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And The Award Goes To...The Circuit Court Of The Nineteenth Judicial Circuit In and For Okeechobee County, Florida · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's awards season right now, and that's what we're going
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: to get into today. A strange story about an award
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: that is unfolding as we speak. Sure, at their best,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: awards celebrate actual, timeless excellence. But there's no avoiding that
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: there's still a reflection of the fields they spring from.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Of the turf wars and politics and biases going on
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: inside an industry at the moment when an award is given.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Case in point, Beyonce didn't get a single country music
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: award nomination for Cowboy Carter in September. A scandal. But
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: then a couple weeks ago, at the Grammys, she won
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Album of the Year for it, which as we know,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: she had never won until this year, despite all her
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: years turning up bangers. That's a snapshot of the music
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: industry right now, and the country music industry, the fault
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: lines within them, between them. Journalism has its own Grammy Awards.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: The most prestigious honor in our industry is the Pulitzer Prize.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And today on the show, we have a story about
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: someone who is furious about an award the Pulitzers gave
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and has been trying for years to get them to
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: retract it. Something the Pulitzers do not do easily.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: The most egregious, widely reviled Pulitzer ever was Walter Durante's
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: reporting in the New York Times about how great Stalin was.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: They refused to retract that after reviewing it because they
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: agreed it was despicable.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: But they said, you know what?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like he was lying.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: This is Ben Smith. He runs the news site Semaphore.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Before that, he was the New York Times media columnist.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And before that, he was editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. I'm
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: going to talk to Ben about one story he's been
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: sniffing out, about the Journalism Award controversy happening right now.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: There was just a big update yesterday, actually. A lawsuit
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of Trump's that I'm guessing you may not have heard of.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: A truly one-of-a-kind case.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: He is suing the Pulitzer Board.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: From Placement Theory and KCRW, I'm Brian Reed. This is
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Question Everything. Stick around. I don't know about you, but
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: three weeks and change into President Trump's new term, and
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I feel overwhelmed and confused, again, maybe even more this time,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: about how to approach covering Trump. The Trump administration is
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: subjecting us to a strategy called flood the zone, where
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: they just do a ton of consequential stuff every day
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: on all sorts of fronts, declaring that the U.S. is
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: going to own Gaza, sending the first migrants to Guantanamo.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I'm just now reading a headline on about how people
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: taking part in government-funded medical trials are now stuck with
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: experimental medical devices in their bodies with no access to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: monitoring or care since the administration stopped funding the research abruptly.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: What should journalists' strategy be in the face of this?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: What should our mindset be? I think there was a
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: sense in Trump's first term from people worried about him
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: that journalists might save the day, that the right story
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: would have some big impact on the direction of his administration,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: maybe even take him down. I've been thinking about this lately,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: as I've been reading about Trump's lawsuit against the board
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of the Pulitzer Prizes. Trump's suit is about the coverage
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: of Russiagate. Quick refresher, in case you blocked this out.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: After it started becoming clear in 2016 that the Russian
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: government had tried to influence the U.S. election, there were
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: allegations that Trump and members of his family and campaign
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: had collaborated with the Russian government, maybe even conspired with
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin, to win Trump the election. Special Counsel Robert
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Mueller spent the first two years of Trump's first term
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: investigating these claims and the nature of Russia's involvement in
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the election. And the media could not get enough of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the story. The numbers are kind of staggering looking back
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: at it. Between Election Day 2016 and the release of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Mueller's final report two and a half years later, MSNBC
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: dedicated 32 percent of all its coverage to the Russia story.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: That's according to an assessment by the Columbia Journalism Review.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: CNN devoted 26% of its coverage to it. By one count,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: there were more than a half a million articles and
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: segments about the Russia story overall. And at the end
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: of it all, Mueller did not find evidence of a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russians. Yes, there were
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: shady incidents, receptive emails and meetings from Donald Trump Jr.,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and some convictions that came out of it for crimes
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: not directly related to the campaign. But that Columbia Journalism
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Review study found that more than a third of CNN
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: viewers and more than 40% of MSNBC viewers came away
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: from the coverage believing that Donald Trump had a formal
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: agreement with Russian actors to turn the election results towards him.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And that just isn't true. There's no evidence of that.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: When I talk to people about how they feel about journalists,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the Trump-Russia story has got to be one of the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: top three examples they bring up as to why they've
