Trump proxies were asked a simple, straightforward question on the Sunday morning interview shows: Did Trump lose the 2020 election? Mike Johnson couldn’t say it. Tom Cotton couldn’t either. Vance wouldn’t do so the Wednesday before. To be fair, the interviewers pressed the question, refusing to let them dodge and weave without notice, but they were not going to answer no matter what.
Last night, Kamala Harris was interviewed by Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes. On the one hand, at least she had the gumption to show up and be asked questions. On the other hand, she dodged every one of them, refusing to give a straight answer no matter how Whitaker pushed. She was given the opportunity to finally establish what she stood for on a very large media platform and chose instead to regurgitate the same canned vagaries that have left so many to question why she should be president.
There was once a time when people being interviewed answered the questions asked. The PR gimmick of deflecting and pivoting, ignoring the question and instead giving the talking points the putative leaders were told by their superiors to give, was too obvious and embarrassing. It was too obvious that they were dodging the question for anyone of even the most modest credence to attempt. No one was fooled then. Is that still the case?
Dodging the question. Recognize it. Reject it. Whenever someone does it, it means they refuse to provide a truthful response, and by dodging the question, they have revealed the truthful response they refuse to provide.
— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) October 7, 2024
Part of the problem is the willingness of interviewers to push, to keep asking the question until it’s answered. To make clear that the interviewee is refusing to answer in order to conceal the truth and avoid the responsibility that goes with honesty. It wasn’t that the interviewer could make anyone respond truthfully, but they could certainly make clear that the interviewee did answer, albeit in the negative.
But then, is there support for interviewers to do their job of doing journalism?
Last week, CBS journalist Tony Dokoupil conducted an interview with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates whose new book, The Message, includes a one-sided polemic against Israel. Coates himself describes his book as an effort to debunk the complexities journalists invoke to obscure Israel’s occupation. He complained in an interview with New York magazine that the argument that the conflict was “complicated” was “horseshit,” that was how defenders of slavery and segregation described these plagues a century ago. “It’s complicated,” he said, “when you want to take something from somebody.”
So Dokoupil asked him about it.
And all hell broke loose, both online and within the CBS newsroom, where some believe Gayle King is a journalist.
“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?”
“Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?”
“Why not detail anything of the first and second intifada. . . the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?”
In other words, Tony Dokoupil did his job.
It’s unclear whether this reaction, sufficiently horrific that CBS brought in Dr. Donald Grant, “a mental health expert, DEI strategist and trauma trainer,” to deal with the internal fallout. The bigwigs at CBS gave Dokoupil a stern talking to about “editorial standards,” which they later explained to the staff.
“We are here to report news without fear or favor,” Roark added. “There are times we fail our audiences and each other. We’re in one of those times right now, and it’s been growing. And we’re at a tipping point. Many of you have reached out to express concerns about recent reporting. Specifically about the CBS Mornings Coates interview last week as well as comments made coming out of some of our correspondents’ reporting.
“I want to acknowledge and apologize that it’s taken this long to have this conversation.
If this all sounds too Orwellian for you, that’s how it sounded to CBS chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford as well.
Jan Crawford, the chief legal correspondent at CBS News, spoke up later on the call to say she did not understand why Mr. Dokoupil’s questions had not met editorial standards.
“When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists we are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account,” Ms. Crawford said. “To me, that is what Tony did.”
Interviews were once the mechanism by which the public learned what was going on, what people stood for and, most importantly, who was full of shit. Interviewers who pressed their questions were once heroes of journalism for not letting people dodge and weave, at least not without consequence.
Yet, there was no sense of shame in the inane responses to the straightforward question of whether Trump lost the 2020 election. There was no recognition that refusing to answer a single question might not serve the cause of trying not to come off as vapid twit incapable of proffering any more than vaccuous crap.
And under the most bizarre guise of “lack of objectivity” for not being an obsequious sycophant and asking Ta-Nehisi Coates deeper questions than “if you were a tree, what type of tree would you be?” the effort to conduct a legitimate interview was met with condemnation, apologies and a newsroom offering free Play-doh.
Is that it? Is the mechanism of the interview as a means to get answers to questions a relic of the past? Do you no longer care about straight answers to straight questions? Do you no longer want a piercing question when someone in your tribe spews lies, platitudes or bullshit, but only when it’s the other tribe on the hot seat?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
My initial reaction was that the problem wasn’t the mechanism of interviewing, but the shamelessness of interviewees spewing nonsense in response. But upon further consideration, I think there is something to be said about the mechanism no longer fulfilling any useful purpose, particularly when an interviewer is only allowed to challenge members of the other tribe lest they violate “editorial standards.”
Are interviews dead? Only if we, the public, allow them to be. We can demand better of the interviewee, and better of the interviewer. That’s on us.
As an “a pox on both your parties” independent, I see both RWNJs and LWLTs* as unwilling to accept facts/ evidence that contradict their tribes approved narrative. RWNJs can’t accept that there’s no evidence the 2020 election was stolen. LWLTs can’t accept that “red flag laws” are unconstitutional. Each side is convinced the other are ignorant dupes or complicit in an effort to elect a candidate who threatens the future of our nation and our democracy.
It’s hard not to despair.
(* Right Wing Nut Jobs and Left Wing Lib-Tards for the uninitiated.)
That’s an interesting false equivalence.
