Latest / Trumponomics / Managing the News in the Age of Trump
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I think the best
- 0:09Speaker 1: way of characterizing this administration it is essentially the kind
- 0:12Speaker 1: of monetization of US hegemony. The left polite way is
- 0:16Speaker 1: something about a mafioso shakedown.
- 0:28Speaker 2: I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg,
- 0:31Speaker 2: and this is Trumpanomics, the podcast that looks at the
- 0:34Speaker 2: economic world of Donald Trump, how he's already shaped the
- 0:36Speaker 2: global economy and what on earth is going to happen next.
- 0:41Speaker 2: This week, well, we're widening the lens a bit because
- 0:44Speaker 2: I just had a fascinating conversation i'd like to share
- 0:46Speaker 2: with you. The occasion was Bloomberg's second Women, Money and
- 0:50Speaker 2: Power event in London, and the conversation was with Alessandra Galoni,
- 0:55Speaker 2: the editor in chief of Reuter's News Agency, and Zanni Mintembadows,
- 0:59Speaker 2: editor in chief of The Economist. The title of our
- 1:01Speaker 2: session was reporting on money and Power in the current moment,
- 1:06Speaker 2: and there was plenty of Trump andomics in the mix.
- 1:08Speaker 2: But what you'll also hear is how all three of
- 1:10Speaker 2: us have been grappling with not just the sheer volume
- 1:14Speaker 2: of news coming out of Washington, but also the Trump
- 1:16Speaker 2: administration's aggressive approach to handling the media. We see that
- 1:21Speaker 2: obviously in the Jimmy Kimmel saga and the many lawsuits
- 1:24Speaker 2: the President has filed against the New York Times, the
- 1:26Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal, most of the traditional US news networks.
- 1:30Speaker 2: But it's also something we've been living with behind the
- 1:32Speaker 2: scenes since the White House took control of the White
- 1:35Speaker 2: House Press Pool and dramatically cut the mainstream media's regular
- 1:40Speaker 2: access to the president. So yes, it's a little bit
- 1:43Speaker 2: more introspective than our usual discussions on Trump andomics. But
- 1:47Speaker 2: like it or not, Donald Trump is leaving his mark
- 1:50Speaker 2: on journalism as well as the global economy, and sitting
- 1:53Speaker 2: at the helm of these two major news organizations, Zanni
- 1:57Speaker 2: and Alessandra have a bird's eye view of both. I
- 2:01Speaker 2: started by asking Alessandra eight months in how this Trump
- 2:05Speaker 2: administration had changed the way Reuters did its job.
- 2:15Speaker 3: I think there's sort of two buckets, right, there's what
- 2:17Speaker 3: you have to do journalistically, and then instead of how
- 2:20Speaker 3: you go about it and navigate some of the new
- 2:22Speaker 3: rules that have come in journalistically, I think, you know,
- 2:26Speaker 3: the bottom line is sort of a back to the future.
- 2:27Speaker 3: You do what we always do, which is you report
- 2:30Speaker 3: this administration. And what we try to do is we
- 2:33Speaker 3: try to report what matters, you know, what the real
- 2:36Speaker 3: effects of the executive orders are, or what the real
- 2:40Speaker 3: effects of changes in policy new laws are. So for example,
- 2:44Speaker 3: just yesterday, we had a story that looked at how
- 2:47Speaker 3: prosecutions for drug abuse, or for money laundering, or for
- 2:52Speaker 3: crime financial crimes that used to be prosecuted a lot
- 2:56Speaker 3: in the US have now sort of given way to
- 2:59Speaker 3: deportations because so much attention of the Trump administration is
- 3:02Speaker 3: focused on deportations that a lot of the same sort
- 3:05Speaker 3: of prosecutors and officers who are focusing on one type
- 3:09Speaker 3: of crime are now focusing on what Trump classifies as
- 3:12Speaker 3: another type of crime. So again, what flows from changes
- 3:15Speaker 3: in policy. That's just one example. I mean this there's
- 3:18Speaker 3: worth perhaps mentioning a few of the restrictions that we've had.
