0:00

Hey, how you

0:02

doing? Good, how

0:05

are you? How's

0:08

the acquisition going?

0:11

We'll see. It's

0:13

a slow, it's

0:16

a slow effort

0:18

by Kara Swisher.

0:20

I wear them down eventually.

0:23

President Donald Trump loves bashing the

0:25

press. In fact, it's his favorite

0:27

sport. Those attacks helped him win

0:29

the presidency in 2016 and they

0:31

formed a core of his appeal.

0:33

But the onslaught is no longer

0:35

just rhetorical. Trump is using lawsuits

0:37

to intimidate the press, and he's

0:40

inspired a conservative legal movement to

0:42

overturn the Supreme Court case that

0:44

sets a high bar for proving

0:46

defamation. And as assault on the

0:48

press is part of a larger

0:50

pattern of intimidating freedom of expression

0:52

on multiple fronts, including against the

0:54

legal profession, universities, and even corporations

0:56

that implement DEAI. So I'm speaking

0:58

with a panel of exceptional journalists

1:00

to break it all down. David

1:02

Enrich is the business investigations editor

1:04

for the New York Times. an

1:06

author of a very timely book,

1:08

Murder the Truth, Fear, the First

1:10

Amendment, and a secret campaign to

1:12

protect the powerful. Ruth Marcus was

1:14

a long-time columnist for The Washington

1:16

Post and also a fantastic reporter

1:18

who recently resigned after one of

1:21

her columns was spiked. Since then, she's

1:23

been on a tear, writing brilliant pieces

1:25

for The New Yorker, and I've known

1:27

her for a very long time, and

1:29

she's, again, a tremendous journalist. And Ben

1:31

Mullen is a media reporter for the

1:33

New York Times who's constantly getting scoops

1:35

on the newsbiz. So, stick around. Have

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cosmetic. David

3:56

Ruth Ben, thanks for coming David, Ruth, Ben, thanks for coming

3:57

on on. Thanks on on. Thanks for having

3:59

us. Thanks for having for having us. Thanks for having us. So each of you, how would you

4:01

us. So each of you, how describe the current

4:02

would you describe the current state of

4:04

News Media in America? The 2024 World

4:06

Press Freedom Index ranked America 55th out

4:08

of 180 countries and labeled it as

4:11

problematic, and that was before President Trump

4:13

took office for the second time. Is

4:15

that accurate, alarmist, or are things even

4:17

worse than that ranking suggests? Let's hear

4:20

from all three of you, starting with

4:22

Ruth, then Ben, then David. state of News Media in America? The 2024 World Press Freedom Index ranked America 55th out of 180 countries and labeled as problematic and that was before President Trump took office for the second time. Is that accurate alarmist or are things even worse than that ranking suggests? Let's hear from all three of you, starting with Ruth, then Ben, then David. In

10:09

that vein, the Associated Press has banned from

10:11

the White House, uh, press pool, Trump's upset

10:13

that it won't refer to the Gulf of

10:15

Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP soon

10:17

as executive editor Julia Pace put it, the

10:20

lawsuits, isn't about the name of the Gulf,

10:22

but quote, it's really about whether the government

10:24

control what you say. Talk about that example,

10:26

why ban the AP for something as trivial

10:28

as the name of the Gulf, and what's

10:30

the larger strategy? they're doing it because it

10:32

allows them to flex their muscles and it

10:35

sends a very loud message not just to

10:37

the AP but to every other news outlet

10:39

and journalist in America that if you write

10:41

things or say things that are not in

10:44

line with what the Trump administration wants you

10:46

to they are going to consider using their

10:48

enormous levels of power to get you to

10:51

comply and it's not just the AP right

10:53

I mean Trump has personally sued CBS news

10:55

and the Des Moines Register and their pollster

10:57

he has issued a variety of

11:00

other private legal threats against major

11:02

news outlets. He has his FCC

11:04

chairman, as we just said, exerting

11:07

a lot of pressure. So this

11:09

is a really multifaceted assault, I

11:11

think, by the administration on journalism,

11:14

and they're trying to get people

11:16

scared that if they speak

11:18

up or investigate or critical or

11:20

do not get in line, that

11:22

there could be real potential consequences.

