Yes, where indeed?
On a TiVoed version of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, they showed a British reporter grilling Tony Blair. The reporter said something to the effect of (obviously paraphrased):
How can the British government talk to China about human rights given that the British government has allegedly been violating human rights in prisons in Iraq?
The reporter (whose name I don’t know) was brutally straightforward without appearing rude. He asked a tough and valuable question. Jon Stewart then replied something to the effect of:
Where can we (The US) get reporters like that?
Why can’t our reporters ask relevant and tough questions? Why do they ask superficial questions about SUVs, boobs on the Superbowl, etc. when there are, you know, important things to talk about?
Here’s an article I found on Blair’s response.
May 13th, 2004 at 11:34 am
Clearly we need to clone Helen Thomas.
May 13th, 2004 at 12:16 pm
Especially in light of the british press running fake photos of British abuse of prisoners.
Oh well.
I’m a big funk.
I’ll never trust the BBC. If they said the sky was blue, I’d have to look outside first to check.
May 13th, 2004 at 1:57 pm
That’s not tough journalism, that’s (if I may borrow from some of our readers) a tu quoque fallacy, isn’t it?
May 13th, 2004 at 10:53 pm
Thibodeaux:
I don’t think it exactly fits tu quoque, because the reporter didn’t claim that something Blair said was false. What he was asking was whether or not Britain had a right to chide others concerning human rights based on recent allegations. It doesn’t really fit any of these examples, it’s more akin to “people in glass houses…”
All that aside, the larger point is that valid or not, our media seemingly NEVER asks tough questions. It’s as if our reporters are too interested in being buddy-buddy with people in power to risk offending anyone. And this holds true regardless of whether donkeys or elephants are in power.
May 14th, 2004 at 8:36 am
Do you consider “Mr. President, do you think you should apologize for 9/11” to be a tough question?
May 14th, 2004 at 9:30 am
And just to be clear: I’m by no means trying to defend the US press, or to disagree with the notion that the US press tends to focus on the silly or superficial.
It’s just that this particular question seems to me not really intended to get any new information. It sounds more like a chance to try to slam Mr. Blair. The reporter sounds like he doesn’t REALLY care about Mr. Blair’s plans to get China to act nicer; he just wants to bring up this Iraq thing.
In my opinon, a REAL tough question would be, “How do Chinese human rights problems figure into these ‘contracts worth more than £1bn’ that British companies are signing? If you’re concerned about human rights, what steps are you taking to make sure that, for example, British businesses aren’t profiting from Chinese slave labour?”
May 14th, 2004 at 2:12 pm
Do you consider “Mr. President, do you think you should apologize for 9/11” to be a tough question?
Not really, although it also depends on when it’s asked.
As for the Brit’s question, it’s a little of both. Yes, it’s an opportunity to grandstand a bit and highlight a particular subject that’s not necessarily on the agenda. At the same time it is, on its face, a legitimate question.
A good example of a tough question for Bush might be “How can we reasonably expect our enemies to follow the Geneva Convention when they capture our troops, when we aren’t following the Geneva Convention with the people we’ve captured?” That’s the type of thing that the US mainstream media has essentially given Bush a free pass on (although the blogosphere has discussed it at length).
May 14th, 2004 at 3:29 pm
I think the answer to that would be “We expect our troops to follow the Laws of Warfare, and we’ll punish those who don’t.”
But that’s essentially the same question: You guys do it, so aren’t you a hypocrite for complaining when THEY do it? Again, that’s not really asking for information. A better question, IMHO, is “Mr. President, how are you going to fix the problem?”
Look, I know that Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” But does that mean that because we ourselves might not be perfect, we cannot therefore condemn evil in our enemies?
May 15th, 2004 at 3:18 pm
Thib:
No doubt there are better questions, but that doesn’t make this one illegitimate or irrelevant. But the larger point is that our media won’t ask anything even resembling such questions. Instead it’s “how was your vacation in Crawford?”