- 3:20Speaker 3: The new one is on the Pentagon reporting, which all
- 3:22Speaker 3: of us have, which is that there's a new rule
- 3:25Speaker 3: now or a new request for all journalists who cover
- 3:29Speaker 3: the Pentagon to sign a piece of paper saying that
- 3:33Speaker 3: that essentially we wouldn't publish something that could be in
- 3:36Speaker 3: a security interest of the of the US, you know,
- 3:40Speaker 3: without checking with the Pentagon first. Essentially, now, of course
- 3:44Speaker 3: that is something that we can't do right, and that
- 3:45Speaker 3: is something that I think, you know, to my knowledge,
- 3:49Speaker 3: virtually nobody has signed this right and you faced the
- 3:52Speaker 3: same thing. And so we're you know, talking to the
- 3:54Speaker 3: administration about how we can change this. And interestingly, what
- 3:56Speaker 3: we understand is that it's actually aimed more at people
- 3:59Speaker 3: work in the Pentagon to avoid them from leaking. And
- 4:02Speaker 3: of course leaks also have been sort of more kind
- 4:05Speaker 3: of criminalized with a criminalization of what the administration would
- 4:09Speaker 3: call leaks. So I think on the reporting side, we
- 4:11Speaker 3: keep reporting on the news, trying to you know, understand
- 4:15Speaker 3: what is going on, and then sort of try to
- 4:17Speaker 3: convince the administration that, you know, First Amendment press freedom
- 4:20Speaker 3: is something important for everyone no matter where you operate
- 4:24Speaker 3: in the US or in our case, in all the
- 4:25Speaker 3: two hundred other countries where we work.
- 4:27Speaker 2: And I mean as why and news services obviously Router's
- 4:30Speaker 2: and Bloomberg have been affected by just taking what taking
- 4:32Speaker 2: the wires out of the Oval office. As a matter
- 4:34Speaker 2: of course, off the plane, there was always a wire
- 4:37Speaker 2: journalist previously on the plane, or more than one. There's
- 4:41Speaker 2: just a consistent sort of lack of people to ask
- 4:44Speaker 2: questions or questions that aren't along the lines of mister president,
- 4:47Speaker 2: how do you look so healthy and so much younger
- 4:49Speaker 2: than in your previous administration. But I mean, Zami, you're
- 4:51Speaker 2: in a slightly different position with the economists, but I
- 4:53Speaker 2: know obviously you have much the same journalistic mission. How
- 4:58Speaker 2: are you dealing with the different aproach that this administration has?
- 5:02Speaker 1: You know, what we do is to join the dots
- 5:06Speaker 1: between geopolitics, business technology to help our readers understand where
- 5:11Speaker 1: the world is going. And that mission is exactly the
- 5:14Speaker 1: same as it always has been, and the Trump administration
- 5:18Speaker 1: changed our framework because the Trump's administration is so dominant
- 5:24Speaker 1: in pretty much every global story. And so for me,
- 5:27Speaker 1: one of the things that has changed is that I
- 5:29Speaker 1: spend a lot of time making sure that we differentiate
- 5:32Speaker 1: between the signal and the noise. If you're not careful,
- 5:34Speaker 1: every story about every part of the world could start
- 5:37Speaker 1: with the reference to Donald Trump. And so I spend
- 5:39Speaker 1: quite a lot of time, either literally or at least figuratively,
- 5:42Speaker 1: crossing out first paragraphs that mentioned Trump too much. It
- 5:45Speaker 1: would be incredibly boring if you had every single story
- 5:48Speaker 1: framed in a Trump way. Differentiating the signal from the
- 5:50Speaker 1: noise also means, you know, not suffering from Trump derangement
- 5:55Speaker 1: syndrome and being fair minded about the way you cover
- 5:59Speaker 1: this administration. We have a lot of Republican readers, we
- 6:02Speaker 1: have a lot of Trump administration people read US, and
- 6:05Speaker 1: indeed trumpions read us. And I think it's very important
- 6:09Speaker 1: that even people who don't share the economist's world view.
