The Daily - The Lessons of 2016

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

The media’s coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign has come to be criticized for operating under three key assumptions: that Hillary Clinton was certain to be the Democratic nominee, that Donald Trump was unlikely to be the Republican nominee, and that once Clinton and Trump had become their party’s nominees, she would win.With voting for 2020 set to begin in Iowa on Monday, “The Daily” sat down with Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times, to discuss the lessons he — and the organization — learned from 2016. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: This is our guide to the 2020 election.We’ve sent reporters to every corner of the country and told them not to make any assumptions in this election cycle. Here are some of the most in-depth stories we’ve told in an effort to help the country understand itself.As part of a new approach to election coverage, The Times’s editorial board has re-examined how — and why — it makes presidential endorsements.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. In the time since the 2016 presidential campaign, the media's coverage of that race has come to be criticized for operating under three key assumptions. That Hillary Clinton's Democratic nomination was inevitable. She has no competition. That Donald Trump's Republican nomination was unlikely.

Could he actually win? I know you don't believe that. And that once Clinton and Trump had become their party's nominees, she would win. 100% chance. You still think she has 100% chance of winning the election? I do. 100% chance. You still think she has 100% chance of winning the election? I do.

Today, with voting for 2020 set to begin in Iowa on Monday, a conversation with the executive editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, about the lessons of 2016. It's Friday, January 31st. Okay. We're going to start. Welcome to the Daily Studio. I believe this is your... This is my first time here. First time here.

Thank you. Thank you. So, Dean, I actually want to start in a kind of unexpected place with a hiring announcement that The Times made a few years back. So I'm going to ask you to read this email. I'm delighted to announce that Amy Chozik will be joining our political team with a special focus reporting on Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family. with a special focus reporting on Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family. Amy is an unusually gifted reporter with unique ability to penetrate tight-lipped institutions and deliver dazzling and detailed stories from within. She is relentless and not easily intimidated.

Her coverage of News Corporation prompted Rupert Murdoch to call her personally to debate the lead in one story. And I want you to do one more thing, which is do me a favor and read the date on that announcement. July 2nd, 2013. Okay. Mm-hmm. So, what does that date mean to you? I mean, we have been criticized for assigning a reporter

to cover Hillary Clinton and the Clintons very early, long before. You knew what I was up to. Yeah, yeah, of course. And look, it's a legitimate question. It really is a legitimate question. Why? Because it's highly unusual for a news organization to, I'm not even, I don't even think she had announced at that point. It would be two years. Yes, right. So she hadn't announced. I think most people thought she would be a candidate, but she had not announced. And I get the criticism. So let me talk about it a little bit. The criticism is by focusing on her so early, we were anointing her the Democratic nominee,

that we were saying to the world that the New York Times looked at the field of possible candidates and thought Hillary Clinton was the one that we should start covering two years before she announces, long before anybody else announces. And secondly, we were inevitably setting ourselves up to write harder stories about her even before she declared. But mainly, I think the criticism is we were saying to the world, the New York Times thinks Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and probably the president. It created perhaps an era of inevitability. That's right. I thought a lot about that decision. I mean, I was the managing editor at the time, but that means I helped run the newsroom.

I actually don't think assigning somebody to her that early was a mistake. The Clinton power structure, it represented a certain arm of the democratic party in repose and also it was inevitable that hillary clinton would be a large player on the american stage for years to come so you don't you don't think it was a mistake yeah to put a reporter on hillary clinton so early essentially when she was a candidate waiting on the clinton's writ large is what would be my case. But I'm also conceding, by the way, that if I sat down here with a pen

and looked at stories at the time, I would edit more carefully to make sure that we did not give a sense of inevitability. But I don't think it was a mistake. But it sounds like you do acknowledge that such a move functions kind of psychologically as a signal of this is likely to be a frontrunner, this is likely to be a nominee, this is likely to be a frontrunner, this is likely to be a nominee,

this is likely to be first woman president. And in fact, by the way, all that was true. She did become the frontrunner. She did become the nominee. So I can make the argument, in fact, that it wasn't a crazy choice to select her. But I don't think... We're going to talk about cause and effect, right?

I mean, chicken and egg influence and outcome. Of course. And you mentioned, Dean, that if you had the opportunity, you might go back and re-edit a bit. Yes. And we're going to give you a little bit of opportunity to do that here.

I always love doing that. So two years later, in April of 2015, Amy Jozek writes the story saying that Clinton is indeed running for president. And she writes in the opening line, and I'm going to read this. Amy Jozek writes the story saying that Clinton is indeed running for president. And she writes in the opening line, and I'm going to read this. Ending two years of speculation and coy denials, Hillary Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the presidency for a second time, immediately establishing herself as the likely 2016 Democratic nominee. Now, we're actually kind of saying the thing in the story.

