Welcome to the system. If a show / journalist asks hardball questions they'll quickly find that they no longer have access to the folks worth interviewing. This

Welcome to the system. If a show / journalist asks hardball questions they'll quickly find that they no longer have access to the folks worth interviewing. This is the self-censorship model that's well established here. We may have a free media, but with self-censorship like this, it's effectively only marginally more free than a state run system. Al Jazeera meanwhile has absolutely no chance (I'm assuming here) of getting an interview with a high level player, so they can pose hard hitting questions as they have no downside risk in doing so.