- 6:12Speaker 1: We believe in liberal values. We were founded to champion them.
- 6:15Speaker 1: They drive what we do. But I feel very strongly
- 6:17Speaker 1: that even people who do not share that view should
- 6:19Speaker 1: find our journalism useful, and so we need to be rigorous,
- 6:23Speaker 1: fact based. We need to really go the extra mile
- 6:26Speaker 1: to make sure we are fair minded in our analysis.
- 6:29Speaker 1: And that's that's doubly important at this moment in terms
- 6:33Speaker 1: of the kind of way we deal with it. I mean,
- 6:35Speaker 1: of course, things have changed for us too. All my
- 6:37Speaker 1: non American journalists when they go to the US now,
- 6:39Speaker 1: including the carrier, I think it's a G twenty nine form.
- 6:41Speaker 1: It's a form that if you are stopped by the
- 6:44Speaker 1: customer border control, you sign it. I'm sure you have
- 6:46Speaker 1: it too, and they have to call our lawyer in
- 6:48Speaker 1: the US. I look at my phone before I go.
- 6:51Speaker 1: I scrub my phone to make sure that just in case.
- 6:54Speaker 3: I have to say.
- 6:55Speaker 1: I've gone to the US every week this month, and
- 6:57Speaker 1: I've sailed in and I have global entry.
- 6:58Speaker 2: And it's also you're not well known. Feel scerless posts exactly.
- 7:01Speaker 1: But I just think it's prudent, and that is a
- 7:03Speaker 1: weird feeling. I've been to China many, many times, and
- 7:06Speaker 1: I have never scrubbed my phone. I've taken a burner computer,
- 7:09Speaker 1: so for there are different behaviors that I do there.
- 7:12Speaker 1: But so the environment has changed, undoubtedly. It's a long
- 7:16Speaker 1: answer to your question, but it makes me value our
- 7:18Speaker 1: independence more. This sound incredibly pretentious, and I don't mean
- 7:21Speaker 1: it to be, but I think we should all be thinking,
- 7:23Speaker 1: not just about the hearing now, but how are our
- 7:26Speaker 1: successors going to look at what we did. Did we
- 7:30Speaker 1: go overboard with Trump derangement syndrome or did we normalize
- 7:35Speaker 1: totally non normal behavior and fail to raise enough red
- 7:39Speaker 1: flags about what is potentially happening to American democracy? And
- 7:42Speaker 1: I think the balance between those two is what I'm
- 7:45Speaker 1: figuring out.
- 7:46Speaker 2: I think we do find that the White House team,
- 7:47Speaker 2: particularly I think is having to use it thesaurus very
- 7:49Speaker 2: often on different words for unprecedented. That's the way you
- 7:52Speaker 2: put it in perspective and don't normalize it while still
- 7:56Speaker 2: reporting it. Just to come back on you, Sanny, because
- 7:58Speaker 2: I was dropped by this a couple of weeks ago.
- 7:59Speaker 2: There's a version of Trump derangement syndrome when one's thinking
- 8:02Speaker 2: about global affairs and global events, and I was struck
- 8:06Speaker 2: the Shanghai Summit and then the parade in China. A
- 8:09Speaker 2: lot of the coverage saw everything that was happening in
- 8:12Speaker 2: Beijing as a response to Trump, and indeed India Prime
- 8:18Speaker 2: Minister Modis going to China, all of that as being
- 8:22Speaker 2: entirely a response to what Donald Trump had done and
- 8:25Speaker 2: the trade wars and other things, which in many ways
- 8:28Speaker 2: was true, or at least was one way of looking
- 8:30Speaker 2: at it. But there was another way, which I got
- 8:32Speaker 2: from talking to my Indian colleagues and our geoeconomics analyst
- 8:36Speaker 2: in India, that it was entirely in line with Prime
- 8:39Speaker 2: Minister Modi's own objectives. He needed to have a relationship
- 8:42Speaker 2: with China because it's a key part of his manufacturing
- 8:45Speaker 2: domestic manufacturing agenda that he needed access to these inputs
- 8:48Speaker 2: from China, and we could show how many inputs he
- 8:51Speaker 2: relied on, etcetera, etcetera. It struck me that was true
- 8:53Speaker 2: for almost every country there that you could also just
- 8:55Speaker 2: redescribe what they were doing as not putting two fingers
- 8:58Speaker 2: up to Donald Trump, but pursuing their national interests in
- 9:01Speaker 2: a world in which the US has to some extense
- 9:03Speaker 2: step back. So how do you guard against that? That's
- 9:06Speaker 2: an aspect of the same issue.
