Pundits or Trump campaign coaches? A twist in news coverage
LOS ANGELES — When radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Donald Trump this week if he really meant that President Barack Obama had founded the Islamic State group, it was the equivalent of offering him a do-over.
Trump declined, refusing to back down. While the GOP presidential candidate said Friday he was being sarcastic, the exchange stands as an example of a school of interviewing some say turns political coverage on its head and others argue that, done right, can be valuable.
“It’s journalistic malpractice to lead your witness to give the desired response,” said Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. “The standard in journalism is straight, objective questions, and that’s what I teach my students.”
While Hewitt and his fellow conservative pundits on TV are “partisans, not journalists,” he said, “does that allow them to lead presidential candidates?”
On his show Thursday, Hewitt gave Trump a chance to clarify his remarks about Obama and ISIS, an acronym for the terrorist group.
“I know what you meant. You meant that he [Obama] created the vacuum, he lost the peace,” Hewitt said.
“No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do,” Trump replied.
Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who is now a professor at George Washington University, sees the exchange differently in light of Trump’s unusual candidacy.
“So many of his answers appear to be stream-of-consciousness responses, so slamming on the brakes as an interviewer and saying, ‘Well, you don’t really mean that literally’” gives him a chance to either retract or “double down” as he did with the Islamic State claim, Sesno said.
“Did Hewitt give Trump an opportunity to walk it [his allegation] back, did he put words in his mouth? Yeah, he did. But Trump didn’t walk it back, which is why I think it’s so remarkably newsworthy,” he said.
But the liberal watchdog group Media Matters contends the interview is part of a troubling pattern in which conservative hosts are serving as self-appointed “coaches” for Trump and his campaign.