April 4, 2025 • 38 mins
Politico politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin, New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney, and USC Center for the Political Future Director Bob Shrum join Margaret Hoover to discuss challenges facing the media in Donald Trump’s second term, threats to freedom of the press, and the future of journalism.
In a panel recorded at the CPF’s Warschaw Conference on Practical Politics in January, Nagourney says the obligation to call out Trump’s lies puts the media in a difficult position. "If you don't go far enough, people say that you're carrying his water. If you go too far, you're being hostile."
In an evolving and increasingly fragmented media landscape, Martin is less concerned about the survival of national papers than more regional and local ones like The Washington Post and the L.A. Times. “The benevolent billionaire model clearly isn't working now.”
Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist, says the loss of local news poses a “huge” threat to democracy and the dangers facing journalism run much deeper than just Trump.
The panelists also address the impact of Trump’s litigation against media outlets, the rise of podcasters and influencers, and how changes in media are affecting political messaging.
Support for “Firing Line for Margaret Hoover” is provided by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mark Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, The Meadowlark Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, Damon Button, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, The Philip I Kent Foundation, Annie Lamont through The Lamont Family Fund, The Susan Rasinski McCaw Fund, Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair Effron, and Al and Kathy Hubbard. Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
What is really, I think going on, Margaret, is that we're
living through the end of the post World War 2 consensus in
politics, in media and culture and everything else where you
had a society that that was really sort of pushed toward the
center in every conceivable way.That's Jonathan Martin of
Politico, reflecting on how journalism is changing in a
(00:21):
polarized world. And we're back to a 19th century
model that's much more fragmented.
I'm Margaret Hoover. This is the Firing Line podcast.
Donald Trump's second term has already brought a new wave of
challenges for the media, including the threat of lawsuits
and investigations over its coverage.
I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad
(00:48):
about me, are political arms of the Democrat party, and in my
opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal.
What they do is illegal. But some say the problems facing
the press run much deeper. In January, at the University of
Southern California's Center forthe Political Future, I sat down
with Politico's politics Bureau chief, Jonathan Martin.
What I really worry about is theWashington Post and the LA Times
(01:10):
and every other smaller paper. The benevolent billionaire model
clearly isn't working now. Veteran New York Times reporter
Adam Nagorny. The New York Times, I think, is
very dominant, but it's nothing like it was 20 years ago.
We're very aware of that for a whole lot of reasons.
And the center's director, longtime Democratic strategist
Bob Shrum. Everybody now can get whatever
(01:31):
news they want that they alreadyagree with.
They're not going to be challenged.
We discussed Trump's attacks on the press, the loss of local
journalism, and what an increasingly fragmented media
landscape means for American democracy.
It's a very tough time. We are testing whether or not we
can sustain the democracy, free elections, respect for each
(01:52):
other in a time when we don't agree on basic facts.
Bob Shrum, Adam Nagorny, Jonathan Martin, welcome to
Firing Line. Thank you.
Donald Trump is the 2nd president to return to office in
a non consecutive term and I want to know what the unique
(02:15):
challenges and responsibilities of covering a second Trump
presidency are for journalists. Jonathan Martin.
Look, the, the, the challenge with Trump is that you're damned
if you do and you're damned if you don't.
And I don't say that to look forsympathy.
I don't say that to say woe is me.
Covering politics is the great joy of my life, and I think it's
(02:38):
the best job in the world. But here's what I mean.
If you cover Trump straight and cover him for what he is and
what he says and how he conductshimself, it basically demands
Page 1, Pearl Harbor or man walks on moon headlines every
day. If we were just to cover him
like we covered Al Gore, George W Bush, or, you know, Reagan
(03:01):
versus Mondale, whatever, it would demand a level of banner
headline of breathlessness of ofjust sort of screaming emojis,
to use more current terms that we just don't have the capacity
to because he's such an aberrantfigure from everything that we
know in modern politics. You can't do it.
(03:22):
If you grate him on a curve and you try to put him in that great
blender of between the 40 yard lines, post World War 2
consensus era American politics that all of us grew up in.
You're doing the reader of the viewer a disservice because
you're not really covering him for what he is.
You're pretending like he's a conventional figure when he's
emphatically not a conventional figure.
(03:44):
He's a break from modern American politics.
So what do you do? It's really tough and I think 10
years on, we haven't figured it out yet.
Adam, take us in The Newsroom ofthe New York Times.
How is The Newsroom grappling with covering Trump like any
other candidate? I mean, it goes back to 2016.
I think Jonathan laid out a lot of the issues and problems.
(04:05):
If you try to cover them traditionally, it doesn't work,
right, because he does all this stuff that I think is designed
to get attention, even if it's not really that weighty.
And it's hard to know what to pay attention to and what to
ignore. I think it's easier to do that
when he's a candidate. I think when he's president,
there's such institutional authority between what he's
saying that it's really difficult.
(04:27):
I think if you talk to people who were involved in 2016 when
he ran against Hillary Clinton, we had we had trouble figuring
it out. We had trouble figuring out the
balance of how to cover him. I think it was better for us and
everyone else in 2024. But it's, it's still there, as
Jonathan said, he is a Barrett or a Borant, which were just a
Barrett. OK.
He is unusual and a real challenge to all the traditional
(04:49):
stuff we we stand for. And a big part of that has to do
with fact checking, right? He says stuff that's just wrong.
And I think that we have an obligation to point that out.
But it's not that easy because when you do that, if you don't
go far enough, people say that you're carrying this water if
you go too far. You're being hostile.
You're being hostile and a bigger problem or as big a
problem in my view is if you go really like let's just say that
(05:12):
he said stuff that's a complete lie just for arguments sake, you
don't mind about saying he does I.
Mean hypothetically. Hypothetically, well, we use the
word liar or really strong wordsto describe him.
And we deal with this every day,writing headlines, writing
stories. I always fear that it will turn
off readers who look at it and go there's the liberal New York
Times or liberal Politico or whatever, but we're not going to
(05:33):
pay attention to it. So it's a real problem.
Do I think we're better at it than we were in 2016?
Yeah. Do I think we've cracked this
nut? Absolutely not.
Bob, from your position here at the Center for the Political
Future at USCI want to ask you to place this in the context of
the many campaigns that you've been involved in and also
(05:55):
against the backdrop of where weare with press freedoms
internationally. Reporters Without Borders, for
example, has had the US's ratingin their Freedom Index drop
closer to autocratic Hungary than any of our democratic peers
in Western Europe. And they cite concentrated
(06:16):
ownership of media, public distrust in media, growing
pressure to revisit media freedoms that are codified in
law like New York Times versus Sullivan, and the contraction of
media platforms across the country, but which includes the
the diminishing influence and presence of local journalism.
(06:38):
How do you see this moment against the broad sweep of of
your life in politics? Well, first, let me make a
comment about campaigns that I was involved in.
You used to be terrified that you would be fact checked and
found to be wrong, right. So that when you were making an
ad, you go over every single syllable.
(06:59):
Yeah. And make sure that you could
defend it. That's all gone.
Yeah. And that's why I, I would
suggest the problem is systemic goes much deeper than Donald
Trump in say, the early 1960s. And that was even before I was
doing campaigns in the early 1960s.
(07:19):
We had gatekeepers. You know, the New York Times was
a gatekeeper at a certain point.The Washington Post was maybe
the LA Times and certainly CBS and, and, and NBCABC to a lesser
extent at that time. And I always have this thought
experiment with, with students. Imagine in 1962 that someone at
(07:43):
CBS went up to Walter Cronkite, who was then the Dean of
American television journalism and maybe journalism period, and
said, by the way, there's a group called the John Birch
Society, and they're holding a press conference today in New
York, and they're going to charge the president Eisenhower
was an agent of the communist conspiracy and President Kennedy
(08:05):
is a socialist. How many cameras should we send?
And he would have looked up and said, you're fired.
The gatekeepers decided that there was a common base of
knowledge, common set of facts that we all ought to operate on.
So, you know, Kennedy and Nixon could fight about Medicare.
