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The Times, They Aren't A Changin' · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_02: If you're the president of the United States, whatever outlet you appear on becomes big, right?
0:06
SPEAKER_02: And you want to appear on outlets that,
0:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
0:09
SPEAKER_02: align with your view of what the stakes in the election are.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: And, like, make people pay attention to us.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: Make people pay attention to Mehdi Hassan.
0:21
SPEAKER_02: Make people pay attention to Chris Hayes.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: You're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: In this episode, Matt and I will examine the widening rift between Biden world and the New York Times.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really between Democrats and mainstream news outlets more generally.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: I think we've reached a potentially significant inflection point.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: And a lot might turn on whether mainstream news is as receptive to good faith
0:54
SPEAKER_01: criticism from liberals as they have been in the past to ref working from the right.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: So this week, what's going on at the New York Times and between Joe Biden and the New York Times?
1:22
SPEAKER_01: How much does it matter if the animosity between the two of them lingers?
1:28
SPEAKER_01: And who's actually right about the fight that they're having?
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Is it the Times or the Times' critics?
1:34
SPEAKER_01: But before we get to any of that, we have a couple of oopsies to correct from last week.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Matt, do you want to go first with your MC?
1:42
SPEAKER_02: So I had said that Corinne Jean-Pierre did not have campaign experience.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: She's the White House press secretary.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: The White House press secretary.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: I said that she didn't have campaign experience,
1:51
SPEAKER_02: which was relevant because even though she's not on the Biden reelection campaign
1:56
SPEAKER_02: in a technical sense,
1:58
SPEAKER_02: obviously that is what she's doing.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: That's not correct.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: She had jobs on both of Obama's campaigns, right?
2:07
SPEAKER_02: But they were,
2:08
SPEAKER_02: one of them,
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SPEAKER_02: she was a regional political director,
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SPEAKER_02: and one of them,
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SPEAKER_02: she was a battleground state's deputy director.
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SPEAKER_02: So these were not rapid response or press secretary type jobs.
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SPEAKER_02: She wasn't performing the kind of role that she performs now,
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SPEAKER_02: where people would,
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SPEAKER_02: where journalists would try to like jam her up on the tough questions of the day.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: But just to be clear, she was in roles on those campaigns.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: All right, fair enough.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: Our regrets and apologies to Karine.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: And then I owe a big apology to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Because I, when we were talking about Kristi Noem.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: He holds a grudge too.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, he's like, I'm going to end up radiation poisoned.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: When we were talking about Kristi Noem and her violence towards dogs last week,
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SPEAKER_01: I suggested a natural affinity between her and Putin,
3:01
SPEAKER_01: who I said,
3:03
SPEAKER_01: Hated dogs, but I had it backwards.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: And I knew this, but it was just I pulled a Joe Biden being old thing.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Vladimir Putin loves dogs.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: The thing that I was remembering what misconstrued is that he knew that German
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SPEAKER_01: former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is deathly afraid of dogs.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: And so he would bring his dogs.
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SPEAKER_01: attack dogs, basically, I guess, with him to meet her in order to distress her because he's an asshole.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: So maybe there isn't an affinity on these grounds, at least between Kristi Noem and Vladimir Putin.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: But I do owe Putin, a dog lover, myself, a little bit of an apology.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: It's good.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: Good that we got that straight.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, facts matter on podcasting and The New York Times.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Just real quick stage setting here.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: A couple weeks back,
3:58
SPEAKER_01: just right before the White House Correspondents Dinner,
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Politico ran a pretty detailed...
4:04
SPEAKER_01: media piece.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: It was a little gossipy,
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SPEAKER_01: but there was some real stuff in there about tensions between the White House and
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SPEAKER_01: the Biden campaign on the one hand and the New York Times.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And the rift boils down to that Biden has,
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SPEAKER_01: I think,
4:19
SPEAKER_01: a fairly standard set of liberal slanted complaints about political journalism in
4:26
SPEAKER_01: general and at the Times in particular in the Trump years.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: Like,
4:30
SPEAKER_01: Are they normalizing him?
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SPEAKER_01: Are they treating his threat to democracy with the sort of oomph and seriousness it deserves?
4:38
SPEAKER_01: And The Times is kind of leaning into their –
4:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
4:43
SPEAKER_01: focus on polling and trivia and the things that Biden doesn't want them to focus on,
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SPEAKER_01: in part because the leadership there is apparently pissed that Biden won't give
4:52
SPEAKER_01: them an exclusive sit-down interview.
4:55
SPEAKER_02: I think we should be specific about this because there was a back and forth and denials, right?
4:59
SPEAKER_02: So the way Politico characterized it,
5:02
SPEAKER_02: or certainly the way liberals characterized Politico's reporting,
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SPEAKER_02: is that the New York Times was angry that Biden has not done a sit-down interview
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SPEAKER_02: with them.
5:11
SPEAKER_02: and is sort of punishing the White House for that.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: The Times strenuously denies that,
5:18
SPEAKER_02: but I think the slightly more generous but amounts to the same thing construal is
5:25
SPEAKER_02: that the Times has...
