Speaker 1: This has been one of the strangest political campaigns, certainly
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, I would say in many lifetimes. And
Speaker 1: I think the media has really been doing recently a
Speaker 1: lot of naval gazing in the best possible way, looking
Speaker 1: at themselves and trying to figure out what they've done right,
Speaker 1: what they've done wrong, and how they've covered this campaign,
Speaker 1: this very unusual campaign, And both as a journalist and
Speaker 1: someone who consumes the news and information, I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about that a lot as well. Recently, I read an
Speaker 1: article in New York Magazine where one d and thirteen
Speaker 1: journalists were interviewed about all these issues, and the title
Speaker 1: of the article was the case against the Media by
Speaker 1: the media. So I'm not the only one asking all
Speaker 1: these questions. It seems as if journalists everywhere are doing
Speaker 1: some self examination about how the media has comported itself
Speaker 1: during the course of this election. And who better to
Speaker 1: talk about these issues than two veteran reporters, I would argue,
Speaker 1: and I think Brian Goldsmith might agree, my sidekick Brian,
Speaker 1: with two of the finest journalists of our generation, Bob
Speaker 1: Woodward and Tina brown Well, I definitely agree. These are
Speaker 1: two of the heroic characters in the history of journalism,
Speaker 1: not just journalism right now. Bob Woodward, of course, I
Speaker 1: think people have heard of half of the famous Woodward
Speaker 1: and Bernstein duo that helped to bring down Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: He's written or co written eighteen best selling books, most famously,
Speaker 1: of course, all the presidents men. Tina Brown is probably
Speaker 1: a little less well known, but she's had just a
Speaker 1: story to a career. She was the editor of Tatler,
Speaker 1: the great British gossip rag. She then became, at the
Speaker 1: age of thirty, the editor of Vanity Fair and transformed
Speaker 1: that magazine into what you see today, and then became
Speaker 1: the first female editor of The New Yorker. She's founded
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast, she hosted a talk show, she wrote
Speaker 1: a best selling book on Princess Diana. She edited Newsweek.
Speaker 1: So we're really lucky to be joined today by these
Speaker 1: two great journalists to discuss the state of media in
Speaker 1: this crazy campaign. Bob and Tina. There has been so
Speaker 1: much handwringing over the way the media has been handling
Speaker 1: have been handling this election season, and I've often wondered,
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, how will journalism schools if in
Speaker 1: fact they still exist. Review the performance by journalists covering
Speaker 1: this campaign. Let me ask you straight out, Bob, what
Speaker 1: do you think have have we embarrassed ourselves or is
Speaker 1: it still a relatively noble profession. Well, I'll take a
Speaker 1: middle ground at first. I think there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of great campaign coverage at the Washington Post. We've done
Speaker 1: this book on Donald Trump at twenty people work on it.
Speaker 1: If if you read it, you will see I think
Speaker 1: it's the best exposition of who he is. He spent
Speaker 1: twenty hours with the reporters. It's it's tough, but it
Speaker 1: lets him have his say. We're working on Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: in the same way. I think there's no book planned
Speaker 1: at this point. But for instance, today there was a
Speaker 1: terrific story that the Post did about how Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: got seventeen million dollars from this private for profit college
Speaker 1: while serving for five years is honorary chancellor. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of money he helped, There's no question about it.
Speaker 1: His name probably assisted in the recruitment of students and donors.
Speaker 1: But you see the convergence here of all of the
Speaker 1: Clinton enterprises, the personal fundraising, the speeches, the Clinton Foundation,
Speaker 1: the Global Initiative, and and now this for seventeen million
Speaker 1: dollars is not bad paved for five years work, which
Speaker 1: in no way was full time. Tina, what is your
Speaker 1: overall view of media coverage this go around. I do
Speaker 1: not think it has been a you know, a stellar
Speaker 1: journalism election in any sense. I do actually happen to
Speaker 1: agree with Bob that I think that the Washington Post
Speaker 1: coverage has been by far the best it has eating
Speaker 1: everyone's lunch on this particular cycle. The piece you mentioned
Speaker 1: today was was terrific. I will actually say, though, I
Speaker 1: think most of this coverage just seems very late to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems to me that it's almost like
Speaker 1: journalists have have come so late to the stories that
Speaker 1: are obviously I mean, they shout in holler about the
Speaker 1: big sort of the big issues of dishonest demon darcy,
Speaker 1: but where the details in the rigor that sort of
Speaker 1: drills down. I mean, what was to me a gratifying
Speaker 1: thing about today's story in the Post was that actually
Speaker 1: there was drilling down into one thing that was a
Speaker 1: really very interesting thing, a new thing that people didn't know.
Speaker 1: I would argue that all these other stories about the
Speaker 1: Clinton most of them are so many of them are
Speaker 1: sort of innuendo and like massive drum rolling, and that
Speaker 1: turns out, I mean, nothing really there. That's what I resent,
Speaker 1: is the huge drum rolls for things that aren't really there.
Speaker 1: And on the other side, Trump just for so long
Speaker 1: just seemed to get away with absolute murder to the
Speaker 1: point that these uh sort of stereotypes were fixed very
Speaker 1: very early in people's minds. So it's, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the stereotype of of of Hillary being the narrative of
Speaker 1: her being dishonest was fixed so early in people's minds
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be shiftable. The other hand, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: all the revelations about Trump have come so late in
Speaker 1: the day that he's got away with murder all his time.
Speaker 1: So it feels to me as if you know that
Speaker 1: the journalists are just not sometimes making more noise than
Speaker 1: they are forensic searching time. Okay, first of all, can
Speaker 1: I disagree Tina with that. The problem is so many
Speaker 1: of these stories I went back and looked at the
Speaker 1: stories the Post wrote about both Trump and Hillary. In
Speaker 1: the case of Hillary, going back toteen about the foundation
Speaker 1: about all of these things in one form or another.
