Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. The turn of
Speaker 1: the century newspaper baron Joseph Pulitzer once remarked, quote, our
Speaker 1: republic and its press will rise or fall together unquote
Speaker 1: as the election looms. I, like many, am disappointed and
Speaker 1: bewildered by the constant noise of twenty four hour cable
Speaker 1: news channels, paid opinion writers, and social media feeds. But
Speaker 1: there is a short list of writers and broadcasters that
Speaker 1: managed to cut through the clutter, and that I listened
Speaker 1: to regularly. Kurt Anderson on Studio three sixty, Brian Lair
Speaker 1: on w n y C Radio, and my guest today
Speaker 1: Bob Garfield, the co host of On the Media with
Speaker 1: Brooke Gladstone. Garfield's trenchant interviews hold not just politicians and
Speaker 1: newsmakers accountable, but also the journalists who cover them. He's
Speaker 1: truly as fair and balanced as they come. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: because he's always found himself in the middle. I was
Speaker 1: the middle child in a middle of the middle class
Speaker 1: household and where in western suburbs of Philadelphia, the affluent
Speaker 1: Jewey suburbs of Philadelphia, and it was kind of a
Speaker 1: upper middle class ghetto called ballet Kinwood. And my parents
Speaker 1: were active, civically active, and they talked about the news
Speaker 1: mainly through the prism of complaining about various political figures.
Speaker 1: And as I go back and reconstruct there, they were
Speaker 1: progressive because the people they were bad mouthing now that
Speaker 1: I think about it, were Republicans. But we didn't have
Speaker 1: We didn't sit down at the table and discuss political
Speaker 1: issues or anything like that. What did he do for
Speaker 1: a living, Well, obviously, he was the general manager of
Speaker 1: a factory that made paper plates and duh. And but
Speaker 1: what's fabulous about it is the brand of paper plates
Speaker 1: was artist crat fantastic and you know it was not
Speaker 1: false advertising. I mean they were the most aristocratic paper
Speaker 1: plates so that I've ever used. They even handled baked beans.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying. Yeah. So he was in the He
Speaker 1: also had a kind of moon landed. He had a
Speaker 1: creative side. He moonlighted as the vice president of a
Speaker 1: company that made corrugated cartons, So he was a diverse man.
Speaker 1: He certainly was her renaissance made what about her? My
Speaker 1: mom was a housewife. He was in the plastic utensil
Speaker 1: fortune inherited would that she had. We actually we kept
Speaker 1: a kind of Potempkin village of affluence. But we really struggled,
Speaker 1: uh to keep up with the you know, the mantel bounds.
Speaker 1: And it was but it was fine. I mean, we
Speaker 1: didn't we didn't really know. Again this I've reconstructed an
Speaker 1: adult life how my parents struggled at the time. But um,
Speaker 1: you know it was it was really unremarkable childhood. And
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't miserable, I wasn't happy. I don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of fodder for writing now because
Speaker 1: my parents didn't abuse me and my father wasn't a drunk.
Speaker 1: And it was in the high school years. Were you
Speaker 1: involved in any kind of media radio writing. I was
Speaker 1: the I was the president of the tetracycling squad. My
Speaker 1: high school was entirely defined by ACNE. It was absolutely
Speaker 1: the defining aspect of my high school life. And it
Speaker 1: was politically in just did I was part of an
Speaker 1: fledgling organization called something like concerns, students for concern, and
Speaker 1: we were for a number of things and against a
Speaker 1: number of things. Precisely which ones I don't recall, but
Speaker 1: it was in the middle of Watergate, and it was
Speaker 1: at the more or less it had just followed at
Speaker 1: the point in our history where college students were occupying
Speaker 1: administration buildings and so forth. So I was playing at
Speaker 1: being politically active. But when it came down to go
Speaker 1: to college, where'd you go? Uh? Father died dropped my plans. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: to go to an etsy bitsy little school in Vermont
Speaker 1: called Marlborough College, which had like two hundred people on
Speaker 1: the campus, all in I'm that students. Half it was staff.
Speaker 1: Half of his staff, I think, all dressed in black
Speaker 1: leotard tops, writing a lot of poetry. I think there
Speaker 1: were bongos involved. I'm not sure. But it was expensive
Speaker 1: and we didn't have money. I can go there here,
Speaker 1: So I went to Oxford. No, I'm sorry, it's Penn State.
Speaker 1: I want to Penn State, where I got involved in
Speaker 1: the newspaper as the world's worst nineteen year old columnist.
Speaker 1: I found I didn't quite found a humor magazine, but
Speaker 1: there had been a humor magazine at Penn State called
Speaker 1: Froth that I took up and essentially ran single handed.
Speaker 1: So I graduated. And what was the inclination in you
Speaker 1: to do that, to want to share information with people,
Speaker 1: opening about things. If you hadn't been doing that in
Speaker 1: high school when you got to college, what do they
Speaker 1: opened up for you? What I think opened up was
Speaker 1: my genome. I came from a long line of unbelievably
Speaker 1: opinionated people, and I'm the first one ever, you know,
Speaker 1: to make a nickel at it. There may have been
Speaker 1: a desert of facts in my growing up, but there
Speaker 1: was absolutely an abundance of opinions. And when you left
Speaker 1: Penn State, you went right into that. As a career.
