By Christopher B. Daly
Not to be missed: this recent commentary by Tim Egan in the NYTimes about Fox News figure Bill O’Reilly and O’Reilly’s recent interview with President Obama. As usual, O’Reilly believes that the key figure in the interview was . . . himself. For days afterward, O’Reilly and his colleagues at Fox milked the interview and scored it a solid win for O’Reilly over the president (as if it were a debate).
Egan makes a good point here:
So, the first point for historians sniffing the odor of O’Reilly’s time capsule in 2114 is that the interview made no news. No ground was broken. It was a journalistic dud. O’Reilly himself spoke for about 40 percent of the time, and devoted 90 percent of the interview to “the full Fox scandal grab bag,” as Jon Stewart called it.
As it happens, I am teaching my students this week about how to conduct interviews in my journalism classes at Boston University (where, yes, I know: Bill O’Reilly attended college). The point I always try to drum into my students about interviewing is simple: It’s not about you.
Of course, I understand that Bill O’Reilly is not trying to conduct a productive, journalistic interview. He is trying to stage a clash of personalities for television. Like his boss Roger Ailes, O’Reilly is very good at understanding television, even if he seems to have missed class on the day of the lesson about humility.
Prof Chris Daly's Blog 