Wit & Attitude Quote by Walter Isaacson

Interviewing, in Walter Isaacson's telling, is less a hunt than a contract. The line is disarmingly plain, but it carries a pointed rebuke to a media ecosystem that often treats guests as raw material: book the villain, clip the takedown, feed the outrage. Isaacson is staking out a different ethic, one rooted in the biographer's sensibility. If your job is to understand a person in full, you can't start by arranging their public humiliation; you have to create conditions where they might say something true.

The intent is practical and moral at once: fairness isn't a halo, it's a method. A guest who senses they're being "beat...up" will default to PR armor, talking points, performance. An interviewer who signals good faith gets access to nuance, contradiction, and the human texture that makes reporting worth reading. Isaacson's word choices matter: "fair and honest" sets a baseline of legitimacy, while "make fools out of them" names the older, crueler tradition of the gotcha interview as a kind of sport.

The subtext is also institutional. Isaacson has lived inside legacy media and the high-access world of politics and tech, where reputations are currency and interviews are negotiated territory. He's defending an approach that keeps doors open, yes, but also insists that accountability doesn't require cruelty. It's a quiet argument for rigor without sadism: you can ask hard questions without building the whole segment around a punchline.