The Daily - Journalism, Interrupted: 7 Podcast Hosts on the State of the Media

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

Warning: This episode contains strong language.In this special episode for subscribers of “The Daily,” the host Michael Barbaro moderates a panel from The New York Times’s DealBook Summit, speaking with journalists and personalities from across the industry about the state of media in 2025.Guest:Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of “The Breakfast Club” and “The Brilliant Idiots” and co-founder of The Black Effect Podcast NetworkJon Favreau, co-founder of Crooked Media and host of “Pod Save America”Amna Nawaz, co-anchor and co-managing editor of “PBS NewsHour”David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and host of “The New Yorker Radio Hour”Stephanie Ruhle, host of “The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhle” on MS NOWAndrew Schulz, host of “The Brilliant Idiots” and “Flagrant”Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show”For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hey, it's Michael. This is a subscriber-only episode of The Daily, which means if you're listening to it, you are a subscriber. So thank you. Today, we're going to bring you a conversation that I had for the Deal Book Summit in New York with some of the country's biggest name podcasters and TV news anchors. The theme was journalism interrupted. The seismic changes now underway in the media. and what those changes mean for journalists

and what they mean for you, the news-consuming public. And just to set the scene, we have this conversation in front of a live audience, and I'm just going to warn you, when one host tries to interview seven other hosts, things get really, really interesting. Okay, take a listen. It's Saturday, December 13th.

To all of you, welcome to the Deal Book Summit and to the largest journalism panel ever assembled. Thank you for having us. Yes. I am going to start by introducing each of you by asking you the same question. It's a yes, no, maybe kind of question. Amna Navas, co-anchor, co-managing editor of PBS News Hour, host of a brand new PBS podcast to settle in. Should people trust the media in 2025? Yes or no?

Yes. I think we all understand why people don't trust the media. We all understand why people have lost trust in a lot of institutions of power. But I think there's a lot of really good reasons for people to say, I have a reason to trust this. I have a reason to believe this person. Have a reason to think this is authentic and credible and something I can hang my hat on. And we need that now more than ever. So I'm going to start with a yes. And I think we'll talk about it more. Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the Daily Wire, host of the Ben Shapiro show. Same question. I mean, I'm going to say no, as you might imagine. I didn't know. Well, the reason that I'm going to say no in very brief is that people just don't. And telling them that they should is not going to answer the question. If you say should people trust a particular report or a particular story, I think the answer goes to whether that report is credible or whether a reporter has done a good job in the past. But saying the media writ large, I think it's too broad.

Charlotte May and the God, co-host of the Breakfast Club, co-founder of the Black Effect. What say you? Yes, no? Broadly, no, but you should trust the media that earns your trust. Sucinct. Stephanie Ruhl, host of MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhl. Yes, no? I would say broadly yes. I think this is an extraordinary time for smart, credible, trustworthy journalism.

And while Ben could say no, I would say, isn't it great that Ben has the platform that he has today, whereas 20, 30 years ago, he might not have that opportunity. Speaking of new platforms, John Favreau, co-founder of Cricket Media, former Obama White House speechwriter, host of Pod Save America. Should people trust the media in 2025? I think it depends on the definition of media, right? Because I think we're talking about so many different sources of information, endless sources of information now. And I think that there are obviously some outlets and some journalists and some media figures who are more trustworthy than others. I think if you're a consumer of media, then you have an opportunity to not just listen to or consume one kind of journalism or one media outlet, but to look at a whole bunch.

And I think that's in an age where people are distrustful of media, as Ben said, I think you need to, you know, make sure that you're consuming a variety of media and that helps build trust. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. Maybe you'll be the first to actually just do yes or no. Well, I would Jewishly answer your question with a question, what's the media? Is the media Candace Owen? Is the media the New York Times? Is the media PBS? Is it the New Yorker?

Well, it's all those things. And I think it's incumbent on any commentator, any institution, any news organization, to establish trust over time. And that's hard. Trust is not something given automatically and shouldn't be. Finally, Andrew Scholl's Yeah Stand-up Comic Host of the Flagrant

podcast with Akash Singh and host of the Brilliant Idiots podcast. Should people trust the media in 2025? Yeah. Yeah. There it is. Yeah. Yes, we're done here.

No, no. You should trust the media to serve their audience, what their audience wants. So for me, I would say, no, don't trust them, or trust them to just feed their audience what they want. That was a yes and a no. Is that what brilliant idiots means?

Yes. Yes. That's why people listen. Yes. So trust the media to lie to their audience to make them feel good. All right. So. Yes.

That's why I think is broadly no. And that's why I go back that you should trust the media that earns your trust. Because to Andrew's point, it's like everybody is serving their audience. You know what you're going to get when you tune in the Fox News. You know what you're going to get when you tune in the CNN. You know what you're going to get when you tune in the MSNBC. And the reason voices like the Shapiroz and the Favreau's have, you know, grown is because... And broken through.

Broken through is because they're hearing something that they don't normally hear on those legacy media outlets. That's an assumption. Just even saying, you know what you're going to get listening to here. Well, guess what? But you just interrupted a woman. Yeah. Dammit, Charming. There you go.

In this scenario, you're the only over first. There you did. What the hell is happening here? There you did. Sorry, continue, Stephanie. That only continues that narrative that you know what you're going to get here, you know what you're going to get there. I challenge that. You don't. Oh, that's not true.

I know exactly what I'm going to get when I turn on Park News. I know exactly what angle they're going to come with. If I turn on MSNBC, I know I'm getting a left angle. Are you shocked when you turn on MSNBC? Are you like, oh, my God, I didn't see this take. We're going to talk about surprise. I need to watch my show any night of the week. We're going to talk to a show.