Kennedy could say I'm for Medicare and Nixon could say I'm
(08:26):
for an alternative program. What Nixon could not say was we
don't have a problem of impoverished old people in this
country because of their medicalbills.
He would have been killed for itin in terms of the press.
So that this, it's a big systemic change.
Concentration of ownership, that's a problem.
But you know what else is the problem?
(08:46):
The fragmentation of media so that I don't have my cell phone
with me because we're on the on the air.
But everybody now can get whatever news they want that
they already agree with. They're not going to be
challenged and they can actuallybe a broadcast outlet of their
own if they want. And reinforced by an algorithm
(09:08):
that feeds them more of what they want and that only sends
them further down the path of, of their, their preferences,
which they, they want to be reinforced in the 1st place.
This is the hard truth to grapple with.
A lot of Americans are want their, their, their, their views
to be ratified. They want their views to be be
affirmed by the outlets that they're reading.
(09:29):
They don't want to be challenged, right.
And so that's a huge, huge difficult.
I think Bob is exactly right. This is, this is much bigger
than Trump. Technology's the enormous driver
of this. And it's hard to know that it's
happening because we're living it.
But what is really I going on, Margaret, is that we're living
through the end of the post World War 2 consensus in
politics, in media and culture and everything else where you
(09:51):
had a society that that was really sort of pushed toward the
center in every conceivable way and pushed toward a certain
level of of sort of a common language, common views, common
values. And we're back to a 19th century
model that's much more fragmented.
And we have alternative facts. Yes, whatever.
There's no there's no shared truths.
The old Pat Moynihan line that everybody's entitled to their
(10:15):
own opinion but not their own facts is sadly out.
The window. So how important then is it,
Bob, that there is some kind of convened consensus about about
what's happening at a national level and our local level with
our leadership? Is that fundamental to a
representative democracy? Probably, but we're going to
(10:36):
test the proposition because we don't have that consensus.
I mean, we have people who thinkthat the January 6th
insurrectionists were national heroes who were trying to save
the country. We have people nominated to the
Cabinet who refused to answer the question of whether or not
the 2020 election was rigged, and in one case person said it
(10:56):
was, it was rigged. So we don't have that kind of
consensus. And the consensus is if we don't
even have a consensus about whether or not we like our
institutions the way they are, there is a whole movement now to
have a constitutional conventionrewrite some of the
Constitution. I think it was Peter Thiel who
(11:19):
said he doesn't even like democracy.
You know, it's it's a very toughtime.
We are testing whether or not wecan sustain the democracy, free
elections, respect for each other in a time when we don't
agree on basic facts. I'll give you a good example of
that with The New Yorker magazine wrote a devastating
(11:43):
story, in my opinion about the now Defense Secretary with some
of the original allegations about sexual.
It's I recall because sexual assault, drinking.
I read that story. I remember thinking about Jay
Mayer. I was quoted in that story.
Oh, you were OK, so there. OK, so I remember thinking when
I read it, you know, this was 10years ago.
Or let's just mention John Tower, right?
(12:04):
He would have been dead, right? Pig would be dead.
But I thought, you know what? I bet this isn't going to bring
him down. I mean, he probably should have
brought him down 10 years ago. It would have, but not anymore.
It just shows that because people don't care.
People don't believe what they're reading in the
organizations like that. Let me then ask you guys, you've
written a book. I mean, you, you famously wrote
a book about the New York Times efforts to transform itself.
(12:25):
And I guess the question really I have for you all is how
important or how relevant are these legacy media publications
now I. Mean my speaking with some bias
because that's where I work. Yeah, I mean, there's no way you
can be objective. Yeah.
But I think that there's a smaller and smaller two things
are going on. One is none of them.
This is being as they were 20 years ago, as Bob was saying,
(12:47):
Cronkite, right? Like, like the New York Times I
think is very dominant, but it'snothing like it was 20 years
ago. We're very aware of that for a
whole lot of reasons. But there's all these different
voices, whether it's the attemptto sort of delegitimize the New
York Times and other press. So even given that, what makes
it worse is you've seen, at least for now, the decline in
(13:10):
some other really big deal newspapers.
Well, obviously, what's going onhere in Los Angeles?
Right. And what I think there was a
degree of optimism, if I could interject, I think there was a
degree of optimism in the 20 tens that there are benevolent
billionaires who are coming along to purchase these legacy
operations that you had Patrick Shinjiang, who is going to buy
the LA Times. You had Jeff Bezos, who's going
to buy the Washington Post. And frankly, the jury is this
(13:31):
and the jury is out on how this is done.
They have hemorrhaged jobs. They have hemorrhage.
I'm being generous. I'm.
Being generous. I mean, I, I think we haven't
seen the end of the story. I don't know.
I don't know that we know what the final chapter is.
But we have certainly seen of late a turn of the page.
They have hemorrhage jobs. They have hemorrhage money.
They seem to be to some, they'velost subscribers.
(13:55):
Some of the owners are perceivedto be susceptible to the whims
of political pressure. Trump.
Can I? Can I?
Interject by all means. The Wall Street Journal and the
New York Times were pioneers of putting themselves into the
social media era. Most people who read the New
(14:16):
York Times now read it online. They don't read it in in in the
paper. The Wall Street Journal, same
thing is true. I think the Times Now has
11,000,000 online subscribers. That's very sustainable as an
economic model. The Washington Post, on the
other hand, did not do this is, as you said a moment ago,
(14:37):
hemorrhaging money. And as a result of that, I think
someone like Bezos who thought I'm going to come in, I'm going
to save the place, I'm going to be a hero now, wants to somehow
or other make it sustainable andthinks that to do that, he has
to get along with certain political people.
So he vetoes the editorial board's decision about who to
(15:00):
endorse for president. Is there a concern by any of you
of media capture along the linesof Orban's Hungary where a sort
of Orban aligned or aligned autocrats come in and purchase
media outlets and then neuter news organizations?
(15:21):
Yeah, I, I'm a little less concerned about that because of
why, Well, just the size of our country and the diversion
political views here. I think there will be an
appetite for centre right, centre left news outlets.
I I don't worry about the Times in the Journal.
I think of all the outlets. I think that the Times in the
Journal will survive. People will be getting the news,
(15:45):
whether it's on a phone, a iPad,or a chip implanted in their
arm. Because as long as there's like
an oil and gas executive in likeOdessa, TX, there's going to be
a Wall Street Journal. And as long as there's like a
philosophy professor at like Oberlin, there's going to be a
New York Times. I'm, I'm being very
stereotypical of the audience. It's a.
Fragment of the audience. It's a fragment of the country.
(16:06):
Well, it's also a national look.This was driven home to me when
I was covering politics, probably even before I came to
The Times, and I would be on theground in an affluent city and
I'd be driving through a neighborhood and I would see the
blue bags or the white bags in the driveways, the Times and the
Journal. I wasn't seeing the local paper.
(16:28):
So to me the story is, look, thenational papers like that are
going to survive. There's going to be a market for
them. They're going to be just fine.
What I really worry about is theWashington Post in the LA Times
and every other smaller paper, because the local and regional
journalism doesn't have the financial model.
The benevolent billionaire modelclearly isn't working now.
So who rescues Mcclatchy? LA, Lee, Gannett.
(16:51):
Those papers are valuable and they're not going to be
replaced. So it's not the Times in the
journal that I worry about. It's everybody else out.
There. And to what extent is that loss
of local news a threat to democracy, Bob?
Oh, I think it's a huge threat because it disconnects people
from what's happening in their communities.
Right now. You have a lot of these local
(17:11):
newspapers, even if they're surviving, they fire the staff
and they just use wire copy or copy that's generated on a mass
basis and they're not really informing people about what did
the City Council do? Yes, that in fact kept fire
trucks in a in a a storage facility instead of having them
(17:35):
out there when the city of LA started to catch on fire.
Or, or it's even more tragic than that, and I think that that
that's a prime example. It's pretty tragic, it is.
But, but I'm talking about the conspiracy theories.
Look, if the media of yesteryearstill existed in Western North
Carolina and you had a robust Asheville newspaper and robust
weeklies and in every small county in Western North
(17:58):
Carolina, and that was how people got their information
along with the big national networks, I don't know.
