November 30, 2024 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Molly Hemingway is a journalist, author, political commentator. She's the
editor in chief of The Federalist, which is a conservative
online magazine. She's probably best known the biggest audience as
a contributor on Fox News. She's known for a rather
(00:27):
insightful mind and a very astute ability to make a
point quickly, succinctly, directly, and that is a real skill
set that most people don't have. She's written multiple books,
Justice on Trial, The Cavanough Confirmation, and the Future of
the Supreme Court, which I encourage you to read. It's
(00:47):
wonderful read. And yeah, anyway, so she sat down with
a student at Hillsdale College to talk about media bias
in America. And having heard this, you know, every week
we talk about what we're going to share with you
as the Saturday Podcast. We all agreed this met the test.
(01:12):
It's a long form that we can't play on the
air because it doesn't fit into our time segments that
we want to share with you. And we think that
our Saturday Podcast is a time when maybe you're cleaning
out the garage or rowing the grass, or sitting out
back having some ice tea, whatever that may be where
(01:32):
you're probably a little more open to a longer form
discussion that you may not be during the weekday when
you're rushing. Anyway, that's the plan, that's the programming strategy
behind this. We hope you like it.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Last time I saw you, I was staying in your basement.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yes you were, and I was telling my roommates that
we were doing this conversation. I told them actually to
stop by AG's if they wanted to see you again.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
They were asking, if you're going to stay in our house?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Right I did?
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I will say, I mean I stayed with you because
there was a housing shortage issue, correct, and you generously
took me in.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
But I had a really great time.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Also, your house is ridiculously nice, much nicer than what
I was dealing with in college.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So yeah, we're kind of spoiled as college kids. But congratulations,
You're editor in chief is a Federalist.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
How's that going?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
It's going great. We just announced this a couple of
weeks ago.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
I've been at the Federalists since we started in twenty
thirteen and have loved it and loved seeing what we've done,
and very excited to take the reins here.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
What does your role as editor in chief look like,
because my understanding of editor in chief is maybe like
when I was in charge of my school newspaper, and
I feel like that's definitely different.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
For the Federalists, it actually is probably the same.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
I think there's like an editor's club where no matter
what it is, like you know, neighborhood newsletter or large publication,
you have some of the same things overseeing all the
other writers. And we have you know, staff writers, but
we also have quite a few contributors who are on
the outside just making sure we're covering all the important
things that should be covered. And that's particularly important in
(03:05):
our media environment where so many of the large media
outlets are just completely out to lunch or just worse
on how they report or characterize the news, how they
shape narratives, and it's just really important to not just
fight against that but but be aggressive in saying what
(03:26):
is actually important that's going on in the world, in
the country.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And so it's it's fun, but we never lack for work.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
We're seeing today like such a divide in the media,
more of this like this left and this right kind
of competing against each other. Where do you think this
kind of began this divide where we have like left
leaning media and right leaning media.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
So in this country, we actually used to have extremely
partisan media. If you read the newspapers at the time
of the founding and even for a long period after that,
they are extremely partisan.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
They wear their bias on their sleeves.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
And then we had this period of time in the
middle part of the previous century where we moved to
what a lot of people call the American model of journalism,
where you aim toward objectivity and you have just this
like voice of God with a shared set of facts,
and then people can make up their own mind.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
About that shared set of facts.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
And that was always more an ideal than reality, and
a lot of liberal advocacy actually got pushed through this model,
and it's just completely fallen a part in recent years,
as everybody with a pulse understands that the vast majority
of our corporate media has a hard left not just bias,
(04:45):
but propaganda approach to talking about really important things, you know,
global pandemics or you know, international affairs, or what's happening
in the country at any given time.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
And the trust in today's media as kind of I
would say, it's not as trust.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Have you noticed that, I'm just a little bit.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yeah, where do you think this has really come from?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (05:08):
So it is off the charts bad for the corporate media.
Nobody really trusts them only like even their numbers aren't
great among democrat or or leftist readers. They are the
only ones who will report any amount of trust, and
that is purely a reflection of the fact that much
(05:28):
of the corporate media exists to advance their agenda. So
it's not really meaningful in any sense. But yeah, they've
completely lost the plot in recent years.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
They went from some bias some extreme bias.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
I always think it's funny that the first Republican president
to complain about bias was Dwight Eisenhower, who's been a
long complaint of the Republican Party and conservatives.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But in the last several years it's just become I mean,
just they have nothing.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
They are there's so much embracing narrative pushing over reporting
of facts that there's nothing love.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
What is the difference in reporting a narrative as opposed
to just reporting truth or facts?
Speaker 5 (06:17):
So ideally you would be just whatever the thing is
that you're writing on, you'd be collecting facts and trying
to report them in a way that matched the scenario.
And what we've seen happen with our corporate media is
that they're not really interested in reporting facts. They're interested
in pushing a narrative. They want to push people into
(06:38):
doing something. Maybe it is accepting draconian lockdowns as a
response to the global pandemic.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So rather than just reporting honestly.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
About what we know, what the rates of infection are,
what the rates of transmission are, they worry about how
reporting facts might affect their real goal, which is to
push lockdowns or to push a shutdown of the economy.
Have a certain political aim, and so they shape everything
to match the narrative rather than just letting the facts
(07:06):
go where they may.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
And you saw that. I mean we've seen.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
This for years, but particularly I think in response the
last couple of years with the global pandemic, there was
just an open acceptance of suppressing news for fear of
how it might affect political goals.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And that's very dangerous.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
I mean, it's important that people you know, sometimes facts
are not fun to deal with, Like you take, for example,
the early days of the global pandemic, there was some
concern that maybe the Wuhan Institute of Virology had something
to do with the COVID nineteen and that was suppressed.
That was like violently suppressed. You couldn't talk about it,
(07:44):
and you could even be banned from social media. And
it would have been good to know that that was
a logical line of inquiry for foreign policy reasons, for
national security reasons, for health reasons. You know, who knows
who would have been saved, It might have affected vaccine development.
And yet it took like a year for that to
be allowed to be discussed. And that was all narrative
(08:04):
pushing instead of facts.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And so when we focus on the narrative, you mentioned
that it's like dangerous to the country.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
In what ways?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Is it dangerous in so many ways?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Because now you think also of what happened to an
entire field public health professionals.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Which were largely held in.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
High regard at the time this started. And you know,
I think people understand that public health professionals are like
anyone else, that you might believe something to be the
case and later you find out it's not true. But
because of the way that the media and public health
professionals work to kind of suppress information or to push narratives.