And it's interesting because I don't remember noticing anything about this at the time, but now it really does kind of jump out to me that we are writing the day she enters the race that she is the likely nominee. In retrospect, should we have written that a little bit differently? Yes, of course. It jumped right to horse race. By the way, I'm not blaming Amy for this.

Of course not. Yeah, look, if I had to edit that story all over again, I would have toned down the inevitability of it, of course. Yes, I would have. I would not make it seem like Hillary Clinton has announced and she's going to get it. It's got a little bit of a tone to that. I would do it differently. Sure.

So I want to compare the Clinton announcement to what happened when a challenger to Clinton entered the race that same month in 2015. I'm going to ask you to read, Dean, this story, the highlighted portion that our colleague Alan Rappaport wrote. I can guess this one. Go ahead. This is the highlighted portion. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, announced Thursday that he was running for president as a Democrat,

injecting a progressive voice into the contest and providing Hillary Rodham Clinton with her first official rival for the party's nomination. Keep going? Yes, please. Avoiding the fanfare that several Republicans have chosen so far when announcing their candidacies, Mr. Sanders issued a statement to supporters that laid out his goals for reducing income inequality, addressing climate change, and scaling back the influence of money in politics. Quote, after a year of travel, discussion, and dialogue, I have decided to be a candidate for the Democratic nomination

of president, Mr. Sanders said in an email early Thursday. Mr. Sanders' bid is considered a long shot, but his unflinching commitment to stances popular with the left, such as opposing foreign military interventions and reigning in big banks, could force Mrs. Clinton to address these issues more deeply. What do you think? I think that's a great lead. You do? Yeah, I think that's a great lead. I think that captures what happened. It captures the role he played. He did inject a progressive voice. He did have a dramatic impact on the election.

We quoted him. We talked about the role he would play. In four paragraphs, I read the whole rest of the story again. We talked about the issues that he cared about most. It feels to me a little less horse race. And when you say horse race, you mean emphasis on who's up, who's down? Yes, yes.

The second paragraph doesn't say he's up, he's down. And I think this is a, you know, if I'm re-editing, I think the story would change less. Okay, I agree with you to a point. But for me, it's that final sentence. Mr. Sanders' bid is considered a long shot. Yeah.

I'm lingering on that word, long shot. But his unflinching commitment to stances popular with the left could force Mrs. Clinton to address those issues more deeply. So that framing,

looking back now, it feels a little preemptive to call someone a long shot the day they enter the race. But I'm especially noticing that we characterize his candidacy as kind of, and I don't want to oversimplify it, but as existing in a way that would shape Hillary Clinton. So there's a criticism I think could naturally arise from that and a frustration in the Sanders world that the media is characterizing him as this thing that's going to needle her. this distant possibility that, let's be honest, doesn't really stand that much of a chance. And that does feel a little embedded in there. Yeah, well, let me say two things.

First, he was a long shot. And here, if I can pull back for a second and just talk about journalism. I mean, journalism is, by its very nature, is flawed. What do you mean? When I say flawed, it's also great. It's also, for my money, the most beautifully designed way of communication imaginable,

and there's nothing like it in the world. But there are built-in flaws. The flaws are you do have to tell people what to think. Most Americans had not heard of Bernie Sanders. Most Americans had heard of Hillary Clinton. And while I acknowledge that we went too far in making her seem inevitable, Bernie Sanders was a guy from a small state who was a democratic socialist, which is not a perspective that Americans have been known to embrace. I actually think it would have been sort of weird to not pull up and say, this guy's a long

shot. I do think we have an obligation. And I think we met it with this story because we also told you what he stood for, right? That's the main thing. And then you can decide whether you want him to be a long shot. I do think we have an obligation to pull back in the moment and say, here's our best sussing out of where we think this person stands. And I think that was accurate for Bernie Sanders. You're saying understanding, contemporaneous understandings are by definition ephemeral. Yes, that's right. But word choice and language are enduring, right? Sure they are.

And so couldn't we have used language like, Clinton has significant financial and political advantages, they might be hard to overcome, rather than, you know, a long shot. Yeah. See, I think, I mean, I guess I think the exercise of this, I'll go back to what I said about journalism is imperfect. You know, political reporting, probably more than any other kind of reporting, to be honest, because of the nature of the ups and downs, the horse race is, I suspect I would go back at every campaign and re-edit a bunch of stories. But I think we got to tell the readers in the moment, how should we think about this?