We're going to talk about surprise because actually I think, Stephanie, you're one of the more surprising figures to emerge from MSNBC. Ben, you routinely surprised me with your critiques of people on the right. But, Charlie, we'll come back to that. This panel is called journalism interrupted. And this assembly of people in your range of answers, I think pretty clearly speaks to the interruption. And there are all kinds of ways to talk about it. But for the purpose of this conversation, I'd like us to focus on three seismic ways that journalism is being interrupted right now. I'm going to summarize them real fast.

First, by President Trump, the interruptor of media in chief. Second, by the rise of journalists as brands embodied, I'd say, by more than half the people at this table. And third, by the technological disruption we're all familiar with, decades in the making. But 2025 seemed to be the year that broadcast TV kind of officially broke. I want to take these interruptions or interruptors one at a time. President Trump, quite literally interrupting journalism as it exists by suing or defunding news organizations that offend him, by threatening to remove TV licenses from major broadcast networks whose content he dislikes. Andrew, we're going to get back to why you're snickering by ejecting disfavored journalists from the Pentagon.

And in doing all of this, the president has reoriented many news organizations out of fear of Trump or in some cases because they feel he's on to something. David, how grave a threat do you believe what I just described to be? I take it beyond seriously. And my background is such, and that's I guess what I bring to the table, is my journalism career, serious journalism career, began in Moscow for the Washington Post and lived under the latter days of complete and utter totalitarian censorship and all the systems that were in place. And then I watched it crumble. And if you're not taking what Donald Trump is doing seriously, and you don't see. how this at least rhymes with the reestablishment of authoritarian pressure on the free word, then you're not watching and you're not listening and you're not being serious. But I am telling you the summation of these lawsuits, these threats, these pressures,

these deals that have been established between corporate overlords and the administration rhyme in the most serious way with what I've seen and what we've seen. historically in other places. And you're damn right it should be taken seriously. I'd love to hear from someone who disagrees with that and thinks that what the, Ben, and who thinks of what the president doing is a necessary corrective to the orientation of legacy media. So I don't think that everything the president is doing is a necessary correction. It's very critical of the president over some of the measures he's taken, suing various media outlets and all the rest, which I think is inappropriate. But I think that people make two

general mistakes about President Trump. One is that they see him standing over the body of journalism and they assume that he is the killer and not the coroner, meaning that journalism had widely lost credibility with the American people before President Trump became president. Certainly on the right, for as long as I've been alive, the critique of legacy media as a left-wing generally oriented tool has been a very live critique. And so Trump coming along and saying, you guys are pretending to be objective journalists, you're not objective journalists. Let's stop pretending you're objective journalists. And let's just treat you as what you are, partisan actors. So he's just a keen press critic.

I think that initially that is correct. That doesn't mean that, again, every action that he's taking is something that I agree with. The other thing that I would say here is that President Trump, as always, tends to do the quiet part out loud. And I think that you'll hear this a lot from people who are defenders of President Trump is that a lot of the sorts of backroom deals that were happening between media and administrations were back room when it was Democrats. And everybody just sort of commonly understood that, for example, there was coordination between the Biden administration and members of the press to pre-submit, questions, for example. And so there were cards that he could literally look at with questions on them. I interviewed President Biden. There was no pre-submitted cards. There was no agreement beforehand. I was given 11 minutes with President Biden. Did you sense anything amiss with him

in terms of his mental state? And if so, did you report on it? The first question I asked him was that in corporate America, corporations force their board members to leave when they are 75. why should the United States elect you to be the most important CEO in the world? Are we not watching and listening to each other? Is that what's happening here in our programs? What did he say to that? What did he say?

And what was your critique of his follow-up? He gave a fine answer. The problem was not president. He gave a fine answer about his qualifications. Was it in English? It absolutely was. The problem, and it was reported, was President Biden's staff.

At a minute 11, I asked him about his Department of Justice and his son Hunter. President Biden started to give the answer. And when he started, his team started flailing and waving their hands in front of the cameras and stopped the interview. Kind of like take away the keys kind of thing? Correct. And they should have. And how much of that did you report on the air? All of it. Okay. Because it's an official interview with the president of the United States. So I turned to the president and I said, sir, you started answering that question, will you finish? Yes, they continued to try to protect that president. And what a mistake it was because all of that was officially on the record. And that became a story.

But the media protected them too, though, MSNBC protected. See him protected them. Like, I mean, when you see Jake Tapper come out with a book called The Original Sin, it's almost like malpractice because it's like, like, you didn't see this the last three years. Like, I'm not a journalist like Jake Tapper, but I saw the decline in President Biden. I reported on the decline on President Biden. I may have done it on, you know, podcasts like Burry Nidius or on a Reference called on a daily show. Yeah, I don't think you needed the media. But when the New Yorker had a cover a year before this book, The New Yorker had a cover drawn by Barry Blit in which there was a road race being run,

a kind of street race, of Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Mitch McConnell, and they were using walkers. I'm not saying it was in the greatest taste of all time, and I don't care, but it was making a point graphically as a political cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker a year before this all collapsed. So this was being discussed widely. Now, we're the people in the White House trying to tamp this down and limit the access? Sure.

Are there critiques to be made of what you call the liberal media? Absolutely. Is it healthy to see a profusion of different viewpoints and magazines and podcasts and radio? Absolutely. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the president of the United States calling the press as a whole, including you, enemies of the people. This is a phrase used by Stalin and used by robes beer. This is very serious.

