In my new CFI blog I examine the recent interview of conspiracist Alex Jones by NBC’s Megan Kelly…

Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is doing her best to establish herself as a hard-nosed journalist in recent interviews with Russian president Vladimir Putin and conspiracy peddler Alex Jones. Both shows were breathlessly hyped, and while Putin has spent decades conducting disinformation campaigns (and continues to do so; see my CSI Special Report “How Russian Conspiracies Taint Social Activist ‘News’”), the interview with Jones was the more controversial. This was due in part to Jones’s promotion of the conspiracy that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.

The question of whether or not Kelly should have given Jones more of a platform for his blinkered views (or any legitimacy) is a fair one—and one she anticipated. In the program Kelly defended her decision at least partly on the grounds that Jones has some influence over the President of the United States. As I’ve noted in Skeptical Inquirer magazine and elsewhere (and in a PBS NewsHour segment), no modern politician has so successfully and routinely employed conspiracy theories as Donald Trump. Trump enjoys flirting with fringe and extremist elements including conspiracy theorists, and has appeared on Jones’s program. This is a legitimate concern, and Alex Jones, as the source of many of those conspiracies, is by extension useful to understand.

That being said, the Kelly interview generated more heat than light (or ratings, as I’ll touch on). I watched the first ten minutes of the interview—it was about as much as I could stomach—and it was exactly what I expected. Jones blustered and bluffed his way through the interview, blithely brushing aside self-evident contradictions and routinely resorting to the familiar tactic of “I’m not saying any of this is true… I’m just asking questions!” What, if anything, Jones really believes remains an uninteresting mystery and it’s unlikely the program changed any minds.

You can find the rest HERE. 

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