Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I'm sure many of my readers watched Rachel Maddow's interview last week with Richard Cohen, the ridiculous fake "therapist" who promises to rescue people from homosexuality. It was a great interview that dismantled his absurd claims and Maddow has been rightly praised for it. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, it stands in stark contrast to how the mainstream media interviews people with actual power.
As superb and skillful as this demolition was, and as heinous as people like Richard Cohen are, I'm more impressed when relentlessly adversarial interviews like this are targeted at people who are genuinely powerful and well-regarded by our political establishment (as Rachel has done before). When it's obscure, stigmatized nobodies who are subjected to this treatment -- easy targets -- I'm less moved. After all, even Beltway power-worshiping sycophants like Chris Matthews have shown a willingness in the past to expose a guest's ignorance with relentless questioning to the point of humiliation -- as long as the guest was some obscure, fringe figure who had no real standing in the power circles Matthews reveres...If you watch a typical establishment television reporter conduct an interview with someone who is already marginalized and despised by All Decent People, you'll often see them suddenly become very aggressive and scrutinizing in a way that they would never dare do if they were interviewing a top political official or respected Washington Wise Man.
This isn't remotely a criticism of Rachel; she's an exception to this rule, as I've seen her conduct equally relentless interviews with people like Tom Ridge, and she frequently extends invitations to even powerful people whom she criticizes (they typically decline). Moreover, people like Richard Cohen are truly pernicious and urgently need to be exposed with the treatment to which Rachel subjected him; he actually deserves worse. The point in which I'm interested here is how rare it is for interviews like this to be conducted by establishment journalists with people who have real power. Could one even imagine, for instance, Tim Russert's having questioned Dick Cheney this way prior to the Iraq war, or any of the standard array of pompous, blowhard Senators being treated to an interview like this by any standard Sunday morning TV host?
No, one can hardly imagine it. Greenwald points out the specific reasons why Maddow was so effective and why others can't and don't do the same thing with powerful guests:
(1) Rachel had obviously done a substantial amount of work prior to the interview, having even read the guest's books and being able to refer to various parts of them quickly; doing real work and real reading is far too burdensome for most of our coddled, vapid media stars.
(2) Rachel, despite being unfailingly civil and polite, was obviously indifferent to whether the guest liked her. She bombarded him with questions that made him extremely uncomfortable and which conclusively proved that he was simply lying. Media stars who host political interview programs would never subject powerful people to treatment like that for fear of losing access and/or their standing in the Beltway world.
(3) Rather than treat the guest and his claims as entitled to respect and deference, Rachel explicitly pointed out when he was lying, and even more important, demanded that he accept responsibility for his conduct (she told him he has "blood on his hands" for the role he is playing in enabling Uganda's oppression, and possibly execution, of gay people). It's simply impossible to imagine a Sunday morning media star telling, say, an advocate of the Iraq War that they have "blood on their hands," or explaining that those who advocated torture are "war criminals." Words like that are disrespectful and thus strictly prohibited when journalists deal with our elites. Sunday-morning media star journalists are there to obfuscate and elevate elite crimes, not expose them and certainly not describe them as such.
(4) Rachel's guest last night was modestly smart, coy and well-prepared, and pinning him down this way was not an easy task. Rachel was able to demolish his statements only because she is extremely smart, intellectually quick and dexterous, and able to think critically on the spot. To put it as politely as possible, people like David Gregory or, say, Brian Williams and John King don't exactly have those instruments at their disposal. That deprivation is a major reason why they're selected for those positions.
Just imagine how much better things could be if our political leaders were routinely subjected to the kind of surgically probing, lie-exposing interrogation which Rachel imposed on her homosexual-converter guest. But the reasons they almost never are speak volumes about our media stars and their true function.
Heads and nails.
