A sad state of affairs

PJ:  What a sad state of affairs....  How we all long for the days of the tough interviewer who got to the bottom of things...who forced out the truth for the benefit of their viewers.  This was during the days before Fox News.  This was before the mainstream media cowered, afraid of their responsibilities lest they be called biased.  This was before newsrooms concentrated more on ratings than reporting.  This was before the likes of Sarah Palin* would appear as an 'expert' on anything on a major news outlet.  

So here we have something unique in today's America journalism:  A reporter, doing what a reporter is supposed to do.

* Speaking of Mrs. Palin...if she thought that Katie Couric was tough, I wonder how she would have managed an interview with Norah O'Donnell!

Mediaite

Norah O’Donnell Teaches TV Journos Another Lesson With Rob Portman Stuffage

Video

by Tommy Christopher

Former Chief White House Correspondent and newly-minted CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell has been on fire lately, holding a veritable clinic on how to interview dishonest politicians that her mainstream media colleagues would do well to study. In the latest example of this, O’Donnell abandoned the current media fashion of ignoring lies (or presenting the truth as just another counter-argument), and pursued Sen. Rob Portman‘s (R-OH) disinformation on the recent violence in Libya like a Terminator with OCD.

What O’Donnell has been doing recently shouldn’t seem as remarkable as it is, but good old-fashioned feet to the fire followup is a sadly dying art, especially in television news. Interviewers either let lies and misinformation slip by because they need to hit all their prepared questions before time’s up, or because they’re numb to post-truth politics, or they present the facts in asterisk fashion before moving on to allow more lies to spew forth.

Read it and watch the video at Mediaite:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/norah-odonnell-teaches-tv-journos-another-lesson-with-rob-portman-stuffage/