Latest / Pod Save America / How the Right Took Over the Media

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How the Right Took Over the Media · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. This is
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  Speaker 2: our second Sunday show. These episodes are going to be
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  Speaker 2: coming out every other weekend and will give us hosts
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  Speaker 2: a chance to step back from the churn of to
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  Speaker 2: have longer-form conversations about the big ideas and forces shaping
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  Speaker 2: news and politics. My guest today is Ben Smith, the
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  Speaker 2: co-founder and editor-in-chief of the news site Semaphore. Ben is
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  Speaker 2: a longtime reporter. He worked for Politico, was the editor
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  Speaker 2: of BuzzFeed News, and was the New York Times media critic.
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  Speaker 2: So he has a ton of experience covering the coverage.
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  Speaker 2: From the prominence of podcasters and influencers in the 2024
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  Speaker 2: election to the way Trump is running roughshod over the media,
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  Speaker 2: it feels like we are at a critical moment for
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  Speaker 2: the role of the fourth estate. That's why I wanted
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  Speaker 2: to bring Ben on to dig into the state of
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  Speaker 2: the American free press, what journalists need to do differently
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  Speaker 2: for Trump 2.0, and whether the right has finally won
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  Speaker 2: the war on the media. Ben Smith, welcome to Pod
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  Speaker 2: Save America. How are you doing?
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  Speaker 3: Good. Thanks for having me, Dan. It's nice to see you.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. We've known each other for a very long time.
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  Speaker 3: I think we first met on a bus in Iowa
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  Speaker 3: in 2007.
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  Speaker 2: Seven. You were a blogger.
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  Speaker 3: And they were like, we have an adult here to
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  Speaker 3: take charge of you all. And it was you.
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And the adult, I think I was 29, 30 maybe
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  Speaker 2: at the time. So like a true adult. But look,
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  Speaker 2: Trump's been in office for nearly three weeks. It has
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  Speaker 2: been a truly insane and intense three weeks. But we
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  Speaker 2: know that's part of his and Steve Bannon's flood the
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  Speaker 2: zone strategy. Bannon first described this approach in 2018. He
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  Speaker 2: said his strategy for overcoming the media's opposition was to
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  Speaker 2: flood the zone with shit. For our listeners, let's take
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  Speaker 2: a listen to what he said on PBS's Frontline back then.
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  Speaker 4: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only,
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  Speaker 4: because they're dumb and they're lazy, they can only focus
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  Speaker 4: on one thing at a time. And the one thing
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  Speaker 4: they'll mainly focus on is either they do the horse
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  Speaker 4: race or once the horse race.
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  Speaker 2: Who's in, who's out.
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  Speaker 4: It's like the high school, who are the cool kids
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  Speaker 4: in the cafeteria, right?
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  Speaker 3: Because it's easy.
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  Speaker 4: It's the reason they do the horse race stuff all
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  Speaker 4: the time, right? And they won't do the basic, what
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  Speaker 4: are the core things that are going on in the country?
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  Speaker 2: I said, all we have to.
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  Speaker 4: Do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them
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  Speaker 4: with three things. They'll bite on one and we'll get
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  Speaker 4: all of our stuff done.
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  Speaker 2: Bang, bang, bang.
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  Speaker 4: These guys will never be able to recover. But we
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  Speaker 4: got to start with muzzle velocity. So it's got to start.
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  Speaker 4: It's got to hammer. What does it work?
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  Speaker 2: Muzzle velocity. It seems like a pretty accurate description of
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  Speaker 2: what at least the first couple of weeks of Trump 2.0
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  Speaker 2: have looked like. How have you been covering Trump 2.0
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  Speaker 2: and how have you tried to deal with the flood
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  Speaker 2: the zone strategy?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is a very accurate description.
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  Speaker 3: And I mean, is the media dumb and lazy? Like
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  Speaker 3: often also accurate. But I think, you know, he thinks
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  Speaker 3: the notion that the opposition party is the media and
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  Speaker 3: that the world is totally mediated by the media and
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  Speaker 3: that we shape reality and decide what happens to me,
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  Speaker 3: like I don't really buy that. But I also think
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  Speaker 3: it's kind of poisonous for the media to think that
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  Speaker 3: about itself.
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  Speaker 4: In a way.
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  Speaker 3: You know, and I get, you know, I mean, we're
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  Speaker 3: trying to cover the story. We're trying to understand what's happening,
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  Speaker 3: why things are happening, who's actually making these decisions, what
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  Speaker 3: their actual motives are, things that social media can often
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  Speaker 3: be shaky on. I mean, I think one of the
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  Speaker 3: big stories, one of the stories that struck me early,
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  Speaker 3: you know, is that is obviously you have this iconic
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  Speaker 3: image of Mark Zuckerberg and et al sort of in,
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  Speaker 3: you know, paying their, showing up to support Trump's inauguration
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  Speaker 3: and and to pledge their loyalty to the administration. And
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  Speaker 3: it was really striking to me, a story we broke
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  Speaker 3: over the weekend, that when it comes to key appointments,
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  Speaker 3: like the general counsel for the FCC, they pick somebody
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  Speaker 3: who is the most anti-big tech possible lawyer in America.
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  Speaker 3: This bought them nothing. The Trump people think it's hilarious.
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  Speaker 3: They like it. But it isn't buying them. It's not
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  Speaker 3: buying them anything. And then conversely, who has actual influence
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  Speaker 3: in the White House? Which who in media has Trump's respect?
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  Speaker 3: rupert murdoch whose publications have been very very tough on
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  Speaker 3: trump and call actually if you read the wall street
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  Speaker 3: journal editorial page you'll get much tougher clearer criticism of
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  Speaker 3: trump than you get from you know the la times
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  Speaker 3: which only writes about los angeles now because they feel
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  Speaker 3: scared it's an interesting thing i think you see there's
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  Speaker 3: these like demonstrations of weakness by a lot of kind
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  Speaker 3: of would-be media moguls which they imagine are going to
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  Speaker 3: ingratiate themselves to the white house and there's no evidence
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  Speaker 3: that it is.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah i want to get into some of those um
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  Speaker 2: tributes that some of the media and tech are paying
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  Speaker 2: to Trump in a minute. But I think, I'm not
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  Speaker 2: going to defend Steve Bannon often in the history of
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  Speaker 2: Pod Save America, but I think when he made those
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  Speaker 2: comments in 2018, 2019, whatever it was, it was a
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  Speaker 2: different place, right? The media did play, the legacy media,
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  Speaker 2: if you will, just who he's really talking about, right?
