Pajamas Media interviews

While reading Hugh Hewitt’s description of his recent encounters with reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times who sought to interview him about the Roberts nomination, I started to think about how Pajamas Media should conduct its interviews when we are up and running (which won’t be long now). The reporters from the Times and the Post declined Hugh’s invitation to interview him live on his radio show, which is an indication, as Hugh notes, that they feared transparency. And the press, as we all know, often prefers to quote selectively. Some things are not as important as others, they tell us… and there are space limitations, after all.

Well, yes, there are. Neither PJ nor any other website could afford or indeed have the space to run an even moderately long interview in its entirety on its front page. But it can easily do one thing: it can provide all interviews – whether in text, audio or video forms – verbatim on the site. For their own reasons most of the mainstream media are not doing that. They seem to think it’s necessary to tell us great unwashed what’s important via selective quoting and sound bites. Pajamas Media will have more respect for the public. If I have anything to do with it (and, along with my colleagues, it seems as if I will), PJ will always have a link so that you can, in Glenn Reynolds’ famous words, “read the whole thing.” That’s the least we can do.