I think the reader picks up the New York Times and says, Bernie Sanders, I've never heard of him. How should I think about him? And I think this captures that. But if we can agree that the media's 2016 coverage reflected something of an assumption that Clinton was more or less inevitable. Oh, I agree with that. I wonder what you think the impact of that was. This is kind of a chicken and egg situation because I think part of what the Sanders campaign was so frustrated by and

angry about is that they thought this coverage and the assumptions they reflected were not just annoying. They weren't just frustrating. They thought that it had real world consequences, that in presenting his candidacy, intentionally or not, as less valid, the media perpetuated those assumptions and helped to make them a reality. And if the New York Times thought that Sanders was a long shot, a voter might think that too. If they thought Clinton was the likely nominee, a voter might think that too. Yeah. Well, part of my response to that would be we thought Jeb Bush was inevitable too. And he lasted about 15 minutes. You're right about Jeb. I was assigned to cover him. Yeah. And we thought, we just figured, okay, this is going to be Bush versus Clinton. This is going to be the old establishment. The power of a narrative. Yes.

establishment. The power of a narrative. Yes. You know, here, if I can pull back for a second, we probably should be very wary of language that seems to make somebody's run inevitable. Because I think what we learned in 2016 is that none of the inevitable candidates were inevitable. Were inevitable. Right. And some of the seemingly inevitable candidates, I can go way back. I mean, And some of the seemingly inevitable candidates, I can go way back. I mean, I can remember when the governor of Texas seemed like such a powerful candidate. I can't even remember his name. I can remember the year Rudy Giuliani seemed like a frontrunner and was on the cover of Time magazine. So we did learn something about inevitability, which is maybe that it's not so inevitable. It finally occurred to me you're talking about Rick Perry. Yes. Yes. Okay, so let's turn to the other side and the assumption the media is accused of having made on the Republican ledger.

Could you, Dean, read this from our friend and colleague Alex Burns in June of 2015? Just to highlight the points. Donald Trump, the garrulous real estate developer whose name is adorned apartment buildings, hotels, Trump brand neckties, and Trump brand steaks, announced on Tuesday his entry into the 2016 presidential race,

brandishing his wealth and fame as chief qualifications in an improbable quest for the Republican nomination. Drop down three or four paragraphs. It seems a remote prospect that Republicans stung in 2012 by the caricature of their nominee Mitt Romney as a pampered and politically tone-deaf financier would rebound by nominating a real estate magnate who has published books with titles such as Think Like a Billionaire and Midas Touch, Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich, and Why Most Don't. But Mr. Trump, who has never held elective office, may not be so easily confined to the

margins of the 2016 campaign. Thanks to his enormous media profile, he stands a good chance of qualifying for nationally televised debates, where his appetite for combat and skill at playing to the gallery could make him a powerfully disruptive presence. This is where there's an audio deficit, because, Dean, you had a huge grin on your face while you were reading the first part of that story. Yeah. Why? Oh, because it's exactly what everybody thought at the time. And, you know, I'm sitting here reading it while Donald Trump has been president for three years and is in the

middle of an impeachment trial. Look, nobody took Donald Trump seriously as a presidential candidate. I'll be the first to admit that. Of course, nobody thought. By the way, I don't think he thought he was going to win the nomination or win the presidency. So, you know, look, I mean, that captures the moment. The reality was Donald Trump was a long shot. I don't look back at that characterization from June 2015 and say it was a mistake. Alex even opens the possibility that he would at least be a disruptive force. Do you think it's fair to say that, like with Sanders, the media saw Trump's candidacy as unlikely,

but unlike with Sanders, there was a tremendous amount of attention paid to it, not out of a belief that Donald Trump could win, but more out of an interest in what I might call the kind of stunning unorthodoxy of the candidacy, the ways in which it broke all of our understandings of the rules. Yeah. I mean, I can answer that from the, I mean, I don't know if you want me to answer that about the media or about the New York Times. I think about the media writ large, of course, I think he was an irresistible television candidate.

He just was. He was funny. He was charming. I do think the press, and now I'm talking about the New York Times, while we didn't think he could win, that did not keep us from, if I can be frank, putting a lot of energy into digging into him as a candidate. into digging into him as a candidate. And to me, that's the test, right? We examined his real estate holdings extensively. We were the first to extensively, and you were part of it, actually, to examine allegations of his mistreatment of women. We broke the story that he barely paid taxes.

So this didn't keep us from covering him aggressively. We just didn't think he stood. We just didn't think he could win, right? And we actually thought it was even less likely he would win because of the scrutiny he was getting. I mean, I remember sitting in the newsroom when we had just written the stories, you and Megan had just written the stories about him and his treatment of women, which I thought was an important and devastating and early story. And then in comes the Access Hollywood tape. And I remember thinking, this is over. In my head, I was already rearranging the political coverage. Okay, well, he's out. That's honest.