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  Speaker 2: When we talk about media in this podcast, that is
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  Speaker 2: everything from Semaphore to the New York Times to Fox News,
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  Speaker 2: now to Joe Rogan, Alex Cooper, everything. But what Ben
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  Speaker 2: is talking about here is he's talking about the White
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  Speaker 2: House press corps, right? The establishment media, legacy media, regime media,
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  Speaker 2: as Republicans call it. And back then, it certainly played
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  Speaker 2: a larger role, I think at least, and maybe if
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  Speaker 2: you disagree, you should say it, in sort of mediating reality.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were reacting, of course, to a moment in
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  Speaker 3: which the Russia investigation had totally swamped the administration, driven
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  Speaker 3: by breathless media coverage. And so I think in a way, like,
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  Speaker 3: and they had allowed, and they had gotten onto the
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  Speaker 3: back foot in the first weeks of the administration were,
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  Speaker 3: and never really got onto the front foot. They were never,
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  Speaker 3: they were very rarely were they able to really drive
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  Speaker 3: that story. It was mostly, they were, you know, they
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  Speaker 3: were the rabbit being pursued by the wolves. And so like,
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  Speaker 3: I think they were kind of honestly, reasonably figured we
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  Speaker 3: don't want that to happen again. And that strategy, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: Bannon puts it in really bombastic terms, but I don't know,
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  Speaker 3: do you think it's probably a good, like, is that
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  Speaker 3: If you were a White House comms director, would you
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  Speaker 3: come out with muzzle velocity right now?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you would want muzzle velocity. I think
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  Speaker 2: the question for Trump, if I'm stepping back from the
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  Speaker 2: perspective of a political operative, is are you telling a
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  Speaker 2: larger story or are you getting swamped by action? What
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  Speaker 2: they are demonstrating right now is action, right? He's doing
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  Speaker 2: things and that is standing in stark contrast to what
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  Speaker 2: people perceived of Biden, right? He was largely absent. Even
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  Speaker 2: though he did a lot of things, a lot of
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  Speaker 2: those things weren't public. They didn't see him. And so
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  Speaker 2: I was thinking about this the other day is that
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  Speaker 2: in Trump's first term, in the beginning, he suffered, I think,
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  Speaker 2: mightily in public perception with the comparison to Obama because
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  Speaker 2: he was out there. He was kind of saying dumb,
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  Speaker 2: crazy things. He was not thoughtful. And Obama was much
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  Speaker 2: more popular than Trump, so that suffered. In this situation,
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  Speaker 2: I think he actually benefits from the comparison to Biden
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  Speaker 2: because Biden was perceived to be, fairly or unfairly, as– absent,
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  Speaker 2: not doing a lot, not showing strength, not being out there.
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  Speaker 2: And Trump is out there 24-7, right? When was the
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  Speaker 2: last time? The public never really saw Biden, and Trump
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  Speaker 2: is out there all the time, so he benefits from it.
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  Speaker 2: The question will be, right now, that is a very
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  Speaker 2: good short-term strategy. What points are you putting on the
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  Speaker 2: board in terms of delivering your campaign promises, right? Or
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  Speaker 2: is it just a bunch of noise? And it's early
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  Speaker 2: to know whether that's actually true or not.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And the thing that, I mean, I think Bannon is
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  Speaker 3: a smart guy in some ways. He's so ubiquitous that
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  Speaker 3: people don't underestimate how consequential he is. But notably absent
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  Speaker 3: from the muzzle velocity speech is just like, which way
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  Speaker 3: is the gun pointed? What's in it? And it's a strategy.
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  Speaker 3: It's kind of content neutral. Like they could be announcing anything.
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  Speaker 3: And there was this narrative last year that, well, look,
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  Speaker 3: like this time around, Trump has a real plan. They
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  Speaker 3: know what they're doing. They have a set of actions planned.
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  Speaker 3: And some of the stuff coming out of the muzzle,
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  Speaker 3: like some of the particular and immigration, I think is
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  Speaker 3: actually like, look, we had a plan, we're gonna do
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  Speaker 3: some high profile, even if they're not massive raids, we're
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  Speaker 3: gonna try to scare people away from the border, we
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  Speaker 3: have some legal changes we want, like that all felt planned.
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  Speaker 3: The Elon stuff is obviously he's just seeing tweets about
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  Speaker 3: agencies he's never heard of reacting, canceling stuff, uncanceling stuff.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it's mostly improvisational. And I think That's, as
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  Speaker 3: you say, at some point, these are the fights. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I think the laws of gravity still apply. The president
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  Speaker 3: has this 100 days, has this moment at which to
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  Speaker 3: set an agenda, to pick their priorities, to pick the
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  Speaker 3: fights they're going to pick. And some of the fights
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  Speaker 3: they're picking are the fights they planned to pick and
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  Speaker 3: wanted to pick. But a lot of the fights they're
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  Speaker 3: picking are the fights that Elon saw a tweet about yesterday.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they are better, is a better run
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  Speaker 2: organization than last time, only in the sense that You
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  Speaker 2: have a bunch of people who maybe care about a
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  Speaker 2: specific issue that Trump may or may not care about
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  Speaker 2: as much, and they are finding ways to drive that.
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  Speaker 2: Some of it is not legally sustainable. Some of it
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  Speaker 2: is just like a bunch of bullshit, like the executive
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  Speaker 2: order on transgender sports participation. That is not something the
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  Speaker 2: government has any access to. But just by being out
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  Speaker 2: there and being mobastic, you get likely the NCAA or
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  Speaker 2: someone else to respond to it. But they didn't have
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  Speaker 2: executive orders in the can last time to do it.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: And the ones they've written, or they're, and I think
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  Speaker 2: they are, Trump is freed this time from caring what
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  Speaker 2: the media thinks, or at least he seems to be.
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  Speaker 2: Like they were very, they were more sensitive to the,
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  Speaker 2: you know, what Maggie Haberman would say about them. They
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  Speaker 2: seem to be now at least.
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  Speaker 3: See, I think that remains to be seen. I think
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  Speaker 3: Trump likes to be present.
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  Speaker 2: At least let me say the administration. Question about Trump.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think that you're, I mean, this is
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  Speaker 3: going to be a real question as, you know, because
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  Speaker 3: they're just doing, they have a lot of muzzle blasts. Right,
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  Speaker 3: and as you said, like some of the stuff, and
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  Speaker 3: a lot of it is kind of, organizationally, you know,
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  Speaker 3: kind of culture war stuff that doesn't really affect the
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  Speaker 3: outcomes of government policy in an immediate way is all happening.
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  Speaker 3: It's moving. They clearly had it well planned. But again,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of the most consequential stuff is
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  Speaker 3: being decided by Elon Musk in a pretty chaotic way.
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  Speaker 3: And when it starts, and I think there's a real
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  Speaker 3: question of some of it will be very unpopular. Some
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  Speaker 3: of it will get really bad press. Do we think
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  Speaker 3: Trump wants that? Like, I actually don't think Trump likes
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  Speaker 3: getting bad press or is comfortable with getting bad press.
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  Speaker 3: I think he likes getting good press.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's true. I
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  Speaker 2: guess the way I've been thinking about it is, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: the way he backed off the tariffs very quickly for
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: just basically nothing is notable. I know a judge stopped
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: the funding freeze, but Trump also pulled the plug on
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  Speaker 2: it and reportedly, I mean, at least in some reporting
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I read, that was his choice because it was so
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: noisy and messy. And so I think he's still going
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  Speaker 2: to be reactive to some of that stuff. The people
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  Speaker 2: around him are less reactive to it. Like last time
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  Speaker 2: he had so many Republican establishment people in his administration
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  Speaker 2: that they were more reactive to it. And you know,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: you know, like, you know, John Kelly is going to
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: be more reactive to bad press than Kristi Noem or, or,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: you know, same thing with his defense. Pete Hankseth is
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: not going to care about it, you know? And so
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I think that it will matter. So, but I guess,
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  Speaker 2: I guess I question to have is it seems to
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  Speaker 2: me at least watching this over the first three weeks
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  Speaker 2: that the legacy media establishment media, right. I always want
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: to kind of just at least the people in the
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: briefing room in Trump one, came in really sort of
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: guns blazing, right? They sort of branded themselves as defenders
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: of democracy. There was a ton of fact checking. And
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: there is a, it feels like, at least from afar,
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  Speaker 2: a different approach this time, right? A little more, not
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: that there is not real, like, I do kind of
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: want to separate the journalists who are covering the White
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: House or covering Trump from maybe the parent companies who
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: own them, But because there is like real, like people are, reporters,
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  Speaker 2: I will say, are working their ass off and they're
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: writing like a really, a lot of really important stories,
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  Speaker 2: whether anyone's reading them or not is an open question.