Speaker 1: I became a newspaper reporter in Reading Pennsylvania, part of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: Dutch Land. I actually had an internship while I was
Speaker 1: still in college. And it's just was one of those
Speaker 1: epiphany moments. First day in the newsroom, slovenly dressed people
Speaker 1: saying fuck out loud, Well, this is for me, this
Speaker 1: is where I want to spend my life. And you know,
Speaker 1: I did some really solid reporting on agricultural economics. I
Speaker 1: literally there a four part series about milk marketing as
Speaker 1: an intern and then you know, chase some real news.
Speaker 1: How many years were you there? Intern for a few
Speaker 1: months and then I immediately got a job out of
Speaker 1: schools as a reporter and reading four years four years,
Speaker 1: So you weren't reading for four years. And so we're
Speaker 1: talking the late seventies probably correct, h correct? What is
Speaker 1: journalism in your mind? Is it? Has that changed when
Speaker 1: you were doing that back then? What was journalism to you?
Speaker 1: To me, it was finding out about the ship that
Speaker 1: happens and getting it back to the folks. It matters too,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it comes down to, I think ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, and then there's plus a big part of
Speaker 1: it that it's just looking for phenomenal, phenomenological stuff, the
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on. It isn't necessarily news. You're not
Speaker 1: watch dogging government figures and taxpayer dollars. You're just kind
Speaker 1: of letters trends. Yeah, yeah, And the key for me
Speaker 1: always has been to report it fairly neutrally. Now that
Speaker 1: that has changed, not only in the general practice of
Speaker 1: journalism but in my heart of hearts. But the idea was,
Speaker 1: even if you have a point of view, just to
Speaker 1: make damn sure that you're intellectually honest about the exercise
Speaker 1: and that you're being fair minded. And that was by
Speaker 1: and large the rules of the game in the world
Speaker 1: when you began. I think so now, I was not trained.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to j school. I was an English major.
Speaker 1: But I happily blundered into journalism. Knew literally from the
Speaker 1: first morning that that's just what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And but I was I wasn't even trained in basic
Speaker 1: journalism ethics. So on the one hand, that hurt you.
Speaker 1: I did some things as a young journalist that we're
Speaker 1: firing offenses. Nobody would ever today countenance some of the
Speaker 1: things I did that were encouraged by my own newspapers.
Speaker 1: Give example, you know, I would needed tires from my
Speaker 1: car in my city editor, who was corrupt, sent me
Speaker 1: to one of his pals and said, you know, tell
Speaker 1: him I sent you, and you'll get a discount. I
Speaker 1: took a discount of my tires. I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: firing offense right there. I was doing some investigative reporting,
Speaker 1: chasing the connections between some drug dealers and local officials,
Speaker 1: and I went along with a county detective who was
Speaker 1: proceeding along similar lines and went to talk to some people,
Speaker 1: and I didn't happen to mention that I was a reporter.
Speaker 1: I didn't say I was a policeman, but I was
Speaker 1: with a policeman, and I certainly wouldn't have objected if
Speaker 1: the people we were talking to thought I was a policeman.
Speaker 1: Crossly unethical. And later I did something even worse. I
Speaker 1: actually cooperated with the police while trying to track down
Speaker 1: physical evidence from someone we both thought was a murderer.
Speaker 1: This is actually a story that I'm going to body
Speaker 1: with because it's it's horrifying. Poor woman murdered in her home.
Speaker 1: It happens on the other papers cycle. So I'm doing
Speaker 1: the second day story, which means knock your neighbors doors,
Speaker 1: and getting to say that, oh, this is so horrible.
Speaker 1: And we thought this just a safe community. Now we're afraid.
Speaker 1: So the guy next door goes through this whole song
Speaker 1: and dance about he's going to put up lights, and
Speaker 1: he's he's going to buy double locks, triple locks, dead bolts, barricades,
Speaker 1: and I walked away thinking I think he was play acting.
Speaker 1: I think he was overdoing it a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1: So when I was talking to the cops later in
Speaker 1: the day, I said, does the next door neighbor have
Speaker 1: an alibi? Said, oh yeah, yeah, checks out. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I wrote my little story and the next day the
Speaker 1: police chief calls me. He says, why did you ask
Speaker 1: about the neighbors alibi? I said, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought he was I thought he was just overdoing a
Speaker 1: little I sensed play acting. I thought he was playing
Speaker 1: to the mezzanine and uh. He said, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Because his albuy broke down. He lied to us and
Speaker 1: they pieced together this scenario. The victim had had had
Speaker 1: foot surgery and he was helping her out and take
Speaker 1: her out the trash. But that he had been obsessing
Speaker 1: over for years, decades, and came this opportunity when his
Speaker 1: wife was out and she was home recuperating. He goes in.
Speaker 1: He has a key because he's been helping her. She's
Speaker 1: in the basement. She comes upstairs with a bar and
Speaker 1: she sees, oh, it's him. She puts the bar down,
Speaker 1: He makes an advance, she spurns it. Next thing you know,
Speaker 1: she's raped and murdered. It sounded good to me, but
Speaker 1: he had hired a lawyer and fantastic, and the murder
Speaker 1: is horrendous. But the profile just totally was in sync
Speaker 1: with my vision of what might have taken place. So
Speaker 1: but the guy hired a lawyer. When the question got
Speaker 1: a little more rigorous, the guy hired a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let him surrender fingerprints, hair samples, anything you
Speaker 1: wanted to get a search warrant otherwise, leave my client alone.
Speaker 1: So incredibly, I, you know, journalist of whatever, fourteen months
Speaker 1: contrived to do a follow up story this guy, and
Speaker 1: I take my the ideas. I stand there with my pen,
Speaker 1: all right, and while I'm talking to him, I drop it.