Yeah. Oh, no. At the moment of the Access Hollywood tape, I thought, how could he win? How could he possibly win? So that's about us not really understanding the voters. So here is the, I almost think that the Sanders and the Trump coverage is all of a piece. I think that we, and I don't think this is just the New York Times, but I'm going to wear the hat for the New York Times. I think that the combination of post-economic crisis and a sense that there were parts of America that were still shaken by the economic crisis, I think a lot of Americans, more Americans than we understood at

the time, were rattled and were looking for something dramatic. And that desire for something dramatic was reflected in the rise of Bernie Sanders, and it was certainly reflected in the rise of Donald Trump. Certainly reflected in the fact that Hillary Clinton came across, rolled onto the landscape, as did Jeb Bush, by the way, as names that had been looming on the American political scene for what seemed like forever, which fairly or unfairly made them seem like part of the elite. And I don't think we, you know, I don't think anybody quite got it. I wonder how much you think all of what we're

talking about, the assumptions, not understanding the voters, how much that has to do with our sources. I know as a political reporter, how much I used to call figures within the party establishment, operatives, party leaders, and those become important sources in how you think about the party and the candidate. And of course, we know now that the Democratic establishment clearly favored Clinton over Sanders. He wasn't independent, he wasn't really a member of the Democratic Party, and they didn't want him to win. And we know that the Republican establishment was horrified at the idea of Donald Trump being their nominee. And looking back, I think on some level, we took the establishment as kind of experts on their party's candidates and kind of a barometer of the way people in the party felt when in fact they have their own motivations, right? And they weren't necessarily reflecting what voters wanted. And maybe the media allowed them to have outsized influence on the way we understood the situation. What do you think of that?

I think that's true. Coupled with we weren't out in the country enough. So there came a moment where I would say that evidence on the ground started to contradict the assumptions that we're talking about here on both sides. And that was once the voting actually got underway in the primaries. Sanders overwhelmingly won New Hampshire by a margin that really surprised us. Trump began sweeping the primaries. Won New Hampshire, then South Carolina, then Nevada. Do you think that the newsroom adequately responded to what was happening at that point on the ground? Um, yes and no. Yes, the newsroom, if we didn't take Donald Trump seriously as a candidate beforehand and dig into him, as I recall, I had more people digging into him at that point. You know, suddenly he was a serious person. And my recollection is we turned up the volume on him considerably and digging into his business dealings, his casinos, his losses, his finances. So I do think we adjusted on him. Do I think we adjusted on Bernie Sanders? I mean, it certainly felt at that moment,

I don't remember specifics, it certainly felt at that moment that both these guys were being taken more seriously. Yes. I'm not pulling back from my idea that we didn't quite have a finger on the country, but I do think we started treating them more seriously. Yes. And you're leaving open the possibility that perhaps when it came to Bernie Sanders, we weren't as nimble as we were with Trump. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I'd have to stew in it a little bit,

but I think that's probably true. I mean, I think we didn't, we were writing about the chinks in Hillary Clinton's armor. Again, the framing of her. Yeah. Well, the framing of, by the way, for the record, that framing was right. She was the front runner. She had all the money.

She had the machine. She ultimately won the nomination. She also won the popular vote. had the machine, she ultimately won the nomination. She also won the popular vote. So when Sanders rose, it was because of two things, obviously, right? The country was a little more radically inclined than we thought, but it also meant that Hillary Clinton wasn't quite the perfect candidate that we thought. So I do think we started looking harder at that moment at the chinks in her armor. Sure. Right. Is it fair to say we turned up the volume, to use your word, on covering the candidates at this phase, but not the country, the people voting for them? Yes. We hadn't learned

that lesson yet. Yes, I think that's right. I think that's the biggest, my biggest self-criticism, which is that, of course, we cover the country. You'll see voter stories. But I don't think we quite, we did not dig in and say, why is this country pushing ahead with these two very, you know, unusual candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders? I don't think we quite understood that. Well, so I've been speaking with some of our colleagues ahead of this conversation, anticipating it, surreptitiously reaching out. I like the names and salaries. I know you were kidding. I am kidding.

Of course. And one of the observations that some of them had is that stories about the voters and the country were being written, as you suggested. But they were not elevated in the same way that the candidate stories were. That's absolutely correct. That's absolutely correct. That's the tangible evidence of what I'm conceding, what I'm saying. There were reporters, this is not an, I mean, from where I sit, all roads lead to the executive editor, right? No, there were reporters out in the country were writing stories about what was going on in the country, but we didn't elevate them and say, wait a minute, there's something powerful going on here. We didn't see that. So let's talk about the final assumption.

Yeah. What happens once Clinton secures a nomination, Democratic nomination, and Trump gets the Republican nomination? Which is the assumption that Clinton will win and she will likely win big. And here, Dean, is where I want to reference not our writing, but our podcasting. This also marks the moment where the Times created an audio department. Thank you. And I came on three months before the election

to host a little podcast called The Run-Up. And our first ever episode in August 2016 was called, quote, Landslide. And let's just say that it was not about the potential prospect of a Donald Trump landslide. So mea culpa from this side of the table. What do you think was going on here once we reached this moment? Clinton nominee, Trump nominee. Why had we not learned from the primary that Trump was not to be underestimated? Yeah. You know, it sure looked like he was going to lose.

