It's strange, as someone who primarily consumed/consumes American media, I almost never see the "adversarial" interviews you discuss. I know they're commonplace on the BBC, but reporting in the States is largely a matter of someone having a guest on the air to push whatever they're pushing with little if any token resistance to anything.
I wish my media was more adversarial, especially in politics since so many politicians go on TV and spout complete nonsense with no challenge whatsoever by the people who really ought to know it's nonsense.
You're 100% correct. Joe Rogan's popularity has nothing to do with the fact that he's not adversarial. I was shocked to read that too, American interviewers are laughably tame, no one is ever held to account for egregious ideas or behaviors. And yes, most of the tough interviewers I've seen have been on the BBC (see Ben Shapiro's interview where he literally ran away or Boris Johnson's interview where he display an utter lack of understanding of trade law despite posturing as an expert.)
American media picks sides. Most lean left, a few lean right. When a guest with opposing views does decide to come on, you'll see a lot more challenge than the usual friendlies.
It has gotten so bad that the Democratic party regularly shames and rallies against even appearing on a non-friendly. Take Warren's refusal to go on Fox News [1], or Pete Buttigieg's refusal to go on Dave Rubin [2].
I hold Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard in high regard, for going on Fox News and Joe Rogan, and explaining their opinions to an audience & network with opposing ones
While it's important to take on the arguments from the other side, the reason many Democrats refuse to go on Fox News has little to do with them being conservative leaning, and far more to do with their general laid back attitude to reporting the truth. So much of what is presented on Fox as "news" is anything but, they'll take twitter threads from unverified accounts and spin entire stories from them, and that's not even going into the problematic ones like when they draw attention to and pay lip-service to outright nonsense like the Qanon conspiracies.
They're still head and shoulders above people like Alex Jones but they're just a setup and punchline relative to news as of late. I'm all for hearing the opposing sides but when all they seemingly have is petty name-calling, Whataboutism, or insane conspiracy theories, I'm just not interested.
I don't know if you followed the whole "Trump is a Russian Spy" narrative over the past two years, but I see little difference between MSNBC & CNN vs. FOX, except that they play for different teams. I do regret the rise of yellow journalism, but it seems to have occurred as a result of: 1) increased competition for American attention and segmentation of American public 2) 24/7 cable news format and 3) competition with alternative media like YouTube. Ultimately it's the segmentation and the complete fracturing of dialog between the different segments that has led to a breakdown in civility, interesting debate, and moderation.
Aaron Mate had a pretty funny take on the interesting contrast in curiosity and skepticism between media coverage of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory versus the Epstein story:
It's honestly shocking how much you can learn about what's really going on in the world from watching literal comedians compared to "trustworthy" "journalists". The news is such obvious theater, I suppose the boiled frog theory probably explains how we got to this point with almost no one noticing.
Jimmy Dore has been calling it out for years. And I think it's interesting, because he's a pretty progressive person, very left leaning, but he was able to see through the partisanship, which I give him a lot of props for. That doesn't seem easy for people to do these days.
I wish my media was more adversarial, especially in politics since so many politicians go on TV and spout complete nonsense with no challenge whatsoever by the people who really ought to know it's nonsense.