Speaker 1: The difficulty is there's so much out there, a good story, uh,
Speaker 1: an important piece of the puzzle on either of these candidates.
Speaker 1: I mean, all about Trump University. We wrote about it,
Speaker 1: Steve Brill wrote about it in Time magazine. I remember
Speaker 1: last year being on one of the cable news shows saying,
Speaker 1: what about Trump University? And people just laughed, Oh, we
Speaker 1: know all about that. That's been in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: But it hasn't. And there has to be incremental coverage
Speaker 1: on these things to dig into them. But when you look,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to borrow you with a list
Speaker 1: of the stories that ran, but when you really look,
Speaker 1: there was vast coverage about Hillary Clinton. You're right. Some
Speaker 1: of it is unfair, some of it contains innuendos that
Speaker 1: are not supported. At the same time, there is just
Speaker 1: a lot there on both of these candidates, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's not just overwhelmed journalists, it's overwhelmed the public.
Speaker 1: Well that that brings me to a question. It seems
Speaker 1: that a lot of these stories don't matter. Um. I
Speaker 1: think this sort of overarching narrative about dishonesty. I think
Speaker 1: that's what Tina was saying about innuendo, sort of a
Speaker 1: feeling about candidates. Is this thing that seems to have
Speaker 1: a residual impact, But these sort of detailed stories, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Is it the sheer volume of material that's
Speaker 1: being written about this campaign, or is it that people
Speaker 1: just don't really respect or trust the press anymore? Bob,
Speaker 1: I was looking at this number. Gallup reported that in
Speaker 1: nine seene seventy four, the year you helped bring down
Speaker 1: a president, sixty of the public trusted the media. Today
Speaker 1: that number is twenty percent. So is it volume? Is
Speaker 1: it trust? Why don't these stories seem to have a
Speaker 1: bigger impact. Well, one thing I feel strongly is it
Speaker 1: is the volume. That's one of the problems. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking the other day when you Katie interviewed Sarah
Speaker 1: Palin and she said she couldn't say a newspaper that
Speaker 1: she read. Her ignorance became such a kind of defining
Speaker 1: feature that it helped to bury her. It was one
Speaker 1: of the major things that helped to bury Sarah Palin
Speaker 1: when you compare it to the amount of ignorance that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has shown in this election again and again
Speaker 1: and again in so many different venues. That hasn't stuck,
Speaker 1: and that hasn't defined him. Why is that? Is it? Because,
Speaker 1: as as Bob was saying, the volume, the very volume
Speaker 1: of the amount of stuff means that it's just not landing.
Speaker 1: Whereas when Sarah Palin went on that major news broadcast
Speaker 1: and said that thing, everybody saw it and everybody knew, well,
Speaker 1: what wasn't just that that Sarah Palin said? What? It
Speaker 1: was an important part of it. She said many other
Speaker 1: things too. I think, But so is Donald Trump, Bob,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem to be hurting him. Well, but
Speaker 1: the idea is there are let's face the facts here,
Speaker 1: and that is there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: support Trump. Remember he's got forty percent of the people
Speaker 1: in the polls one way or another don't really care.
Speaker 1: I've talked to some of these people. They say, I
Speaker 1: don't really care that he doesn't understand this, or that
Speaker 1: he's going to be tough, he's a leader, they like
Speaker 1: his background and so forth. So it's not and you're
Speaker 1: you're posing it. Why doesn't that hurt him? Uh? Because
Speaker 1: many many you know, I don't know obviously the number,
Speaker 1: but I think the polling shows on this people uh
Speaker 1: really think this is Washington establishment. It's Democrats and Republicans
Speaker 1: who have alive themselves together in this kind of shadow establishment,
Speaker 1: and Trump is outside of it, and he's saying We're
Speaker 1: going to kick the hell out of it and people
Speaker 1: like that. So the details of what he knows are irrelevant. Now.
Speaker 1: The big question that's got to be addressed what would
Speaker 1: he do as president if he became president. My answer
Speaker 1: to that question is that I think we don't know,
Speaker 1: and in many ways I think he doesn't know himself.
Speaker 1: How scary is that fair point? But you know, people say, okay,
Speaker 1: well you can be practical you get in Uh. We know,
Speaker 1: politicians get in office and they've said all kinds of
Speaker 1: things and then they do something, Uh, the opposite most prominent.
Speaker 1: I hate to go back to Nixon in he said
Speaker 1: he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: Probably lots of people voted for him on the basis
Speaker 1: of that. I was in the US Navy then, and
Speaker 1: I voted for Nixon in sixty eight because I thought
Speaker 1: he had the best chance of getting us out of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: We look at the record, which is very clear now, Uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't get us out of Vietnam. He withdrew troops
Speaker 1: but he increased the bombing and certainly did not end
Speaker 1: the war. But Bob, to your point, it's striking to
Speaker 1: me that it isn't just about Trump not knowing particular details,
Speaker 1: like when you interviewed him and he seemed not to
Speaker 1: be clear about what Abraham Lincoln did, which was a
Speaker 1: very striking thing to me. Right, and if we should say,
Speaker 1: I mean what when we interviewed Trump a number of
Speaker 1: months ago and asked why was Lincoln successful? His answer
Speaker 1: was because he did some things that needed to be done. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: it was. It was baffling and jaw dropping. So so,
Speaker 1: but you know, if if Sarah Payton had said that,
Speaker 1: you know, my point is that, you know, why did
Speaker 1: why did it hurt Sarah Palin when she said she's
Speaker 1: could see Russia from her back door? Why did that
Speaker 1: hurt her so badly? But this comment about not even knowing,
Speaker 1: which show you didn't even know what Lincoln did. Nobody
Speaker 1: really didn't didn't boom around or anybody. Well, and Tina,
Speaker 1: it's to me it's more than that because Trump has
Speaker 1: gotten more pants on fire ratings from fact checkers than
Speaker 1: practically any candidate ever, And that too doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be resonating as much. But also I think you have
Speaker 1: to factor in it's now six and Sarah Palin was
Speaker 1: eight years ago, and I think the whole media landscape
Speaker 1: has changed significantly just in that eight years. And there
Speaker 1: again to go. And it's not an excuse, it's an
Speaker 1: attempt a description. There is a volume of stuff that
Speaker 1: is staggering. If you are in the media business, you
Speaker 1: can't even follow it. May I also just say that
Speaker 1: I think that the universe has been created now with
Speaker 1: twenty years of Fox News has really come to roost.
