Consider This from NPR - The U.S. Can't Agree On The Truth. Is It The Media's Job To Fix That?

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution as crucial to a functioning democracy. But what role does the press serve when it feels like the country can't agree on basic facts? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with a handful of journalists to hear how they're navigating this divide.This episode feature's CBS's Leslie Stahl, CNN's Jake Tapper, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, Dawn Rhodes of Block Club Chicago and Sherry Liang of the University of Georgia's Red & Black newspaper. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Here's a question I get asked a lot these days. How can we, as in we the press, help bring the country to a common, agreed-upon set of facts? I'll be honest, I don't quite know. But I was talking recently with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, and he says he landed on one partial solution to this problem during Donald Trump's first run at the presidency. Tapper says he decided to boldly call out lies. In May 2016, he falsely started suggesting that Ted Cruz's father had a hand in the Kennedy assassination. I cannot believe I need to say the following, but here goes. There is no corroborated evidence that Ted Cruz's father ever met Lee Harvey Oswald, or for that matter, any other presidential assassin.

I just went on air and said, now that's not an anti-Trump position or a pro-Cruz position. It's a pro-truth position. And I have been trying to report from that perspective since. Can I ask you a question? It's Leslie Stahl. Yep. Entering the conversation with Jake Tapper and me is longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl. We had invited multiple accomplished broadcast journalists to hop on a video call to wrestle with questions about facts, the press, and our democracy. And it became clear pretty quickly even journalists can't agree on the

best way forward. When you say those things, you're talking to your audience, which, you know, isn't buying Trump's line. So you're talking to people who are inclined to listen to you. You're not talking to the Fox audience. First of all, that's true, but I'm not trying to appease CNN viewers or appeal to them. All you can do is tell the news and share the news and give the facts and hope that people will disrespect that. Consider this. A free press is enshrined in the Constitution. It is essential to American democracy. For it to function and speak to all Americans requires an agreed-upon set of facts, but that agreement feels more elusive than ever. Today, we'll take a look at how a handful of

journalists are navigating that divide. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Friday, June 4th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. What happens to police officers who get caught stealing, lying, or tampering with evidence? Each week, we open up an internal affairs investigation that used to be secret to find out how well the police police themselves. Listen to On Our Watch, a podcast from NPR and KQED. It's Consider This from NPR.

And let's pick back up with that conversation I had with CNN's Jake Tapper about how the press should navigate a political climate where people are claiming multiple, starkly different versions of reality. Am I right in thinking that your show started a policy? You have a policy now you don't put lawmakers on the air who voted to overturn the election. It's not a policy. Have you put any lawmakers on the air since January who voted to overturn the election? No, I have not. It's more a question, which is, if I know that you will lie about the election and vote that way, if I know you have such disdain for facts and truth that you're willing to buy all of these crazy accusations, then what else won't you lie about? Ayesha, jump in, because you're covering this as part of the White House press corps.

Also on the call with Tapper and Stahl was NPR White House correspondent Ayesha Roscoe, who spent a lot of time going back and forth with the Trump administration over the truth. Ignoring what the president or his spokespeople, about looking forward to the next election. Even the DNC. The DNC is still involved in this next election. Is that not correct? Ignoring what the former president or his spokespeople say is not an option. No, it's not. And during the Trump administration, there was this tension of trying to make sure that, yes, what he said mattered, but that doesn't mean that you had to parrot what he said unchallenged. I do think, and one thing that I do want to say is,

even when the idea that the media was being unbiased, they were coming from a certain perspective. So neutral statements like, well, the police said this, therefore it is true, that's not really a neutral statement, right? And in this moment, when you have communities that even back in the, you know, good old days, did not trust the media because they felt like they were not represented, they were not spoken to. So this is something that goes beyond the Trump issue. And I think if we come out of this moment and it's only focused on Trump voters versus non-Trump voters and not looking at the fact that there were seeds of this in communities that felt like they couldn't trust the government, that they couldn't trust the media, I think you miss a whole big part of this country and where some of this distrust is coming from. You're getting at something really interesting, which is it is possible to produce a news report that is absolutely accurate, but not true. Leslie, I want you to pick up on the point that Jake was making about who you put on air. And do you put somebody on air who is gonna lie?

You had that famously contentious interview with former President Trump right before the election. Do you know what you told me a long time ago when I asked why you keep saying fake media? Yeah. You said to me, I say that because I need to discredit you so that when you say negative things about me, no one will believe you. I don't have to discredit you. But that's what you told me. You've discredited yourself. And he stood up, he cut it off, he walked out. I think we have enough of an interview here, Hope. Okay, that's enough. Let's go.