Politics
Comments
Another possible reason why our media coddles our elites: Anyone remember the interview Dan Rather of CBS did with the elder president George Bush about his role in the Reagan Iran-Contra scandal when he was VP? Rather pushed Bush hard on obfuscations and inconsistencies in his story about a "quid pro quo" (of weapons for hostages, IIRC - someone correct me if not). Bush took umbrage, becoming visibly angry on camera. And Rather was roundly criticized by many in the media and in public opinion for being "disrespectful". Bush was largely given a pass and managed to pass himself off as a victim of "gotcha" journalism.
I bet David Gregory, Brian Williams, John King and many of our other TV journos, all old enough to remember that episode, have that in the back of their minds too.
Posted by: bcoppola | December 15, 2009 9:51 AM
I suspect that Mr. Cohen is now somewhat regretful that he agreed to go on Ms. Maddows' program. The problem is that if the hosts of the Sunday Morning interview shows conducted interviews like Ms. Maddow does, no important guests would agree to go on. For instance, does anyone think that Senator Inhofe would agree to go on Ms. Maddows' program?
Posted by: SLC | December 15, 2009 9:51 AM
My opening might not be clear: IIRC, the Rather interview was with Bush when he was POTUS, about his actions taken as VP under Reagan.
Posted by: bcoppola | December 15, 2009 9:53 AM
Why am I thinking of the infamous incident on CNBC, the "Billionaire Summit"? Allen Stanford was on there. If you watched the interview, you would not have known he was being investigated for a Ponzi scheme at the time.
Posted by: Gray Falcon | December 15, 2009 9:57 AM
I agree that the threat of lack of access is a strong deterrent to actually being a journalist, but at the same time such an aggressive interviewer of real power brokers would be sure to garner ratings. If Maddow hosted "Meet the Press" and the powerful ducked such a popular show then they could easily be protrayed in elections as cowards.
Posted by: jws | December 15, 2009 10:08 AM
The tougher (not neccessarily longer) you set-up a golf course, the bigger advantage you create for the best players relative to the not-best players. Tough golf courses more often identify the best player, rather than the luckiest or streakiest player who happens to be a on roll that week. This is why U.S. Opens are disproportionately the best tournament of the season relative to other three major tournaments.
I've found the same to be true with politicians I find are serious, smart, well-informed and focused on the national interest. They appear to enjoy tough questions because it separates their positions from the field of vapid talking heads playing identity politics and depending exclusively on marketing techniques to sell themselves. The revelation of these attributes during the 2008 campaign is a primary reason I became a big fan of President Obama, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, and an opponent of Sen. McCain and delusional idiot Sarah Palin. Because the media is not capable of doing such, Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton would often raise the best objections to their policies themselves if they went unasked and then attempt to effectively rebut such a position. I think to illuminate this distinction given the media was failing to do their job. Tough questions would have made it far more difficult to defend W. Bush, John McCain and Sarah Palin as media favorites given none of them possess any intellectual depth beyond their gut instincts and talking points - a trait I was surprised to discover in Mr. McCain in 2008.
In spite of Ms. Maddow's inexperience and background as ideologue analyst; soon after Tim Russert died I was writing NBC asking that they promote her to be the host of Meet the Press for the very reasons Ms. Greenwald is a fan. Russert's replacement David Gregory has been doing a good job in this regard on some issues, economic and foreign policy, but letting the candidates slide on social matters.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 15, 2009 10:14 AM
Here's the truly sad part.
The only other person on TV I know of who comes to his interviews as well prepared and asks tough questions is Jon Stewart.
Many politicos have had the unpleasant surprise of being on "The Daily Show" for a puff interview and find that Stewart has read their book and has some questions, tough ones.
Posted by: Jim Ramsey | December 15, 2009 10:15 AM
Frankly, I see this as a legitimate concern. Losing access would be a big problem for such an interviewer eventually; if you scare off everyone worth interviewing, you could find yourself out of a job --- or at least unable to continue doing that job in as worthwhile a fashion. I don't know what the solution is, but this does seem as if it could be a legitimate problem.
Otherwise, I'm in complete agreement; it's wonderful to see an interviewer as effective, and as fearless, as Rachel Maddow is. We need many more like her!
~David D.G.