The sort of catastrophism with regard to the fact that President Trump uses colorful language after a full decade of this does not ring true. The American people have been dealing with this for a decade. Okay, I've said before that what's going to be written on his epitaph on his gravestone is the 45th and 47th presidents of the United States. He said a lot of shit. But, Ben, can I ask you, can I follow up on what you said? Does a coroner sue, and forgive me for torturing the metaphor? Yeah, the analogy. Does the coroner sue his patience in, let's think about what President Trump has done, suing ABC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal for reporting that was completely accurate.

Again, I've said that I'm against that. I'm going to be against. I'm a hundred percent against those things. Also, one of the things that President Trump has run up again and again are the guardrails of a system of law that exists in the United States. He shouldn't be filing those lawsuits, and those lawsuits are going to be dismissed. Right. But he is filing them. I mean, I think that is the point David's making here is that whether or not the attack is successful, is that the attack is being treated as a Soviet style crackdown on the press, a private lawsuit that is going to be dismissed in court.

Okay, that is not announced. But you don't want it to get to someone. Here's the thing, though. We're talking about the lawsuits, but there's also what he's doing with the FCC, what he tried to do to Jim Liddle, right? And so. But again, I opposed. Right, no, I'm not saying you didn't.

But like. Those are the examples to focus on it. Yeah. Yeah, like, so the lawsuits could get dismissed. Now we're talking about two different trends, right, which is what President Trump is doing and the larger challenges that corporate-owned media is facing because the places that's settled with Trump, right, like those lawsuits could get thrown out, but it still costs a lot of money for all these places that are getting sued.

And some of these media outlets, which are now owned by larger conglomerates, the actual media outlet is a rounding error for them. And so they're obviously going to settle. and then Trump, in a sense, wins, even though he didn't win the lawsuit. So that is dangerous. Right. I do think everything he's been doing with the FCC and what he tried to do with Jimmy Kimmel is quite dangerous. Threatening the pool licenses.

And now, every time there's going to be a media merger or a company that wants to merge with someone else, they have to make sure that they are in good graces of Donald Trump and the administration and the government, which is something that you would not want in a free democracy. Andrew, you're a stand-up comment. What did you think of the effort by the FCC chairman to... Horrible. Brendan Carr, is that the guy's name? Yes.

Yeah, that was horrible. You know what I mean? And I don't even love Jimmy. You know what I mean? But I thought it was horrible as a comedian. You've got to, like, allow people to make jokes, obviously, 100%. And I don't even think the joke... You've been committing too much white-on-white crime.

Between you and Jimmy... I'm trying to make up for lost time. Okay? What do you want me to do? What kind of reparations do you want, Charlemagne? Enjoy it. Watch it. No, no.

So what I think was really important what you said, which is like... We're going to explain that stand-up comics now run major media organizations. I hate that we're even in this discussion. I don't even want to be here. No, no. I want to just be a stand-of comedian, not a journalist. But to your point, which I thought was great, which is like, if there are these media networks that are hoping to make a big exit on this thing that they built for decades, and they're willing

to curtail their own personal constitution on, like, what they should put out and what media is so that they can make money, then I'm kind of like, fuck them. If you're willing, because it's like, why do I have to hold the Constitution and the American values down just so that you can make more money? If you're up against Trump and Brennan Carr and the FCC and they're basically saying, well, we're not going to do this merger. Then you go, hey, journalism is more important than this merger. Prove to us. You want Americans to trust the media, then prove you care about the media, not about money. You should ring the alarm.

They should say, hey, the Trump administration is saying this merger is not going to go through if we don't do X, Y, and Z. Y'all have the pulpit. I mean, everyone knows what happened at CBS. You saw what happened with 60 Minutes. You saw how Bill Owens stood up and said, I need you to know what's happening inside this organization. And then they folded, right? Pressure from, well, he left.

You're talking about executive producer. Executive producer is a really good point. And the problem, the complication here is ownership, not editors. Ownership. For sure. Yes. And we have a lot of places, like the New York Times, the New Yorker, Condonast,

that are owned by wealthy people, ultimately. And if those people don't see it in their interest or have the principles or the backbone to stand up to this kind of nonsense, then things go belly up. The president might say there have been countless moments where the mainstream media, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CNN,

legacy media institutions, traditional media, failed to represent reality. And two big ones come to mind, the 2016 election, and to a degree, the 2024 election, when that traditional media got very excited and started to believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were stronger candidates than they ended up being and missed the profound coalition of disaffection that ultimately carried Donald Trump to re-election pretty easily. John, sitting here in 2025,

it's pretty universally accepted. The Democratic Party has lost its way, lost touch with what American... Has allowed the Republican Party to capitalize. What? Did the media lose? If you say this, you might get labeled a magaloon. I just want to be very careful.

I'm over here, John. I'm right here. I think it's safe to say, and I think in your own jocular way, you agree. The Democratic Party has lost its way, lost its touch with the American people, what they want, the Republican Party to capitalize on all this disaffection and desire for change.

Did the media, and let's maybe be specific in this last campaign, also lose touch? It's an interesting question because I think that the challenge in 16 and 24, first of all 24, I think the coverage throughout 24 was that it was a pretty close race, and which it ended up being. I think in 16, it was much different. It was a one and a half point national election, but it was a decisive electoral college victory for Donald Trump. It was. But if you looked at even the polling or the coverage, like, it, I mean, he was up in those battleground states.

But the Times polling at the end was pretty close. Thank you. 16, the polls were way off, right? And I do think that the media coverage in that election followed the polls. I think if you had replayed 2016 and the polls were accurate. And from the time that Donald Trump was nominee and Hillary Clinton was nominee, you started seeing a close race in all the battleground states. I believe the media coverage would have been much different.