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: distanced themselves from journalism. And with this Pulitzer lawsuit that
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Ben Smith has been writing about, Trump is trying to
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: force the issue. He's trying to force journalists to reconsider
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the Russia coverage in a way that is somehow both
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: ridiculous and shrewd.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I was chatting with someone in Trump's orbit about all
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: these lawsuits, and I was sort of like, which of
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: these is your favorite? Which do you think is the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: interesting one? And they were like, you know, no one's
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: talking about this, but the Pulitzer case is both legally
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: kind of Interesting, although I think a lot of First
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Amendment lawyers think ultimately a huge stretch. I think it's
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: making an interesting argument about journalism.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Here's what happened. In 2018, the Pulitzers did something unusual.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: They gave an award to two competing publications, The Washington
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Post and The New York Times, for their overall coverage
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of the Trump-Russia story.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: They covered it very aggressively through 2017 and were rewarded
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: for their diligence for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. The
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: highest award for journalism is for very high-profile stories, but
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: very capable reporters.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Something like 20 articles from both papers were listed as
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: part of the prize. Stories about how Trump's national security
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: advisor and attorney general had private discussions with Russia's U.S.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: ambassador before taking office. Reporting about how Donald Trump Jr.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer who was
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: offering compromising information about Hillary Clinton, even though that didn't
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: lead to anything. So these stories, they get the Pulitzer
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: in 2018. Then the Mueller report comes out in the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: spring of 2019, saying these interactions didn't amount to conspiracy.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Fast forward to the fall of 2021. Trump is out
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: of office.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: And... Trump writes a letter to the Pulitzer board demanding
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: that they retract their award to the Times and the Post,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: essentially based on the Mueller report and based on the
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: fact that there wasn't evidence that he colluded with Vladimir
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Putin to rig the election. And the Pulitzer board then
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: in 2022 put out a statement saying that they've reviewed
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: the prize. They've conducted, in fact, a confidential review with
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: a journalist they will not name doing this review. And
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: based on that, they're standing by the prize. And Trump's
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: lawyers see this and just see it as this incredible
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: gift because the statute of limitations has run on suing
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: the New York Times and and the Washington Post for defamation.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: It's run on suing the Pulitzer Board for defamation based
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: on the award. But this new statement gives them new
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: legal traction. Had the Pulitzer Board just said, screw you,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: we stand by our story, or expressed any other opinion,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: we think you're an idiot and should leave us alone,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: that would be opinion. And you can't, opinion isn't defamatory.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Or they could have said, you know what, we still
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: think these are great stories. That's also an opinion. Hard
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: to see how that's defamatory. But by saying defamation, We
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: did a bunch of research, looked into this. That moved
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: it back into, arguably, and this is what a Florida
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: judge has found, moved it back into the kind of
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: claim that can be considered defamatory. And so they sue
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: based on the new statement and say that the Pulitzer
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Award defamed him by saying that its old prize was
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: appropriately awarded and it wouldn't retract it. That that's defamatory,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: even if all the other stuff wasn't. If you read
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: the motions and the briefs in this lawsuit, Trump is
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: not complaining about specific facts that the Washington Post and
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: New York Times got wrong in its reporting for which
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: they won the Pulitzer. And he's not suing the Washington
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Post and the New York Times. He is suing the
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Pulitzer Board. And he's not suing the Pulitzer Board for
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: awarding the prize. He's suing the Pulitzer Board on the
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: grounds that when Trump demanded that they retract the prize,
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: that that statement standing by it was defamatory, because by 2022,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: you should have known that this was a wild goose
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: chase and didn't deserve the Pulitzer, in Trump's view. I
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: think legally, I think that's a very tenuous argument. Journalistically,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: I think it is a reasonable argument.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Say more, why is it journalistically a compelling or possibly
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: legitimate argument?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: As somebody who did a lot of reporting on Russian interference,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: I think that's basically accurate, that that reporting, and the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: reporting on the Mueller investigation, which was itself dramatic and interesting,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: ultimately was a bit of a wild goose chase. If
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: you said to me in 2017, look, I think there's
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence that raises the question of whether
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump is colluding with the Russians, you would not
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: be an insane person. You would be looking at the
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: available evidence and thinking this is pretty disturbing and interesting.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: If you said that to me right now, I think, well,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: like you're a little crazy. Like there's really not evidence
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: for that. And like every journalist and law enforcement agency
