[rendall]

I'd love to see more follow up questions of the sort "Excellent answer, if I had asked about X (e.g. who to blame for high taxes), but instead, my question was Y (what are your plans regarding tax policy?)".

It seems that Scottish interviewer Andrew Neil has a reputation for this kind of implacable questioning. Any others?

[johannes1234321]

That can work in a 1:1 setting, where you are trying to pin down somebody.

In that described setting here, you have journalists who want to write an article about current topics. In the article they can write "they avoided answering XYZ" and given limited time it is more worthwhile to switch topics. Repeating a non-answer doesn't make the article longer.

In the 1:1 setting the way they try to weasel out and avoid answering can be educational to the audience and can narrow down the topic a bit.