American cable giant NBC is moving ahead with plans to air a feature interview of Alex Jones — the Texan conspiracy theorist whose paranoid fantasies of government plots have earned him influence in red state America, all the way up to Donald Trump’s White House. “The purpose of a news show is to engage with issues important to the public, and (Jones) is certainly important to the public. “That’s the job of Megyn Kelly, NBC and the show editors, to make sure that it’s not just about Alex Jones, that it’s about Alex Jones’ ideas and where those ideas fall short on the fact test.”But in the hyper-connected world of online media, where Jones thrives, there is a sense of hopelessness, Linvill said. The traditional liberal intellectual safeguard known as the “marketplace of ideas” appears to have failed, with Jones as a prime example. Even Kelly herself interviewed Vladimir Putin the other week, although she has been criticized for letting him get the upper hand.

Source: National Post June 14, 2017 17:48 UTC