What do you see as the value of an interview like that? Wow. You know, my mind is racing around thinking, no value? Is that possible? If our job is to persuade people, then we're never going to be believed or trusted. If nobody's believing us, what's our value? And we all know that even the founding fathers understood that at least in our system, having the press as a cleansing agent is vital. And so when you ask these questions, they are nearly impossible to answer. You initially asked us, can we unthread this? And my answer is, I'm not sure. Y'all are all pretty bleak. Depressed, I have to say. Are any of you optimistic about the role that we,

we the press, can play going forward? I would say I think there is a hope because these conversations are happening. People are grappling with it. And I think that is a good thing. Being on a panel with Aisha and Leslie Stahl and you, Mary Louise, as somebody who's been on plenty of panels in my life and my career in which it's just five white men, yeah, I'm optimistic. I'm looking at the screen right now and I'm seeing you three. Thank you. Thank you. NPR White House correspondent Ayesha Roscoe, CBS's Leslie Stahl and CNN's Jake Tapper. I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host, I'm your host Court on all of it demands a focus on the words we in the media use to describe what's going on. In the days right after George Floyd's death, many newsrooms, including NPR, debated whether to say he had died or been killed or been murdered.

And as we watched in real time as supporters of the former president broke into the Capitol building, were they protesters, rioters, a mob? One thing that I want to inject into this conversation is the issue of race. This is Dawn Rhodes, senior editor at Block Club Chicago. That's a nonprofit news organization dedicated to ground-level local reporting in Chicago. Our language was definitely, they stormed at the Capitol and it was an attempted coup. We definitely use that language, understanding that I think in news media, we probably wouldn't be wrangling over this so much if the color of the people or the demographics of the people doing something like that were different. There were people pointing out if these were people who appeared to be Muslim, we would be,

you know, asking, should we be called these terrorists? And that was not part of the conversation. Rhodes also says the long-held journalistic tradition of striving for objectivity. As a reporter, it doesn't feel like the right goal in a moment like this. It's about being fair. I think that when we start our stories from a place of understanding that a situation is inherently unfair and it's inequitable, and that certain people here, they don't have as much opportunity to tell their story. I think that that helps us achieve a little bit of balance because we're starting from a sense of things are not balanced.

The last journalist we'll hear from today is struggling to figure out how much she wants to push the traditional boundaries of journalistic objectivity. Unlike the other voices you've heard, she is from this profession's next generation. She is Sherry Leong, editor-in-chief this spring at the University of Georgia's student paper, The Red and Black. We spoke about how she's approached her work this past year. I had a big identity crisis, I think, which was when the Atlanta shootings happened. I grew up around Atlanta, so I was very familiar with the area. I grew up in a majority Asian community, and a lot of questions about my identity as a journalist came up, especially as we've come to find, I think I'm the first East Asian editor-in-chief at the Red and Black as well.

And that experience made me realize, like, is there a possibility that journalism can be personal as much as it is news reporting? And is there a way we can have people of these identities report on the news as we would see on the front page of any major news organizations, but also talk about their experiences, because I think that's just as valuable, and it improves the credibility of the journalist as well. Sherry Leong says as editor of her college's newspaper, she faces a stream of never-ending questions about how exactly to cover the news in her community. I have moments where I just sit there and I'm like, I don't know the answer sometimes. And then I think, yeah, that makes sense. Cause I'm 20 years old. Like I, it doesn't change in your fifties. I hate to tell you. Yes, no, I, and, and like,

we have a very new staff this year because we've had like a record number of recruits come in. And I'm just thinking like, most of us aren't even of legal drinking age. And we're trying to cover our town and our university, and we're one of the primary sources of news here. So it's been a lot to process. It's super interesting, because we have just lived through a moment where the most powerful person in the united states the former president was regularly attacking the press and so i'm

interested that people in their teens and their 20s students are flocking to it yes i i think we kind of grew up in an interesting time because in 2016, when Trump was elected, I was also taking my first journalism class in high school. And so this was kind of like our reality that we kind of entered the field into. And I guess what we find is that there is a very vocal minority as well of people who don't trust the news. But at the same time, we have very loyal readers who are subscribed to our newsletter, who look at our app every morning, who genuinely come to our site for answers. And I think it's important not to lose sight of that. Do you plan a career in journalism? I hope so. I think it really comes down to a lot of us have come into this field because we want

to hold our institutions accountable. And especially as an independent news organization, I think we have a lot of power in this community to make a difference. And I don't know what that will look like exactly for me. I think a lot of us are just figuring things out as they come. But I don't think this last year has dissuaded many of us from entering the field at all. If anything, it's given us more reason to enter and help make a change. That makes me so happy to hear. If I'm allowed to editorialize, I will be cheering on the ranks of reinforcements i hope so and an update we checked back with sherry leong to see how her summer plans are shaping up

and she told us she has landed an internship with georgia public broadcasting an npr member station so congratulations and here's to the next generation of journalists training to tell the messy, contradictory, glorious story of this country and our democracy, figuring it out together in real time, along with you. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.