0:01

The caricature of objectivity, I think, does

0:03

a lot of work in battling

0:05

and arguing against the benefits of

0:07

objectivity. The word objectivity is fraught.

0:09

Many listeners of this conversation will

0:11

say, come on, there is no

0:13

objectivity. So call it fairness, call

0:16

it non-predetermined conclusions, call it

0:18

many, there are many synonyms that

0:20

would convey the idea that the

0:22

journalist's job is not to have

0:25

one conclusion that they've decided beforehand

0:27

and that they can't get knocked

0:29

off their conclusion. You have to be

0:31

curious and be able to give up your

0:33

premises as you do your reporting. And now

0:36

the good fight with Yasha Monk. My

0:44

guest today is Mike Peska. Mike is

0:46

the host of the podcast The Jist,

0:48

which has a lovely spirit. He invites

0:50

people from all over the political spectrum

0:53

and pushes back on all of them

0:55

in a really thorough way. We talked

0:58

about the transformation of American

1:00

media in general and radio

1:02

in particular. Mike used to work a lot for

1:05

NPR. We were then

1:07

at Slate together for a little

1:09

while at the same time, but

1:11

he views very critically how those

1:13

media platforms have evolved. We also talked

1:15

about a host of other issues, including

1:17

touching on the upcoming US elections. And

1:20

Mike interrogating me a little bit about

1:22

how we should feel about the populist

1:25

threat to democracy about 10 years after

1:27

I first raised the alarm about it.

1:30

Mike Peska, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thanks for

1:32

having me. I've heard dozens of these. And to

1:34

be honest, it's sort of a dream come true,

1:36

like the time I was on Jeopardy. You

1:40

on Jeopardy? I came in third

1:42

place. I was leading going into Final Jeopardy.

1:44

And you know, it's a long story,

1:46

but I wound up crossing out the answer Barbara

1:48

Streisand. And at the last minute I realized it

1:50

was right, but I didn't have enough time to

1:52

write Streisand. That is

1:54

my own personal Streisand effect, losing Jeopardy.

2:00

I feel like I've always moved around too much to

2:02

do well on a question in any one country

2:04

because they're quite culturally specific. Perhaps at this point

2:06

I've been in the United States long enough that

2:08

I would stand a chance. If I went back

2:10

to Germany, for example, I would do quite badly

2:12

because any German pop culture reference over the last

2:14

20 years, I would just completely miss. There we

2:17

go. We've just figured out

2:19

a new game show. It's called The

2:21

Internationalists, and it's people who don't have

2:23

permanent citizenship anywhere. So you have

2:25

to know a little bit about the English Premier League

2:27

and a little bit about Bavarian hops, and then we're

2:29

good. I think if you're

2:31

looking for a way to get media more hated

2:33

than it already is, you've ducked men to find

2:35

it. No, but

2:37

then the guy who becomes the world

2:40

sweetheart is the cop, the bobby from

2:42

London, or

2:45

the Nigerian middle-class worker who just

2:47

happens to know all this stuff.

2:50

He shows this snooty, it's a whole slobs

2:52

versus snobs thing on an international scale. I

2:55

don't know if we've created a game show

2:57

or a sitcom. It would

2:59

be kind of amazing to have a show where you

3:01

get people from around the world discussing

3:04

issues that are going on. It would be

3:06

hard to find issues that are going to

3:08

be relevant to various audiences. And you find

3:10

really likable people of completely different perspectives, and

3:12

they're just like sitting around talking

3:14

about these things in a genuinely intercultural perspective, but not

3:16

in a kind of feel-good. I mean, it would have

3:19

to feel good in the sense that it would have

3:21

to be sort of smart, likable people, but not feel

3:23

good in a kind of like, they all agree and

3:25

hug it out, right? That they sort of go at

3:27

it, but in a way that's likable. That'd be kind

3:29

of fun. As you know, I started a podcast, I

3:31

have a podcast called The Jist, and it's been going

3:34

on for, I don't know, maybe by the time this

3:36

airs literally 10 years. I

3:38

started a podcast called Not Even Mad, and

3:40

it wasn't people from around the world. It

3:42

was just the classic idea of a lefty

3:45

person, a righty person. I was in the

3:47

center moderating, but also giving my ideas. And

3:49

it didn't work. And among the

3:51

reasons it didn't work, I do think the audience is

3:53

there, and there's just such a lack of that kind

3:55

of discussion. So the general

3:57

discussion podcast has three people agreeing.

4:00

But the one big reason is it didn't

4:02

work is you have to do it with

4:04

people who have been friends for like 10

4:06

years right where they're where the Disagreements of

4:08

the podcast and then what's interesting is the

4:11

groups that the three individuals or

4:13

four individuals associate with

4:16

the tribes don't pull

4:18

the Depth of

4:20

the friendship apart. That's the only

4:22

way that's the only glue to

4:24

survive the dynamic of the individual

4:26

tribes You know pulling the left

4:28

from the right until it becomes

4:30

acrimony That's interesting So

4:33

listen, we're sort of in the heart

4:35

of what I want to talk to

4:37

you about which is that you see anybody

4:39

who's been at NPR for a long

4:41

time NPR for Non-American listeners is the

4:43

abbreviation for National Public Radio and it's

4:45

really a very important institution In

4:47

the United States when you're publishing a book for

4:49

example getting on the right NPR Show is the

4:52

thing that your publicist will worry about probably the

4:54

most more than you know We all excerpt

4:56

in the New York Times and so on

4:58

so forth and then you've been running this

5:01

Debate podcast for 10 years first. It's late

5:03

where we were contemporaries for a little while and

5:06

then under your own eagles

5:08

How has this space changed

5:11

in the last 15 years? How is

5:13

the market journalism changed in the last

5:15

15 years and how is NPR specifically

5:17

changed? There was a much shared story

5:19

by Yuri Berliner in the free press

5:21

a little while ago You mentioned to

5:23

me that he was sometimes your editor

5:25

at NPR and she made the case

5:27

that NPR has really Gone from

5:29

a place that always had a kind of left lean like the

5:31

New York Times had a kind of left lean But

5:34

was listened even in the early 2010s Was

5:37

listened to by a very broad range of people

5:40

ideologically a lot of moderates a lot of conservatives

5:42

used to listen to NPR and

5:44

the station tried to Portray

5:47

the world in a kind of balanced

5:49

way and now the listenership to NPR

5:52

has not only reduced But

5:54

it has come to skew very very liberal and

5:56

in fact very very far left According

5:58

to surveys and you're very in assessor, this is

6:00

because NPR has kind of given up on some of

6:02

the commission of what public media used to

6:05

be. You know, as somebody who was at NPR for a

6:07

long time in a prominent position, what do you make of

6:09

that? I think there was

6:11

a conscious choice to change and then

6:13

just running along with

6:15

the river, the stream

6:18

of societal change, but not really recognizing

6:20

how much the waters had

6:22

increased their rapidity. So what I mean by

6:24

that is NPR, you're right, it was always

6:26

a liberal place, you know, liberal

6:29

in both the best sense, but also, you

6:31

know, that was its lean. I would seriously

6:33

doubt that if you surveyed the people who

6:35

worked at NPR and said, who'd you vote

6:37

for since the time of their founding, which

6:39

was during the Watergate trials to the time

6:42

I left, you'd get more than, you know,

6:44

any Republican presidential candidate getting maybe 10%, maybe

6:46

15% of the vote. But

6:49

that's not the end all be all of

6:52

the definition of journalism. And the best anecdote

6:54

I tell about this is my longtime colleague

6:56

and head of the New York bureau was

6:58

a woman named Margo Adler. And

7:00

Margo was, I don't know if they

7:02

have a real hierarchy of this, but

7:04

she was essentially the chief Wiccan goddess

7:07

of the United States. She was a

7:09

big Wiccan and not to stereotype. She

7:11

also had the politics of what you

7:13

expect a Wiccan would have. And she

7:15

was into protesting and she was into

7:17

activism and she found it all delightful.

7:20

But she reported, you would

7:22

listen to her reports and you wouldn't

7:24

be shocked to know that Margo had

7:26

been to many, many protest marches in

7:28

the sixties, but she played it straight in

7:31

her reports. Part of that was she had editors who,

7:33

if she would ever go over the line, would pull

7:35

her back. And part of that

7:37

was that she knew and whatever over the

7:39

line was, she knew and appreciated that she

7:41

was operating in this system. And I think

7:44

she also appreciated, she has since passed away,

7:46

the fact that the editors were there to

7:49

buttress her credibility. And she also was

7:51

a great storyteller and someone who was

7:53

really curious about all aspects of the

7:55

human condition. I don't know who the

7:57

equivalent or what the equivalent of Margo

7:59

Adams. would be today, but I do

8:01

think that she would be, or

8:04

that kind of person, would

8:06

not have the editorial oversight. And the

8:08

message wouldn't be that you have to

8:10

put on a radio broadcast that could

8:12

very much appeal to people who disagree

8:14

with you. That whole idea is

8:16

out. And part of that is the people when I

8:19

was there in 2007, 2012, people who disagreed with

8:25

you were, or who might be

8:27

listening to NPR were, something like

8:29

a Mitt Romney Republican, or

8:32

a professor at the university who

8:34

was a professor of business and

8:36

had Republican leanings but was a

8:38

smart, furious person. Now I think

8:40

the conception is, and it's changed

8:43

a bit, that the person who

8:45

disagrees with you if you are

8:47

presenting progressive coded content is

8:49

a crazy insurrectionist who owns a number

8:52

of assault rifles, and you don't care

8:54

at all about their opinion. And if that

8:56

is the person that you're quote unquote trying

8:59

to appeal to, I understand jettisoning the idea

9:01

or the ideal of, oh, let's say some

9:03

things that a conspiracy theorist would like. But

9:06

what I think is, and this is one of the

9:08

reasons why I say local news has been hurt so

9:10

much, and that the splintering of news and the siloing

9:12

of news and the ideological silos hurt us is, you

9:15

know, it used to be the case that if you

9:17

were the Sacramento Bee and you put out your paper,

9:19

it was going to be read by, even if you

9:21

had a mostly liberal editorial slander, it was going to

9:23

be read by everyone in the community. And

9:26

if you said crazy things that offended

9:28

the business owners, like if you had

9:30

many articles valorizing the idea of defunding

9:32

the police, you were going to upset

9:34

your very reasonable members of the community.

