Latest / Question Everything / ‘Kick Him Off The Bench.’ A Judge in Trump’s Pulitzer Case Gets a Prize

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‘Kick Him Off The Bench.’ A Judge in Trump’s Pulitzer Case Gets a Prize · Question Everything

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Mr.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Koontz. Thank you, Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin, and Acting
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Chair Cornyn.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, a state-level judge from Florida, Jeffrey Koontz,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in D.C.,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: hoping to get confirmed for a lifetime federal court appointment
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has nominated him for. I would like
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to thank President Trump for entrusting me with the privilege
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of being nominated to the Southern District of Florida. a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: district where I spent much of my career as an attorney. Then,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: just last week, while the Senate is still considering his nomination,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: an organization called the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: an ethics complaint against Judge Kuntz. What are you hoping
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: will happen?
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Kick him off the bench.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: This is Seth Stern. He's chief of advocacy at the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Freedom of the Press Foundation and helped file the complaint.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It's quite a severe punishment they're hoping for. Here, Judge
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Kuntz is on the verge of being confirmed by the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Senate for a huge promotion, a lifetime federal judgeship. But
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: instead of giving him that, Seth wants the judicial board
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: in Florida to take away Judge Kuntz's gavel and to
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: strip him of his law license altogether. And here's why.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Judge Kuntz recently ruled on a defamation lawsuit that Donald
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Trump has filed in Florida against, of all places, the
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  Speaker 1: board of the Pulitzer Prizes, the most prestigious award in journalism.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: As we all know, the president is on a legal
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: crusade against the press. He sued the New York Times,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, CBS, the Des Moines Register,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: among others, for sometimes billions of dollars. But this lawsuit
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: against the Pulitzer Board is definitely the most peculiar. Trump's
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: suing them for giving an award for coverage that was
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: critical of him. The case is still ongoing, and that's
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: in large part because of Judge Kuntz. The Pulitzer Board
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: tried to get the case thrown out, and Judge Kuntz,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: sitting on a panel with two other judges... ruled in
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Trump's favor. He said Trump could move forward with the case,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: handing the president a big victory. At the same time, though,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Seth says Judge Kuntz was doing something that he didn't
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: tell the Pulitzer Board about.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: The Pulitzer Board did not know while Judge Kuntz was
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: considering their case that he had been seeking a nomination
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: to the federal bench, a lifetime appointment as a federal
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: judge while the case was pending. And of course, he
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: is seeking that nomination from the Trump administration.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: While Judge Kuntz was considering Trump's case against the Pulitzer Board,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: behind the scenes, he was trying to get the nomination
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: for a lifetime judgeship from Donald Trump, working to get
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a Republican senator from Florida to put in a good
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: word for him with the president.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Obviously, Donald Trump has a very involved role in selecting
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: the judges who he commonly calls his judges. And word
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: that a judge had ruled in his favor on one
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: of his many frivolous lawsuits is likely to be helpful
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: in securing a nomination from the president. If I were
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: in front of this judge litigating a case involving Donald Trump,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: I would certainly want to know that that judge was
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: seeking a judicial appointment from Donald Trump. Seems pretty obvious
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: that he should recuse himself or disclose the conflict, but
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: he did neither.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: It looks pretty fishy.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe even fishier.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: He wasn't the only judge on that panel who was
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: also seeking a judgeship from President Trump. There was also
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: a judge named Ed Artaud, and he not only ruled
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: in favor of Trump, but he issued a concurring opinion
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: in the case that that read like a MAGA manifesto.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: It called for the repeal of New York Times versus Sullivan.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: It talked about fake news. It hit all these talking points.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember reading that. I think he says fake
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: news in all caps.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: It read like something Trump would put on Truth Social.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: The only reason to put all of that in a
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: concurrence is that he was writing for an audience of one.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: After this judge, Judge Artaud, issued that Trumpy decision, Trump
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: also nominated him to a lifetime appointment, and he got it.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: The Senate confirmed Artaud to the federal court last September.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: This was despite Seth's organization filing an ethics complaint against him, too.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So basically, what it appears has happened, two judges who
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: were hearing the case have ruled in favor of Donald
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Trump and have since been nominated by Trump to higher judgeships,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: which certainly looks like a quid pro quo. even if
