The pros and cons for Kamala Harris in her upcoming Fox News interview

As my colleagues wrote in Tuesday’s newsletter, Vice President Kamala Harris is drifting into unfriendly waters today by agreeing to be interviewed by Fox News. Harris will sit down with Fox News’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, for an interview that is expected to be in the 25-30 minute range.

It’s a crafty move by Harris for several reasons, but not without pitfalls.

Even though she has been interviewed by “60 Minutes,” CNN and several other legitimate and respected news outlets, Harris can now stiff-arm her detractors who claim she only sits down with friendly interviewers. Agreeing to be interviewed on Fox News is a bold move — or at least one that certainly can be claimed as a bold move.

Of course, Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork that Baier will go easy on Harris because he is “soft” on the left. (That strategy is in the same playbook of saying the election is going to be rigged just in case you lose.)

While Fox News’ biggest stars, especially in prime time, continue to prop up Trump while slamming Harris, Baier is probably Fox News’ most-respected journalist. You would hope he is not going to lob up a bunch of softballs, but he also is not going to pander to the MAGA types and Fox News diehards by hitting Harris with a bunch of unfair questions or cheap shots.

I would expect what you pretty much get with Baier: strong, tough questions with aggressive follow-ups. In a word: fair.

(But just for your consideration, here’s Media Matters’ Matt Gertz with “Three damning facts about Fox’s Bret Baier.”)

As far as Harris goes, sure there’s a risk that she could stumble on a tough question about the economy or immigration or whatever. If I had to guess, Baier is going to ask a lot about the economy.

Harris also has tried to delicately walk the fine line of setting her vision for a new era and a fresh voice while still embracing the work of the Biden administration. That, at times, has been difficult, especially when Trump links Harris with Joe Biden. It’s not always easy for Harris to simultaneously embrace and distance herself from him.

Many Fox News viewers strongly dislike the current administration. This interview is Harris’ chance to make a case to those viewers that a vote for her is not necessarily a vote for Biden. A bad stumble might not cost her any votes she currently has locked up.

But her performance, good or bad or mediocre, could influence a few voters out there. And even though there are less than three weeks until Election Day, by agreeing to go on Fox News along with all the other interviews she has done, Harris can put to rest the criticism that she isn’t sitting down for serious one-on-one interviews.

A MESSAGE FROM POYNTER

So powerful a hurricane couldn’t stop them.

The Poynter Leadership Academy for Women in Media has transformed the careers of more than 650 people. Each participant learns to manage teams more effectively, hone and communicate their strategic vision and steer their organizations toward success. But perhaps more importantly, graduates join a global community of support — a community so strong, they rode out a hurricane together.

Read more and apply now.

The format …

There was a bit of a dustup on social media Tuesday on how the interview was going to work. Baier described it as “as-live.” And that threw off many people.

It’s really quite simple. The interview will be taped, but there will be no stopping and no editing. Then it will be aired exactly as taped with no commercials.

The other half

Trump also is doing something with Fox News. On Tuesday, he taped a town hall in front of an all-women audience in Georgia that was to mostly focus on women’s issues. It was moderated by Harris Faulkner and is scheduled to air today at 11 a.m. Eastern.

I’m not nearly as optimistic about Faulkner doing as good of a job with Trump as Baier will do with Harris. The formats are a bit different, with Baier doing a formal interview, while Faulkner is facilitating a town hall with audience questions. But Faulkner still will have the ability to fact-check Trump and push him to give any answers he ducks.

Will she? Much of Faulkner’s on-air work as a supposed “news anchor” has veered into commentary — most of it right-leaning. She is nowhere near the caliber of journalist as Baier. So, ultimately, as I said, I’m not optimistic.

And, oh, speaking of Trump. The former president lashed out at Fox News for having Harris’ spokesperson Ian Sams on the network earlier this week. Trump used a bunch of juvenile insults to criticize Fox News host Neil Cavuto for hosting Sams. He added that Sams “virtually owns” Fox News now. Then Trump praised Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, calling her wonderful.

Then Sams went on Fox News again Tuesday.

Trust in media

New year, same story.

A new Gallup poll found that for the third straight year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. In addition, another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence in it.

Meanwhile, 31% said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” That’s about the same as last year’s 32%.

In the report, Gallup senior editor Megan Brenan wrote, “As has been the case historically, partisans have different levels of confidence in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. Currently, 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.”

Check out the report for many more details.

Perplexity

For this item, I turn it over to Poynter media business analyst Rick Edmonds.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, The New York Times has sent a cease-and-desist order to artificial intelligence search engine startup Perplexity for allegedly pirating Times stories to create its content.

Which raises a question that would have baffled me two months ago: What the heck is Perplexity? Many savvy Poynter readers already know, but for others — especially in my demographic — here’s a little primer.

The two-year-old free service, backed by Jeff Bezos, can be used as a substitute or supplement to Google. Rather than a ranked series of articles, it provides a short answer with examples and links.

At my house, my wife, a financial executive, was looking at the draft of an important submission letter to a federal regulator. Unfortunately, it was written in such dense legalese that it was not just infelicitous but hard to follow.

So she queried, “Give me some examples of great legal writing.” This was Perplexity’s response — with both writing samples and guidelines.

The Journal story adds that several other publishers, including Condé Nast and Forbes, have written Perplexity with the same kind of legal objections. Another group, including the Journal’s parent company News Corp., has struck licensing deals.

The Journal said that Perplexity is already valued at an estimated $1 billion.

Jones lashes out

No owner in North American professional sports is more outspoken and more in the public eye than Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. He meets with reporters following most games and even has his own weekly radio segment — something usually reserved for coaches and players, but rarely for owners.