I think there is a critique of legacy media following the polls too much in their coverage and political coverage, for sure. But also, like, he won. He won both of those elections. And so clearly the public got the information they needed to make a decision about both of the candidates in each of those elections. Also, the largest legacy media organization on television that has the biggest audience is Fox News. And so, like, plenty of people were hearing Donald Trump's version of reality. And by the time you get to 2024, millions and millions of people were hearing Donald Trump's version of reality through Ben's podcast, through a whole bunch of other right-wing media. So I don't think, I think you could make a case a couple decades ago that traditional media, which is liberal leaning was the dominant source of information for people in the country.

I don't think you can make that case today because I now think that there is just a diversity of voices, especially. especially on the right, but across the political spectrum, that people can tune into. So I don't necessarily think that's a challenge. I think that's a really great point. We can't complain about the impact of legacy media while at the same time saying, it's dead. Right?

Like, it's one or the other. And now, are people turning to other forms of media because they don't trust it, because they're more entertaining? Who knows? Because they're more easily accessible? Who knows? It's not like there was underrepresentation for the people that wanted Trump to win, there was representation.

And, yeah, yeah, that's a good one way. I mean, I think that there is truth to the idea that the right wing, when they say that legacy media, that that's obviously an exaggeration. It's very much not true. And the reality is that there are kind of two types of media. There's a well-funded legacy media that does an enormous amount of reportage. And my show relies on a lot of that reportage. And so to not acknowledge that reality would be foolish, obviously.

With that said, I think that if you are going to see. steel man, the right-wing critique of legacy media, the examples I would use would not be the 2016 election. It would be Russiagate. It would be the coverage of COVID in 2020. It would be the coverage of Joe Biden's obvious to everyone with retinas and a prefrontal cortex decline. Do you mind if I ask you to do COVID? Okay. So the narrative on the right about COVID is that, yes, it was true that COVID was, at least in the initial phase, a very, very scary thing. And then universally the media coverage focused in on the idea that if you were in close proximity to anyone, including outside, that it was going to kill you, that school should

be shut down, that the entire society should be shut down. But also, if you are outside in the street protesting for Black Lives Matter, it was totally fine for you to be outside for the proper cause. And that COVID suddenly discriminated on the basis of politics. And that's it. It was a once in a lifetime pandemic. And we were covering it real time. I mean, so was I. And I was looking at the same data that you guys were looking at, and that's fine. But I think the idea that that was not tied to a broader narrative about the public health establishment or about the, or about politics when it came to Black Lives Matter and the protests and the riots. Again, I think that when we look at members of the legacy media who covered this sort of stuff, they can point to their granular level coverage.

The way that people actually consume media is via Gestalt. But, you know, again, if we're talking about the critique of the media, the basic idea here is not that the media don't do reporting. It's what they choose to report on and how they report it. An emphasis. Can I just push back on one thing? Because I think we're kind of of speaking in broad terms about something that was quite, frankly, when you look back on it now, like a very worrying moment in American history because it showed that when you see it enough doubt in the traditional deliverers of information, even the scientists and the experts upon whom we as a country and a nation and society have relied to get us where we are and healthy today,

that it can cause real damage. I mean, over a million Americans died in that pandemic. And what we saw from the beginning, to Stephanie's point, was journalists following the science, and the experts. If there was a bias in media, legacy media at the time, it was that we do rely on experts. We do tend to go with what the scientists tell us, because that's where the evidence is. We talked about a lot of things all at once very quickly, and I just want to make one point. It is, to me, arguable at once that the New York Times is the most sustained and best news gathering organization in this country. At the other hand, I would say that the New York Times also has on its history, as other news organizations do, Walter Durante, who suppressed

the artificial famine in Ukraine. It failed to cover something called the Holocaust and has made any number of really serious errors as every serious news organization has historically. Now, does that mean that is because of the liberal media, that the flaws in the history of the New York Times, which I still think, despite all its flaws, is I can't think of what New York organization. I come for the Washington Post. This is very painful for me to admit. Surpasses the New York Times? Is it for ideological reasons? Is it because of a group of people get together and conspire to hide one thing and to reveal another? No, I think we have to admit that these collectives, these organizations are made up of human beings. And that

what we're talking about the press is a first rough draft of history. And what you're discussing is totally legitimate, totally legitimate about where the coverage of... By you, you mean, Ben. Yes. And some of it has to do with flaws in coverage. Some of it has to do the fact that was happening in real time and what we're being told by credible scientists as opposed to others. So I think we're talking about a lot of things at once. We are. And it's worthwhile to kind of slow down and say, you know, some of these organizations are both superb and flawed, including my own. The question is, I think, and I think this is why you've seen the rise of what I, you know, partisan media like my company or John's company, is because if all the errors tend toward one direction, then you start to question the underlying bias of the newsroom, right?

There are very few errors in favor of Donald Trump in the New York Times. There are very few errors in favor of the Republican Party in the New York Times. Most corrections are happening in the opposite direction. And so you have to start wondering. Literal corrections or course corrections over time. Both. But I think that, but and that's why, you know, the recommendation, that I've made for news consumers, and I say this literally on my show, frequently, is that if you actually want a good way of determining what is opinion versus what is fact, what you should do is listen to both my show and John's show. Fair enough. And any place where we agree, that's the basis of fact.

And then every place where we disagree, that's the opinion. What you do is very different. You guys are informed each in your own way, but I don't know that you're spending all your days dug in and reporting on one issue, talking to sources and producing that kind of journal. That's what I read the New Yorker for. That's quite different. Without that original reporting from news organizations, that's the basis for much of what you cover. Of course.