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  Speaker 2: But it does feel like the press is a little
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  Speaker 2: more accommodation, has more of an accommodationist and less aggressive
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: approach this time. Do you see it that way? Am I,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: is this my, is my anti-media bias coming through?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's one way to see it.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I never really bought the idea
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: that like our choice is to be accommodationist versus collaborationist
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: versus aggressive. Like we're supposed to be covering reality. And
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: I think that there was an almost delusional quality to
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: the media where reporters loved having people they met out
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: in the world say to them, like, wow, you're so brave.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for what you do. It's like, come on,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: you cover the White House. You're not a war reporter.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: And I do think the work is incredibly important to democracy,
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  Speaker 3: but that's a little different between saying, you know, journalism
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  Speaker 3: is this incredibly, is this vital pillar of democracy and
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: journalists are themselves heroes of democracy who wide, right. You know,
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  Speaker 3: who ride around on white horses, like it's a weird job.
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  Speaker 3: And the best reporters, right. Like the reporters who are
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  Speaker 3: very valuable right now, like spend a lot of time
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: kind of burrowing into Trump world and telling you what's
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  Speaker 3: happening there. That's, you know, and that's an incredibly valuable thing,
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  Speaker 3: but you don't have to, I don't know, but I
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: think there was a level at which the sort of media,
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: the media fell in love with a narrative about itself that,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: you know, that, that made liberals love them and conservatives
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  Speaker 3: hate them. And that's not the only factor, maybe even
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  Speaker 3: the most major factor, but I don't think in retrospect
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  Speaker 3: that was a good thing. And I would say the
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: underlying thing here is just to go back, Trump gets
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  Speaker 3: elected and a lot of journalists, a lot of liberals
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: think there's no way this was legitimate. Like there has
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: been a mistake here. And like what happened? Maybe it
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: was Facebook. Like maybe there's some technical social media trick
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: or maybe it was the Russians. And like these are
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: two very great lines of reporting inquiry that lots of
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: really smart journalists, and I don't think they were always
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: framing the story that way, but a lot of journalistic
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: effort was expended basically trying to answer the question of
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: how did Donald Trump manage to get elected? And those
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: were both factors, obviously, shifts in social media, Russian interference
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: in the election. But I think they did not sufficiently
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: consider option three, which was that he was pretty popular
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: and won a lot of votes. And so I think
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: that was Like Trump people aren't wrong to be upset
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: that most of the journalistic energy of 2016 and 2017
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: was expended on trying to figure out what trick got
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: him elected.
• 15:41
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• 17:09
  Speaker 2: I think one of the accommodate, you know, one of
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: the real critiques from you know, folks, not just on
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the left, but in even the journal itself, is that
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: some of the corporate media entities have been, are trying
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: to curry favor with Trump for reasons separate and apart
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: from their, from the specifics of their publication itself, right?
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: So you have the Disney Corporation settling a pretty specious
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: lawsuit that a lot of legal experts think ABC could
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: have won involving George Stephanopoulos erroneously calling Trump a racist.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: You have reports that– Get it right down. Sorry, rapist.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Calling him a rapist, yes. You probably could have gotten
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: sued for the racist one. But the– and then you
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: have reports that Paramount, which has a merger, a very
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: large merger before the Trump administration, considering settling what is
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: an even more reportedly absurd lawsuit about the editing of
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: the Kamala Harris interview. Just sort of as a publisher,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: a person, a longtime media critic, what's your response to
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: how some of these entities are doing this?
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: You know, it's funny that for years, for our whole careers,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: there's been a set of advocates who yelled about the
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: corporate consolidation of media. They're kind of like Ralph Nader people.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: There's a group called Free Press. They were totally irrelevant
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: to the political conversation, like nice people. And you'd be like, yeah,
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Like I work in corporate media and
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: I've never had my corporate overlords cutting secret deals with
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: the government. That doesn't, that's not a thing that happens
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: in America. And they were totally right. Like what you
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: see now is that this very, very consolidated media movement
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: is largely owned by, on one hand, public companies that
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: have fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders. And when we say media,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: we really mean news media, because they have lots of
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: exposure beyond news. The Ellison family isn't buying Paramount because
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: they want CBS News. CBS News comes along with the
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: bargain and this kind of a headache. But they're looking
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: for a content library and getting into the movie business.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: And so this like cbs news is this liability and
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: actually the disney suit is you know sort of specious
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: but it's the kind of suit sometimes you settle because
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: i think they were worried about what was it you
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: know disclosing george stephanopsis text messages whatever there's some argument
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: for settling that one i'm not not a great one
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: but the the cbs one is ludicrous it's about editing
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: uh it's about like it's a very normal journalistic thing
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: if you edit a an interview the way you want
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: to edit it maybe you screw it up maybe whatever
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: but it's But it's something that is widely viewed as
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: protected and as a specious lawsuit, even if they've found
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: a friendly judge in Texas. But Sherry Redstone, who's selling CBS,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: would like to get paid. And the quickest way to
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: getting paid is caving to Trump. And if that damages
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: the brand, if that blows up the newsroom, it's not
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: a big deal for her. I think similarly, you know,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong are billionaires. And the issue isn't
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: that they're billionaires. It's that they have lots of exposure
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: in other businesses that the government has a lot of
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: power over. Soon-Shiong is in the healthcare business. You know, FDA,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: incredibly important to him. Bezos is very interested in his
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: space projects. And Trump will obviously punish them. I mean,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: he's done it in the past. He'll kill contracts if
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: your publication angers him. And Bezos wrote this in his
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: letter about canceling the endorsement. And he said, well, I'm
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: not doing this because I'm caving to Trump, but I
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: can't blame you for seeing it that way because I
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: recognize that it looks that way. And I just think
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: that what you see is that it makes you realize
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: the importance of independent media and independent in sort of
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: the old Naderite sense, that they are independent of consolidated ownership.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, the New York Times is the only major
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: publication in the country that is independent in that sense.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: You know, the Murdoch Press, for all the many problems
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: I have with them, are at least in the news
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: business in a real way and have some experience in
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: dealing with power and not just caving. And then lots
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: of smaller outlets like ours, like yours and mine. And,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: you know, like if the Trump administration decided to try
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: to damage your business and go after your advertisers, it
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: could probably do a lot of damage. But you're not
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: dealing with a sister company that is heavily regulated that is,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: you know, and we already, you know, and I think
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: that to me is actually kind of the scary thing,
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: is the way in which ownership is really being brought
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: to bear for the first time in my career.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: It is– there's just this ultimate irony that like the
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: ABC settlement actually goes to the Trump Library where it
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: won't ever be built.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: It's going to be in Newt Greenland.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: That's right. Or it could be in Gaza.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Somebody in Trump's orbit described it to me as the
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Trump Library and Casino.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that is the– or an amusement park
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: or whatever else it will be. But it's just there's
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: a tremendous irony. So Walt Disney and ABC have given
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Trump money for the library. If Paramount settles his suit,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: CBS will give Trump money for his library. Mark Zuckerberg
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: just settled a suit with Facebook against Trump that will
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: go to the library, and that Trump is going to
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: end up with a library built by the legacy media
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: and big tech. It's just sort of a wild thing.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: You see why he finds that really satisfying.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: I can imagine. I can imagine that he's quite satisfied, Dan.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: In the first Trump term, fact-checking was a very important
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: part of how the press was thinking about holding Trump accountable, right?
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: He is telling all these lies. It is our job
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: to sort reality out. for our readers. We're going to
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: fact check them. We're going to do it, bring on
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: people like Daniel Dale and CNN right afterwards. And I'm
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: curious how that's going to happen this time. I want
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: to have you listen to this clip from Trump's recent
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: press conference where Peter Alexander tries to question the reality
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: of what Trump just said. Let's take a listen.
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: The cited FAA tax that you read is real, but
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: the implication that this policy is newer than it stems
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: from efforts that began under President Biden or the Transportation
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: Secretary Pete Buttigieg is demonstrably false. It's been on the
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: FAA's website.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: Who said that, you?
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: No, it's on the website, the FAA's website. It was
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: there in 2013. It was there for the entirety of
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: your administration, too. So my question is, why didn't you
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: change the policy during your first administration?