Speaker 1: He picks it up. We have his fingerprints, we have
Speaker 1: his fingerprints. The police, you know, see if it matches
Speaker 1: the one partial that they have from the crime scene,
Speaker 1: and they get their man. Well it didn't quite play
Speaker 1: out that way. What happened was I stood at his
Speaker 1: or and he's angry to see me there. He's angry
Speaker 1: to see me here. That's a guilty conscience. I dropped
Speaker 1: the pen. It falls, He stands and stares. He stares
Speaker 1: at the pen. I stared at the pen. I look
Speaker 1: at him, He looks at me. I look at the pen.
Speaker 1: I look back at him. He's not moving. I say,
Speaker 1: I got that, then check up the pen Anyway. For
Speaker 1: years and years and years, I thought that this guy
Speaker 1: had dodged the bullet of justice and the police had
Speaker 1: not done a good job, and this poor woman was dead,
Speaker 1: and he eventually himself died. One year ago, the Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: State Police arrested a man for the murder of this woman.
Speaker 1: He was a serial killer. He had spent most of
Speaker 1: the previous fifteen years in prison for other murders. For
Speaker 1: whatever reason, he unburdened himself about this one. His DNA
Speaker 1: matched the samples where they didn't have DNA testing in
Speaker 1: those days, but they kept the evidence the DNA matched.
Speaker 1: Not only did I grossly unethically cooperate with the police,
Speaker 1: so we're supposed to be reporting about not collaborating with
Speaker 1: I did it in the service of hounding an innocent man.
Speaker 1: So no, I didn't go to Jay score. You seem
Speaker 1: very burdened by that. I haven't done many really terrible
Speaker 1: things in my life. I mean, I did something to
Speaker 1: ask you to a girl in sixth grade. I was
Speaker 1: mean to her, and I still shiver and shutter when
Speaker 1: I think about it. But now, when you're in that
Speaker 1: period of your life, you're in reading and you're in
Speaker 1: the beginning of your career, what news are you consuming?
Speaker 1: Are you an evening news network guy? Are you there
Speaker 1: there's nothing online? You can't read the Times? What are
Speaker 1: you consuming? Well, first of all, I was at work
Speaker 1: when evening news was on, so I really didn't have
Speaker 1: access to what most people were saying to find out
Speaker 1: what was going on in the world, right, But I
Speaker 1: did have the AP wire right by my desk, so
Speaker 1: I read a lot of stuff in the wires. I
Speaker 1: read the Philadelphia Inquirer. I did not read the New
Speaker 1: York Times every day. I did not read the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: You know. My paper of record was the Inquirer. Our
Speaker 1: paper kind of sucked. There were a few talented people,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of not very talented people. I
Speaker 1: had talent, but obviously I had no idea what the
Speaker 1: Hannenburgh's still owned the paper. I think it was Try
Speaker 1: and Go Publications. Yeah, and what did you think of
Speaker 1: the Inquirer was it was fantastic. They had all the
Speaker 1: money in the world. You know, the newspaper business used
Speaker 1: to be not only profitable, but obscenely profitable, I mean
Speaker 1: profit margins and on the order of thirty five. And
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was the yes, absolutely, that's
Speaker 1: all gone. And that is one of my current obsessions.
Speaker 1: But put that aside for the moment. So while I
Speaker 1: was in reading Pennsylvania covering the Sewage Treatment Authority, they
Speaker 1: were winning Pulletzer prizes for like going to Africa and
Speaker 1: doing four part series on the plight of the Rhino.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting at the school board meeting trying to
Speaker 1: find out what part of the budget was going towards
Speaker 1: cafeteria lunches and what changes you leave reading and go were.
Speaker 1: Then I went to a paper in Wilmington, Delaware, the
Speaker 1: Wilmington News Journal, which was even though it's a tiny
Speaker 1: little state and not that big a paper, was very
Speaker 1: professionally run and had a lot of talent. And how
Speaker 1: long there I was there for less than a year,
Speaker 1: and then well, Wilmington was owned by Gannette. Gannette started
Speaker 1: USA Today. This was in one they were getting that going.
Speaker 1: It launched on September fifteenth, two and I was kind
Speaker 1: of a friend and drinking buddy of my boss, the
Speaker 1: managing editor. Oh I'm an abusive drinker, and I, uh,
Speaker 1: how could be others? And I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: have moderated in the last thirty or forty years, but
Speaker 1: I was an aspiring, abusive a drinker. Let me put
Speaker 1: it through that way. And my drinking buddy was the
Speaker 1: was the managing editor. He became the business editor at
Speaker 1: this new paper, USA Today. He dragged me down with
Speaker 1: him and overnight I was a business columnist. His name
Speaker 1: is Taylor Bucklet. Who was that guy that always have
Speaker 1: to have his picture on USA Today in the early days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the He was the chairman of Gannett and
Speaker 1: this was his three quarters of a billion dollar vanity project.
Speaker 1: And you know it worked for a while. They're not
Speaker 1: making money now, nobody it's a newspaper. Of course, they're
Speaker 1: not making money. But how does the USA? How does
Speaker 1: someone like USA Today stay in business? Now? Who's eating
Speaker 1: all that cost? The GETT is still making money, mainly
Speaker 1: because of its television properties. The products themselves have been
Speaker 1: reduced to almost nothing. I mean, it's a shame. This
Speaker 1: is how is in des Moines is one of their papers.
Speaker 1: And picked up the Des Moines Register and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like this. It's it's been physically shrunken
Speaker 1: so much it's like opening a little dollhouse. Its Azoka show.