9:37

Now I think that members of the

9:39

community, the people who do the

9:41

radio and do media are mostly

9:43

younger. They've ingested ideas of activism

9:45

that I think go against traditional

9:47

media. And I know you've talked

9:50

about this, the older editors who

9:52

were raised in a system where

9:54

there was such an idea as if we don't call

9:56

it, we don't have to call it objectivity, but there

9:58

was a fairness and there was an ideal of

10:01

even the person who disagrees with you, were

10:03

they gonna recognize the truth in that? They've

10:05

been cowed. Part of this

10:07

was the tumult of Trump, a

10:09

greater accelerant was the 2020 George

10:11

Floyd protests, but it came to

10:14

a situation where NPR

10:16

really stopped caring about being believable

10:18

to anyone outside. And this is

10:20

not always true, but it is

10:23

true in many cases. They stopped

10:25

caring about being credible and believable

10:27

to people who weren't very much

10:29

ideologically captured by what we could

10:31

say as a progressive ideology. But

10:33

one more point, you can say

10:36

the Democratic Party, you know, there's

10:38

another thesis about this, and this

10:40

is probably true with Slate. I used to always

10:42

say, well, Slate was always somewhere where the Democratic

10:44

Party was, and as the Democratic Party got

10:46

more left, let's say Slate got more left.

10:49

The thing is, there are

10:51

ways, there are elections, and what

10:53

elections do is it actually in

10:55

some way inserts the truth about

10:57

where the public really is. So

10:59

in 2020, the theory of the Democratic

11:02

Party was everyone was positioning themselves to the left

11:04

of everyone else, and there was one guy who

11:06

didn't do it, it was Joe Biden, he got

11:08

the election. He got the nomination. My line about

11:10

Joe Biden for a long time has been that

11:13

he became the nominee of the Democratic Party and

11:15

then president because he was too old to get with

11:17

the program. Everybody else, like the

11:19

smart money the Democratic Party was, you

11:21

have to compete for votes on Twitter

11:23

and outbid all the other competitors of

11:25

how far left you are. And

11:28

Joe Biden just didn't get the memo and wasn't

11:30

able to do it. And so he was the

11:32

last man standing in the sort of moderate center-left

11:35

space, and boom, he became the nominee despite being

11:37

scoffed at by the establishment of

11:39

the party actually, and certainly the media

11:41

establishment. He didn't evolve, and I don't

11:43

know if this is true, but in

11:45

zoology, there's this idea of the Irish elk that

11:48

it evolved, its antlers grew so big

11:50

that it could no longer lift its

11:52

head and it died out. It's

11:55

probably a folk tale, but as an analogy,

11:58

Where sometimes you can evolve. Quote

12:00

Unquote so much that you right to

12:02

tell of your destruction. Season of analogy

12:05

Mo added as there's a kind of

12:07

slightly apocryphal story about the effect of

12:09

the Two thousand and Eight financial crisis

12:11

on various types of banks. and Buddha

12:14

speaking, the idea was know, fuel Goldman.

12:16

You really know what's going on and

12:18

you're plugged in enough and smart enough

12:20

to get rid of all of those

12:23

subprime mortgages. The for the music stops

12:25

so you get to the crisis. Sort

12:27

of. Okay, If. You are a German

12:29

bank is plugged into the international financial system

12:32

enough that you know you can like fly

12:34

over to New York and your colleagues from

12:36

Goldman. gonna give you a great time and

12:38

take out for a lovely dinner and possibly

12:40

to a strip club and then they'll save

12:42

you a bunch of goods that they say

12:45

amazing been included enough to realize that the

12:47

actually we not very good goods into some

12:49

of the thanks really ended up in trouble

12:51

because they got stuck holding the back and

12:53

of Italian banks those so out of the

12:55

loop they didn't even notice could go to

12:58

New York. And have of the time and

13:00

be sold the bad goods and so they actually

13:02

came out ahead in some ways and path to

13:04

biden a segment hallion but. That's. A

13:06

good analogy, but unfortunately both of

13:08

analogies zoological and monetary are perhaps a

13:10

little apocryphal, but they do right underline

13:13

the point. That and this is what

13:15

happened with Npr Npr last thirty percent

13:17

of it's listenership. All media has suffered

13:20

to some extent, But if you

13:22

look at compare radio to Radio, the

13:24

radio listenership of say, Sean Hannity of

13:26

Add the most popular radio show before

13:29

Twenty Nineteen Stores most popular radio

13:31

show when it's still around sixty million

13:33

listeners, right? Others have fallen off Dave

13:36

Ramsey. has done a little bit better

13:38

my point is dr time radio listenership

13:40

overall has fallen but it hasn't fallen

13:42

by twenty percent and it's npr wanted

13:44

to replace stairs of logic this is

13:46

not the logic of politics or of

13:48

most media were younger is better in

13:50

terms of advertising but in terms of

13:52

what npr is doing and just in

13:54

terms of audience if you want to

13:56

replace every sixty year old with a

13:58

thirty year old that me good business

14:00

sense. Even if you want to replace every 60-year-old

14:02

with .8 30-year-olds, you're doing

14:06

yourself a favor. But they didn't do

14:08

that. There's no evidence that they're getting

14:10

younger was anything other than jettisoning, lopping

14:12

off like cream from the top. The

14:15

older listeners or the listeners have

14:17

been with it a long time. And

14:19

one of the striking things, which of course

14:21

goes to the popular misconception about what I

14:25

call the identity trap or the identity synthesis, the

14:27

ideology that has led us into this trap, is

14:30

that NPR wanted to diversify its audience and

14:32

its listenership. And that makes sense given the

14:34

change in demographics of the United States. But

14:36

they haven't actually succeeded in doing so. So

14:38

they managed to attract an audience

14:40

that is much more ideological. So

14:43

it's less diverse than ideological terms because it

14:45

skews much more towards the left and the

14:47

far left. But they haven't meaningfully managed to

14:49

diversify the audience in ethnic terms.

14:52

It's still overwhelmingly white. That's true.

14:54

But this is the interesting thing.

14:56

Some of their press materials, and

14:58

I've actually seen this at the

15:00

member station, so NPR is a

15:02

complicated structure. But they do brag

15:04

that our audience has gotten more

15:06

diverse. But that is, I see

15:08

no evidence contradicting the analysis that

15:10

that is entirely a function of

15:12

the older and whiter audience just

15:14

leaving. So congratulations, your audience got

15:16

more diverse. But you didn't add

15:18

a discernible number. You certainly didn't replace

15:21

the old audience as the aggregate numbers

15:23

show. But you also didn't really diversify

15:25

in the best sense of the term.

15:27

Diversification isn't just throwing away a bunch

15:29

of older white people who used to

15:31

like you and now don't. So

15:35

here's one thing I was pausing about. If you're

15:37

looking at different media

15:39

outlets that go in a much more

15:42

progressive direction, there's a normative point of

15:44

view and a business point of view.