Speaker 1: And I'm very interested to see them the National Review,
Speaker 1: the the right wing National Review, they're actually now started
Speaker 1: to come out against Fox and say it has created
Speaker 1: a universe which has been such an echo chamber for
Speaker 1: the Republican Party that they have become a cocoon universe
Speaker 1: in which Republicans could go on talk to themselves, talk
Speaker 1: to an audience that was strictly understood from their point
Speaker 1: of view of the world. And in a way that
Speaker 1: that volume of ignorance and cite the cycle of ignorance
Speaker 1: that the falsehoods and so forth that were put out
Speaker 1: constantly as facts has taken has taken the Land, you know,
Speaker 1: has actually borne fruit. And that's what we've got now,
Speaker 1: is isn't it isn't a less informed electorate because they're
Speaker 1: watching the silo, Tina. I don't think you can blame
Speaker 1: it on on Fox News. I think it's part of
Speaker 1: this story, part of the story. Yeah, of course it's
Speaker 1: not all of that fool But I do think it's
Speaker 1: made a difference to the Republican Party. Look, it's it's
Speaker 1: individual voters who say they don't like what's going on.
Speaker 1: They do not like this establishment in Washington and in politics.
Speaker 1: And somebody who talks tough and kicks a lot of
Speaker 1: sand and is not up on the details of all
Speaker 1: kinds of things and all kinds of history that doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to them. And I, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: whether it's our job to sit in judgment of people.
Speaker 1: I think what we have people who are going to
Speaker 1: vote for Trump or vote for somebody else, but try
Speaker 1: to understand and then present who these people are in details. Well,
Speaker 1: I totally agree with that, in the sense that you know,
Speaker 1: there's every reason for people to be upset and disenfranchise.
Speaker 1: Has no doubt about that. I guess the question is
Speaker 1: much more is that why don't certain specific things make
Speaker 1: a difference. But we may be making a mistake in
Speaker 1: making this assumption that it isn't hurting him. It's clearly
Speaker 1: hurt him a lot with college educated white voters who
Speaker 1: are normally a pillar of the Republican coalition, who are
Speaker 1: leaning toward Clinton this time. It may be helping him
Speaker 1: with blue collar voters who historically voted more Democratic, but
Speaker 1: it's clearly having an effect in terms of the electorate
Speaker 1: that he's able to attract. We'll be right back after
Speaker 1: a quick break. What do you have to lose by
Speaker 1: trying something new like Trump? What worries you both most
Speaker 1: about the way journalism has changed. You've been in the
Speaker 1: business for a very long time, and uh as I have.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious what you think about the current state
Speaker 1: of journalism, because, yes, the sheer volume, it's hard for anything,
Speaker 1: I think, to attach itself any narrative, although Brian said
Speaker 1: it is having some kind of impact. But but we
Speaker 1: talked about volume, and also there's such fragmentation and niche
Speaker 1: viewing or niche readers, people who want to hear their
Speaker 1: own views reflected back at them. A friend of mine
Speaker 1: set people are seeking affirmation, not information. So what worries
Speaker 1: you most about what journalism has become acknowledging that some
Speaker 1: very good work is still being done. Bob, Well, first,
Speaker 1: it's also not just the volume. It's the pace, and
Speaker 1: it's Internet driven, and it reflects the impatience and speed
Speaker 1: of the internet. Tell me the headline, give it to
Speaker 1: me in a d forty characters. And so the whole
Speaker 1: technology of this has dumbed down the information transfer process
Speaker 1: to people. Instead of expecting a long article, uh, people
Speaker 1: expect something really short. It give give me the SoundBite,
Speaker 1: and you know yourselves when you do interviews, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: give us the bottom line. And so that takes people
Speaker 1: away from an in depth understanding of things. Now that
Speaker 1: that can't be changed. That's a reality, and uh quite
Speaker 1: quite frankly, and I think we have to confront this.
Speaker 1: No one has found a way in television, radio, print media,
Speaker 1: anything else. Uh, you know, Buck, Roger, Dakota Rings. No
Speaker 1: one has found a way to connect the doubts in
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense, in a way that is
Speaker 1: of sufficient length or time that people will absorb it.
Speaker 1: I think that we should not underestimate the sheer impact
Speaker 1: is having on the professionals themselves, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing I think that is extremely dispiriting for journalists
Speaker 1: is the constant to your point, Bob, but the constant
Speaker 1: demands to keep filing, filing, filing, you know, posting five
Speaker 1: times a day, coming on Sunday and do Facebook live now,
Speaker 1: all of these things, you know the New York Times
Speaker 1: for insts. I know that journalists feel that as the
Speaker 1: newsroom shrinks, they're being asked to do more and more
Speaker 1: and more in regard to you know, short time consuming,
Speaker 1: time wasting. You could argue, you know, bursts of this
Speaker 1: and busts of that to feed the social media beasts
Speaker 1: that are out there demanding to be fed, to be fed.