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: has looked really hard at it. Right.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Our understanding of just the broad kind of consensus on
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: a story changes. basically over time as things get revealed.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: But that's the point of journalism. I mean, it is
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the first draft of history. When Ben started going through
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the filings in the case, he realized, oh man, what
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Trump and his legal team are trying to do here,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the way the case is structured, the way they frame
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the arguments, it actually draws out in an illuminating way,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: a limitation of journalism.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: One of the things that really distinguishes reporting and professional
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: journalism from citizen journalism and from really hyper-partisan journalism and
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: from whatever you call all the other claims and allegations
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: floating around in the world is that when we get
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: stuff wrong, we correct it. And there's a real mechanism
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: for You got a fact wrong, you are required to
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: go back and fix it or else your boss is
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: going to get mad at you. It's the culture and
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: the systems of professional journalism. There is not a mechanism
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: for when you get the whole thing wrong. You can
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: have stories that are factual, but that are chasing something
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: that ultimately is nonsense. I mean, the most recent instance
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: of this was all the reporting on the drones over
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: New Jersey.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Did you clock this story? At the end of last year,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: people started reporting all these sightings of objects in the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: sky that appeared to be drones, mostly in New Jersey.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Seemed weird. 5,000 tips came in to the FBI. Mayors
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: and county officials started weighing in. People were demanding an
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: explanation from the Biden administration, and then the administration started investigating.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: People in news outlets started asking, could these drones be
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: tied to Iran or China? Finally, multiple federal agencies released
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a joint statement saying... These things in the air were
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: not a threat. After Trump was inaugurated last month, his
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, said this to reporters in her
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: very first press conference.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Before I turn to questions, I do have news directly
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: from the president of the United States. After research and study,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: not the enemy.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: I think the conclusion by many people is that was
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: mass hysteria. But lots of reporters reported on what people
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: said about drones in New Jersey. And some people quoted
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: sources saying it must be the Chinese or it must
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: be the Iranians. And that was all in good faith, right?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: But ultimately, that was a wild goose chase, and we
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: should all be kind of embarrassed. But there's no formal
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: mechanism for saying, not, you know what, that guy I
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: quoted in paragraph six, I got his name wrong, and
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: we have to correct, and we're really sorry. But we
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: have egg on our faces and look like idiots because
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: this was all a bunch of lunacy.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And there's also no formal mechanism for retracting a Pulitzer
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: based on a sweep of stories that ages poorly. The
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer's focus is on the accuracy of the facts.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: The most egregious and sort of widely reviled Pulitzer ever
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: was Walter Durante's reporting in the New York Times about
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: how great Stalin was. They did not retract. They refused
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: to retract that after reviewing it because they agreed it
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: was despicable.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: But they said, you know what?
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: There were no questions about the factual reporting. And it
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like he was lying. It just seems like
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: he was an idiot or an ideologue. The one case
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: where I think the Washington Post gave back its prides
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: was where a reporter had made up a kid and
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: written a story about an imaginary eight-year-old heroin addict.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: In which she had lied, she'd fabricated. Here's the statement
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the Pulitzer board put out after the reviews. This is
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the statement that Donald Trump is suing the board over.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read the whole thing because these are
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the precise words he claims defamed him. From July 18th, 2022, quote,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize board has an established formal process by which
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: election and its connections to the Trump campaign, submissions that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: jointly won the 2018 National Reporting Prize. These inquiries prompted
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: work submitted by those organizations to our national reporting competition.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the institutions. whose work was under examination, nor any connection
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: subsequent to the conferral of the prizes. The 2018 Pulitzer
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Prizes in National Reporting stand.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: It's a very kind of appropriately, absolutely literalist approach to
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: the question of, did these stories get it right? And
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: went back and looked at all the facts and the
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: stories and the claims, so-and-so met so-and-so on such and
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: such a day. You go back, yes, they did in
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: fact be done that day. And I think that's actually
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: a very strong defense of those stories. Story by story,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: not only did they not say Donald Trump was colluding
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: with the Russians, they say, Here is a weird meeting
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that happened, but our FBI sources said they do not
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: have any evidence that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Kind of story by story, they're not making that allegation.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: And yet, with every little scoop or headline flying around
