The Twitter discourse is all conservatives saying "Dems HATE this but it’s JOURNALISM! The LIBERAL MEDIA refuses to interview him and theyre calling it TREASON but HE’S RIGHT! They’re hypocrites because they didn’t call it treason when X LEFTIST journalist interviewed him years ago!
And at first I got a little swept up in it, I was thinking "yeah actually it is good to interview world leaders even if they are involved in wars, I agree with the Right on this.’
But then I just went to check on what actual left leaning people and journalists were actually tweeting. Left leaning people were saying it was going to be bad because Tucker isn’t a journalist and he was going to make a puff piece for a dictator full of misinformation. So it wasn’t that interviews with Putin are bad, it’s that this interview will be bad.
Journalists are saying they’ve all had interview requests in for years, they want to interview him he just refuses Western media and the question is how Tucker got the interview. If he promised softball questions or gave editorial control to Putins team or something things could get real not-journalism-y fast.
a puff piece for a dictator full of misinformation
It’s not a puff piece. It’s full-on Russian propaganda tailor-made for American conservatives. The entire point is to draw even more conservative voters into the fold and convince them that the US needs to stop supporting Ukraine and move towards pulling out of NATO.
This is a symptom of a larger problem, which is that the bar for journalism for conservatives is literally just the big red R next to their names. Anyone who labels themselves republican can suddenly tell no lies and do no harm. That’s exactly what right wing media wants, but it has destroyed the very integrity journalism has been built on for 100+ years, and the kicker is that conservatives in this country don’t even have a clue about it.
This seems like a test question for journalistic ethics.
I don’t know what the answer is but I am confident in saying that Tucker won’t “do the right thing”.
The Twitter discourse is all conservatives saying "Dems HATE this but it’s JOURNALISM! The LIBERAL MEDIA refuses to interview him and theyre calling it TREASON but HE’S RIGHT! They’re hypocrites because they didn’t call it treason when X LEFTIST journalist interviewed him years ago!
And at first I got a little swept up in it, I was thinking "yeah actually it is good to interview world leaders even if they are involved in wars, I agree with the Right on this.’
But then I just went to check on what actual left leaning people and journalists were actually tweeting. Left leaning people were saying it was going to be bad because Tucker isn’t a journalist and he was going to make a puff piece for a dictator full of misinformation. So it wasn’t that interviews with Putin are bad, it’s that this interview will be bad.
Journalists are saying they’ve all had interview requests in for years, they want to interview him he just refuses Western media and the question is how Tucker got the interview. If he promised softball questions or gave editorial control to Putins team or something things could get real not-journalism-y fast.
It’s not a puff piece. It’s full-on Russian propaganda tailor-made for American conservatives. The entire point is to draw even more conservative voters into the fold and convince them that the US needs to stop supporting Ukraine and move towards pulling out of NATO.
This is a symptom of a larger problem, which is that the bar for journalism for conservatives is literally just the big red R next to their names. Anyone who labels themselves republican can suddenly tell no lies and do no harm. That’s exactly what right wing media wants, but it has destroyed the very integrity journalism has been built on for 100+ years, and the kicker is that conservatives in this country don’t even have a clue about it.
This seems like a test question for journalistic ethics.
I don’t know what the answer is but I am confident in saying that Tucker won’t “do the right thing”.