Speaker 1: And of course it means that they can't get on
Speaker 1: with their story. I mean, they can't actually spend at
Speaker 1: time doing what you were just doing, returning the call
Speaker 1: from a source and sitting there on the phone for
Speaker 1: forty minutes and getting the story they've been pursuing. There too,
Speaker 1: busy out there having to do something down you know,
Speaker 1: Facebook live thing or whatever, which they have to keep
Speaker 1: doing to feed the beast. Well, let's get that terrible
Speaker 1: effect on the journalism because ultimately they're constantly filing before
Speaker 1: they're ready. And what is the Washington I was going
Speaker 1: to say, what is the Washington Post, though, Bob doing differently?
Speaker 1: You just mentioned rate piece that was done today. They're
Speaker 1: obviously Marty Baron, who's a great editor in chief and
Speaker 1: somebody who cares deeply about good journalism. What kind of
Speaker 1: environment is he establishing for people at the Post that
Speaker 1: is it really liberating them to do this kind of good, solid, important,
Speaker 1: critically important journalism. Like everything it it starts with the owner.
Speaker 1: And several years ago Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon,
Speaker 1: bought the Post and it was a year ago was
Speaker 1: last October. I had a conversation with Bezos and we
Speaker 1: were talking about Nixon and uh Bezos said, could we
Speaker 1: have found out about Nixon before he became president? My
Speaker 1: answer is I don't think so, but we could have
Speaker 1: done more and better before he was elected. And so
Speaker 1: the owner, Maso said, Okay, what we need to do
Speaker 1: is make sure that we dig into the lives and backgrounds,
Speaker 1: do a full excavation of the two remaining candidates through
Speaker 1: after the primary process. And then he said, the editor,
Speaker 1: Marty Baron, will have he will have the resources to
Speaker 1: do this, and so the Post has hired lots of
Speaker 1: new reporters. I look at the front page or some
Speaker 1: of these stories, and I know none of the bye lines.
Speaker 1: I do not know who these people are, but they
Speaker 1: but they are fabulous reporters with experience with the patients
Speaker 1: to dig in and who understand what matters is incremental coverage.
Speaker 1: That you have to stick with the story, chase it
Speaker 1: to ground, and at the same time be aggressively nonpartisan. Uh,
Speaker 1: and to be as fair but tough as you can.
Speaker 1: What do you two make of the of the now
Speaker 1: infamous New York Times stat that Trump got two billion
Speaker 1: dollars in free media coverage during this campaign. He tweeted
Speaker 1: in July about the Milannia controversy, the plagiarism issue, that
Speaker 1: he believes that all press is good press. So by
Speaker 1: that standard, even if some of the two billion was negative,
Speaker 1: was that all helpful to him and propelling his rise?
Speaker 1: And let me just add to Brian's point by saying,
Speaker 1: New York Magazine interviewed a hundred and thirteen journalists, and
Speaker 1: eight said they believe the media created Donald Trump. So
Speaker 1: how much is the media to blame for the very
Speaker 1: fact that he is the Republican nominee for President of
Speaker 1: the United States. Well, I think a weakness of obviously
Speaker 1: of the entertainment driven nature of the time we live
Speaker 1: in means that Donald Trump is a heck of a
Speaker 1: lot more fun to cover than Hillry Clinton. You know,
Speaker 1: the fact is that that journalists cannot resist where the
Speaker 1: action is, if you like, and Trump was the action.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, I do think there was way
Speaker 1: way too much that without question, that he was allowed
Speaker 1: to go on there and blow hardaway and do interviews
Speaker 1: on the phone in the higher hour and a half
Speaker 1: rallies it's covered without interruption. That was insane. And you know,
Speaker 1: the fact is that there will be sort of one
Speaker 1: sort of slightly combative second question. He would blow blow
Speaker 1: steam and then you move on to your next question,
Speaker 1: instead of doing what should have been done on television,
Speaker 1: which is like the just refusing to let go. It's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to challenge somebody on the phone than
Speaker 1: it is face to face. It is, but there's also
Speaker 1: the question of the second follow up and the third
Speaker 1: follow up and the fourth follow up. We actually don't
Speaker 1: let somebody stop. You don't ask one question, you get
Speaker 1: a blow up answer, and then you try a second question,
Speaker 1: you get a blow fonser, and then you just move on.
Speaker 1: You have to stay with it. If I may say
Speaker 1: and challenge that a little bit, I think that, of
Speaker 1: course we should have done more. That's always the case.
Speaker 1: But it's the voters who created Donald Trump. Let's not
Speaker 1: kid ourselves. He was ahead in the polls, he almost
Speaker 1: from the beginning. If I recall, he won primary after
Speaker 1: primary after primary, and now he's the nominee of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. So you have to cover that. That's our job,
Speaker 1: embedded in your right team. I mean, these rallies were
Speaker 1: expect to coals. I mean it was almost like the
Speaker 1: Roman color situation. Absolutely yeah. But you covered those and
Speaker 1: then people followed up and there was lots of examination,
Speaker 1: and if you put all the clips together, you would
Speaker 1: be astonished what you never even read or were aware of,
Speaker 1: because there's been so much. Well, I can remember certain
Speaker 1: really good critical moments where it did happen, like with
Speaker 1: Chris Matthews when he really nailed Trump about how when
Speaker 1: he said women who had abortion should be punished on
Speaker 1: his show, and he really was fabulous about that, and
Speaker 1: he really dressed and then Trump took it back. And
Speaker 1: then Trump took it back his mind. He said, oh no,
Speaker 1: no punishment, absolutely, But does I mean the Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: partisans I know would say that it isn't just about
Speaker 1: the volume of coverage, it's about the tone of coverage,
Speaker 1: the kind of coverage. The Shorenstein Center put out a
Speaker 1: study that shows that Hillary got by far the most
Speaker 1: negative coverage of any candidate in either party. Trump got
Speaker 1: pretty raw ra coverage, at least at the beginning. Um,
Speaker 1: does the press need to be held account for the
Speaker 1: tone that they're striking. Some of the tone is has
Speaker 1: been bad, There's no question about it. But look, Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton has been on the public stage for so long.