He was a deeply flawed candidate. I had reporters during the buildup to the election with Mitch McConnell and others, and I was calling them up all the time. The establishment. And McConnell, all of them were saying, it sure looks like he's going to lose. The question is by how much. We bought into that. Some of that was calling. It's everything we're talking about.

It's calling the experts. It was, you know, not having a handle on the country. All that stuff came together in those last days. So I want to talk for just a quick second about the Clinton emails in this context. The emails that were stolen by Russia and disseminated on WikiLeaks. Do you think that the assumption that you have very clearly laid out here, that she was going to be the next president, influenced the coverage of her when we got those emails? Because we made the decision to get those emails. We didn't have to publish them. Yeah. People forget there were big stories in those emails.

There were big stories. Important stories in those emails. There were important stories. There were less important stories. I remember I looked up a couple days ago one story that was just basically highlights to the sexiest tidbits. Yeah. No, but there were stories about the turmoil in her campaign, her speeches. There were real stories. Yes, there was. But were we applying perhaps more scrutiny to her campaign because we were covering her innocence as if she were the president and waiting, and we wanted to apply the kind of scrutiny that you would to such a person? No. I think if we had gotten, I mean,

I think if we had gotten, like I ran our coverage of WikiLeaks when I was the Washington bureau chief. I ran our coverage of the Snowden tapes. We go into that stuff really carefully, but you have to report the newsworthy stuff to find. Why? There are going to be people listening to this who ask the question. I get it. Russia, because now we know. Yeah, well, first off, let's remember, we didn't know Russia. We knew they were ill-gotten. Yeah. So here't know Russia. We knew they were ill-gotten.

Yeah. So here's, of course we knew they were ill-gotten. By the way, the original WikiLeaks documents years before, which led to the Arab Spring, were also ill-gotten. The Snowden tapes were also ill-gotten, the Snowden documents. Two of those relate to questions of national security and national interest. One to a candidate's inner workings and seem much more designed to inflict political national security and national interest. One, to a candidate's inner workings and seem much more designed to inflict political damage. That's right. So here's my view, and I understand it may not be popular. When journalists learn things that we think are

important, and I think some of the stuff about the Hillary Clinton campaign were important, Hillary Clinton campaign were important. When we learn important things, to not publish is a political act. It's not a journalistic act. Abstention becomes a form of... When you learn something, there should not be a whole lot that we learn about important stories

that we don't publish. My view is that publishing is journalism, not publishing is political balancing. I think, and I hear the next question because I've gotten it. The next big document dump comes in about something, anything. I've even seen other journalists say, I hope we understand that we can't publish that stuff. No, I will read it. We will evaluate it. We will look at it in the new context that we understand, which is Russia is actively trying to influence American elections. That will be part of the calculation. But the calculation cannot be, we're just not going to publish because that would screw up American politics.

You know, at that point, I will go into business as like a campaign advisor to people and not as a journalist. If such a leak as happened in 2016 happens this time around, and if we believe that it is an act of a foreign government attempting to influence our election, as it turned out to be in 2016. Will we apply a different standard to reporting on stolen materials? We will have, we will take all of these things into account in debate. So if I walk back to my office today and there's a batch of documents that show, you know, all kinds of stuff about Donald Trump or all kinds of stuff about Joe Biden, et cetera, et cetera. We will know in the back of our minds that we're being manipulated, which is going to raise the bar a little bit, right? If it's just a little bit of stuff about candidate X and how he doesn't like his campaign manager, that doesn't raise the bar past we're being manipulated. If it's the tax returns of a candidate and it's really important and compelling and we're being manipulated, my view is we have to publish it and say we're

being manipulated. So we would use news judgment. If it's goofy, silly stuff where we're clearly being manipulated to hurt Hunter Biden in a baseless investigation. Less interesting. Taxes of a presidential candidate. More interesting. More interesting. And I'm sure the debate will be more fierce than it was in 2016. But in the end, if there is information that the American public should know, we'll publish it. And that's what we do.

So, Dean, at long last, let's go to election night, 2016. What do you remember about that night? I remember, you know, shock. I remember presiding over the, I don't know if you remember this, if you were there, presiding over the meeting two days before the election. And they were showing us the Hillary Clinton wins front page. And I said, not because I foresaw the future, but because executive editors think about all possibilities of screw ups. I said, do we have a Trump wins one? It was as if I had gotten up and started, you know, telling knock-knock jokes in the middle of the meeting. Everybody just sort of chuckled. And I ordered one up. I'm not sure it was ever done. It was, we'll get to that. It was done. It was done by Matt Fleckenheimer.

And it was nobody, but the room was like, oh my God. It was like, do we have to humor this guy? So I can confirm your memory that we did not have a full package of Trump winning stories ready. We had a relatively short story. And beyond that, I think 500 or so words, there was virtually nothing else. And the reason I know this intimately is because when Trump started to pull ahead and it became clear he might win, I was drawn into turning that 500-word story along with Matt Flackenheimer into what would become the next day's almost 2,000-word story, which was kind of a brand new front-page story. And the online headline was, quote, Donald Trump is elected president in a stunning repudiation of the establishment. And in the confusion of that moment, and I'm not upset about it at all, Matt and my byline did not show up on the story. The Clinton victory authors got the byline.