- 9:08Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. That's a sort of
- 9:09Speaker 1: another way of framing the too much focus on Trump.
- 9:12Speaker 1: I think two ways. Firstly, you know, what is happening
- 9:15Speaker 1: right now is a period of extraordinary uncertainty because we've
- 9:19Speaker 1: got at least three massive great shifts going on in
- 9:22Speaker 1: the world economy. One is the geopolitical shift, which is
- 9:25Speaker 1: driven in part by the administration, but was also starting
- 9:28Speaker 1: long before the rise of China, you know, the kind
- 9:30Speaker 1: of authoritarian axis. There were big shifts going on before
- 9:33Speaker 1: the Trump administration. Secondly, the huge economic shift, which again
- 9:37Speaker 1: predated the sort of I'm afraid the sort of end
- 9:40Speaker 1: of the unfashionability of the worldview of the economists started
- 9:43Speaker 1: long before Donald Trump became president. But he's taken it
- 9:47Speaker 1: a step further with massive protectionist turn. And then the
- 9:49Speaker 1: third one is the technological revolution who wins the AI race.
- 9:52Speaker 1: And all three of those are driving the world, and
- 9:54Speaker 1: all three of those are driving what Prime Minister Moodia
- 9:57Speaker 1: is doing, or Brazil is doing, or any country doing.
- 10:00Speaker 1: And so you're right, if you only think of this
- 10:02Speaker 1: through the prism of the US and through Trump, you're
- 10:05Speaker 1: missing something. And once that for this, I think the
- 10:07Speaker 1: US is what you'll know down exactly. I think there's
- 10:09Speaker 1: a sixteen percent of global trade. It's a relatively small proportion.
- 10:13Speaker 1: It's of course it's dominant in global finance, but that
- 10:17Speaker 1: suggests that a lot of what is going on is
- 10:19Speaker 1: actually external to the United States, and so we have
- 10:22Speaker 1: to absolutely make sure that we don't overemphasize the impact
- 10:27Speaker 1: of this hyperactive and of course extremely important administration.
- 10:32Speaker 3: I completely agree. I think nobody doubts that US administration
- 10:35Speaker 3: is important. And what has been happening where this is
- 10:37Speaker 3: like global trade, you know, geopolitics is no question something
- 10:41Speaker 3: that we need to cover. But the risk is if
- 10:42Speaker 3: we only cover it from the vantage point of the US,
- 10:45Speaker 3: we miss what's actually happening in other countries, and we
- 10:48Speaker 3: may find ourselves, to your point, about ten years from now,
- 10:51Speaker 3: twenty years from now or more, we may miss the
- 10:54Speaker 3: applical shifts in places like China and India because we've
- 10:57Speaker 3: only been focusing on them as a result of the
- 10:59Speaker 3: US administration. And then equally, this accounts on one of
- 11:04Speaker 3: the key thing for journalists is to be open minded.