They wouldn't be convinced that the government bioengineered a
hurricane to hit them last fall.That to be was the most eye
opening moment that I've had about the media landscape in a
long time. American citizens believe in the
federal government bioengineereda hurricane because they heard
(18:20):
it on social media. And that gets to the heart of
lack of trust in institutions and the collapse of the press
corps because those folks aren'tgetting their information from
the Asheville Citizen Times. They're they're getting it from
social media, which is reinforced by an algorithm.
It's heartbreaking. I want to bring it back to how
journalism is going to interact with this administration.
Lawsuits are one of President Trump's favorite tactics against
(18:41):
the media. In December, President Trump
sued the Des Moines Register forrunning the poll before the
election that showed him behind Vice President Harris.
He has sued CBS in federal courtover the editing of 60 Minutes.
He has had a settlement recentlywith ABC News.
And we also know that Mehta is poised to pay roughly $25
million to resolve a 2021 lawsuit that Trump brought after
(19:05):
the company suspended his accounts.
To the Trump Library. And 22 million of it will go to
the Trump library. This was after, yeah, Facebook,
You know, this was after Facebook took this action of
changing, shutting down Trump's accounts because he had, quote,
(19:25):
fomented a, quote, violent interaction designed to thwart
the peaceful transition of tower.
To put it on top of that, Trump's nominee for the FBI has
promised to pursue journalists. What is the impact of all of
these actions on The Newsroom? Adam, I think two things I think
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for papers, I think that for papers without organizations
that don't have resources, it's really intimidating, right?
Like the more and register right, right.
How much is it going to cost to defend themselves against?
What I think was a really, I'm alawyer, but I think it was a
really specious lawsuit. He was upset with.
They were, he was upset with thepoll that got that, that called
(20:10):
that race wrong. So that's a real problem for a
paper like that I think that I shouldn't speak from.
Which also had no impact on the election.
I know, right? But it had an impact on the man
who's that president clearly gave magic and they're paying
price for that. I think the newspaper like the
New York Times, I don't want to speak for the souls burgers or
their bank bank accounts, but like they can afford it.
And I think that so far they've seemed to be really, again, this
(20:35):
was how boosters but gutsy in terms of standing up to the
administration, but they're alsobeing very, very careful in fact
checking stuff, realizing that anything could be a cause for
action. But I think it's a really, I
think it's a real problem. It's one more thing that's going
to shrink the number of papers that are really covering the
world objectively, and it's a reason to be alarmed.
And you have to. You have to distinguish the
(20:55):
different categories of people can who can afford to defend
these suits like New York Times can.
Afford to defend the suits. Wall Street Journal can't
Medicans. Medicans.
Facebook can, but they're not doing it.
They're giving in because not because.
They're worried about spending the money on the lawsuit.
They're worried about the regulatory decisions that the
(21:17):
administration might make that would affect their bottom line.
They're thinking of their stockholders rather than their.
Same with Disney and ABC. By the way, right?
They were first, Jonathan. Should reporters be concerned
that the nominee to run the FBI has said that he will prosecute
journalists? Yeah, I think they should take
that seriously. I think what?
Should they do? Cover him aggressively and cover
(21:41):
his conduct aggressively. Is the intent to chill reporters
courage? I think the threats are one
thing, but the settlements are actually more demoralizing,
frankly. Like Donald Trump threatening to
sue a news organization or actually doing it is like an old
story. What is I think more alarming is
(22:01):
a series of institutions settling and giving him money
or, I'm sorry, giving his library money.
I corrected like that. To me is is a bigger a bigger
turn here because it shows that there is a level of capitulation
which speaks to their level of fear.
And by the way, if it goes too far, then your earlier question
about Hungary will become quite relevant.
(22:22):
You could see across the country, if you drive all the
local journal or most of the local journalism out, you have
the Times, the Wall Street Journal on an island, right,
able to defend themselves, maybepolitical, political, able to
defend itself because of its owner.
But everybody else in a in a quite different and perilous
(22:42):
position. You could begin, I think, to see
people saying we have to shave the story.
We need to get rid of the fact checkers.
They annoy him. You know, we need to be very,
very careful. And it's such a striking
difference between now and the aftermath of Richard Nixon's
victory in 1972, when he won 49 states.
(23:05):
Trump won 49%, all right? And Richard Nixon was running a
criminal enterprise in the federal government and got
driven from power, all right, because of journalism and
because he was held accountable by his own party.
And he had Amanda. You talk about Amanda, He won 49
states. Yeah.
But he might not and. There wasn't a chill in the air
(23:25):
then he. Might not be driven from power.
Today I would do exactly the same.
Thing because you would not havehad the collective media
horsepower and you sure as heck don't have the accountability in
his own party. Let me ask.
You very quick people would automatically assume that Bob
Woodward, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were right.
Right. Like the Post had a lot of power
then, but people just thought they're publishing.
(23:46):
It's true. And I think that people don't
think that. Many people don't think that.
There were shared facts the. White House press briefing under
the Trump administration is it'sjust been announced the press
secretary will radically change the composition of the
journalists who are in the pressbriefing room.
Independent journalists, podcasters, social media
influencers, content creators are all going to get dedicated
(24:07):
seats. And there's a dedicated row for
new media in the in the front row.
What does this mean for the future coverage of the
President, Jonathan? I think that may be inevitable.
You know, you saw Biden doing more, more non traditional
media. Certainly Obama did too.
I think that reflects as the oldsaying is, you know, you know,
(24:31):
why did why did Willie Willie rob the rob the banks?
That's what the money is. Politicians are going where the
voters are. OK, You know, they're going to
go where voters exist and votersexist now on podcast in a lot of
places. So I think that's the sort of a
natural outgrowth of of how the information flow is is changing
in this country. But let's be honest about what
(24:51):
it is podcast or need. I listen to a lot of them, but
they're not doing the traditional accountability
journalism of organization. So it's a way for them to find
voters. It's also a way for them to duck
accountability. And by the way, that applies to
what Biden did in the last administration, certainly Trump
now, too. Yeah.
They look, they, I think the Trump administration wants to
(25:11):
elevate all of these podcasters,the right wing media ecosystem,
give them more and more influence and hopefully in their
view, degrade the influence of, of, of enterprises like the
times are political. Yeah.
You know, I'm not sure. I'm wondering what you guys
think. I'm not sure how much those
briefings really matter in termsof getting out information.
(25:34):
I mean, just using one example, Maggie Haberman, I bet she's
never gone to a White House briefing.
I just some need to right? I just when I.
Was the calls room. The calls room I.
I briefly covered the White House I think for USA TODAY and
like I found those briefings like.
Right. Really like they just were
useful. And that was in.
I don't think they're always occasionally always useless
(25:55):
though. I mean, it really was at one
time the time to interact and engage with the principal or or.
No, I mean, it's it's now more theater in which they joust with
the, you know, in the Biden areawas Corinne going after the
Rupert Murdoch, the properties and now it's gonna.
Steve Doocy going after Corinne.And now it's gonna be the Trump
folks going after the legacy media, corporate media or
(26:18):
whatever they're preferred nomenclature is to let.
Me ask you this the at the dawn of sort of social media and its
intersection with political campaigns and national politics,
the platforms were perceived to be structurally benefiting the
left. Right Facebook helped elect
President Obama. Today the the universe of that
(26:41):
dynamic is totally different. Right X is formerly Twitter,
owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, who has a desk in the Eisenhower
Executive Office Building acrossthe street from The West Wing.
And who fires people who had executive agencies?
Mark Zuckerberg's content moderation policy shifts at Meta
and lack of fact checking, right?
That all of this is is seen in many ways as an effort to cozy
(27:05):
up to the president. The right now has the advantage.
Yeah, let me tell you a story about that.
So in 2004, Howard Dean moves out to a big lead in the
Democratic primaries. He's using the Internet very
creatively to raise money. After John Kerry won Iowa, New
Hampshire, he basically inherited that.
(27:25):
And we pursued it very, very, very vigorously.
