The Dispatch Podcast - AG Sulzberger on NYT, Objectivity, and Media Bias

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

The New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger joins Steve Hayes and Sarah Isgur in a special interview recorded from The Times' building in New York. They discuss Sulzberger's recent CJR piece on objectivity in journalism (and its discontents), digging into the historically hostile relationship between right wing media and The Times, the challenges of fighting "bias" in news, and the possible paths to rebuilding public trust in institutional journalism. Show Notes: -A.G Sulzberger's article for the Colombia Journalism Review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes. And we've got a special interview today to share with you with A.G. Soltzberger, the publisher of the New York Times. And we just thought we'd talk for a few minutes before we hop into the interview. Steve, why was this going to be an interesting interview for you heading into it? Well, I mean, I spent so much of my time thinking about the business of journalism, talking about the business of journalism, trying to come up with ways to make the

to make good journalism profitable. And what we've seen in the time that A.G. Salsberger has been published from the New York Times is that he's done it. He's been an innovator. I mean, they've taken a new course in how they're monetizing journalism at the Times, and they've made it very successful. Ten million digital subscribers these days. We're close. We're right behind them, but we're not quite there. So I'd say that's the reason number one.

And then number two, you know, as somebody who's been a New York Times reader with a bit of a love-hate relationship with the New York Times, I was very interested in getting into some of the ideological dimensions of the Times reporting and more broadly why there is this crisis of confidence in the media today and what role the New York Times plays in it. So that was, I think, those was kind of the ways that I was approaching the conversation. Sarah, what about you? Well, you know, he'd written this 12,000 word opus in the Columbia Journalism Review about the importance of, he refers to it as independent journalism. But a lot of folks use the term objective journalism. And there's been a lot of pushback from journalists in sort of this modern era of journalism that after 70, 90 years, you know, however you want to think about this era of journalism, that the premise of objectivity or. independence probably should be, you know, tossed in the trash, that everyone has biases. Activist journalists are good things and that we should stop pretending.

And this is an argument that has been made by Leonard Downey in the Washington Post, West Lowry, the New York Times. I mean, these are real people who I take seriously. And yet here's the publisher of the New York Times saying, no, the way that we've been trying to do this is really important and here's why. And I think that's a conversation worth exploring too. But of course, I find your point about really the trust in media being such a partisan issue these days and falling so deeply along partisan lines to be interesting, but also a real problem. And obviously both of us went into this curious if he thought it was a real problem.

Yeah, it's a big challenge. And, you know, in the course, of this interview, I didn't want to stop and run through a raft of numbers to give people, to give our listeners sort of all of the background and sort of demonstrate exactly how significant the problem is. So I sort of mentioned the numbers in passing and we had a conversation about them because Salzberger refers to this crisis in journalism, in his Columbia Journalism Review essay, but for the purposes of setting up, you know, the interview with some background, let me just run through a few of them because I think they're fascinating and they make a very interesting point, and they sort of set up the

discussion nicely. Gallup does a poll and has been doing a poll since the mid or early 1970s really on Americans' confidence in media. And the most recent version of that poll had what I think were basically anybody who works in journalism, much less lives in the United States, It's some shocking results. 34% of Americans trust the media to report the news fully, fairly, and accurately. 7% of that 34% have a great deal of trust. 27% say they have a fair amount of trust. Meanwhile, 28% say they don't have much confidence in the media, a fair amount of trust in the media.

and 38% say they have no trust in the media at all. So more respondents say they have no trust at all than say they have a combined great deal or fair amount of trust. Not good. In the 1970s, the mid-1970s, when Gallup first asked him, started asking these questions, 72% of Americans had a great deal, fair amount of confidence, compared to just 26% who had little to none.

So I wanted to ask him in fact, how did we get there? because, as I said, there's been this big discussion about the crisis in competence and media. I think that the discussion that we've had has been somewhat misleading because it's not a broad lack of confidence in the media. It's a partisan lack of confidence in the media. If you look at the numbers today, 57% of Republicans say they have no confidence in the media. and 29% say they don't have much. Just 14% of Republicans say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence.

Meanwhile, 70% of Democrats say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence. For independence, 27% say a great deal or fair amount. 73% say none or a little. That's the picture today. what we see is Republicans have basically no confidence in the media to tell them the truth. Democrats have a high degree of confidence in the media to tell them the truth. And as I suggested in the mid-1970s, when Gallup first started asking these questions, there was very little partisan difference.

75% of Democrats said a great deal of fair amount of confidence, 63% of Republicans. So as you'll hear, we go into some detail with Sulzberger about these findings and what they mean and what role in New York Times and other outlets have had. All right. So we spent over an hour talking to him. What were your biggest takeaways? What should people be listening for that you found most interesting? Yeah. I mean, I think, I hope one of the things people see is that this was a good faith discussion among people who,

you know, in the broadest sense, want the same thing. You know, we believe in pursuing the truth and reporting facts. And I think the New York Times does as well. I can't remember if I said it in the course of our conversation in New York. But, you know, I'm a daily reader of the New York Times. I encourage our staff to read the New York Times. I encourage our members at the dispatch to read the New York Times. I think it is the greatest newspaper in the world.