Oh, wow. Even though we wrote the story. Wow. I didn't know. It's okay. Said newspapers were flawed. But it felt in that moment like our assumptions had truly guided us all the way to the final moments of election night. And then they had been burst. Yeah, of course.

That's true. You know, I think if I can say one thing about journalism, though, we do have a tendency to beat ourselves up a little bit too much. Yes, I don't think we had a handle on the turmoil in the country. Something surprising and shocking happened with the election of Donald Trump. And it would be a little bit too narcissistic to, I'm not talking about your questions, I'm talking about the exercise of, it's a little narcissistic for my taste to spend forever beating ourselves up over it. It was a very unlikely, unlike any other presidential candidate in my lifetime and probably forever, who walked in and captured the country at a particular moment. And some things you can anticipate, but, you know, there are 300 million Americans. Some things you can't anticipate.

You use the word narcissistic, and I'm not judging that. Yeah. But I think what we're up to here is an exercise in explaining to the country what we've learned. Oh, of course. Because, of course, it's, and I know you believe this, but I'm just going to articulate it. It's no small thing. Yeah.

And the implications are still playing out. Oh, of course. And they've changed journalism. And that election changed journalism. It was historic in a lot of ways. I also think when I say narcissistic, I'm just saying there's a fine line between understanding it and also understanding that something giant happened.

And while we should change our rules to understand it, to keep from missing a story like that in the future, I don't think we should go into it with the assumption that all of our rules are wrong. That's all I mean. We'll be right back. Dean, from our conversation, it feels clear that the source of these assumptions was, in very large part, a kind of institutional decision to cover the candidates so heavily and to not cover as much

or as prominently the country. So with that in mind, what do you think the biggest changes have been to the coverage this time around, 2020? So we've done a whole series of stories from out in the country. We've brought in people from the business staff to go out into the country to talk about the effects of the economy.

We are about to announce a plan to put writers in seven or eight states that we're usually not in. We have added to our regular political staff a religion writer, because I think that religion, and to be frank, abortion, are currents that I don't think we quite had a handle on.

And we give huge play now to stories about the anxiety in the country. I think if you read the New York Times right now, you read a New York Times that reflects a country that's in some turmoil, a country that's divided much more than we understood in 2016. We have doubled the number of people who cover the Internet. We used to cover the Internet as a series of companies vying for control. Rather than a force that is affecting the country's mood and its political beliefs as

profoundly as anything. That's right. It's a dramatically different setup. And I don't think we've labeled any, the campaigns would disagree, but I don't think we've made anybody feel like the inevitable candidate. Or the long shot. Or the long shot. I am extremely proud of where our coverage is right now and nobody's even voted yet. I'm also mindful that, like politics, journalism can feel a little bit like a pendulum swinging side to side. And I wonder if there's a danger of over-correction here, by which I mean over-coverage of basically what's known as the Trump base in the United States. After 2016, there was an understandable emphasis on understanding Trump voters. Yeah.

Do you see any risk in giving those voters and those Trump allies and even the president himself too much of a platform in pursuit of that understanding and over-representing their perspective and maybe as a result, missing the many other perspectives that are out there in the process? I don't. Not as long as you write about the other perspectives. Not as long as you write about, you know, black people who are anxious about Trump and love Joe Biden. I don't. Look, one of the greatest puzzles of 2016 remains a great puzzle. Why did millions and millions of Americans vote for a guy who's such an unusual candidate? Why did people who are

very religious vote for a guy who's been married three times, I think? Those puzzles are reporting targets. And I know that every time we go out and we ask people questions about that to try to understand it, people

roll their eyes and say, why are you going to talk to those people? Because understanding how those people voted and how they will vote in the future is a big and important thing. And to dismiss them as a group of, you know, 35, 40 percent of Americans, it's a hell of a thing to dismiss, who should not be in our pages. that's not journalistic to me. You know, Dean, you're bringing me to one of the biggest questions I have about overcorrecting or oversimplifying what we learned in 2016, which is there's justifiably a very significant focus on the economic grievances, the white working class, you know, for example,

economic grievances, the white working class, you know, for example, Midwestern voter. We tell that story a lot. But moderate voters may be driven as much by these questions of culture and morality and identity as much as anything in the economy, right? There may be Democrats who support universal health care and taxing the rich, but they oppose open borders. They oppose abortion. Yeah. They oppose the culture of political correctness.

And it's very challenging to capture that. Yeah. Do you think that we're capturing that? I do. I think we are capturing it. We have done much more. I want to keep doing more. I think that there are so, so it's always funny for me to be called, I always feel weird being called a member of the political elite.