I think you've seen a decline of trust not just
(08:41):
in the media, but in the public health profession itself. So,
you know, this has been a very bad pandemic that
we've lived through. It's obviously taken many people's lives, it's
injured a lot of people, but it's not the worst
thing you could ever imagine happening. And if there were
something else unleashed upon the world that was even worse,
you can imagine that the last people you might trust
(09:04):
would be some of these same professionals that were so
wrong in the last couple of years.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Do you think today we value truth and like fact
reporting as opposed to people who reinforce our opinion.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Yeah, I think it's human nature to want to have
your opinions reinforced.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I think studies have.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Shown that people very much flock to arguments that support
they're already held.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Biases, and that's just something that we all deal with,
even if we wish that we didn't.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
And so we can personally work to combat that or
just make sure that we're not just accepting things because
it's what we want to believe is true by going
out of our way to seek out other viewpoints and
test our ideas against those viewpoints and just you know,
be well read.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Do you think it's possible to be completely objective in
journalism or is there always going to be a little
bit of that bias in there.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
So when I was starting out, I was trained in
that ideal that you are aiming toward objectivity, and I
think it's a great way to be trained. You have
to work really hard to make sure that you are
looking at other viewpoints, including them, you know, questioning your assumptions,
and so I think that's important no matter what type
of journalists you are, you should always be thinking what
(10:19):
are the different arguments that are out there.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I'm not a huge believer in the.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Success of that American model of aiming toward objectivity. I
just saw how it didn't work and how it was
used to kind of.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I don't know it was.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
It was something that made people feel like they were
doing something more than they were actually doing something. But
I still kind of prefer it to some of the
corruption that we've seen recently. Like I thought, I don't
know how much you remember what was going on in
twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I was a freshman in high school that much.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
But so that was the period where the media just
completely broken. They had been previously claiming that they were
nonpartisan and objective, and with the rise of the Republican
presidential primary with Donald Trump, they just completely broke and
they openly admitted that they felt that their job was
(11:16):
to interfere in the election, keep him from being elected,
you know, portray news in such a way so as
to decrease the chances of him being elected, not cover
news stories or cover and it just was really bad.
And I thought that after that effort failed in twenty sixteen,
that maybe they would return to this idea of pushing
facts instead of narratives, of not having everybody in the
(11:39):
newsroom be a crazy left winger, of promoting people who
weren't that way, firing people who were that way, you know.
I thought maybe it would be a big wake up call,
and instead they somehow got worse. I mean, twenty fifteen
twenty sixteen was less bad than the rest of that administration,
where they embraced this crazy conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
They pushed it.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
They broke all of their own journalistic standards to push
out false, anonymously sourced stories, again pushing an agenda that
was not one that they should have been pushing, and
they just seem to be addicted to failure, and partly
because it's lucrative for them, like powerful forces, like this new.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Model of journalism.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
I mean, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post's it's a
good idea for him, as one of the world's wealthiest
and most powerful people, to be able to control a
major publication. All corporations kind of feel this way, and
so they don't care that they're hurting the country, maybe
even hurting the world. It's helping them in their bottom line,
and so they I don't see it changing anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That's really bad news.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But yes, great, Well why did you really get into journalism?
Where did you first realize you want to get into journalism?
Was it because you can see it kind of going
down this path and we need people to kind of
oh combat that.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Yeah, it's a good question that I should probably have
a good answer too. But I guess I was interested
when I was younger. I think I started a school
newspaper in elementary school.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I was a yearbook editor.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
For two years in high school, so I was interested
in it, but I knew I wanted to become an economist,
so I studied economics in school, and that's the road
that I thought I was going down.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And then I don't.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Really know exactly how it happened, except that everybody I
knew who I was friends with, they were journalists and
they really liked their jobs. They weren't paid that much,
but they really liked their jobs, and they enjoyed that
they could study different things and like cover this topic
one day and cover a different topic the next day,
and interview people. And I thought that it sounded fun,
(13:45):
and so I made a go of it.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
And I loved it.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Like the first time I saw my byline, I was
covering the FCC, you know, like the radio and recording industry,
and it was a totally boring story, but it was
my first byline, and I was totally hooked, and I
was like, this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Where was your first byline?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It was a publication called Radio and Records.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Oh cool.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
You've always been pretty transparent about your faith. Have you
seen that affect your career or your reporting at all?
Speaker 5 (14:14):
It's mostly helped, I can't. I mean, I'm maybe entirely helped.
So I think that some Lutheran and we have certain
things that just help us think through how to live
our lives, Like we have a strong views on vocation,
like you serve God by.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Serving your neighbor.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
And you have different vocations, like you can be a daughter,
a wife, a mother, an editor, and you have different
roles in each vocation. And as a journalist, your job
is to serve others by telling factual things and bringing
people into a place where they might not have been
able to be before. You cover a congressional hearing, or
(14:54):
you cover an event to protest, and you get this
very special role to help other people, people who couldn't
otherwise know about it, And so I like that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I like Also.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
A commandment that I struggle with is putting the best
construction on what other people are saying. You know, we
teach that the commandment against bearing false witness is much
more than just not lying, but that you have to
really put the best construction on what other people are saying.
I obviously fail at that all the time, but I
like being reminded of that so that, you know, when
I want to go after someone, I think, well, what
(15:27):
were they trying to say? And can I articulate that
in a fair way and still critique it, but by
being as honest as I can be about what they're saying.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Do you think your faith has shaped your conservative values
or if that's led you kind of like down this
political and into your political beliefs at all.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
My husband and I talk all the time about how
much the last few years have been very hard for
people in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And I think that they make politics their religion.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
It's everything for them, and power is everything for a
lot of people. And my husband's a journalist also, and
we love politics and we're really interested in it, but
the core of our lives is in our church and
our faith and like the higher things, eternal life, and
so what's happening in politics is so much less important
(16:17):
than our eternal salvation, and it gives us this balance
and perspective that I think helps you just not lose
your mind when things are a little bit in turmoil
around you. And that has been extremely helpful for us.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
And being open about your faith and then also just
talking about politics, you face a lot of criticism. How
do you kind of handle that and not bend to
what these people are kind of like saying about you
or forcing you maybe try to do so.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I don't know I hear that, but I think actually
what I mostly received from people is just a profound
amount of gratitude. Like if you look in my email,
it's just full of people saying really nice things. And
I think it's about who do you want to be
liked by? And I remember when we started the Federalists,
someone said that we were dangerous because we didn't want
(17:05):
to be liked by the New York Times. And I
loved that because so many conservative media people, they're desperate
to get hired at the Atlantic, They're desperate to get
hired at the New York Times. I would I don't
even understand why you would want those things. I do
care about whether average Americans, who I think are the
backbone of this country, who have done so much and
(17:26):
never get represented in the media. I care what they think.