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: I did change it. I changed the Obama policy, and
• 23:13
  Speaker 6: we had a very good policy. And then Biden came in,
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: and he changed it. And then when I came in,
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: Two days, three days ago, I signed a new order
• 23:20
  Speaker 6: bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: Please.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Quiet, quiet. So Peter Alexander here, who's the MSC news correspondent,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: does exactly what you're supposed to do. Trump holds this
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: press conference, makes a series of claims that are demonstrably
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: not true. He corrects him on it. Trump runs right
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: over him. And I guess the question is, what value
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: do you see in fact-checking? Is it still an important
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: part of journalism? Is it even possible when you have
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: a president who you're an administration or even a political
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: party right now who's sort of willing to ignore reality?
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess, you know, as you know, I
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: come from a slightly weird corner of the world. I
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: never really liked the formalized fact-checking. Like, I think journalists'
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: job is to get the facts right and that you
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: shouldn't outsource that to some other often Facebook-funded or whatever
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: institution populated by 23-year-olds who are learning how to do
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: their jobs. But anyway, let me bracket that particular rant. No,
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's a level of, I mean,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: the media, the news media is weaker than it used
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: to be. It was weaker in 2016 than it thought
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: it was. Maybe it realizes how weak it is now,
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: but like what, I mean, I think there's some question
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: of what's the, like we should get our facts right.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: We have a responsibility to our readers to tell them
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: what's really going on. Are we going to disabuse Trump's
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: supporters of things that they believe or, or of things
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: that maybe aren't really being received as facts, but more
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: as political statements or as sort of, you know, like,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: it doesn't seem like it. It doesn't seem like those
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: fact checks were changing a lot of minds or reaching
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of people who were looking to have the
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: facts checked. And so I think that kind of formalized
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: fact checking, I mean, I'm not sure what it was
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: doing in the end. There's a fair amount of research
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: on media effect and media impact that none of us
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: actually wind up looking at that much. But I think
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: it's often interesting to ask, well, okay, did this, did
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: we do some focus groups where this then changed people's
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: minds and people came in thinking that one thing was
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: happening and then read factcheck.com and left thinking another thing
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: was happening. I don't really see a lot of that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: I do think this is a real obvious case where
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: there's a factual dispute. It is, in fact, the journalist's
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: job to resolve it and say what is true and
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: for people who are looking for it to read the
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: true thing. A lot of things that got fact-checked were
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: sometimes a little hazier, were sometimes more political disputes. Is
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: immigration good for the economy? That's not really a fact-checkable claim.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: That's an argument among economists.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that was– I mean even– that's been
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: a problem even in my days in government. Like I
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: would rage at my desk at the Washington Post fact
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: checker for taking a sort of a statement of values
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: or a statement of principle and then assigning some of
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: their Pinocchios to it because you could find– Yeah. Like
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: you could.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Nitpick it in a way. Yeah, it's the most pedantic
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: imaginable approach to politics. And I think sometimes– kind of
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: annoyed people and backfired in that way. But I think
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: the broader question of, I mean, I, you know, there is,
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is honestly often true with the first
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: wave of people who come into government that like, they
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: believe some things that are just not true about reality
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: and about how government works. And they come in with
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: some things that they've said on the campaign trail about,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think you saw this in the Biden
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: administration with the Saudis, frankly, like they had some views
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: on Saudi Arabia that did not survive contact with reality
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: and wound up being the Saudis best friends just to,
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: just to kind.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Of like, but like, Yeah, I mean, to me, that's
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: a slightly different one.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: But for instance, I wrote about this guy named Darren Beatty,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: who's going to be in the State Department. And it
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: has some views on how they were trying to orchestrate
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: color revolutions, like Eastern European style. The people who had
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: orchestrated the color revolutions in Eastern Europe had come back
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: here and were trying to orchestrate against Trump. At some level,
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: that's a factual claim. Do we think that happened? And
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: I do think that I'm sort of more interested in
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: some ways in people who are like, arriving with Trump
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: with a set of beliefs that may or may not...
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Because I think the one thing that people underestimate is
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: a lot of the people who are saying things, they
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: believe the things they're saying. Some of it is nonsense. Bannon,
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I think, often will just tell spin yarns whose details
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: are not all true and doesn't believe all of them.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: But a lot of these folks believe what they're saying.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: I think RFK mostly believes the things he says about vaccines.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess on a day-to-day basis, as you cover...
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: politics or government or whatever, everything in the world you're covering. Like,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: what do you, like, what is your, what did like,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: what do you say to your reports is your task?
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, you know, I
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: think we are trying to speak to a really informed
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: audience that has to understand what's actually going on because
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: they're encountering it in the world of business economics. Um, politics.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, actually, you know, the business press often is
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: more reliable than the political press because they are talking
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: to people who have to make, you know, have to
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: trade stocks, have to make decisions based on reality. So
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, we obviously see that as our responsibility.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: We also, I mean, I do think it's a moment
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: when you sort of have to bring some humility as
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: a journalist, whether you like it or not, because we
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: have the industry, like we have less power than we did.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And we definitely do try to do two specific things.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: And one is to try to say to readers that
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: because I do think people live in these deep information bubbles.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: And it's not that you necessarily believe the things that
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: are being said on Fox News, but it is important
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: if you're a listener of POTS to probably know what
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: they're talking about some of the time, like literally what
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Republican legislators are walking into the House with no idea
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: what the Democratic colleagues like read that morning. And the
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Democrats have no idea what the Republicans were reading. And
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: so we have this very popular feature called Blindspot that's
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: literally like, we're not trying to arbitrate the reality of this.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Often these are true stories just with different emphasis, totally
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: different emphasis. But the Republicans are talking about some crime
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: committed by an illegal immigrant in Colorado, and the Democrats
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: are talking about some just totally different story, right? And
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: I think some level of just trying to say, like,
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: this is giving a glimpse of the reality that the
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: other side is living in is pretty useful. I mean,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: just sort of actionably useful. And sometimes I do think
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: social media is a machine for taking the stupidest thing
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: that your opponent said and the stupidest version of the
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: stupidest thing they think and constantly barraging you with it.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: And there might be someone in there who's actually making
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: a reasonable case you could argue with, but it will
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: be totally swept away in social media. And I think
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: we do try to sort of, you know, to elevate
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: the stronger arguments and to try to like create some
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: space for reasonable disagreement. So I think there's a fair
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: amount of that too. Although there is also, as you say,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: like some like eroding shared factual basis around this for sure.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Pots of America is brought to you by stamps.com. We're
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: in the news business here at Crooked Media, which means
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• 31:24
  Speaker 2: I think the blind spot thing is very interesting because
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: in my career in politics, one of the things that
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: was a fundamental shift in how government and politics worked
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: was the moment Republicans and Democrats stopped reading the same media,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: which probably happened about midway through the Obama years. The
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: people would pretend like they were playing a part, particularly
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: around 2010 when the Tea Party took off. A lot
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: of the Republicans were appealing to But they were still
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: reading the New York Times. They were still reading Politico.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: They were seeing everything else. And so we were operating
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: under the same set of reality, at least in a
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: private negotiation you were having over legislation. We all sort
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: of agreed on the same reality. Right about, I would say,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: midway through Obama's second term, kind of when Facebook became–
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Republicans radicalized a little bit after Obama's reelection. Fox News
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: became sort of more powerful. And then the sort of
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: right-wing media ecosystem took off, sort of powered by Facebook.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: So the Breitbart era– daily caller. Right around 2014, it's
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: like we stopped having the same reality. We were having
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: completely different conversations. And it is– so that speaks to governing.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: And in politics, it is– the difference has been that–
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: and I think this might be changing a little bit,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: for better or probably for worse, is that Democrats had
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: a media diet that was primarily legacy media. Still, we're
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: in the near times, still it's NPR. Maybe it would
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: skew a little on the more left-leaning part of that
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: legacy media diet, but it was traditional media abiding by
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: the rules of journalism as commonly understood. And the Republicans
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: had shifted to something totally different that did not abide
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: by and often sort of spat in the face of
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: those rules. And now we are fully in that moment
