The topic of BBC interviewing style has been covered in the other comments, but I (in the US) listen to the BBC news on the radio fairly regularly (it’s on late at night on many NPR stations) and the somewhat adversarial interviewing style is striking, and sometimes uncomfortable to listen to.
But by making the interviewees defend themselves over every little thing, it forces them to really say what they mean and minimizes BS answers. And when the interviewee doesn’t have a non-BS response or is evasive, it’s much more obvious than with softer interview approaches (like are often heard on NPR). They don’t explicitly editorialize, but they make it very clear through the way they interview a person whether or not a person is full of shit. The interviewees are forced to fully reveal their intention (especially if it is to BS people).
Of course in this case, Greenwald knows what’s up and is in the right and is not full of shit, and as he himself said, the interview showed that really well - it allowed him to give some very good answers covering many of the major points of the story. An equivalent interview from someplace that isn’t so adversarial would not have been as good for Greenwald - not even popular left/progressive interviewers like Jon Stewart.