And I would just argue that every single day, thousands of stories are reported on, right? But it's the fringiest, most incendiary things that the algorithm picks up and churns out and churns out and pumps up and pumps up and pups up. I think the algorithm, right? For a moment, if we consider that what's going viral, is making us sick. And we can make a choice to consume what's going viral or just take a minute,

lower the temperature and have open minds. Stephanie, I do want to focus on something we do have a little bit more control over than the virality of the algorithm. And that for me means

returning to the question of 2024 coverage. I suspect that President Trump, just to go back to his perspective, would say that MSNBC embodies, in his mind, what he's going after here, having a particularly liberal worldview, and he would argue failing to convey certain realities

to people. Let's take immigration. I would argue that the MSNBC's coverage of immigration tends to be pretty sympathetic to migrants. I don't know if you would disagree with that. How are you thinking about an issue like that post-election, given how crucial immigration was to Trump's victory? Do you feel like MSNBC conveyed the reality of the immigration story? to America. I absolutely believe that I did. And I know that I specifically asked Kamala Harris about it. Use Springfield, Ohio as an example. No one was eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. However, Springfield, Ohio changed dramatically. And if we don't hold space and interview people and speak to people who say, my community is different, my town is different, and immediately

not call those people who are feeling those issues, if we're immediate to say, say, well, they're xenophobic. They're racist. It's easy to say that we're a nation of immigrants and we have to welcome everyone. Immigration is complicated. I can't speak for my entire organization. I can say that we accurately cover the news. Now, do I think immigration is covered in a dramatic fashion on the other side? Sure. My mother is a devoted Fox News Watcher. And you can tell my mother that a violent caravan of criminals is making their way up from Venezuela, And she'll believe you because she's in Park Ridge, New Jersey. But when the right wing tells my mother that there's no inflation,

she knows that they're lying because she buys London Royal from ShopRite every Friday, and she knows the price of it. So at the end of the day, you have to tell your audience the truth. The challenge is if your audience has a particular bias and they don't like what you have to say, you have to be a strong enough journalist that they're going to stay with you. So I think the challenge for good journalists is, how do you tell people a truth that they might not love, but that they accept? You just tell them the truth.

And that's why, you know, Ben kept using the word eras. And I don't think that these newsrooms are making errors. I think they have agendas. And I think that, you know, the thing that a lot of these newsrooms don't understand now is they don't control. What do you mean these newsrooms? Tell me what this news is. Tell me what's happening. You know how I know y'all have agendas?

MSNBC, based off all the points that you just said, I conveyed those same points. And MSNBC said I was spreading MAGA messaging. You may not have done that stuff, but MSNBC as a whole. We talked about this. So they have agendas. Like they have a set of programming that they want to push to a group of people. And when they see all of these different things happening on social media or on podcasts, they're realizing, oh, man, the people aren't buying into our programming. So instead of actually listening to the people, they continue to try to push their programming.

And that's why people don't trust the media. But this idea that people don't trust the media, more people are consuming media today than ever have. But I would argue that people are more engaged and more informed than I've ever seen in my lifetime. Why is that? Because democracy's at risk. No. That's not it. What is it, Andrew?

Because they're carrying that thing in their pocket and everybody's just filling their face non-stop. We no longer live in monoculture. Monoculture is dead. That's why Leonardo DiCaprio can be in a movie with a superstar director and it loses $200 million. Because people don't even know the movies out. That's right. We do not share the same information. We live in a thousand different realities.

And we're even having this discussion right now, which is kind of almost two years late because we're having, like, how have podcast disrupted media? It's like, that was two to four years ago. That's right. We've already been disrupted again. should be talking about how AI is going to disrupt media. We're having an antiquated discussion about media on traditional media. That's right. That's right. And by the way, this is a South Park. The additional. We're having an incident on one of the most listened to podcasts on the planet. Well, what I would say about that specifically. Not after what Andrew said. No, no, no, no, no. No, what I would say about that specifically is that you guys, part of your success is obviously your wife.

Hi, Lisa. Hi, Lisa. Nice to meet you again. And you guys are very talented, but you also met the moment, right? Okay. But right now, we live in a thousand different realities because we went from fan clubs, which is like Instagram, right, to TikTok. TikTok drives culture, whether you're like it or not. And TikTok is pure algorithm, right? What they did is they realize people actually don't want to follow their friends. They want us to feed them the most interesting thing. And interesting can be low-hanging fruit. It could be chaos, clickable, clickable, right? Once that happened, it divides us into a thousand different silos. Those silos that you're now in are getting less views, Right? So people start going, oh, shoot, my views are going away. Well, what do I do to get more views?

Ratch it up the dialogue, ratchet up the rhetoric. And now you're saying the most insane stuff because only the most insane stuff crosses over completely. Because you need to hop out of your silo to get the views you used to do. Other people see it and they're like, okay, now my rhetoric needs to be extreme. There's a porn star that had sex with a thousand guys in a day. You didn't need to do that back in the day. But that's what you need to do to cross over. So what does that mean for media? What does that mean for any political discussion? Right now, the only thing that is monoculture is news, which is what you're saying, right? It's the only thing that really crosses over.

Trump is such a magnetic force, live them or hate him, the only way you can get people to talk about you every single day or watch your videos every single day. Andrew, what are you saying? You're saying a lot of things all at once, but what are you saying that's prescriptive? What does that mean? Prescriptive, like, what should be done? What can you recommend? Oh, you want me to tell you what should be done. I think it's like...

In your view. Well, there's multiple things. Now that this is number one. We didn't know that food was bad for us when we were growing up like McDonald's. Like when I was a kid, like McDonald's was food, right? It wasn't bad food. It was just food. And what I assume will happen in the next like two to five years is we'll start

realizing that the internet also needs nutrition facts. So when I open my phone and a video from an account I don't even follow is put onto my screen and it's saying some crazy salacious hot take, my immediate reaction should be don't take this as truth, don't take this as 100% reality, understand that this is fast food meant to keep me engaged. But what's happening right now is... Still going to need a gatekeeper, though. Now we're bringing the gatekeeper's back.