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: not an explicit one.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Right. Whether it's a direct quid pro quo or whether
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: it is just an effort by the judges to boost
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: their stock to get on Trump's radar, both of those
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: under the ethics rules are not permitted. Everyone knows who
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: they're dealing with when you're dealing with the Trump administration.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: They're transactional. Do you scratch their back?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: They scratch yours.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I've been following Trump's cases against the press pretty closely.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I know how bad they are for the press. But
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I hadn't considered this noxious byproduct that when a president
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: is suing somebody personally, it gives judges an easy opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to use the case to curry favor with them by
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: issuing decisions they know the president will like. The Freedom
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of the Press Foundation has been trying to stop the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: potential graft by filing these ethics complaints. But according to
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: reporting on Capitol Hill, it looks like Judge Kuntz is
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: on track for Senate confirmation regardless. The judge told senators
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: that Florida's ethics rules did not require him to disclose
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: his attempts to get the appointment from President Trump. Last year,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I interviewed the editor-in-chief of Semaphore, Ben Smith, about Trump's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize board. Ben, who previously
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: was the New York Times media columnist and before that
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, was reporting on the Pulitzer case
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and had dug up several scoops. And he was also arguing...
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: that Trump and his legal team are actually making a
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: compelling point in the case about facts and truth.
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  Speaker 2: I think legally, I think that's a very tenuous argument. Journalistically,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I think it is a reasonable argument.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So this week, with Trump's judges from the case on
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the rise and people calling for their robes, I wanted
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: to share that interview with you again. The story of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the president's lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board, which we
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: first aired in February of last year. From Placement Theory
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and KCRW, I'm Brian Reed. This is Question Everything, where
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: we investigate how the truth gets buried, distorted, denied, and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the ways that people are fighting to make it matter again.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Stick around. Trump's soup is about the coverage of Russiagate.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Quick refresher, in case you blocked this out. After it
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: started becoming clear in 2016 that the Russian government had
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: tried to influence the U.S. election— There were allegations that
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Trump and members of his family and campaign had collaborated
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: with the Russian government, maybe even conspired with Vladimir Putin
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: to win Trump the election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the first two years of Trump's first term investigating these
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: claims and the nature of Russia's involvement in the election.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: And the media could not get enough of the story.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: The numbers are kind of staggering looking back at it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Between Election Day 2016 and and the release of Mueller's
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: final report two and a half years later, MSNBC dedicated 32%
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: of all its coverage to the Russia story. That's according
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to an assessment by the Columbia Journalism Review. CNN devoted 26%
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of its coverage to it. By one count, there were
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: more than a half a million articles and segments about
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the Russia story overall. And at the end of it all,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Mueller did not find evidence of a conspiracy between Trump's
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: campaign and the Russians' conspiracy. Yes, there were shady incidents,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: receptive emails and meetings from Donald Trump Jr. and some
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: convictions that came out of it for crimes not directly
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: related to the campaign. But that Columbia Journalism Review study
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: found that more than a third of CNN viewers and
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: more than 40% of MSNBC viewers came away from the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: coverage believing that Donald Trump had a formal agreement with
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Russian actors to turn the election results towards him. And
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: that just isn't true. There's no evidence of that. When
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I talk to people about how they feel about journalists,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the Trump-Russia story has got to be one of the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: top three examples they bring up as to why they've
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: distanced themselves from journalism. And with this Pulitzer lawsuit that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Ben Smith has been writing about, Trump is trying to
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: force the issue. He's trying to force journalists to reconsider
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the Russia coverage in a way that is somehow both
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: ridiculous and shrewd.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: I was chatting with someone in Trump's orbit about all
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: these lawsuits and I was sort of like, which of
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: these is your favorite? Which do you think is the
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: interesting one? And they were like, you know, no one's
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: talking about this. But the Pulitzer case is both legally
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: kind of interesting, although I think a lot of First
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Amendment lawyers think ultimately a huge stretch. I think it's
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: making an interesting argument about journalism.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Here's what happened. In 2018, the Pulitzers did something unusual.
