Obama Fox News Interview.

[Stoicish]

In a stroke of insanity Fox News was allowed to interview President Obama. In journalistic integrity Fox News sent their best anchor and had him calmly sit down and ask the president questions. They were hard hitting questions that the President needed to account for thus provided a very Fair and Balanced view on even the toughest questions.

Actually, I'm kidding, the interviewer was a tool.

Bier had a real chance her. He had a chance to act like a real interviewer. Instead he employed a attack style interview which obviously flustered the President. He interrupted the President many times and really didn't give him many chances to finish answering his questions. To top it all off his questions were mainly streamlined talking points instead of hard hitting questions.

It's a shame and a disapointment. Here is the President of the United States and here is Bier treating him like he's a second class political science professor. He interrupted him constantly and hardly gave him the chance to speak.

It was just a nightmare to watch.

[jarmel123]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URJUSlfTg GU

[Gunner-D]

Like one of the comments on the video.

"They make the president look like the only adult in the room."

[adrshepard]

Neither of them come off well, though Baier does much worse. He was stupid to bring up the email questions, because it plays right into Obama's hand of citing the struggles of people paying huge sums for healthcare. He also dwelt too much on getting some sort of bill status report, which isn't something the President would really know about.
He should have set the boundaries of the discussion more, kept it specific and controlled. Instead, he asks aggressive yet open-ended questions, which is pointless.
Then he gets petulant at the end. Awful.

Obama couldn't give a straight answer to the process questions because he was too fearful to simply say that he wants it passed, whatever it takes, and that he's changed his mind from when he was a senator. Instead, he talks about partisanship rehashed the same lines about suffering, and Baier gets justifiably irritated.

[Elfer]

I think the thing that turns me off the most about television news media (at least in the US) are these tantrum-style interviews that run rampant through commentary-style shows, but have started to bleed into real interviews.

My own political leanings aside, I think Fox is particularly bad about this. There's something to be said for asking hard-hitting questions instead of throwing softballs, but it's one thing to be an aggressive journalist and another thing to abandon dignity, poise and respect entirely.

Asking accusatory questions without simple answers, then interrupting to change subjects is no way to conduct an interview, no matter how your interviewee is responding. It reminds me of "debates" on commentary programs, where they are invariably between a somewhat well-informed person who agrees with the host, and the dumbest fucking loudmouth on the face of the blogosphere.

[Imperator]

Having finally watched it, I don't think it's nearly bas bad as people are making it out to be. Bad yeah, but from what I've been hearing on the grapevine, I expected shouting.

I think the problem with a lot of these "interviews" is that they try too much to insert action and debate into them. It becomes a ratings game, rather than something informative.

These "yes-no" "in-out", "yea-nay" "good-bad" "pass-fail" etc questions are more akin to a debate. They're the kinda questions asked not to get an answer from the respondent, but asked because the interviewer already has the answer in mind. "Why does this interview suck? It's not really an interview." I think a few times you can actually see Baier trying to answer his own questions. That's a debate tactic, not an interview tactic.

There's nothing wrong with asking a tough question, but there's a difference between asking a tough question for an interview and asking a tough question for a debate. O Reiley is the kingpin of the latter; he can ask tough debate questions that rattle his opponent, but they're not suitable for interview.

And tough interview questions require the patience to wait for an answer. They're not these easy peezy yea nay questions that require a one sentence reply. Let the man gather his thoughts, and answer the question. If he wants to explain his answer a second time because he wasn't happy with his first explanation, let him.

I think the best adjective I can give to describe this type of "interview", and Fox is notorious for it, is "impatient". The interviewer comes off as impatient with the interruptions, impatient because they're not getting the answerthey expect.

The problem here is Baier was trying to coax a specific answer out of Obama, rather than letting him answer, asking a follow-up question based on the answer, and letting him answer that. He wanted Obama to answer specifically on some "in-out" "yes-no" BS questions, and really, Obama could have just given thumbs up or thumbs down at that point, because there would be no need to actually communicate an answer any other way.

And when the respondent doesn't even have to talk to answer the questions, you're doing a shitty job at "interviewing".

This was a good opportunity for a conservative news station to interview the president and bring forth a lot of the issues conservatives have on the topic......but this was a fishing expedition. Nothing more.

[poxpower]

Yeah I think the mindset is that if a question takes more than 30 seconds to answer, then the interviewee is just stalling Nixon-style.

[brainface]

Hey! Im from FOX News!!

...

What in the fuck is journalistic integrity?

[orangebomb]

It's from Fox News, what the hell did you expect from them?