Speaker 1: All of her incarnations as first Ladies, Senator, Secretary of
Speaker 1: State are going to be examined. And the whole email
Speaker 1: fiasco is not something the media created. And if you
Speaker 1: look at the facts in this and you look at
Speaker 1: what we've seen, um, there are a multitude of stark
Speaker 1: contradictions that needs to be covered. I think in a sense,
Speaker 1: the problem Secretary Clinton has had is and she now
Speaker 1: apparently is somewhat on the road to remedy that uh,
Speaker 1: to not answer questions, to not have press conferences. I've
Speaker 1: known her for decades and interviewed her some in earlier incarnations,
Speaker 1: and I think Katie, uh, you and Tina know so
Speaker 1: well when you've interview her and you listen to her,
Speaker 1: she's fabulous, She incredibly informed. She can be very friendly,
Speaker 1: very open, very self deprecating, and that's not what we've
Speaker 1: seen in the campaign, and so maybe for the next
Speaker 1: two months we're going to get more. It is curious
Speaker 1: because actually she's at her best, one of her box
Speaker 1: against the wall. I mean, I think her finest hour
Speaker 1: in the last year really was the Benghazi hearings, where
Speaker 1: she's grilled and grilled and grilled and grilled and never
Speaker 1: lost her cool. Seven hours. She was well informed, she
Speaker 1: was on top of it, she never lost a beat,
Speaker 1: and yet somehow seems to have been fearful of the
Speaker 1: press pack who were way less informed and very often
Speaker 1: way less hollstyle than the Manghazi hearing. So I agree
Speaker 1: that you know, it's not been a good strategy, but
Speaker 1: one that she seems to have adhered to despite everybody
Speaker 1: saying she should not. But why why are they doing that?
Speaker 1: I mean, she held her first press conference in two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty days she did start talking to reporters
Speaker 1: on the plane. And I'm curious why why the hesitancy
Speaker 1: to to actually talk to reporters, especially when Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was establishing the narrative every single day, um by talking
Speaker 1: to reporters and then creating a storyline that was being
Speaker 1: adhered to by almost every news organizations. A long theory
Speaker 1: which is that if your if your opponent is killing themselves,
Speaker 1: let him go ahead and do it. Why should she
Speaker 1: go walking herself to death, like risking sound bites of
Speaker 1: her own when he's busy falling on his face it
Speaker 1: seems every ten minutes. And indeed, as bron said, it
Speaker 1: is affecting him in the polls. But I think she
Speaker 1: has a deep seated fear of not being perfect that
Speaker 1: goes back, must go back way into her. We're really
Speaker 1: getting her on the couch now. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's true. I think that's always been an issue for
Speaker 1: Hillary that she can never really say yes, I got
Speaker 1: that wrong and move on like she couldn't say, you know,
Speaker 1: I got the I RAG vote wrong. All the way
Speaker 1: through the last campaign, she always gave fifteen caveats about
Speaker 1: why she yes, she was the wrong but instead of
Speaker 1: just saying, you know what, I got it wrong, bad consequences.
Speaker 1: If I could do it again, I wouldn't I have
Speaker 1: to ask Bob about this, this Paul Krugman column and Tina,
Speaker 1: I'd loved your view on it too, that Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: gets gored, basically saying the media coverage of her has
Speaker 1: been patently unfair. He compared it to what happened to
Speaker 1: Al Gore against George W. Bush during that campaign, and
Speaker 1: he writes throughout the campaign, most media coverage gave the
Speaker 1: impression that Mr Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while
Speaker 1: portraying Al Gore, whose policy proposals added up and whose
Speaker 1: critiques of the Bush Plan were complete accurate, as slippery
Speaker 1: and dishonest. And right now I and many others have
Speaker 1: the six sinking feeling that it's happening again. True, there
Speaker 1: aren't many efforts to pretend that Donald Trump is a
Speaker 1: paragon of honesty, but it's hard to escape the impression
Speaker 1: that he's being graded on a curve if he seems
Speaker 1: to suggest that he wouldn't round up all eleven million
Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants right away, he's moving into the mainstream, and
Speaker 1: many of his multiple scandals like what appears to be
Speaker 1: clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating
Speaker 1: Trump University get remarkably little attention. Meanwhile, we have the
Speaker 1: presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most
Speaker 1: spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I could go on and on, but Bob, what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that? Okay? Paul Krugman is ardent partisan,
Speaker 1: and he has very strong views about this. In that column,
Speaker 1: he says, well, George W. Boy lied about what he
Speaker 1: was gonna do with taxes. I spent months looking at
Speaker 1: the origins, development, and final passage of the Bush tax cuts.
Speaker 1: Bush was quite straightforward. He was gonna lower taxes for everyone,
Speaker 1: and he did. And now the economic consequences of that
Speaker 1: Krugman and others are very critical of and and and
Speaker 1: that's reasonable. Hillary Clinton's got to be accountable. Uh, she's
Speaker 1: running for president. And uh, the idea that I mean, Look,
Speaker 1: we all know hundreds of journalists, and yes there are
Speaker 1: some who are partisan one way or another, but by
Speaker 1: and large, journalists want to get it right. They don't
Speaker 1: aren't sitting around and say, let's gore Hillary or gee,
Speaker 1: I don't like Hillary. There's too much out there. There
Speaker 1: are too many questions, there's too much history and past
Speaker 1: and it's got to be addressed, and it is. I
Speaker 1: think the answer is for her, quite frankly, is to
Speaker 1: sit down with you too. And you know, maybe I've
Speaker 1: been trying, Bob, and they keep blowing me off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean, it isn't that. I mean, Katie, I've
Speaker 1: known you for years. I have no idea you could
Speaker 1: torture me. And I couldn't tell you what your politics are.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. You're a journalist, you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what happened. You would give her a fair hearing,
Speaker 1: but a tough hearing. But you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things though that Bob, I think that they fear she fears,
Speaker 1: And what's so fascinating is that it hasn't applied to Trump.