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: where the Trump administration and Republicans writ large, up and down,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: it's not just in Washington, it's everywhere, exist in this
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: wholly other media ecosystem. And that media ecosystem is becoming
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: much less clear to anyone else because it's not just,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: it's not like you, like, yes, you could turn on
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Fox news and that would be a very good idiot's
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: guide to what the right is thinking. But that's often,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: I think in this day and age, it's kind of
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: a lagging indicator of what's really bubbling up. Like, are
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: you like, do you know what's happening on rumble? Are
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: you watching, you know, are you listening to the daily
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: wire or reading Barry Weiss or some of these other
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: things that are, um, yeah, those are really affecting it.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an incredibly fragmented system that you're describing. And
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, right, there's a big distance between Rumble and
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: Barry Weiss. These are all different things. I think there
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: are parts of it, I think. I was talking to
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: a really prominent conservative podcaster who was saying that they
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: spend a lot of their time complaining about the journalists
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: and everything they get wrong. And then once in a
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: while there'll be a holiday. And they're like, where is
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: the flow of news for me to talk about? It's
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: so annoying. And it's like, oh, all the people I
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: hate are like, taking vacation with their kids, and so
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: there's no fodder for me. There's no underlying information. I
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: do think there's this question that gets kicked around sometimes. Actually,
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Tucker Carlson founded The Daily Caller to solve this. It
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: did not. Which is that there's no real center-right, far-right
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: reporting apparatus, or not much of one. Actually, one of
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: the things that distinguishes Breitbart from the others is they
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: do some original reporting. Most of the places, a lot
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: of the places in that world, podcasters, are really commentating
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: and reacting and off work. reacting to things they've seen
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: on social media, which really are often made up. And
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: there's like a lack of a kind of baseline of, yeah,
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, it would be healthy if the Trump movement
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: developed more reporting muscles, honestly.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: You've mentioned a couple times here that the media is
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: weaker than it has been and maybe recognized its weakness.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I think just to put that sort of in perspective, right,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: we had the 2024 election where The candidates interacted less
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: with the media than at any point.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Trump did famously.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: No interviews with a mainstream media organization for the last,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: you know, whatever it was, month of the campaign. Harris
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: did historically few. They took few– Harris took few questions
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: from the press. Then– and then you have just, you know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: you have to, you know, drop in cable subscriptions, ratings,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: the– economics, the Washington Post is losing money. The media
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: has been weaker at this point than it has been
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: in any time. On top of that, the credibility and
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: the reach of the legacy media is obviously at its nadir.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Is it fair to wonder whether the right, who's been
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: raging a decades-long war against the media, has now won
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: that war?
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, I mean, yes, I think that's
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: a reasonable thing to say. Like, what's the prize for
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: winning that war? I'm not sure. I mean, there's a couple,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: just when you talk about trust, like the polling data
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: here is worth looking at because it's interesting. And basically
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: what you see is that, like, starting with Dan Rather, actually,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: all of the decline in trust in the media is
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: among Republicans. Like, the independents, pretty flat. Democrats, pretty flat.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: But you see this decline starting with Dan Rather in 2004.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Republicans start saying the media is too liberal. And then
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: at some point in the Trump years, it flips from
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: the media is too liberal to the media is making
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: everything up. And that's a huge difference. And that's sort
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: of what you're talking about. It used to be a
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: shared reality in which Republicans complained about the refs, sometimes justifiably,
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: to a situation in which they believe that the whole
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: thing is made up. And that is a big shift.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: And then the final thing that is kind of dispiriting
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: is the one place that trusted media is eroding among
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Democrats is among young people. And that's happening pretty fast now.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: And it's, they just, I participate.
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: And I, and I've done, I was, I saw a
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: lot of focus groups, a lot of research in how
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Gen Z gets their news. And just the idea of
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: going to a website to get news is like, we never,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: it doesn't even occur to them. The idea that you
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: would turn on the television to watch news does not.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: And, and, you know, my daughter, um, you know, if she, uh,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: if she knew about Huffington post and she was like, Oh,
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: is that, is that something in safari?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Just, I mean, you, you wrote about
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: this in your book and you've talked about a lot
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: of the interviews when you're talking about a couple years ago,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: but is just the, uh, and this is sort of
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: where we, so you have, you have two things. You
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: have lack of trust in media, which is, uh, and
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: growing among Democrats, particularly among young people. You have what
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: I think is actually a distribution crisis in news, which is,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of the short version history I always
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: do is that if you were a person who was
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: not a news junkie in the pre-internet era, you had
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: to see the news, some form of the news. You
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: would bump into it organically because someone literally threw a
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: newspaper at your door every morning. And you had to
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: open that if you wanted to know when the movies were,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the baseball score, the weather, like something happening in your
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: local town, you would see headlines, right? If you wanted
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: to know the news, you wanted to know the weather
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: the next day, You had to turn on the 6
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: o'clock news and you would see news that way. And
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: then we kind of– we moved from newspapers. I mean
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: this has been your whole career. We sifted to– we
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: trained some group of people that they should go to www.nytimes.com
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: or www.politico.com in the morning. Like the same way you
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: would grab a cup of coffee and read a dead
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: tree newspaper, you would grab a cup of coffee and
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: pull up your laptop or your– if it was at
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: a certain year, your iPad and you would look at
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: a website and read the news that way. Maybe the
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: first thing you did at work, right, was you would
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: sit down and read the news. Then social media came
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: and we have like, we have a better plan. Facebook's
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: going to deliver the news to your phone. You're going
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: to see it. And even if you're just like scrolling
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: through for your, to look at pictures of your friend's
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: kids or whatever else you know on Facebook, we go
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: killing time in the grocery store, waiting in line. You
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: would see some sort of news. And then some point
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: after 20, and Twitter served the same function for a
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: small group of people. Then around 20, sometime after 2020,
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: that all fell apart. And now it's like, how do
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: people get... There is no major distribution mechanism for legacy
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: media to reach people who are not actively seeking it out.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: That is the thing that has changed.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really good way to put it.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would say you know, that these things
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: keep changing. Like it's, I don't think it's reached a
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: static point. And I think that the thing that you describe,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: which sounds incredibly disorienting and maddening, most people, most consumers hate,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: like if you ask people like, Hey, do you think
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: this is working for you? Do you like how you're
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: getting your news? No, everybody hates it. And I think that's,
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, that was sort of what we were reacting
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: to in creating some before was like, just why, and
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: you know, why, why I left the times, just this
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: sense of like, Oh, there's actually an opportunity to like,
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: like to not to respond to the fact that people
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: feel totally disoriented, feel like they don't know what to
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: trust and try to address that stuff directly. And I think,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: and I think you're seeing, so I think that, I mean,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: ultimately we live in this very, very dynamic free market
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: society in which consumers do even, even in news and
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: news is sometimes an exception to that. Like the tradition
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: in news is if the consumers say, we hate you
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: and everything you're doing, we say, fuck you, you're wrong. but,
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: but I think there is this opportunity for both legacy
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: and for new outlets to take pretty seriously how terrible
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: the experience of consuming news is. And a lot of
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: the pendulum swing is back to, um, some of the
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: older values. Like I think the reason that email newsletters
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: are very popular is they actually kind of print, like
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: they force a kind of hierarchy of saying what's important.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: They force a kind of concision cause they're not infinite. Um,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: and I think that's made them very popular. Um, And
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: I think, so I guess I, I mean, I'm obviously
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: an optimist because I wouldn't still be doing this stuff,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: but I do think that the current, the status quo
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: in some ways is kind of untenable. And the fragmentation
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: commercially is extremely annoying too. Like how many sub stacks
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: do you want to subscribe to? How many different streaming
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: services are you going to pay for? Like, and I
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: think there's a very aggressive push and will be over
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: the next couple of years to reconsolidate that stuff, like
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: for better or for worse, but you'll have one subscription
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: to newsletters. You'll have, two streaming services, they'll all swallow
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: each other. Again, that could be bad or that could
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: be good. But I think that experience of just like
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: absolute disorientation and fragmentation, like it's terrible and everyone knows it.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: And so there are a lot of opportunities to fix it.