We got rid of them. Now we need to bring it. Well, the gatekeeper, I guess, could be ourselves. It could be to have that distrust of media, to have that distrust of content that we don't even subscribe to. But if the gatekeeper is telling the truth, but we don't want to believe the gatekeeper, we won't believe the truth that the gatekeeper.

That is another problem. And there's so many people that are going to echo the sentiments that we already feel. goes back to Trump. You know, he's not the first person to do this, but he's the most brilliant person to do this in the position of power. He has done more than anybody to eradicate the notion that some things are true and some things are false. I don't think that's true. We don't live in a world where we have a common set of facts. He's not the first president's alive. He's hardly the first president's a lot. I actually think that we're looking for solutions in many of the

wrong places, meaning that the more, it's true. Media consumption is at an all time high. Are we happier? Is Is the country doing better because media consumption is at an all-time high? That's a different question. No, I think it's the only important question. Is our politics better because media consumption is at an all-time high? Or are we actually more atomized in our things worse? So I'm going to say something that's in none of our interest, which is that everybody should turn off their fucking phone.

Yeah. And that we should all start spending time with each other in person and touch some grass. And this will drop all of our ratings. Okay, that is about decency. And when you go back to politics, 30 years ago, lawmakers moved to Washington with their families. Okay? They live there. So while they disagreed on the hill all day, when they left, they would go to the same little league games as somebody on the other side of the aisle or the grocery store. Now they do not live in Washington. All they do is speak to speak in silos. And then they have no incentive to actually work together. So what you're asking for in politics or media is the same thing. Decency. And that's what we need a return to. But I'm also asking for people to break what is pretty clearly an addiction. And that includes politicians who are using the algorithm. as a sort of substitute for actual public opinion, which is why you're seeing on both sides,

by the way, again, I'm in both sides this thing because it's actually true. You're seeing extremes on both sides who are programming toward the algorithm in the bizarre opinion that that's actually reflective of where the American people are. And then the American people are dissatisfied with the options they're being offered. And so we keep ping ponging side to side wildly between a harder right right and a further left left. And what most Americans want is actually something pretty stayed and in the middle. But when you do that, you're a fence sitter, Ben. We have some of the most powerful media personalities around this table right here. And I guess the question is, we all live in this world, we're all fighting for the same attention economy, right?

There's a reason that rage bait was the word of the year from the Oxford University Press this year. And it's because people like to go to places where they are emotionally triggered into feeling something. And it becomes addictive. How do you fix it? What are you recommending? Well, I feel like Ben's recommending. Ben's saying we should all take a blood oath to stop doing our job. tomorrow, move to Montana together with our kids.

Well, he didn't say all that. He just said, turn your phone off every now and then and go actually talk to people. If you would have actually spoken to people two years ago, you would have known how they felt. Right, so I'm not even going to make a political page. There are good sources of information out there. Y'all should keep Sabbath, right? Like, everyone, seriously.

God had a reason for this. Friday night to Saturday night, turn off your phone. Go spend some time with their family and your community, you'll be better off. To you point in what we should all be doing, right? Like, yes, it's turn off our phone. But some of the media that we all produce, too, is, Like, watching clips of you on social media, you get a much different impression of you

than listening to your whole podcast. You're speaking to Ben right now. That's fair. And I think that's true. But I think that's, yes, I think that's true for all of us. So it's not just the most extreme figures are being heard more. It's the most extreme parts of everyone who's in public life. And the reaction to those things.

So it's like you say one sentence on your podcast. Some guy on TikTok reacts to it. Flips it out. Yes. Yep, that's right. You know, besmirch is your good name. And now all of a sudden, his following believes this out-of-context sentence that you said one time on your podcast. Yes.

And I think that a really troubling thing for legacy media is facts can be corrected. Narratives, it is almost impossible. Andrew, you're going to maybe think I'm picking on you. But to bring this back to these new face. You've got 18 seconds. Well, we're going to go a little long. Just let you know. Throw another 75 on there.

In these new faces of journalists. There's the question of what are the responsibilities of people with an audience as big as yours? Sure, sure, yeah. And maybe you know where I'm going here. You sit down with Donald Trump. Yes. And you interview him. And I just want to preface this question by saying I've consumed every interview where you've talked about what it means for you to interview someone.

And you're very clear about something. You're not asking dutiful questions. You're not asking something because you think you're supposed to. You're asking a question because you're following your curiosity. Yes. When you sat down with Donald Trump. A couple weeks before the 2024 election, you had a long conversation with him. And I do want to push you on what you see as your responsibilities with an interview like that.

There's a section of the interview. And maybe you would have thought this was dutiful in the moment, unless or sure, I'd agree. Where the president is describing the entire federal investigation into Russia as a hoax, made up by Hillary Clinton, made up by, these are made up by Nancy Pelosi. That's factual, that's not accurate. But then he goes further and he says that the Pulitzer Prize Committee should take back the Pulitzer it gave to the New York Times for its aggressive coverage of that investigation. And the post.

And you in the interview, you're nodding along to him. You're verbally agreeing with him. Yeah. And you say, yeah, to have the New York Times keep that Pulitzer is to basically say that the lie is true. Oh, that's what they bought you here for. I said, no, no, no. Now, obviously, that hits home for me. Wait, wait.

Did I say, all the whole. See, I said those words? This is what you said. This is what you said. This is what you said. Let's go. Let's do it. Donald Trump, because you're actually by leaving the Pulitzer.

