that you wouldn’t ordinarily get to see.” 

Ah right so it’s kind because of the experience  

“Yeah it’s not the sort of thing you normally get to do, it can be exciting and interesting that it can also be extremely dual at times like when you’re waiting for a door to open and you’re watching but hum you get an insight into life that you wouldn’t normally get to see and all of those by definition of investigative journalism you know exposing things that are wrong and you know doing good.” 

With your experience as a journalist what skills would you say are necessary to write the best story? 

"Well writing a story is less than the half of what you do, the most important things writing a story is to have a story to write. Most newspapers would rather have people that bring in stories and that have contacts and understanding to get a story to have the skills to turn that into a provable stories that somebody can write because if you’ve written it poorly there are always people that can help but normally there are people who can bring in the stories and then execute them properly." 

So having contacts is a quite an important thing obviously 

Brian - "Yeah totally it’s the single most important thing I would say In journalism you know journalism is about finding things out and you if you want to know something you ask somebody who knows uhm I’ve got contacts all over the world who bring stories to me who know things that I uhmuhm recently I was asked to do an investigation into drugs and well I needed a well I needed those contacts to know persifict things but they were contacts who were homed over years not weeks or months." 

Me - Ohh so yeah I just thought it was always about the writing skills, I didn’t know there were contacts and looking for story’s I thought you were just told.

Brian - "Uh no, no if all you want to do is write the investigative journalism isn’t for you because the most important thing in any story is getting the story." 

Me - Oh right 

“Writing it is only a small part of what I do if you haven’t got a story to write you could be you could be good but personally it wouldn’t make any difference, you’ve got to have a story to write” 

I see, and last question uhh what would you say is the best technique to use in an interview 

“Umm ahh, listen to them. Yeah as simple as that. You plan what you want to get out of the interview before you go into it and then when your actually in the interview you don’t rattle of half a dozen pre arranged questions so like what they might mention a topic that’s far more important then or interesting then what you'd expected there's no point carrying out an interview if you think before head.”