Speaker 1: Is the flying sound bite that defines you. I mean,
Speaker 1: her comment inside of a very long interview to Diane
Speaker 1: Sawyer we were broke when we left the White House, right,
Speaker 1: that became for her like and I'll go on the
Speaker 1: internet nightmare it's like, that's what she said. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is what she said. But look and that's what that
Speaker 1: is what she meant. It's fine. But the question is
Speaker 1: why did that end up being such a defining, uh
Speaker 1: sort of killer boomerang to Hillary? Whereas all course it is,
Speaker 1: of course, of course it was absurd, but compared to
Speaker 1: the multi absurdities of everything that Trump has said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's I don't get into this idea of well,
Speaker 1: Trump's done ten times is badly fair enough in those
Speaker 1: things around the record, and they're under the microscope, believe me,
Speaker 1: by journalists and voters. But that doesn't mean you don't
Speaker 1: do Hillary. In fact, I mean I'm not suggesting that
Speaker 1: you don't do I think she's saying. She's saying, why
Speaker 1: why she why she's hesitant to put herself out. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: that is why she's hesitant to of course you wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Does she have somebody in her entourage who would when
Speaker 1: she said that, you know, we were dead, broke or whatever,
Speaker 1: say to her, Hey, that was a mistake. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: have said that. That is not going to be incredible,
Speaker 1: particularly when you've gone on, uh, you and your husband
Speaker 1: to make all of this money. She made a messay
Speaker 1: she did, Well, that's that's the point, that's what she's
Speaker 1: so desperately afraid of doing. She's afraid that she's going
Speaker 1: to talk for twenty minutes about her policy about criminal
Speaker 1: justice and then use suddenly, you know, like slip and
Speaker 1: use a word like super predator, and then you know,
Speaker 1: it undermines everything that she said before. I think that
Speaker 1: the fear of that flying sound bite being this curse
Speaker 1: of of her the next six months has made her
Speaker 1: into a fetal position of fear. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: I don't say it's a good thing that she's in
Speaker 1: that position, but I think that is what's driving it. Okay, Tina,
Speaker 1: if that's what's driving what's going to happen if she
Speaker 1: becomes president and Vladimer Poop confronts her, Is she going
Speaker 1: to be able to hold her own I think there's
Speaker 1: all the evidence in the world that she can. But
Speaker 1: the idea that she's sitting around and worried about, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm gonna make a slip, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say something that I've felt or thought. You know, we're
Speaker 1: sitting here having this conversation and it's not scripted, it's
Speaker 1: not planned. You know, probably one of us probably weren't
Speaker 1: running for president both thank God, no, no. But we
Speaker 1: we live in a spotlight, and you know, probably one
Speaker 1: of us said something we wish we hadn't said, probably me,
Speaker 1: and that happens. Okay, But when that happens, then you
Speaker 1: kind of say, you know, I stepped on it. That
Speaker 1: was a silly thing to say. People are forgiving. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows people who say things that are silly or a mistake.
Speaker 1: And and the idea that that drives her into a
Speaker 1: defensive crouch. It is not testimony to what I know
Speaker 1: is her strength. And yet I would agree with I
Speaker 1: would agree with Tina. I think that's true. I think
Speaker 1: it's she feels this is hers to lose, and why
Speaker 1: risk it if she's going to be really challenged, even
Speaker 1: though I agree also with Tina that that is when
Speaker 1: she is best, when when she's really challenged about some
Speaker 1: specific policy, and uh, I just I I also think
Speaker 1: combined her her unwillingness to kind of step in it,
Speaker 1: as she said, Bob, coupled with her inability to say
Speaker 1: I screwed up. That's a pretty bad combination for dealing
Speaker 1: with the media. Okay, but whose fault is that the media's? No, Well,
Speaker 1: I think the media critique, though, is a little bit different,
Speaker 1: which is that Trump is being graded on a curve
Speaker 1: that even if, as Tina says, he makes ten times
Speaker 1: as many mistakes, if he utters ten times the number
Speaker 1: of falsehoods, the coverage is presented as as equal and
Speaker 1: and and so. For example, when she gave a very
Speaker 1: well researched speech, after what she answered no questions, so
Speaker 1: that could be a fault. But she gave a speech
Speaker 1: in which she, you know, demonstrated in remarkable detail Trump's
Speaker 1: connections to a bunch of white supremacists and racist elements.
Speaker 1: And then Trump, in the middle of a rally the
Speaker 1: same day, yelled Hillary Clinton's a bigot. And on a
Speaker 1: lot of the news programs, those two things were treated
Speaker 1: as equal, um and so, Bob, Tina, do you think
Speaker 1: that there is a reckoning that's going to happen after
Speaker 1: this election in which the conclusion does not know, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't cover Hillary Clinton critically, The conclusion is that there's
Speaker 1: got to be some fairness in terms of the the
Speaker 1: amount that the that the whip or the zapper is
Speaker 1: applied to these two candidates. But but but that's the
Speaker 1: internet culture, in this impatience and speed they both effectively
Speaker 1: called the other a bigot, right, so you cover that,
Speaker 1: whether one was well researched versus one that was off
Speaker 1: the top of his head. You can make that point,
Speaker 1: and I think some people did, but you you, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to cover that, I think, And this
Speaker 1: is what's I'm one of. You know, this is almost
Speaker 1: a constitutional point. But we have a democracy and people
Speaker 1: are going to vote, and people are gonna get it.
