Once upon a time people could go on TV shows and, if a host didn’t like a politician’s answer, they would nail them with facts over and over, then move onto another question and nail them with more facts in their follow ups. NBC’s late, lamented Tim Russert did his homework, displayed it, and kept his interviews on a world-class political level.
The flip side is Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, a mega-ratings winner, and someone with a broadcast background. Just watch this clip. Partisan Republicans will love it. Partisan Democrats will hate it. But the larger issue is what it says about how far political discussion has fallen in America where name-calling and screaming and talking over someone is applauded by some and rewarded with massive viewership. And O’Reilly’s critics often ignore this: O’Reilly is a trained journalist and he can conduct excellent interviews. This is considered good TV due to the controversy and anger factor, but it shows how far we have fallen in our media culture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAuOEdttjZQ
P.S. Serious journalists don’t scream at, talk over and and name call their interview subjects.
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.