I take back all the nice things I said, Lisa. By leaving the Pulitzer with the New York Times, you're sort of saying it happened, and it didn't happen. And everybody now, he goes on, and you say, Andrew Schultz, this is the... Oh, he said that part. Yeah, and you say you're rewarding the lie. And you're agreeing with him on, yeah, for the hoax. So now, are, in retrospect, maybe you think this is the best interview you've ever done. But I wonder if, in retrospect, perhaps you question whether in the best interviewer

question whether in moments like that, you're not fulfilling what your friend and even your co-host Starlameen thinks is pretty essential about the role of journalism in this moment. Wait, wait, wait, that was a big leap right there. Tell me why. What was the last question? Are you letting the president lie on your show and not bothering the fact-checking? I don't know anything about the Russia hoax. So why interview the president and let him talk about it?

And that's why Trump wants to go on his podcast. I didn't ask him about the Rush House. No, he brought it up every which way throughout the interview. But I didn't ask him about the Russia hoax. I had three things I want to ask him. Turns out there's no hooks. So this is a perfect example of the media class, which is like you guys, you know everything about the Russia hoax, you know everything about what it is. Was it actually? Was it not? So you guys are really aware of this because it's important to you. It's important if you're reporting on something that if there is truth to it. But what ended up did happen? Did he get indicted? Or did he get proven guilty of it? Like what did happen with the hoax?

Just to be clear. Not the hoax. What did happen with the Russia investigation? The Russia investigation is a federal inquiry into a sustained campaign by Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to U.S. intelligence agencies on behalf of in favor of Donald Trump. Are they saying what happened? There was a Mueller report and there was no indictment. Okay. So there was no indictment. Take this right here.

Let's stop right here. There was a Mueller report and there was what? No indictment. Okay. What do you think the American people think when they hear there was no. indictment. They're not looking into all this research. They're not seeing, like, ooh, there are real connections, but maybe not close enough to indict, but there is something real here. What do you think the average American thinks when they hear there was a Mueller

report and there was no indictment? What do you think they think they're clearly have an answer? David, correct me for wrong. Richard Nixon wasn't indicted in Watergate, but Americans still look back on Watergate and think that was a scandal. You're not answering the question. I am. In my own way. You're answering it with a different one. And I think you're avoiding it because you know the truth. The truth of the matter is... I don't think being willfully ignorant of what happened is a defense of knowing something. I'm sorry. Look, I'm sorry I don't know every single thing before I interview the guy and I see that I'm clearly being like a, I don't know, punish for that or whatever. And you're not. And you're not being in. No, no, no, no. I think it's a,

listen, all criticism are fair. What I'm trying to tell you is there is definitely a separation between what you guys know and what the American people know. And when you only talk to other journalists, you guys are all aligned left or right about like what the facts of these things are. Hardly. But when you go to, maybe not. I would think Ben and I'm not aligned on this. Andrew, remember earlier when I was talking about the gestalt of the story, this is what I mean. Like the overall sense of the story in Russia is that there was an allegation. Okay. And again, the specifics were not quite this clean. But the takeaway for most Americans was that Donald Trump was coordinating with Russia to pervert the 2016 election. That was the takeaway. And it turned out that wasn't true.

I think the takeaway was. And so the idea that somebody won a Pulitzer for coverage of subsections of that broader narrative, a narrative which turned out not only not to be true, but that the American people then rejected wholesale in 2024 and re-elected the man, president of the United States. That is the reason why when Andrew says, yeah, I kind of get what you're saying. He's not wrong about that. Now, I mean, that's a different thing.

But to the point, I would like to know why Ben believed it wasn't true. I just want to know what. Because there is no evidence that Donald Trump directly coordinated with the Russian government in order to pervert the 2016 election. Which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which is not the source of the inquiry. The inquiry was about interference. Of course. That's what the, that's what those pieces were about.

And this is the problem with the TikTokification of information. It's definitely you got your head in your hand, but it's true. This is why you have to talk to people. But this is a thing. And I think this is maybe an advantage of it. You're doubting that I talk to people any less than you do. And I don't accept that. You definitely talk to them less than us.

No, that's just false. David. That's simply false. You're a hundred years old. You have five friends. Come on. Andrew. I'm teasing them. I'm teasing them.

Come on. I'm teasing. I'm not teasing. David, I'm not joking. No, no, no. The actual work of journalist is to go talk to people. I'm not insulting the work of journalists. No, but you are. And insulting David in that way you are. And I'm insulting David B. I was fun. You can kid around. That's fine. That's fine. But if we're being serious here, those stories were about a specific thing.

You can debate till the cows come home whether the Mueller report was interpreted by Barr in the proper way, all the rest. But those stories were solid. Okay. I'm not saying the stories weren't solid. This whole conversation is, at least that was started. by a distrust in media. And I think that, like, to what you were saying, right, the idea of what Americans think happened. I agree with that. There was an investigation and then no indictment. When I hear there's an investigation

and then no indictment, it means there's nothing there. You know what else we saw that at? January 6th. January 6th, you know, we were waiting for Merrick Garland to go out there and prosecute the case against Donald Trump. They were telling us it was a threat to democracy. It never manifested the way it should have been. So to me, it's like, did it really happen?

So then the question is, Well, I mean the difference is we're talking is how narratives can exist and what allows them to exist. And what allows them to exist is he can easily say on my interview, and I'm sure he said on plenty of interviews, it was a hoax, it was nothing here. And the Americans will believe him because, one, they're not going to look at every single article and they're not going to read the entire endarvin. They're not going to read the entire Mueller report, right? But to your earlier point about, I think it's the difference between sitting down with an interviewer and doing the work of journalism, which I think is, still incredibly essential. You just made the point that...