• 41:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: The question, I think, like, I agree with that. Like
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: we are, we're sort of in a moment and it's,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: this is not, it's like you can do the, have
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: the same conversation about, you know, just content services beyond news, right?
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: Like, are you really.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Going to be going to really pay for how many
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: people are, how many streaming services you're going to pay for?
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: You know, YouTube TV, which has become very popular, is
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: basically just cable through the internet, right? Where it's like,
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: it looks at the same format. So how are you
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: going to, like, is there a way to get back
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: to it? But I wanted to sort of get back
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: to the role of the media. Because it, like, you
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: and I are, like, right now this conversation about distribution
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: is about the business of media, right? Like, how do you,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: because ultimately you need readers to make money, whether that's
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: going to be subscriptions or how you get ads in
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: front of people or whatever that is.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: Just to stop you, though, because I see where you're, like,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: I agree with where you're going. the extent to which
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: all of everything we're talking about, the chaos, the disruption,
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: is all fundamentally driven by these huge technological shifts and
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: business shifts. That is the underlying thing here. It's not
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: little choices made by journalists here and there.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. I fundamentally agree with that. And
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: it is, I think you can, you pointed out a
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: couple of examples, you can point back at various choices
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: made by people in the media, like in the media,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: you do two things. You do the business of media, like,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: giving away your product for free on the internet for
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: a few years, probably in hindsight, not the best move,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: or optimizing a Facebook or whatever else. You can do
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: some things. You can also point to some journalistic choices
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: that have eroded trust, fairly or unfairly, right? You picked
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: the Dan Rather, just the entire coverage of the Iraq
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: war in the run up to it.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: That is the biggest one.
• 43:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: But then you also have cultural shifts that have happened,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: which is in how young people think about news. One
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: of the things you see when you do sort of
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: focus groups of younger folks is they find more authority
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: and more relatable, a piece of content that looks like
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: the conversation you and I are having more than nine
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: pundits at an anchor desk for CNN. Like when they
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: think of news, it is, you know, people with headphones on,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: on a couch or around a table having a podcast,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: or it's a streamer speaking, you know, doing a vertical video.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: And that, like, that is to them what, like the
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: sort of traditional image of Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: or Brian Williams at the Anchor Desk is to previous generations.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's funny. We, on our podcast, Mixed Signals,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: we interviewed Colin and Samir, who are big, big YouTubers
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: who think a lot about, who sort of talk a
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: lot and think about YouTube. And at one point I
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: said to Samir, like, I mean, so when did you
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: start thinking of yourself as a journalist? Like, how'd you
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: get into journalism? And he was like, what? Don't call
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: me that. That's offensive. So yeah, I think it's a,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: And that was a pretty striking thing to me. It's
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: a totally different ecosystem.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break. But before we
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: do that, look, it pains me to self-promote like this.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: It truly does. But Crooked Media is offering a 30-day
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: free trial of my newsletter, The Message Box, and I
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: hope you'll consider signing up. In the months ahead, I'll
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: be breaking down how we got to this terrible place,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: exploring how Democrats can rebuild our coalition, and strategizing about
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: how we can take on the right-wing media machine. I'll
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: also be sharing specific ideas about how you can fight
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: back against Donald Trump and his minions. We're at a volunteer.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: which campaigns matter most, and how to talk to the
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: persuadable voters in your life about the threat Trump poses.
• 44:37
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• 44:42
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• 44:45
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• 44:49
  Speaker 2: That's crooked.com slash yeswedan.
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• 46:19
  Speaker 2: I just want to get back sort of to the
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: role that the media has played in sort of politics
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: and public discourse. Cause that, that to me has been
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: a fundamental shift is it was a measure of accountability, right?
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: We called it the fourth state for a reason. You
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: interacted with the media as a politician or a governmental
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: entity because you, you know, for two reasons, one, you
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: needed the media to get your message out. Like that
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: was a fundamental thing. Like when I, if I was
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: preparing Barack Obama for a press conference, like, like Mike,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: the Faustian bargain in my head is I'm going to
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: take a bunch of questions that are going to be annoying.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: They're going to be about the things that I know
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: voters don't care about. But the price of that is
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: the airwaves. It's the way I can get my message
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: in front of people. And you would react to, you know,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: the media could, if they picked a thing that was
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: going to become the narrative, could change government policy, right?
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: It would create such a firestorm that you would have
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: to stop doing it or change course or whatever else.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: I do sort of question after watching this election, the
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: first couple weeks of Trump, whether like, it seems like
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: that role is so diminished as to be, is that
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: the media becomes, maybe this is for better, not for worse, um,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: from your perspective, but more observed, almost entirely an observer
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: and chronicler of the process opposed to a participant when
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: it was a huge participant in politics for basically since
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: the invention of the newspaper. Yeah.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: And I think, I mean, I don't think it's a
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: binary thing, but obviously, yeah. But I think the media's
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: role in being able to sort of set the agenda
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: essentially is obviously diminished, you know, to some degree given
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: over to whatever, like a non on Twitter caught Elon's
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: eye this morning. Like right now, that's what's driving. That's
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: what you'll see on Fox tomorrow morning and in the
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: white house the next day. Like that's, you know, is
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: literally random people tweeting in Elon's replies. Um, but, um,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: And I guess, yeah, and I think that the media
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: can overplay, you know, can overplay. I do have some
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: ambivalence about that role. And we definitely, I think, we
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: are able, like Semaphore has been able to build a
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: lot of trust with Republicans and Democrats, partly because we do,
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: we see our lane as narrower, right? Like we're trying
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: to tell you what's going on and provide really good information,
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: but not ultimately resolve the argument.
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: That said, I do think that there's a long tradition
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: of people in American politics who think they can shape reality.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: There was a famous... Who was it in the Bush administration?
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: It was Karl Rove in the New York Times magazine.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: He told Robert Draper that they didn't have to be
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: accountable to the reality-based community anymore. At some point, journalism
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: is the reality-based community. The power doesn't really ultimately come
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: from To me, it comes from the fact that you're
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: revealing things that are in fact true and that citizen
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: voters are going to wind up having to react to.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we've– I think people kind of
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: underestimate that that's really the power of it in the
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: first place.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: I think the what is, reality is still reality, right?
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: If let's say the Biden administration had been able to
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: get a bunch of reporters, you like, let's, inflation is
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: an example, right? It did not matter what the New
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: York Times or CNN or Semaphore or anyone else wrote
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: about inflation. People still went to the grocery store. and
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: we're paying more for eggs or milk or whatever. That
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: is reality. The thing that is, I think, harder is
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: people are less informed about what's happening now because it's
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: harder to get news. You have this gigantic gap now.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: We saw this in a bunch of the polling. There
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: was NBC polling before Biden dropped out. You had Navigator
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Research polling afterwards, which just shows that the biggest gap
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: in politics is not left and right. It's news consumers
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: and non-news consumers, which does go to the irony, which
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you might find quite sweet that All the
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Democrats who've been screaming at myself sometimes, including who've been
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: screaming about New York Times headlines, turned out to be
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: the New York Times readers are the ones who were
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: most likely to support Biden or Harris and the people
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: who did not read the news. You do just sort
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: of have this question. To me, that chasm is growing
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: so much larger, really since 2020, I think.
