The politicial, media and blogosphere worlds are abuzz over Fox News’ Bret Baier’s interview with President Barack Obama. Did Baier show himself to be a caricature of Fox News — a biased partisan masking as a newsman? Or was he asking tough follow up questions and trying to do what good journalists are trained to do: extract information from interview subjects that their readers or viewers would like to get? Was Obama justified in asking Baier to let him finish? Or was he, as some conservative commentators suggest, showing that he can’t handle tough questions. It all really boils down to this question: WAS this a fair and balanced interview or an attempt to score political points?
Rather than give you one more take (and the questions posed above are valid questions to lay out to TMV readers) why not just watch the interview here and judge for yourself?
If you want to read blog reaction to the interview (with often predictable takes depending on the website’s poliitical position) GO HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.