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Panels that flatten real ideological divides into entertainment The lofty conception of panel debates— guests from either side meet for a civil exchange—is of no use. Democrat A spars theatrically with Republican B on contrived controversy C while reporter D and pundit E split the difference. On an episode of the “Powerhouse Roundtable,” on ABC’s This Week, guests squabbled over William Barr’s supposed U-turn on Trump, which conveniently allowed the host, Jon Karl, to plug his book on the subject. Sarah Isgur, a pundit who worked in Trump’s administration, claimed that the Mueller report largely “exonerated the president.” That wasn’t true. No one pushed back.
this would happen and this would actually be talked about in the US in a serious manner—but, lo and behold, they’re actually really talking about it.” Hasan’s interviews at The Intercept were framed as a corrective to mainstream media narratives. Since his days at the Statesman, Hasan has incorporated more media criticism into his work than perhaps any other journalist who is not on the media beat. In the UK, he lashed out regularly at right-wing pundits (“If he could provoke more established commentators into responding to him, that’s exactly what he wanted,” Cowley said); after moving to the US, he often accused major outlets of deferential coverage, and of normalizing Trump. In his Intercept column, he shredded interviews he found unimpressive—Norah O’Donnell on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (“a crime against journalism”), Margaret Brennan on Ivanka Trump (“makes O’Donnell’s sit-down with MBS look like an interrogation”). On his podcast, he took aim at “guests from corporate-funded think tanks who run their mouths day in, day out on corporate-owned cable channels,” and slammed White House reporters for defending Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, after Michelle Wolf, a comedian, mocked her at a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Andrea Mitchell, of NBC News, even suggested that the White House press secretary was owed an apology by the White House Correspondents’ Association,” Hasan said. “I mean, seriously? What is wrong with these people?” Now that Hasan works for the same corporate-owned cable channel as Mitchell, it seems his perspective has changed. “I definitely get the access issue,” he said, of the need for shows not to alienate potential guests. “Not everyone has to have the same style; not everyone needs to do what I do.” He has praised Chris Wallace, of Fox News, and Jonathan Swan, of Axios, for eventually subjecting Trump to tough, on-camera interviews. He also likes CNN’s Jake Tapper and Pamela Brown, who is one of Hasan’s competitors in his Sunday-night slot. But he has continued to criticize rivals: assailing “lazy, unhelpful, ‘both sides’ media coverage” that equates progressive Democrats, including Ilhan Omar, with QAnon-adjacent Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and scolding Politico for granting credence to Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration adviser. Hasan finds media criticism fun; he enjoys reading “gossipy media pieces.” His main motivations, though, are serious. “Race is a big part of it,” he said. “I am a Muslim journalist. I am an immigrant journalist. I am a brown journalist. That’s not how I define myself, but it is part of who I am, and therefore I’m not going to hide the fact that in an era where race is very much dominating most political stories, I’m gonna have a strong view on how we’re covering it.”
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n 2018, Hasan hosted Ahmed, his old schoolmate, on his Intercept podcast, and brought up something that Ahmed had said in an interview with the New York Times magazine, about his identity as a child of immigrants in Britain: “We are the inheritors of the scars of empire but also the spoils of empire, and that kind of inside-outside state is totally ingrained in us, which is why, at a time like now where everybody’s being asked to pick a side, everything is binary.” The quote, Hasan said, resonated with him. He added, “Isn’t it the case
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