A case of Jordan Peterson & Cathy Newman: Why would an Interviewer not hear the answers of an Interviewee?

This was one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever viewed.

Upon watching, it begs the question: Why couldn’t the interviewer hear the answers from the interviewee?

In this instance, why couldn’t Cathy Newman hear the actual answers shared by Jordan Peterson?

This starts a flood of questions that come to mind when viewing the exhange between host and guest. It’s perplexing to witness the disjunction. What drives the interviewer to keep inflating the nature of Peterson’s claims? Why choose this, rather than addressing what he really says? Did Cathy have presuppositions about Jordan Peterson and what she believed he stood for? Were her own ideologies getting in the way for her to truly listen and comprehend his response?

Her questions were formulated in such a way that it appeared as if she were baiting Jordan into answering in a certain way. Like setting him up so that his response would somehow feed into a negative preconceived notion she had of him.

I understand that sometimes an interviewer takes that route. Jordan even states at one point in the interview that she is digging. And yes, some interviewers do a little digging. So, the offensive nature of this interview, was not so much that she was digging, or even bating him. What was offensive was that she kept misconstruing his claims.

Throughout the interview there are over 10 times in which Cathy says “So you’re saying….” and then she follows up with something that he did not say. Is that not poor from for an interviewer?

If she’s in the role of an interviewer, and it’s meant for the interviewer to ask questions, wouldn’t it behoove the interviewer to actually listen to the answer. To me, it clearly appeared that Cathy did not listen to his answers. Otherwise how would she re-state his responses wrongly in nearly every instance. When she would say “So you’re saying…” inevitably the words to follow would be a misinterpretation of what Jordan had stated or believed.

Yes, a couple of times in an interview this might occur. Maybe the interviewer might not get what the person is saying exactly. Or maybe the interviewer shapes the next response in a way to make some kind of leap or inference. But every time? In seems every time she took the opportunity to re-state Jordan’s claim, she got it wrong. To which Jordan would then clearly and succinctly have to correct her.

So it makes me wonder, Was it just a poor journalistic tactic that she was overusing? Was she aware that she was off the mark, but doing it any way (at the risk of being considered a bad journalist) Or was she unaware of this constant pattern of how she was responding to Jordan? Was is that she actually couldn’t hear what Jordan was saying. Was there some Cognitive Dissonance occurring for Cathy within the interview?

Fortunately in this interview, unlike many others that have offered a similar dynamic, we get a major Gotcha moment.

There’s a moment in the interview when Jordan calls her on the fact that her tactics were trying to make him uncomfortable or offend him. He ties this back to her quotes earlier in the interview when she was chastising him on using his free speech in a way that might offend someone.

When Jordan brings this up to her, and says that he even believes she should have the right to do so. It left her speechless.

On the re-watch this moment appears to be her most genuine moment in the interview.

it took her several seconds to realize she shot her self in the foot over by pointing out how he was using his freedom of speech, when she was clearly doing the same thing to him right then and there. When Peterson consented to her right to offend him during the interview, you could see that Cathy was having a hard time resolving the two thoughts.

As it likely made sense that they both have the right to use their free speech in such a manner. But to honor him that, it would be in cognitive dissonance to her presupposed stance against him.

In that moment, Cathy had the opportunity to truthfully reconcile the cognitive dissonance, but she didn’t. Instead she eventually got her thoughts back on track to dominating the discussion with her ideology and preconceived notions. This made it more apparent to the viewer that her goal was to engage him in the argument, rather than to reveal truths and engage in equal discourse. But Jordan knew better than to engage in the argument.

In fact, how he managed to carry himself through this interview was a marvelous feat.

For more of my speculation on this interview, check out my additional commentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svBMGBa8BDs