From:
reliablesources@newsletters.cnn.com
Baierish on Harris
Years ago, in my former life as a TV anchor, I learned that the first question sets the tone. Interviewers make a choice every time they begin talking with a newsmaker. Do they start by warming their subject up or go straight for the jugular?
Fox's Bret Baier chose the softball way when interviewing Trump last year, and the hardball way when interviewing Harris earlier this week. I reviewed both segments and found that Baier 1) challenged both candidates; 2) generated lots of newsy clips; and 3) treated Harris differently than Trump. Baier interrupted Harris a lot more often and interrogated her from the get-go. Read all about it here.
>> The ratings were remarkable: Harris' first ever formal sit-down on Fox "drew an estimated 7.1 million viewers," Deadline's Ted Johnson wrote. That's more than three times the average audience for Baier's program.
>> "She got exactly what she wanted out of it," Dan Pfeiffer said on MSNBC, noting that the #1 local market for the interview was Pittsburgh.
>> The interview "was grievance theater, not political journalism," Margaret Sullivan writes, but Harris "still injected some reality into Fox News’s world."
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