Can we do interview now?

Following up on my horrible horrible post earlier which was both distasteful and offensive, I also remembered another event in conjunction with this that I thought I should share with you.

I had just come home from a hard day at the office the same day that the news that the killer had been caught by the police broke, news that dominated the media completely that day in Japan. As I was watching the news, they called up the father of the victim in Britain to get his comment on having the accused murderer of his daughter arrested after more than two years of waiting for this day. As a separate note I should say that this man has made a very sympathetic impression during his many visits in Japan in his desperate efforts to raise awareness on the case and get the help of the public to catch the killer. The anchorman asked him a number of questions in the vein of "how do you feel?" and "what will you do next?" questions to which the father answered passionately and many many times expressing his thanks to the Japanese people and media who had helped catching the killer.

However... the news channel apparently had missed having a translator ready for this call and after the interview basically was done, the anchorman was made aware of the fact that no simultaneous translation had been provided and him himself claiming to not have had good audio (more likely he did not have good enough English skills to understand what was being said in reply to his questions). After keeping the father on hold for a few minutes while getting the translator available the anchorman simply stated that they will redo the interview. It was at the same time painful and humorous to watch the "second take" of the interview with the translator in place and from the exchange I very much doubt that the father had gotten an explanation on what was going on and why he was put on hold and then asked the same questions again.

When the anchorman asked him "How did you hear of the news that the killer had been caught" for the second time in a few minutes, he replied with a pained and exhausted "I heard of this for the first time just a little while ago when you told me these news?!". Then followed up by "Have you told your family members and what is their reaction?" to which a desperate sounding "No!!! Because you are calling me and taking up my line I haven't been able to, I want to tell them and really need to finish the call, I appreciate everything you done but I need to talk to my family now". Apparently the anchorman either fails to understand this or just completely ignores it since he smoothly follows up with "What will you do next?" and I squirmed in the sofa as the desperate reply "I want to get off this call and talk to my family, can we please finish this now?”.

Mercifully they finished the call briefly after that...