15:46

From a normative point of view, I

15:48

worry about the New York Times basically

15:50

becoming the mouthpiece of the five million

15:52

subscribers to the New York Times who

15:54

are among the more progressive people

15:56

in the country. Even if you look at readers'

15:58

comments, comments on

16:00

various Quincote, New York Times articles are well to

16:02

the center or well to the right if you

16:04

want on the average New York Times writer, which

16:06

is interesting in itself. So I worry about the

16:08

way in which the New York Times ceases to

16:11

be a newspaper of record and

16:13

becomes more like a more successful version

16:15

of The Guardian, like a full-time voice

16:17

of the American left, just because I

16:19

think that we need some newspaper of

16:21

record, some outlet that actually is able

16:23

to be a fair

16:25

arbiter and that has some amount

16:27

of respect in different realms

16:30

of the United States, including among what written including

16:32

along the center right. And so I worry that

16:34

the New York Times is giving up on that

16:36

very important historical role. But in

16:39

a purely business sense, what the New York Times has

16:41

done seems to be working very well. They

16:43

have a lot of subscribers, a lot of them

16:45

have come from other daily newspapers that are declining

16:48

as a result, that it has managed to build

16:50

a bigger newsroom, cover more things in many ways,

16:52

add cooking and games and other kinds of things,

16:54

which is part of its appeal. But

16:56

it's thriving as a business. So you've got to give it

16:58

to them in that sense. The MPI is not

17:00

thriving. It is losing audience. Why

17:03

is that? Now, one difference is that the New York

17:05

Times now has to compete with Substack, but

17:07

perhaps it's not the same kind of competition. And

17:10

piano has to compete with podcasts, like this podcast

17:12

and your podcast. I think a lot of high-information

17:14

people don't want to switch on the radio and

17:16

listen to whatever is being told to them. They

17:19

say, hey, I know exactly what kind of show

17:21

I want and when I want to listen to

17:23

it. And I want to be able to press

17:25

pause and resume it. And the easiest way

17:28

to do that is to go to podcasts, which I

17:30

didn't manage to corner. I think there's a second

17:32

reason as well, which is that I am annoyed

17:35

by the New York Times, a good part

17:37

of it home. But I subscribe to the

17:39

New York Times. I'm a subscriber and I read the

17:41

New York Times. And when I want to know what's

17:44

going on in the world, I still go to nytimes.com

17:46

or to the app. So

17:48

even though there are things about it

17:51

that I find to be

17:53

irksome, it creates

17:55

a product that I can actually still be on

17:58

board with. I

18:00

pay them my money and I pay them my money for a reason.

18:02

But NPR somehow,

18:04

I find harder to

18:06

listen to. And I found a

18:08

few friends have said the same thing. There's

18:10

something about the moralizing, lecturing tone of NPR

18:13

that's somehow worse than the New York Times.

18:15

And I'm having trouble putting

18:17

my finger on where exactly

18:19

the difference lies. Is it just having somebody

18:21

in your ear saying stuff that you find

18:23

ideologically annoying? Is that somehow worse than seeing

18:26

somebody on the page? Or is it that

18:28

there's sort of two different gradations

18:30

here where the New York Times has sort

18:32

of veered from the historical role it's played,

18:34

but it still is living up to some

18:37

kind of standards and the opinion

18:39

pages run some stuff that I think is

18:41

silly, but also some stuff that I think

18:43

is very good. NPR has more OneNote, it

18:45

has more monochrome, it has more extreme in

18:47

how it perceives the world through an ideological

18:49

lens. Help me puzzle through the

18:51

difference that righty or wrongy I perceive between

18:53

something like the New York Times and NPR.

18:56

First of all, on the monetary front or

18:58

on the success, on the question of why

19:00

as the New York Times, perhaps

19:02

alone Wall Street Journal also been a

19:04

successful news organizations, there's the idea of

19:06

network effects and as other news organizations

19:08

fail, one will rise and they're able

19:11

to hire all the best people from

19:13

the other news organizations who are out

19:15

there because they're done. We also can't

19:17

overlook the fact that everything we're talking

19:19

about, maybe we're gonna talk about journalism,

19:21

we're gonna talk about audience capture, we're

19:23

gonna talk about all these concepts. It

19:26

might redound to just Wordle and some cooking

19:28

apps. Those have been extremely successful

19:30

for the New York Times and the subscription

19:32

model has supplanted the advertising model.

19:34

So but for Wordle, it is

19:36

possible that none of the stuff,

19:39

the praise I'm about to give to the New

19:41

York Times will be true as this successful business

19:43

model. But the big reason, I

19:45

think there is something about the amount of

19:48

breath that a huge newspaper and the amount

19:50

of articles that the Sunday New York Times

19:52

can do, the length

19:54

of the articles, a radio piece. I have

19:57

friends who are a married couple and one

19:59

was a... radio reporter and one was

20:01

a print reporter and they would both

20:03

cover the same thing. The print reporter

20:05

would file a 2,000 word piece and

20:07

be or maybe a 1,500 word piece and

20:09

be in bed by midnight. The radio

20:11

reporter would work for two days on that

20:14

and it would come out to the

20:16

equivalent of 500 words. They're just less information

20:18

although the texture and maybe the human

20:20

feel is different from a radio piece.

20:22

But I think the biggest thing is that

20:25

the New York Times specifically after

20:27

going through a lot of tumult

20:30

at the same time that NPR and

20:33

other news organizations did, the New York

20:35

Times made a lot of mistakes

20:37

and they fired James Bennett but then they pulled

20:39

back. And I think it was a monetary

20:42

consideration, I think it was a

20:44

business consideration, but you know A.G.

20:46

Salsberger, the publisher, last year about

20:48

a year ago today wrote in

20:50

the Columbia Journalism Review an article

20:52

called Journalism's Essential Value and he

20:55

essentially embraced objectivity. There was a

20:57

lot of time being spent about

21:00

how the problems without objectivity, the

21:02

history of objectivity, the word objectivity,

21:04

he rebranded it as some

21:07

multi-hyphenate, multi-syllabic phrase. But

21:10

they've essentially said in order to work

21:12

with the trust of the audience that

21:14

we've always had, we have to get

21:16

back to an idea very close to,

21:19

perhaps in different clothing, but very close

21:21

to objectivity. We have to do this

21:23

for our audience, we have to do

21:26

this for believability. They've changed the comportment

21:28

and composure of the op-ed page to

21:30

reflect that. So there was a reckoning

21:32

or you'd call it a counter reckoning

21:35

within the New York Times. The opposite,

21:37

I think, has taken place at NPR.

21:39

I don't have extreme visibility. But all

21:42

they seem to do publicly and they

21:44

don't have a family owner, they don't

21:46

have one CEO, they cycle through CEOs

21:49

and even leaders of the newsroom. But

21:51

they have mostly talked

21:53

about diversity being their North Star. If you

21:55

said the word or phrase North Star and

21:58

NPR, everyone know, ah, that's our diversity. Initiative,

22:00

and they've been successful at that. Good,

22:02

I say. As far as

22:04

objectivity, they just reject the premise from

22:06

what I could tell. They have done—I'm

22:09

going to do a piece on the gist

22:11

about this—they've done many, many segments over the

22:14

years questioning the idea of objectivity. It's kind

22:16

of a straw man at its worst form

22:18

to say, well, no human being can be

22:20

objective, therefore we have to get rid of

22:22

the idea that we're going to do

22:26

our journalism with the idea of

22:29

impartiality or fairness or all these

22:31

other fought over phrases in mind. But they

22:33

really say, it seems to me, that the

22:35

people who make the editorial decisions really

22:38

think that there is an inherent

22:40

problem with the old ideas of

22:42

objectivity, whereas the New York Times

22:44

knows that the word objectivity will

22:46

get attacked. In journalism schools, it

22:48

doesn't matter what you call it,

22:51

that whole idea of objectivity will

22:53

get attacked, but they've gotten down

22:55

to—they've returned to their roots, and

22:57

their editor has embraced that. For

23:00

people who are less in the weeds about this debate, let's

23:02

delve into it a little bit and give a little bit

23:04

of context. Obviously,

23:07

there was always

23:09

an idea of trying to describe the

23:11

world in academia and journalism as it

23:13

is. There's an old concept in a

23:15

certain kind of geographical school of how

23:18

historians have comport themselves, which is to

23:20

write history, wie es eigenlichte wiesner, as

23:22

it really was. The old slogan of

23:24

the New York Times, all the news

23:27

that's fit to print, has a kind

23:29

of whiff of that, I

23:31

think. Now, this standard of objectivity

23:34

was held very high in American newsrooms

23:36

in particular. I think English newspapers always

23:38

had a slightly more partisan tradition and

23:41

lean. It's always been a slightly different

23:43

approach. With the important exception of the

23:45

BBC, that had a legal mandate on

23:47

neutrality. But it came under attack

23:50

in two kinds of ways, I think. The first

23:52

is that the palliative

23:54

to objectivity could lead to

23:57

a slightly silly kind

23:59

of— of two sides

24:01

reporting that didn't really

24:04

help the reader understand debates, right?

24:06

So if you had a conversation

24:08

about climate change, you would just

24:10

always find people in two sides of the issue, right?

24:12

So you write a story about climate change, you have

24:14

to find this is the calculator, at least somebody who

24:16

says climate change is real and somebody who says climate

24:18

change is not real. It doesn't matter whether

24:20

the position that says climate change is not real or

24:22

scientifically serious or not. The way you

24:25

approach it is simply to have one voice in

24:27

one direction, one voice in the other direction. There

24:29

is obviously something formulaic about this. It often

24:31

I think makes for not very good

24:33

journalism. It makes for difficulty

24:35

of readers actually understanding the situation. So

24:37

that was one line of attack. And

24:40

then the second line of attack came

24:42

particularly after the election of Donald

24:44

Trump where objectivity was contrasted with

24:47

a call for moral clarity. And

24:50

the idea here was that journalists should

24:53

fight for the right

24:55

moral causes and let

24:57

that moral clarity inflect

24:59

everything they're doing. Now of

25:01

course the concern with that

25:03

is two things. First, what does moral

25:05

clarity actually mean? Right? That

25:07

goes beyond we want to be factual

25:10

and being factual doesn't always mean having

25:12

equal opinion quotes from two sides. It

25:14

means actually helping readers understand the lay

25:17

of the land, right? Moral

25:19

clarity means I have my values and I'm going to impose

25:21

you impose them on the reader. And

25:24

a lot of the time the reader's values will be different from

25:26

that of the journalist. And so that starts to feel very lecturing

25:28

and clawing. The second problem is that

25:31

I think it often makes

25:34

people mistrust what

25:36

journalists do. I think

25:38

a lot of journalists have gotten into the habit of

25:43

framing every piece about Donald Trump

25:45

for example or about an upcoming

25:47

election or about some other issue

25:49

of genuine political concern with

25:51

the thought of how do I get

25:53

the reader to take the right conclusion

25:56

from that. And I think that's

25:58

often self-undermining. 2016-2017

26:01

was very worried about the rise of populism

26:03

and the election of Donald Trump, and I

26:06

continued to be very worried about those things.

