Journalists haven’t ‘bothered’ to interview Putin? No, Tucker Carlson’s claim is Pants on Fire!

When former Fox News anchor and current web show host Tucker Carlson announced he would be interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin, he leveled an accusation of journalistic carelessness. 

"Since the day the war began in Ukraine, American media outlets have spoken to scores of people from Ukraine and they’ve done scores of interviews with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy," Carlson said, noting that he’d requested an interview with Zelenskyy, too. "At the same time, our politicians and media outlets have been doing this — promoting a foreign leader like he’s a new consumer brand — not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin." 

Carlson’s claim that journalists have not made any effort to interview Putin prompted some journalists who have covered the war since Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, Ukrainian invasion, to describe the situation very differently.

"Interesting to hear @TuckerCarlson claim that ‘no western journalist has bothered to interview’ Putin since the invasion of Ukraine," BBC News’ Russia editor Steve Rosenberg wrote Feb. 6 on X. "We’ve lodged several requests with the Kremlin in the last 18 months. Always a ‘no’ for us."

(Screenshots from X.)

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov disputed Carlson’s claim, too. "Mr. Carlson is wrong," Peskov said in a Feb. 7 press briefing. "We receive many requests for interviews with the president."

Peskov said the Kremlin regularly declines interview requests from large Western news outlets, but it granted Carlson’s request because "his position is different" from the major "Anglo-Saxon media," The Washington Post reported. 

This is not the first time Peskov has described the many requests the Kremlin receives from journalists seeking to talk to Putin. In September 2023, he said on his daily call with journalists, "We receive dozens of requests every day from international media, including American media, asking Putin for an interview." Those requests were declined, Peskov said, according to The Washington Post, because "hardly anyone is able to soberly perceive Putin’s analysis" of the war because of what he called rampant anti-Russia sentiment. 

Journalists who have repeatedly, unsuccessfully asked to interview Putin challenged Carlson’s statement. 

"Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine?" CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour wrote Feb. 6 on X. "It’s absurd — we’ll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now."

PolitiFact has also attempted to get comments from Putin and the Kremlin, most notably in 2022, when we named "Putin’s lies to wage war and conceal horror in Ukraine" as our Lie of the Year. We did not hear back.

Journalists from The Atlantic, Financial Times and some Russian journalists also pushed back on Carlson’s claim.

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Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic who studies disinformation and propaganda, said in an X post that, "Many journalists have interviewed Putin, who also makes frequent, widely covered speeches."

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is American, has been detained in Russia for nearly a year after being arrested during a reporting trip, accused of spying — charges The Wall Street Journal said it "vehemently denies" and that the Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned. Gershkovich is not the only journalist detained in Russia.  

John Watson, a journalism professor at American University who studies journalism ethics, told PolitiFact that "it’s Journalism 101" to reach out to the leaders of both nations when reporting on something like the Russia-Ukraine war. 

"Every news story has at least two sides; professional responsibility requires outreach to both," he said. If someone declines to speak with a reporter, that journalist has failed to provide the full story, "but as a matter of ethics, the effort to get the full story is what counts." 

Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said it’s extremely common for political figures to decline interviews or refuse to provide statements, particularly "in authoritarian or autocratic countries, where concepts of freedom of the press are very different or non-existent."

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lies about Ukraine were the 2022 Lie of the Year. (AP)

In many cases, it would be "unethical to allow a news source to kill or unreasonably delay a news report by refusing to comment," Watson said.

Kirtley also said Western journalists have attempted to interview Putin, both before the 2022 invasion and since.

"Very few have succeeded," Kirtley said, "and when they did, I think it was mostly when Putin thought it was to his advantage." 

Carlson claimed that "not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview Putin" since Russia invaded Ukraine.

This was disputed by the Kremlin’s spokesperson and numerous Western journalists. Journalists across the world have "bothered" to seek interviews with Putin. The Kremlin declines. 

We rate Carlson’s claim that no one made efforts to interview Putin Pants on Fire!

RELATED: Lie of the Year 2022: Putin’s lies to wage war and conceal horror in Ukraine