Posted by: David D.G. | December 15, 2009 10:21 AM
I have to agree: bad and all as things are in Ireland, at least we have a few journalists who aren't afraid to call bullshit. (I love this clip of Carol Coleman skewering Bush the Lesser before his visit here a few years ago: The White House complained - what higher compliment could you ask for?)
The ratings-driven 24-hour news cycle in the USA seems to have debased political reporting even further than it's gone over here.
Posted by: Amadan | December 15, 2009 10:23 AM
Since nobody would go on a program where they were asked serious questions about policies they support and actions they have taken and nobody asks serious questions because they would be shunned by these people. I just don't watch the nonsense. Well, except for The Daily Show and the Cobert Report.
Posted by: Owen | December 15, 2009 10:25 AM
Compare and contrast: Jeremy Paxman on the BBC interviewing Michael Howard (then Home Secretary -- approximately equivalent post in the UK to Secretary of State in the USA) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwlsd8RAoqI -- probably the most famous example of Paxman's interview style.
We have the added benefit that UK politicians can't easily refuse to appear on the BBC without looking foolish or cowardly.
Posted by: MarkW | December 15, 2009 10:36 AM
Correction: UK Foreign Secretary is roughly equivalent to US Secretary of State. UK Home Secretary was then roughly equivalent to a combination of Attorney General and Secretary Of The Interior.
Posted by: MarkW | December 15, 2009 10:40 AM
What I find to be disturbing is the somewhat opposite interview format. Where the host who lobs softball questions to politicians turns around and asks nothing but tough questions of the hapless powerless person in the news of the day.
I watched Matt Lauer interogate a 80-something woman who had been tasered by a cop for essentially not bowing to the cop's authority. Almost every question was from the point of view of those in authority.
Posted by: HeartlessB | December 15, 2009 10:57 AM
"Sycophant" Chris Matthews did a number on Bishop Tobin who had denied the sacraments to Patrick Kennedy over the latter's stance on abortion/free choice. Matthews tried to get the good bishop to explain how his actions were not in the spirit of John F. Kennedy's famous speech in which he argued that there should be no religious interference in secular decisions. Furthermore, Matthews noted that the bishop considered abortion to be murder, but inconsistantly, did not seem to wish to prosecute women and doctors for murder. Matthews has been critized for his treatment of the bishop and there have been calls for him to be fired.
Posted by: Smith Powell | December 15, 2009 11:13 AM
Is Bishop Tobin a Senator?
Posted by: jws | December 15, 2009 11:18 AM
she frequently extends invitations to even powerful people whom she criticizes (they typically decline).
Hm. Perhaps a hard-poking journalist might make a regular feature, showing all those people who have standing invitations to appear for interview who have been declining for over a year.
Posted by: abb3w | December 15, 2009 11:20 AM
Jeremy Paxman's interview with David Irving after the latter's lost of a libel lawsuit filed by him over being called a holocaust denier is priceless.
Posted by: History Punk | December 15, 2009 11:40 AM
As M. Heath says, it actually felt weird during the election to see when Obama was asked a question, and then he would give an answer to the question that was asked. As if he was actually listening to the questioner, and not just waiting to give a preplanned mini-speech. I thought Clinton slipped too easily into saying whatever she thought someone wanted to hear.
Of course, now Obama has guys like Timmy Geithner to be weaselly evasive in his place.
Posted by: Moopheus | December 15, 2009 12:02 PM
If only the Paxman version of interviewing was allowed to be carried out here in the U.S.
Posted by: Umlud | December 15, 2009 12:05 PM
Right now, no one in America has more real power than Obama.
But I sincerely doubt that liberals here would like to see some journalist skewer Obama the way Maddow skewered Richard Cohen.
"Speaking truth to power" never seems to apply to anyone on the Left with power, like Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama.
Posted by: sinz54 | December 15, 2009 12:13 PM
@19 - Who, exactly, decided that it wasn't allowed?