26:08

And I certainly wanted newspapers to pay attention

26:11

to that topic, to take serious leaveaways in

26:13

which democracy might be undermined by these kind

26:15

of political movements. I didn't

26:17

think then, I certainly don't think now, that

26:20

news reporters thinking

26:23

to themselves every time they cover a Trump

26:25

press conference, how can I make sure that

26:27

the way I cover this event is going

26:29

to make people not vote for Donald Trump, so

26:31

we save our democracy, is in

26:33

purely instrumental terms, leave alone the normative element

26:35

of it for a moment, a good way

26:37

of ensuring that people don't vote for Donald

26:40

Trump. Because what people actually do

26:42

is to recognize, hey, you're not talking about certain

26:44

things because you worry it's going to lead me

26:46

to the wrong conclusion. You're framing

26:48

things in a very heavy-handed way in such a

26:51

way that I come to the right conclusion. But

26:54

actually all that leads up

26:56

to is to me mistrusting the way you're

26:58

trying to manipulate me. And

27:00

so I worry that many journalists, most famously

27:02

in the case of The Washington Post, adopting

27:05

the slogan, democracy dies in darkness, coming

27:07

to think of their own goal

27:10

as saving democracy has

27:12

actually undermined the cause for

27:14

democracy. And it's not because I disagree with

27:16

them about the urgency of protecting democracy or

27:18

the nobility of trying to do something

27:20

to save democracy. I just think that we

27:22

have a division of labor in society, and the

27:24

job of reporters, the best way they can serve

27:26

democracy is to tell it straight, is

27:29

to actually analyze what's going on, is

27:31

to actually allow readers to help understand

27:33

what's going on, not to frame exactly

27:35

how they should perceive things. How do

27:37

you think we should approach objectivity?

27:40

How can we have a standard

27:43

in journalism that

27:45

takes our, especially in

27:47

the reporting business, not in the opinion

27:49

business, but takes our duty to the

27:52

reader seriously without falling

27:54

in some of the genuine traps that

27:56

I think an older style of journalism

27:58

sometimes had, like the... And that's

28:00

just fine bludges on each side, not really analyze it

28:02

too carefully. Right. The caricature

28:04

of objectivity, I think, does a lot of work

28:06

in battling and arguing

28:08

against the benefits of objectivity. Word

28:11

objectivity is fraught. Many listeners of

28:13

this conversation will say, come on,

28:15

there is no objectivity. So call

28:17

it fairness, call it non-predetermined conclusions,

28:20

call it many, there are many

28:22

synonyms that would convey the idea

28:24

that the journalist's job is not

28:26

to have one conclusion

28:28

that they've decided beforehand and that

28:31

they can't get knocked off their

28:33

conclusion. You have to be curious and be

28:35

able to give up your premises as you do

28:37

your reporting. There is

28:39

a problem, I think, in that there is a disconnect

28:42

between the public and the press. And

28:44

I don't think the public is totally right

28:46

on this. When Pew asked people, journalists should

28:49

always strive to give every side equal coverage

28:51

versus every side does not always

28:53

deserve equal coverage. That's

28:56

55% to 44% said every side

28:58

does not always deserve equal coverage. I

29:00

would answer that. That would be my

29:02

answer because I would think of exactly

29:05

the climate change example that you're talking

29:07

about. US adults say, 76% say journalists

29:09

should always strive to give every side

29:11

equal coverage. Because I think people who

29:14

just looked at journalists as, oh, please

29:16

tell me what is true, please tell

29:18

me the news, they're not

29:20

thinking of every exception to

29:23

the rule of equal coverage.

29:25

They're thinking, in general, do

29:27

I want to know why

29:29

Joe Biden or if Joe

29:31

Biden constitutionally, unconstitutionally, legally, correctly

29:34

reduced student loan debt? And

29:36

so they want a story that says, hey, Joe

29:38

Biden did this, here are the political reasons, here

29:41

are the beneficiaries, but also here's the

29:43

argument that it might not pass muster.

29:45

That's the kind of article they want.

29:48

There are thousands of articles

29:51

and topics where the ideal

29:53

news consumer, who I think is still out there, but

29:55

is a little turned off by how news is turned

29:58

out, want that kind of coverage. Even

30:00

if the war, many partisans

30:02

will want to know why the aid

30:05

convoy was hit in Israel, what

30:08

mistakes Israel made, maybe they'd want

30:10

reporting to say that these mistakes

30:12

were guaranteed to happen by

30:15

the flaws of the Israeli system. Some

30:17

news readers will say, or some news

30:19

readers will not want both sides of

30:21

that. They will not either want to

30:23

hear that Israel made a mistake or

30:25

they will not want to hear that

30:27

Israel was acting legitimately at all. I

30:30

think it's the duty of the

30:32

real news reporter to do in that

30:34

side both sides or all sides. And

30:36

it's not both sides-ism. Both

30:38

sides-ism has been, I think, politically

30:40

anatomized and weaponized to make it

30:42

seem like if you articulate a

30:44

view of someone who, I don't

30:46

know, for instance, thinks that there

30:49

really was no great evidence that

30:51

Donald Trump was marching to the

30:53

Kremlin's orders when it comes to

30:55

election interference, put that case on.

30:57

With that person airing, it's not

30:59

as if there's absolutely nothing to

31:02

that point of view. I think especially

31:04

in that case, a little bit with

31:06

the Wuhan virus, there have been a

31:08

lot of high-profile stories where the idea

31:10

of, well, we don't have to engage

31:12

in both sides-ism because we know the

31:14

truth. And then you're exposed as, oh,

31:16

we got the truth, quote unquote, a

31:18

little wrong. It seems like

31:20

the public is more correct than

31:22

journalists when they want more both

31:24

sides or all sides or a

31:26

better rounded-out story. I mean, even

31:28

though, like I said, I would

31:30

side with the majority of U.S.

31:32

journalists and say every side doesn't

31:34

always deserve equal coverage. That's true.

31:36

But in general, your default setting

31:38

as a journalist should be humble

31:41

to know that the narrative or

31:43

the agreed-upon frame isn't necessarily correct.

31:45

You also have to do a

31:47

lot of work to, you know,

31:49

not air things that seem to

31:51

have absolutely no basis to them.

31:53

I think that the idea of objectivity

31:55

is sort of like the

31:58

idea of kindness, right? You could always say. there's

32:00

no agreed upon definition. And what a

32:02

lot of journalists have done is sort

32:04

of, I think, like a

32:06

radical reconsideration of some basic ideals

32:08

that it definitely hurt journalism. Yeah,

32:11

I mean, a few points here, right?

32:13

One is just, it's a very, very

32:15

weird confusion in the

32:17

debate where the impossibility of fully

32:20

reaching a certain kind of normative

32:22

standard is a reason

32:24

not to aspire to that

32:26

standard at all. I try to be kind

32:29

in my personal interactions. I don't always succeed

32:31

in being kind in my personal actions. That's

32:33

not a reason to say kindness is a

32:35

bad standard to try and hold yourself to.

32:37

And this is true of every societal endeavor,

32:40

right? Justice, fairness.

32:42

These are all baked into what we do as

32:44

societies. And you're right, there's no agreed upon definition.

32:46

It doesn't mean that we should,

32:48

you know, decarcerate or have no concept

32:50

of justice. I'll give you an example

32:53

of, I've been doing some research and

32:55

I'm trying to remember some of

32:57

the more egregious examples in media where I

32:59

think they went off the rails. So there

33:01

was a producer for an NPR show called

33:04

1A and he, as a producer, without

33:07

permission, started tweeting, Donald Trump is a fascist.

33:09

And it caused a little bit of kerfuffle,

33:11

should a producer say this. So

33:14

the program 1A did a whole show where

33:16

they had the PBS on

33:18

Budsman, and they had Nicole

33:20

Hannah Jones, and they had this producer

33:22

essentially all agreeing with each other and

33:25

the host did, that there is no

33:27

objectivity. There is no such, or the

33:29

objectivity that we once decided on was

33:31

like a white person's objectivity. And it

33:33

didn't take into account the perspectives of

33:35

the marginalized. I think everyone in the

33:37

conversation, I think the PBS on Budsman's

33:39

Latino and everyone else was black. So

33:42

what the journalist said or what the

33:44

producer said was, the reason I said

33:47

Donald Trump is a fascist is because

33:49

it is the truth that Donald Trump is

33:51

a fascist. Because I have done the reading

33:53

and I have learned that what fascism means,

33:55

and that's why we say it as journalists.