And he raised $250 million, unheard of at that time before
the Democratic convention. And Kerry would say today that
one of his biggest mistakes was accepting federal funding, $76
million for the whole campaign when the machine.
(27:47):
He raised millions of dollars inhis acceptance speech that the
campaign couldn't spend because once you give the acceptance
speech and you're in federal funding, you can't do it.
So it looked like it was going to be a huge advantage for the
left or for the center left. Barack Obama certainly used it
in 2008. I mean, raised an enormous
amount of money. Well, poor John McCain was
(28:09):
confined to using the federal funds, but it's all shifted.
I think the critical moment of the shift, by the way, was Elon
Musk buying Twitter, which he insists on calling X, which
means he's named it after one ofhis children.
Or vice versa. And I think that was that was
(28:30):
the moment, because the logarithm can be tweaked so that
it advantages certain kinds of messages.
Biden and Harris raised, Speaking of money, twice as much
money as the Trump campaign did,and they spent it overwhelmingly
on TV and much less on digital media.
(28:52):
Democrats spent $400 million more on advertising in the
presidential race than Republicans turned out.
Six million fewer voters than they did in 2020.
How you're the political. Message matters.
Where? Where do you spend money now and
why? Where Is it just message that
matters or is it how you spend the money?
You got to spend the money on social media, you got to spend
(29:14):
the money on non traditional, meaning you got to spend the
money on broadcast because a lotof that, you know, people are
still I don't. Drive votes anymore?
Yes, and to older people who vote very reliably tend to watch
a lot of broadcast television. But I think the biggest problems
that that Kamala Harris had was that the message had no edge, so
(29:36):
it didn't resonate with people. So, you know, the opportunity
economy that that was her, her line.
How does that compare with Franklin Roosevelt saying
economic royalists or never havethe forces of greed and
privilege been so united in their hatred for one candidate?
And I welcome that hate. And with that, in 1936, he sent
(29:59):
a huge signal to people that he was on their side against
entrenched interests. I, I think the problem she had,
number one, was that that the message didn't connect with
people with in a kind of center populist way.
And #2 there were certain ads that they needed to respond to
(30:19):
that they didn't. I mean, the 125 million that was
spent attacking her about transgender rights, they needed
to respond to that And, and just.
She's for you, she's for them. She she owned an incumbent at
White House that was deeply unpopular.
She owned a country that that was overwhelmingly sour,
believed that that we were on the wrong track and and an
(30:40):
electorate that was unhappy about high prices.
To put it in sports terms, it was very much an away game, but
that's what. You need the edge on the
message. Yeah, I mean, got to distinguish
yourself. She could have said the people
versus the powerful. For example, that was the Gore
slogan in 2000 against George W Bush.
And and Gore would say his mistake was being persuaded by
the pollsters in the final weeksbefore the election that he
(31:04):
should take the edge off off, yeah, and should talk about
removing barriers that get in people.
'S way OK. Yeah.
Removing barriers that get in people's way or the people
versus the powerful, I mean there is a huge difference in
the impact of those. Changed a few votes in Tennessee
or Florida, but it's real fast. To bring it back to the media,
(31:24):
though, on this question, thinking about the campaign,
Margaret, I think back to two events that get at how Kamala
Harris, you know how Democrats are fighting a conventional war
against an asymmetrical political warrior in Donald
Trump. Donald Trump goes to a closed
McDonald's drive thru and fry station and literally breaks the
Internet. I mean, the Internet melted down
(31:46):
that day. Everybody, I don't care how
apathetic they were, knew that Donald, Donald Trump was at a
McDonald's somewhere in America.OK, That is his big play.
All right. Kamala Harris's big final close
was to give a prepared speech atthe Ellipse in Washington, DC,
which could have happened in like 1999.
Eighty, 979 or 69. Technology would have been
(32:09):
irrelevant. That's like a conventional play
by a conventional politician. I'm going to give a big summary
speech at the end of the campaign, and that's going to
drive the coverage. Not anymore.
The McDonald's drive, it was what breaks through.
It's not a big speech. But if at the Ellipse, right,
she had had a message with an edge, yeah, a center populist
message, it would have gotten a lot.
(32:30):
More. If she economic royalists or
never have the forces agreed in privilege been so united and
their hatred for one candidate. I welcome that eight.
I mean, that would have broken through or.
Something like that, or standingup there and saying the man
behind me in the White House hasa good and decent man.
But I'm here to say tonight thatit's time for the country to
move past Trump and Biden, the like, and I'm going to do that
(32:53):
for you. It was a.
Message it was. I'm just not sure.
Like I think those are both great messages.
I'd be obviously, but I'm not I'm still not quite sure that
would have broken through the same way.
So I'm wondering. All right, well, so let's go
back to 1985 then. Bob, you were on the original
Firing Line program, which airedfor 33 years with William F
Buckley Junior. You were on several times.
(33:13):
In one such program, you sparredwith Buckley about Star Wars
missile defense systems. Take a look at this.
Oh, I'm. Excited.
For this, I'm telling you we shouldn't waste money on Star
Wars. I can define a reasonable level
of expenditure and to spend beyond that, because I think we
can reasonably. Mr. Mr. Shrum, don't try to
define your reasonable level. You don't know the slightest
(33:35):
thing about what expenses are required to research this
program. He does.
Do you? Do you?
No, I know that you don't. But they.
Do. But which leads Mr. Buckley to
the question, what are you and Idoing up here talking about
this? Do you stand by your position?
Yeah, sure. Look, I was younger, heavier.
(33:58):
Mustache is good, Bill. Bill Bill loved that exchange.
He put it in a book of Firing Line transcripts when when they
were published. Because the one thing I learned
from him very early on, like thefirst time I ever did the show
was he's was that you can't pause when he asked you
(34:19):
something or challenged you. You had to go at it right away
and you had to say the first thing that popped into your
head, otherwise you're dead. Well, so.
I was going to go in a differentdirection with that.
What I was going to ask you was the role of conservative media
has really developed. I mean, Buckley was the first
iconic conservative on television and we now have a
(34:42):
balkanized media environment with conservative personalities
and and progressive personalities.
Very rarely do you see a moment like that where where somebody
from the left and somebody from the right have a rigorous
contest of ideas. You know, he liked that, but his
idea of conservative media was that it should be in dialogue
(35:04):
with people on the other side. Jonathan, you wrote for National
Review at the beginning of your career.
How do you reflect on the evolution of conservative media?
Oh, good question. Look, I think there was
certainly an intellectualism to it that Buckley represented.
It was more a kind of drawing room conservatism.
Yeah, it was. It was something that was more
(35:26):
decorous. It was not sort of populist.
I think that that changed with Buchanan really.
And you can look at sort of the rise of Buchanan as the shift
from a kind of Buckley conservatism, a more decorous
sort of Yale Skull and Bones version, to a much more populist
version. And then we went back to George
W Bush, so after Buchanan. Well, Buchanan never himself was
(35:48):
a real political threat, but I think it's as he he was to Trump
as Goldwater was to Reagan, right?
He's the forerunner to a different kind of politics.
And I think that's really the shift.
And now, you know, in some ways,though, Trump is delaying what I
view as the great, the great reckoning on the right.
There's going to be a real showdown in terms what it means
(36:10):
to be a Republican because Trumphas kind of put off that
argument. Because Trump is what it means
and it's all personality. It's not issues.
But 2028 is going to be. What do we stand for in foreign
policy? Are we isolationist or
internationalist? How about domestic policy?
Are we for Lena Khan's FTC or not?
Where are we on entitled immigration?
To get to. Get to the question.
To get to the heart of what you're saying, all the years
(36:31):
that Mary Louise and I lived in Washington, we had conservative
friends and liberal friends, andthey mixed together at the
dinner table. It doesn't happen anymore.
People now choose their friendships according to
politics. I don't.
What we're trying to do at the Center for the Political Future
is advance and model of politicswhere we respect each other, we
(36:52):
respect the truth. But the loss of that in
Washington is one of the things that I think makes it very
difficult to compromise in ways that move the country forward.
Adam, you've been covering politics for the Times for more
than 30 years. Yeah.
