MATT GERTZ: [Megyn Kelly] is basically trying to take all the criticism that she has received for this interview and file it all under “they don't want us to do it and get to the bottom of the truth,” which is not accurate. There are plenty of people, and Media Matters among them, who said, “Yes, Alex Jones is a very important topic. Yes, because of his relationship with Donald Trump, he is a worthy subject for a major news magazine show.” But the way Kelly was going about it, which in its early stages seemed to be very much an attempt to do a head-to-head interview with him, was probably the least likely way to actually expose who Alex Jones is.
[...]
The sort of bigger problem is that the segment doesn't exist in a vaccum, right? It exists admist what has been a very successful effort by Alex Jones to take control of the narrative -- to spin all of this as Megyn Kelly taking advantage of him and trying to smear him, of NBC taking him out of context. He's used this very clearly to build his own brand with his own audience and that's largely because NBC had no idea at all how to handle him. From the very beginning, from when they teased out on last Sunday's show that this interview was happening, and the first interview clips, they have been on the defensive every step of the way. And to a similar effect, Sandy Hook families have been the ones who are running this story. NBC has been woefully unprepared, and that's really kind of shocking because if you're doing a story about Alex Jones, you should know that this is how he operates. You should know that he is a master propagandist, that he is really brilliant at manipulating the media to do his bidding. And if you're not prepared for that, if you don't realize that this is not just a one-off segment, but in fact you need to have an overall press strategy for how to deal with the thing from top-to-bottom, you're going to lose. He's going to win.