- 11:07Speaker 3: You have to be open to the possibility that your ideas,
- 11:11Speaker 3: your original idea, your original hypothesis, is wrong. And I
- 11:15Speaker 3: think that the mainstream press as we sometimes we're called,
- 11:20Speaker 3: has a certain view of this administration, and we you
- 11:23Speaker 3: need to be open to the possibility that the US
- 11:25Speaker 3: economy is not going to collapse because of what is happening,
- 11:28Speaker 3: because that inflation is not going to be what people
- 11:30Speaker 3: feared because of the tariff policy. That you know, the
- 11:34Speaker 3: institutions of the state of law, the institutions in the
- 11:37Speaker 3: US will not collapse necessarily, that they're strong and that
- 11:40Speaker 3: they will last some of the attacks, right, I mean,
- 11:43Speaker 3: I mentioned before in passing some of the new Attorney
- 11:47Speaker 3: General's rules on against sort of leaks, you know, leaks
- 11:51Speaker 3: by journalists. Well you know what actually what it reversed
- 11:54Speaker 3: was a policy of the Biden administration. It went back
- 11:58Speaker 3: to a policy of the administration visa you journalists, and
- 12:02Speaker 3: so I think everybody was ready. So even though we
- 12:05Speaker 3: are there in the rooms and we are fighting for
- 12:07Speaker 3: press breedo, and we also have to put it into
- 12:09Speaker 3: context right and not criminalize everything that is done by
- 12:12Speaker 3: this administration while standing firm to fact check everything that
- 12:17Speaker 3: is said.
- 12:24Speaker 2: I want to do a bit more on the economics,
- 12:25Speaker 2: not least because this is going to be getting out
- 12:27Speaker 2: of my Trumpnomics podcast, which you can get anyway. I
- 12:34Speaker 2: can't speak about de arrangement syndrome on the name of
- 12:36Speaker 2: the name of the podcast. I think the closest thing
- 12:39Speaker 2: to a consistent principle of trump Noomics as it's applied
- 12:42Speaker 2: globally has been that the rest of the world should
- 12:46Speaker 2: just pay for stuff that previously it got quote unquotes
- 12:50Speaker 2: for free from the US, whether that's reserve, currency, security umbrella,
- 12:55Speaker 2: a certain kind of global order. And I think the
- 12:59Speaker 2: assumps at the beginning of the year might have been
- 13:02Speaker 2: that countries were going to push back a bit more
- 13:04Speaker 2: than they have. Have you been surprised any by how
- 13:07Speaker 2: effective the administration has been short term at dividing and ruling.
- 13:13Speaker 1: So, first of all, I think your characterization is spot on.
- 13:16Speaker 1: I think the best way of characterizing this administration, and
- 13:19Speaker 1: people have over the last few months have talked about
- 13:20Speaker 1: is it is it isolationist? Is it great power series?
- 13:24Speaker 1: It's not. It is Essentially the polite way is a
- 13:27Speaker 1: kind of monetization of US hegemony. The less polite way
- 13:30Speaker 1: is something about a mafioso shakedown. And you can you
- 13:34Speaker 1: can take your pick which one you want to use,
- 13:36Speaker 1: but that really is the common thread that goes through
- 13:39Speaker 1: all of the administration's international economic actions. I'm struck. If
- 13:44Speaker 1: you'd said to me in March, you know, just before
- 13:46Speaker 1: Liberation Day, and you'd said me, the Trump administration is
- 13:50Speaker 1: going to increase America's effective tariff from around two percent
- 13:53Speaker 1: to about nineteen percent, and it's going to have fifty
- 13:56Speaker 1: percent taffs some countries like India and thirty five percent
- 13:58Speaker 1: on Canada, I would have said, the odds are we
- 14:01Speaker 1: are going to go into some kind of nineteen thirties
- 14:03Speaker 1: style tit for tat trade war. There's going to be retaliation,
- 14:07Speaker 1: And actually you're right. The surprising thing is that two
- 14:10Speaker 1: things happened. Ju Jinping retaliated and America caved very clearly.
