He explained how he no longer has to worry about any kind of censorship or restrictions on his speech, and he pointed to mainstream media coverage of the Middle East as an example of how US journalists tend to pull their punches.
“A word like ‘genocide’ scares a lot of people,” Mehdi told Max. “I think given that Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, multiple Holocaust historians, have all said ‘genocide’ I think it’s worth more of our media people willing to say the G-word without having a meltdown.”
He also defended his style of adversarial journalism and combative interviewing style.
“The reason I think I have been successful in the US, and I did come out of nowhere 10 years ago and people liked what I did, is because the trust deficit existed around the existing form of interviews,” Mehdi said, adding: “If you stick to interviews, everywhere I go people are fed up of Sunday morning shows. They’re fed up of the kind of coziness between interviewers, anchors, and guests. They’re fed up of the lack of a follow-up question.” ….more