5:28
SPEAKER_02: um, indulged a lot of scrutiny of Joe Biden's age, right?
5:34
SPEAKER_02: Like this is a, a, there's an anti Biden narrative that he is too old.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: The times has,
5:39
SPEAKER_02: I think promoted that narrative and they believe like top decision makers at the
5:45
SPEAKER_02: times believe that Biden's reluctance to do long form,
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SPEAKER_02: sit down interviews with their staff is evidence that,
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SPEAKER_02: that that he's too old right so like that's their sort of mental processing of it
6:01
SPEAKER_02: you know is that like if joe biden was up to the job like he'd be doing a big sit
6:05
SPEAKER_02: down with maggie haberman okay i mean because i don't want this to be like we're
6:09
SPEAKER_02: doing a segment based on the politico story but the times denies it like the times
6:12
SPEAKER_02: does deny it but i think like what the times is denying is that they are acting out
6:17
SPEAKER_02: of revenge against biden but the fact is they are very hung up
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SPEAKER_01: I did an episode of Greg Sargent's podcast with him when that Politico piece came out,
6:27
SPEAKER_01: and he was,
6:28
SPEAKER_01: I think,
6:29
SPEAKER_01: similarly a little dubious of that claim in the piece,
6:33
SPEAKER_01: but that claim was sourced to a New York Times journal,
6:37
SPEAKER_01: anonymized,
6:38
SPEAKER_01: but there was a quote there.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: The Politico reporters starting.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: And like,
6:42
SPEAKER_01: it is worth noting that this is not like some like junior upstart Politico reporters,
6:47
SPEAKER_01: like a well-established reporter.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And there is a lot of connective tissue between Politico and the New York Times political desk.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Like they go back and forth.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: They hire, you know, Politico is a feeder to the New York Times.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: A couple of all-star New York Times reporters who came from Politico just went back.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they are...
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SPEAKER_02: I completely agree.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: I'm bringing this up just to say that,
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SPEAKER_02: like,
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SPEAKER_02: when you read a vehement denial of something,
7:14
SPEAKER_02: you need to pay attention to exactly what is being denied.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: Right?
7:18
SPEAKER_02: And, like, what they are denying is that A.G.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: Sulzberger is there twirling his mustache,
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SPEAKER_02: being like,
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SPEAKER_02: we got to crush him on age until he agrees to do an interview.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Which,
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SPEAKER_02: like,
7:29
SPEAKER_02: sure,
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SPEAKER_02: because everybody in their own subjective understanding of the world is,
7:33
SPEAKER_02: like,
7:34
SPEAKER_02: doing the right thing.
7:35
SPEAKER_02: And so they are just like calling balls and strikes and they see this this damning evidence.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: But then it's like you look at anything.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like so Biden goes and does a bunch of podcasts and they're like, well, that doesn't count.
7:49
SPEAKER_02: And then Biden went on Howard Stern and they gave very little coverage to that interview.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
7:55
SPEAKER_02: You know, as if like they weren't actually that interested in the question of it.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: And then the last two paragraphs of the write ups were all about how Biden has been
8:03
SPEAKER_02: ducking interviews with traditional media.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: And so that is like,
8:08
SPEAKER_02: yes,
8:08
SPEAKER_02: like they have decided to jab a knife in the side of the White House over the White
8:13
SPEAKER_02: House's choice of interview strategy,
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SPEAKER_02: which like is really not unique to this particular dynamic,
8:22
SPEAKER_02: but like very frequently the thing that
8:27
SPEAKER_02: uh,
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SPEAKER_02: high end journalists feel most comfortable like editorializing about is like their
8:35
SPEAKER_02: own specific treatment.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
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SPEAKER_01: whether they have access to the white house,
8:40
SPEAKER_01: they will like,
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SPEAKER_01: it's been a hundred days since Barack Obama did a press conference or whatever as
8:45
SPEAKER_01: like a tier one story.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think as a person, you know, I have, um,
8:53
SPEAKER_02: both managed to have a career in Washington political journalism,
8:58
SPEAKER_02: but also never really be,
9:00
SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: I've never been in the,
9:02
SPEAKER_02: in the White House press corps.
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SPEAKER_02: You know, I'd never, like, been on Air Force One or in a gaggle.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: It's like,
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SPEAKER_02: the question you have to ask yourself is,
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SPEAKER_02: like,
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SPEAKER_02: is it possible for journalists to get,
9:17
SPEAKER_02: like,
9:17
SPEAKER_02: questions answered?
9:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, is there something we're not knowing?
9:21
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is the complaint exactly about?
9:26
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, I feel...
9:28
SPEAKER_02: reasonably well informed about the Biden administration's policymaking,
9:33
SPEAKER_02: um,
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SPEAKER_02: both where I agree with them and where I disagree with them.