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: And how.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: That to me is a crisis for democracy. All this stuff,
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: you mentioned Elon 50 times, as you should. It's one
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: of the biggest stories maybe in generations of American politics.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: We have the world's richest man possibly running rush shot
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: over laws and rules and norms to just reshape government
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: without any sort of accountability. How many people are actually
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: consuming any of that? How do you get that information
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: to them? Is that your job, I guess, is the question.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, those are all really good questions. I mean,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: I think, I mean, I guess I would say like,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: it's certainly nothing like the democracy that we grew up
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: in in the 20th century with a very kind of state,
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: unusually stable, unusually centrist media. It's a lot like 19th
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: century American democracy, right? I mean, it's a lot like,
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: and I think that, you know, a kind of, There
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: is something about what we're seeing is a kind of
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: small D democratic media that's an absolutely chaotic, hyper-partisan, untrustworthy
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: mess that is very embedded in the history of democracy.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that is a good thing, but I
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: do think that the kind of thing that we know
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: that honestly by the beginnings of our careers was already
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: in trouble, the sort of broadcast, the Walter Cronkite thing,
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: that was the blip. I mean, this is the norm.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: You talked to a lot of Republicans, talked to a
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: lot of Democrats. Do you think Republicans better understand this
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: media environment than Democrats?
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I think that in this moment after the election, everybody
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: thinks that the winning side figured it out and that
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: the losers are morons and everybody is gearing up to
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: refight the last war and every CEO, every politician is
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: going to be booking themselves onto a bunch of podcasts
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: nobody listens to for the next four years. But that
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: in fact, that I think, and then always the world
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: changes faster than they expect. Like, I think we're headed
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: back into a moment of consolidation, basically, and that there's
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: going to be a recentralization of audiences and of content
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: and that like some poor hapless congressional candidate is going
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: to spend 300 hours talking to podcasts nobody listens to,
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: to no discernible effect. But also the Trump, which for
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: the Trump years have, I mean, the consolidation of power
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: in Washington is also really new in media, right? Like
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: the extent to which Media executives are obsessed with what
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: the administration can do to hurt them. And it's true
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: across business. We're hosting this huge World Economic Summit here
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: in April. And just the appetite of CEOs in America
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: to get to Washington to figure out what is going
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: on is really new.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Say a little bit more about moving back to a
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: more centralized media. I assume you don't mean ideologically. What
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: do you mean by that?
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: Oh, just that, you know, I mean, it was technological.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: If you needed, for the late 20th century, you needed
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: a broadcast tower or a printing press if you wanted
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: to reach a lot of people. And not that many
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: people had them. The spectrum was regulated. And so, like,
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: you really had this very, I mean, for technological reasons, fundamentally.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: There were, as you said, about distribution. The system was meant,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: and then the business incentives of those were to sell
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: mattresses to Republicans and to Democrats. And Often that led
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: to something that we look, that we romanticize, actually, a
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: kind of so centrist media, but it also did produce
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: this kind of false consensus around Iraq, which, as you say,
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: is part of why everybody lost trust in that kind
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: of media. But the fundamental change was technological, the splint
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: in the fact that you didn't need these broadcast towers anymore.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: And so I just think it's hard to imagine going
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: back to that. And, you know, there are, like, we
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: definitely see for readers, part of the value is, and
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: I think you do this too, like, we can read
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: everything so you don't have to and go out into the,
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: put on the hazmat suit and go out into social
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: media and find the interesting stuff. Some of which is
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: on weird sub stacks and right wing podcasts and some
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: of which is in the New York times. And it's
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: this very disorienting moment to be a media consumer.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's one of the things that I think with
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: like my media business head on is that one of
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: the places where there is opportunity is basically curation.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: And I, and I trust you, right. And it's, and
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you have to build trust with, The audience has to
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: trust you. And that is, like, for better or for worse,
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: that trust is, you know, you can build brand trust,
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: as I'm sure you guys are trying to do at Semaphore,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: but it's often with people.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: With individuals, totally, yes.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: It's like, I trust Joe Rogan to tell me what's happening.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: I trust Ezra Klein to tell me what's happening. I
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: trust Positive America, whoever else. I mean, you've done that
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: a little bit with some of your reporters, trying to
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: lift them up, like Dave Weigel.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, we definitely are building around that. expert reporters
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: on key beats in a way that in the old days,
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: you would just, you're all cogs in the machine, dispensable
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: cogs in the Wall Street Journal machine. And now if
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: you're Liz Hoffman on Wall Street or Burgess Everett in
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: the Senate, like that's, you know, you trust a person.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: And it's a very, yeah, it's a very, it's a
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: interesting time to be in this business for sure.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Speaking of sort of that sort of curation role, I
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: was thinking, I went back and read your first column
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: as the New York Times media critic. which was claiming
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: that your brand new employer, the New York Times, had
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: grown so successful that it was bad for business. Since then,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: the New York Times has become even bigger, even better read,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: and its putative competitors have struggled mightily since then. Washington Post,
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: most notably. Wall Street Journal still does well, but has
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: had layoffs, et cetera. And so where do you think
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: the New York Times stands right now? Do you still
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: believe it's bad for journalism?
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, I actually think it's scary for the New
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: York Times. Like, you don't want to be the sole
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: strong independent outlet in a kind of democracy where rule
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: of law is a little shaky. Like, that's a bad
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: place to be. And it would be healthier for the media.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: You have a target on you?
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And it would be healthier for the
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: media ecosystem and healthier for the Times and better for
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: the leverage of journalists and their salary negotiations. if there
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: were lots of big competing outlets with sort of somewhat
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: different outlooks on the world. Like, I mean, that's just
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: a healthier system. And I don't know. I mean, I'm
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: hopeful that a couple of other legacy outlets, the Wall
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Street Journal, maybe CNN, could get their acts together and
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: that long, long-term places like the Washington Post can pull
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: it out. And then I do think there's a lot of,
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, I do think that, again, if you go
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: back to like, if you ask people, if you ask
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: your listeners, like, do you think this is all great
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: and you're satisfied with what you're getting or do you
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: want new stuff? People really are hungry for new ways
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: of getting information, for new voices, for somebody who will
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: go out, as you say, and just like sort through
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: all the lunacy for them. And so I think, I mean,
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: I think there's, I mean, I think, you know, we're
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: in this moment of crazy transition and there'll be a
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: bunch of new things too. But yeah, no, I do think,
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's in no one's interest to
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: have one absolutely dominant and defending company.
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: I sort of feel like the New York Times has
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: become Netflix for news, where it's just, it's the place
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: you go for every, it is replaced, sort of like
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: the way Netflix has replaced television, right? Yeah.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: So does Netflix have taste, right? Like Netflix has the
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: stuff that is targeted at conservative people in the middle
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: of the country and the stuff that's targeted at liberals.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they have everything. And the New York
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Times obviously brings with it a brand that exists, but
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: it is, like right now, if I, If I am
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: just like, I want to find out what is happening
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: right now in this moment, my default place to go
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: would just be the New York Times.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: I know, like it's 2005, right? Because for 10 years
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: and then 15 years in the middle, Twitter was where
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: I would have gone to see that. Now you can't
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: use social media for that. Like you just can't ask
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: the question of what is going on and have it answered.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't just open up Twitter and have it
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: be at the top of your feed in the way
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: it was before from a trusted, you know, a reporter
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: or a news outlet you knew that had been verified by, Twitter.
• 58:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: And you want to know what's going on and you
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: want to know what's more important than what else? Like
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: you want to know where on the page it is.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: You want some hierarchy actually in the chaos. No, I mean, it's, that's,
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the opportunity that we see ourselves as
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: running at for sure.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: But it's like right now for a lot of people,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: I think who are sort of in the serious news consumer,
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: it's like, you want to know what's happening in sports.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe you go to ESPN or maybe you go to
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: the New York times and read the athletic, right. You
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: want to know how to cook something. You go there.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: You want to play, you want to play a game.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: You go there. You want to know what's happening. You
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: go there. You want to know who's winning the Grammys?