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  Speaker 1: They gave an award to two competing publications, The Washington
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Post and The New York Times. for their overall coverage
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: of the Trump-Russia story.
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  Speaker 2: They covered it very aggressively through 2017 and were rewarded
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: for their diligence for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. The
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: highest award for journalism is for very high-profile stories by
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: very capable reporters.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Something like 20 articles from both papers were listed as
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: part of the prize. Stories about how Trump's national security
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: advisor and attorney general had private discussions with Russia's U.S.
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  Speaker 1: ambassador before taking office. reporting about how Donald Trump Jr.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer who was
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: offering compromising information about Hillary Clinton, even though that didn't
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: lead to anything. So these stories, they get the Pulitzer
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: in 2018. Then the Mueller report comes out in the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: spring of 2019, saying these interactions didn't amount to conspiracy.
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  Speaker 1: Fast forward to the fall of 2021. Trump is out
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: of office.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And... Trump writes a letter to the Pulitzer board. demanding
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: that they retract their award to the Times and the Post,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: essentially based on the Mueller report and based on the
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: fact that there wasn't evidence that he colluded with Vladimir
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Putin to rig the election. And the Pulitzer board then
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: in 2022 put out a statement saying that they've reviewed
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: the prize. They've conducted, in fact, a confidential review with
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: a journalist they will not name doing this review. And
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: based on that, they're standing by the prize. And Trump's
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: lawyers see this and just see it as this incredible gift,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: because the statute of limitations has run on suing the
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: New York Times and the Washington Post for defamation. It's
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: run on suing the Pulitzer Board for defamation based on
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: the award. But this new statement gives them new legal traction.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Had the Pulitzer Board just said, screw you, we stand
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: by our story, or expressed any other opinion, we think
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: you're an idiot and should leave us alone, that would
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: be opinion. And you can't—opinion isn't defamatory. Or they could
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: have said, you know what, we still think these are
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: great stories. That's also an opinion. Hard to see how
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: that's defamatory. But by saying we did a bunch of research,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: looked into this, that moved it back into arguably, and
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: this is what a Florida judge has found, moved it
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: back into the kind of claim that can be considered defamatory.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: And so they sue based on the new statement and
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: say that the Pulitzer Board defamed him by saying that
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: its old prize was appropriately awarded and they wouldn't retract it.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: That that's defamatory, even if all the other stuff wasn't.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: If you read the motions and the briefs in this lawsuit,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Trump is not complaining about specific facts that the Washington
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Post and New York Times got wrong in its reporting
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  Speaker 2: for which they won the Pulitzer. And he's not suing
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: the Washington Post and the New York Times. He is
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: suing the Pulitzer Board. And he's not suing the Pulitzer
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Board for awarding the prize. He's suing the Pulitzer Board
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: on the grounds that when Trump demanded that they retract
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the prize, that that statement standing by it was defamatory.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Because by 2022, you should have known that this was
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: a wild goose chase and didn't deserve the Pulitzer, in
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Trump's view. I think legally, I think that's a very
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: tenuous argument. Journalistically, I think it is a reasonable argument.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Say more, why is it journalistically a compelling or possibly
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: legitimate argument?
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  Speaker 2: As somebody who did a lot of reporting on Russian interference,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I think that's basically accurate, that that reporting, and the
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: reporting on the Mueller investigation, which was itself dramatic and interesting,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: ultimately was a bit of a wild goose chase. If
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: you said to me in 2017, look, I think there's
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence that raises the question of whether
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump is colluding with the Russians, you would not
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: be an insane person. You would be looking at the
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: available evidence and thinking, this is pretty disturbing and interesting.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: If you said that to me right now, I would think, well, like,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: you're a little crazy. Like, there's really not evidence for that.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: And like, every journalist and law enforcement agency has looked
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: really hard at it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Our understanding of just the broad kind of consensus on
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: a story changes, basically, over time as things get revealed.
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  Speaker 2: But that's the point of journalism. I mean, it is
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: the first draft of history.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: It When Ben started going through the filings in the case,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: he realized, oh, man, what Trump and his legal team
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: are trying to do here, the way the case is structured,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the way they frame the arguments, it actually draws out
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: in an illuminating way a limitation of journalism.