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: social media in real time 24 hours a day, with
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: people reacting and speculating to the new details like plot twists,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: with the constant coverage on cable news, Ben says that
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: wasn't the impression one would come away with. And that's
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: what Trump is going after the Pulitzers for.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Trump wants to sue not over some detail about whether
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: some meeting with the Russian ambassador was on a Tuesday
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: or Wednesday, but over.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: The whole thing.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: You know, it's a very strange lawsuit. It's all about
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: the narrative, the Russia collusion hoax. He wants to sue it.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Capital J journalism, which the Pulitzer Board embodies.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: It's kind of ingenious in that way.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it raises a really, I mean,
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: it raises a very interesting point. It is also, by
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the way, a form of harassment against a bunch of
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: journalists who are just trying to do a good job
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and award a prize. The Pulitzer Board isn't itself like
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: an institution. It's not like they're Pulitzers Incorporated and these
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: are the members of the Pulitzer Incorporated board. This is
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: just a bunch of people who call themselves the Pulitzer board.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Just a group of like 20 journalists. The New Yorker
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: editor David Remnick, the editor of the Boston Globe, people
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And not just journalists. Because the Pulitzers don't give awards
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: only for reporting. There's a couple professors caught up in this.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: The poet Elizabeth Alexander. The novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. Catherine Bu,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the best-selling nonfiction writer, is being sued. not to mention
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: journalists from local papers around the country.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: And so the lawsuit is against all of them personally,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: which is a headache. It's no fun, I know, to
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: be sued for defamation.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: After a quick break, I asked Ben Smith about his
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: personal role in the creation of the Trump-Russia narrative, which
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: was significant. The Trump team actually alludes to it a
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: lot in their lawsuit. That's in a sec. Welcome back
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: to the show. I'm talking to Ben Smith of Semaphore,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: formerly editor of BuzzFeed News, about this unusual lawsuit Donald
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Trump has filed against the Pulitzer Board. On its face,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: it looks like Trump being sore over a fancy award
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: going to reporters who were critical of him, which it is.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: But as Ben's observed, it's also about more than that.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Trump is symbolically suing Capital J Journalism, or maybe another
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: way of looking at it. He's suing American Journalism's Board
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: of Directors. for the media's years-long coverage of Trump's connections
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: to Russia. In a sense, Trump's trying to use this
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: lawsuit to blast away the overarching narrative that has, for many,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: stuck as a result of that intense coverage, the idea
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: that he was in direct cahoots with Putin and Russia.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And Ben, notably, made a decision back when he was
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: editor of BuzzFeed News that factored heavily in the formation
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of that narrative. It was the first weeks of 2017.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Trump was gearing up for his inauguration, and a mysterious
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: document was floating around D.C. It had been compiled by
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: a former British spy who had been paid by Democrats
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: to dig up dirt on Trump. It contained a bunch
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: of serious allegations, including that the Russian government had blackmailed
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: on the incoming president. This was the Steele dossier. The
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: spy who'd made it was Christopher Steele. You probably remember
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the claim about the pee tape that came from this document.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Very little in the dossier could be verified, and not
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: for lack of trying by reporters. So in the news,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: no one was talking about it plainly. But around Washington,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: everybody was. Spies and senators and reporters. It was an
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: open secret. Eventually, the FBI started looking into it. And
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: then CNN did report, cryptically and vaguely, that both President
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Obama and Donald Trump had been briefed about a document
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: with claims related to Russia and Trump. And at that point, Ben,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: who was, again, running BuzzFeed News at the time, decided
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: it was time to publish it in full.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: One of our reporters, Ken Bensinger, was able to get
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: a hold of a copy and where all the other
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: journalists who'd gotten it had been given it on the
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: condition they not do anything with it. Ken got it
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: under a very classic and strange different condition, which was
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: his source, former aide to John McCain. This all later
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: came out in court. Basically, left him in a room
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: with the document and said, well, I hope you won't
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: take a picture of this and I'm leaving. And left
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: him there for a while. And he in fact did
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: take a picture. And so we had the whole document
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: and didn't have any conditions on how we could use it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: But we published it and said this is an unverified
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: document that we're publishing because it's influencing the workings of power.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: We didn't publish the dossier because we thought it was true.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: We published it because we thought it was an important document.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I just want to sort of rest on that distinction