As a former sports journalist, I love it. The owner of the most valuable and, perhaps, best-known franchise in all of sports constantly talks to the media? That’s great. And it’s especially great when Jones reveals exactly what he’s thinking.

However, Jones may have crossed a line on Tuesday when he threatened to have the hosts of a radio show replaced in his interviews because he didn’t like a line of questioning.

During his weekly appearance on 105.3 in Dallas, the flagship station of the Cowboys, Jones told “Shan & RJ” hosts, Shan Shariff and R.J. Choppy, that he would “get somebody else to ask these questions” because he didn’t like how the conversation was going. It was Jones’ first radio interview since the Cowboys were embarrassed at home in a 47-9 loss to Detroit on Sunday, which also happened to be Jones’ 82nd birthday.

Jones was angry that Shariff asked Jones about the lack of personnel moves made by the Cowboys during the offseason.

After a bit of a back-and-forth, Jones finally said, “Let me tell you what I’ll do about it. I will let us sit down and look at the decisions we’ve made over the last several years. Now, if you think I’m interested on a damn phone call with you over a radio and sitting here and throwing all the good out with the dishwater, you have got to be smoking something over there this morning.”

Then Jones added, “This is not your job. Your job isn’t to let me go over all the reasons that I did something and I’m sorry that I did it. That’s not your job. I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions, man.”

Jones, who was talking on a phone from an NFL owners meeting in Atlanta, then said, “I’m not kidding. You’re not going to figure out what the team is doing right or wrong. If you are, or any five or 10 like you, you need to come to this meeting I’m going to today with 32 teams here, you’re geniuses. You really think you’re gonna sit here with a microphone and tell me all of the things that I’ve done wrong and without going over the rights? Listen, we both know we’re talking to a lot of great fans, a lot of great listeners. And I’m very sorry for what happened out there Sunday. I’m sick about what happened Sunday. And I’m not talking to these yay-hoos on the end of this phone. I’m talking to you, the fans, that are listening this morning. And we can spend a lot of time going over zigging and zagging on the stupidest things I ever done that anybody has ever analyzed is buy the Cowboys. It was an idiot that did that. So idiot things can turn into good decisions. Smart things can turn into bad decisions. The facts are that when you make one you don’t really know whether it’s gonna be good or not at the time.”

The interview carried on for another five minutes or so without incident.

ProFootball Talk’s Mike Florio wrote, “It’s as defensive as Jerry has ever been. Given that he talks to the media as many as three times per week during the season, it was inevitable that he’d take issue with questioning, even if it wasn’t all that aggressive.”

So why do I say Jones “may have” crossed a line? Well, while Jones did a lot of huffing and puffing, I’m not positive he was sincere with his threat to get someone else to host his weekly radio spots.

As Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod wrote, “Ultimately, it’s hard to view Jones’ answer as anything other than him lashing out in an attempt to defend the indefensible, while using 105.3 The Fan’s status as the radio home of the Cowboys as leverage to bully a radio host asking the most obvious of questions.”

But ESPN’s Shannon Sharpe wasn’t having it, saying on air, “He put a man in fear for his job. I hate, I detest, I despise someone that will prey on the weak. And because Jerry Jones is in an advantageous situation, because he has the power in this situation, he would actually say that publicly. That tells me a lot about a man. That tells me a lot about a man that has power and would abuse that power to tell that man, 'I will get someone in here to ask me favorable questions.’ … What do you think his job was?”

Another day closer to normal here in St. Petersburg following Hurricane Milton. Power just returned to my home and to the Poynter Institute late in the day on Tuesday. We’re getting there! So now for more media news, tidbits and interesting links …

• Useful interactive piece from The Washington Post’s Michael J. Coren, with Naema Ahmed and Kevin Crowe: “Where climate change poses the most and least risk to American homeowners.”
• FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich with “How Hurricanes Helene and Milton could affect the 2024 election.”
• The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel writes about the misinformation problem in “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is.”
• The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin with “What Should a Music Magazine Be in the TikTok Era? Pitchfork Alumni Have an Idea.”
• The Associated Press’ Gary D. Robertson with “North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson sues CNN over report about posts on porn site.”
• The St. Louis Post Dispatch announced Tuesday that, in January, it will stop using its current presses to print the daily newspaper and will outsource printing to a facility owned by Gannett in Columbia, Missouri. That means 72 employees — 48 full-timers and 24-part-timers — will no longer be employed at the newspaper. The paper will still print daily, but deadlines will be much earlier, according to Post-Dispatch executive editor Alan Achkar, who wrote, “The move will result in earlier deadlines for news coverage, which will affect late-breaking coverage in print, especially sports. Our coverage of Cardinals NIGHT games, for example, will not appear in the next day’s sports section.” He added, “But the print edition will still feature our array of columns, analysis, features and enterprise journalism. We remain committed to producing a strong print edition, with the same range of comics and puzzles you now enjoy. … And for the latest breaking news and sports coverage, of course, you can turn to our website, stltoday.com, and our mobile app.” Check out Achkar’s announcement for more behind the move.
• The Athletic names Fubo its first official live TV streaming partner. Here’s the announcement from The New York Times.
• Front Office Sports’ Colin Salao with “WNBA Finals TV Ratings Grow in Game 2 Despite NFL Competition.”
• Los Angeles Times culture columnist and critic Mary McNamara with “Inside the Kafkaesque experience of getting your car towed in L.A.”

More resources for journalists

• Are you an upcoming-and-coming newsroom manager?
• Encourage an outstanding colleague to apply for Leadership Academy for Women in Media
• Ensure your newsroom is on the cutting edge of evolving criminal justice coverage.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].