Both are important. But you just made the point that... So, Heggs have kicked out all the reporters, right? From the Pentagon. A horrible thing that he did, right? But they got the job done. But the Post got the story, right? And so the actual work of reporting that journalists need to do is essential. We all depend on

it. We all rely on it. But the idea that politicians are going to have to sit down with traditional media outlets to take tough questions. Like, that's going on. Can I point out something? The fact is, even after... Look, PBS had our federal funding cut, right? I'm glad you finally, I'm glad we finally brought that up. Even after that, we have Republicans regularly come on the show.

Why? Like, according to everything we've said here, that makes absolutely no sense. But the fact is, we actually still have a mixed audience. A third who identify is liberal, a third who identify as conservative, and a third who identify is independent. And those politicians feel like they can reach those people. Millions of people every night. We have five million subscribers on YouTube where the show streams live every day. Like, people who show up know that they can face the tough questions, right? They know that that journalism still matters.

Donald Trump won't come on the show. There's a standing invitation for the president, wherever you are, to come on the show. And he doesn't need to. So I wouldn't say all politicians are the same necessarily, but there is a choice. I don't expect. It's also not just partisan. I don't expect Andrew to do an interview the same way that I would. I listen to me for lots of different reasons, right?

But it's not for that. I agree with you. I think the thing about, like, for us, right, we're a comedy podcast. So this is really important. And like, when Donald Trump goes on SNL, we don't sit here and re-litigate. every sketch and be like, well, why didn't he address the Mueller probe in this sketch? The expectations I want you to have when anybody comes on our pod, whether it's Mamdani, Trump, where it's Casey Nicestat, whether it's a plethora of other guests that we've had

on, is the same, are we hanging, having fun, and are we humanizing our guests? I don't do Gacha journalism. You guys can do that. I think it's important. We don't do that. Regardless about got gotcha. I bring people on because I have an interest in them. Yeah. And I want to see the humanity on them. And you got a natural curiosity. And I think that that has been true when I had you guys on. Right. So Andrew, actually, remember, we actually got into a bit of a tete-a-tete a few weeks ago, and I think this is actually quite important. We're not all in the same industry.

Yes. We are broadly in the same industry, but we are not specifically in the same industry. And my critique was not of you. I should be. I should be. I should be in the audience, which can no longer tell the difference. Yeah. Right. And I don't think that we should be. No, so I don't think that's true. I don't think that is true. I think that this is it. So when it comes to, I'm going to get started. And then Ben, the last word, and then I'm going to have to jump in.

Is decent. I agree with that. But I'm saying that the responsibility when we talk about there's a plethora of sources, which of course is true. And the audience needs to be more discerning than ever, which of course is true. The first step toward discernment is acknowledging that what you are doing and what Andrew is doing, these are two different things and that the host themselves acknowledge that these are two different things. And if you're honest with your audience, and I think this is the biggest thing for all of us. I'm honest with my audience. I'm a conservative. Okay, my principles are there. I'm not lying about who I am. I think the reason people pick on legacy media is because legacy media tries to be all things. to all people by claiming that they do not have a viewpoint, that they stand somehow objectively outside the world and never bring their own viewpoints to bear, and so people object to that, which is why they turn to us. I'm going to say, just...

But this is actually the point of the journalism part of this. This is actually the point. I'm giving on you the last word. The literal last word. I'm that you got this. Look, the whole thing was about... Okay. Stop being distracted.

Don't listen to it. We better all agree. If this goes great, you're getting funding. Was that a pledge? I lied about the Mueller probe for you. Give her money. That's a verbal contract for a pledge from Andrew. Yes.

Omna. In the journalism of it all, to your point, I think you asked this question about personality and brands and the presenters and messengers themselves. And I think the messengers matter just as much as the message today. That's the media landscape that we're in. Everyone here is terrifically authentic about who they are. We know who we're hearing from when you do an interview. We know who you are in your background. You're a comedian.

You're one of the best. interviewers in the business, you're straight journalists. People know what they're getting when they tune into it. But the journalism at the heart of it, I don't think journalists are out there saying, we're better than everyone, we're neutral, we have some kind of monopoly on the truth. What we're doing is fundamentally different. We have a duty to look at things from different sides. We have a duty to remove whatever our personal biases are and we all have them from the conversation. We have a duty if we have a Republican on one day to have a Democrat on the next. And you don't have those same standards. It's not good or bad, but they're different

standards. And so in the practice of our journalism and what we do, we still, all of us at the table, hold ourselves to those standards. And I think that is what sets us apart. I just want to be honest and say we didn't even get to the death or the spiraling of cable news, which feels kind of meta. I'm sorry that that didn't happen. That was our third interruption, but there were so many interruptions. We have another 30 minutes. We have another 30 minutes. That we have to end and Who owns the Times? Who owns the Times? The Salzburgers and our shareholders, I want to thank you all.

You know you can keep going. We can keep talking. This is going to be the biggest interview. Salisburg. We have a hold. Solzberg. Solzberger. Come on.

I don't say E.R. David, Stephanie, Andrew, John, Ben, Charlemagne. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you for having us, Robert. Thank you. this sober conversation.

Yes. And thank you all for trying as hard as you could to contend with the various forces in this conversation. Of nature. Most fun dealbook panel, for sure. Yes. Take it away. All right?

Beautiful cheers. Thank you all. Thank you. Today's episode was produced by Rochelle Bonja, edited by Lexi Diao, and engineered by Chris Wood. It contains original music by Dan Powell. Our guests were booked by Julie Zahn, executive producer of the Deal Book Summit, and the interview was live produced by Lisa Tobin. Special thanks to Tate Towers Productions, the New York Times events team.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Sam Dolnick, Nina Lassum, Maddie Masiello, and Christina Josa. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Barrow. See you on Monday.