How? How is the growing influence of
a more hyper partisan strain of of media and politics influenced
(37:13):
your reporting and your work? It makes it harder to report
because it makes it harder to get people to open up and not be
confrontational and not be sort of like as if they're on
television. And the other thing, nothing
wrong with big ITV and like thatup there.
And I think it also makes them often less likely to trust the
(37:35):
times, right? Just assume the times has a
liberal bias and therefore I have a liberal bias.
So it's it is definitely more challenging and and it's harder
to sort of prepare a story I presented in a sort of objective
down the middle kind of way. Bob, Adam, Jonathan, thank you
for joining me on firing. Line, thank you.
Thanks, Margaret.
What is really, I think going on, Margaret, is that we're
living through the end of the post World War 2 consensus in
politics, in media and culture and everything else where you
had a society that that was really sort of pushed toward the
center in every conceivable way.That's Jonathan Martin of
Politico, reflecting on how journalism is changing in a
(00:21):
polarized world. And we're back to a 19th century
model that's much more fragmented.
I'm Margaret Hoover. This is the Firing Line podcast.
Donald Trump's second term has already brought a new wave of
challenges for the media, including the threat of lawsuits
and investigations over its coverage.
I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad
(00:48):
about me, are political arms of the Democrat party, and in my
opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal.
What they do is illegal. But some say the problems facing
the press run much deeper. In January, at the University of
Southern California's Center forthe Political Future, I sat down
with Politico's politics Bureau chief, Jonathan Martin.
What I really worry about is theWashington Post and the LA Times
(01:10):
and every other smaller paper. The benevolent billionaire model
clearly isn't working now. Veteran New York Times reporter
Adam Nagorny. The New York Times, I think, is
very dominant, but it's nothing like it was 20 years ago.
We're very aware of that for a whole lot of reasons.
And the center's director, longtime Democratic strategist
Bob Shrum. Everybody now can get whatever
(01:31):
news they want that they alreadyagree with.
They're not going to be challenged.
We discussed Trump's attacks on the press, the loss of local
journalism, and what an increasingly fragmented media
landscape means for American democracy.
It's a very tough time. We are testing whether or not we
can sustain the democracy, free elections, respect for each
(01:52):
other in a time when we don't agree on basic facts.
Bob Shrum, Adam Nagorny, Jonathan Martin, welcome to
Firing Line. Thank you.
Donald Trump is the 2nd president to return to office in
a non consecutive term and I want to know what the unique
(02:15):
challenges and responsibilities of covering a second Trump
presidency are for journalists. Jonathan Martin.
Look, the, the, the challenge with Trump is that you're damned
if you do and you're damned if you don't.
And I don't say that to look forsympathy.
I don't say that to say woe is me.
Covering politics is the great joy of my life, and I think it's
(02:38):
the best job in the world. But here's what I mean.
If you cover Trump straight and cover him for what he is and
what he says and how he conductshimself, it basically demands
Page 1, Pearl Harbor or man walks on moon headlines every
day. If we were just to cover him
like we covered Al Gore, George W Bush, or, you know, Reagan
(03:01):
versus Mondale, whatever, it would demand a level of banner
headline of breathlessness of ofjust sort of screaming emojis,
to use more current terms that we just don't have the capacity
to because he's such an aberrantfigure from everything that we
know in modern politics. You can't do it.
(03:22):
If you grate him on a curve and you try to put him in that great
blender of between the 40 yard lines, post World War 2
consensus era American politics that all of us grew up in.
You're doing the reader of the viewer a disservice because
you're not really covering him for what he is.
You're pretending like he's a conventional figure when he's
emphatically not a conventional figure.
(03:44):
He's a break from modern American politics.
So what do you do? It's really tough and I think 10
years on, we haven't figured it out yet.
Adam, take us in The Newsroom ofthe New York Times.
How is The Newsroom grappling with covering Trump like any
other candidate? I mean, it goes back to 2016.
I think Jonathan laid out a lot of the issues and problems.
(04:05):
If you try to cover them traditionally, it doesn't work,
right, because he does all this stuff that I think is designed
to get attention, even if it's not really that weighty.
And it's hard to know what to pay attention to and what to
ignore. I think it's easier to do that
when he's a candidate. I think when he's president,
there's such institutional authority between what he's
saying that it's really difficult.
(04:27):
I think if you talk to people who were involved in 2016 when
he ran against Hillary Clinton, we had we had trouble figuring
it out. We had trouble figuring out the
balance of how to cover him. I think it was better for us and
everyone else in 2024. But it's, it's still there, as
Jonathan said, he is a Barrett or a Borant, which were just a
Barrett. OK.
He is unusual and a real challenge to all the traditional
(04:49):
stuff we we stand for. And a big part of that has to do
with fact checking, right? He says stuff that's just wrong.
And I think that we have an obligation to point that out.
But it's not that easy because when you do that, if you don't
go far enough, people say that you're carrying this water if
you go too far. You're being hostile.
You're being hostile and a bigger problem or as big a
problem in my view is if you go really like let's just say that
(05:12):
he said stuff that's a complete lie just for arguments sake, you
don't mind about saying he does I.
Mean hypothetically. Hypothetically, well, we use the
word liar or really strong wordsto describe him.
And we deal with this every day,writing headlines, writing
stories. I always fear that it will turn
off readers who look at it and go there's the liberal New York
Times or liberal Politico or whatever, but we're not going to
(05:33):
pay attention to it. So it's a real problem.
Do I think we're better at it than we were in 2016?
Yeah. Do I think we've cracked this
nut? Absolutely not.
Bob, from your position here at the Center for the Political
Future at USCI want to ask you to place this in the context of
the many campaigns that you've been involved in and also
(05:55):
against the backdrop of where weare with press freedoms
internationally. Reporters Without Borders, for
example, has had the US's ratingin their Freedom Index drop
closer to autocratic Hungary than any of our democratic peers
in Western Europe. And they cite concentrated
(06:16):
ownership of media, public distrust in media, growing
pressure to revisit media freedoms that are codified in
law like New York Times versus Sullivan, and the contraction of
media platforms across the country, but which includes the
the diminishing influence and presence of local journalism.
(06:38):
How do you see this moment against the broad sweep of of
your life in politics? Well, first, let me make a
comment about campaigns that I was involved in.
You used to be terrified that you would be fact checked and
found to be wrong, right. So that when you were making an
ad, you go over every single syllable.
(06:59):
Yeah. And make sure that you could
defend it. That's all gone.
Yeah. And that's why I, I would
suggest the problem is systemic goes much deeper than Donald
Trump in say, the early 1960s. And that was even before I was
doing campaigns in the early 1960s.
(07:19):
We had gatekeepers. You know, the New York Times was
a gatekeeper at a certain point.The Washington Post was maybe
the LA Times and certainly CBS and, and, and NBCABC to a lesser
extent at that time. And I always have this thought
experiment with, with students. Imagine in 1962 that someone at
(07:43):
CBS went up to Walter Cronkite, who was then the Dean of
American television journalism and maybe journalism period, and
said, by the way, there's a group called the John Birch
Society, and they're holding a press conference today in New
York, and they're going to charge the president Eisenhower
was an agent of the communist conspiracy and President Kennedy
(08:05):
is a socialist. How many cameras should we send?
And he would have looked up and said, you're fired.
The gatekeepers decided that there was a common base of
knowledge, common set of facts that we all ought to operate on.
So, you know, Kennedy and Nixon could fight about Medicare.
Kennedy could say I'm for Medicare and Nixon could say I'm
(08:26):
for an alternative program. What Nixon could not say was we
don't have a problem of impoverished old people in this
country because of their medicalbills.
He would have been killed for itin in terms of the press.
So that this, it's a big systemic change.
Concentration of ownership, that's a problem.
But you know what else is the problem?
(08:46):
The fragmentation of media so that I don't have my cell phone
with me because we're on the on the air.
But everybody now can get whatever news they want that
they already agree with. They're not going to be
challenged and they can actuallybe a broadcast outlet of their
own if they want. And reinforced by an algorithm
(09:08):
that feeds them more of what they want and that only sends
them further down the path of, of their, their preferences,
which they, they want to be reinforced in the 1st place.