- 14:14Speaker 1: Trump realized that he couldn't win that, and then the
- 14:18Speaker 1: other countries have essentially all tried to strike deals, and
- 14:21Speaker 1: what we haven't had is a kind of collective we're
- 14:24Speaker 1: standing up to this. And so in the short term,
- 14:27Speaker 1: you're right, it's been quite successful. I actually don't. I'm
- 14:30Speaker 1: not at all sure it's going to be successful in
- 14:32Speaker 1: the medium term, because I think, firstly, America loses out.
- 14:35Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a card carrying free trader, and I
- 14:38Speaker 1: believe that the country that imposes tariffs does lose out,
- 14:40Speaker 1: the consumer does pay. It's not good for American competitiveness,
- 14:43Speaker 1: and although it may not cause an inflation problem in
- 14:46Speaker 1: the short term, in the long term this is bad
- 14:48Speaker 1: for the United States. And therefore, I think the rest
- 14:51Speaker 1: of the world has shown very clearly that it does
- 14:52Speaker 1: have no intention of going down this route, and so
- 14:55Speaker 1: you will see greater coordination between different regional trees GA
- 15:00Speaker 1: agreements that I actually think. I mean, it won't be
- 15:02Speaker 1: the WTO, it won't be the old system, but you
- 15:04Speaker 1: will have something that resembles a rules based trading system,
- 15:07Speaker 1: increasingly excluding the US, and that is not good for
- 15:10Speaker 1: the US and the medium.
- 15:12Speaker 3: The system has worked. Ultimately, what you're saying is that
- 15:14Speaker 3: global trade to a certain extent has worked because we've
- 15:17Speaker 3: seen the deals that have been struck. You know, it
- 15:20Speaker 3: has been a huge overhaul of the system. But we
- 15:22Speaker 3: thought that there would be more of a dismantling.
- 15:26Speaker 1: I mean, we have to say we have I think
- 15:28Speaker 1: it is a new system, but I think that it
- 15:31Speaker 1: is there. We will see a limit to the ability
- 15:33Speaker 1: even of the US. That's shakedown. That's where countries over
- 15:37Speaker 1: the medium term. I think this is the height of
- 15:39Speaker 1: the shakedown ability.
- 15:40Speaker 3: And China was and China, as you say, was the one.
- 15:43Speaker 3: There was no way that you could push further with China,
- 15:45Speaker 3: and that's why you're backtracked.
- 15:47Speaker 2: Well, and there's any points out there's more than eighty
- 15:49Speaker 2: percent of global trade.
- 15:50Speaker 1: Shameless self promotion. Since this is going to be on
- 15:52Speaker 1: your conference RESI is that, as you may know, next
- 15:56Speaker 1: week we're launching the Economist inside US series of video
- 15:59Speaker 1: shows on there'll be specialist ones and I will co
- 16:02Speaker 1: host a weekly one, but the first episode will be
- 16:04Speaker 1: along this track, and as part of it, I am
- 16:07Speaker 1: I have an interesting conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney
- 16:09Speaker 1: on precisely this topic, so you should listen.
- 16:11Speaker 2: To it right, watch the space.
- 16:13Speaker 3: The other thing I think we should not forget is
- 16:16Speaker 3: that a lot of Trump's policies that are ostensibly about economics,
- 16:20Speaker 3: or sensibly about global trade, or or are actually about
- 16:24Speaker 3: getting something else in the geopolitical sphere in that his
- 16:27Speaker 3: linkage policy is very strong.
- 16:29Speaker 2: So I will what the king.
- 16:31Speaker 1: Feels like exactly the court exact king, and the king
- 16:34Speaker 1: likes you, so that then you're going to stop, you know,
- 16:38Speaker 1: sign a piece deal, right.
- 16:39Speaker 2: Alessandra, do actually think in this environment? I think we've
- 16:42Speaker 2: all agreed that there's a kind of short term getting
- 16:45Speaker 2: along with the US, but long term a real erosion
- 16:48Speaker 2: of US position and potentially a vacuum into which other
- 16:52Speaker 2: countries will move in. Do you think there's any scope
- 16:55Speaker 2: for Europe to step up in this environment? And there's
- 16:57Speaker 2: a lot of pressure.
