Oh No Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones GOTCHA'D Your GOTCHA! (Not A Euphemism)

Worst. Road Movie. Ever.

So Megyn Kelly will be trying to give her new NBC show, "Greta Was Busy So It's Me, Megyn Kelly," a viral ratings goose (a primary vector of avian flu) by interviewing Alex Jones this Sunday. We may or not watch, seeing as how it's Father's Day and we fully expect to be taken out to dinner if a certain Kid is paying attention, ahem! So far, the publicity buzz seems to have been helping Jones a lot more than Kelly -- searches for the ridiculous rageferret's name have spiked to almost the same level as when insufferable CNN blancmange Piers Morgan displayed Jones in 2013.

But Alex Jones is worried that the whole affair may turn out to be an exercise in character assassination by the perfidious Megyn Kelly, which seems unlikely since his character committed suicide years ago. As the New York Times said when Donald Trump threatened a libel suit, you have to have a good name in order for anyone to smear it. Jones has been teasing the interview more than Kelly has, whipping up his followers to come and see the violence and fake news inherent in the system, and recently released a half-hour video full of top secret recordings of Kelly, to prove the bitch set him up.

It's got the usual trademark Jones invective, like describing the prospect of meeting Kelly as "entering the labyrinth of the gorgon, of this modern-day Medusa" and the like. Sadly, he didn't turn to stone, but he did manage one actual GOTCHA! He caught Kelly seeming to promise him approval over how the interview would be edited, which is 1) Bad Journalism that Megyn Kelly should know better than to have done, and 2) kind of hilarious for Alex Jones to worry about, since his GOTCHA! video is full of really obvious, sloppy edits. We don't really expect Alex Jones to be any better than himself, but it would be nice if Megyn Kelly would please try to ooze some Journalistic Ethics from her wherever.

Some of what Kelly promised in the preliminary phone calls seems OK, like when she tries to flatter him that she wants to show the human side of Alex Jones, even though she doesn't have a scanning electron microscope:

• The reason you are interesting to me is because I followed your custody case, and I think you had a very good point about the way the media was covering it and for some reason treated you and your family and what was going on as fair game when they never would have done that, if you will, of a mainstream media figure. And I saw a different side of you in that whole thing. You just became very fascinating to me.

• I just sort of thought you were this maybe, you know, one-dimensional guy. Like this is your thing. And the comments I heard from you during the course of that trial, and your plea to the media to be respectful of you and your kids just reminded me that you’re just like anybody. You know, you’re a dad.

Nor is it a problem that she tries to reassure him the interview won't simply focus on the freakish stuff, like Jones's 9/11 trutherism or his contention that Sandy Hook was a false flag -- Jones says Kelly said she wouldn't bring those up, but she actually just said she'd give him a fair chance to clear up what he really thinks about them. We can see how even that could be a problem, since Jones's reality is awfully flexible depending on who's suing him. 

Kelly does seem to cross an ethical line here, though:

I will promise you to personally look at any clips we want to use of you. And have a producer run by you whether we are taking it in context and what you are saying about it.

Seriously? Let him see the clips and have a producer massage them to his liking? Whether she ended up doing that or not, giving an interview subject approval over what you publish is Just Not Done, except maybe by Fox News, for Donald Trump (we bet). Boo, Megyn Kelly, Boooo! Once you let the person you're interviewing shape how the thing gets edited, you've stopped doing journalism -- you're a collaborator in a PR piece.

Now, the fact that Jones is pretending to be so upset that Kelly will portray him unfairly suggests maybe he didn't actually get that final cut approval he wanted, or he'd already know what will air Sunday. In which case Megyn Kelly only lied to him about journalistic malpractice, which is still bad, but lying to Alex Jones may be one of those coals to Newcastle things.

Now, when is Bill Moyers going to give Alex Jones the interview he deserves?

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[ Media Matters / Alex Jones on YouTube]