Speaker 1: People are a lot smarter, and the job we have
Speaker 1: is to put it out there. Jeff Bezos, the owner
Speaker 1: of the Post, said, So our goal is no one
Speaker 1: can go into the voting booth in November and say
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out who these two candidates were. And
Speaker 1: so we have, uh, you know, a lot of his
Speaker 1: money going to hire extra reporters and editors to make
Speaker 1: this I think unparalleled monumental effort to answer that question
Speaker 1: for people. Now, the volume, I mean, you can't keep
Speaker 1: up with it? Can you two? Keep? Can you keep
Speaker 1: up with Now? That brings us back to where we
Speaker 1: were at the beginning, which is sometimes the volume. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you're dealing with, what rigor if the
Speaker 1: volume is so intense, people forget it. They have brain fade,
Speaker 1: and well, let's face it, how many people are reading
Speaker 1: these great stories in the Washington Post. I mean they
Speaker 1: don't have They don't land with the kind of impact
Speaker 1: they landed in the seventies and eighties when the paper was,
Speaker 1: you know, one of four or five major places that
Speaker 1: people got their news. I mean, it's not like being
Speaker 1: I feel like mostly political journalists are reading what political
Speaker 1: journalists are writing, and I wonder how much it's sinking
Speaker 1: in to the general population. Which I think that's a
Speaker 1: fair question, and it's uncharted territory, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we stopped doing what we're doing. Let's bring it home, Bob,
Speaker 1: and and and TEENA and Brian, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: your perspective on this. We're about two months away from
Speaker 1: election day. What should the media be doing and the
Speaker 1: these next two months? And I guess the second part
Speaker 1: of that question is will it really matter? Well more
Speaker 1: what matters is what the candidates do than what the
Speaker 1: media does, because it's a question of how they're going
Speaker 1: to handle these two months ahead. Uh. I feel that Trump,
Speaker 1: when he thinks he is losing, is going to really
Speaker 1: do the kind of thing you do when a retreating
Speaker 1: army retreats and starts to kind of blaze his guns
Speaker 1: in every direction, that he will go out in a
Speaker 1: blaze of bomb attox, as it were, more and more
Speaker 1: crazily extreme, because he will want to retain that counter
Speaker 1: of the electorate for himself for whatever he does later. Hillary,
Speaker 1: I think he's just going to try and be as
Speaker 1: cautious as she can and not be forced to answer
Speaker 1: things that could create the flying SoundBite. As as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: I think the media, I think presentation is very important.
Speaker 1: I do think that sometimes, you know, you don't get
Speaker 1: a sense that this is the big story. Pay attention.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have to do the incremental coverage, but
Speaker 1: I do think, you know, the newsrooms have to sort
Speaker 1: of gather themselves together and say, what are the four
Speaker 1: big stories now, and just report the hell out of
Speaker 1: these defining stories and really make sure that they haven't
Speaker 1: left one stone. On Turner in the New York Times
Speaker 1: did a wonderful piece, I thought, on all of Trump's
Speaker 1: real estate deals. Unfortunately it came out the same weekend
Speaker 1: that the pulse bombing happened in Florida, so I actually
Speaker 1: didn't have the same impact, which I think it would
Speaker 1: have had if that tragedy hadn't occurred, because of course
Speaker 1: you're also racing not just the media coverage of the election,
Speaker 1: which you're also racing the wild news environment that we've
Speaker 1: been living in. I mean the summer. I think no
Speaker 1: one was ready paying attention and apologies because of this
Speaker 1: constant uh tragedies that were hitting at every turn. But
Speaker 1: but when, when when these stories don't land? As Tina said, Bob,
Speaker 1: do you think it's because it's more of a feeling
Speaker 1: that is motivating Trump supporters, rather than details of his
Speaker 1: business dealings or the way he's behaved in certain situations
Speaker 1: or Trump University. It's it's this overall anger and this
Speaker 1: visceral reaction to him as a candidate and what he
Speaker 1: could do. That means these stories just don't really matter. Well,
Speaker 1: but you know you can't sit around. I if you
Speaker 1: go back to some of the Nixon Watergate coverage, I
Speaker 1: remember Ben Bradley, our editor, would say, you know, just
Speaker 1: keep doing it, keep trying to find out what's going on.
Speaker 1: And somebody would say, well, it didn't get picked up
Speaker 1: by television. No one is talking about it. In fact,
Speaker 1: no one believes it and and uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: good editor is going to say just keep going. And
Speaker 1: the answer to Katie's question, what should we do? Keep
Speaker 1: following it? I think in September and October there is
Speaker 1: that cliche about the October surprise, something happening that really
Speaker 1: turns things around. Events are going to occur that maybe
Speaker 1: will determine or have a huge impact on the outcome
Speaker 1: of this election and how the cans respond to them,
Speaker 1: to how the candidates respond to those huge events. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: But a number of people have said, from the intelligence world,
Speaker 1: the CIA world, that if there is a major terrorist
Speaker 1: attack in this country, uh, that will help Trump. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure. That depends on the timing, who
Speaker 1: was behind it, how big it is, what the impact is,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people will say, well, he's tough,
Speaker 1: he's tough. Now He'll rea Clinton is tough also in
Speaker 1: a different way. But there could be occurrences like that
Speaker 1: in the security terrorism field, in the world of the economy,
Speaker 1: which is still not is robust and resilient as it
Speaker 1: should be. So you know, I think the message should
Speaker 1: be keep your seatbelled on. And I'd add one more
Speaker 1: thing to answer Katie's question, which is I think the
Speaker 1: press ought to focus on what the candidates planned to
Speaker 1: do as president. I think often there's a uh, fake
Speaker 1: sophistication on the part of a lot of reporters that,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't really pay attention to these campaign
Speaker 1: promises because we all know that after they're elected they
Speaker 1: toss them out. But that's really not true. And the
Speaker 1: and the political science bears this out. Campaign promises are
Speaker 1: the single best indicator of what the candidates, the policies
Speaker 1: the candidates planned to pursue in office. And so even
Speaker 1: if it isn't the sexiest coverage, I'd argue for you know,
Speaker 1: really rigorous analysis of of what the candidates are actually proposing.
