Difference in Bias with Hillary Clinton

     Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. She had many interviews with people from different political parties, from the beginning and end of her term.  Many of the interviews with her are fair but there were biased interviews in the span of her time being Secretary of State.

Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger
and Hillary Clinton at the State Department
 in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2011.

Jon Meacham held an interview with Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton for Slate Magazine; when she had just been appointed Secretary of State in 2009. The interview was about the specifics of Secretary of State, how the job impacts the U.S, and the stress of the “the job that requires 24-hour attention”; a segment Hillary said during the interview.

Even though the Hillary is a democrat and henry is a republican, the interview never turned into “my parties’ ideas are better” argument or discussion. Throughout the entirety of the interview were very fair, light questions asked by Jon.

But in the opening of the article Jon writes, “Two of the most prominent secretaries of state in recent history…” That statement caries some bias. Picking two individuals out of more than fifty previous Secretaries of State and saying “in recent history” that these are two the most famous has to raise an argument. An opposing or even part of the same party could see flaws in Hillary’s or Henrys tactics in defending the country and consider them poison to the American Government.

That bias in just the opening line was the only incident. Like mentioned before, the interview was not full of hard hitting or stressful questions. But, with Jon Meacham, saying that these are “two of the most prominent secretaries of state in recent history”, and then interviewing them show that Jon has respect for them and agrees with their ideas and tactics in performing their job. Maybe if Jon was interviewing a previous secretary of state that he disagreed with, he would have had different questions, or even hard hitting stressful questions for the person he didn’t favor.

Greta interviewing Hillary on Fox News in 2014.

Another interview Hillary had with Greta Van Susteren. The interview was found on Real Clear Politics website. This was in 2011, the middle of Hillary’s carrier as Secretary of State.

The interview was about the Egypt democratic reform that was going on at the time. How Hillary was planning to handle the situation. They discussed multiple outcomes coming out of the change to Egypt's government. How it could be beneficial or the change could lead to a radicalized government.

The interview has clear bias. Van is basically trying to convince her to side with his ideas. Hillary keeps bringing up the fact that people in Egypt really want political freedom. But van keeps bringing up slowly entering a democratic government and how the government won’t be strong and could cripple if not run right. Toward the end of the interview they both agree that they share the same passion to help Egypt. The  topic of Egypt is very important and not many leaders now and future one will have the same love for the topic as Van and Hillary do. Before reading the article and seeing two opposing people talking, I knew the bias, conflict; differing ways of solution would be there.

Van being a part of Fox news, which is known to have right wing bias and Hillary being known to have left views on topics this interview should be heated. But the interview was not as expected.  Van would ask how she would handle a certain situation and serve a rebuttal about how it could fail and then ask another question about what would happen if it would fail.

Hillary had an interview toward the end of her 4 years as Secretary of State in 2013 with Michele Kelemen, associated with National Public Radio. The interview was about recent events going on in 2013, like the Benghazi incident, and Syrian refugee bans.

The interview had question about hard hitting topics but weren’t asked to stress Hillary out. Even though the interview had stressful topics the tone was relaxed and stress free. Michele had no bias toward any side. Her questions were toward how Hillary is going to help resolve these issues that America is dealing with. Interview seemed to take the role of getting Hillary’s opinion on certain political topics and how she is handling the situation.