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SPEAKER_02: Like it's not some black hole of non-transparency.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: Um,
9:41
SPEAKER_02: the Trump administration to an extent was,
9:43
SPEAKER_02: but that even so was like mostly,
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SPEAKER_02: um,
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SPEAKER_02: chaos rather than anything else,
9:49
SPEAKER_02: uh,
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SPEAKER_02: and a lack of professionalism.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: And like,
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SPEAKER_02: I wish Joe Biden would do an on-camera interview with the Politics Podcast.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: That would be great.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: He should do that.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: But it's ridiculous to let that become the pivot point of your own coverage,
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SPEAKER_02: that you would like to score an interview.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you said that because I think it's very clear that they want one of these marquee
10:15
SPEAKER_01: hour-long Oval Office interviews that feeds days' worth of stories,
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SPEAKER_01: and everyone's chasing the New York Times,
10:21
SPEAKER_01: and it's like a rite of passage,
10:23
SPEAKER_01: and they feel like they're entitled to it.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm pretty confident that if their investigative team had an important
10:31
SPEAKER_01: scoop about Hunter Biden,
10:33
SPEAKER_01: they got the goods on Hunter Biden doing something that had not yet surfaced in
10:38
SPEAKER_01: congressional investigations or criminal investigations,
10:42
SPEAKER_01: and there was some –
10:45
SPEAKER_01: suggestion that maybe Joe Biden was involved.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: They would go to the White House,
10:49
SPEAKER_01: and if it was really that serious,
10:52
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden would talk to them about that,
10:55
SPEAKER_01: right?
10:55
SPEAKER_02: The perennial problem of these interviews,
10:58
SPEAKER_02: which is,
11:00
SPEAKER_02: I think,
11:00
SPEAKER_02: genuinely bad for America,
11:02
SPEAKER_02: is that presidents have started systematically subjecting themselves to fewer hard
11:09
SPEAKER_02: news interviews.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: And then because they want to do less of it,
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SPEAKER_02: now more and more when you get the chance,
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SPEAKER_02: it's like bloodsport.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: So it's like, here's my chance to really show them, which then just makes people not want to do it.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: I think it would be great for Biden to sit down with,
11:29
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
11:30
SPEAKER_02: with Jim Tankers and ask some questions about the state of the economy and the
11:36
SPEAKER_02: American Rescue Plan and whatever else.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: But we all know that if Biden did an interview, the first question would be like, aren't you too old?
11:46
SPEAKER_02: And then Biden would be like, no, I'm not too old.
11:48
SPEAKER_02: And they'd be like, but come on, you're too old.
11:50
SPEAKER_02: And then Biden would get testy.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: And then he'd be like, ah, you're getting testy.
11:53
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like, it's just this kind of like dumb trap that there's no really great way out of.
12:02
SPEAKER_02: But then also in the contemporary media landscape, like you can just like
12:10
SPEAKER_02: go on Howard Stern and talk about your life experience.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: And also,
12:16
SPEAKER_02: like,
12:16
SPEAKER_02: reach people who don't read the New York Times,
12:19
SPEAKER_02: who are,
12:19
SPEAKER_02: in fact,
12:20
SPEAKER_02: the voters Biden needs to reach.
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SPEAKER_02: Anyway, this pivoted into an interview that Joe Kahn did with Ben Smith at Semaphore.
12:33
SPEAKER_02: And Ben, who is a very clever interviewer, said,
12:38
SPEAKER_02: queued this up for maximum engagement by asking Khan like a kind of straw man question.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: That's like,
12:45
SPEAKER_02: Joe Khan,
12:46
SPEAKER_02: like,
12:46
SPEAKER_02: do you agree with liberals who say that to save American democracy,
12:50
SPEAKER_02: like the New York Times should just tank constantly and help Biden win the election?
12:55
SPEAKER_02: So then Khan was able to be like, no, I believe in the role of journalism.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
12:59
SPEAKER_02: OK,
13:00
SPEAKER_01: like you're jumping the gun a little bit because because after the Politico piece ran,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: but before Smith and Khan sat down,
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Biden addressed the press corps at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Eight years ago, you could have written off as just Trump talk, but no longer.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Not after January 6th.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm sincerely not asking you to take sides, but asking to rise up to the seriousness of the moment.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions,
13:30
SPEAKER_00: the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics and focus
13:37
SPEAKER_00: on what's actually at stake.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: And I think in your hearts you know what's at stake.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: The stakes couldn't be higher.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us has a role to play,
13:46
SPEAKER_00: a serious role to play in making sure democracy endures,
13:49
SPEAKER_00: American democracy.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: I have my role, but with all due respect, so do you.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: In the age of disinformation, credible information that people can trust is more important than ever.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And that makes you, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, makes you more important than ever.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: I think that the, like a reasonable, it's a little generous, but I think honest,
14:12
SPEAKER_01: assessment of what Biden was saying was,
14:14
SPEAKER_01: if you know how to make everyone in America aware of my age and of Hillary
14:20
SPEAKER_01: Clinton's emails by cluttering up your front page with it and assigning multiple
14:25
SPEAKER_01: reporters to it and treating it like it's very important news,
14:28
SPEAKER_01: you can do the same thing with respect to Donald Trump's authoritarian campaign promises.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: And that might help me
14:36
SPEAKER_01: Incidentally,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: but it's right in your core duty,
14:40
SPEAKER_01: like you should feel obligated to make people aware of those things.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: And if it helps me, fine.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: If maybe Donald Trump just gets tired of taking heat for it and becomes less of a authoritarian,
14:52
SPEAKER_01: also fine.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: But like.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: Don't let people.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: like,
14:58
SPEAKER_01: remain under-informed about this while you guys are chasing dumb fucking stories
15:03
SPEAKER_01: about polling and my age.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that's,
15:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: like,
15:09
SPEAKER_01: as a newsroom leader could quibble with it,
15:11
SPEAKER_01: but it's not what Ben Smith said.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: when he interviewed Joe Kahn, right?