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  Speaker 2: One of the things that really distinguishes reporting and professional
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: journalism from citizen journalism and from really hyper-partisan journalism and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: from whatever you call all the other claims and allegations
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: floating around in the world, is that when we get
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: stuff wrong, we correct it. And there's a real mechanism for,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: you got a fact wrong, you are required to go
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: back and fix it, or else your boss is going
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: to get mad at you. It's the culture and the
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: systems of professional journalism. There is not a mechanism for
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: when you get the whole thing wrong. You can have
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: stories that are factual, but that are chasing... something that
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: ultimately is nonsense. I mean, the most recent instance of
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: this was all the reporting on the drones over New Jersey.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Did you clock this story? At the end of last year,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: people started reporting all these sightings of objects in the
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: sky that appeared to be drones, mostly in New Jersey.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Seemed weird. 5,000 tips came into the FBI. Mayors and
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: county officials started weighing in. People were demanding an explanation
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: from the Biden administration. And then the administration started investigating.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: People in news outlets started asking, could these drones be
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: tied to Iran or China? Finally, multiple federal agencies released
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: a joint statement saying these things in the air were
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: not a threat. After Trump was inaugurated last month, his
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, said this to reporters in her
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: very first press conference.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: Before I turn to questions, I do have news directly
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: from the President of the United States. After research and study,
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: also hobbyists, recreational, and private individuals that enjoy flying drones.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: not the enemy.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I think the conclusion by many people is that was
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: mass hysteria. But lots of reporters reported on what people
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: said about drones in New Jersey. And some people quoted
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: sources saying it must be the Chinese or it must
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: be the Iranians. And that was all in good faith, right?
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: But ultimately, that was a wild goose chase. And we
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: should all be kind of embarrassed. But there's no formal
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: mechanism for saying, not, you know what, that guy I
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: quoted in paragraph six, I got his name wrong and
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: we have to correct and we're really sorry. But like
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: we have egg on our faces and look like idiots
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: because this was all a bunch of lunacy.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And there's also no formal mechanism for retracting a Pulitzer
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: based on a sweep of stories that ages poorly. The
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer's focus is on the accuracy of the facts.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: The most egregious and sort of widely reviled Pulitzer ever
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: was Walter Durante's reporting in The New York Times about
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: how great Stalin was. They did not retract. They refused
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: to retract that after reviewing it because they agreed it
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: was despicable. But they said, you know what, there were
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: no fact questions about the factual reporting. And it doesn't
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: seem like he was lying. It just seems like he
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: was an idiot or an ideologue. The one case where
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: I think the Washington Post gave back its prize was
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: where a reporter had made up a kid and written
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: a story about an imaginary eight-year-old heroin addict in which
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: she had lied, she'd fabricated.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Here's the statement the Pulitzer Board put out after the reviews.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: This is the statement that Donald Trump is suing the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: board over. I'm going to read the whole thing because
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: these are the precise words he claims defamed him. From
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: July 18th, 2022, quote, The Pulitzer Prize board has an
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: established formal process by which complaints against winning entries are
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer board
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: on Russian interference in the U.S. election. and its connections
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to the Trump campaign, submissions that jointly won the 2018
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: National Reporting Prize. These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: organizations to our national reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: separate reviews converged in their conclusions that no passages or headlines, contentions,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: or assertions in any of the winning submissions, were discredited
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: It's a very kind of appropriately, absolutely literalist approach to
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: the question of, did these stories get it right? And
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: went back and looked at all the facts and the
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: stories and the claims, so-and-so met so-and-so on such-and-such a day.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: You go back, yes, they did in fact be done
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: that day. And I think that's actually a very strong
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: defense of those stories. Story by story, not only did
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: they not say Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: they say, here is a weird meeting that happened, but
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: our FBI sources say they do not have any evidence
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians. Kind of
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: story by story, they're not making that allegation.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And yet, with every little scoop or headline flying around
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: social media in real time, 24 hours a day, with
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: people reacting and speculating to the new details like plot twists,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: with the constant coverage on cable news, Ben says that
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: wasn't the impression one would come away with. And that's