33:58

We have to say the truth. I

34:00

have unlearned, since he used the word

34:02

unlearned a couple times, I have unlearned

34:05

the thinking that would lead me to a

34:07

different conclusion, and this is why we must

34:09

say it. No one on the show disagreed

34:11

with him. And that, I think, is exactly

34:14

the problem, that if we embolden that

34:16

kind of thinking, which is not if

34:18

Trump was or wasn't a fascist, but

34:21

the thinking that what journalists should be

34:23

doing is coming out and saying, the

34:25

fascist president, Donald Trump, et cetera,

34:27

et cetera, because they've learned it

34:29

and because it's the truth, it is

34:31

going to do nothing but degrade and

34:33

destroy the credibility of news organizations. And

34:36

they haven't done that. You

34:38

can mention Donald Trump without saying the fascist

34:40

Donald Trump, but they've gone 80-something percent of

34:42

the way there. And I think that that

34:44

does degrade trust, and not just with

34:46

Trump, with many, many issues. Yeah, and

34:48

part of this is a kind of illusion

34:50

of omnipotence among journalists. So one concern I

34:52

have is that there's many, many, many things

34:54

for which there was good reason to criticize

34:56

Donald Trump. There's many, many reasons to worry about

34:58

what will happen if Donald Trump becomes president again in

35:00

2024. The fact

35:03

that media outlets can't

35:05

restrain themselves from also criticizing

35:07

him in ways that are very dubious,

35:10

from also pretending that

35:12

he said things that he didn't really

35:15

say, makes people not listen

35:17

to the real criticisms of it. So

35:19

one recent example was when

35:21

Donald Trump was talking

35:24

about the competition economically

35:26

for Mexico, and the

35:28

fact that there's many cars now produced in

35:30

Mexico, rather than the United States, and then

35:32

being sent across the border. And he said,

35:34

in that context, if Biden gets elected, there's

35:37

going to be a bloodbath. And clearly what

35:39

he meant was a lot of

35:41

American autoworkers would lose their jobs, which is, by

35:43

the way, itself, a very, very dubious claim. I

35:46

don't buy what he was saying. Media outlets would

35:48

have been perfectly justified in saying it's ridiculous to

35:51

think that the American economy

35:53

is going to be decimated if Biden gets

35:55

reelected, and somehow if Trump gets elected miraculously,

35:57

everybody is going to want an auto manufacturing.

36:00

decent ways to criticize it in a

36:02

factual way, but instead a lot of

36:04

mainstream outlets, and I believe both NPR

36:06

and the New York Times quoted

36:08

this in headlines in ways that

36:10

strongly implied Trump was saying, if

36:13

I don't get elected, my followers are going

36:15

to ensure that there's a bloodbath in the

36:17

streets of the United States, a kind

36:19

of veiled threat as to what would happen to the

36:22

country if he wasn't elected. Now,

36:24

some of these reports in the 10th

36:26

or 15th paragraph provided a little bit

36:28

of a context, so for the small

36:30

percentage of people who clicked

36:32

on the headline and got down to

36:35

the second half of the article, they

36:37

might to some extent have been rectified

36:39

in their initial impression. But that, I

36:42

think, is deeply irresponsible, in part

36:44

because it makes questions of Trump less

36:46

effective. But the second point here is

36:49

that journalists, I think, generally have this

36:51

idea that if we

36:53

don't talk about uncomfortable topics, if

36:55

we don't talk about ways in

36:57

which perhaps some of the aspects

37:00

of a trans debate are more complicated than

37:02

meets the eye, the way in which perhaps

37:04

Democrats have made some genuine mistakes when it

37:06

comes to inflating other topics. If we don't

37:08

talk about this stuff, we take that off

37:10

the table, then nobody's going to know. And

37:13

if we frame things in the right way for

37:15

our readers, if we say, the fascist Donald Trump,

37:17

then people will understand he's a fascist and nobody's

37:19

going to vote for him anymore, right? And

37:21

that's just hugely overestimating

37:26

the power of journalists and the stupidity

37:28

of the audience, because the audience realizes

37:30

when somebody is hiding the ball. The

37:33

audience realizes when they're being manipulated.

37:36

And their response tends to be either to

37:38

just switch off the medium, go

37:40

to a different medium, which is often worse,

37:42

which is often the less mainstream medium that

37:44

actually has stronger biases in

37:46

its own right. But a lot of the time,

37:49

I'll actually go to things that are much less

37:51

intellectually serious and rigorous and honest

37:53

as a result. Always simply conclude the opposite.

37:55

They say, well, look, if you're trying to

37:57

manipulate me like that, perhaps actually the opposite

37:59

is true. Right. And

38:01

the audience that's left in the case

38:03

of all of our fractured table audiences

38:05

are the audiences that buy into it

38:07

and then you just serve them and

38:09

you get captured by the audience that's

38:12

using your service, not so much to

38:14

hear about the news, but to assuage

38:16

their anxiety about where they put their

38:19

finger on as the state of the

38:21

world. Right. Fox News exists to assuage

38:23

the anxiety of Republicans about immigration and

38:26

MSNBC exists to assuage the

38:29

anxiety of liberals about

38:31

the racism of Republicans, among

38:33

other things. The bloodbath

38:36

issue is really interesting because at that same

38:39

speech that he said bloodbath and it was

38:41

taken out of context. He also led that

38:43

speech with his hand over the heart playing

38:45

of the national anthem as sung by January

38:48

6th insurrectionists from prison who he called hostages.

38:50

The thing is that has been reported before.

38:52

So you can't say, or you can, but

38:54

it wouldn't be a good news story for

38:57

the eighth day in a row or for

38:59

the 12th rally in a row, Donald

39:01

Trump played people who he called

39:03

hostages who had been adjudicated as

39:05

insurrectionists and held

39:07

his hand over his heart as

39:10

they played the national anthem. Right.

39:12

It's a conundrum and Donald Trump

39:14

knows about this conundrum and he

39:16

knows how to take offense at

39:18

any misstatement or mischaracterization of anything

39:21

he said. So you can't say

39:23

that Donald Trump told the proud

39:25

boys to storm the Capitol, but

39:27

you can say by his ambiguity,

39:29

either strategic or just like the

39:32

lucky guy he is always

39:34

falling into shit and finding

39:36

gold by saying, stand down

39:38

and stand by. He communicated

39:41

to each audience something ambiguous

39:43

that wound up being dangerous.

39:45

Bloodbath also specifically, it

39:47

wasn't just a mischaracterization and sometimes Trump

39:49

is mischaracterized. Is he mischaracterized more than

39:51

other politicians? I don't know. I bet

39:54

you've, if you asked Obama, who

39:56

probably, I would say got the best news

39:58

coverage of any politician, major. politician in my

40:00

lifetime, he would say, oh my god, the

40:02

media mischaracterized me so often. But the very

40:05

point of bloodbath and insurrection

40:07

goes exactly to this tension that I

40:09

did want to ask you about, which

40:11

is two books ago, you raised

40:14

the point of our democracy being imperiled. But

40:16

then one book, which is true, and I

40:18

agree to it to some extent, one

40:21

book ago, it was about the

40:23

mindset that has overtaken much of

40:25

academia, but also much of the

40:27

media. And I would say the

40:29

consequence of is polarization. MSNBC, which

40:31

I watch and monitor, is

40:34

both a major source of

40:36

raising the salience question of

40:39

our democracy being imperiled. It's

40:41

not untrue that a Trump

40:43

election will be bad for democracy. I

40:45

don't know the death knell, but bad.

40:48

So MSNBC is very good,

40:50

I guess, or consistent on that front.

40:52

But on the other hand, I think

40:54

they're a deeply polarizing force,

40:56

not that Fox isn't okay, but

40:58

they're a deeply polarizing force. Because

41:01

if there ever is any right

41:03

winger with a gun who either

41:05

shoots at an FBI headquarters through

41:07

thick glass that doesn't hurt anyone

41:10

then gets killed, it's, I'm

41:13

not gonna say wall to wall covered,

41:15

but covered extensively on MSNBC about look

41:17

at these right wingers and periling democracy.

41:19

And I think the idea of right

41:21

wingers with guns in periling democracy who

41:24

want to kill you who want to

41:26

kill your family is so

41:28

prevalent there, it leads to

41:30

polarization. And I think that

41:32

they've done a disservice when it comes to

41:34

that. And you could say they haven't done

41:37

as much of a disservice as Fox has,

41:39

I'll concede the point. But I think they've

41:41

done a disservice. And their ratings are twice

41:43

as big as CNN's. And I think that's

41:46

a big problem with our country.

41:48

And with the mindset of a

41:50

lot of people who

41:52

identify as fair minded, liberal,

41:55

not necessarily entirely progressive Democrats,

41:57

but they really, really do say

42:00

that we're on the verge of a

42:02

civil war. So you could worry about

42:04

democracy, but also think these claims about

42:06

a civil war are totally overblown and

42:09

really destructive to the project

42:11

of depolarization. Yes, I agree

42:13

with all of that. I can see how there's

42:15

a superficial tension between my third

42:17

book, The People versus Democracy, and my

42:20

latest, my fifth book, The Identity Trap.

42:22

I think there is a tension between

42:24

those two, but I don't think they're

42:26

contradictory in any way, right? It's

42:29

both true that there are dangerous

42:31

authoritarian populists around the world, some of whom

42:33

are on the left, but many of whom,

42:35

and most of whom are on the right.