15:15
SPEAKER_01: He said, like, the liberal complaint is that you're not in the tank for Biden more.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: And Biden,
15:22
SPEAKER_01: like,
15:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:23
SPEAKER_01: headed off,
15:24
SPEAKER_01: attempted to head off that critique in advance by saying,
15:27
SPEAKER_01: no,
15:27
SPEAKER_01: this is not about...
15:28
SPEAKER_01: you just like burying negative stories about me.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: It's about you using your news judgment to prioritize the stakes of the election
15:36
SPEAKER_01: and like lend more resources to higher tier issues.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
15:42
SPEAKER_02: look though,
15:42
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
15:44
SPEAKER_02: obviously every president wants the media to cover their administration more
15:49
SPEAKER_02: positively and cover their opponent more negatively.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: To me, that was like,
15:54
SPEAKER_02: I guess this is like Smith just like injecting the Biden frame into this,
16:02
SPEAKER_02: just like cued Khan up to give this response that I think as text is hard to
16:09
SPEAKER_02: disagree with,
16:10
SPEAKER_02: where he's like...
16:11
SPEAKER_02: We need to cover the issues fairly.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: Like we can't be like Pravda or Xinhua News, which is true.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: But then as you say,
16:19
SPEAKER_02: like Biden said,
16:20
SPEAKER_02: that's not what he wanted and blah,
16:21
SPEAKER_02: blah,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: blah,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: blah,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: blah,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: blah,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: blah,
16:23
SPEAKER_02: blah.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: But then then come get into the more contentious part.
16:26
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: Which is he said that like democracy is not the issue that most people say is most important to them.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: And most people say that the issue that's most important to them are immigration and inflation.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: And so what are we supposed to do?
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Just not cover those issues because it's inconvenient to Biden.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: So I got a lot of thoughts on that.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean, starting with like.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: It's a little odd to say that you should cover issues in the order that polls tell
17:03
SPEAKER_02: you people say they are important.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: It's just a made up... That's not... We both got trained as journalists and that was never...
17:13
SPEAKER_01: the way stories were assigned.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
17:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
17:16
SPEAKER_02: especially for the New York Times,
17:18
SPEAKER_02: who,
17:19
SPEAKER_02: if you ask anyone,
17:20
SPEAKER_02: like,
17:20
SPEAKER_02: why do we talk so much about the New York Times?
17:22
SPEAKER_02: Like, it's not that many people read the New York Times, right?
17:25
SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, the New York Times has incredible agenda-setting power for the entire national media.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: And,
17:32
SPEAKER_02: like,
17:33
SPEAKER_02: if you went to the New York Times' investigative desk and were like,
17:36
SPEAKER_02: why are you looking into this politician who nobody's ever heard of?
17:40
SPEAKER_02: They'd be like, well...
17:42
SPEAKER_02: Because if we uncover a scandal, then people will hear about it, right?
17:47
SPEAKER_02: That's journalism.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: He can't seriously mean that the way he runs the New York Times is he looks at Nate
17:54
SPEAKER_02: Cohn's issue prioritization polls and then doles out journalistic resources in
18:00
SPEAKER_02: proportion to their answer.
18:02
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't make sense.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: That is the read, right?
18:05
SPEAKER_01: That is what...
18:06
SPEAKER_01: That's what he said, yes.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: I think we're going to get into this in a second.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: It's not a defensible ethic for running a newsroom,
18:16
SPEAKER_01: but it's also not just empirically what the New York Times is doing.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: The reason it bugs me more than just that it's unjustifiable is that there is a very common two-step that
18:33
SPEAKER_01: mainstream news outlet leaders do when confronted specifically with this liberal criticism, right?
18:40
SPEAKER_01: That they normalize Trump,
18:42
SPEAKER_01: that they're not – their coverage doesn't convey significant alarm or sufficient
18:49
SPEAKER_01: alarm about Trump's threat to democracies.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: They'll say, that's not our job.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: It's Democrats' job to beat back the threat to democracy by beating Democrats.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: But like that's out of one half of their mouth because the other half of their
19:03
SPEAKER_01: mouth is,
19:04
SPEAKER_01: is like mining for new subscribers by talking about how democracy dies in darkness
19:09
SPEAKER_01: and how free press is essential to an informed citizenry.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, basically like newspapers are the tip of the spear for democracy.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: And so that's why you should give us your money.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: It can't be both things, right?
19:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, either you are, you aren't.
19:28
SPEAKER_02: But this is where I both understand why Joe Kahn did not want to give a fully
19:33
SPEAKER_02: candid interview to Ben Smith about the dilemmas of running The New York Times.
19:39
SPEAKER_02: But the whole thing,
19:41
SPEAKER_02: I think,
19:41
SPEAKER_02: would benefit from a little less defensiveness and a little more candor about business.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: He alluded to the fact that part of what's going on at The Times is that the top
19:54
SPEAKER_02: leadership of The Times felt that
19:58
SPEAKER_02: The Times as an institution fell to prey to like internal staffer activism during
20:05
SPEAKER_02: the 2020 election cycle.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: And there is like a kind of,
20:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
20:11
SPEAKER_02: Thermidorian reaction being driven by Times leadership,
20:16
SPEAKER_02: which if you work in media,
20:17
SPEAKER_02: if you hear any gossip from people in middle management at the Times is like
20:21
SPEAKER_02: definitely happening.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: the owners and top-ranking people decided that they need to lay down the law a
20:28
SPEAKER_02: little bit and incorporate some of the criticisms that James Bennett and Barry
20:33
SPEAKER_02: Weiss were making of the Times as an institution into their coverage.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: Another thing that's happening is like,
20:40
SPEAKER_02: They're trying to make money.
20:42
SPEAKER_02: The Times is a publicly traded company.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: It is controlled by the Sulzberger family.
20:47
SPEAKER_02: The Sulzbergers are wealthy, but they're not rich like Jeff Bezos.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
20:53
SPEAKER_01: They can't float The Times indefinitely if it starts to
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:55
SPEAKER_02: What makes them wealthy is the fact that they own the New York Times, right?
21:00
SPEAKER_02: It's not that they don't have some other business that they own.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: So it really matters a lot to them whether the Times is a successful business.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: And it has been a very successful business.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: When I launched Vox,
21:13
SPEAKER_02: when investors were pouring money into BuzzFeed,
21:16
SPEAKER_02: people thought there was going to be this wave of disruption.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: But The Times,
21:21
SPEAKER_02: through its subscription program,
21:22
SPEAKER_02: through its high-end advertising,
21:25
SPEAKER_02: through its investment in these games,
21:28
SPEAKER_02: has done really well for itself.
21:30
SPEAKER_02: And they both benefited financially from Trump's presidency and now are surfing the
21:38
SPEAKER_02: the post-Trump era in various ways that is hard.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: And, like, that's what they're doing on some level.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: So,
21:47
SPEAKER_02: like,
21:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
21:47
SPEAKER_02: I was just checking,
21:48
SPEAKER_02: like,
21:49
SPEAKER_02: has the New York Times been covering inflation and immigration a lot?
21:53
SPEAKER_02: And that's hurting Biden?
21:55
SPEAKER_02: And...
21:56
SPEAKER_02: You know,
21:57
SPEAKER_02: as far as I can tell,
21:57
SPEAKER_02: they aren't like they have run more articles that mention Kristi Noem killing her
22:03
SPEAKER_02: dog than they have articles mentioning inflation over the past few days.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: And like they talked about Kristi Noem killing her dog for the exact same reason
22:12
SPEAKER_02: you and I talked about Kristi Noem killing her dog.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: Cynical cash grabs.
22:16
SPEAKER_02: You know,
22:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
22:16
SPEAKER_02: not as a cynical cash grab,
22:18
SPEAKER_02: but it's like she's one of the big characters of American politics over the past
22:22
SPEAKER_02: few years.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: Even though South Dakota is a small state,
22:25
SPEAKER_02: she's like a good looking woman who is an interesting character who might have been
22:30
SPEAKER_02: Trump's vice president,
22:31
SPEAKER_02: who put out this memoir,
22:32
SPEAKER_02: who said something nutty in it.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: This thing about lying about Kim Jong-un seems probably more significant,
22:39
SPEAKER_02: but it's just like a fun,
22:42
SPEAKER_02: interesting story about human drama.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: If it was true... I'd call it inhuman drama.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: She killed a fucking dog.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: But so I just mean, like, there's a certain, like, come off it quality.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: Like,
22:57
SPEAKER_02: you could imagine a publication that was,
23:00
SPEAKER_02: like,
23:01
SPEAKER_02: laser-focused on hard news reporting about Joe Biden and policy that was in some
23:09
SPEAKER_02: way unflattering to him and just being like,
23:13
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:13
SPEAKER_02: here we go.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: But, like, the thing that is...
23:16
SPEAKER_02: bugging the White House about the New York Times' coverage of the race is not their
23:21
SPEAKER_02: coverage of inflation or immigration or their coverage of Kristi Noem's dog.