This is the hard truth to grapple with.
A lot of Americans are want their, their, their, their views
to be ratified. They want their views to be be
affirmed by the outlets that they're reading.
(09:29):
They don't want to be challenged, right.
And so that's a huge, huge difficult.
I think Bob is exactly right. This is, this is much bigger
than Trump. Technology's the enormous driver
of this. And it's hard to know that it's
happening because we're living it.
But what is really I going on, Margaret, is that we're living
through the end of the post World War 2 consensus in
politics, in media and culture and everything else where you
(09:51):
had a society that that was really sort of pushed toward the
center in every conceivable way and pushed toward a certain
level of of sort of a common language, common views, common
values. And we're back to a 19th century
model that's much more fragmented.
And we have alternative facts. Yes, whatever.
There's no there's no shared truths.
The old Pat Moynihan line that everybody's entitled to their
(10:15):
own opinion but not their own facts is sadly out.
The window. So how important then is it,
Bob, that there is some kind of convened consensus about about
what's happening at a national level and our local level with
our leadership? Is that fundamental to a
representative democracy? Probably, but we're going to
(10:36):
test the proposition because we don't have that consensus.
I mean, we have people who thinkthat the January 6th
insurrectionists were national heroes who were trying to save
the country. We have people nominated to the
Cabinet who refused to answer the question of whether or not
the 2020 election was rigged, and in one case person said it
(10:56):
was, it was rigged. So we don't have that kind of
consensus. And the consensus is if we don't
even have a consensus about whether or not we like our
institutions the way they are, there is a whole movement now to
have a constitutional conventionrewrite some of the
Constitution. I think it was Peter Thiel who
(11:19):
said he doesn't even like democracy.
You know, it's it's a very toughtime.
We are testing whether or not wecan sustain the democracy, free
elections, respect for each other in a time when we don't
agree on basic facts. I'll give you a good example of
that with The New Yorker magazine wrote a devastating
(11:43):
story, in my opinion about the now Defense Secretary with some
of the original allegations about sexual.
It's I recall because sexual assault, drinking.
I read that story. I remember thinking about Jay
Mayer. I was quoted in that story.
Oh, you were OK, so there. OK, so I remember thinking when
I read it, you know, this was 10years ago.
Or let's just mention John Tower, right?
(12:04):
He would have been dead, right? Pig would be dead.
But I thought, you know what? I bet this isn't going to bring
him down. I mean, he probably should have
brought him down 10 years ago. It would have, but not anymore.
It just shows that because people don't care.
People don't believe what they're reading in the
organizations like that. Let me then ask you guys, you've
written a book. I mean, you, you famously wrote
a book about the New York Times efforts to transform itself.
(12:25):
And I guess the question really I have for you all is how
important or how relevant are these legacy media publications
now I. Mean my speaking with some bias
because that's where I work. Yeah, I mean, there's no way you
can be objective. Yeah.
But I think that there's a smaller and smaller two things
are going on. One is none of them.
This is being as they were 20 years ago, as Bob was saying,
(12:47):
Cronkite, right? Like, like the New York Times I
think is very dominant, but it'snothing like it was 20 years
ago. We're very aware of that for a
whole lot of reasons. But there's all these different
voices, whether it's the attemptto sort of delegitimize the New
York Times and other press. So even given that, what makes
it worse is you've seen, at least for now, the decline in
(13:10):
some other really big deal newspapers.
Well, obviously, what's going onhere in Los Angeles?
Right. And what I think there was a
degree of optimism, if I could interject, I think there was a
degree of optimism in the 20 tens that there are benevolent
billionaires who are coming along to purchase these legacy
operations that you had Patrick Shinjiang, who is going to buy
the LA Times. You had Jeff Bezos, who's going
to buy the Washington Post. And frankly, the jury is this
(13:31):
and the jury is out on how this is done.
They have hemorrhaged jobs. They have hemorrhage.
I'm being generous. I'm.
Being generous. I mean, I, I think we haven't
seen the end of the story. I don't know.
I don't know that we know what the final chapter is.
But we have certainly seen of late a turn of the page.
They have hemorrhage jobs. They have hemorrhage money.
They seem to be to some, they'velost subscribers.
(13:55):
Some of the owners are perceivedto be susceptible to the whims
of political pressure. Trump.
Can I? Can I?
Interject by all means. The Wall Street Journal and the
New York Times were pioneers of putting themselves into the
social media era. Most people who read the New
(14:16):
York Times now read it online. They don't read it in in in the
paper. The Wall Street Journal, same
thing is true. I think the Times Now has
11,000,000 online subscribers. That's very sustainable as an
economic model. The Washington Post, on the
other hand, did not do this is, as you said a moment ago,
(14:37):
hemorrhaging money. And as a result of that, I think
someone like Bezos who thought I'm going to come in, I'm going
to save the place, I'm going to be a hero now, wants to somehow
or other make it sustainable andthinks that to do that, he has
to get along with certain political people.
So he vetoes the editorial board's decision about who to
(15:00):
endorse for president. Is there a concern by any of you
of media capture along the linesof Orban's Hungary where a sort
of Orban aligned or aligned autocrats come in and purchase
media outlets and then neuter news organizations?
(15:21):
Yeah, I, I'm a little less concerned about that because of
why, Well, just the size of our country and the diversion
political views here. I think there will be an
appetite for centre right, centre left news outlets.
I I don't worry about the Times in the Journal.
I think of all the outlets. I think that the Times in the
Journal will survive. People will be getting the news,
(15:45):
whether it's on a phone, a iPad,or a chip implanted in their
arm. Because as long as there's like
an oil and gas executive in likeOdessa, TX, there's going to be
a Wall Street Journal. And as long as there's like a
philosophy professor at like Oberlin, there's going to be a
New York Times. I'm, I'm being very
stereotypical of the audience. It's a.
Fragment of the audience. It's a fragment of the country.
(16:06):
Well, it's also a national look.This was driven home to me when
I was covering politics, probably even before I came to
The Times, and I would be on theground in an affluent city and
I'd be driving through a neighborhood and I would see the
blue bags or the white bags in the driveways, the Times and the
Journal. I wasn't seeing the local paper.
(16:28):
So to me the story is, look, thenational papers like that are
going to survive. There's going to be a market for
them. They're going to be just fine.
What I really worry about is theWashington Post in the LA Times
and every other smaller paper, because the local and regional
journalism doesn't have the financial model.
The benevolent billionaire modelclearly isn't working now.
So who rescues Mcclatchy? LA, Lee, Gannett.
(16:51):
Those papers are valuable and they're not going to be
replaced. So it's not the Times in the
journal that I worry about. It's everybody else out.
There. And to what extent is that loss
of local news a threat to democracy, Bob?
Oh, I think it's a huge threat because it disconnects people
from what's happening in their communities.
Right now. You have a lot of these local
(17:11):
newspapers, even if they're surviving, they fire the staff
and they just use wire copy or copy that's generated on a mass
basis and they're not really informing people about what did
the City Council do? Yes, that in fact kept fire
trucks in a in a a storage facility instead of having them
(17:35):
out there when the city of LA started to catch on fire.
Or, or it's even more tragic than that, and I think that that
that's a prime example. It's pretty tragic, it is.
But, but I'm talking about the conspiracy theories.
Look, if the media of yesteryearstill existed in Western North
Carolina and you had a robust Asheville newspaper and robust
weeklies and in every small county in Western North
(17:58):
Carolina, and that was how people got their information
along with the big national networks, I don't know.
They wouldn't be convinced that the government bioengineered a
hurricane to hit them last fall.That to be was the most eye
opening moment that I've had about the media landscape in a
long time. American citizens believe in the
federal government bioengineereda hurricane because they heard
(18:20):
it on social media. And that gets to the heart of
lack of trust in institutions and the collapse of the press
corps because those folks aren'tgetting their information from
the Asheville Citizen Times. They're they're getting it from
social media, which is reinforced by an algorithm.
It's heartbreaking. I want to bring it back to how
journalism is going to interact with this administration.