So I like who likes me, and I also like
who doesn't like me.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I understand, and I feel like the people that you're
looking to like you, those people that you talk about,
like the backbone of America. What's the best way for
like the average citizen to stay informed in today's political world.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Yeah, I think it takes a lot of effort. It
probably always took a lot of effort, but now, because
of what we were talking about, with the credibility of
the media being at an all time low, people are
aware that they can't trust some of the news sources
that they'd trusted previously, and so I think it was
just ortant to still get a wide, you know, wide
variety of inputs and make your do as much original
(18:06):
viewing of things as you can. Like, one thing that's
great about the Internet and everybody being the reporter is
you can you can kind of like watch a video
of a hearing yourself, or you can read an original
document yourself and make up your own mind about it.
And so for me personally, what I like to read, like,
the only real, big corporate media that I.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Read every day is the Wall Street Journal. Still like it.
It's not perfect, but I like it.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
And then I use Real Clear Politics, which is a
website that kind of covers things from left, center and right,
kind of puts the best arguments forward from all perspectives,
and it updates regularly throughout the day.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So I love that.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
And then I have like a highly curated social media
feed where people I trust I follow, and so I
think that's that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Find a voice you trust, find a voice who's.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Told difficult truths, you know, and just maybe keep listening
to them unless they give you a reason to stop.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Speaking of like biases, You've interviewed all types of people.
Do you prefer to interview someone who maybe agrees with
you politically or somebody who you kind of oppose in
a political way.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
It's easier to interview people who you oppose, So I
would prefer that your questions just come naturally when you're thinking, like,
you know, they give you an answer and you just
instinctively think why that was a wrong answer, so you
can kind of navigate it better. It's harder to do
when you agree with someone. On the other hand, when
someone is, you know, more aligned with you, you kind
(19:33):
of can dig deeper in certain ways to flesh out
what's going on. But I'm not the world's best interviewer.
I've admitted that before. But I've gotten to interview really
high level people and it's you know, it's always.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
It's always interesting.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
But I find it like you have to have a
balance between going after the information that you came to
get you know you're you're usually there for a reason,
so letting the person that you're interviewing kind of have
a say in what they're gonna what they're going to
talk about. You know, I don't like just a completely
belligerent interview. I want to hear I want to really
(20:12):
come to understand what it is that they're thinking.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Well, you say you're not the best interviewer, but it's
like not every day that I get to ask you
for interviewing interviewing tips.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
How do you prepare for an interview?
Speaker 5 (20:22):
Oh, so I have interviewed. I mean, it's it's funny,
like I've done so many interviews now that usually I
just think about what it is that my my my
near goal is, which is a story where I probably
have a pretty good idea of what it is that
I want to find out and and just and just
I plot it out.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I practice like what I'm gonna what I'm going to ask.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
But I also think like, if you can interview in person,
that is so much better than over the phone. And
during COVID times, I've had to do so much over
the phone, and you can't get a feel for what
how comfortable someone is or you know, when you're in person,
you can feel like, do they want to go deep here?
Do they want to you know? Did they pause in
a weird way and look at certain directions that you
(21:05):
know that they're thinking about something that you want to interrogate.
But I like to also just you know, if you
can interview someone in their office or in their home,
I love that because you get a little cues about
what's important to them, and you just can be more
comfortable with them by talking about like, oh, I see
that sports jersey, what's that about?
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Or important well, and just kind of treat people as
people without without having to just be there for business.
But I think just as much research as you can
do beforehand so that you're not wasting time.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Know, so you've interviewed President Trump, who he's pretty high profile.
Do you have like a best Trump's story from like
that interview?
Speaker 5 (21:52):
So I just want to first say that he is
the most difficult person in.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
The world to interview.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
I'd imagine, Yeah, I mean he's like you, you ask
him a question here, and he goes all the way
around before getting you know, and you're kind of trying
to bring him back to the thing.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
That he does that.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
He's a really interesting cat. I also think it's weird
because he's much nicer in person than he is. Like
on TV, he comes off like a total.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah no, I understand, a taxionistic guy.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
But then when you're in person with him, he's usually
just I don't know, he's much much more gentle. I
talked to this one reporter who said that most politicians
in public they're kissing babies and they're complimenting your wife,
and then in private they're just jerks. And then Trump
is the one who will insult your wife and like
attack the baby, but then in private be like, really
(22:44):
is sorry, but what was your question about, oh best
trum story. I don't know, he's just just from the
interview perspective. One thing that's interesting is he'll he has.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
His own rules.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
So you know, in journalism, you say this is on
the record, where it's on background, on background, So on
the record means you can use it totally un quote
the person, and on background means you can use the information,
but you can't tie it to the person that you're
talking to. And then off the record means it's more
like for your own context. You're not supposed to use it,
And then people come up with other things. They're funny,
(23:18):
like deep background, which is like, I really mean, don't.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Tie my name to it. But he'll say stuff like
this is off the record, but you can use it.
That's like what does that mean?
Speaker 5 (23:27):
But in a weird way, like the more you're around him,
the more you understand exactly what he means. He means
that more like his background. I think, I hope it
hasn't been a problem yet those far. But so I've
interviewed him in the Oval Office, I've interviewed him elsewhere
in the White House. I've interviewed him at mar A
Lago several times, and he's just, you know, like I said,
(23:48):
you need a much more tenacious interviewer than I am
to have like a fully productive thing. But I've spent
a lot of time with him, and I find him
to be truly fascinating. He did teach me how to
take picture, which I think is funny. After one of
my interviews at mar A Lago for my book on
the twenty twenty election, I had realized, like I'd never
taken a picture of him, even though i'd you know,
(24:10):
I never had like, I had many opportunities, but I've
never done it. And so we're walking out of his
place and I said, well, you know, can I take
a picture of you?
