News

Darren Wilson Gives First Major Interview

by Chris Tognotti

Well, that was quick. Less than 24 hours following the announcement that a St. Louis county grand jury did not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, he's already making the media rounds — Darren Wilson was interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos for an hour Tuesday, as confirmed in a tweet from the This Week host. Stephanpoulos' promise to the viewers? "No question off limits." And here's hoping that's true, because it's already clear throughout social media that the host giving Wilson airtime so soon, with the raw outrage at his non-indictment still hanging in the air, is upsetting a whole lot of people.

According to ABC, the Wilson interview will air on World News Tonight Tuesday, at 6:30 p.m. ET. But it may not be the last time we'll hear from Wilson, regardless — ABC, after all, wasn't the only network angling to land him. After more than 100 days of waiting, during which countless protesters wondered where he had vanished to after the shooting, it was reported by CNN’s Brian Stelter that a number of major network personalities met with Wilson to try to arrange interviews Sunday — Stephanopoulos, CNN’s Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, NBC’s Matt Lauer, and CBS’ Scott Pelley (Pelley’s involvement has since been disputed by a Politico report).

Suffice it to say, a lot of people are less than thrilled to have Wilson's face beaming out of televisions nationwide tonight. Based on the brief preview Stephanopoulos has put forward, it seems a safe bet that you could predict the kind of things we'll end up hearing from Wilson — sorry it happened, but wouldn't have done anything differently. Basically, nothing to see here.

Whether the interview will carry any genuine newsworthiness will depend on just what Stephanopoulos asks — whether he addresses the inconsistencies in Wilson's account of the Brown shooting, for example. As legal analyst Lisa Bloom detailed on Twitter Tuesday morning, doing so might prove to be a more trenchant cross-examination than the grand jury prosecution apparently mustered.

For the time being, well, we'll just have to wait and see. It won't be long now until the interview comes out, and hopefully Stephanopoulos is aware of the gravity of the situation for so many people. Having been deprived the chance for a criminal trial, a skeptical examination of Wilson's story by the media is basically the sole hope for his actions to be placed under harder scrutiny.

Image: George Stephanopoulos/Twitter