The spin in the corporate media is that putative GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney wilted under tough questioning during a one-on-one interview with Fox News’ fake journalist, Brett Baier, earlier this week. But that is not what really happened. Baier lobbed a series of tough-sounding softball questions at Romney, but there were no “gotcha” questions. The topics he covered were predictable to anyone who has been following the GOP presidential campaign.
Romney should have been prepared with answers that deflected the implied criticism and steered the interview back onto his campaign talking points. That’s politics 101. Instead, Romney was defensive, over-used his fake laugh and even had the audacity to complain about being taken out of context less than a week after he approved an ad that deliberately took Pres. Obama out of context. His performance has been panned by pundits of all persuasions, and rightly so.
But it wasn’t because of Brett Baier’s hardball interview tactics. Not hardly.
Fox News personalities like Baier don’t do real hard-hitting journalistic interviews. Instead, when they interview Democratic leaders, they use the tactic of “interdiction,” in which they repeatedly interrupt their subject’s answers every few seconds in order to prevent a coherent message from coming through. It is a sophisticated technique deployed as part of a propaganda strategy to ensure that Fox viewers are not exposed to a clear presentation of plans, programs or messages that do not reinforce Republican orthodoxy.
An added benefit of this extremely rude, bullying tactic is that it serves to diminish the interview subject in the eyes of Fox viewers, making him or her look ineffectual and weak, which reinforces GOP/Fox dogma that liberals and their views are unworthy of respect. It is also fundamentally an attempt to goad the interview subject into losing his or her cool.
Baier most famously used the tactic of interdiction against Pres. Obama in March 2010. (See video at right.) In the interview, Baier interrupted the president no less than 30 times. In a February 2011 interview, Baier’s Fox colleague Bill O’Reilly interrupted the president a whopping 70 times.
Although the Romney interview was heavily edited, it is clear that Baier was instructed to avoid interdicting Romney’s messaging. In fact, in a quick review of various versions of the interview available online, it appears that Baier never interrupt Romney at all.
After all, Fox News operated out of Karl Rove’s political shop in the Bush White House. It is unlikely that Fox would jeopardize a similar cozy arrangement in the Romney White House by deliberately kneecapping the candidate now, five weeks before primary voting begins.
Romney certainly imploded during the interview, but it wasn’t because of tough questioning from Brett Baier.