Posted by: Alec | December 15, 2009 12:14 PM
Jim Ramsey @ 7:
As I stated earlier, David Gregory is coming well-prepared and willing to both ask tough questions and follow-up if the question is avoided as host of Meet the Press, but only on economic and foreign policy matters (though I haven't seen him grill anyone on torture).
Fareed Zakaria is always prepared and always willing to ask tough questions. However he focuses on macro- topics and gets guests that normally don't avoid tough questions or will just flat out lie (Karzai being an example of the latter).
I agree with your point about Jon Stewart and your observations is indicative of how bad our media is at doing their job.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 15, 2009 12:24 PM
Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes comes well prepared and asks tough questions.
I also thought Steve Kroft did a decent (not good or great) job on President Obama last Sunday evening though the brevity of the interview didn't leave time for the questions that would reveal answers to the set of criticisms Ed posts about Mr. Obama in this blog. Kroft was particularly good about questioning Obama on why we should focus on Afghanistan when the threat (al Qaeda) and their enablers (Taliban) are primarily located in Pakistan or the border regions we don't have sufficiently staffed.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 15, 2009 12:35 PM
Everyone seems to be ignoring the times in last year's campaign when the Press came together to ask the really hard questions: "What newspapers and magazines have you read lately?" or "When you say you can see Russia from your house, how does that enhance your foreign policy experience?"
They sure took the gloves off when they had too, and I, for one, am grateful.
Posted by: kehrsam | December 15, 2009 12:55 PM
I don't consider losing access to be a good enough excuse to let the powerful slide on difficult issues. If your in the mainstream press and presumably have a show or an article, nothing stops you from being able to criticize people in a non-interview format. Rachel Maddow could have done this entire piece without interviewing Richard Cohen. She clearly did her research and could have made an argument just from the things he has said and done.
What the media doesn't seem to get is that by interviewing him, she extended him the courtesy to account for himself in his own words. She gave HIM access, not the other way around. You can assemble the evidence and make the argument that Dick Cheney is a war criminal without ever talking to Cheney. Giving him an interview is not mandatory.
So I just don't buy this stuff about access and careers. There are many reasons why the media elite give deferential treatment to powerful people, liberal and conservative, but access isn't one of them.
Posted by: random guy | December 15, 2009 1:04 PM
The funny thing about that Paxman interview was that it was entirely accidental.
Paxman had run out of questions and had to fill some time before they could move on. So he just keep repeating himself.
Had Howard actually answered Paxman may have been in some trouble. Fortunately Howard is a politician.
Posted by: Paul Schofield | December 15, 2009 1:07 PM
@21 - I should have chosen my words more carefully. Of course it is "allowed" in the sense that it would be legal. However, it isn't "allowed" in the sense that if it were done, it would likely result in the same thing as what happened to Rather, as mentioned above. ... add to that the supposed "gotcha" interview that Palin continues to say she got from Couric, you have to wonder if the environment is one in which such types of interviews are "allowed" on major news networks (instead of the vapid pieces of uninformed sensationalism of this-is-happening-right-now so-called "news stories" that make much of the 24-hr news cycle so annoying to watch).
I have to say that when Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May (of BBC's Top Gear) start to sound more informed and to be sharper interviewers than the major so-called news anchors in the US, you have (imho) a problem.
Posted by: Umlud | December 15, 2009 1:09 PM
Well, it seems to me that "60 Minutes" and, ocassionally, NPR are willing to use the following gambit:
"We don't have any information about the congressman being a goatfucker, aside from some blurry photos and the sworn statements of several of his aides. The congressman was offered a chance to rebut the allegations but declined the interview request."
Posted by: democommie | December 15, 2009 1:10 PM
If Rachel--or anyone else--submitted every drooling, dripping, feculent, suppurating political slag s/he interviewed to the same scrutiny, the same rigor, the same skepticism that Rachel showerd down upon the charlatan Cohen, nobody other than publicity-hungry charlatans with dubious books would appear on her show.
That's almost the way it is anyway.
