Tag: Brett Baier
Romney Self-Destructs During Softball Interview on Fox
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.
Interdiction: There’s Method to Fox’s Rudeness to the President
1. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly-Pres. Obama, Feb. 6, 2011 | 2. Fox’s Bret Baier-Pres. Obama, March 2010 |
3. O’Reilly-candidate Obama, Sept. 4, 2008 | 4. Baier-George Bush, Dec. 17, 2008 |
During the live portion of Fox’s interview with Pres. Obama before the Super Bowl on Sunday, Bill O’Reilly interrupted the president 43 times, according to Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” on Monday. (See #1 above.)
The interruptions continued in a second, taped part of the interview that was shown later, so that by the end of the 15-minute sit-down, O’Reilly had interrupted the president more than 70 times — once every 19 seconds, according to O’Donnell in a follow-up segment Tuesday night.
Conversely, the number of times O’Reilly let the president finish a sentence was zero, by O’Donnell’s count.
O’Reilly’s 70-plus interjections more than doubled the number of interruptions the president endured in his previous interview on Fox. In March 2010, O’Reilly’s lesser known colleague Bret Baier — host of Fox’s daily round-table presentation of Republican talking points — stopped the president in mid-sentence just 30 times or so. (See video #2.)
So, other than rudeness, what is behind this behavior from Fox? In a word: fear.