23:27
SPEAKER_02: It's the way they are portraying the age issue as a question of stakes,
23:34
SPEAKER_02: which ties back into the coverage of the email server issue,
23:38
SPEAKER_02: where you go back to 2016,
23:41
SPEAKER_02: you ask any liberal,
23:42
SPEAKER_02: why are you mad at the New York Times?
23:45
SPEAKER_02: It's not that the email server stories were inaccurate,
23:49
SPEAKER_02: and it's not that The Times didn't run any tough stories about Trump.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: It's that the quantity of email server stories and the one-sidedness of email
23:59
SPEAKER_02: server stories suggested to a person who just scans the paper on a daily basis that
24:06
SPEAKER_02: the big thing at stake,
24:08
SPEAKER_02: or one of the biggest things at stake in 2016—
24:11
SPEAKER_02: was which candidate would comply more rigorously with federal document retention
24:16
SPEAKER_02: and information security policies.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: And that candidate was Donald Trump.
24:21
SPEAKER_02: And like, neither of those things are true.
24:23
SPEAKER_02: That was not one of the most important things at stake in 2016.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: And there was no reason to believe that Donald Trump would be better on that issue.
24:31
SPEAKER_02: Similarly, Joe Biden is in fact old.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: Like, that is true.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: He's only a little bit older than Donald Trump.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: And nobody can articulate why it is significant that either of these guys is old,
24:46
SPEAKER_02: like in the grand scheme of things.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: If you try to spell out rationally, like what difference does it make who wins?
24:55
SPEAKER_02: You can talk about the threats to democracy.
24:57
SPEAKER_02: You could talk about fucking inflation if you want.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: But it's like...
25:02
SPEAKER_02: try to explain what will happen to me,
25:06
SPEAKER_02: to you,
25:07
SPEAKER_02: to anybody in America if the president is Joe Biden's age or it's Trump's age.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: It's very, seems small to me, like not untrue.
25:22
SPEAKER_02: But like, I don't know.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: I just like, I would love it.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to say I would.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: It would be a fascinating exercise to live in a world where there were lots of people
25:35
SPEAKER_02: stories about inflation at the New York times.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: And the white house was like,
25:39
SPEAKER_02: why are you writing so much about inflation when you should be writing about democracy?
25:43
SPEAKER_02: But like, that's not what's happening.
25:44
SPEAKER_02: Like there,
25:45
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:46
SPEAKER_02: it's the usual blend from any mainstream news outlet,
25:50
SPEAKER_02: which is like a lot of good reporting.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: And then a lot of stuff that's like kind of nonsense and a lot of ingesting of
25:58
SPEAKER_02: conservative talking points that,
26:02
SPEAKER_02: without securing credibility among conservative readers.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: There are some conservative Catholic commentators who seem fixed on the age issue
26:11
SPEAKER_01: because they think it can hurt Joe Biden,
26:13
SPEAKER_01: but I'm old enough to remember that they were huge fans of Pope John Paul II when
26:18
SPEAKER_01: he was president of Catholicism.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: And go back and look at what he looked like near the end of his tenure.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: Very old.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's just like, I just think everything about this is a little bit...
26:32
SPEAKER_02: disingenuous.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: I think that you alluded to it.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: They homed in on the email service story and then this year on the age story.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: And
26:44
SPEAKER_01: It's,
26:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:45
SPEAKER_01: often I think this gets distilled down as like they need to find something to
26:51
SPEAKER_01: offset all the negative stories about Trump because Trump is so transgressive that
26:57
SPEAKER_01: there's lots of bad things about him to cover and they need to like gin up some balance.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: But like it's that's a problem.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: But to me, it's a little bit more than that.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Like the analogy I've drawn in the past is that there's like.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: think about how like the difference between an eighties or 1990s sitcom where
27:21
SPEAKER_01: there's really no plot continuity episode to episode,
27:24
SPEAKER_01: right?