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: what Trump is going after the Pulitzers for.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Trump wants to sue not over some detail about whether
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: some meeting with the Russian ambassador was on a Tuesday
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: or Wednesday, but over the whole thing. You know, it's
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: a very strange lawsuit. It's all about the narrative, the
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Russia collusion hoax. He wants to soon capture J Journalism,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: which the Pulitzer Board embodies.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: It's kind of ingenious in that way.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it raises a really, I mean,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: it raises a very interesting point. It is also, by
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: the way, a form of harassment against a bunch of
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: journalists who are just trying to do a good job
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: and award a prize. The Pulitzer Board isn't itself like
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: an institution. It's not like they're Pulitzers Incorporated and these
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: are the members of the Pulitzer Incorporated Board. This is
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: just a bunch of people who call themselves the Pulitzer Board.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Just a group of like 20 journalists. The New Yorker
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: editor David Remnick, the editor of the Boston Globe, people
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: And not just journalists. Because the Pulitzers don't give awards
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: only for reporting. There's a couple professors caught up in this.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: The poet Elizabeth Alexander. The novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. Catherine Boo,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the best-selling nonfiction writer, is being sued, not to mention
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: journalists from local papers around the country.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And so the lawsuit is against all of them personally,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: which is a headache. It's no fun, I know, to
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: be sued for defamation.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: After a quick break, I asked Ben Smith about his
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: personal role in the creation of the Trump-Russia narrative, which
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: was significant. The Trump team actually alludes to it a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: lot in their lawsuits. That's in a sec. Welcome back
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: to the show. I'm talking to Ben Smith of Semaphore,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: formerly editor of BuzzFeed News, about this unusual lawsuit Donald
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Trump has filed against the Pulitzer board. On its face,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: it looks like Trump being sore over a fancy award
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: going to reporters who were critical of him, which it is.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But as Ben's observed, it's also about more than that.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Trump is symbolically suing Capital J Journalism, or maybe another
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: way of looking at it, he's suing American Journalism's board
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of directors for the media's years-long coverage of Trump's connections
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: to Russia. In a sense, Trump's trying to use this
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: lawsuit to blast away the overarching narrative that has, for many,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: stuck as a result of that intense coverage, the idea
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that he was in direct cahoots with Putin and Russia.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: And Ben, notably, made a decision back when he was
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: editor of BuzzFeed News that factored heavily in the formation
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of that narrative. It was the first weeks of 2017.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Trump was gearing up for his inauguration, and a mysterious
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: document was floating around D.C. It had been compiled by
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a former British spy who had been paid by Democrats
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: to dig up dirt on Trump. It contained a bunch
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: of serious allegations, including that the Russian government had blackmailed
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: on the incoming president. This was the Steele dossier. The
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: spy who'd made it was Christopher Steele. You probably remember
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the claim about the pee tape that came from this document.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Very little in the dossier could be verified, and not
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: for lack of trying by reporters. So in the news,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: no one was talking about it plainly. But around Washington,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: everybody was. Spies and senators and reporters. It was an
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: open secret. Eventually, the FBI started looking into it, and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: then CNN did report, cryptically and vaguely, that both President
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Obama and Donald Trump had been briefed about a document
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: with claims related to Russia and Trump. And at that point, Ben,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: who was, again, running BuzzFeed News at the time, decided
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: it was time to publish it in full.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: One of our reporters, Ken Bensinger, was able to get
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: a hold of a copy and where all the other
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: journalists who'd gotten it had been given it on the
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: condition they not do anything with it. Ken got it
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: under a very classic and strange different condition, which was
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: his source, former aide to John McCain, this all later
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: came out in court, basically left him in a room
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: with the document and said, well, I hope you won't
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: take a picture of this and I'm leaving. and left
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: him there for a while. And he, in fact, did
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: take a picture. And so we had the whole document
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: and didn't have any conditions on how we could use it.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: But we published it and said, this is an unverified
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: document that we're publishing because it's influencing the workings of power.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: We didn't publish the dossier because we thought it was true.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: We published it because we thought it was an important document.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I just want to sort of rest on that distinction
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: for a minute.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Happy to rest here for a minute. An uncorroborated document
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: with salacious claims was influencing U.S. politics. out of view