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And he said we Why don't we take one together?
And so we take a picture and his assistant shows
him the picture.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
And he says, I don't like her, and I don't
like me, and he's like, let's move over here. So
we move over to this other location. We take it
and she shows him and he says, I like me.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I still don't like her.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
And he's like, I'm gonna teach you how to take
a picture. And he gave me all these tips, like
you you look at what the background is, not just
the people who are in the picture. He's like, so
we want to have the background be this beautiful mar
A Lago estate, you know, with the grass, the green
grass below us whatever. And then he was teaching me
things like to turn to the side and put my
hand on my hip and like put.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
My chin out, and so we take the picture. On
he says, you can.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Trust me, my wife's a supermodel. I was like, I
am aware that your wife is a supermodel. Yes, And
so his assistant shows him the picture, and he kind
of pauses and he says, well, there you go when
it was better. You know what, I was thinking, How
am I my age and none of my female friends
(25:26):
ever taught me how to take a picture, and the
former president of the United States is teaching me, like
really excellent tips on taking pictures. Like it just was
one of those like absurd moments, but was really funny.
And so now I'm still not great at taking pictures.
But every time I, you know, when someone does it,
I'm like, okay, wait, hold on, what did what did?
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Then I do you think interviewing different people like that
would be maybe the part you like the best about
your job? Or I guess what would be the favorite
part about it?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (25:54):
I will say so of all the people I've loved
interviewing presidents, I've had a few former presidents or current
or former presidents.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Senators.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
I enjoy senators, but I really enjoy interviewing judges justices.
I think because they don't talk that much to the media,
they are very logical in their thinking.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It's just interesting.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
That's the thing I've enjoyed most is covering federal judges
or other judges and just getting a better understanding of
their thinking. I think because I'm personally quite interested in
the law.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So yeah, when I first met you last spring, it
came to my advanced writing class, and the person I
look is like, does she have a wedding ring?
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Because I'm interested in knowing.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
How do you balance kind of like having a family
and a high profile journalism career poorly?
Speaker 5 (26:49):
No, So my husband is the main person who got
me into journalism. We were friends at the time that
I followed him into journalism and taught me everything.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
I know.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
He's with me on everything, and so even to the
extent that I would love to not be working so much,
and he's always the one encouraging me to get out
there and do things. Having someone who's fully supportive and
a partner is really key having a clear understanding of
what's most important. So we both work from home, so
(27:24):
we're both very involved in our children's lives. We're very
involved in our church, and so it's just like natural
balance provided by just having people who love you and
are with you no matter what's going on politically. I mean,
even the fact that there are people I go to
church with who are wildly different political viewpoints, and we
all love each other, and we all work together, and
we're you know, doing the Octoberfest together or in the
(27:45):
church choir together, and it just reminds you of what's
actually important versus what people in DC think is important.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
And this kind of builds off of that in a way.
Do you have advice for young people who are looking
to go into a career in journalism.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I mean, that's that's a broad question. I don't know.
Can you narrow it down a little?
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Sure, Okay, I'm going to be graduating. I'm twenty one
years old, and I ultimately would like to be in DC,
and I want to be a journalist coming out of Hillsdale.
What would be I guess a main takeaway for me
as I'm graduating and going out into that world.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
So I think it's really weird because when I started
in journalism, it was a completely different path you had.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
I mean, it was kind of standard.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
You start out at a local paper, like even if
you wanted to do TV journalism, to start at a
local TV outlet, and then you slowly worked your way
up into the bigger markets or you figured out what
your beat was going to be, and then you just
like drilled into that. You know, if you knew you
wanted to be a tech reporter for the rest of
your life, you could just kind of work.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Your way up that way.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
And in the last twenty years, everything's kind of fallen apart.
There aren't many local media outlets, so there aren't like
ways to start local and then get bigger. I mean
you can still, but it's just so many fewer opportunities
on that front, but then so many more opportunities in
DC and New York.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
With outlets that have particular perspectives.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
And so I think just kind of accepting the reality
that's that's where we are now, Like there's no mainstream
journalism anymore. That's just gone. It's all left or right,
and that's just the fact. And some people like to
claim that they're mainstream, they're not.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
They're left.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
And just understanding like what it would mean if you
were to go into a left media outlet and what
it would be like or to go into a right
media outlet. And so I think that's one thing, just
understanding the reality of the of the environment. And then
the other thing I think is just like experiences everything
and don't worry about making a huge splash right away
(29:54):
until you really know have like mastered the writing or
mastered being on TV, and then you can kind of
like get a feel for everything and then go for
a big I mean, everyone's different.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Some people can make a splash right away.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
But I think that I've seen a lot of people
really want to share their opinions very quickly out of college.
And you know, if you're a Hillsdale educated person, you
have well formed opinions.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I get it.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
But there's something to be said for just humbling yourself
to the idea that other people might have something to
teach you for the next several years, and just learning
the craft, learning the trade, and then going for it.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So yesterday you emailed me and we were kind of
you're asking me if we were preparing for this, I guess,
And I asked you what you were wearing. You suggested
to me. I never answered, like a softball T shirt,
that we should wear softball's T shirts. I got you
a softball shirt. Oh, since I am on the softball team,
so I do this is like awesome.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
If you've come back on campus.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, we should just put them on right now, right.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Great.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
I did want to give you that, so use your sauce.
All team, this is my softball team. We actually I
had to tell access tomorrow while we're doing this today.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Well, thanks for making time. I really appreciate it. This
is awesome.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
It's wonderful to get to hang out with you.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I have two requests. Yes, would you mind signing my
rigged book? And then, of course, also could we get
a photo. That's like, that's more of my parents' requests.
They were like, can you.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Oh, that's cool that you don't want to photo with me?