Do you not think there is a significant difference in, on one hand, one group believes a reality wholly unsupported by facts and the other does not, and on the other hand, the other group wants to pass laws that are unconstitutional (something which happens all the time) to address a perceived problem?
If the choice is between, e.g., a party that believes there is a secret Jewish cabal controlling every major decision made by governments and corporations, and a party that believes they should be able to outlaw revenge porn even though there isn’t an established First Amendment exception that would allow doing so, I know which group I’d prefer. And it isn’t even close.
Is it a false equivalence? The nut jobs on either side are the most vocal, and the ones that fill our news and social media. The nut jobs across the spectrum seem to be stuck in a reality unsupported by facts, and have members in the legislature trying to pass state and federal laws that are unconstitutional.
I believe that the vast majority are reasonable people that can have reasonable discussions … if held in person. Sadly they’re not the ones that get promoted as they don’t make the news or raise the funds.
When a candidate answers a question, his primary goal is to lose as few votes as possible. If that requires a non-responsive answer, so be it.
So if a candidate for office told the truth, he would lose votes? Interesting rationalization for non-responsive answers. Maybe you want to give that a bit more thought?
Example: Harris was asked in an interview a question that could be paraphrased as “We gave Israel a $1 Billion of military equipment, so why doesn’t Netanyahu do what we want?”. What answer doesn’t risk losing votes?
That’s a fair point, since the truthful answer, that their support for Israel only goes so far as to not alienate the left wing of the party and lose their votes would be bad. If it costs Israel its existence, well, at least Harris might win the election, amirite?
Of course, the gains in the middle if her answer was that they were not going to extort Israel by threatening the denial of weapons to an ally to control it’s actions for political gain (say, like some other president tried to do with Ukraine) while Israel was in an existential battle against terrorism and Israel was doing the dirty work that the US should have done but failed to do over the past two plus decades.
So there’s that.
It’s a race to the bottom, sponsored by the wingnuts. If the vile, corrupt bastards of the other lot lie and dodge, then it’s okay for the at-all-costs defenders of decency to lie and dodge. Before you know it, it’s simply okay to lie and dodge, and to double-down on the most flagrant alternate realities.
The mechanism of the interview as a way to get answers to questions isn’t necessarily a relic of the past, but its use has become almost obsolete, largely because of the ubiquity of recording devices and the shrinking of our attention spans. Because of the first, you can’t give a targeted, content-rich answer to your base privately anymore, because someone will leak it. Take, for example, Mitt Romney’s comment: “There are 47 percent of the people … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … [and] pay no income tax. … and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” That was meant for a specific audience, but it got recorded, leaked, and he paid the price.
Second, if you give a nuanced, balanced answer to a general audience, it will likely be selectively sound-bitten and taken out of context—and you’ll pay for that too. Take this hypothetical: Donald Trump, in response to last month’s debate question about abortion, might have said something like this: “I’ve got five beautiful kids—I love kids. But Roe v. Wade was a disaster, believe me. Look, we’re a big country with all sorts of opinions. So here’s what we do: we let the states handle it. You saw what Kansas did. We’ve got 50 states, and they can all do what they want. As President, I’m not going to sign a nationwide abortion ban. I’m not going to sign any abortion law. That’s not my job. But let me ask you this: What do the Kamala people want? They want abortion right up until birth, maybe even after. That’s crazy. Nobody wants that. When I was running things, nobody lost their abortion rights because of anything we did in Washington. And that’s how it’ll be when I’m back. But we did something incredible—we gave the power back to the people.” That’s a nuanced argument and actually represents the position of a plurality of Americans. But he couldn’t say that, because the Democrats would slice it into two ads: one for their base, repeating “Roe v. Wade was a disaster,” and another from an anonymous PAC targeting the hard right, highlighting “I’m not going to sign a nationwide abortion ban.” The full context gets lost. Often, an argument only makes sense when you hear it all—but nobody listens to the whole thing anymore. Hence the death of the interview.
That seems at least in part to be a symptom of the death of media literacy. That same lack gives rise to not recognizing when questions are fluff or are bullshit, or legit. Same for the answers.
I remember having media literacy as a part of mt 8th grade civics class. It was during the Bush v Clinton v Perot election. We looked at how to analyze news articles, tv reporting, political cartoons; how to spot bias and more. I suspect this is one of the classes that isn’t taught anymore to make room for the “modern education”.
Quote:What do the Kamala people want? They want abortion right up until birth, maybe even after.
Citation needed.
Also, I have seen polls and it is not true that ” a plurality of the people that they wanted Roe v Wade struck down”.
Trump’s argument is horseshit, and it’s hard to believe that he wouldn’t sign an abortion ban given who’s he hanging around with. But even if didn’t sign an abortion ban, leaving it to the states is just as bad as leaving it to the federal govt. Why is that any different?
Finally, by allowing a state to decide whether someone in their jurisdiction can have an abortion is not, is clearly not giving the power to the people.
I think abortion is horrible, and it should only be done in certain cases, but I would prefer to let that decision be between a doctor and the patient, not some government (local, state, or federal).
As far as the original topic, I agree that I would like to have hard hitting journalism over what we have now. I want both sides to be hit relentlessly with questions until they actually answer the damn question.
Watching the Nixon-Kennedy debates on YouTube shows how much we have lost since then. Two WW II veterans respectful of each other.