Speaker 1: Comic newspapers are thin, thin, thin there. The newsrooms have
Speaker 1: been decimated. The newspaper business is unsustainable. This is one
Speaker 1: of the great crises of the economy, but mainly of
Speaker 1: our democracy. We the media economy is in such a
Speaker 1: vortex of ruins for themselves. With the online edition, they
Speaker 1: said coming out of them, they're they're more generally profitable,
Speaker 1: but they're still they're you know, they're looking at the
Speaker 1: trend lines and they're still figuring out ways to cut, cut, cut,
Speaker 1: while looking for the you know, these this magic revenue
Speaker 1: bullet that's somehow going to solve everybody's problem. I have
Speaker 1: spent the last twelve years in deep think and also
Speaker 1: deep anxiety about this situation. You know, I can say, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: pretty unequivocally, that magic bullet has not appeared. Do you
Speaker 1: think that that this has happened? Will use the Times?
Speaker 1: Obviously there is the best model. Do you think this
Speaker 1: has happened because those people have gone elsewhere for their
Speaker 1: news or they're just consuming less news, period of both. No,
Speaker 1: it's not news consumption that's gone down. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: there we we are a wash in news because there
Speaker 1: we can access any news organization in the world instantaneously
Speaker 1: on our telephones, right, so we've got no problem getting news.
Speaker 1: We have problems locating rigorous news covering the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts of government. I mean, try to find some state
Speaker 1: legislative coverage in any state in the Union. It's hard
Speaker 1: to do because nobody can afford to have a state
Speaker 1: house reporter anymore, much less the smaller cogs in the
Speaker 1: wheel of government. I mean, they're just completely completely neglected
Speaker 1: because nobody can afford to put the human beings at
Speaker 1: the meetings with the notepads, like I said, got shut
Speaker 1: down at CBS, Yes, exactly, they've They've cut deep into
Speaker 1: the bone and there's there's really nothing on the horizon
Speaker 1: to solve the problem. The problem is there's the Internet
Speaker 1: has given us an absolute glut of content. The barriers
Speaker 1: of entry to be a news organization used to be
Speaker 1: a billion dollars for you know, printing presses and buildings
Speaker 1: and employees and trucks and ink and paper, and that
Speaker 1: kept all but a handful of oligarchs out of the business. Well,
Speaker 1: now you can be a newspaper for the cost of
Speaker 1: an iPhone. You get free production, free distribution, So there's
Speaker 1: a tremendous glut of content. Like Lauren Michaels is about
Speaker 1: do he said about YouTube, it would say broadcast yourself.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, sometimes we realize that having
Speaker 1: executives who are in charge of networks and movie studios
Speaker 1: who decide who's ready to be broadcasting, it wasn't such
Speaker 1: a bad idea after all, And maybe broadcasting yourself isn't
Speaker 1: the best way for us to get the best content
Speaker 1: out there. But let me let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: when you you when you're done withnet Ganett is how
Speaker 1: long the USA today is? How long? I was there
Speaker 1: for four years? And then where do you go? Well,
Speaker 1: then I'll be a slee I became a critic of
Speaker 1: advertising for twenty five years and made fun of TV
Speaker 1: commercials for a living at a trade magazine called Advertising Age.
Speaker 1: Did you make a lot of enemies doing that? I
Speaker 1: believe I did. Yeah. I have sat at a dinner
Speaker 1: table and a fancy restaurant in can and had an
Speaker 1: executive come across the dinner table. A hit been overserved,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless trying to physically assault me. I mean that
Speaker 1: stuff happened because no human example. Why you were you
Speaker 1: were You were literally critiquing their creative output of the
Speaker 1: You were a column. It was a column for advertising age,
Speaker 1: in which you just comment commented about whatever the hell
Speaker 1: you wanted to do in the world of advertising. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the commercials. It's a Pepsi commercial that's shot
Speaker 1: and you look at it like from the security camera
Speaker 1: of a seven eleven or whatever, and you see the
Speaker 1: coke vendor sneak to try to get a pepsi from
Speaker 1: the pepsi cooler instead of the coke one, and he's
Speaker 1: looking around all furtively and he goes to take this
Speaker 1: thing and he pulls it out and the whole every
Speaker 1: can tumbles out of the cooler and he's totally busted. Right.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty famous commercial directed by one of the
Speaker 1: greatest TV commercial directors who ever lived, a guy named
Speaker 1: Joe Pitka. And I thought that what a great commercial.
Speaker 1: And I had a four star system. I gave it
Speaker 1: three and a half stars. Why because for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they didn't record the sound of full soda cans falling
Speaker 1: out of a cooler and then layer it over the
Speaker 1: actual sound which we hear in the commercial, which is
Speaker 1: of empty cans prop cans falling out. So it was
Speaker 1: there's really you see it. It's funny, but there's this
Speaker 1: any sound of empty cans, right, and you go, wait,
Speaker 1: what of all details to leave out? So I knocked
Speaker 1: him down. I didn't usually do this because I was
Speaker 1: worried about my key issues whether it would sell goods
Speaker 1: and services. But in this case it was an annoyance
Speaker 1: and I gave it three and a half stars. You
Speaker 1: would have thought that I had written that this guy
Speaker 1: was a Nazi, that he was a pedophile. No. I
Speaker 1: took off a half a star for sound effects, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to kill me. Now twenty five years you
Speaker 1: do that, and during that time, do you just have
Speaker 1: your political gland removed? I took my shots. You know,
Speaker 1: having a column enables you to get any range in them,
Speaker 1: opinion in through the prism of whatever is you're nominally
Speaker 1: writing about. So I took my shots. You know. I
Speaker 1: wrote some op eds. You know, there were like eight
Speaker 1: Bob Garfields, and the ad Critic was just one of them.