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: for a minute.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Happy to rest here for a minute. An uncorroborated document
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: with salacious claims was influencing U.S. politics out of view
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: of most Americans. So they published it because it was significant,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: not because it was true. Still. Ben stood in the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: newsroom and watched the metrics shoot upwards as thousands, millions
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: of people flocked to BuzzFeed to see the dossier. It
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was a firestorm. Ben says the one thing he wishes
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: he'd done differently, he wishes he'd stamped unverified on every
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: one of the dossier's 35 pages. BuzzFeed's disclaimer that the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: allegations were not corroborated got lost as the rest of
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the dossier shot around the internet.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: This became... kind of proof that Donald Trump was a
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Russian agent without real examination of the thing itself.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I know that you, I've heard that you stand by
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the decision to publish it, and I agree with the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: decision for what it's worth. But since we're talking about
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: this current lawsuit against the Pulitzer Board, where the Steele
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: dossier is mentioned a lot, it's clearly a fixation still
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of Trump and his team.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Understandably.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: When you look back at that decision, I'm just curious
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: what you make of the reverberations. that your decision to
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: publish that had.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think one of the things about journalism,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: whether you sort of like this about it as I do,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: or you hate this about it is you don't know
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen next. We wrote, it was unverified
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: and we didn't know if the specific claims are true
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: or false. And like, that was true. And then the
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: job is to go try and figure out whether they're.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: True or false.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: And you can't have like a real rooting interest in
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: one or the other. And I think that's sort of,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: you know, that's, that's how it works. It's a weird business,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: weird profession.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: In the lawsuit, Trump's lawyers described the Russian collusion narrative
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: as self-authenticating, as in, the more media outlets reported on
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: things like the Steele dossier, the more legitimate it seemed.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Law enforcement felt moved to investigate it. The press then
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: reported on those investigations, making it all look even more legitimate.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Trump says this is a conspiracy, an intentional plot to
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: take him down.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: You know, there are sort of factual claims here about
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: what happened, and the strongest claim, the thing that calls
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: it a hoax, which is what Trump calls it, is
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: that Steele knew this stuff was false. Maybe the journalists
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: knew it was false. And the whole thing was spread
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: to bring down Donald Trump. I actually don't really see
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence that Steele thought it was false.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: He just published a book. He still claims it's true.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: He's the last person in the world who believes Steele
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: does it. But he's still out there saying, no, no,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: this was accurate. Um, so.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, who knows? It's hard to know what's inside
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: people's hearts, but I didn't really get the sense that
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: people who were spreading it thought it was false. I
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: sometimes thought they thought it was, they really thought it
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: was true. They believed in it fervently against, you know,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: despite the kind of thin sourcing and the fact that
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: people hadn't been able to verify it. But that's a
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: real factual question, right? Like, did the people who were
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: spreading it Was it a hoax made to stop Donald Trump,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: or was it a set of claims by ultimately misguided,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: concerned citizens? One of the reasons I think it's the
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: latter is because if I was trying to stop Donald
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Trump with a hoax, I would have released it before
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: rather than after the election. It's harder to stop the
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: guy after he's been elected. There's a reason they call
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: it October's surprise, not December's surprise or January's surprise, because
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: it's too late.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: While the Pulitzer Board was doing its review of the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Times and Post's Russia coverage after Trump's complaints and being
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: all secretive about it, there was another journalist who was
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: conducting his own reexamination. In 2023, Jeff Gerth, a former
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: investigative reporter from the Times and ProPublica, published a massive
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: four-part post-mortem of the Russian collusion saga in the Columbia
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Journalism Review. He called it the press versus the president.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: And in it, he goes through at length every leg
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of that scandal— and how the press dealt with each.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Trump sat with Gerth for two interviews for this piece. Meanwhile,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: when Gerth asked journalists to talk about their coverage of
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Trump on the record, he asked more than 60 for interviews,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and only a fraction agreed. No major media organization made
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: a newsroom leader available to discuss the coverage publicly for
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Gerth's story. In the piece, Gerth bemoans how few of
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: his colleagues would talk to him. He writes he was, quote,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: hoping they would cooperate with the same scrutiny they applied
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: to Trump. Ben Smith did agree to talk to Jeff Gerth,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: by the way, about the Steele dossier, etc. In the end,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Gerth comes down pretty hard on the press. He concludes
