Mainstream media: Stop admiring good
interviews and reform your approach
Columnist
August 4, 2020 at 9:27 a.m. CDT
Axios’s Jonathan
Swan deserves praise for his revealing interview with the intellectually and
temperamentally deficient president. Pressed on how he could crow about his
handling of the pandemic when a thousand people a day were dying, President
Trump replied: “They are dying. That’s true. And you have — it is what it is.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as
much as you can control it."
The sight of him
shuffling through papers, unable to process unflattering information or respond
to questions for which he did not have a stock answer, was sobering if
unsurprising. His peevish refusal to recognize the late Rep. John Lewis’s
greatness because Lewis did not attend Trump’s inauguration was yet another
example of raging narcissism.
However, what is
instructive — and disturbing — was the amazement expressed by other media
personalities in response. They gawk and applaud as if Swan (like Fox
News’s Chris Wallace) did something unprecedented. Instead, Swan —
like Wallace — did his job, refusing to be flustered by Trump and eschewing
congenial tactics that allow Trump to escape from tough encounters.
I cannot imagine a
network anchor displaying the look of incredulity on Swan’s face or retorting
“Why can’t I?” when Trump said he couldn’t count coronavirus deaths as a percentage of our population. I
cannot envision a cable TV anchor (other than Wallace or CNN’s Jake Tapper)
dwelling on a topic for as long as it takes to pin Trump down and refusing to
rush off to another topic.
Swan and Wallace
expertly displayed their craft, but they (and the reaction of their peers)
wound up demonstrating how sadly deficient TV interviewers have been in the
Trump era. There are two problems: the personnel hired to do tough, combative
interviews and the mindset of too many news outlets.
TV news
personalities are hired in part because they are congenial, likable and
watchable. They put guests and the audience at ease. They do not allow pregnant
pauses. They bail out interviewees who are at a loss for words. This is the
wrong skill set for interrogating a president, especially one who is a serial
liar. In nearly four years, TV news outlets have not figured this out; some
simply threw in the towel and declined to switch to more effective interviewers
because their star anchors draw TV viewers.
The TV networks
would do better to hire people — lawyers, specifically — who are attack dogs,
who do not care about being liked and who do not care if they get “access.”
House Intelligence Committee counsel Daniel S. Goldman and Barbara McQuade,
former U.S. attorney and now MSNBC interviewer, know how to prepare a line of
questions.
(Disclosure: I’m an
MSNBC contributor.) They know how to listen to the answer and follow up. They
shrug off bluster and body language meant to intimidate them. If the job of the
media is to hold those in power accountable and to reveal the truth (not
maintain phony balance), this is the kind of person you want grilling
administration figures.
That brings us to
the larger problems with a good deal of mainstream media coverage: the false
supposition that Trump is a rational president whose actions can be analyzed as
deliberate policy or political choices; the aversion to describing Trump’s
statements accurately (“lie,” “incoherent,” etc.); and the reluctance to give
up the false idol of “balance” when one side acts in bad faith. In conducting
themselves in this way, mainstream media help prop up Trump, conferring an aura
of normality that is not earned. They also let other Republicans off the hook
when they should be asking hard questions about their own moral failures. (How
can you seriously support someone who blabbers nonsense about coronavirus
deaths? Aren’t you embarrassed to defend Trump’s blatant appeals to racism?)
And they give cover to right-wing editors, pundits and columnists who concoct
elaborate rationalizations and ignore what is in front of their noses — a
haphazard, delusional and racist president.
After applauding
their colleague Swan, the rest of the TV news universe might engage in some
self-reflection. Why have they been so ineffective? Why have they played the
false balance game? Do they have the people with the right skill set or have
they simply given up asking the hardest questions for the sake of genial
entertainment? These are tough but essential questions necessary if we are to
have an effective, independent media. Right now, effective inquisitors are
islands in a sea of froth and fog.