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: of most Americans. So they published it because it was significant,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: not because it was true. Still, Ben stood in the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: newsroom and watched the metrics shoot upwards as thousands, millions
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: of people flocked to BuzzFeed to see the dossier. It
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: was a firestorm. Ben says the one thing he wishes
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: he'd done differently, he wishes he'd stamped unverified on every
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: one of the dossier's 35 pages. BuzzFeed's disclaimer that the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: allegations were not corroborated got lost as the rest of
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the dossier shot around the internet.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: This became kind of proof that Donald Trump was a
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Russian agent without real examination of the thing itself.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I know that you, I've heard that you stand by
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the decision to publish it, and I agree with the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: decision for what it's worth. But since we're talking about
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: this current lawsuit against the Pulitzer Board, where the Steele
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: dossier is mentioned a lot, it's clearly a fixation still
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of Trump and his team.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Understandably.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: When you look back at that decision, I'm just curious
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: what you make of the reverberations that your decision to
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: publish that had.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think one of the things about journalism,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: whether you sort of like this about it as I do,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: or you hate this about it, is you don't know
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen next. We wrote it was unverified,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: and we didn't know if the specific claims were true
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: or false, and that was true. And then the job
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: is to go try and figure out whether they're true
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: or false, and you can't have a real rooting interest
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: in one or the other. And I think That's how
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: it works. It's a weird business, weird profession.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: In the lawsuit, Trump's lawyers described the Russian collusion narrative
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: as self-authenticating. As in, the more media outlets reported on
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: things like the Steele dossier, the more legitimate it seemed.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Law enforcement felt moved to investigate it. The press then
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: reported on those investigations, making it all look even more legitimate.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Trump says this is a conspiracy, an intentional plot to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: take him down.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: You know, there are sort of factual claims here about
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: what happened. And the strongest claim, the thing that calls
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: it a hoax, which is what Trump calls it, is
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: that Steele knew this stuff was false. Maybe the journalists
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: knew it was false. And the whole thing was spread
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: to bring down Donald Trump. I actually don't really see
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence that Steele thought it was false.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: He just published a book. He still claims it's true.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: He's the last person in the world who believes Steele dossier,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: but he's still out there saying, no, no, this was accurate.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So I don't know. Who knows? It's hard to know
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: what's inside people's hearts. But I didn't really get the
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: sense that people who were spreading it thought it was false.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I sometimes thought they really thought it was true. They
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: believed in it fervently against, you know, despite the kind
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: of thin sourcing and the fact that people hadn't been
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: able to verify it. But that's a real factual question, right? Like,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: did the people who were spreading it, was it a
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: hoax made to stop Donald Trump or was it a,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: you know, set of claims by ultimately misguided, concerned citizens?
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: One of the reasons I think it's the latter is
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: because if I was trying to stop Donald Trump with
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: a hoax, I would have released it before rather than
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: after the election. It's harder to stop the guy after
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: he's been elected. Like, there's a reason they call it
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: October surprise, not December surprise or January surprise, because it's
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: too late.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: While the Pulitzer Board was doing its review of the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Times and Post's Russia coverage after Trump's complaints and being
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: all secretive about it, there was another journalist who was
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: conducting his own reexamination. In 2023, Jeff Gerth, a former
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: investigative reporter from the Times and ProPublica, published a massive
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: four-part post-mortem of the Russian collusion saga in the Columbia
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Journalism Review. He called it the press versus the president.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And in it, he goes through at length every leg
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: of that scandal, and how the press dealt with each.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Trump sat with Gerth for two interviews for this piece. Meanwhile,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: when Gerth asked journalists to talk about their coverage of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Trump on the record, he asked more than 60 for interviews,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and only a fraction agreed. No major media organization made
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: a newsroom leader available to discuss the coverage publicly for
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Gerth's story. In the piece, Gerth bemoans how few of
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: his colleagues would talk to him. He writes he was, quote,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: hoping they would cooperate with the same scrutiny they applied
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: to Trump. Ben Smith did agree to talk to Jeff Gerth,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: by the way, about the Steele dossier, etc. In the end,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Gerth comes down pretty hard on the press. He concludes
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that the media did get a lot wrong in its
