News Munchies
Are Any Actual Adults In The Newsroom?
Originally Posted
Updated
We're sure there are equally egregious examples from conservative commentators, but we were channel-flipping and happened to notice Democratic analyst Bob Beckel on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" saying, "The stock market is at a record high or near a record high."
Oh, really?
We would have expected Andrea Tantaros, the Republican political commentator chosen to provide "balance" in this segment, to have called him on this calumny, but, inexplicably, she didn't.
Fine, but where was the adult in the room? Was substitute host Alisyn Camerota so insecure or so incompetent or so worried about her next question or the timing of the segment or busy filing her nails or something that she missed an obvious opportunity to pounce on, or, at least, to point out and challenge a statement that is so patently incorrect as to border on the absurd?
This is the problem with pack journalists nowadays, and with overburdened news hosts and 24-hour cable news: They're so worried about their question, their next opportunity, or what the control room is saying to them, that they don't truly listen to answers and don't fully engage their brains during an interview.
How many times have you seen the subject of an interview deflect, ignore, or mishandle a question, only to see that journalist, or another, blithely go on to the next question or an unrelated topic, rather than pressing the person being interviewed for correction, clarification, or an actual answer to the question being asked?
No, journalists seem to have come to the point that they accept words -- the fact that something was said in response to their question, no matter how inane or off-topic or obviously spurious -- rather than actual answers. The art of actual in-depth questioning of the person being interviewed has faded, and network officials seem not to have noticed. Or perhaps they don't care.
You'd think Bob or Andrea or Alisyn or the control room or even someone just waking through the newsroom set would have had time to remember, and might have noticed, and mentioned, that yesterday's Dow Jones Industrial Average closing of 12,070.81 points was some 17.6 percent below the historic high of 14,198.10 on 11 Oct 07 (the highest "close" was 14,164.53, two days earlier).
Good grief!