That aside, It shows that FNC is clearly retarded, and are that damn butthurt because McCain or any other idiot Republican crony didn't get the president seat. Every time they want to be "fair and balanced", they go on full bitch mode and say that Obama and the liberals are sending us down to hell, what with medicare reforms and what not.

Then again, this isn't the first time Fox News were assholes to Obama.

[MercZ]

Fox's hard-hitting and professional "journalism", folks.

[Warforger]

In Fox's defense, its not the only one, I first saw this shit in a interview on CNN.

[Warforger]

Wow I just saw it, there are FAR worse examples of bad interviewing in other networks like CNN and MSNBC

[ImaSmartass2]

At 3/19/10 06:58 PM, Warforger wrote: Wow I just saw it, there are FAR worse examples of bad interviewing in other networks like CNN and MSNBC

Could I get a link, or are you just ranting?

[Conqueror95]

Hmmm that's an interesting video. I'm actually somewhat surprised Obama didn't realize it was a joke after the first 5 minutes.

There will always be people out there who like to joke around like that,eh?

[fli]

At 3/19/10 10:56 PM, ImaSmartass2 wrote:

At 3/19/10 06:58 PM, Warforger wrote: Wow I just saw it, there are FAR worse examples of bad interviewing in other networks like CNN and MSNBC

Could I get a link, or are you just ranting?

Yup....
Journalists like Amanpour are, indeed, FAR WORSE EXAMPLES of bad interviewing...

oh, c'mon... FOX has nothing equivalent to what's very decent reporting and insight of top notch journalists like Christiane Amanpour.

[Proteas]

At 3/19/10 10:56 PM, ImaSmartass2 wrote:

At 3/19/10 06:58 PM, Warforger wrote: Wow I just saw it, there are FAR worse examples of bad interviewing in other networks like CNN and MSNBC

Could I get a link, or are you just ranting?

Nancy Grace, anyone? Clicky.

[Pantera1992]

Buck Ofama. That's All I Gots to Say.

[Stoicish]

At 3/21/10 04:06 AM, Pantera1992 wrote: Buck Ofama. That's All I Gots to Say.

Does that actually contribute to the conversation?

[ToddM]

Why do people here hate Fox News? Is it because it is right leaning or is it something else?

[Ericho]

At 3/21/10 02:00 PM, ToddM wrote: Why do people here hate Fox News? Is it because it is right leaning or is it something else?

People hate Fox News because it is thought of by many people to be right winged biased. Now, I really cannot tell for myself, as I do not regularly watch Fox News and the only things I know from it are stuff on the Internet where it is mocked, so it does seem pretty unfair for me to hate it. It has people like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin, whom many people think of as being on the far right.

[Bacchanalian]

At 3/21/10 03:37 PM, Ericho wrote: People hate Fox News because it is thought of by many people to be right winged biased.

Fox News is a propaganda machine operating on the premise that the ends justify the means, in a ratings war with the other major networks. And hey... the leftist networks are often the same way. And I'm betting that almost anyone on the left can cite you the above reasons for hating on Fox. The problem is that they may be excusing or ignoring the same garbage coming from their own side. But to characterize the aspersion as born of labels alone is counterproductive and dishonest.

I'm honestly sick of, "you hate x just because x is [insert label]," defenses.

[AsthmaticHamster]

I think modern day journalist could learn a lot by watching the Frost-/Nixon interviews in term of journalistic integrity, and that coming from a man who wasn't even considered a gossip-style interviewer at the time...

[Elfer]

At 3/20/10 12:39 PM, Proteas wrote: Nancy Grace, anyone? Clicky.

To be fair, CNN 2 barely qualifies as a news network, and Nancy Grace isn't exactly what I'd call a "real person"

However, I don't think this should turn into a pissing match about whose interviews are the worst. Every station does shit like this at one point or another, and whether or not the interviewee is really important is irrelevant to the problem. The problem is that calm, reasoned interviews are too boring to sell ad spots. If you want to fix things, what you need to do is round up ten million of your friends and demand a higher standard of intellectualism in interviews.

[Proteas]

At 3/21/10 06:46 PM, Elfer wrote: To be fair, CNN 2 barely qualifies as a news network, and Nancy Grace isn't exactly what I'd call a "real person"

She's employed by Turner Broadcasting System, the company that owns and operates CNN and HLN both. Ergo, she's a CNN news anchor, just as much as Christiane Amanpour, Anderson Cooper, and Fahreed Zakaria. The only difference being is that she's there to be the X-23 to Fox New's Wolverine. She's there for sensationalist bullshit and ratings, not for journalistic integrity... which is pretty pathetic coming from CNN.

However, I don't think this should turn into a pissing match about whose interviews are the worst.

Well, what did you expect with a topic about how stupid Fox News is?