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: coverage of Trump and Russia, and specifically argues that news
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: outlets loosened their normal standards when they were covering this story.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: He thinks they relied too much on anonymous sources and
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: failed to report information that ran contrary to the popular narrative.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: He calls out the Times, for instance, for ignoring a
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: document showing that the FBI's lead investigator didn't think, after
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: 10 months of looking into Trump-Russia ties, that there was
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: much there. I spent the better part of a week
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: last year reading this tome by Jeff Gerth, and I
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: found it compelling. But then, when I started learning about
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the Pulitzer lawsuit, I found it confusing. And I wanted
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: to ask Ben about it, because here you had two
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: arms of the same university... the Pulitzers are housed at Columbia,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and Jeff Gerth was writing for the Columbia Journalism Review,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: conducting independent reviews by serious journalists and coming to what
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: seemed like conflicting conclusions. One saying, this coverage holds up,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and still deserves the highest prize in journalism. The other saying,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the press messed this up pretty bad. I read Jeff
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Gerth's post-mortem of this whole saga. And, you know, there's
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a section.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Sidebar, so annoying. I talked to Gerth for like an
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: extended period of time, kind of against interest. For his piece.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: And then he wouldn't help me with this piece I did. Anyway.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Are you serious? Well, I want to talk about it
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: because he has a whole lament of journalists like not
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: being open with him for that piece. That's like his whole.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And that he just wouldn't help me. I tried to
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: call him on that hypocrisy.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: What help did you want from him here?
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Just. I want him to leak me the name of
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: the reviewer.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Ben was trying to find out who was the anonymous
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: journalist the Poulter board had brought in to review all
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the posts and times Russia stories that they'd given the
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: award for. The board was being very hush-hush about this
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: person's identity. An anonymous journalist? That's a weird oxymoron. Ben
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to figure it out. And just a couple weeks ago,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: after a bunch of digging, he did figure out who
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the secret journalist was and published a scoop in Semaphore.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: It was a journalist named Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief of Reuters
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: for years. He now runs a center for ethics and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: journalism at NYU.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: You know, honestly, had I thought for a minute and
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: just tried to guess, you know, who would I hire
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: to conduct a review very, very, very carefully, painstakingly, fairly
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: with somebody who is obsessed with journalistic standards? Is Stephen
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Adler the guy?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Ben didn't say whether he trusted Stephen Adler's review more
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: or Jeff Gerth's. But as the conclusions of these two
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: reviews show, there is clearly not agreement on how journalists
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: should think about and go about reexamining narratives that maybe
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: don't hold up. And by even doing that kind of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: review in the first place, the Pulitzer Board accidentally opened
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: themselves up to a lawsuit from the president. So what's
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the state of the lawsuit now against the Pulitzers?
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: So most defamation lawsuits don't survive a motion to dismiss
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: and go away very quickly.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Not this one, though. The Pulitzer Board filed a motion
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: to dismiss the case, which, like Ben said, is usually
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: successful in a defamation suit because the First Amendment gives
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a very strong defense against defamation of public officials like
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the president. But the judge in the Florida county where
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Trump filed the suit, Okeechobee County, which seemingly is just
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: a random county, by the way, where his lawyers thought
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: he'd get a friendly jury. It's not where Mar-a-Lago is.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: The judge denied the Pulitzer board's motion and let the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: case go into its next stage, which means the board
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: has had to start turning over documents, emails, sitting for depositions,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: and preparing for trial. I was texting with my buddy,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: who's a media lawyer this morning, who hadn't really paid
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: close attention to it, just saying we were going to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: talk about this. And he started reading it, and he
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: was just texting me furiously, like, this is bonkers, this
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: is crazy, I can't believe this. you know, just really
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: tearing his hair out that it survived the motion to dismiss.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think media lawyers find it pretty disturbing because
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: some of the consequences are pretty weird. Like if it
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: turns out, if somebody asks you if you awarded a
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: prize correctly and you say, screw you, we did, you're fine.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: But if you say, you know what, that's a really
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: good question. I want to hire a very high integrity,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: experienced person to review and make sure we did a
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: good job, then you get sued. Like that's a bad incentive.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: As of yesterday, this case looks like it could now
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: become even more consequential. A Florida court rejected an appeal