Lawsuits are one of President Trump's favorite tactics against
(18:41):
the media. In December, President Trump
sued the Des Moines Register forrunning the poll before the
election that showed him behind Vice President Harris.
He has sued CBS in federal courtover the editing of 60 Minutes.
He has had a settlement recentlywith ABC News.
And we also know that Mehta is poised to pay roughly $25
million to resolve a 2021 lawsuit that Trump brought after
(19:05):
the company suspended his accounts.
To the Trump Library. And 22 million of it will go to
the Trump library. This was after, yeah, Facebook,
You know, this was after Facebook took this action of
changing, shutting down Trump's accounts because he had, quote,
(19:25):
fomented a, quote, violent interaction designed to thwart
the peaceful transition of tower.
To put it on top of that, Trump's nominee for the FBI has
promised to pursue journalists. What is the impact of all of
these actions on The Newsroom? Adam, I think two things I think
(19:50):
for papers, I think that for papers without organizations
that don't have resources, it's really intimidating, right?
Like the more and register right, right.
How much is it going to cost to defend themselves against?
What I think was a really, I'm alawyer, but I think it was a
really specious lawsuit. He was upset with.
They were, he was upset with thepoll that got that, that called
(20:10):
that race wrong. So that's a real problem for a
paper like that I think that I shouldn't speak from.
Which also had no impact on the election.
I know, right? But it had an impact on the man
who's that president clearly gave magic and they're paying
price for that. I think the newspaper like the
New York Times, I don't want to speak for the souls burgers or
their bank bank accounts, but like they can afford it.
And I think that so far they've seemed to be really, again, this
(20:35):
was how boosters but gutsy in terms of standing up to the
administration, but they're alsobeing very, very careful in fact
checking stuff, realizing that anything could be a cause for
action. But I think it's a really, I
think it's a real problem. It's one more thing that's going
to shrink the number of papers that are really covering the
world objectively, and it's a reason to be alarmed.
And you have to. You have to distinguish the
(20:55):
different categories of people can who can afford to defend
these suits like New York Times can.
Afford to defend the suits. Wall Street Journal can't
Medicans. Medicans.
Facebook can, but they're not doing it.
They're giving in because not because.
They're worried about spending the money on the lawsuit.
They're worried about the regulatory decisions that the
(21:17):
administration might make that would affect their bottom line.
They're thinking of their stockholders rather than their.
Same with Disney and ABC. By the way, right?
They were first, Jonathan. Should reporters be concerned
that the nominee to run the FBI has said that he will prosecute
journalists? Yeah, I think they should take
that seriously. I think what?
Should they do? Cover him aggressively and cover
(21:41):
his conduct aggressively. Is the intent to chill reporters
courage? I think the threats are one
thing, but the settlements are actually more demoralizing,
frankly. Like Donald Trump threatening to
sue a news organization or actually doing it is like an old
story. What is I think more alarming is
(22:01):
a series of institutions settling and giving him money
or, I'm sorry, giving his library money.
I corrected like that. To me is is a bigger a bigger
turn here because it shows that there is a level of capitulation
which speaks to their level of fear.
And by the way, if it goes too far, then your earlier question
about Hungary will become quite relevant.
(22:22):
You could see across the country, if you drive all the
local journal or most of the local journalism out, you have
the Times, the Wall Street Journal on an island, right,
able to defend themselves, maybepolitical, political, able to
defend itself because of its owner.
But everybody else in a in a quite different and perilous
(22:42):
position. You could begin, I think, to see
people saying we have to shave the story.
We need to get rid of the fact checkers.
They annoy him. You know, we need to be very,
very careful. And it's such a striking
difference between now and the aftermath of Richard Nixon's
victory in 1972, when he won 49 states.
(23:05):
Trump won 49%, all right? And Richard Nixon was running a
criminal enterprise in the federal government and got
driven from power, all right, because of journalism and
because he was held accountable by his own party.
And he had Amanda. You talk about Amanda, He won 49
states. Yeah.
But he might not and. There wasn't a chill in the air
(23:25):
then he. Might not be driven from power.
Today I would do exactly the same.
Thing because you would not havehad the collective media
horsepower and you sure as heck don't have the accountability in
his own party. Let me ask.
You very quick people would automatically assume that Bob
Woodward, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were right.
Right. Like the Post had a lot of power
then, but people just thought they're publishing.
(23:46):
It's true. And I think that people don't
think that. Many people don't think that.
There were shared facts the. White House press briefing under
the Trump administration is it'sjust been announced the press
secretary will radically change the composition of the
journalists who are in the pressbriefing room.
Independent journalists, podcasters, social media
influencers, content creators are all going to get dedicated
(24:07):
seats. And there's a dedicated row for
new media in the in the front row.
What does this mean for the future coverage of the
President, Jonathan? I think that may be inevitable.
You know, you saw Biden doing more, more non traditional
media. Certainly Obama did too.
I think that reflects as the oldsaying is, you know, you know,
(24:31):
why did why did Willie Willie rob the rob the banks?
That's what the money is. Politicians are going where the
voters are. OK, You know, they're going to
go where voters exist and votersexist now on podcast in a lot of
places. So I think that's the sort of a
natural outgrowth of of how the information flow is is changing
in this country. But let's be honest about what
(24:51):
it is podcast or need. I listen to a lot of them, but
they're not doing the traditional accountability
journalism of organization. So it's a way for them to find
voters. It's also a way for them to duck
accountability. And by the way, that applies to
what Biden did in the last administration, certainly Trump
now, too. Yeah.
They look, they, I think the Trump administration wants to
(25:11):
elevate all of these podcasters,the right wing media ecosystem,
give them more and more influence and hopefully in their
view, degrade the influence of, of, of enterprises like the
times are political. Yeah.
You know, I'm not sure. I'm wondering what you guys
think. I'm not sure how much those
briefings really matter in termsof getting out information.
(25:34):
I mean, just using one example, Maggie Haberman, I bet she's
never gone to a White House briefing.
I just some need to right? I just when I.
Was the calls room. The calls room I.
I briefly covered the White House I think for USA TODAY and
like I found those briefings like.
Right. Really like they just were
useful. And that was in.
I don't think they're always occasionally always useless
(25:55):
though. I mean, it really was at one
time the time to interact and engage with the principal or or.
No, I mean, it's it's now more theater in which they joust with
the, you know, in the Biden areawas Corinne going after the
Rupert Murdoch, the properties and now it's gonna.
Steve Doocy going after Corinne.And now it's gonna be the Trump
folks going after the legacy media, corporate media or
(26:18):
whatever they're preferred nomenclature is to let.
Me ask you this the at the dawn of sort of social media and its
intersection with political campaigns and national politics,
the platforms were perceived to be structurally benefiting the
left. Right Facebook helped elect
President Obama. Today the the universe of that
(26:41):
dynamic is totally different. Right X is formerly Twitter,
owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, who has a desk in the Eisenhower
Executive Office Building acrossthe street from The West Wing.
And who fires people who had executive agencies?
Mark Zuckerberg's content moderation policy shifts at Meta
and lack of fact checking, right?
That all of this is is seen in many ways as an effort to cozy
(27:05):
up to the president. The right now has the advantage.
Yeah, let me tell you a story about that.
So in 2004, Howard Dean moves out to a big lead in the
Democratic primaries. He's using the Internet very
creatively to raise money. After John Kerry won Iowa, New
Hampshire, he basically inherited that.
(27:25):
And we pursued it very, very, very vigorously.
And he raised $250 million, unheard of at that time before
the Democratic convention. And Kerry would say today that
one of his biggest mistakes was accepting federal funding, $76
million for the whole campaign when the machine.
(27:47):
He raised millions of dollars inhis acceptance speech that the
campaign couldn't spend because once you give the acceptance
speech and you're in federal funding, you can't do it.
So it looked like it was going to be a huge advantage for the
left or for the center left. Barack Obama certainly used it
in 2008. I mean, raised an enormous
amount of money. Well, poor John McCain was
(28:09):
confined to using the federal funds, but it's all shifted.
I think the critical moment of the shift, by the way, was Elon
Musk buying Twitter, which he insists on calling X, which
means he's named it after one ofhis children.