42:38

And that a lot of this political

42:40

moment requires us to beat

42:42

those political forces in order to defend

42:45

democratic institutions. And Donald Trump

42:47

is a, perhaps, the

42:49

prime example of that kind

42:51

of right-wing populist. And I do

42:53

worry about the way in which he attacked

42:55

independent political institutions in his post-German office,

42:57

and I worry very much that he's

43:00

going to do that with

43:02

more effectiveness and more vindictiveness

43:05

in his potential second-term office if he

43:07

gets reelected in November 2024. At

43:10

the same time, I worry that in

43:13

part because of the shock of his

43:15

victory, an ideology has come to

43:17

be so influential in big parts of the

43:19

mainstream, that it's actually harder to beat him.

43:22

I think a lot of the reason, even in

43:24

2016, I think a little bit of the reason

43:26

why he won was that some of these ideas

43:29

were starting to spread. I've taught many times the

43:31

essay by Michael Anton called the Flight 93 election,

43:33

which was a key document

43:36

in moving conservatives, movement

43:38

conservatives, more traditional conservatives, towards Donald Trump

43:40

in the fall of 2016. And

43:43

what struck me about that text when I was

43:45

first teaching it, because I think it's actually an

43:48

interesting exhibit of how Trump was able to broaden

43:50

and rally support, was his

43:52

lines about immigration. So the line which has

43:55

not the ceaseless, quote unquote, the ceaseless importation

43:57

of third world foreigners is going to make

43:59

a difference. America less small-out Republican and less

44:01

capital-out Republican over time. So this is an

44:03

existential threat to our Republican system of government,

44:06

and that's why even though we don't know

44:08

whether or not Donald Trump can fly the

44:10

plane, we should put him in the cockpit

44:12

and see what happens the way that the

44:15

passengers of flight 93 on 9-11 stormed the

44:19

cockpit. That's been quite, of course, wonderful.

44:22

Re-reading the essay recently when I was teaching it again,

44:24

I was struck that even

44:26

at the time, some of

44:28

the concerns were actually about cultural overreach on

44:30

the left. So I think it played some role in 2016.

44:33

I think it plays a much bigger role today. One

44:36

of the reasons why Republicans are

44:39

making huge inroads, especially among

44:41

non-white voters, is that so

44:43

many of them are deeply put off by

44:45

the quote-unquote wokeness

44:48

in NPR and many of the times that

44:50

we're talking about and in parts of the

44:52

Democratic Party. And so I think if we

44:55

actually want to beat populists like that, we

44:57

have to make sure that our mainstream institutions

44:59

and make sure that non-popular political parties don't

45:01

get taken over by this ideology. That's a

45:03

broader point. The more narrow point relates

45:06

to what I was saying earlier

45:08

about journalists not

45:10

taking on the role of democracy defenders,

45:13

right? I think it's fine to have

45:15

a broader conception of one

45:17

of the things I want to do in life and

45:19

as a citizen is to defend democracy. I certainly think

45:21

of myself in both parts. It's even

45:23

fine to say we have a division of

45:25

labor and society and one of the key

45:27

ways in which we'd affect the democracy is

45:30

to have good journalists who do good jobs

45:32

as a journalist and therefore I take

45:34

some professional pride in what I do because I think it's

45:36

part of the maintenance of democratic norms. That's

45:39

also fine. When you're sitting

45:41

down and saying, how do

45:43

I frame the story about Hunter Biden's laptop

45:45

or how do I frame the story about

45:48

the origin of a coronavirus in such a

45:50

way that I'm defending democracy, then

45:52

I think you are actually coming to be actively

45:54

harmful to that asset. I would go one step

45:56

further, which is that I think a lot of

45:59

journalists are going to I think some

46:02

political scientists have too. I was very

46:04

saddened when many of my genuine

46:07

friends and colleagues, some people who deeply respect

46:09

and admire, signed onto a letter,

46:11

I think it was in the days after Joe

46:13

Biden won the 2020 election, perhaps it

46:15

was briefly before, demanding that Democrats abolish

46:18

the filibuster as a matter of democratic

46:20

theory. If you want to have a

46:22

democracy, you have to abolish the filibuster.

46:25

Now I'm not deeply wedded to

46:27

the filibuster for some good reasons. To get

46:30

rid of the filibuster, I also am far from

46:32

certain that this would be in the long run

46:34

in the interest certainly of a democratic party or

46:36

of democratic stability because after all

46:39

the Senate favors Republicans

46:41

in its current shape and that probably makes

46:43

people like Trump more powerful on average when

46:45

we don't have a filibuster. You can have

46:47

debates about one way or the other, but

46:49

to have all of the leading political scientists,

46:51

and many were signed by just about every major

46:53

political scientist in the country, Marinus Meebe said, I

46:55

didn't sign it. I refused to

46:57

sign it. Saying we

47:00

as experts and political scientists are

47:03

saying that to serve the cause

47:05

of democracy, the Democratic Party

47:07

has to do this thing that happens to be in as

47:09

part of an interest in order to pass laws that we

47:11

all happen to agree with. I thought

47:13

there was one worrying indication of a way

47:16

in which the field of political science has

47:18

gone the wrong direction. The academy

47:20

does remain a good place for having

47:22

serious intellectual debates despite all of its shortcomings.

47:25

But I do worry about that development in

47:27

the field and especially among the most audible

47:29

voices within the field. I agree

47:31

with you and I would even take it beyond the realm of journalism.

47:36

I want to ask you a question. Did

47:38

you not want to sign the filibuster

47:41

is the death knell of

47:43

democracy or needs to be abolished article

47:45

because you had some disagreements

47:48

with the analysis or you don't think

47:50

it's the proper place of a political

47:52

scientist to have that sort of decree?

47:55

Yeah, that's a great question. Let's take back

47:57

a couple of steps. One is I certainly

47:59

don't think that academics, including political scientists,

48:01

need to pretend not to have

48:03

values or to be neutral

48:05

in that kind of sense. It's perfectly fine

48:07

for them to be very active as citizens,

48:10

fighting for political causes, whether the mainstream political

48:12

causes or whether the less mainstream political causes,

48:14

all of that right to have

48:17

that form of political engagement does not go

48:19

out of a window just because you also happen

48:21

to have a day job as a political

48:23

scientist. The second point is that I think

48:25

when you are speaking as an

48:29

expert, right, when you're speaking

48:31

with a professional hat on from

48:33

point of view that should aspire

48:36

to a certain kind of academic grounding, and if

48:38

you want to use that word through a certain

48:40

kind of objectivity, you want

48:42

to be very, very careful that you're

48:44

not letting your

48:47

activist point of view color what

48:50

you're telling people from on high.

48:53

So I have no problem with

48:55

an individual political scientist writing an

48:57

op-ed saying, here's why I think

48:59

abolishing the filibuster would

49:02

on the whole be good

49:04

for democracy. I

49:06

might disagree with that, but I think the

49:08

standard for putting that forward

49:10

as an individual opinion is a

49:13

little bit lower. I

49:15

think once you're saying, here is

49:17

an open letter from 50 of

49:20

the most distinguished political scientists today,

49:23

and we're telling you as experts

49:26

that objectively speaking abolishing

49:28

the filibuster is what we need to do

49:31

in order to save American democracy. The language

49:33

probably wasn't quite as dark as that, but

49:35

that is certainly the impression that the letter

49:37

was trying to convey. You better

49:40

be doing sure. I mean, that better have

49:42

a very high epistemic standard, especially if it

49:44

so happens that 49.9

49:46

out of 50 political scientists also think

49:48

that abolishing the filibuster would happen to

49:51

be in the partisan interest of the

49:53

political party that they, like me, prefer

49:55

in this particular historical structure. And

49:57

I just felt that And

50:00

that letter fell short of

50:02

that epistemic standard. That certainly,

50:05

look, the filibuster is not

50:07

written into the Constitution. It used

50:09

to be a very rare thing. It's now

50:11

become something very routine. There is

50:13

a counter-majoritarian element to the Senate,

50:15

which was part of this design, but that

50:18

is slightly troubling in the way it's playing

50:20

out these days. Perhaps actually

50:22

political systems that have too many veto

50:24

points become too stuck, and that

50:26

can actually grow the appetite for a

50:28

strongman leader. These are all

50:30

good reasons to abolish the filibuster

50:33

that I think are legitimate. On the other

50:35

side, though, it's also the case that

50:38

veto point is quite a useful thing to

50:40

have when you have, before a time, populist

50:42

possibly come back to office, and nobody was

50:45

thinking about Trump getting back in office in

50:47

December of 2020. But lo and

50:49

behold, we're now in a situation where it looks like

50:51

the Senate has at least about 50 percent, but he

50:54

might be very soon. So perhaps

50:56

it's a good thing that the filibuster is still around. He

50:58

might abolish it if he wins the Senate, etc. Still,

51:00

good thing that for now we have a

51:02

filibuster that's at least going to be one

51:05

more roadblock, making it harder for Donald

51:07

Trump to do whatever he wants. I

51:09

don't think that people thought seriously about the

51:11

fact that because the Senate skews Republican, it

51:14

actually is as likely to undermine the causes

51:16

of Democrats as it is to serve them.