11:25

They are getting, it's

11:27

not just that they're

11:29

trying to get people

11:31

scared, they are demonstrably

11:33

getting people scared. You

11:35

see the spate of

11:37

settlements, and I'm using

11:39

air quotes here, by

11:41

ABC, essentially payoffs to

11:44

the Trump or Trump

11:46

related entities in order

11:48

to avoid harm to businesses

11:50

that are... extraneous to the

11:52

media companies or the news

11:54

organizations that are at the center

11:56

of this and I think

11:58

it shows one One of the

12:01

harms of having news organizations housed

12:03

within larger sprawling corporate enterprises. But

12:05

I want to make one more

12:07

point, which is this is a

12:09

multifaceted assault on the news media,

12:11

but it is not simply an

12:13

assault on the news media. There

12:15

is a... Similar parallel assault on

12:17

other vectors of possible opposition to

12:19

the Trump administration. We see an

12:21

assault on law firms. We see

12:23

an assault on judges. We see

12:26

an assault on universities. This is

12:28

all of a piece because if

12:30

you can scare enough people... against

12:32

standing up to you, then you

12:34

can run roughshod over constitutional rights.

12:36

And this, I, and I, for

12:38

people who don't know me, I

12:40

am not normally an alarmist person,

12:42

but I am in high alarm

12:44

because of the totality of this

12:46

assault. Okay, let me, let me

12:48

ask you specifically, the Trump administration

12:50

is working on dismantling the U.

12:53

The U.S. Agency for Global Media

12:55

in response, a recent Wall Street

12:57

Journal opinion headline read, defund voice

12:59

America, of all the fine journalists,

13:01

Voice of America, Radio of Europe,

13:03

and elsewhere who can no longer

13:05

do their excellent and indispensable work.

13:07

Talk about the indispensable, because I

13:09

think a lot of people don't

13:11

understand it or think it's an

13:13

anachronism from the past. What's the

13:15

larger strategy here? Killing Voice of

13:18

America doesn't actually save much money.

13:20

And number two, this is a

13:22

use of... American soft power to

13:24

show other democracies and other nations

13:26

that journalism, that journalism, that journalism,

13:28

that it can bring to a

13:30

society. And now in another one

13:32

of these things that is going

13:34

to hurt our country in the

13:36

long run because it's... turning us

13:38

from, I'm just going to continue

13:40

to sound over wrought here, from

13:43

a beacon of democracy into, you

13:45

know, an instrument of repression. We

13:47

are shutting down independent, trusted voices,

13:49

and we are showing ourselves to

13:51

be not in the shining example,

13:53

but an example of what happens

13:55

when you interfere with free journalism.

13:57

So Ben, last week you covered

13:59

a congressional hearing on PBS and

14:01

NPR where Republicans accused the public

14:03

broadcasters of liberal bias. Most of

14:05

them quoted Yuri Berliner, by the

14:07

way, a very grumpy person in

14:10

my experience, a former senior editor

14:12

for NPR who wrote an expose

14:14

last year. I'm not even going

14:16

to call an expose. It was

14:18

just a rant. It was a

14:20

grumpy rant. According to him, NPR's

14:22

DC office employed 87 registered Democrats

14:24

and zero registered Republicans. Talk a

14:26

little bit about this. and others

14:28

are calling out the head of

14:30

NPR, Catherine Mayer, and somehow trying

14:32

to link her to signal gate

14:35

because she's on the board of

14:37

signal, and for calling Trump a

14:39

fascist, which she also did. But

14:41

talk a little bit about that.

14:43

Right. Because they don't get a

14:45

lot of their money from... Congress.

14:47

That's right. NPR gets between, depending

14:49

on how you slice it, gets

14:51

between I think one and five

14:53

percent of their money either directly

14:55

or indirectly from the Corporation for

14:57

Public Broadcasting, which is the, you

15:00

know, government funded organization that funds

15:02

public media in the U.S. And

15:04

so when I interviewed Marjorie Taylor

15:06

Green, I think two weeks ago,

15:08

ahead of these hearings, the point

15:10

that she made was, well, they

15:12

shouldn't receive any funding. And if

15:14

it's only 1%, well, then they

15:16

can do without 1%. But if

15:18

you talk to people on the

15:20

other side, what they say is

15:22

that for every dollar that's given

15:24

to one of the local public

15:27

media stations, they are able to

15:29

fundraise basically $7 to match it.