Or vice versa. And I think that was that was
(28:30):
the moment, because the logarithm can be tweaked so that
it advantages certain kinds of messages.
Biden and Harris raised, Speaking of money, twice as much
money as the Trump campaign did,and they spent it overwhelmingly
on TV and much less on digital media.
(28:52):
Democrats spent $400 million more on advertising in the
presidential race than Republicans turned out.
Six million fewer voters than they did in 2020.
How you're the political. Message matters.
Where? Where do you spend money now and
why? Where Is it just message that
matters or is it how you spend the money?
You got to spend the money on social media, you got to spend
(29:14):
the money on non traditional, meaning you got to spend the
money on broadcast because a lotof that, you know, people are
still I don't. Drive votes anymore?
Yes, and to older people who vote very reliably tend to watch
a lot of broadcast television. But I think the biggest problems
that that Kamala Harris had was that the message had no edge, so
(29:36):
it didn't resonate with people. So, you know, the opportunity
economy that that was her, her line.
How does that compare with Franklin Roosevelt saying
economic royalists or never havethe forces of greed and
privilege been so united in their hatred for one candidate?
And I welcome that hate. And with that, in 1936, he sent
(29:59):
a huge signal to people that he was on their side against
entrenched interests. I, I think the problem she had,
number one, was that that the message didn't connect with
people with in a kind of center populist way.
And #2 there were certain ads that they needed to respond to
(30:19):
that they didn't. I mean, the 125 million that was
spent attacking her about transgender rights, they needed
to respond to that And, and just.
She's for you, she's for them. She she owned an incumbent at
White House that was deeply unpopular.
She owned a country that that was overwhelmingly sour,
believed that that we were on the wrong track and and an
(30:40):
electorate that was unhappy about high prices.
To put it in sports terms, it was very much an away game, but
that's what. You need the edge on the
message. Yeah, I mean, got to distinguish
yourself. She could have said the people
versus the powerful. For example, that was the Gore
slogan in 2000 against George W Bush.
And and Gore would say his mistake was being persuaded by
the pollsters in the final weeksbefore the election that he
(31:04):
should take the edge off off, yeah, and should talk about
removing barriers that get in people.
'S way OK. Yeah.
Removing barriers that get in people's way or the people
versus the powerful, I mean there is a huge difference in
the impact of those. Changed a few votes in Tennessee
or Florida, but it's real fast. To bring it back to the media,
(31:24):
though, on this question, thinking about the campaign,
Margaret, I think back to two events that get at how Kamala
Harris, you know how Democrats are fighting a conventional war
against an asymmetrical political warrior in Donald
Trump. Donald Trump goes to a closed
McDonald's drive thru and fry station and literally breaks the
Internet. I mean, the Internet melted down
(31:46):
that day. Everybody, I don't care how
apathetic they were, knew that Donald, Donald Trump was at a
McDonald's somewhere in America.OK, That is his big play.
All right. Kamala Harris's big final close
was to give a prepared speech atthe Ellipse in Washington, DC,
which could have happened in like 1999.
Eighty, 979 or 69. Technology would have been
(32:09):
irrelevant. That's like a conventional play
by a conventional politician. I'm going to give a big summary
speech at the end of the campaign, and that's going to
drive the coverage. Not anymore.
The McDonald's drive, it was what breaks through.
It's not a big speech. But if at the Ellipse, right,
she had had a message with an edge, yeah, a center populist
message, it would have gotten a lot.
(32:30):
More. If she economic royalists or
never have the forces agreed in privilege been so united and
their hatred for one candidate. I welcome that eight.
I mean, that would have broken through or.
Something like that, or standingup there and saying the man
behind me in the White House hasa good and decent man.
But I'm here to say tonight thatit's time for the country to
move past Trump and Biden, the like, and I'm going to do that
(32:53):
for you. It was a.
Message it was. I'm just not sure.
Like I think those are both great messages.
I'd be obviously, but I'm not I'm still not quite sure that
would have broken through the same way.
So I'm wondering. All right, well, so let's go
back to 1985 then. Bob, you were on the original
Firing Line program, which airedfor 33 years with William F
Buckley Junior. You were on several times.
(33:13):
In one such program, you sparredwith Buckley about Star Wars
missile defense systems. Take a look at this.
Oh, I'm. Excited.
For this, I'm telling you we shouldn't waste money on Star
Wars. I can define a reasonable level
of expenditure and to spend beyond that, because I think we
can reasonably. Mr. Mr. Shrum, don't try to
define your reasonable level. You don't know the slightest
(33:35):
thing about what expenses are required to research this
program. He does.
Do you? Do you?
No, I know that you don't. But they.
Do. But which leads Mr. Buckley to
the question, what are you and Idoing up here talking about
this? Do you stand by your position?
Yeah, sure. Look, I was younger, heavier.
(33:58):
Mustache is good, Bill. Bill Bill loved that exchange.
He put it in a book of Firing Line transcripts when when they
were published. Because the one thing I learned
from him very early on, like thefirst time I ever did the show
was he's was that you can't pause when he asked you
(34:19):
something or challenged you. You had to go at it right away
and you had to say the first thing that popped into your
head, otherwise you're dead. Well, so.
I was going to go in a differentdirection with that.
What I was going to ask you was the role of conservative media
has really developed. I mean, Buckley was the first
iconic conservative on television and we now have a
(34:42):
balkanized media environment with conservative personalities
and and progressive personalities.
Very rarely do you see a moment like that where where somebody
from the left and somebody from the right have a rigorous
contest of ideas. You know, he liked that, but his
idea of conservative media was that it should be in dialogue
(35:04):
with people on the other side. Jonathan, you wrote for National
Review at the beginning of your career.
How do you reflect on the evolution of conservative media?
Oh, good question. Look, I think there was
certainly an intellectualism to it that Buckley represented.
It was more a kind of drawing room conservatism.
Yeah, it was. It was something that was more
(35:26):
decorous. It was not sort of populist.
I think that that changed with Buchanan really.
And you can look at sort of the rise of Buchanan as the shift
from a kind of Buckley conservatism, a more decorous
sort of Yale Skull and Bones version, to a much more populist
version. And then we went back to George
W Bush, so after Buchanan. Well, Buchanan never himself was
(35:48):
a real political threat, but I think it's as he he was to Trump
as Goldwater was to Reagan, right?
He's the forerunner to a different kind of politics.
And I think that's really the shift.
And now, you know, in some ways,though, Trump is delaying what I
view as the great, the great reckoning on the right.
There's going to be a real showdown in terms what it means
(36:10):
to be a Republican because Trumphas kind of put off that
argument. Because Trump is what it means
and it's all personality. It's not issues.
But 2028 is going to be. What do we stand for in foreign
policy? Are we isolationist or
internationalist? How about domestic policy?
Are we for Lena Khan's FTC or not?
Where are we on entitled immigration?
To get to. Get to the question.
To get to the heart of what you're saying, all the years
(36:31):
that Mary Louise and I lived in Washington, we had conservative
friends and liberal friends, andthey mixed together at the
dinner table. It doesn't happen anymore.
People now choose their friendships according to
politics. I don't.
What we're trying to do at the Center for the Political Future
is advance and model of politicswhere we respect each other, we
(36:52):
respect the truth. But the loss of that in
Washington is one of the things that I think makes it very
difficult to compromise in ways that move the country forward.
Adam, you've been covering politics for the Times for more
than 30 years. Yeah.
How? How is the growing influence of
a more hyper partisan strain of of media and politics influenced
(37:13):
your reporting and your work? It makes it harder to report
because it makes it harder to get people to open up and not be
confrontational and not be sort of like as if they're on
television. And the other thing, nothing
wrong with big ITV and like thatup there.
And I think it also makes them often less likely to trust the
(37:35):
times, right? Just assume the times has a
liberal bias and therefore I have a liberal bias.
So it's it is definitely more challenging and and it's harder
to sort of prepare a story I presented in a sort of objective
down the middle kind of way. Bob, Adam, Jonathan, thank you
for joining me on firing. Line, thank you.
Thanks, Margaret.
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