Speaker 4 (31:19):
But no, I do like.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
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(31:43):
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(32:08):
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(32:31):
we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the
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The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Molly Hemingway is a journalist, author, political commentator. She's the
editor in chief of The Federalist, which is a conservative
online magazine. She's probably best known the biggest audience as
a contributor on Fox News. She's known for a rather
(00:27):
insightful mind and a very astute ability to make a
point quickly, succinctly, directly, and that is a real skill
set that most people don't have. She's written multiple books,
Justice on Trial, The Cavanough Confirmation, and the Future of
the Supreme Court, which I encourage you to read. It's
(00:47):
wonderful read. And yeah, anyway, so she sat down with
a student at Hillsdale College to talk about media bias
in America. And having heard this, you know, every week
we talk about what we're going to share with you
as the Saturday Podcast. We all agreed this met the test.
(01:12):
It's a long form that we can't play on the
air because it doesn't fit into our time segments that
we want to share with you. And we think that
our Saturday Podcast is a time when maybe you're cleaning
out the garage or rowing the grass, or sitting out
back having some ice tea, whatever that may be where
(01:32):
you're probably a little more open to a longer form
discussion that you may not be during the weekday when
you're rushing. Anyway, that's the plan, that's the programming strategy
behind this. We hope you like it.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Last time I saw you, I was staying in your basement.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yes you were, and I was telling my roommates that
we were doing this conversation. I told them actually to
stop by AG's if they wanted to see you again.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
They were asking, if you're going to stay in our house?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Right I did?
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I will say, I mean I stayed with you because
there was a housing shortage issue, correct, and you generously
took me in.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
But I had a really great time.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Also, your house is ridiculously nice, much nicer than what
I was dealing with in college.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So yeah, we're kind of spoiled as college kids. But congratulations,
You're editor in chief is a Federalist.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
How's that going?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
It's going great. We just announced this a couple of
weeks ago.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
I've been at the Federalists since we started in twenty
thirteen and have loved it and loved seeing what we've done,
and very excited to take the reins here.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
What does your role as editor in chief look like,
because my understanding of editor in chief is maybe like
when I was in charge of my school newspaper, and
I feel like that's definitely different.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
For the Federalists, it actually is probably the same.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
I think there's like an editor's club where no matter
what it is, like you know, neighborhood newsletter or large publication,
you have some of the same things overseeing all the
other writers. And we have you know, staff writers, but
we also have quite a few contributors who are on
the outside just making sure we're covering all the important
things that should be covered. And that's particularly important in
(03:05):
our media environment where so many of the large media
outlets are just completely out to lunch or just worse
on how they report or characterize the news, how they
shape narratives, and it's just really important to not just
fight against that but but be aggressive in saying what
(03:26):
is actually important that's going on in the world, in
the country.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And so it's it's fun, but we never lack for work.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
We're seeing today like such a divide in the media,
more of this like this left and this right kind
of competing against each other. Where do you think this
kind of began this divide where we have like left
leaning media and right leaning media.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
So in this country, we actually used to have extremely
partisan media. If you read the newspapers at the time
of the founding and even for a long period after that,
they are extremely partisan.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
They wear their bias on their sleeves.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
And then we had this period of time in the
middle part of the previous century where we moved to
what a lot of people call the American model of journalism,
where you aim toward objectivity and you have just this
like voice of God with a shared set of facts,
and then people can make up their own mind.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
About that shared set of facts.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
And that was always more an ideal than reality, and
a lot of liberal advocacy actually got pushed through this model,
and it's just completely fallen a part in recent years,
as everybody with a pulse understands that the vast majority
of our corporate media has a hard left not just bias,
(04:45):
but propaganda approach to talking about really important things, you know,
global pandemics or you know, international affairs, or what's happening
in the country at any given time.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
And the trust in today's media as kind of I
would say, it's not as trust.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Have you noticed that, I'm just a little bit.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yeah, where do you think this has really come from?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (05:08):
So it is off the charts bad for the corporate media.
Nobody really trusts them only like even their numbers aren't
great among democrat or or leftist readers. They are the
only ones who will report any amount of trust, and
that is purely a reflection of the fact that much
(05:28):
of the corporate media exists to advance their agenda. So
it's not really meaningful in any sense. But yeah, they've
completely lost the plot in recent years.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
They went from some bias some extreme bias.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
I always think it's funny that the first Republican president
to complain about bias was Dwight Eisenhower, who's been a
long complaint of the Republican Party and conservatives.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But in the last several years it's just become I mean,
just they have nothing.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
They are there's so much embracing narrative pushing over reporting
of facts that there's nothing love.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
What is the difference in reporting a narrative as opposed
to just reporting truth or facts?
Speaker 5 (06:17):
So ideally you would be just whatever the thing is
that you're writing on, you'd be collecting facts and trying
to report them in a way that matched the scenario.
And what we've seen happen with our corporate media is
that they're not really interested in reporting facts. They're interested
in pushing a narrative. They want to push people into
(06:38):
doing something. Maybe it is accepting draconian lockdowns as a
response to the global pandemic.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So rather than just reporting honestly.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
About what we know, what the rates of infection are,
what the rates of transmission are, they worry about how
reporting facts might affect their real goal, which is to
push lockdowns or to push a shutdown of the economy.
Have a certain political aim, and so they shape everything
to match the narrative rather than just letting the facts
(07:06):
go where they may.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
And you saw that. I mean we've seen.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
This for years, but particularly I think in response the
last couple of years with the global pandemic, there was
just an open acceptance of suppressing news for fear of
how it might affect political goals.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And that's very dangerous.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
I mean, it's important that people you know, sometimes facts
are not fun to deal with, Like you take, for example,
the early days of the global pandemic, there was some
concern that maybe the Wuhan Institute of Virology had something
to do with the COVID nineteen and that was suppressed.
That was like violently suppressed. You couldn't talk about it,
(07:44):
and you could even be banned from social media. And
it would have been good to know that that was
a logical line of inquiry for foreign policy reasons, for
national security reasons, for health reasons. You know, who knows
who would have been saved, It might have affected vaccine development.
And yet it took like a year for that to
be allowed to be discussed. And that was all narrative
(08:04):
pushing instead of facts.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And so when we focus on the narrative, you mentioned
that it's like dangerous to the country.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
In what ways?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Is it dangerous in so many ways?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Because now you think also of what happened to an
entire field public health professionals.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Which were largely held in.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
High regard at the time this started. And you know,
I think people understand that public health professionals are like
anyone else, that you might believe something to be the
case and later you find out it's not true. But
because of the way that the media and public health
professionals work to kind of suppress information or to push narratives.