Speaker 1: But I also started working at almost the same time
Speaker 1: for NPR for all things considered as a roving feature
Speaker 1: correspondent going around looking for weird, quirky kinds of Americana.
Speaker 1: The guy who wanted to do a home cryonics experiment
Speaker 1: in his backyard and got a sears shed, and there
Speaker 1: was Grandpa on dry ice. You know, that's that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And I did hundreds and hundreds of these
Speaker 1: for a DC over the same period of time. How
Speaker 1: did you connect with npr ah Okay? I wrote an
Speaker 1: op ed about going hunting with my in laws. I'm
Speaker 1: a Jewish kid from the suburbs of Philadelphia. They were
Speaker 1: cast like family, much like yours. Actually it's they were
Speaker 1: the bald Ones, except from western Pennsylvania. And you know,
Speaker 1: they could all build a house with their bare hands, blindfolded,
Speaker 1: and they killed anything that moved with high powered rifles.
Speaker 1: I remember once that Thanksgiving, my mother in law said
Speaker 1: to me, Bobby, would you handle hand me that cast
Speaker 1: role from the top of the refrigerator, And I said,
Speaker 1: you mean this one next to the bullets. So it's
Speaker 1: a different lifestyle. So I I did a piece of
Speaker 1: a fish out of water piece about going hunting with them,
Speaker 1: and sold us in the New York Times. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be not bad page in the Times. They laugh, laugh, laugh,
Speaker 1: laugh left, and then at the very last minute they
Speaker 1: killed it because there were religion jokes in it and
Speaker 1: they said this is our only sacred cow. Well it wasn't.
Speaker 1: But in any event, with regret, they they said, we're
Speaker 1: not going to run this after all. And for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know why, I called all things considered. I
Speaker 1: wasn't even a regular listener to the show, and talked
Speaker 1: to the executive producer, guy named Art Silverman. He said,
Speaker 1: we'll come in and read it. And I read it.
Speaker 1: It was on the air that night, so we have
Speaker 1: a great voice for radio. You never thought about that,
Speaker 1: that had never been pitched to you before. Well, in fact,
Speaker 1: thank you, but you speak so clearly. But I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was there. Here's where I was when I was
Speaker 1: first starting a radio and I taught myself to come
Speaker 1: back here. This is this is pretend. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's maybe it's natural, but I was here. In fact,
Speaker 1: the same guy on my second piece in the radio
Speaker 1: I recorded, and they I wasn't there for the actual
Speaker 1: mix of the thing, and I didn't hear it because
Speaker 1: I was at work. And I called him and said, Hey, Art,
Speaker 1: how did how did I sound? He said, um, sub human,
Speaker 1: early alive. But Bob Garfield has come alive in a
Speaker 1: major way over the last sixteen years as the co
Speaker 1: host on the Media Coming Up. We talked about where
Speaker 1: he gets his news today and what he thinks about
Speaker 1: the election, Explore the Here's the Thing archives. Dick Cavitt
Speaker 1: made a career on television by getting stars to open
Speaker 1: up as real people, but it wasn't always that way.
Speaker 1: I was going through old envelopes of stuff. I found
Speaker 1: three report cards from third, fourth and fifth grade. Dick
Speaker 1: has learned to control his talking is on two of them,
Speaker 1: and Dick miss learned to let others talk occasionally. One
Speaker 1: of the wittier ones, Uh, put down. Take a listen
Speaker 1: at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you were listening to Here's the Thing. Bob Garfield
Speaker 1: has been holding journalists and media makers accountable for decade,
Speaker 1: but as sources and outlets have proliferated, it's become no
Speaker 1: small task to keep tabs on everything that's out there.
Speaker 1: Garfield told me he's got one ace up his sleeve.
Speaker 1: One of the best things about being a co host
Speaker 1: and on the media is we have a staff of
Speaker 1: six producers who are all better educated, smarter, have more
Speaker 1: scope and uh knowledge and understanding, and I ever had
Speaker 1: on my best day on Earth, they called to my
Speaker 1: attention stuff that I ordinarily Inaccadia diet wouldn't. They are
Speaker 1: my aggregators. So I'm in this situation where I have
Speaker 1: this most wonderful, rich inbox of stuff that has been
Speaker 1: curated by the smartest, most curious people in the world.
Speaker 1: But my go to it's it's the New York Times.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but I think it's it's a daily Mirrornic
Speaker 1: was on our show and said, it's the weather. It
Speaker 1: was it's the weather. And I read the Washington Post
Speaker 1: I'm from. I live in Washington and that's my local paper.
Speaker 1: They're doing the best they can with their shrinking resources.