Speaker 1: What do their plans say't what was Richard Nixon? And
Speaker 1: and that's the difficulty. No one believes because when people
Speaker 1: get in office, they're going to do what they want
Speaker 1: or what necessity dictates. And there's a downside to that,
Speaker 1: but there's also an upside. Can I ask one question
Speaker 1: of you guys before we let you go? Uh? I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to ask this, actually of both of you,
Speaker 1: as two of the journalists I admire most. Bob, you've
Speaker 1: written these best sellers about Richard Nixon, and you know
Speaker 1: him better than just about anybody. Um And Tina, you
Speaker 1: wrote this best seller of another person who was sort
Speaker 1: of at the center of the media mails from Princess Diana.
Speaker 1: Do you see any of those two iconic characters in
Speaker 1: either of the candidates uh that we're all covering this year,
Speaker 1: or at least in the media environment that we're covering. Well,
Speaker 1: Diana was the first internet ah death, if you like.
Speaker 1: I mean when she died, it was the first time
Speaker 1: that um, a celebrity death had been covered on every medium,
Speaker 1: all the time, everywhere. It would began the mass carpet
Speaker 1: bombing media era that we have entered into. So in
Speaker 1: that sense, I guess she is more of a in
Speaker 1: the Trump genealogy than she is the Hillary genealogy, because
Speaker 1: you know, she started for this huge celebrity that then
Speaker 1: just magnified and magnified and magnified, so that everything she
Speaker 1: did became a fulfilling, self fulfilling prophecy in a way,
Speaker 1: And her relationship with the media was as combative and
Speaker 1: as uh sort of you know, co opting at the
Speaker 1: same time. So there's there are there are some aspects there,
Speaker 1: I guess but sunny, you know, her humanitarian side was
Speaker 1: way more in line with Hillary. It's unfair to compare
Speaker 1: any candidate to Nixon, quite frankly, and uh, people have
Speaker 1: ascribed Nixonian tendencies to both Trump and Hillary. I think
Speaker 1: that's I think that's unfair. Nixon was unique. He was
Speaker 1: a criminal president who violated the law, who resigned when
Speaker 1: he realized that the entire Republican Party and Republican establishment
Speaker 1: had turned against him. His very Goldwater said, uh, Goldwater,
Speaker 1: being the conscience of the Republican Party. Uh, for many
Speaker 1: many years said too many lies, too many crimes. And
Speaker 1: we've had lots of untruths from both candidates. No one
Speaker 1: has established a rhyme from either of them. I think
Speaker 1: the I think it's probably gonna turn out okay, because
Speaker 1: voters are very smart. I was off giving a speech
Speaker 1: some weeks ago down south, and some man stood up
Speaker 1: and said, I'm confused. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Help me, And I said, uh, you know, look, you
Speaker 1: get to decide, you get to decide where you're going
Speaker 1: to get your information. It's personal. And then he wanted help.
Speaker 1: And I think we need to give him more help
Speaker 1: in our business more information, even if people don't look
Speaker 1: at it or listen or read. UH. At least the
Speaker 1: data is there. And UH, in the end, majority of
Speaker 1: people are going to be able to say I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this, and that's who's going to be the
Speaker 1: next president. When you look to the future, are you
Speaker 1: optimistic or pessimistic about the state of journalism? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you know, like you, people have to get up in
Speaker 1: the morning and work at it. And the thought I have,
Speaker 1: because I think I can say this literally when I
Speaker 1: get up in the morning, my thought is what are
Speaker 1: the bastards hiding whoever they are, because they are out
Speaker 1: there and you know, with political good maybe good intent
Speaker 1: trying to protect something, or maybe with less good intent,
Speaker 1: but but people are hiding things. Remember Al Gore once
Speaker 1: said when I asked, what percentage of what goes on
Speaker 1: in government that's of consequence do we know? And he
Speaker 1: said one percent. And that's, of course Gore being exaggerating.
Speaker 1: We know a lot more than one percent. Maybe it's fifty,
Speaker 1: maybe it's six. But there's a lot we don't know
Speaker 1: and about what goes on in government, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot we don't know about who these people really are.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad that Bob is they're digging away shoveling
Speaker 1: with his pick. Well, I could talk to you both,
Speaker 1: Brian and I know agrees for hours. I didn't even
Speaker 1: get a chance to talk to you about the role
Speaker 1: Facebook is playing in news distribution. So maybe we can
Speaker 1: do part two of this podcast following the election. Bob
Speaker 1: and Tina, thank you both so much for your time.
Speaker 1: It was great great to talk to you. Thank you, Katie,
Speaker 1: Thank you. So we want to thank Bob Woodward and
Speaker 1: Tina Brown for participating in the show today. We also
Speaker 1: want to thank Gretta Cone, the Reverend John Delore, and
Speaker 1: Zack Dinerstein for producing this show. Also a special shout
Speaker 1: out to Mark Phillips for our terrific theme music, and
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. If you want to leave us
Speaker 1: a message, please do so at nine to four four
Speaker 1: six three seven. As always, I will be standing by
Speaker 1: the phone. Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show.
Speaker 1: It helps other listeners to find it. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. Hey folks, it's me Mark
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