You know, I'm a black guy who grew up in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans in a religious Catholic family. Two weekends ago, I went to a fundraiser for my high school back in New Orleans, St. Augustine's. And I sat next to a woman, a black woman. Everybody was black there. And she said to me, you know, I don't like Donald Trump. I think he's a racist, but I will tell you, I'm finding it really hard to vote for the Democrats, but I'm going to vote for one. And she said, I grew up believing abortion was a sin. And it is really hard for me to vote for somebody who's going to support abortion. And I was sitting there and I was thinking, my God, this is the way my mother felt.

Abortion is a sin. I can't vote for somebody who feels otherwise. So I think that there's a big chunk of America, you know, for whom that's a big deal. Cultural issues. Cultural issues are a big deal. So continuing a bit more on the subject of the potential for overcorrection, when efforts are made to fairly cover this president, his voters, his allies, the Times has sometimes been accused of engaging in what's called both-sidism. I'm sure you're familiar with this phrase.

This tendency to represent both sides of a debate as equal or both sides as having contributed equally to something. And there was a story a couple weeks ago about the impeachment inquiry that was criticized for this. And I read it very carefully. And among the lines people zeroed in on was this. Throughout the committee's debate, the lawmakers from the two parties

could not even agree on the basic set of facts in front of them the criticism was there can only be one set of facts so yeah lay them out another point in the article it read quote they called each other liars and demagogues and accused each other of being desperate and unfair the criticism of that is that we can tell who is lying or who is not lying based on the testimony and the evidence that we have, but the story didn't do that. It suggested both sides had legitimate equal cases. Are stories like that a kind of both-side-ism abdication? So I'm going to stick my neck out here, and I'm going to first offer what I think of as a spirited defense for sophisticated objectivity.

I think that we're at a moment where people very much want us to take sides. And I don't think that's the right stance for the New York Times. I do think about the person who picks up his paper in the morning and just wants to know what happened. I do think about the person who picks up his paper in the morning and just wants to know what happened. I do think that we have an obligation to that person. And I do fear that we're sort of pretending that we don't have that obligation. I do think that American journalism has a tendency to go for the easy version of what I call sophisticated, true objectivity. And the easy version is, I'm writing my Syrian deadline.

Okay, this guy said this, this guy said that. I'm putting them together. You decide. That's not what I mean when I say sophisticated true objectivity is a goal. True objectivity is you listen, you're empathetic. If you hear stuff you disagree with, but it's factual and it's worth people hearing, you write about it. Does the New York Times and every news organization in producing tons of stories on deadline fall into on the one hand, on the other hand? Absolutely. Because, you know, when you cover trial and when you cover some kinds of stories, that's an okay formula. It's not the best formula for covering Donald Trump in the impeachment trial. And I do think that both siderism and too easily saying on the one hand, on the other hand, is not healthy for the discussion that we're having. When you talk about people wanting us to pick a side, who are you talking about?

Can you explain that a little bit more? Look, I mean, there are different gradations. Look, many of our readers hate Donald Trump and want us to join the opposition to Donald Trump, right? Well, I'm not going to do that. And then there are people who disagree, understandably, with what I described as a sophisticated objectivity. There are people on our staff who disagree with that as a goal. I get that. I really do. That premise of sophisticated objectivity and independence, we should always debate it and question it.

But I think that that view, that in my mind, I think of the reader who just wants to pick up his paper in the morning and know what the hell happened. I'm beholden to that reader. And I feel obligated to tell that reader what happened. But where do you draw the line between

picking a side and holding truth to power? Because at this point, I think this is important, there's a well-documented pattern of President Trump, some of his allies and supporters, denying established facts, spreading misinformation, embracing conspiracy theories. And frankly, and this is uncomfortable to say, it was not easy to kind of embrace this reality over time as a reporter. It's against our nature. Many of them have a different relationship

to the truth than the Democrats and the Democratic Party. And do you think our journalism has sufficiently adjusted to that reality? And how central should that understanding and that reality be to our 2020 coverage? Yeah, I do, actually. I mean, I just... Do you agree with that? Oh, do I agree with that?

Characterization of the pattern. Yes, yes, yes. Of the way the truth is being handled by the two parties. Yes, yes. I think it's less the parties, it's more Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump has attacked all of, well, he's supported by the parties.

But if you pulled, but. I think of Republican senators out there saying what they're saying. Okay, yes. And climate change. But I think Donald Trump is the extreme version of that. Donald Trump has made it his business to attack all of the independent arbiters of fact. And I think that you will find in the pages of the New York Times very powerful reporting that illustrates that.