I think you've seen a decline of trust not just
(08:41):
in the media, but in the public health profession itself. So,
you know, this has been a very bad pandemic that
we've lived through. It's obviously taken many people's lives, it's
injured a lot of people, but it's not the worst
thing you could ever imagine happening. And if there were
something else unleashed upon the world that was even worse,
you can imagine that the last people you might trust
(09:04):
would be some of these same professionals that were so
wrong in the last couple of years.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Do you think today we value truth and like fact
reporting as opposed to people who reinforce our opinion.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Yeah, I think it's human nature to want to have
your opinions reinforced.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I think studies have.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Shown that people very much flock to arguments that support
they're already held.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Biases, and that's just something that we all deal with,
even if we wish that we didn't.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
And so we can personally work to combat that or
just make sure that we're not just accepting things because
it's what we want to believe is true by going
out of our way to seek out other viewpoints and
test our ideas against those viewpoints and just you know,
be well read.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Do you think it's possible to be completely objective in
journalism or is there always going to be a little
bit of that bias in there.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
So when I was starting out, I was trained in
that ideal that you are aiming toward objectivity, and I
think it's a great way to be trained. You have
to work really hard to make sure that you are
looking at other viewpoints, including them, you know, questioning your assumptions,
and so I think that's important no matter what type
of journalists you are, you should always be thinking what
(10:19):
are the different arguments that are out there.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I'm not a huge believer in the.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Success of that American model of aiming toward objectivity. I
just saw how it didn't work and how it was
used to kind of.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I don't know it was.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
It was something that made people feel like they were
doing something more than they were actually doing something. But
I still kind of prefer it to some of the
corruption that we've seen recently. Like I thought, I don't
know how much you remember what was going on in
twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I was a freshman in high school that much.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
But so that was the period where the media just
completely broken. They had been previously claiming that they were
nonpartisan and objective, and with the rise of the Republican
presidential primary with Donald Trump, they just completely broke and
they openly admitted that they felt that their job was
(11:16):
to interfere in the election, keep him from being elected,
you know, portray news in such a way so as
to decrease the chances of him being elected, not cover
news stories or cover and it just was really bad.
And I thought that after that effort failed in twenty sixteen,
that maybe they would return to this idea of pushing
facts instead of narratives, of not having everybody in the
(11:39):
newsroom be a crazy left winger, of promoting people who
weren't that way, firing people who were that way, you know.
I thought maybe it would be a big wake up call,
and instead they somehow got worse. I mean, twenty fifteen
twenty sixteen was less bad than the rest of that administration,
where they embraced this crazy conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
They pushed it.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
They broke all of their own journalistic standards to push
out false, anonymously sourced stories, again pushing an agenda that
was not one that they should have been pushing, and
they just seem to be addicted to failure, and partly
because it's lucrative for them, like powerful forces, like this new.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Model of journalism.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
I mean, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post's it's a
good idea for him, as one of the world's wealthiest
and most powerful people, to be able to control a
major publication. All corporations kind of feel this way, and
so they don't care that they're hurting the country, maybe
even hurting the world. It's helping them in their bottom line,
and so they I don't see it changing anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That's really bad news.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But yes, great, Well why did you really get into journalism?
Where did you first realize you want to get into journalism?
Was it because you can see it kind of going
down this path and we need people to kind of
oh combat that.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Yeah, it's a good question that I should probably have
a good answer too. But I guess I was interested
when I was younger. I think I started a school
newspaper in elementary school.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I was a yearbook editor.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
For two years in high school, so I was interested
in it, but I knew I wanted to become an economist,
so I studied economics in school, and that's the road
that I thought I was going down.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And then I don't.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Really know exactly how it happened, except that everybody I
knew who I was friends with, they were journalists and
they really liked their jobs. They weren't paid that much,
but they really liked their jobs, and they enjoyed that
they could study different things and like cover this topic
one day and cover a different topic the next day,
and interview people. And I thought that it sounded fun,
(13:45):
and so I made a go of it.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
And I loved it.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Like the first time I saw my byline, I was
covering the FCC, you know, like the radio and recording industry,
and it was a totally boring story, but it was
my first byline, and I was totally hooked, and I
was like, this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Where was your first byline?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It was a publication called Radio and Records.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Oh cool.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
You've always been pretty transparent about your faith. Have you
seen that affect your career or your reporting at all?
Speaker 5 (14:14):
It's mostly helped, I can't. I mean, I'm maybe entirely helped.
So I think that some Lutheran and we have certain
things that just help us think through how to live
our lives, Like we have a strong views on vocation,
like you serve God by.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Serving your neighbor.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
And you have different vocations, like you can be a daughter,
a wife, a mother, an editor, and you have different
roles in each vocation. And as a journalist, your job
is to serve others by telling factual things and bringing
people into a place where they might not have been
able to be before. You cover a congressional hearing, or
(14:54):
you cover an event to protest, and you get this
very special role to help other people, people who couldn't
otherwise know about it, And so I like that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I like Also.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
A commandment that I struggle with is putting the best
construction on what other people are saying. You know, we
teach that the commandment against bearing false witness is much
more than just not lying, but that you have to
really put the best construction on what other people are saying.
I obviously fail at that all the time, but I
like being reminded of that so that, you know, when
I want to go after someone, I think, well, what
(15:27):
were they trying to say? And can I articulate that
in a fair way and still critique it, but by
being as honest as I can be about what they're saying.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Do you think your faith has shaped your conservative values
or if that's led you kind of like down this
political and into your political beliefs at all.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
My husband and I talk all the time about how
much the last few years have been very hard for
people in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And I think that they make politics their religion.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
It's everything for them, and power is everything for a
lot of people. And my husband's a journalist also, and
we love politics and we're really interested in it, but
the core of our lives is in our church and
our faith and like the higher things, eternal life, and
so what's happening in politics is so much less important
(16:17):
than our eternal salvation, and it gives us this balance
and perspective that I think helps you just not lose
your mind when things are a little bit in turmoil
around you. And that has been extremely helpful for us.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
And being open about your faith and then also just
talking about politics, you face a lot of criticism. How
do you kind of handle that and not bend to
what these people are kind of like saying about you
or forcing you maybe try to do so.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I don't know I hear that, but I think actually
what I mostly received from people is just a profound
amount of gratitude. Like if you look in my email,
it's just full of people saying really nice things. And
I think it's about who do you want to be
liked by? And I remember when we started the Federalists,
someone said that we were dangerous because we didn't want
(17:05):
to be liked by the New York Times. And I
loved that because so many conservative media people, they're desperate
to get hired at the Atlantic, They're desperate to get
hired at the New York Times. I would I don't
even understand why you would want those things. I do
care about whether average Americans, who I think are the
backbone of this country, who have done so much and
(17:26):
never get represented in the media. I care what they think.