15:31

So they view that public funding

15:33

is kind of a kernel around

15:35

which they build their business. Crucially,

15:37

public media in the United States,

15:39

if it's defunded, it's not going

15:41

to affect. probably the national organizations

15:43

like NPR and PBS as much.

15:45

What it will affect is the

15:47

local stations in very rural areas,

15:49

which are news deserts that actually

15:52

do need to be served by

15:54

public media. But what about the

15:56

idea that public media is biased

15:58

against conservatives? I mean, there are

16:00

points to be made. A lot

16:02

of people are Democrats. I think

16:04

they're very fair, both of them,

16:06

and in fact, have a whole

16:08

panoply of stuff that has nothing

16:10

to do with politics. How do

16:12

you push back on that notion?

16:14

Well, the objections that were raised

16:17

during the hearing were around NPR's

16:19

coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop

16:21

story and around the reporting around

16:23

President Trump's campaigns connections to Russia.

16:25

Interestingly, during the hearing, Catherine Marr

16:27

made it admission that I don't

16:29

think I've seen her make elsewhere,

16:31

which was that NPR kind of

16:33

erred in its coverage of the

16:35

Hunter Biden laptop story. So that

16:37

was a notable omission and people

16:39

at NPR basically took note of

16:41

that. But I think some of

16:44

these accusations that Catherine Mars, some

16:46

kind of secret intelligent plan or

16:48

that she was in an earlier

16:50

point in her career, that stuff

16:52

is obviously not true. But is

16:54

it getting traction or is it

16:56

just a faint to be able

16:58

to remove NPR and others from

17:00

the field? Well, on the day

17:02

after the hearing on Thursday, Ronnie

17:04

Jackson, who I believe is President

17:06

Trump's former personal physician, put forward

17:09

a bill essentially that would defund

17:11

NPR and PBS. So I think

17:13

this is real. I mean, I

17:15

think there's a real chance this

17:17

could happen. Which they've tried for

17:19

years. Well, what I was going

17:21

to say. is that there is,

17:23

look, the media, including NPR, certainly

17:25

including the New York Times, including

17:27

the Washington Post, we are imperfect.

17:29

We screw up. We make mistakes.

17:31

We're not always the best at

17:34

acknowledging those mistakes. We have biases.

17:36

And sometimes those biases lead us

17:38

to come down too hard on

17:40

someone or too soft on someone.

17:42

But in general, in my experience,

17:44

the journalists and news organizations are

17:46

operating in good faith. And yes,

17:48

we're imperfect, but those mistakes are

17:50

honest ones. What is not in

17:52

good faith or the attacks that

17:54

are the attacks that are coming

17:56

from the attacks that are coming

17:58

from the likes of Marjorie Taylor

18:01

Green. She knows full well the

18:03

journalists are doing their best. She

18:05

disagrees with some of what they

18:07

produce, but this is, I really,

18:09

I keep coming back to the

18:11

fact that this is. This is

18:13

a broad campaign that is designed

18:15

to undercut the credibility and to

18:17

frankly delegitimize news outlets like NPR,

18:19

not because people think that they

18:21

are ideologically biased, but because they

18:23

are doing their best to report

18:26

the truth and correct distortions and

18:28

lies. And frankly, a lot of

18:30

what is coming out of the

18:32

Trump administration over the past two

18:34

months have been distortions and lies.

18:36

So they're using to promote their

18:38

agenda. And so I think this

18:40

is part of a broad. effort

18:42

to delegitimize and weaken institutions and

18:44

individuals that are really kind of

18:46

speaking truth and trying to correct

18:48

and refute the deliberately wrong statements

18:51

that are often coming out of

18:53

the administration and coming out of

18:55

people like Marjorie Taylor Green. We'll

18:57

be back in a minute. This

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is Celebrity Memoir Book Club. And we're

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think like a monk or listen to this week's

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you've been online this week,

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you've probably seen an unending

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flood of those beautiful animated

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studio gibly style images of

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everything. On

54:49

with Cara Swisher is produced by Kristen

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Castor Russell, Keteriokam, Dave Shaw, Megan Bernie,

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Megan Cunein, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa

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is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

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Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers

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