UPDATE: Biden's "Are you kidding me?" interview

Backlash from Biden's (10-23-08) interview with WFTV-9's Barbara West. For the record, I think he did pretty good. I don't understand her "interviewing style". All the words have the same emphasis and she reads them from the teleprompter like they don't register up top.

Found this article at NewsBusters by P.J. GADNICK:

Here are the observations of what happened from the Orlando Sentinel blog of Hal Boedeker the TV Guy: (emphasis added)

Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.

Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign."This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election.

McGinnis said the Biden cancellation was "a result of her husband's experience yesterday during the satellite interview with Barbara West."

WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, "When you get a shot to ask these candidates, you want to make the most of it. They usually give you five minutes."

Jordan said political campaigns in general pick and choose the stations they like. And stations often pose softball questions during the satellite interviews. "Mr. Biden didn't like the questions," Jordan said. "We choose not to ask softball questions. I'm crying foul on this one."

Hal Boedeker also cited how upset the Obama campaign was with an interviewer who finally asked tough questions of a Democrat candidate in another blog posting:

Why did Barack Obama's campaign cancel an interview Jill Biden, wife of Sen. Joe Biden, was going to do with WFTV-Channel 9?

In a statement Friday afternoon, Adrianne Marsh, Florida spokeswoman for Obama's campaign, said the station, in talking with Sen. Biden, was "both combative and woefully uninformed about simple facts."

Marsh said West's insistence that Obama was an organizer for ACORN was "100 percent false." "In a line of questioning that would make Rush Limbaugh proud, West even went as far as to quote Karl Marx, a Communist icon, in a disturbing attempt to associate Barack Obama with socialism," Marsh wrote.

"There's nothing wrong with tough questions, but reporters have the very important job of sharing the truth with the public -- not misleading the American people with false information," Marsh added. "Senator Biden handled the interview well; however, the anchor was completely unprofessional. Senator Biden's wife is not running for elected office, and there are many other stations in the Orlando television market that would gladly conduct a respectful and factual interview with her."

So it must be a FOX affiliate. Gotta give it to Joe on this one, even though his explanation of his mark my words comments were fantastical. For a laugh see his 9-26-08 interview with West.