- 16:59Speaker 3: I mean, there's certainly scope. There's a big question as
- 17:02Speaker 3: to whether as to whether Europe will. But I think
- 17:04Speaker 3: another point, and I know we reached the end that
- 17:06Speaker 3: I that I think we also shouldn't forget recently, actually
- 17:10Speaker 3: we were in the room together when we were talking
- 17:13Speaker 3: to the former head of I six, I think at
- 17:14Speaker 3: Davos in January, and one of the things that this
- 17:17Speaker 3: was that was all right, well, what I'm about to
- 17:20Speaker 3: say is pretty thank you.
- 17:24Speaker 1: From and among friends.
- 17:26Speaker 3: No. But one of the things that I thought was
- 17:28Speaker 3: very interesting is how much of an emphasis he put
- 17:31Speaker 3: on the fact that leave aside the heads of these
- 17:35Speaker 3: or the organizations, you know, the top organizations of the
- 17:38Speaker 3: US and of the UK, but that a lot of
- 17:40Speaker 3: the work is done at the second and third level,
- 17:42Speaker 3: and a lot of the relations and he was talking
- 17:44Speaker 3: about about security, but you could extend this to many
- 17:48Speaker 3: other areas is actually done not at the top levels,
- 17:53Speaker 3: and that the coordination and collaboration still goes on. And
- 17:57Speaker 3: I was really struck by that because it's suggested to
- 18:00Speaker 3: me that you know, administrations come and go, and they
- 18:02Speaker 3: are important, and this administration may lead to another same administration.
- 18:06Speaker 3: We just don't know what's going to happen, right, But
- 18:08Speaker 3: that actually between countries and among countries, a lot of
- 18:11Speaker 3: the work that and that holds policies together is still
- 18:15Speaker 3: still good.
- 18:16Speaker 2: And that is that is actually a lot of the
- 18:17Speaker 2: concerns were pretty much run out of time. But I
- 18:19Speaker 2: do want to just because you are also leaders of
- 18:22Speaker 2: people and managers of people, and this is a pretty fractious,
- 18:27Speaker 2: often emotive journalistic environment for particularly reporters in the US
- 18:34Speaker 2: to navigate, and we've seen that in spades over the
- 18:36Speaker 2: last few weeks. So I just wondered both of you,
- 18:39Speaker 2: how much are you how much have you had to
- 18:41Speaker 2: think about that? Have you had issues with people either
- 18:44Speaker 2: with burnout or just people struggling to sort of hold
- 18:48Speaker 2: that line because you both stand for objective, rigorous reporting.
- 18:53Speaker 1: The answer is it is people feel very very strongly
- 18:56Speaker 1: about what's going on. I think we benefit from being
- 18:59Speaker 1: we don't have to you know, we do different kinds
- 19:02Speaker 1: of journalism to you too, so we have the time
- 19:05Speaker 1: to discuss and debate. And what's most important to me
- 19:09Speaker 1: is that people feel their voices are heard. And so
- 19:11Speaker 1: we have lots of discussions about a lot of these subjects,
- 19:14Speaker 1: and we may end up often with leader lines that
- 19:17Speaker 1: perhaps I'm fairly sure some of my team don't agree with,
- 19:20Speaker 1: but as long as they've had their voices heard, and
- 19:23Speaker 1: I think it's people. I mean, I can speak for
- 19:26Speaker 1: my colleagues. They have been extraordinary in their sort of
- 19:29Speaker 1: professionalism and the way that they have risen to the challenge.
- 19:32Speaker 1: They understand that our role is to make sense of
- 19:35Speaker 1: what is happening, explain it to our readers around the world,
- 19:38Speaker 1: never never compromise on our underlying values. We are a
- 19:41Speaker 1: liberal newspaper, classic English liberalism. We proudly champion that. But
- 19:45Speaker 1: you can do that and at the same time have
- 19:47Speaker 1: fair minded journalism that distinguishes between the signal and the noise,
- 19:50Speaker 1: and I think everyone is completely on board with that.
