Glenn Greenwald’s feelings on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly are, well, mixed.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who’s been a passionate source of both reportage on the surveillance state and fierce media criticism, offered his thoughts on Kelly for a profile published Tuesday by Politico’s Hadas Gold.
Greenwald said although he finds Kelly’s views to be “viscerally repellent,” he believes she “distinguishes” herself from her Fox colleagues and other cable news hosts.
“She has a lower tolerance for being fed incoherent tripe from her own side than the average cable news TV host,” Greenwald said in an email. “Most Fox and MSNBC hosts treat even the most blatant idiocy with respect if it advances their party’s political agenda for the vapid cable news partisan controversy of the day. Kelly, by contrast, seems to be often contemptuous of incoherent blather even from her own side, sometimes openly so, and that further distinguishes her.”
Gold’s piece covered well-worn ground, focusing on Kelly’s journalistic “independence” at the overtly conservative cable news channel. It’s a theme that Kelly and her bosses have diligently pushed, even as she clearly upholds the outlet’s ideological orthodoxy.
Greenwald, who hasn’t shied away from the Fox arena, had similar praise for Kelly after her well-publicized interview with Dick Cheney in June.
He said in a tweet that Kelly posed “tough” and “uncomfortable” questions to the former vice president and his wife, Lynne, and wondered if MSNBC would give the same treatment to a prominent Democrat.
On Fox, @megynkelly poses some tough & uncomfortable questions to the Cheneys http://t.co/EcpmGrGasc – does MSNBC do this to prominent Dems?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 19, 2014
Correction: This post has been updated to show that Greenwald said he finds Kelley’s views to be repellent, not her.
