American journalism is dead. Have you ever watch a news conference or watched an interview on tv and noticed how the journalist doesn't ask open-ended question. Instead they all ask leading open-ended questions.
An open-ended question is a question that starts with who, what, where, when, why, how, or tell me. Those questions will get the person you are interviewing to give you answers that aren't just yes or no. An example is "What do you think is the best solution in dealing with gun violence?" This questions invites the person being interviewed to give their opinion and a full answer.
Closed-ended questions start with words like Do, Can, Is, There, Don't, Aren't, and other words that allow the person you are interviewing to answer with just a yes or no. An example is "Do you support stricter gun laws?" Here this assumes only two options. The person being interviewed could just answer yes or no and not have to say anything further.
What a lot of journalists do today is ask a leading question that is closed-ended. An example is "Consider all the gin violence, the amount of guns in citizens hands, and the fact of how dangerous guns are don't you agree we need more reasonable gun control?" Again this question is only asking the person who is being interviewed to answer yes or no, but also it is really just the bias opinion of the journalists.
As a salesperson I find it funny how jouralinsts only ask closed-ended. As a salesperson we are trained to ask open-ended questions and only use a closed-ended question when you are closing a sale. But when learning about your customer you always ask open-ended questions. In reality journalists need to go to sales training and learn how to do their jobs better.