- 19:53Speaker 3: We have a slightly different situation. You know, we're obviously
- 19:55Speaker 3: on the sharp edge of a lot of what happens
- 19:58Speaker 3: in the world, and including in conflict. We've been talking
- 20:00Speaker 3: about economics, but you know, we have the other half
- 20:03Speaker 3: of our newsroom, you know, is in war zones. We
- 20:06Speaker 3: have many people in Ukraine, I mean, on battlefields around
- 20:10Speaker 3: the world. So for us, there's a real imperative to
- 20:13Speaker 3: keep our people safe physically all the time, and that
- 20:16Speaker 3: is becoming increasingly difficult. I mean, I mean it's no
- 20:20Speaker 3: secret I've been in this job as EIC for four
- 20:22Speaker 3: years and we've lost four journalists. So, you know, in conflict,
- 20:26Speaker 3: so the physical remains very, very important because there are
- 20:29Speaker 3: a lot of actual kinetic situations on the ground. But
- 20:32Speaker 3: to your point, which is more sort of the emotional
- 20:35Speaker 3: aspect of it. No, it's very real. I mean, our
- 20:37Speaker 3: journalists in the US are feeling the same sort of
- 20:40Speaker 3: pressures that many of our journalists and other countries feel.
- 20:43Speaker 3: And so, you know, we do a lot of hostile
- 20:45Speaker 3: environment courses. Those are mainly for physical protection, but increasingly
- 20:49Speaker 3: we use a lot of mental health protection and how
- 20:51Speaker 3: to protect your mental health, how to keep yourself safe
- 20:54Speaker 3: scrubbing your phone, you know, digitally. And we have introduced many,
- 20:58Speaker 3: many more sessions on hostile environment writ large in the
- 21:03Speaker 3: US than we ever could have imagined.
- 21:05Speaker 1: We are.
- 21:05Speaker 2: We're rolling out trainings that we've never before done in
- 21:08Speaker 2: the US. And to your point, people who are in
- 21:10Speaker 2: the Washington Bureau who have come from Latin American countries
- 21:14Speaker 2: and others that are finding this much more familiar territory. Okay, final,
- 21:17Speaker 2: very quick question. We've none of us managed to get
- 21:19Speaker 2: sued our organization so far by the administration. Will you
- 21:23Speaker 2: be a little bit embarrassed if you're not by the
- 21:25Speaker 2: end of the administration.
- 21:28Speaker 1: No, genuinely, don't think about it. I will be embarrassed
- 21:33Speaker 1: if we haven't done the best possible coverage, and that
- 21:35Speaker 1: is if that leads to us being sued, so being yeah, are.
- 21:40Speaker 2: You exciting our general council firing.
- 21:42Speaker 3: Up our general councils? You know have plenty of work
- 21:45Speaker 3: to do with all the investigations that we do and
- 21:47Speaker 3: all of the countries we operate in, so I think
- 21:50Speaker 3: they've got plenty to handle.
- 21:52Speaker 2: Alessandro Zani, thank you so much for Davis. Thanks for
- 22:07Speaker 2: listening to Trumpnomics from Bloomberg. It was hosted by me
- 22:10Speaker 2: Stephanie Flanders, and I was in a conversation with the
- 22:13Speaker 2: Reuters editor in chief Alessandra Galonni and the Economists editor
- 22:17Speaker 2: in chief Zanni Minton Beadows. Trumponomics was produced by Summer,
- 22:25Speaker 2: Sadi and Moses and and special thanks this week to
- 22:28Speaker 2: the organizers of the Women, Money and Power event at
- 22:31Speaker 2: Bloomberg's headquarters in London. Sound design was by Blake Maples
- 22:36Speaker 2: and Kelly Gary and Amy Keene is our executive producer.
- 22:40Speaker 2: Sage Bowman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. To help others
- 22:44Speaker 2: find the show, please rate it and review it highly
- 22:46Speaker 2: wherever you listen to podcasts.