Tucker In Russia
Is anyone else old enough to remember when journalists engaged in actual journalism? You know, trying to tell the unvarnished truth by interviewing as many subjects and presenting as many sides of an issue as possible?
In TV parlance a big interview was a “get” and the pros would go to almost obscene lengths to secure face time with controversial politicians and reclusive celebrities.
Barbara Walters, who died in 2022, was the queen of the big interview. During her long career she interviewed Cuban dictator Fidel Castro numerous times. The first in 1977, 16 years after the Bay of Pigs, when Americans were forbidden from traveling to the communist island.
Walters didn’t care that she was in enemy territory. She was after the story. Her interviews were tough and they didn’t turn Americans into Fidel lovers. They did, however, flesh out the story of what was happening on that Caribbean island, 90 miles away.
Times have changed.
So far, American journalists have shown a complete lack of interest in interviewing Vladimir Putin, content to portray the Russian leader as a ruthless former KGB agent willing to shed as much blood as possible as he tries to rebuild the old Soviet Union. On the other hand, members of the American media have acted as fanboys for Volodymyr Zelensky, the brave defender of democracy in Ukraine.
Both men are no doubt far more complex than the simple caricatures painted for us by a lazy American media. But the caricatures are very convenient for a government bent on pouring endless sums of money into this two-year-old war. After all, an uninformed populace is unlikely to question government policy and spending.
We may start to get a more balanced view of the bloody and seemingly endless war in Ukraine soon thanks one of the last journalists in America: Tucker Carlson. He’s in Russia now and scheduled to interview Putin shortly. Carlson promised that the unedited tape would be available on his website and would not be paywalled.
Carlson says he also requested an interview with Zelensky.
Frankly, I’d like to see American journalists elbowing each other out of the way to put Putin on the spot. What would Rachel Maddow ask him? How about Wolf Blitzer? Where is Christiane Amanpour, who didn’t hesitate to interview Iranian leaders or Yasser Arafat or Moammar Gadhafi?
None of these crack reporters have bothered to go to Russia to talk to Putin.
Tucker did.
Good for Tucker.
