"Gotcha journalism" is a pejorative term used by media critics to describe interviewing methods that appear designed to entrap interviewees into making statements that are damaging or discreditable to their cause, character, integrity, or reputation.
[1] The term is rooted in an assertion that the interviewer may be supporting a hidden agenda, and aims to make film or sound recordings of the interviewee which may be selectively edited, compiled, and broadcast or published in order to intentionally show the subject in an unfavorable light.
[2] The intent of gotcha journalism is always premeditated and used to defame or discredit the interviewees by portraying them as self-contradictory, malevolent, unqualified or immoral.
[4] It has also been used as an excuse to evade a question to which the interviewee does not know the answer, where their lack of knowledge would make them appear foolish or uninformed, or a subject where their intellectual position contradicts their past statements.
A 2020 poll by YouGov in the United Kingdom found that the public were frustrated with "repetitive gotcha" political questions being asked during press briefings about the COVID-19 pandemic.