The British Badgers Are Coming!

Beyond winger media, the BBC style of guest badgering seems rampant. This very morning, I was surprised to hear WBUR's Deborah Becker play silly adversary with Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral. Eh?

If you watch or listen to the Beeb TV or radio, you get the behavior that subsequently became the norm of FOX and more recently even MSNBC (think Hardball). The ill-bred plug uglies like Bill O'Reilly make their living at nasty irrationality and Chris Matthews is not far behind in exhibiting British-tabloid sensibilities.

The routine is to bring on knowledgeable guests, ideally one at a time, and hassle the devil out of them. This is asking a pointed question and then talking over the attempted answer. When the guest does state facts or positions, contradiction is in order, fast, repeated and at high volume. The talking head should act like the expert revealing hidden truth.

Yet what we should have learned from hearing and watching our parents, teachers and clergy sorts holds. Silencing someone with shouted, iterative gainsaying does not mean you are smarter or right. It means you are loud, repetitive and ill mannered.

I want the ideas and information out there. If the host's aim is to end up feeling smug, that is a huge failure.

While it's not daily or two hours at a stretch, we do our interviews at Left Ahead. For the past three and one half years, we've had someone join our podcast about every other week. We tend to have one guest at a time and explore in depth.

Even with those whose political and personal views are quite different, we aren't in the business of gotcha. Perhaps that makes us wimps in contrast to the current style.

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Nah, nah, nah

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This morning's example related to the Philip Markoff suicide was not as strident as a FOXNews segment, but close enough. You can catch the six-minute segment here.

Becker started out like a real journalist and quickly went tabloid on Cabral. She clearly came in with her conclusions and was not about to let truth or knowledge interfere.

The sheriff said several times and clearly that:

• Markoff had been on suicide watch over a year ago and exhibited no behavior to justify it since
• The sole psychiatrist for the jail, holding over 700 prisoners, had cleared Markoff
• Guards check on inmates every 30 minutes
• The jail has numerous mental health professionals in addition to the psychiatrist
• Suffolk's suicide rate is less than half of most other jails - five in eight years
• Markoff exhibited zero signs verbally or otherwise that he wanted to do himself in
  

Becker's increasingly hostile questioning showed her bias. One psychiatrist was not enough. 40% of inmates have "some sort of mental health" issues; I'd say that the general population is higher and criminals may arguably be nearly 100%. Becker somehow linked the hypothetical that Markoff might have been married for a year had his fiance not quit him after his arrest to his needing extra attention, even absent any acting out or statements. Becker clearly liked the concept of and term trigger.

To her credit, Cabral was cool in the face of iterative implications. When Becker seemed not to hear her stats and judgments, returning to Becker's view that Markoff was somehow shortchanged of counseling and monitoring, the sheriff calmly said there might be a misunderstanding or that she (Cabral) was not sure "exactly what you're asking."

So it goes with the badgers. Don't listen, come in with conclusions and stick to them, contradict when possible, talk over answers you don't want, and above all, show that you know better than the expert.

It's tiresome and I wish it would run its course. I don't want my ideas pre-digested.

Cross-post: Come to see what I'm writing, I'll plug this in over at Harrumph! as well.

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Tags: massmarrier, adversarial, interviewing, WBUR, Becker, Cabral, Markoff