Speaker 1: The Times has cut way way way back on in
Speaker 1: many areas, including most recently just playing local coverage of
Speaker 1: stuff that happens, including fires and crimes. They're cut way back,
Speaker 1: but they do just most remarkable reporting. It just like
Speaker 1: seems like every week they're breaking another series about something
Speaker 1: that you just can't believe they got the story on
Speaker 1: and whether it's whether it's the conditions at Riker's or
Speaker 1: the the cozy arrangements between think tanks and their funders,
Speaker 1: horrifying a couple of stories they did about I don't know,
Speaker 1: two or three months ago, or nail salons. They just
Speaker 1: blow me away all the time. Well, it's funny how
Speaker 1: you say that, because people in my life always laugh
Speaker 1: at me. I have two stacks, The New Yorker and
Speaker 1: the New York Times of back issues to read the
Speaker 1: long form articles. The New Yorker, as an institution, it
Speaker 1: has labeled itself variously is the great magazine that that
Speaker 1: ever was? And it is. Uh, there's not a week
Speaker 1: goes by that there isn't something in there that is
Speaker 1: unbelievably illuminating and sometimes validating in the way that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't worry about. But oh yeah, that's I like this
Speaker 1: story because it's my worldview too, and I'm glad to
Speaker 1: see it reflected, which is one of the things that
Speaker 1: has destroyed journalism, certainly on cable, that notion of because
Speaker 1: there is an infinite amount of content, we can now
Speaker 1: terry pick what we want to consume, right, So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like watching porn online if your fetish is you know,
Speaker 1: whatever amputee uh Haitian lesbians you can, you can get
Speaker 1: the whole thing right. And that's what that's what political
Speaker 1: journalism is. Now. If you look at the world a
Speaker 1: certain way, there is going to be this Corney cope
Speaker 1: of options where all you do is sit there and
Speaker 1: you get your worldview valid. There's nothing on television for you,
Speaker 1: no television news viewing, nothing, uh, no program Meet the Press.
Speaker 1: I sometimes watch parts of Meet the Press to see
Speaker 1: what happened when a newsmaker accidentally says something newsworthy, right,
Speaker 1: and at least there's journalism taking place there. But there
Speaker 1: is no journalism taking place on cable news unless there's
Speaker 1: a war actually breaking out and they're showing pictures of
Speaker 1: of tracer fire. It is nothing but talk, not only
Speaker 1: to talk about the news, but it's talk by pundits
Speaker 1: hired because what they're going to say is preordained. But
Speaker 1: they certainly are, and so there's no way there to go,
Speaker 1: you know. But I, you know, I real a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in Slate. As it turns out another one
Speaker 1: of my eight or Amazon partnership with five thirty eight.
Speaker 1: My media diet is basically the New York Times, the
Speaker 1: Post in whatever post, Washington Post, I'm sorry, the real
Speaker 1: Post stir there. The Post is of a good sports department,
Speaker 1: but go ahead, and their headline writers are pretty good.
Speaker 1: And I was the Daily News. Whoever the person is
Speaker 1: who is the editor of the Daily News front page
Speaker 1: should get some sort of Nobel prize. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's a category for piff, but there should be. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I went to George Washington University. I went
Speaker 1: there for three years full time. I was in a
Speaker 1: pre law program there. I mean, I was really really
Speaker 1: locked in loaded that I wanted to run for office.
Speaker 1: How have we arrived at this place where both parties
Speaker 1: this is the best we can offer right now? What
Speaker 1: is your opinion of that? My opinion is that this
Speaker 1: this election represents the manifestation of the inevitable and because
Speaker 1: of that actually very phenomenon that I was describing before,
Speaker 1: where we can go cherry pick our media sources to
Speaker 1: match our worldview. The political rhetoric has vastly changed in
Speaker 1: this country, and we have we have been for the
Speaker 1: last years or so in an ongoing campaign. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is not a notion novel to me. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is a perpetual campaign and everything that's about scoring
Speaker 1: political points and running down the opposition and um fighting
Speaker 1: cultural force, nullification, and it's turned out to be a
Speaker 1: very uh solid cottage industry for Rubert Murdoch and a
Speaker 1: few others. But the problem is nobody actually does any governing,
Speaker 1: and governing is impossible, especially on the legislative level, because
Speaker 1: because every bill that comes to the floor is a battle,
Speaker 1: and you have to win the battle, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what happens to the electorate the people do. We
Speaker 1: need to go to the mattresses over everything, over everything.
Speaker 1: And as a consequence, particularly in the Republican Party, the
Speaker 1: voices have gotten ever shriller, ever less tethered to reality.
Speaker 1: I mean, for God's sakes, almost the entire roster of
Speaker 1: candidates who were seeking the Republican nomination are in one
Speaker 1: stage or another denial about global warming. Quite a number
Speaker 1: of from believe in creationism, you know, they think there
Speaker 1: was a Noah's Ark and a garden of Eden, Like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? How has it come to be that
Speaker 1: this has become the mainstream. Well, it's been incremental and
Speaker 1: as anti science as they are anti science, anti intellectual
Speaker 1: anti fact without getting into him and shooting fish in
Speaker 1: a barrel about Trump's demeanor, which is you know that
Speaker 1: that that's been done to a fairly well, what's what
Speaker 1: troubles you about her primarily, Well, what troubles me about
Speaker 1: her is more or less the same thing that's gonna
Speaker 1: make me for I mean, she's a technocrat wonk in
Speaker 1: the Clinton mold, right, she's one of them, you know,
Speaker 1: That's why I feel safe casting my ballot for her.
Speaker 1: Let's just start what she doesn't appear to be insane.
Speaker 1: Whatever she's done in her past that was sleazy or
Speaker 1: had the appearance of being sleazy, it just doesn't begin
Speaker 1: to utter compared to what she's running against. Right, But
Speaker 1: there's you know, she's a professional politician. She has this
Speaker 1: history of lies, of some politically opportunistic, some done in
Speaker 1: the heat of a campaign against Obama, for example, And
Speaker 1: the Bosnian runway is a little bit appalling. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of polly you know, it's really she's
Speaker 1: the best, but she's also a victim of She was,
Speaker 1: you know, really the first the proto victim, the her
Speaker 1: victim of the great right wing media conspiracy. They were
Speaker 1: out for nothing less than destroying the Clintons, and they
Speaker 1: used the Congress to do it. That was their tool.