Posted by: woody | December 15, 2009 1:20 PM
Bullshit. I'm as liberal as you can get, and I'd love to see Obama in that situation. Most of my friends would say the same.
Of course, they would have to be real questions and not just "Why are you a socialist, muslim, fascist child molestor?"
Posted by: xebecs | December 15, 2009 1:28 PM
xebecs said:
Seconded. I'm in favor of journalists skewering any and all politicians, all of the time.
Posted by: Gretchen | December 15, 2009 1:30 PM
sinz54 @ #20:
But I sincerely doubt that liberals here would like to see some journalist skewer Obama the way Maddow skewered Richard Cohen.
You don't know many liberals, do you? And you appear to be mistaking Obama for one. You should expand your circle of acquaintances.
Posted by: Tex | December 15, 2009 1:35 PM
Woody @ 29:
Bull-shit. Not even worthy of a detailed rebuttal on how inane that argument is. You apply the scrutiny commiserate to the evidence. Smart, competent people with their priorities straight only enhance their reputations relative to their opponents when engaging with tough interviewers.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 15, 2009 1:36 PM
Posted by: Anura | December 15, 2009 1:39 PM
The problem with Jon Stewart is that he's got the same "out clause" that Jesus has in professional sports - if you caught the fly ball, it was thanks to Jesus, but if you missed, it wasn't Jesus' fault. Stewart can hide behind the "I'm just a comedian / it's a comedy show" line to justify any lapse in investigative prowess, and no one can call him on it despite him occasionally (obviously) stepping outside comedy for journalism (Jim Kramer, Betsy McCoughey, etc). This was especially evident when he destroyed Tucker Carlson as a guest on Crossfire ("You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls."..."the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity"), but that wasn't as a prepared interviewer.
A great example of this tactic while in the interviewer's seat would be Stewart's interview with Steve Levitt, co-author of Superfreakonomics. That book was fiercely criticized by scientists and economists, yet Stewart basically gave the guy a reacharound and uncritically accepted Levitt's feel-good claims that climate change was nothing to worry about. Stewart noticed a change in his audience's attitude in response, and promptly shifted from 'journalist' to 'jester' mid-interview, cracking lowbrow jokes about hemp (as if the only people concerned about climate change are hippies). The post-interview show closing was decidedly sycophantic to the treehugger crowd, completely missing the point and cowering behind his (impressive) ability to make us laugh.
The next interview Stewart did on the climate issue was with Al Gore. He did, in that interview, mention the Levitt interview and that scientists had concluded that Levitt's science was "not good" (Gore hadn't read the book, so he withheld commentary and the discussion ended there), but that's the closest Stewart ever came to an apology on-air - except it wasn't on air, since that was part of the segment that was edited out for the televised version (it's in the extended interview online).
(As an aside, that same day, Colbert had Gore on as an unannounced guest to discuss climate change as well. Colbert did the better job as a journalist, despite it basically being an explicit parody. This same pattern held up when both covered the CRU hacked emails, by the way.)
Stewart can pretend to be a journalist and hide behind the "I'm just a comedian" line if he fails, which gives him incentive to actually be sloppy as a journalist (since he has that escape route). On the occasions when he's really motivated (), he can be devastating, but if he tries and fails, there's no punishment, since he's "just joking".
I used to maintain that Stewart was one of our better journalists. After seeing how badly he botched this critical issue, I changed my mind.
(Meanwhile, my opinion on Maddow just continues to grow. I've noticed no one so far has pointed out that she's pretty much the only mainstream source willing to investigate PR, astroturfing, and spin, for instance, and she does a fantastic job on that. Too often, the press literally just copy/pastes press releases from these firms and doesn't bother following their funding to figure out who's really pulling the strings, but Maddow does. By the way, her interview with Tim Phillips, president of the astroturf group Americans For Prosperity, is also a landmark interview, well worth looking into. She doesn't fare quite as well, since the accomplished PR-man Phillips is a master of linguistic judo and her decor does drop at one point (he taunts her into calling him "a parasite that gets fat on Americans' fears"), which should stand as an example of why PR is so successful and insidious.)
