BORAT: Please, you come see my film. If it not success, I will be execute.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] That, of course, was Borat, title character of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the comedy brainchild of Sacha Baron Cohen, opening this weekend worldwide. I've got to tell you, for the past four months, I personally have waited for this movie the way my five-year-old waits for Santa, which is to say pretty much out of my mind with anticipation, because going back to his days as a character on Baron Cohen's Da Ali G Show, I love him. Evidently, I'm not the only one. [VIDEO CLIP]

HARRY SMITH: Borat, it is such a pleasure to have you on.

BORAT: Thank you very much.

HARRY SMITH: Yes, yes, yes.

BORAT: very nice -

HARRY SMITH: Genkouyo, genkouye [KISSING SOUND]

BORAT: Genkouyeh.

HARRY SMITH: [KISSING SOUND]

BORAT: And thank you for come.

HARRY SMITH: Yes.

BORAT: We go now - [END VIDEO CLIP]

BOB GARFIELD: That was Harry Smith with Baron Cohen on Friday's CBS Early Show, and here's Matt Lauer with Baron Cohen earlier last week on The Today Show.

MATT LAUER: What did you learn about Americans by touring the streets of New York?

BORAT: I learned many things. For example, I learned that it is now illegal to shoot at Red Indians.

MATT LAUER: [LAUGHS]

SACHA BARON COHEN: And, and I - [END VIDEO CLIP]

BOB GARFIELD: Actually, I should clarify. Strictly speaking, CBS News and NBC News didn't host Sacha Baron Cohen. They hosted Borat, the clueless Kazak TV correspondent who wears a smelly gray suit and, you know, what do you call it? Oh, yeah- doesn't exist! This didn't seem to bother CNN International, whose anchor Becky Anderson not only conducted an interview with a fictional character, but threw herself into the conceit. [VIDEO CLIP]

BECKY ANDERSON: Let me just ask you- I wondered whether there was any opportunity for me. I've got plow experience. I've got no retardation in the family, and I'm not Jewish. Any chance that you and I could- have a little thing? Any -

BORAT: Well, I don't want to go in a wrong track, because last time I buy a wife - [END VIDEO CLIP]

KELLY McBRIDE: To just interview him and ask funny questions, especially [LAUGHS], would you take me as your wife, there's not a lot of journalistic purpose in that.

BOB GARFIELD: Kelly McBride is a journalism ethicist with the Poynter Institute. She has this crazy idea that people in the news media shouldn't damage what little remaining credibility they still have by participating in comedy skits with fictional characters.

KELLY McBRIDE: I don't think to simply entertain the audience, I don't think that's a good enough reason to let someone pull off a fiction on a news program. I think the viewer will scratch his head and wonder where he should turn for serious journalism, for information that actually is going to improve his life and his understanding of the world.

BOB GARFIELD: On the other hand, the viewer does get a pretty good idea of how hilarious the Borat movie is likely to be, which may not serve any journalistic purpose, but is a publicity windfall for 20th Century Fox. Freelance movie reporter Lewis Beale, who writes for The New York Times and others, requested an interview with Baron Cohen, but was told by Fox publicists that only Borat himself was available. Beale declined.

LEWIS BEALE: I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to interview him in character. I mean, first of all, he's playing a character. Second of all, the character's an idiot. What would you hope to gain from that interview? It's not about journalism. It's basically about shilling for the film company, and I find that disgraceful.

BOB GARFIELD: Of course, you can argue that most celebrity journalism is guilty of that already- one puff piece after another, stage-managed by the studios, timed for the release of a new movie. Often, reporters are herded in for group interviews or five-minute drive-bys, allowing them to assemble a piece that looks like some journalism has taken place. Beale doesn't participate in those junkets - on anti-prostitution grounds- but he thinks even that pales on the whore-o-meter next to clowning with a character in character.

LEWIS BEALE: Because basically, at least with those other interviews, even though they're trying to sell their movie, if you sit down and talk to them as human beings, you can occasionally get real responses from them that deal with real issues or real things to do with the movie. By all accounts, Sacha Baron Cohen is a Cambridge graduate, an observant Jew, speaks fluent Hebrew. I want to interview Sacha Baron Cohen and ask him, what are you accomplishing by bringing this racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic Kazak character to the United States and having him riff on all sort of people all over the country? What do you think you're getting at here? When you're dealing with a character like Borat, you're just getting shtick. Shtick is not journalism.

BOB GARFIELD: It's also not unprecedented. Dame Edna, the investigation of performer Barry Humphries, was interviewed in character by many journalists, including NPR's Scott Simon. To promote the '86 remake of Little Shop of Horrors, some media outlets interviewed the leading character, Audrey Two, who was a carnivorous plant. And 25 years ago, conceptual comedian Andy Kaufman shunned press availabilities as himself, but would sometimes answer questions as his alter ego, a sleazy lounge singer named Tony Clifton. [VIDEO CLIP]

MAN: You had a rather rough crowd tonight. I mean -

ANDY KAUFMAN AS TONY CLIFTON: There were. There were. There was a few people walked out, as you, as you might have seen.

MAN: How do you maintain up there, your act, when you see people walking out on you?

ANDY KAUFMAN AS TONY CLIFTON: Their loss. Their loss, not mine. [END VIDEO CLIP]

BOB GARFIELD: Maybe in a world of suspended habeas corpus and missing WMDs, the question of journalism as movie promotion seems like small potatoes. But ethicist Kelly McBride points out that every interview with Borat squanders an opportunity to cover the actual news surrounding this particular film- namely, that Baron Cohen's hilarious methods of exposing racism, anti-Semitism and petty hypocrisy have infuriated some, who either think the ends don't justify the means or just don't get the joke altogether. This would include pretty much the entire country of Kazakhstan.

KELLY McBRIDE: When you give a payment to the speech without any other context, you're essentially being complicit in promoting something that a fair number of people find horribly offensive. And I think as a journalist you've got to ask yourself why you would do the interview in the first place.

BOB GARFIELD: The footnote to this story is the plight of Dharma Arthur. She was a producer of the WAPT noon news broadcast in Jackson, Mississippi featured in the film. In that sequence, Borat has been invited on the program to discuss his work as a visiting Kazak TV correspondent, and quickly horrifies everyone with his Borat- titude. As it turns out, Arthur had invited him thinking he was the real deal. After management realized she'd booked a fictional character by accident, she was fired- for being duped, in other words. If she'd been a coconspirator in the fraud, maybe she'd be working for The Today Show. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this weeks show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo and Mark Phillips, and edited- by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had help from Alicia Rebensdorf and Michael McLaughlin. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts, MP3 downloads and our podcast at onthemedia.org, and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.