51:19

I think that some background theory that political

51:22

scientists have that it's very hard to pass

51:24

certain things like the exponents of a welfare

51:26

state, but it's very hard. And once you've

51:28

passed them, they never get repealed. And so

51:31

therefore, if Senate filibuster skews conservatives, because it

51:33

makes it harder to put things in place,

51:35

but nobody's going to repeal them anyway. I'm

51:38

not at all sure that is the case. I

51:40

think there's going to be a lot of destructive

51:42

work that happens if Trump wins a trifactor in

51:45

a way that political scientists didn't anticipate. So

51:47

was it OK for a public health official

51:49

in May or June of 2020 to go

51:51

on the streets and join the George Floyd

51:54

protests? Sure, depending on what other kind

51:56

of pronouncements they did in the days leading up

51:58

to that protest. completely contradicting

52:00

other things they said themselves, for them

52:02

to go and join with protesters in a personal capacity,

52:05

absolutely fine. Was it okay for

52:07

public health officials, academics and researchers

52:09

and so on, to do a

52:11

big open letter saying that after

52:14

they told people they can't attend funerals and

52:16

we have to have very extreme lockdowns, it

52:19

is in fact good from the point of

52:21

view of public health to go join mass

52:23

demonstrations over George Floyd? No, they

52:26

were just straying very far from what

52:28

in the capacity as public health officials

52:30

they should have told us. I worry

52:32

in a milder form that

52:35

my genuine dear friends and colleagues who

52:37

signed this letter about the filibuster made

52:39

a similar mistake. Yeah, and you could

52:41

say was it right for 51 intelligence

52:43

officials to say that the Hunter Biden

52:45

laptop was likely the source of foreign

52:47

intelligence? Maybe the standard there

52:49

is if they're right, if they're sure

52:51

they're right, but you were saying something

52:54

different, you articulated very

52:56

eloquently an epistemic, an

52:58

epistemic principle, and for

53:00

you it didn't clear that bar.

53:02

Do you think your fellow academics,

53:04

most of them, all of them, for

53:07

them it did clear the bar of

53:09

a similar principle or they just don't

53:11

have that same epistemic principle? And the

53:13

reason I ask is I think, and

53:15

I'm not in the academy, but I

53:17

just read about it. I think the

53:20

ship has sailed on ideas like our

53:22

job is to describe the world as

53:24

it is not as we wish it

53:26

would be. I think the ship has

53:28

sailed maybe it's department by

53:31

department or discipline by discipline, but

53:33

when I read stories about the

53:35

fight to include ethnic studies in

53:37

California, and California wanted a descriptive

53:39

approach to here was the experience

53:41

of the Asians or the Chinese,

53:43

the Japanese, here is the

53:45

experience of the Latinos, and the

53:48

head of ethnic studies at the University of

53:50

California, Riverside, defines his field

53:52

as not a descriptive curriculum that

53:54

speaks to various ethnic and racial

53:56

groups' experience that is a bland

53:59

form of multicollinear. Culturalism he

54:01

defines the discipline as a critical

54:03

analysis of the way power works in

54:05

society I read that as

54:07

saying they're out of the

54:10

game of description and they are

54:12

consciously activist I perceive most of

54:14

the Academy the social sciences the

54:16

humanities as being in that

54:19

camp I don't think journalism is yet

54:21

But I want to just backtrack half

54:23

a step and saying am I right

54:25

about the Academy? They're now explicitly activist

54:27

and the descriptivist role is just a

54:30

relic of the past You know,

54:32

I might disagree actually so it's certainly true

54:34

of the corners of the Academy And I'm

54:36

very very worried about that and what you're

54:38

saying about you know That ethnic studies colloquial

54:40

in particularly in California is you know One

54:42

of the really dangerous examples of how that

54:44

form of activism Just leads to

54:46

the imposition of pure ideology in pedagogical

54:49

settings in a way that I'm very

54:51

concerned about The people

54:53

who signed this particular petition do

54:55

not have a mind frame They're

54:57

not work ideologues and many of them I

55:00

know privately have serious misgivings about

55:02

work ideology And I certainly think

55:04

that they can have a

55:07

have a mission that I share in a certain

55:09

sense of trying to save democracy But they're not

55:11

they don't I don't think most of them would

55:13

consider themselves Activists in that kind of way and

55:15

I don't think they are activists They're people whose

55:17

judgment I trust in general and who I think

55:19

are doing some of the most important work and

55:21

helping us understand The state of democracy

55:24

and our political questions around the world. I

55:26

do think that There

55:28

is a danger of groupthink You

55:32

talked about the political

55:34

ramifications of the media

55:36

and Democrats

55:39

disgusting the People

55:42

who are maybe swing voters or

55:44

don't share that particular those particular

55:46

cultural concerns And it creates the

55:48

opening for Donald Trump and you

55:50

talked about the Anton essay and

55:52

your analysis was this gives Fertile

55:55

ground for people who might be voting

55:57

against Democrats. Would you say that in

55:59

an? irony, the

56:01

luxury or the leeway

56:04

to use your vote to

56:06

give the middle finger to

56:08

the culturalism of the left

56:10

is because of the

56:12

successes of Joe Biden's or the

56:14

Democrats' policies materially speaking. In other

56:16

words, Donald Trump was voted out

56:19

of office when the economy seemed

56:21

horrible, when the pandemic was raging,

56:23

when it seemed as if his

56:25

leadership was not directing the country

56:27

in a way that Americans could

56:30

live with. Now that things have

56:32

been stabilized and that Biden or

56:34

let's just say the Democrats, even

56:36

the Democrats who operated within the

56:38

filibuster to pass the Infrastructure Act,

56:41

now that they have calmed things down and

56:44

wages are up and unemployment is down,

56:46

provided all those good things, that's where

56:49

the cultural play can affect people's votes

56:51

and they could give the middle finger

56:53

with their vote instead of using the

56:55

vote just to get the benefits of

56:57

democracy. That's a really interesting theory.

56:59

I mean, certainly there's a question about

57:02

more broadly why is it that economic questions

57:05

were at the forefront of politics in the

57:07

post-war era and cultural questions

57:09

seem to be at the forefront of politics

57:11

in the last decade or two at least,

57:13

and perhaps longer than that. So one point

57:15

that I often make is that if you

57:17

were allowed to ask a voter one policy

57:19

question and had to guess which political

57:21

party they vote for, not just the United States but

57:24

the most Western European democracies, in

57:26

the 1970s or 80s you would have asked an economic question. You

57:28

would have broadly speaking asked something like, would you

57:30

rather have higher taxes and a bigger welfare state

57:32

or lower taxes and a smaller welfare state? And

57:35

that would have told you if a somebody's voting

57:37

for Democrat or Republican, for the Social Democratic Party

57:39

of Germany or the Christian Democratic Party of Germany.

57:42

Nowadays, I think the best way of guessing if somebody

57:45

is going to vote for Democrats or Republicans would be

57:47

a cultural question. It would be about to what

57:49

extent should we crack down on the southern border of

57:51

the United States? What do you think

57:54

about trans people in sports or any number of

57:56

other kinds of cultural questions like that?

58:00

partially because we are a lot more affluent than

58:02

we used to be actually. And despite the serious

58:04

material concerns that many people have, they

58:06

are less at the foreground of what everybody's

58:09

thinking about because actually people are doing, and

58:11

I know often

58:13

on Twitter it doesn't sound like that and people

58:15

are catastrophizing about how bad the younger

58:17

generation is off and so on. And there's some genuine

58:20

challenges with housing price and other things. People

58:23

are a lot more affluent than 50 years ago. And

58:25

that is very, very, very clear from every

58:27

statistic. And by the way, at this point,

58:29

people in their 30s have

58:31

more wealth and have higher

58:33

levels of property ownership than their parents'

58:36

generation did at the same age. So

58:38

that might be kind of one background

58:40

reason for that shift.

58:44

Whether that shift is also true in the

58:46

shorter run, I don't know. I mean, 2020

58:48

was a weird election because we were in

58:50

the middle of a pandemic and there's not

58:52

a lot of historical evidence on how people

58:54

go during the pandemics. And that certainly was

58:56

at the forefront in certain ways. So the

58:58

best theory I have heard for how Joe

59:00

Biden will win the election came from a

59:02

friend I spoke to recently who said, look,

59:04

basically what the White House has decided is

59:06

that if the election is

59:08

about Joe Biden, they probably lose.

59:10

If the election is about Donald Trump, they probably

59:12

win. So the Democrats are going

59:14

to do what they can to make the election about

59:17

Donald Trump, which has the advantage

59:19

of giving them a strategic imperative

59:21

for a tactical necessity, which

59:23

is for Joe Biden to not sit in

59:25

his basement as he did in 2020, but

59:28

sit in the Rose Garden as he might do in 2024

59:30

and not run around the country too much, which clearly

59:33

he has trouble doing. And of course,

59:35

Donald Trump and Republicans are incapable of viewing

59:37

from that strategy because Donald Trump isn't capable

59:39

of talking about anything other than himself. And

59:42

so Donald Trump is going to make the election about Donald

59:44

Trump. And if Joe Biden also makes the election

59:46

about Donald Trump, that is the

59:48

only time I've been optimistic about the outcome

59:51

of his election in the last months. I

59:53

think it's the smartest theory about how Democrats

59:55

might somehow squeak through. But

59:57

that does go against the counter counter.

