Two Interviews

The deep problems with our society's media coverage of politics were illuminated last night and this morning by a pair of TV interviews.

In the first, a man who makes his living as a comedian, not a journalist, produced the hardest-hitting interview I have yet seen with presidential candidate John McCain. On Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked tough questions, and responded to McCain with informed, incisive followups. What does it mean when comedians on late-night cable comedy programs are the ones asking the tough questions? What is wrong with our news industry when an admittedly 'fake news' show is actually bringing us the real news?

Watch the interview. Part One:



And Part 2:



Contrast that with the interview NBC's Ann Curry did with Laura Bush, which aired this morning on the NBC Today show. Granted, the First Lady is not a candidate, and traditionally the role commands some respect, but, Today is not nominally an entertainment show, and it is produced by the news division. Ms. Curry's interview is less a 'report' than it is a video 'press release'.

The interview came to my attention because several lefty bloggers are incensed by Mrs. Bush's comment about Iraq,

Believe me, no one suffers more than their President and I do when we watch this, and certainly the Commander-in-Chief who has asked our military to go into harm's way.

I have to agree with their point that perhaps the wives of dead soldiers, and the children who have lost a parent might have a claim to greater suffering.

But what truly bothered me was the way the interview immediately cut to a 'follow-up' from Ann Curry asking "What do you think the American public need to know about your husband?" This above a banner reading 'Curry Reports: First Lady One-On-One'. When, following her straight line, Mrs. Bush responded with more about her husband's burden. Curry then offered a sympathetic "It must be hard for you to watch him in this," complete with compassionate nodding.

After hearing how hard it is, Curry's ace reporter instinct compelled her to move on with "I know that what's also hard for you now is watching the real strain that your Attorney General is going through, I know that he's a good friend of yours and has been for many years." Mrs. Bush acknowledged that he has been a good friend as well as "a very good Attorney General", and took the opportunity to tell us all "nothing was done that was wrong."

Would that I could embed the video in this post, but NBC, being only a major media company, isn't as web-friendly or tech-saavy as Comedy Central. Or maybe it's just that they are less committed to actually making the news freely available. You'll have to go here and sit through a Netflix ad to view it. (The interview starts with discussion of the First Lady's new Malaria initiative, but you can drag the slider across to fast-forward. The section of interest starts at 2:00.)

It is a topsy-turvy world, where the comedians ask the tough questions, and the news reporters serve up the straight lines. A fake newsman refuses to accept the nonsensical assertions of one political figure, while a real newswoman adds and abets the transmission of nonsense from another.

Glenn Greenwald has some excellent writing on the failure of our news media to actually bring us news in the Tillman and Lynch stories here. He also has a series of posts memorializing journalist David Halberstam that is worth reading.