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: by the Pulitzer board that was trying again to get
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the case thrown out. And in the decision, one of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the judges, Judge Ed Artau, went on a tirade against
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: one of the foundational Supreme Court decisions that protects journalism
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: in America, Times v. Sullivan, saying that the Supreme Court
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: in 1964 decided that case incorrectly. He quotes the term
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: FAKE NEWS, all caps, in the ruling. There's a growing
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: movement on the right to challenge Times v. Sullivan and
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: get it overturned, similar to the way Roe v. Wade
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: was overturned, which, if that were to happen, would make
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: it much easier for public officials to win defamation suits
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: against journalists. It'd be a devastating decision for journalism, frankly.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: In the last 24 hours, it looks like the Pulitzer
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: suit has been thrust into that movement. The Pulitzer board
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: said yesterday in a statement, this lawsuit is about intimidation
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: of the press and those who support it, and we
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: will not be intimidated. The Pulitzer Board will continue to
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: recognize the accomplishments of journalists, writers, artists, and composers at
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the highest level. We look forward to continuing our defense
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of journalism. If journalism is the first draft of history,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: then journalism awards are too. They're a record of the times,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: a snapshot of a moment. Even if later that flattering
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: prose about Stalin doesn't age so well, The New York
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Times and Washington Post and others have, of course, continued
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: to report on Trump and Russia, including on Mueller's findings
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and the lack of evidence of a conspiracy. In that way,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: reporting is self-correcting. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't imagine,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: try to imagine, that there might be a way to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: address the issue Ben feels is raised by Trump's lawsuit.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Some approach journalists could agree on, broadly as an industry,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: that would thread the needle between not wanting to give
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: in to a pissed-off president who's on a legal campaign
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: against the press... for stories that are factual, while finding
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: a way to reckon more directly with the public about
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: how the pursuit of those stories may have left them
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: with a skewed impression?
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would be valuable if the
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: institutions that wrote about this stuff were able to reevaluate
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: the story and to say in some clearer way, here's
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: what we got right, here's what we got wrong, in
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: the context of the narrative, really. Because I think this
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: isn't actually about were there factual errors. It's about What
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: really is the deal with Trump's relationship with Russia? What
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: really is the deal with Russia's interference in elections? Which
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I think is clearer now than was then that they
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: were kind of very interested in sowing chaos and backing
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: parties on the right and the far left across Europe
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: and North America. In a way, they didn't require coordination,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: but they were just sort of like trying to make
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: trouble and saw Trump from their perspective as a vehicle
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: for trouble more than the kind of conspiracy people imagined.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: I think part of the answer is that journalistic institutions
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: and journalists ought to be more open to self-examination. But
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: of course, the other is that we should take ourselves
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a little less seriously. Like when people say that they
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: write the first draft of history, they like to put
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: the stress on the word history, but really it should
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: be on the first draft. And, you know, journalism isn't
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: the final arbiter of truth. It's the first crack at it.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's helpful. It's like if we put the emphasis
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: on the first draft part, it might be a little
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: easier for us to say we got it wrong or
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: we weren't exactly right.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: We were only seeing a little part of the picture.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: That's Ben Smith from Semaphore Media. We originally aired that
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: story in February of 2025. Since then, as I mentioned
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: at the top, two of the judges who allowed Trump's
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: suit to proceed have been nominated by Trump for lifetime appointments.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: The polls are bored, meanwhile, has been using the case
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: to try and extract information from Donald Trump that he
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: has long tried to avoid sharing. They're demanding that he
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: turn over his tax returns, information about his financial holdings,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: as well as his medical and psychological records. It's possible
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the president has opened up a can of worms that
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: he does not want crawling out by filing this suit.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: We'll see how it plays out. Today's episode was produced
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: by me with help from Sam Egan and edited by
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Jen Kinney. Our show is made by executive producer Robin Simeon,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: managing editor Kevin Sullivan, producer Zach St. Louis, and associate
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: producer Kevin Shepard, along with contributing editor Neil Drumming. Fact-checking
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: by Annika Robbins, sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: is by Matt McGinley. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seifel,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Tejal Jamera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. Special thanks to
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Nancy Updike. See you next time.