So I like who likes me, and I also like
who doesn't like me.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I understand, and I feel like the people that you're
looking to like you, those people that you talk about,
like the backbone of America. What's the best way for
like the average citizen to stay informed in today's political world.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Yeah, I think it takes a lot of effort. It
probably always took a lot of effort, but now, because
of what we were talking about, with the credibility of
the media being at an all time low, people are
aware that they can't trust some of the news sources
that they'd trusted previously, and so I think it was
just ortant to still get a wide, you know, wide
variety of inputs and make your do as much original
(18:06):
viewing of things as you can. Like, one thing that's
great about the Internet and everybody being the reporter is
you can you can kind of like watch a video
of a hearing yourself, or you can read an original
document yourself and make up your own mind about it.
And so for me personally, what I like to read, like,
the only real, big corporate media that I.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Read every day is the Wall Street Journal. Still like it.
It's not perfect, but I like it.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
And then I use Real Clear Politics, which is a
website that kind of covers things from left, center and right,
kind of puts the best arguments forward from all perspectives,
and it updates regularly throughout the day.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So I love that.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
And then I have like a highly curated social media
feed where people I trust I follow, and so I
think that's that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Find a voice you trust, find a voice who's.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Told difficult truths, you know, and just maybe keep listening
to them unless they give you a reason to stop.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Speaking of like biases, You've interviewed all types of people.
Do you prefer to interview someone who maybe agrees with
you politically or somebody who you kind of oppose in
a political way.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
It's easier to interview people who you oppose, So I
would prefer that your questions just come naturally when you're thinking, like,
you know, they give you an answer and you just
instinctively think why that was a wrong answer, so you
can kind of navigate it better. It's harder to do
when you agree with someone. On the other hand, when
someone is, you know, more aligned with you, you kind
(19:33):
of can dig deeper in certain ways to flesh out
what's going on. But I'm not the world's best interviewer.
I've admitted that before. But I've gotten to interview really
high level people and it's you know, it's always.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
It's always interesting.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
But I find it like you have to have a
balance between going after the information that you came to
get you know you're you're usually there for a reason,
so letting the person that you're interviewing kind of have
a say in what they're gonna what they're going to
talk about. You know, I don't like just a completely
belligerent interview. I want to hear I want to really
(20:12):
come to understand what it is that they're thinking.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Well, you say you're not the best interviewer, but it's
like not every day that I get to ask you
for interviewing interviewing tips.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
How do you prepare for an interview?
Speaker 5 (20:22):
Oh, so I have interviewed. I mean, it's it's funny,
like I've done so many interviews now that usually I
just think about what it is that my my my
near goal is, which is a story where I probably
have a pretty good idea of what it is that
I want to find out and and just and just
I plot it out.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I practice like what I'm gonna what I'm going to ask.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
But I also think like, if you can interview in person,
that is so much better than over the phone. And
during COVID times, I've had to do so much over
the phone, and you can't get a feel for what
how comfortable someone is or you know, when you're in person,
you can feel like, do they want to go deep here?
Do they want to you know? Did they pause in
a weird way and look at certain directions that you
(21:05):
know that they're thinking about something that you want to interrogate.
But I like to also just you know, if you
can interview someone in their office or in their home,
I love that because you get a little cues about
what's important to them, and you just can be more
comfortable with them by talking about like, oh, I see
that sports jersey, what's that about?
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Or important well, and just kind of treat people as
people without without having to just be there for business.
But I think just as much research as you can
do beforehand so that you're not wasting time.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Know, so you've interviewed President Trump, who he's pretty high profile.
Do you have like a best Trump's story from like
that interview?
Speaker 5 (21:52):
So I just want to first say that he is
the most difficult person in.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
The world to interview.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
I'd imagine, Yeah, I mean he's like you, you ask
him a question here, and he goes all the way
around before getting you know, and you're kind of trying
to bring him back to the thing.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
That he does that.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
He's a really interesting cat. I also think it's weird
because he's much nicer in person than he is. Like
on TV, he comes off like a total.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah no, I understand, a taxionistic guy.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
But then when you're in person with him, he's usually
just I don't know, he's much much more gentle. I
talked to this one reporter who said that most politicians
in public they're kissing babies and they're complimenting your wife,
and then in private they're just jerks. And then Trump
is the one who will insult your wife and like
attack the baby, but then in private be like, really
(22:44):
is sorry, but what was your question about, oh best
trum story. I don't know, he's just just from the
interview perspective. One thing that's interesting is he'll he has.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
His own rules.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
So you know, in journalism, you say this is on
the record, where it's on background, on background, So on
the record means you can use it totally un quote
the person, and on background means you can use the information,
but you can't tie it to the person that you're
talking to. And then off the record means it's more
like for your own context. You're not supposed to use it,
And then people come up with other things. They're funny,
(23:18):
like deep background, which is like, I really mean, don't.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Tie my name to it. But he'll say stuff like
this is off the record, but you can use it.
That's like what does that mean?
Speaker 5 (23:27):
But in a weird way, like the more you're around him,
the more you understand exactly what he means. He means
that more like his background. I think, I hope it
hasn't been a problem yet those far. But so I've
interviewed him in the Oval Office, I've interviewed him elsewhere
in the White House. I've interviewed him at mar A
Lago several times, and he's just, you know, like I said,
(23:48):
you need a much more tenacious interviewer than I am
to have like a fully productive thing. But I've spent
a lot of time with him, and I find him
to be truly fascinating. He did teach me how to
take picture, which I think is funny. After one of
my interviews at mar A Lago for my book on
the twenty twenty election, I had realized, like I'd never
taken a picture of him, even though i'd you know,
(24:10):
I never had like, I had many opportunities, but I've
never done it. And so we're walking out of his
place and I said, well, you know, can I take
a picture of you?
