Will ‘Megyn vs. Donald’ Measure Up?
One of the things that makes Kelly so good on her Fox News Channel program, The Kelly File, is her steely, real-time, and often non-Foxian grillings of her guests. The confrontational style she uses to such good effect will be replaced with pre-recorded and (presumably) edited sit-down interviews on her new show, starting with Trump.
It’s a shame, because if the show was live, we’d all be excited by the prospect of Kelly interrogating Trump about the Times story about his treatment of women, which broke after this interview was taped. Instead, we probably see an updated version of what Walters once did for ABC, tilted towards personality coverage and away from policy questions.
.. Journalists delight in one-on-one interviews like with office holders and candidates like tomorrow’s Trump vs. Kelly contest because it fixes their status as equals with the candidates in a way that a “scrum” interview or a press conference Q&A rarely does. If edited by the interviewer instead of run verbatim, the interviewer can control the information flow and in effect “make” the news instead of merely “report” on it, to echo a point made by media scholar Michael Schudson in his 1982 book The Power of News. Like any media pro—and as an inheritor of the Walters infotainment tradition—Kelly will work all the advantages to make the interview hers, not Trump’s.
.. If I can be so bold to retool a show that has yet to air, may I suggest that Roger Ailes, the founding genius behind Fox News Channel, put more faith in his talking head by running Megyn Kelly Presents as a live program? As Kelly demonstrates most nights, and as she proved on election night 2012 when shepunctured Karl Rose’s fantasy Romney could still win in Ohio when she walked the cameras to the Fox “decision desk” for confirmation.
Why not call it Megyn Kelly Presents … Live?