This article investigates how participants
in broadcast news interviews display their orientations to a
social distribution of knowledge regarding newsworthy events
and actors. Interviewers treat the nature, grounds, and limits
of interviewees' knowledge as accountable matters. The
article employs single-case and quantitative analyses to show
that, in and through the design of their questions, interviewers
distinguish between (i) interviewees as subject-actors who are
responsible for direct, first-hand knowledge of their own conduct;
and (ii) interviewees as commentators who, on the basis of indirect,
second-hand knowledge, are entitled to opinions about third
parties' conduct. This distinction serves as a basis for the
production of interviewees' responses as talk that expresses
either matters of fact or points of opinion. The article examines
how these aspects of question design establish relevancies for
interviewees' responses and, ultimately, shape news content.