1. Why do the @NewYorker, @MSNBC, and others persist in willingly giving extremist Steve Bannon a free platform? No good comes of this--only the legitimization and normalization of extremism.
2. New Yorker editor David Remnick makes the most common mistake that journalists/others who "debate" or grant 1-on-1 interviews to extremists make. He says, “I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation.”
3. The mistake is thinking that whatever "difficult questions" or "combativeness" the interviewer may deploy will somehow make up for the equalization effect that any 1-on-1 situation with an extremist suggests. They are elevated and the interviewer lowered. Moreover, the more
4. "combative" the interviewer is, the more the extremist's supporters (& often others as well) will view the extremist as bravely "holding his own" against a hostile interviewer with an agenda. Moreover, the interviewer/debater often overestimates his own abilities and under-
5. estimates those of the extremist, who will often have prepared responses to questions he has been asked many times before and will be on firmer ground on the subject (himself) than the interviewer/debater. Legitimate experts (such as historians and biologists) know that there
6. is no good reason to "debate" Holocaust deniers or creationists. No advantage is gained by giving them a stage. All the New Yorker is likely to do is to give Bannon free publicity--publicity he dearly needs right now, as he is out of power and depends upon such publicity to
7. demonstrate to those who might support him that he is still relevant.
I confess I am much disappointed in the New Yorker. Neither journalism nor the public good are well-served here.
I confess I am much disappointed in the New Yorker. Neither journalism nor the public good are well-served here.
Interesting update. Though his explanation/rationale has some issues, it seems some people, whether on social media or otherwise, were able to get through to Remnick that hosting Bannon would not be a good idea:
