Who really won this meet not so cute?
A day after with Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones finally aired, I am of two minds about the whole business. Kelly’s performance exceeded expectations, mine included. Unlike, I’ m not ready to give her a cookie just yet. That’s because Kelly did what any decent interviewer is supposed to do, in that she did not let Alex Jones get away with using the deaths of children in mass murder events committed by unhinged perpetrators as tools of brand expansion. Then again, while a number of reasonable, previously skeptical viewers may be impressed with the way the host acquitted herself, there’s no question that Kelly also bolstered Jones’ profile while not necessarily doing much to elevate hers. The week leading up to the Kelly-Jones face-off yielded a multifaceted debate on journalism’s role in situations that require an interviewer to air a conversation with an odious person. Jones is a wing nut who has built a multimillion-dollar media enterprise on perpetuating baseless and outrageous claims about news reports, with the topmost among them being his claim that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax. Critics and people directly affected by Jones’ malevolent fearmongering called upon NBC News to cancel the interview, and in deference to the families of Sandy Hook victims living in its community, an NBC-owned station in Connecticut did not broadcast it. JPMorgan Chase pulled its advertising. Jones, for his part, between him and Kelly prior to the interview’s recording in which she came across as sympathetic to his point of view. Prior to the broadcast of Sunday’s interview, Kelly was at a distinct disadvantage from a public relations point of view and she immediately took an aggressive stance against Jones as the interview began. During the broadcast in a voiceover after she questions Jones’ labeling the juvenile victims of a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert “liberal trendies, ” and he parries with a cry of “media misrepresentation, ” Kelly tells viewers of Jones’ pattern of reckless accusations, equivocation and excuses. When he attempts to bob and weave in his response to his false declarations about Sandy Hook, she cuts him off with “That’s a dodge.” Jones insists, “No, no. It’s not a dodge, ” adding, “The media never covers all the evil wars it’s promoted and all the big things — ” “That doesn’ t excuse what you did and said about Newtown, ” Kelly retorts. “And you know it.” Jones then attempts to say that the difference between what he does and coverage by mainstream media is that he “looked at all the angles of Newtown.” In subsequent narration, Kelly replies (correctly) that there are no other angles in terms of the mass shooting that took the lives of 20 children and six adults. As an aside, that’s a fascinating assertion from a person who spent years working for a news organization whose claim to fame was doing what Jones professes to be doing, albeit a tick less outrageously.