Speaker 1: They're they're really good. I love Tuban's book on that subject.
Speaker 1: I thought Tuban's book was very good. And we talked
Speaker 1: about those Chicago law firms and the people, how much
Speaker 1: they were out to and how the tentacles, how far
Speaker 1: they went to that group that was out to get
Speaker 1: the Clintons. Yeah, it's not rhetoric. I mean it was
Speaker 1: an extremely well funded, actual conspiracy. Richard Mellon Scaife and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think it was a Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Pittsburgian Okay. Now with the thing they think about her though,
Speaker 1: was that I mean, with what I do for a living,
Speaker 1: were asked to look at the drama inside and the
Speaker 1: motivation inside the person. You know, why did they do
Speaker 1: what they do the public the membrane between the public
Speaker 1: and the private to in order to create the character.
Speaker 1: They're out there in the world doing this. But here's
Speaker 1: what's really going on. And with her, I always thought,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't fault her for this. With her,
Speaker 1: I always her whole life was about rewriting her repitaph.
Speaker 1: Her whole life in the last it's like. And then
Speaker 1: he was indicted, and he was impeached, and he was acquitted,
Speaker 1: and they wolf went off to Chappaquay together and she
Speaker 1: just took a pencil with not so fast. Then she
Speaker 1: went on to become a United States Senator from New
Speaker 1: York and the Secretary of State and the first. But
Speaker 1: what I'm hopeful about, and this is, you know, this
Speaker 1: is the last vestige of my my passion for or
Speaker 1: my faith in some shard of what this country is about,
Speaker 1: is that she will get in there and she will
Speaker 1: help to reshape the court, and we'll get the citizens united.
Speaker 1: They taken care of once and for all, and sort
Speaker 1: we gotta get the money out of this game we need.
Speaker 1: I mean, the country has been run by Ivy League men.
Speaker 1: Half the presidents since Kennedy had an Ivy League men
Speaker 1: have Kennedy went to Harvard, uh Johnson went to Texas
Speaker 1: State Teachers College, uh Nixon went to Whittier College, Ford
Speaker 1: went to Michigan, Carter was in the Naval Academy. Reagan
Speaker 1: went to Eureka College. And then we have Bush, Clinton, Bush,
Speaker 1: Obama at four Ivy leaguers in a row. You know,
Speaker 1: the best and the brightest have been running this country
Speaker 1: for the last since nineteen and where's it gotten us?
Speaker 1: I mean, no worse, no better than the non ivy leaguers.
Speaker 1: But the problem is the royal professional politicians, the roll people.
Speaker 1: You think any of these people lay in bed. Do
Speaker 1: you think for one minute, Hillary Clinton, forget about Trump.
Speaker 1: They lay in bed and their significant others saying to them,
Speaker 1: what's the matter, baby? I hear get tossed an in
Speaker 1: turn over. Wait, oh, I just gotta I gotta work
Speaker 1: out this whole social security just driving me. Actually, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, I do think I do think Clinton
Speaker 1: does do that. I mean, that's what defines the Clintons,
Speaker 1: because their overwheming ambition is equally to fly in Air
Speaker 1: Force one and to change change public policy. They are
Speaker 1: as ambitious as technocrats as they are politicians. And you
Speaker 1: know that's the deal, that's the that's the devil's deal
Speaker 1: when you when you get one of those and and
Speaker 1: really all politicians, I mean almost by definition, anyone who
Speaker 1: would seek public office and due to themselves and their family,
Speaker 1: the many many uh indignities that goes along with it,
Speaker 1: including the brothel that is campaign finance. You have to
Speaker 1: assume that there's something just off there. I you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind if my daughter came home with a
Speaker 1: motorcycle mechanic. I would really be upset if she came
Speaker 1: back with some young guy in a white shirt and
Speaker 1: orange tire running for Congress. I'd really be upset. Where
Speaker 1: do you think we're gonna be? Do you think that
Speaker 1: the network news? Because they have an edict apparently from
Speaker 1: the from the government, the fairness doctrine, and also what's
Speaker 1: the what's the law that they required to show the
Speaker 1: news the Well, there was there was a public service
Speaker 1: requirement that you had to maintain in exchange for having
Speaker 1: a broadcast license and to use the public airwaves. I
Speaker 1: don't think that has actually been lost since the Reagan administration.
Speaker 1: I think the fairness doctrine is history. What happened, though,
Speaker 1: in almost exactly the same time as they no longer
Speaker 1: had to uh run public service content, is it became
Speaker 1: enormously profitable. And back in the seventies, run Arledge, who
Speaker 1: had gone from ABC Sports to ABC News, figured out
Speaker 1: wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, there's gold in
Speaker 1: them our hills, And all of a sudden there's backwater
Speaker 1: that they were doing out of civic duty and certain
Speaker 1: amount of congressional impetus was making the money hand over
Speaker 1: fist and uh, and it was that way until you know,
Speaker 1: about ten years ago. In the network news is in
Speaker 1: exactly the same situation that every other news organization. It
Speaker 1: is in this death spiral of the media economy. And
Speaker 1: now they're you know, they're cutting back and their audience
Speaker 1: is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, and the people who watch them
Speaker 1: are not going to be around for much longer because
Speaker 1: the average viewer of the CBS evening News has been
Speaker 1: clinically dead since two thousand and six. So, uh, it's
Speaker 1: you know, they're facing they're facing the same kind of problem.