27:24
SPEAKER_01: Like one episode is about one thing and then it's all kind of forgotten because the
27:28
SPEAKER_01: next episode is about something completely different and it doesn't really matter.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: And you can kind of pick up the show in the middle because there's really,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: the point of the show is not to have like a single dramatic arc.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: And then the,
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Contrast that with like prestige TV where it really is kind of this operatic story
27:47
SPEAKER_01: like Breaking Bad where like you really do need to watch the episodes in sequence
27:52
SPEAKER_01: or you won't know what's happening.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And like the way they cover Donald Trump is like the first thing where it's like
27:58
SPEAKER_01: this bad thing happens,
27:59
SPEAKER_01: but then they kind of shelve it to cover the next bad thing that happens and you don't.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: you don't create a picture of somebody who's like a,
28:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:07
SPEAKER_01: basically a serial transgressive necessarily because they just kind of toggle from
28:15
SPEAKER_01: one to the next.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: Whereas because they have to,
28:19
SPEAKER_01: or they feel compelled to offset that with,
28:22
SPEAKER_01: with some sort of,
28:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:25
SPEAKER_01: contentious coverage of his opponents and their opponents,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: his opponents have like fewer scandals.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: They pick one.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: And because it's a single story, it develops this narrative thread through it.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: And so suddenly the story of the election is that story.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: And it's just like genuinely unfair to –
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Essentially,
28:50
SPEAKER_01: what we're saying is the more ethical candidate gets more harmful press coverage
28:57
SPEAKER_01: because the negative stories about him or her are spun into a saga.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:05
SPEAKER_02: Right.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: But let's also,
29:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
29:08
SPEAKER_02: so the thing that I think exists as subtext to all of these kind of controversies
29:13
SPEAKER_02: is that the,
29:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:15
SPEAKER_02: the management of The New York Times and of CNN does not want to do,
29:21
SPEAKER_02: like,
29:22
SPEAKER_02: instrumentally constructive things.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: coverage for progressive causes.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: Whereas the management and ownership of Fox News and Newsmax and AM Talk Radio do
29:34
SPEAKER_02: want to do that for conservative coverage,
29:37
SPEAKER_02: which is fine.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody's allowed to have whatever aspirations they want for their business.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: But the audience for conservative news is
29:46
SPEAKER_02: likes to read and watch these conservative outlets,
29:52
SPEAKER_02: whereas the audience,
29:54
SPEAKER_02: like the liberal audience,
29:57
SPEAKER_02: really likes to read The New York Times,
30:00
SPEAKER_02: which is fine.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: But it means that there's a kind of an asymmetry,
30:04
SPEAKER_02: right,
30:05
SPEAKER_02: where if The Times runs five negative stories about Trump and one negative story
30:11
SPEAKER_02: about Biden—
30:13
SPEAKER_02: That's bad for Biden, right?
30:16
SPEAKER_02: And that's like... It's just a tricky issue to talk about, you know?
30:20
SPEAKER_02: Because, like, I think that if you are...
30:24
SPEAKER_02: you know, Carolyn Ryan or whoever, I think Carolyn Ryan is in charge of the politics coverage.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: She's going to be like, what do you want me to do, right?
30:32
SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm running stories.
30:34
SPEAKER_02: But I do care.
30:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I care about editorial integrity and other things.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: But like, I also do care about outcomes for the country.
30:41
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you look at the politics coverage, I mean, it's not exactly how Joe Kahn portrayed it.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: It's not as high-minded as that.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, it's pretty like,
30:52
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you would think, just like people writing articles about politics.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: If you go to the lifestyle issue, there's a question about an article, Sweetgreen is introducing steak.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: What about its climate goals?
31:05
SPEAKER_02: I read an article.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: It was about an academic conference that was about queer food.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: And what is the nature of queer food?
31:17
SPEAKER_02: There's these real estate listings,
31:18
SPEAKER_02: and all the real estate articles are about very expensive small apartments in urban areas.
31:26
SPEAKER_02: There's a thing about...
31:30
SPEAKER_02: You know, Zendaya, there's a thing about jackfruit tacos.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: It's lifestyle news for liberals, because that's who reads the New York Times.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: There was an ethicist column that was about a parent who is upset because her son
31:50
SPEAKER_02: likes to play with toy guns,
31:53
SPEAKER_02: right?
31:53
SPEAKER_02: And the column doesn't say, like...
31:56
SPEAKER_02: you have to prevent him from playing with toy guns.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: Like it's a better column than that, but it also doesn't,
32:04
SPEAKER_02: That's what they ran an article on.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: The presumed audience for The New York Times is the kind of people who at least
32:11
SPEAKER_02: have friends who worry about little boys playing with toy guns.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: It's not people like my father-in-law who think that Donald Trump is a psychotic
32:23
SPEAKER_02: but worry that liberals are going to take their guns away.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: That's not who...
32:28
SPEAKER_02: The paper is for, which is, I mean, whatever.
32:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
32:34
SPEAKER_02: again,
32:34
SPEAKER_02: you can do what you want,
32:35
SPEAKER_02: but it creates this perverse situation where any good reporting that the Times does
32:42
SPEAKER_02: on Republicans,
32:43
SPEAKER_02: conservatives just tune out because it's like a liberal paper.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: That's preaching to the choir,
32:48
SPEAKER_01: whereas like the negative information about Biden might actually put progressive
32:53
SPEAKER_01: readers off.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: And if I could execute on like the high minded mission of like, we need a newspaper for everyone.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: We need a well-informed populace.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: It's like I would tell them it's like you have to get more moderate.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: In all of your coverage of everything that isn't American politics,
33:10
SPEAKER_02: which they don't want to do because it would be very financially costly,
33:15
SPEAKER_02: actually,
33:16
SPEAKER_02: to purge the food section of communists.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: Start a NASCAR section.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: And,
33:21
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
33:21
SPEAKER_02: I saw this when I was at management at Vox,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: if you want to hire people who are like smart and can write fast and do clean copy
33:32
SPEAKER_02: and like make good jokes and understand headlines to write about television shows,
33:37
SPEAKER_02: just like most of the applicants you get.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: are going to be very left-wing in their political opinions.
