Karl Rove Unplugged
In an online chat session, Karl Rove answered questions not normally asked in the Fox News echo-chamber.
Earlier today, Karl Rove participated in an online chat session to answer questions about his new book. Viewers were able to tweet questions for Rove to respond to. The chat was fascinating to watch for two reasons. First, it actually gave an impression of what Karl Rove might be like as a real person, and second, because it validated how online media can be more constructive and interesting then a cable TV interviewer in an echo chamber.
The setting was not glamorous, but that may have helped the authenticity of the event. The lighting was terrible and Rove was not wearing stage make-up.
When Rove was asked what it was like to work on Fox News, he replied that "For every seven minutes that I'm on television, I have to do an hour of prep work." Yet here he was, for an entire hour, answering questions with little prep work at all. Rove had no way to know what sort of questions he would get from the thousands of followers on Twitter.
Rove seemed fairly relaxed, and took questions on a wide range of topics, including some that were not very serious. One questioner asked Rove what reality show he would most want to be on. Rove admitted that while he was not very aware of the reality TV scene that "I would like to visit one of those 'real wives of Orange County' sets, to see if they are real people." He also noted that the Sci-Fi channel was his favorite source of entertainment, but he didn’t say which shows he watched.
Although some questions were trivial, the strength of the format was that the questions were not part of a predefined topic. This allowed Rove to answer questions that may normally not get asked in the Fox News echo-chamber. When asked straight up “What has Obama done right?” Rove did not miss a beat before praising Obama’s military decisions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, as well the reauthorization of the Patriot Act and strengthening No Child Left Behind. Rove stated: "We ought to look for things he does right, and support him."
It’s highly unlikely that Rove would have ever been asked this question on a cable news show. Even if he had, it’s not hard to imagine a left-leaning site (such as the Huffington Post or Media Matters) grabbing the clip, embedding it, and then placing it under the headline (naturally, in all-caps): “WATCH: ROVE PRAISES OBAMA!” This would have left out how Rove then went on to attack Obama's healthcare plan. When Rove is just chatting with followers on Twitter, there is less attention on him, and he was probably freed up to give more honest answers.
Conservatives may be surprised at Rove’s lack of triumphalism over the 2010 midterms, stating that he preferred to wait and see who the final candidates are for the numerous Senate and House races. Without being forced into making a TV sound bite, Rove could explain why you need to wait on the outcome of certain primaries (such as the GOP California Senate race) before you can start making educated predictions.
Not everyone who asked a question got it answered. Rove ultimately had control over the discussion so he didn’t bring up Paul Ryan’s ambitious budget proposal, despite the interest in the topic. This showed a limitation of the format, although it was more relaxed and less intense, Rove was also his own master of ceremonies and so could avoid any topic if he didn’t want to answer it.
The success of an online format such as this comes down to the willingness of the participant to engage with the questioners. A less skilled participant could have turned the session into a chance to parrot the promotional material about his book, and treat the session as an hour-long infomercial. While little genuinely new information came from this live chat, it demonstrated how the internet could provide a forum for interviews to be more authentic and possibly discuss topics that a cable interviewer would normally ignore.