Speaker 1: Do you think that in the likelihood that she wins?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not just saying this because I'm a
Speaker 1: supporter of hers, but do you think that considering the
Speaker 1: likelihood that she would win, and then he's gonna go
Speaker 1: wherever he goes? Um? Now we're here in Trump is
Speaker 1: the nominee? What happens in the next round, who they're
Speaker 1: going to run against? SOB me next time? What kind
Speaker 1: of person? Will they learn something from this? The only
Speaker 1: I mean I'm trying to think. I'm trying to follow
Speaker 1: the trajectory. Remember a little while ago, I said this
Speaker 1: was an inevitability that we had to come to this
Speaker 1: because the party kept getting more the mainstream became more
Speaker 1: and more fringe, the fringe became more and more mainstream.
Speaker 1: And I suppose that Trump is the quintessence of that,
Speaker 1: the apotheosis of UH, of perversion of whatever it is
Speaker 1: the GP once stood for. But the correct you know
Speaker 1: that the trajectory presumably can only get worse. But what's worse?
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I don't know that that monster from Alien
Speaker 1: that comes out of his rib cage or hers, and
Speaker 1: I don't know. I the party rents previous is. I
Speaker 1: don't understand what's happening. How has he kept his job?
Speaker 1: I mystified, what are they you know, what are they
Speaker 1: going for? I guess it's all about of the Preme Court.
Speaker 1: And that is true because listen, with the Congress being
Speaker 1: in the state that it is, nobody's going to be
Speaker 1: passing any stairs. Nothing is going to get through the converse,
Speaker 1: it is going to be in an absolute standstill, I suppose.
Speaker 1: And therefore, what you know, if there's no legislation. What's
Speaker 1: the president going to be the president of Well, she
Speaker 1: can start a war, you know, and she can appoint
Speaker 1: the judiciary, and probably, but not necessarily, probably the Senate
Speaker 1: will actually have to do its job and confirm or
Speaker 1: not confirmed these these candidates. You know, there's already large backups,
Speaker 1: including the Supreme Court seat, because the Senate has not
Speaker 1: wanted to act on judiciary appointments. But presuming that can't
Speaker 1: last forever, that they got to offer their advice and consent. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the president's the new president's influence, and that's what
Speaker 1: it's all about. That's why evangelicals are are going to
Speaker 1: vote for this buffoon, this apparently immoral or immoral, childish,
Speaker 1: sleazy and I mean, you know, how did they Gosh,
Speaker 1: how do you how have you pulled the lever? If
Speaker 1: you're in Iowa evangelical, how do you go in and
Speaker 1: pull the lever for this person? He's like the worst
Speaker 1: person ever. And I want to say to people, I
Speaker 1: want to say, like, you're atridive her. I really don't
Speaker 1: get it. She's not that hate herble. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have my reservations about her too, and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: voice those, but I don't hesitate the voice those but
Speaker 1: when I see people going you hate her that much
Speaker 1: that you're going to pull the lever for him as
Speaker 1: a as an expression of that wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,
Speaker 1: it's the cookies, to tell you the truth. I think
Speaker 1: it goes back to her saying she's not going to
Speaker 1: sit around baking cookies, which was an insult to a
Speaker 1: lot of cookie baking women who really cherished their roles
Speaker 1: in what they perceived as the traditional American family. And
Speaker 1: it was it was a spike in the heart of
Speaker 1: their values and they will never ever forget it. Um.
Speaker 1: My last question for you, and I want to phase
Speaker 1: this carefully, is um, you know Howard Stern when I
Speaker 1: would do Howard Sterns show, and most people who know
Speaker 1: Howard know this that off Mike, he's nothing like he
Speaker 1: is on mil on microphone. He's blown himself up to
Speaker 1: use Jerry Seinfeld's term for his on stage sona. And
Speaker 1: and for you, I'm wondering you know on your show
Speaker 1: you are wonderfully so very angry and very bitter and
Speaker 1: very cynical inside the content of your show, almost so
Speaker 1: much so like sometimes I'll listen to you and I
Speaker 1: think this guy's gonna have a heart attack on the
Speaker 1: air while he's reporting this. A slow motion heart attack,
Speaker 1: but a heart attack nonetheless. Um, is that is an
Speaker 1: an accurate depiction of you. I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that you and I are b I am, we're
Speaker 1: brothers in anger management issues, and uh that you know,
Speaker 1: what you hear is what you get. I mean, I
Speaker 1: get angry at telemarketers, now that is that's wasted anger.
Speaker 1: But I'm anger that they're interrupting me. I'm angry that
Speaker 1: they're lying to me, that they're criminals. It just makes
Speaker 1: me mad. And you know, you think I would have
Speaker 1: exorcised those demons long air. That's because they're not going away.
Speaker 1: So why do I permit myself to get piste off
Speaker 1: a lot? Pick? Either I'm the most honorable man and
Speaker 1: I cannot separate the daily annoyances of life from actual
Speaker 1: issues of moral conduct in this world. Or I have
Speaker 1: a defect, and I'm not sure exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's a little bit of both. You can
Speaker 1: hear Bob Garfield and Brook Gladstone on the media on
Speaker 1: over four hundred radio stations nationwide and on demand and
Speaker 1: on the media dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you were listening to here's the Thing