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: You open up the New York Times app and they
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: are telling you as they come in where they are.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: It is such a dominant position in the ecosystem that
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: it has. To me, I really feel like it has
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: replaced the conglomerate of major news sources you were all
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: getting from Twitter or from whatever you were using 10
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: It is the internet for news, right? In the way
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: that Netflix is the internet for TV and movies, primarily TV.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: You can get a bunch of stuff around the edges
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: but ultimately no i think that's i think that's really
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: true right now but but i think right but we're
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: also sort of in this moment when podcasts like this
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: one like what is this? Is this a pod? Are
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: we on video? Is it television?
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: Is it a podcast? We're on both.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: It's true.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: It's long form content.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: Some people will be watching this on a big screen
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: on YouTube and at some point somebody's going to come
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: and make us both wear makeup to do this so
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: our skin looks less weird. And then suddenly we're just
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: like idiots in boxes screaming at each other just like cable.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: And I think there's a really, really fast convergence happening
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: between what we used to call podcasts and what we
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: used to call television. And I don't quite know where
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: that lands, but I think that's People don't quite realize
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: the speed at which that's happening and at which that's
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: going to be a kind of re-centralized form of consumption.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: You see it on ESPN, right? You see Pat McAfee
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: out in the afternoons on ESPN. It's like, what's happening here?
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Like one guy's head is bigger than the other guy's head.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is the conventions of television as we
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: know it are coming down in news particular. And the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: things that people don't sort of realize– who sort of
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: even like people even who work in journalism or who
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: are in the communications field in politics or PR or
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: whatever else is there is still like a old world
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: mentality that's hard to break out of because you're always
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: people like people, a lot of people are generationally like
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: frozen in Amber. And when they started in media, I
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: think that's very true of politicians.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: Every single one of us.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: But I think some people, and I give you kind
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: of this point have, you know, you have been indifferent. You,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: you know, you were sort of, you were a tabloid
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: reporter in the, in New York city. You were, A blogger,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: when blogs took off and sort of the RSS feed
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: became the– you've ridden the wave. I've tried to ride
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: the wave as well. But the fact that you don't
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: sort of realize is, one, the biggest podcasting platform in
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: the world is not Spotify. It's YouTube.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: And that a shocking– the numbers of people who watch
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: YouTube on their actual smart TV in their house shocks people.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: That it's so yeah would you like put on nicer
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: clothes if you really thought.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: About it i put on a sweat normally i'm wearing
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: a t-shirt i put on an actual sweater i would
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: not have put on i would not have put on
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: a sport coat because this is this is a podcast
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: or this is it's not a funeral court uh funeral
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: wedding or court date.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: So but yeah but but actually you're you're also running
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: a media business and like don't you must be thinking
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: like why don't you have like some hour of MSN,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: why isn't pod save providing an hour to CNN or
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: MSNBC or something? Like, why are they paying these people
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: way more than you would charge them to provide an
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: hour of programming? Like, don't you see that stuff converging?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: I think you can see that converging, whether how it converges,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: whether it can actually can like this, this has been
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: the challenge for most media organizations. You've, you've witnessed this
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: is it is, truly with the exception of the New
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: York Times, there is not a good example of a
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: previous legacy media organization that has made an actual transition
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: to digital, right? And it's just like, they cannot do it. Some,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: you know, some like Politico start digitally, right? Like you had,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: like when you started, there was an actual newspaper that
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: people read over lunch at Capitol Hill, but it was
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: a digital first publication. But no one else can do
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: it because they are I mean, it is to the
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: great credit of the New York Times as a business
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: story of pulling that off, that people can't actually do it.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: ESPN is trying to do it, and maybe they'll be
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: successful with, like Pat McAfee is an example of it.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: It is fucking hard. Yeah, Disney's trying to do it. Right,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: it is incredibly hard. But it just seems to me
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: that people are producing, podcasters are producing shows that are
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: more interesting than most of what's on TV, and they
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: have big audience and big followings, and they're doing it
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: for like a tiny fraction of the cost of producing
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: an hour of television. And Meanwhile, television's running out of money.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: And it just seems to me that set of factors
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: means inevitably that I'm going to be in a dentist's
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: office and see your face very soon.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I hope not. Not my face, but maybe some
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: other face. But there is a little of everything is
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: old is new again, which is for a long time,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: the thing ESPN ran all morning was just a video
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: feed of ESPN radio shows. Because ESPN radio was where
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: the money was. And so it was just like, you
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: would just watch Mike and Mike every morning. And I
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: miss it. Another example of it. I mean, Howard Stern.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is that. Right. This is not a complicated business.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: And so what does that mean for this super fragmented
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: political landscape? I actually think it means it gets a
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: little less fragmented and that these kind of re-coalesces around really,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: really big individual voices probably more than, I mean, I
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: think like the Megyn Kelly's of the world, like you guys.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's sort of a reconsolidation around a relatively
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: smaller number of really big voices.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Well, it's like how you think of channels is different
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: because it's not like a network channel. It is either
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: a media network that is centered around a podcast like
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: Crooked Media or Daily Wire or Alex Cooper's Unwell Network
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And usually you're entering it because of the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: talent at the top. And then that gives you entry
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: into the other people. But it exists very differently. You
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: asked me the question about why not CNN and MSNBC.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: The thing that I watch, I talk to a lot
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: of people in the progressive media space, is the thing
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: you have to be careful not to do is take
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: your new thing and then just rebuild the failed model.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: You see this in Substack a lot where the economics
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: of Substack are great when you're small.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: When you're one person.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: When you start hiring a bunch of reporters and doing that,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: you're right back to where you were before, which is
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: it becomes very hard to support it. So how can
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: you do something better? that is new and stays new.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: I think we are just like, this is the reason
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: I want to have this conversation with you of all
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: people today is we are just in a fascinating moment
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: in media and politics is media. Politics is the, is
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: the war for attention. Politics is the information war. And
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: so these things interact in a way that are just
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: sort of critically important to, and it's just, it's happening
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: so fast. Like I used to say that when I
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: left the white house in like 2015, that the period
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: of time from when I went to work for Obama,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: which was before the iPhone came out, to the time
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: I left when Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat were becoming dominant,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: was the fastest period of change in media since the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: invention of the printing press. And I actually think the
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: change from when I left to now is greater than that,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you were there for this almost very linear story.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: It felt like this rocket ship, but we could see
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: where it was going. And then at some point, it
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: just exploded.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: And the whole thing is- It exploded, and new things came.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: And the power of the legacy media- changed dramatically because
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: of technology because of economics etc.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah i think there's a big open question of whether
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: this splintering new right-wing media like what becomes of it
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: does it create its own new york times or does
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: it just continue to spend its time basically yelling about
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: the new york times i think that's a really open question.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah i mean it is like that that is a
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: you know it's and some of them are getting quite
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: big right like Yeah.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: But and does it become boring just to be an
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: attack dog for the people in power? Like to me,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: like that's the most boring and demoralizing form of media
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: to be an attack dog for power. And like that's,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: you know, if you worked really hard to get Donald
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: Trump elected, that's that's sort of what you've become. And
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: so and so I think there's going to be a
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: question of who in the media just sticks with loyalty
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: as their brand. And who tries to, I mean, as again,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: as Murdoch has established sort of an independent voice and
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: power base that is not just fealty to the president.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a ecosystem grown in opposition that, you know,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: are they the dog that caught the car and what
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: do they do with that? I think is going to
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: be a big question going forward.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: It is going to be really confusing to watch for us.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: That is a good summary of where we are in
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: the media world. Ben Smith, thank you so much for
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: this great conversation. It's always good to talk to you.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on, Dan.
• 1:06:57
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