33:43
SPEAKER_02: To overbid the market to only get conservatives to write about How I Met Your
33:49
SPEAKER_02: Mother would be a very expensive undertaking.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: And nobody wants to...
33:56
SPEAKER_02: do it.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: It'd be like trying to run an oil company with only liberals.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: It wouldn't work.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: What do you think the politics coverage at the New York Times would look like if it
34:08
SPEAKER_01: pandered to its audience in the same way that the culture section does?
34:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would be more obviously left-wing.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Would it be in a way that helped Biden or hurt him?
34:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's hard to say.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: It would depend.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: Would they channel all that energy into just being anti-Trump propaganda?
34:27
SPEAKER_01: Or would it be like... It would have that heavy democracy frame.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, but it could also be like...
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Why won't Biden replace beef with jackfruit?
34:37
SPEAKER_02: In which case it's possible if it gets like two, two left.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, I just think, you know, like the Times has a lot of coverage of the war in Gaza.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: Right.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: And like if you just wanted to do propaganda for Biden,
34:52
SPEAKER_02: you would just kind of like back shelf that whole topic.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: But if you were really left-wing,
34:57
SPEAKER_02: if you really wanted to represent probably the views of rank-and-file staffers,
35:01
SPEAKER_02: you would probably do more leftist coverage of the Gaza issue.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: And so those are all those kinds of things.
35:07
SPEAKER_02: But what Fox does is strategic coalition management.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: If there's a topic that divides conservatives, they just don't cover it.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: They talk about things that they all agree on,
35:26
SPEAKER_02: or they very strategically discipline dissidents for some kind of reason,
35:31
SPEAKER_02: but they don't air the dirty laundry.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: They are not doing segments where people talk about, is this 10% tariff idea?
35:41
SPEAKER_02: Does that really make sense?
35:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:43
SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, that, that is propaganda.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: Um, but like what the times is doing, I don't know.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: It's like,
35:52
SPEAKER_02: it's,
35:52
SPEAKER_02: it's not what they say they're doing because they're not,
35:55
SPEAKER_02: they're not being honest about the fact that they're running a commercial enterprise,
35:59
SPEAKER_02: but they want people to subscribe to them.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, like they want to have it both ways, right?
36:06
SPEAKER_02: Like they want to be a pillar of democracy.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: They want to have a liberal readership.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: Um,
36:12
SPEAKER_02: But then they don't want to do the work.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: They don't want to leave cash on the table.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: I feel like they are quite aware.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that necessarily their politics coverage is a loss leader,
36:27
SPEAKER_01: but it's certainly less lucrative than the crossword,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: right?
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: And so they do – there is in some sense like –
36:38
SPEAKER_01: They're accepting a financial hit to do something that they think of as a higher
36:46
SPEAKER_01: calling than just profit-making.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: which is good.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, journalism needs that or else it's all going to suck.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: But then like, what is that thing?
36:55
SPEAKER_01: What is the higher calling?
36:56
SPEAKER_01: And like Joe,
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Joe Kahn says,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: well,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: we just follow the polls and they tell,
37:00
SPEAKER_01: it tells,
37:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:01
SPEAKER_01: and a,
37:01
SPEAKER_01: they're not doing that,
37:02
SPEAKER_01: but B like that,
37:05
SPEAKER_01: any news outlet that tried to do that would be like an abysmal place for a
37:10
SPEAKER_01: journalist to work.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: It would produce a bunch of bad pandering journalism.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: Like there is,
37:19
SPEAKER_01: The reason journalism selects for a specific kind of person is you want somebody
37:25
SPEAKER_01: who can immerse themselves in a field and develop a fluency in it and then bring
37:32
SPEAKER_01: that knowledge in plain language back to a readership or a viewership.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: And that's not what the journalism that Joe Kahn describes would be about at all.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: And maybe this is actually a good place to –
37:46
SPEAKER_01: put up a paywall and we can like have a conversation about like should – like are
37:52
SPEAKER_01: the things that Joe Biden and I and maybe you like wish the New York Times would do
37:57
SPEAKER_01: or do better,
37:58
SPEAKER_01: like are they fair demands?
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Like could that succeed in the same way that –
38:05
SPEAKER_01: what the New York Times is doing now is working in some way.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Because I do think that that's ultimately the crux of it.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: And like,
38:14
SPEAKER_01: if there's going to be a renewed,
38:17
SPEAKER_01: happy symbiosis between the Democratic Party and mainstream media,
38:22
SPEAKER_01: I think it's going to have to entail some give on the media side on this question.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: And like,
38:29
SPEAKER_01: The indication I got from the Smith-Khan interview was like, that's not coming.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: But maybe you can play devil's advocate and tell me why they're right.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear that,
38:42
SPEAKER_01: and I know you do,
38:43
SPEAKER_01: it sounds super fascinating,
38:45
SPEAKER_01: go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription to paid.