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: that the media did get a lot wrong in its
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: coverage of Trump and Russia, and specifically argues that news
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: outlets loosened their normal standards when they were covering this story.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: He thinks they relied too much on anonymous sources and
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: failed to report information that ran contrary to the popular narrative.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: He calls out the Times, for instance, for ignoring a
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: document showing that the FBI's lead investigator didn't think, after
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: 10 months of looking into Trump-Russia ties, that there was
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: much there. I spent the better part of a week
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: last year reading this tome by Jeff Gerth, and I
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: found it compelling. But then, when I started learning about
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the Pulitzer lawsuit, I found it confusing. And I wanted
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: to ask Ben about it, because here you had two
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: arms of the same university... the Pulitzers are housed at Columbia,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and Jeff Gerth was writing for the Columbia Journalism Review,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: conducting independent reviews by serious journalists and coming to what
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: seemed like conflicting conclusions. One saying, this coverage holds up
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and still deserves the highest prize in journalism. The other saying,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the press messed this up pretty bad. I read Jeff Gerth's, um, post-mortem.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Of this whole saga. And, um, And, you know, there's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a section.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Sidebar, so annoying. I talked to Girth for like an
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: extended period of time, kind of against interest for his piece.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And then he wouldn't help me with this piece I did.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Are you serious? Well, I want to talk about it
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: because he has a whole lament of journalists like not
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: being open with him for that piece. That's like his whole.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: I know, I know, I know. And that he just
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: wouldn't help me. I tried to call him on that hypocrisy.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: What help did you want from him here? Just... Oh,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I want him to leak me the name of the reviewer.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Ben was trying to find out who was the anonymous
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: journalist the Pulitzer Board had brought in to review all
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the Posts and Times Russia stories that they'd given the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: award for. The board was being very hush-hush about this
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: person's identity. An anonymous journalist? That's a weird oxymoron. Ben
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to figure it out. And just a couple weeks ago,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: after a bunch of digging, he did figure out who
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the secret journalist was and published the scoop in Semaphore.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: It was a journalist named Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief of Reuters
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: for years, He now runs the Center for Ethics and
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Journalism at NYU.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: You know, honestly, had I thought for a minute and
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: just tried to guess, you know, who would I hire
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: to conduct a review very, very, very carefully, painstakingly, fairly?
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Somebody who is obsessed with journalistic standards. Steven Adler's the guy.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Ben didn't say whether he trusted Steven Adler's review more
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: or Jeff Gerth's. But as the conclusions of these two
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: reviews show, there is clearly not agreement. on how journalists
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: should think about and go about reexamining narratives that maybe
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: don't hold up. And by even doing that kind of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: review in the first place, the Pulitzer Board accidentally opened
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: themselves up to a lawsuit from the president. So what's
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the state of the lawsuit now against the Pulitzers?
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: So most defamation lawsuits don't survive a motion to dismiss
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: and go away very quickly.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Not this one, though. The Pulitzer Board filed a motion
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: to dismiss the case, which, like Ben said, is usually
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: successful in a defamation suit. because the First Amendment gives
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a very strong defense against defamation of public officials like
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the president. But the judge in the Florida county where
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Trump filed the suit, Okeechobee County, which seemingly is just
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a random county, by the way, where his lawyers thought
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: he'd get a friendly jury, it's not where Mar-a-Lago is,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the judge denied the Pulitzer Board's motion and let the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: case go into its next stage, which means the board
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: has had to start turning over documents, emails, sitting for depositions,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and preparing for trial. I was texting with my buddy
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: who's a media lawyer this morning, who like hadn't really
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: paid close attention to it, just saying we were going
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: to talk about this. And he started reading it and
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: he was just texting me furiously like, this is bonkers.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: This is crazy. I can't believe this. You know, just
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: really tearing his hair out that it survived the motion
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to dismiss.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think media lawyers find it pretty disturbing because
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: some of the consequences are pretty weird. Like if it
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: turns out if somebody asks you if you awarded a
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: prize correctly and you say, screw you, we did, you're fine.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: But if you say, you know what, that's a really
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: good question, I want to hire a very high integrity,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: experienced person to review and make sure we did a
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: good job, then you get sued. Like, that's a bad incentive.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: As of yesterday, this case looks like it could now
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: become even more consequential. A Florida court rejected an appeal
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: by the Pulitzer Board that was trying again to get
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the case thrown out. And in the decision, one of
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the judges, Judge Ed Artau, went on a tirade against