1:00:00

that people continue to be upset about the economy for

1:00:02

reasons we can debate. I think there are some good

1:00:04

reasons for it. Some extend it's

1:00:06

a misperception of the economy, but people,

1:00:08

I talked about this with Larry Summers, they

1:00:11

don't compare inflation to a year ago. They compare

1:00:13

horizon in the grocery store to five years ago,

1:00:15

and they have gone up over five years. They

1:00:18

are, I think, very upset about some of this

1:00:20

cultural stuff. They don't trust Democrats. It's a bottom

1:00:22

line thing. They don't trust that Democrats are sensible,

1:00:25

and they don't trust that Democrats think

1:00:27

highly of them. They don't trust Donald Trump either.

1:00:29

It's a tough, genuine, tough call for many reasons,

1:00:31

people. I mistrust Donald Trump

1:00:34

more than I mistrust the Democrats. That

1:00:36

is what makes it so difficult. They say,

1:00:39

I don't think things are going great. We're

1:00:41

not getting terribly, but I

1:00:43

just don't trust these people, and I kind of

1:00:45

want to tell them, fuck you. Against

1:00:47

that stands, if the election comes

1:00:50

to be about Donald Trump, Donald

1:00:52

Trump is not popular in America for

1:00:54

very good reason, and that

1:00:57

pushes him back towards the Democrats, and who knows

1:00:59

how those two countervailing factors are going to balance

1:01:01

out. Yeah. A negative polarization is

1:01:04

the single most potent force in American politics, and

1:01:06

I would sign on if you said, will the

1:01:08

next four elections be mostly determined by who do

1:01:11

voters hate more? I think they

1:01:13

probably will be, maybe the next 10. Also, we've

1:01:15

seen evidence that Joe Biden or his people

1:01:17

know this is the strategy. I

1:01:20

mentioned the debt relief program. This is

1:01:22

a big program that could help a lot of

1:01:24

people. You'd think he'd be clamoring about it, but

1:01:26

of course, he announces it during the eclipse

1:01:28

when everyone is paying attention to something else. He

1:01:31

knows even his policies that could appeal

1:01:33

to people, he knows that just not

1:01:36

talking about him or being quiet or

1:01:38

whispering those policies, so the 30 million

1:01:40

Americans who could benefit from them hear

1:01:42

about it, but no one else does.

1:01:44

He knows that plays into his favor.

1:01:47

You're also right. Donald Trump can't help

1:01:49

but get ... He's a chaos agent.

1:01:51

He gets all the attention, and

1:01:54

Americans will probably vote against

1:01:56

him. I do also think, in 2020, my analysis ...

1:02:00

of that election was it was legitimate

1:02:02

for people to be upset about inflation

1:02:05

and to blame Democrats for at least

1:02:07

you know two or three percent of

1:02:09

that inflation. I think Larry Summers helped

1:02:12

for my opinion about which

1:02:14

percent of the inflation Democrats were responsible

1:02:16

for. But now as things actually change

1:02:18

acknowledging that it sticks in people's heads

1:02:20

and people aren't entirely rational actors or

1:02:22

maybe they just don't like the fact

1:02:24

that cornflakes cost two dollars more than

1:02:26

it did in 2021. But anyway my

1:02:28

point is in 2020 people were voting

1:02:33

on crime, inflation, and

1:02:36

you know maybe abortion. Well

1:02:38

crime really I like

1:02:41

empiricism it has come down a lot

1:02:43

it's less of an issue inflation has

1:02:45

come down I don't know how much

1:02:47

it's affecting people's voting or attitudes but

1:02:49

some it's gotta affect at some and

1:02:51

abortion is still I think the big

1:02:53

issue that will motivate Democrats and Donald Trump

1:02:55

hasn't changed or mediated at all he

1:02:57

never can. So add all that up

1:02:59

if Joe Biden doesn't screw it up

1:03:01

too much and the irony is what

1:03:03

you went back to Joe Biden was

1:03:05

too old or maybe not nimble enough to get

1:03:08

with the program and be the progressive of 2020

1:03:10

great so he knew where

1:03:12

the for whatever reason

1:03:14

he aligned with the electorate I

1:03:16

do think that a more virile

1:03:20

capable energetic Joe

1:03:22

Biden could be

1:03:24

louder and help himself the Joe Biden of

1:03:26

2014 could

1:03:28

in fact articulate some policies that maybe

1:03:31

people will give him credit for but

1:03:33

given the hand you're dealt his advisors

1:03:35

are I think there's all the evidence of their

1:03:37

play in that playbook be quiet let people vote

1:03:39

against Donald Trump that's how we'll win. So

1:03:42

you've turned around this conversation for

1:03:45

for matter of conversation to ask me questions is

1:03:47

great but I do want to close the question

1:03:49

for you which is that we've criticized

1:03:51

the media a lot and we're both trying to do

1:03:53

something more constructive which is to build

1:03:55

platforms where we are

1:03:58

able to criticize some

1:04:00

of the new orthodoxy in institutions like

1:04:02

NPR and report on the

1:04:04

world and inform our readers

1:04:06

or listeners about the world in a way that doesn't

1:04:09

fall into those same traps. But without

1:04:11

becoming reactionaries, without running over in the

1:04:13

other direction where all you

1:04:15

do is to criticize those things and you

1:04:17

come to agree with anybody who disagrees with

1:04:19

that ideology and find themselves in their weird

1:04:21

company. How do you do that and

1:04:24

how in particular in the form of a daily podcast

1:04:26

do you cultivate that

1:04:28

conversation? How

1:04:30

do you challenge them in ways that

1:04:32

avoid the temptation of falling into group

1:04:34

things? Tell us a little bit how

1:04:36

you've been so successful at this. First

1:04:39

of all, some of it is easy for

1:04:41

me because my predilection is towards debate and

1:04:43

free inquiry and the exchange of ideas. Most

1:04:46

arguments about platforming, I know they're out there, but

1:04:48

I don't buy them and it doesn't occur to

1:04:50

me that if you talk to a bad person,

1:04:52

badness will spread throughout the world,

1:04:55

especially if you give them good questions, which

1:04:57

isn't to say I would book anyone on

1:04:59

the show, but I'd book almost anyone knowing

1:05:01

that they'd come on knowing

1:05:03

that they might face tough to withering questions.

1:05:06

Some of it is just how I am and it

1:05:08

is just how I order the world. There

1:05:10

are other things that I have to really be

1:05:12

strategic about. A while ago, I

1:05:15

was actually listening to an interview with Hannah

1:05:17

Gatsby, the comedian with Mike Birbiglia, and Hannah

1:05:19

Gatsby was talking about that there's the text

1:05:21

of the work and the theme of the

1:05:23

work and the spirit of the work. That

1:05:26

stuck with me because the text is the

1:05:28

text, but I like to be informed by

1:05:30

the spirit of inquiry and

1:05:32

the spirit of questioning

1:05:34

ideologies. You could imagine a

1:05:36

situation where I had

1:05:38

some bad experience with Slate. I used to work

1:05:41

at NPR. I think there's all this, we're

1:05:43

veering off the course media-wise and so

1:05:45

much of my content is informed

1:05:48

by that as the theme. You can't listen

1:05:50

to the show without knowing, yeah, Mike hits

1:05:52

upon these themes again and again. I

1:05:54

consciously don't want to do that show. I want

1:05:56

the spirit of that to inform the show,

1:05:58

but you could go two or three

1:06:01

shows, it's a daily show, without even

1:06:03

knowing what my stance is

1:06:05

on trans girls in sports. And by the

1:06:07

way, I think I know what

1:06:09

my stance is, but it might surprise you, it

1:06:11

might surprise my listeners. I'll tell you what it

1:06:14

is. I think in high school, generally, you should

1:06:16

let people play and when scholarships are at stake,

1:06:18

it's a different consideration. Fine. So

1:06:20

the spirit of the show

1:06:22

should be the media that

1:06:24

I loved, where all the

1:06:26

best questions, anticipating the audience's

1:06:29

questions are asked. There are

1:06:31

no shibboleths. The ideology that

1:06:34

would mostly appeal to me as a

1:06:36

liberal person does get questioned even harder

1:06:38

than the ideology of people I disagree

1:06:40

with, who we just love to beat

1:06:42

up on. So that's another major factor.

1:06:45

Mike, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks

1:06:47

for having me. A great pleasure. Shall

1:06:50

I say a dream come true? We could put it

1:06:52

in that category. I love listening to the podcast. You

1:06:54

do a great job. Thank

1:06:59

you so much for listening to The Good Fight. Lots

1:07:01

of listeners have been spreading the word about the show.

1:07:04

If you too have been enjoying the podcast, please be

1:07:06

like, rate the show on iTunes, tell

1:07:08

your friends all about it, share it on Facebook,

1:07:10

whatever. And

1:07:12

finally, please mail suggestions for great questions

1:07:15

or comments about the show to goodfightpod

1:07:18

at gmail.com.

1:07:21

That's [email protected].

1:07:26

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1:07:28

Commons 4.0 international license. Thanks

1:07:31

for seeing it. Reversed. Chess

1:07:34

pieces.