Probing questions with pursed lips

Helen Mondloch of Northern Virginia Magazine profiles Fox Business Network reporter Peter Barnes, who writes children’s books on the side, in a recent issue.

Mondloch writes, “Around 8:30 a.m. he arrives at the office, where ‘it’s off to the races.’ This morning he is scrambling together some notes for an impromptu interview with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who will shed some light on food prices and a hotly contested farm bill. As the cameras roll, Barnes poses probing questions and listens in his usual manner, lips slightly pursed and eyebrows knit.

“Sometimes he heads over to the White House to cover a press conference or breaking news. At least once a year, he boards a press plane for an international summit meeting—a G-8 or G-20. His most thrilling sojourn took place in the fall of 2010, when he joined an entourage of reporters trailing President Obama’s flights to India and other Asian countries. He still marvels that the ten-day trip took them across the Atlantic, Europe and Asia on route to those exotic destinations, then over the Pacific on the way home — literally a trek around the world.

“While Barnes and his wife have talked about their books on a number of daytime television shows, including the ‘Today Show,’ most people never make the connection between Barnes the worldly newsman and Barnes the weaver of mouse tails, he says. In some 60 million American homes that have access to Fox Business Network, the average viewer apparently has no clue. ‘People are always shocked that it’s the same person,’ he laughs.”

Read more here.