Posted by: Brian D | December 15, 2009 1:42 PM
Michael Heath @33: I think you mean commensurate, not commiserate.
Posted by: xebecs | December 15, 2009 1:43 PM
As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I want nothing more than for Obama to be absolutely skewered for his pathetic backpeddling and kowtowing to the health insurance industries.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | December 15, 2009 1:49 PM
Sinz54 wrote:
Are you kidding me? I would give my left arm to have Obama on my radio show and I'd go after him way, way harder than anyone in the mainstream media ever has. He has a hell of a lot to answer for and I wouldn't let him get away with that dishonest bullshit about how he really supports a narrow version of the state secrets privilege. I'd be quoting his April 30th speech on the subject and then quoting the briefs filed by the DOJ and asking him how the state secrets privilege being advocated by those in his employ could possibly be any broader. I've seen exactly one reporter with the brass to ask him about the subject - and when he got that bullshit answer, there was no follow up on it. Let me at Obama in an interview and Richard Cohen will feel like he got off easy.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | December 15, 2009 1:57 PM
As much as I respect the job Maddow did in this instance, what I'd really like to see is a journalist being a very tough interviewer of someone with whom s/he generally agrees. Contra Greenwald, there are occasional tough interviews of people with power, but they tend to fall on predictable ideological lines.
Posted by: Robocop | December 15, 2009 3:11 PM
Key difference in Maddow and Stewart is brevity. Stewart (and Colbert) have so many other purposes in an interview--humorous asides, setups, and muggings for laughs) that the actual meat of the interview falls below the threshhold for real journalistic inquiry. As we see in the Paxman interview, it takes a while to make that setup--first get the guy on the record for the premise; head off all slippery evasion-escape-route process; then quote the contrary component; ask for a response; permit the lengthy equivocating to run its course in order not to appear too rude; use your sharp intellect and preparation to focus on the rhetorical point and establish it; then hold the subject's feet to the fire for as long as it takes to retire the point; then move on so the key moment in the interview is not the end of it, because you never want to end on your smoking gun.
Maddow devotes lots of her show's time to these interviews; they're open ended, not on a script, so she can apply her considerable nimbleness and incisiveness and preparation to wait out the subject's memorized talking points--Howard's "top to bottom" remark, for example, which he repeated but knew enough to use again so as to avoid sounding rehearsed. As it was Paxman had to repeat his key question something like 14 times, and still didn't get an answer, and of course that is good enough when done well.
In the Tobin interview, same thing happened precisely. Tweety allowed enough time (though he was a bit hasty at points), was polite but firm, and repeatedly revisited the point until he had the convincing evasion. Of course, Mathews lacks patience and (my most serious criticism of all of these guys) refuses to allow for the transmission delay in an off-site interview, so he is constantly talking over the guest, saying "go ahead," and so on; and this highlights his habit of adding grounds and conditions on the question rather than simply asking and backing away, then asking again simply if the answer is an evasion. Mathews sounds pontifical and overbearing most of the time and that's a fault.
Maddow lets the time go by. That Cohen interview was about 14 minutes long--an utterly impractical slice of time for any show on the air, including 60 minutes, to devote to a face-to-face.
I'm with those who argue that Rachel should keep it up regardless. It's clear that THE market won't reward that particularly, but HER market will; so long as she keeps a consistently sharp tongue and doesn't join the Village, she'll thrive. Journalism is very susceptible to change created by a single individual's style. I can think of no change that would be more valuable or productive than that one.
ice9
Posted by: ice9 | December 15, 2009 4:09 PM
I'm only just becoming familiar with Rachel Maddow. Would anyone care to compare her, as a journalist, with the late, lamented Oriana Fallaci?
Posted by: Chris Winter | December 15, 2009 4:16 PM
"No, one can hardly imagine it."
Yes I can, but I have to go outside the US to see it. I know what BBC and Radio New Zealand interviews with politicians I've heard, they nail those bastards to the wall.