What we haven't done, which some people want us to do, is to say repeatedly he's a liar. That's the language, the word. But the reporting, there's no question we have done that. Or racist. Yeah. That's another question we have done that. Or racist. Yeah. Yes. That's another thing that people have quite literally asked you to do. Yes. I mean, there was a big debate in our newsroom and outside our newsroom

about whether the New York Times should use the word racist. And I accept disagreement. My view is the most powerful writing lets the person talk, lets the person say what he has to say, and it is usually so evident that what the person has to say is racist or anti-Semitic that to actually get in the way and say it yourself is less powerful. The one thing I will do is I will pull a little bit of rank. There's a black guy who grew up in the South in the 1960s I'll pull a little bit of rank. There's a black guy who grew up in the South in the 1960s who has been actually literally called some of the names. The most powerful way to show these things

is to actually just show them. The best piece of writing I've read about a racist community was Joseph Lelyveld's portrait of Philadelphia, Mississippi in the 1960s. This is your predecessor and your mentor. Predecessor and mentor. And his story about Philadelphia, Mississippi, he begins with a guy on the front porch essentially saying,

this is all bull. We're not racist here in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And an old black guy walks by and he calls him boy. If that story had led with Philadelphia, Mississippi is filled with racists, I wouldn't have read the second paragraph. You wouldn't be remembering it. I wouldn't be remembering. It was letting people talk, showing what they had to say.

And you put that paper down and said, man, that is a portrait of a racist community. And to me, that is just more powerful. So maybe you just answered this, but how do you cover the reality of our president and the Republican Party who supports him repeatedly acting deceptively, some people might call it lying, spreading disinformation without appearing to ignore or disparage the very voters who embraced him in 2016, continue to embrace him now, suggesting that we have picked aside? Yeah, this is hard. I will acknowledge this is hard. First off, you report the heck out of what they say and when they say something that's false.

I mean, we've done two or three reconstructs of what happened with the U.S. attack on the Iranian general that shows that some of the descriptions were false. That's reporting. That's not like labeling and cheap analysis. That's deep reporting, a lot of reporters. That's my answer to how we cover Donald Trump.

Let somebody else call it a lie. Let somebody else call it a lie. The world today is filled with pundits. The world today is filled with people who can use labels. The world today has very few institutions that can go out and do the reporting independently, powerfully, and that's what I want to do. And then in terms of his voters,

I think you show up. There's nothing more powerful to convince somebody that you want to listen than showing up. You don't do the cliche diner stories, but you go talk to them. You understand their world and you listen empathetically.

That does not mean giving voice to racists. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the big unanswered question of 2016 for all of our hand-wringing and all the discussion is why did so many millions of Americans vote for this very unusual candidate? I don't think anybody has fully answered it. I think one of our goals should be to come as close as we can. It occurs to me that getting the coverage right on these questions we've been talking about,

both side of some, how much to emphasize cultural issues, it feels especially critical this time because of the impact that 2016 had on voters. That in having a significant portion of the electorate share the assumptions of the media that we've been talking about, that Clinton would win,

Sanders and Trump wouldn't, that when that all flipped on its head, the electorate was left feeling like they didn't really understand and maybe still don't understand what made for a winning candidate. Yeah, and by the way, as I've been saying, we don't fully understand it, right?

So do we recognize in light of what happened in 2016 about the way assumptions kind of coursed through our veins, influenced our coverage, that we now have an electorate that is trying to sort through the results of that, trying to make sense of it? And does that create a special obligation to get it as right as possible, to show a certain amount of restraint, to show a tremendous amount of care and nuance? Yes. I think there's a particular obligation we have to not jump to conclusions, to not make people inevitable, and to hold back and war against the assumptions of the political class, right? The political class that said Trump couldn't win and Hillary Clinton couldn't be beat. Yes, I think we have an obligation to guard against drawing those conclusions too quickly. I do think we have to keep reminding ourselves that what happened in 2016 was a remarkable, a remarkable upset and moment. But yes, I think we have an obligation

not to jump to conclusions and not to declare anybody inevitable. I want you to know that on Monday, we here are launching a new show, The Field, that is really about all of this, the lessons of 2016. And each week we're going to be going somewhere new in the country with a political reporter from the Times and with national reporters from the Times to talk to people and to listen to do it in your words,

empathetically, and to do our part to make sure that we are not guided by assumptions. That's great. That's terrific. That feels like an important contribution to not only our coverage but coverage of American politics. That's great. That's terrific. That feels like an important contribution to not only our coverage, but coverage of American politics. That's great.

And if you haven't figured it out yet, you're kicking off that conversation. Well, that's an honor. That we're having with the country. It's a good conversation to have. I want to thank you very much. Thank you. Not just for being here,

but for being here and being very candid. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. We appreciate it. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Late Thursday night, We'll be right back. calling such witnesses. Alexander's announcement could be a fatal blow to Democratic hopes of calling witnesses like former National Security Advisor John Bolton,

who appears to have damning testimony against President Trump. Just two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, say they will vote for witnesses. But Democrats need the support of four Republican senators. If no witnesses are called, the trial could be over in a matter of days.

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