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: one of the foundational Supreme Court decisions that protects journalism
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: in America, Times v. Sullivan. saying that the Supreme Court
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: in 1964 decided that case incorrectly. He quotes the term
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: FAKE NEWS, all caps, in the ruling. There's a growing
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: movement on the right to challenge Times v. Sullivan and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: get it overturned, similar to the way Roe v. Wade
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: was overturned, which, if that were to happen, would make
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: it much easier for public officials to win defamation suits
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: against journalists. It'd be a devastating decision for journalism, frankly.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: In the last 24 hours, it looks like the Pulitzer
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: suit has been thrust into that movement. The Pulitzer Board
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: said yesterday in a statement, This lawsuit is about intimidation
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: of the press and those who support it, and we
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: will not be intimidated. The Pulitzer Board will continue to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: recognize the accomplishments of journalists, writers, artists, and composers at
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the highest level. We look forward to continuing our defense
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: of journalism. If journalism is the first draft of history,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: then journalism awards are too. They're a record of the times,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a snapshot of a moment, even if later that flattering
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: prose about Stalin doesn't age so well. Or, for that matter,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Harry Styles' winning album of the year in 2023. I mean,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: come on, that was the same year as Renaissance. The
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: New York Times and Washington Post and others have, of course,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: continued to report on Trump and Russia, including on Mueller's
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: findings and the lack of evidence of a conspiracy. In
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: that way, reporting is self-correcting But that doesn't mean we
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: shouldn't imagine, try to imagine, that there might be a
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: way to address the issue Ben feels is raised by
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Trump's lawsuit. Some approach journalists could agree on broadly as
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: an industry that would thread the needle between not wanting
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to give in to a pissed off president who's on
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: a legal campaign against the press for stories that are
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: factual while finding a way to reckon more directly with
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the public about how the pursuit of those stories may
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: have left them with a skewed impression.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would be valuable if the
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: institutions that wrote about this stuff were able to reevaluate
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: the story and to say in some clearer way, here's
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: what we got right, here's what we got wrong, and
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: in the context of the narrative, really, because I think
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: this isn't actually about were there factual errors. It's about
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: what really is the deal with Trump's relationship with Russia?
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: What really is the deal with Russia's interference in elections,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: which I think is clearer now than was then, that
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: they were kind of very interested in sowing chaos and
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: backing parties on the right and the far left across
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Europe and North America. In a way, they didn't require coordination,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: but they were sort of like trying to make trouble
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: and saw Trump from their perspective as a vehicle for
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: trouble more than the kind of conspiracy people imagined. I
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: think part of the answer is that journalistic institutions and
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: journalists ought to be more open to self-examination.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: But of course, the other is that we.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Should take ourselves a little less seriously. Like, When people
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: say that they write the first draft of history, they
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: like to put the stress on the word history, but
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: really it should be on the first draft. And, you know,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: journalism isn't the final arbiter of truth. It's the first
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: crack at it.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's helpful. It's like if we put the emphasis
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: on the first draft part, it might be a little
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: easier for us to say we got it wrong or
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: we weren't exactly right.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: We were only seeing a little part of the picture.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: That's Ben Smith from Semaphore Media. Question everything listeners. I
• 33:05
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• 33:08
  Speaker 1: our show on Apple Podcasts and leave a review? Apparently
• 33:11
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• 33:14
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• 33:15
  Speaker 1: go leave a comment. In fact, in this week's newsletter,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to share the lengthy criticism we got from
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: one listener, from one of you, that inspired me to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: do this episode today. They wrote their critique on Apple Podcasts,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: so we do read this stuff and we do take
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: it seriously. You can sign up for our newsletter at
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: kcrw.com slash question everything. Coming up on the show.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: This morning I was featured on an episode of Weekend
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Update on NPR.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: And after what I tell you next, I can promise
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you you will never hear me on NPR again. We
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: try to redo an interview gone sideways, live on stage.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Today's episode was produced by me with help from Sam
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Egan and edited by Jen Kinney. Our show is made
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: by executive producer Robin Simeon, producers Zach St. Louis and
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Sophie Kazis, and associate producer Emily Moltaire. Jonathan Goldstein and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Neil Drumming are contributing editors. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Sound
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: design by Brendan Baker. Matt McGinley made our music. Our
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: partners at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Gina Delvac, Tejalaj Amara,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and Jennifer Farrow. Special thanks to Nancy Uptake. See you
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: next time.