I don't have the video link now, but there was an Irish journalist who interviewed Bush-- she made that f*cker squirm.
The problem is in the US, "news" is BUSINESS. Profit is all that matters. Hence all the c*cksucking.
Posted by: We Are The 801 | December 15, 2009 4:37 PM
Amadan: yes, THAT is the clip!
Posted by: We Are The 801 | December 15, 2009 4:40 PM
The only good thing about Glenn Greenwald is that he's not named Lew Rockwell.
Posted by: Bro | December 15, 2009 4:42 PM
I think that Rachel has been very good in exposing the backtracking that
the usual suspectsliberal senators have been doing on the healthcare bill. As in: first they gave away single payer, then they gave away strong regulation, then they gave away true universality, then they gave away the public option and now they are giving away medicare buy-in and yet they are still claiming that "the perfect is they enemy of the good".A half-hour of Obama one-on-one with Rachel? I'd love it.
Posted by: natural cynic | December 15, 2009 4:51 PM
Another liberal here who'd LOVE to see Rachel Maddow devote an entire hour-long show to go head-to-head with Obama (or even Nancy Pelosi, for that matter.) I'd DVR that sucker to watch whenever I needed to see some real in-depth interviewing. I still haven't deleted Rachel's interview with that Cohen guy.
Sounds like sinz54 might be indulging in a sad bit of projection. I wish more people could get their heads around the idea that ALL politicians need to have their feet held to the fire and not just the ones they don't happen to like.
Posted by: twincats | December 15, 2009 5:30 PM
Look, how about making this all more interesting? Have some apple-pie charity run a fundraiser. People can vote with their dollars for the public figure they'd most like to see on the hot seat with Rachel. Rachel promises to make it as hard as possible, bearing in mind that if she's hard enough on them there's a prospect for repeat appearances.
Anyone who refuses to take their chances gets slimed as hating a charity that's just dripping American goodness. They wouldn't dare.
Better than pro wrestling!
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | December 15, 2009 6:43 PM
If you had been at my house when I saw that show, you would have seen something quite rare: me cheering at the television and telling Rachel to "rip him apart and don't leave enough for the dogs!" But I suppose Rachel and I might have a similar bias on this one.
I think that what's working for Rachel best right now is the fact that her investigative team is top-notch and she makes it nearly impossible for the party in question not to show up to face her questions. And if they don't show up, or if they make some offhand comment about "liberal media", Rachel isn't afraid to show her proof to make clear that threats won't move her.
Add to this the fact that Rachel is one of the smartest, most unflappably fair and civil journalists I have ever seen, and it's hard for people to resist showing up. I think some of the people who have refused to be on her show have come to regret it somewhat because she's proving herself to be very professional and capable of allowing her opponents to explain themselves - even to the point of simply disagreeing with their conclusions while understanding their motivations.
Posted by: Ryan Egesdahl | December 15, 2009 6:55 PM
It is sad that hard hitting interviewers are such a small set, and include two people whose goal is comedy, not journalism (Steward and Colbert.) I, too, got pissed at The Daily Show's coverage of the climate emails; there wasn't much research done to get to the heart of the matter, that it was all part of a noise machine and not a scandal. He somewhat redeemed himself the other night by stating that the science for AGW is strong, inclusive of EAU's work or not.
Given how low Maddow's ratings are, I'm concerned that she's not going to be able to do her legitimate journalism on TV for much longer. There's always another fool with a bow-tie waiting in the wings, able to move more boxes of dishwashing detergent than she does.
Posted by: Jody | December 15, 2009 7:16 PM
I don't care that interviewers let malefactors slide; people like that won't do tough interviews--not more than once, anyway. So the access issue is real--for interviews.
What I mind is that other types of news-gatherers let them slide. The 1st Amendment is a real gift to the media, a protection afforded to no other industry--but a major reason we got it in the first place is that we expect the media to help us keep our government honest. Cheerleading whatever BS our elected officials decide to utter doesn't need Constitutional protection.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | December 16, 2009 9:06 AM