How to Interview a Bigot

 

Jon interviewed Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas Attorney General, about why her state banned gender-affirming care for minors - ignoring the guidelines of major medical organizations and taking the decision out of parents’ hands. Watch the full interview on @AppleTVPlus pic.twitter.com/4SoH3orWa6

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) October 7, 2022

You challenge their bullshit. It's that simple. You do not let them push a completely fake narrative without challenging it. Every actual journalist needs to take note that this is completely a thing you can do. Know enough about the topic to understand when you are hearing bullshit, and then when you hear it, call it out. The point of journalism isn't airing a side without facts or creating a false equivalency--at some level it has to be about respecting the truth, the facts, the Big Picture, or you are just creating an unchecked forum for actual trash people to unloose their trash opinions in.

 

This may mean some people will not want to be interviewed by you and will regard the media as hostile to them. Awesome. Then they don't get free press for their shitty opinions, and you can report on what they say when they are not in a tv studio. 

But if you have any respect at all for your audience, you don't let wholesale lies go without accounting for them. Even if you can't catch them in real time, be sure to report them after the fact. And ask them to reply to the real facts and catch them up on that. 

This is a kind of due diligence. Your readers or consumers or however you want to put it, deserve not an airing of sides, but a revelation of facts. I am an opinion blogger, but I rely on facts because without them, I can't produce content even I could trust. I admit I rely on mainstream media to run well-vetted stories and be ready to back them up.  I go out of my way to do research if I have the time--but this is my hobby. If this is your job--fact check because you can and should! And do it with those people you have access to because you can. And maybe you can stop the flow of bullshit for a whole minute. 

So much depends on not nodding and accepting a narrative without giving folks context. Not everyone has the time to do the work of examining bias, looking at history, sussing out what experts say. If it's your job--do that thing. 

If you are the Press people Meet, etc. Just confront the hateful bullshit when it happens as it happens, because it doesn't get confronted in some nebulous elsewhere. All that resonates is that some people have some, maybe valid, sort of awkward position, but why not? And so the bullshit lies. And some people feel that the bullshit is ok. If you leave people thinking believing a lie is alright, you fucked up. 

Jon Stewart is a comedian and not perfect, but he fiercely cares about things. Fiercely care about the truth. It matters. It is the whole thing you want to be about. And not all opinions are equal.