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And he said we Why don't we take one together?
And so we take a picture and his assistant shows
him the picture.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
And he says, I don't like her, and I don't
like me, and he's like, let's move over here. So
we move over to this other location. We take it
and she shows him and he says, I like me.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I still don't like her.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
And he's like, I'm gonna teach you how to take
a picture. And he gave me all these tips, like
you you look at what the background is, not just
the people who are in the picture. He's like, so
we want to have the background be this beautiful mar
A Lago estate, you know, with the grass, the green
grass below us whatever. And then he was teaching me
things like to turn to the side and put my
hand on my hip and like put.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
My chin out, and so we take the picture. On
he says, you can.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Trust me, my wife's a supermodel. I was like, I
am aware that your wife is a supermodel. Yes, And
so his assistant shows him the picture, and he kind
of pauses and he says, well, there you go when
it was better. You know what, I was thinking, How
am I my age and none of my female friends
(25:26):
ever taught me how to take a picture, and the
former president of the United States is teaching me, like
really excellent tips on taking pictures. Like it just was
one of those like absurd moments, but was really funny.
And so now I'm still not great at taking pictures.
But every time I, you know, when someone does it,
I'm like, okay, wait, hold on, what did what did?
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Then I do you think interviewing different people like that
would be maybe the part you like the best about
your job? Or I guess what would be the favorite
part about it?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (25:54):
I will say so of all the people I've loved
interviewing presidents, I've had a few former presidents or current
or former presidents.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Senators.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
I enjoy senators, but I really enjoy interviewing judges justices.
I think because they don't talk that much to the media,
they are very logical in their thinking.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It's just interesting.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
That's the thing I've enjoyed most is covering federal judges
or other judges and just getting a better understanding of
their thinking. I think because I'm personally quite interested in
the law.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So yeah, when I first met you last spring, it
came to my advanced writing class, and the person I
look is like, does she have a wedding ring?
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Because I'm interested in knowing.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
How do you balance kind of like having a family
and a high profile journalism career poorly?
Speaker 5 (26:49):
No, So my husband is the main person who got
me into journalism. We were friends at the time that
I followed him into journalism and taught me everything.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
I know.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
He's with me on everything, and so even to the
extent that I would love to not be working so much,
and he's always the one encouraging me to get out
there and do things. Having someone who's fully supportive and
a partner is really key having a clear understanding of
what's most important. So we both work from home, so
(27:24):
we're both very involved in our children's lives. We're very
involved in our church, and so it's just like natural
balance provided by just having people who love you and
are with you no matter what's going on politically. I mean,
even the fact that there are people I go to
church with who are wildly different political viewpoints, and we
all love each other, and we all work together, and
we're you know, doing the Octoberfest together or in the
(27:45):
church choir together, and it just reminds you of what's
actually important versus what people in DC think is important.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
And this kind of builds off of that in a way.
Do you have advice for young people who are looking
to go into a career in journalism.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I mean, that's that's a broad question. I don't know.
Can you narrow it down a little?
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Sure, Okay, I'm going to be graduating. I'm twenty one
years old, and I ultimately would like to be in DC,
and I want to be a journalist coming out of Hillsdale.
What would be I guess a main takeaway for me
as I'm graduating and going out into that world.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
So I think it's really weird because when I started
in journalism, it was a completely different path you had.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
I mean, it was kind of standard.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
You start out at a local paper, like even if
you wanted to do TV journalism, to start at a
local TV outlet, and then you slowly worked your way
up into the bigger markets or you figured out what
your beat was going to be, and then you just
like drilled into that. You know, if you knew you
wanted to be a tech reporter for the rest of
your life, you could just kind of work.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Your way up that way.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
And in the last twenty years, everything's kind of fallen apart.
There aren't many local media outlets, so there aren't like
ways to start local and then get bigger. I mean
you can still, but it's just so many fewer opportunities
on that front, but then so many more opportunities in
DC and New York.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
With outlets that have particular perspectives.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
And so I think just kind of accepting the reality
that's that's where we are now, Like there's no mainstream
journalism anymore. That's just gone. It's all left or right,
and that's just the fact. And some people like to
claim that they're mainstream, they're not.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
They're left.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
And just understanding like what it would mean if you
were to go into a left media outlet and what
it would be like or to go into a right
media outlet. And so I think that's one thing, just
understanding the reality of the of the environment. And then
the other thing I think is just like experiences everything
and don't worry about making a huge splash right away
(29:54):
until you really know have like mastered the writing or
mastered being on TV, and then you can kind of
like get a feel for everything and then go for
a big I mean, everyone's different.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Some people can make a splash right away.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
But I think that I've seen a lot of people
really want to share their opinions very quickly out of college.
And you know, if you're a Hillsdale educated person, you
have well formed opinions.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I get it.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
But there's something to be said for just humbling yourself
to the idea that other people might have something to
teach you for the next several years, and just learning
the craft, learning the trade, and then going for it.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So yesterday you emailed me and we were kind of
you're asking me if we were preparing for this, I guess,
And I asked you what you were wearing. You suggested
to me. I never answered, like a softball T shirt,
that we should wear softball's T shirts. I got you
a softball shirt. Oh, since I am on the softball team,
so I do this is like awesome.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
If you've come back on campus.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, we should just put them on right now, right.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Great.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
I did want to give you that, so use your sauce.
All team, this is my softball team. We actually I
had to tell access tomorrow while we're doing this today.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Well, thanks for making time. I really appreciate it. This
is awesome.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
It's wonderful to get to hang out with you.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I have two requests. Yes, would you mind signing my
rigged book? And then, of course, also could we get
a photo. That's like, that's more of my parents' requests.
They were like, can you.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Oh, that's cool that you don't want to photo with me?
Speaker 4 (31:19):
But no, I do like.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
If you like the Michael Berry Show and Podcast, please
tell one friend, and if you're so inclined, write a
nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, and interest
in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated
directly to the show at our email address, Michael at
(31:43):
Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking on our
website Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry Show and
Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, the King of Ding,
executive producer isch Had Nakanishi. Jim Mudd is the creative director.
(32:08):
Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery, and Shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our
assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated and often incorporated
into our production. Where possible, we give credit, where not,
(32:31):
we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the
memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be a simple
man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God bless America. Finally,
if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(32:56):
a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide freecounciling.
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