but my frustration with the Times sometimes is that it is definitely a liberal paper and it has been a liberal paper and I think sometimes there's there's summing the scale in ways that it shouldn't be befitting of the greatest paper in the country what we did was talk about that and I think he gave some some very good answers he was pretty he was pretty sharp he engaged in most of our questions he parried a few but I think he gave some very good answers he was pretty he was pretty sharp he engaged in most of our questions he parried a few but I come out on the other side of it, knowing a lot more about the Times, having had the opportunity to question him on the essay that he wrote in Columbia Journal's Review, which I thought was a very good essay. So I think people will listen to a good faith discussion about the big questions in journalism. What about you? I think my biggest question coming away from this was how much he was actually reflecting the culture of the New York Times as it is. or the culture of the New York Times as he wishes it were. And that's an impossible thing for him to answer

because he's one guy on top of a huge organization where every individual is bringing their own cultural contribution into that organization. Though I do believe in corporate culture and leadership and all of those things, you can't turn a ship on a dime. And so as the culture of journalism shifts, here is this guy saying this is what I believe our organization should do.

How much will he be able to inculcate that into his organization? So I find his approach and philosophy fascinating. I'm so glad he gave us this time. But I also think that doesn't necessarily mean that is the culture of the New York Times currently as a whole. So that's what I think is most interesting to listen for in this hour plus that we had with him. And hey, before you jump in, if you like this kind of thing, if you want us to do more of it, consider becoming a member of the dispatch and help us fund doing more ambitious interviews like this. We appreciate y'all. Enjoy.

Let's dive right in. Thank you so much for being with. us today we are at the new york times headquarters in new york city and uh incredible building beautiful you've been here uh 15 years or so i think that's about right um we'd already moved before i joined the times uh you're sort of in the heart of tourism area here in new york city as well uh you know the tg i fridays and the red lobster it is it is a lot that doesn't make the commute any easier i wanted to start by asking What is your metric of success? For the institution, for my role.

I was actually curious how you'd answer it if I didn't specify as the truth. Okay. All right. Let me start with for my role. I am the sixth member of my family, the service publisher of the New York Times. And as you can imagine, you know, stepping in after 125 years, you know, stewardship of the institution. I thought a lot about what success would look like, particularly in such a dramatically complicated environment. When I was named, it was not entirely clear

whether we'd be able to find a sustainable business model to keep the lights on. Just a few weeks after I was named, Donald Trump's elected, and we fully start to process how polarized this country has become. And then three years later, you know, and then three years later, you of the pandemic, adding a whole other set of challenges. So anyway, so it's been a really, you know, challenging and complicated period. The way I think about success, it's pretty simple, which is, can I hand off this institution in stronger shape than it was handed to me? You know, one of the things that makes the institution, you know, the New York Times special,

is that we do think over long time periods and that we think over the course of a generation. And I actually find that a really exciting, animating the thought because it really gives you, it helps you frame what are the challenges my generation is going to have. You know, I'm happy to talk about those. You know, one of the main ones is the thing I've been writing and talking about, which is ensuring the commitment, you know, this institution's continued commitment to its model of independent journalism, what we call, you know, without fear of favor. We'll get into so much of that. I think we want to talk a lot about that. But before we do, so your metric of success, that makes a lot of sense. Another pretty open into question, what do you do all day? What is your job? Yeah, it's not a self-explanatory title publisher, right? Especially in an institution that has an executive editor who has broad autonomy to run the news report. Also an institution that has a CEO who has brought autonomy to run the business. But I suspect my days aren't entirely. familiar to either of you, a lot of it's on strategy, a lot of it is on the challenge of the

moment, right? So in a moment like now, you can imagine I'm thinking a lot about AI, you know, among many other things. And then at the end of the day, a lot of it's about people, right? So, you know, making sure that the leadership team is strong and united, making sure that we have the right people at all levels of the organization. The advantage of my role, role as I see it is no matter how good and forward-looking your editor is, it's really hard for them not to fixate on today's news. And no matter how good and forward-looking your CEO is, it's really hard for them not to fixate on this year's budget and this quarter's earnings. And, you know, one of the things that I can add is just a longer view. You know, someone's

staring deeper into the horizon. And that's where a lot of my energy goes. Are you in the office every day? Are these mostly meetings? Is there, you know, a meditation period where AG gets to sit and think his, you know, big thoughts about what next five years look like? Like literally, what is your day? Sarah, you're looking at me when you do that. Like, I have meditation periods. Just to be clear, I don't have those. You're all the things. You're all three jobs. Yeah. So I'm in the office most days in meetings more often than I would care to be like most executives. I do try to take time to think. Honestly, it's something I learned as a reporter. I spent most of my career as a reporter, I should say, you know, superpower of every reporter is the ability to ask questions

of people who know more than you. And so for me, a big part of my job is making sure that I'm constantly reporting, you know, reporting on the industry, the broader landscape that the industry sits inside and even reporting on the times itself right like what's working what isn't you know like what am i not hearing in the place and i do try to carve out you know some time every year to really make sure i'm stepping back because otherwise we all know like email is not our jobs but email can easily become our jobs slack is not our jobs but slack can easily become our jobs i was going to ask if you're on the new york time slack channels and so so i spend some time there but i really pull back from slack um basically because i think it is to the advantage of

of the institution to have someone operating at a slower pace. All right, I'm getting off slack. No more participation in the dispatch Slack channels for me. You're barely on it to begin with and it's mostly to say, I don't know what that word means. That's true. You recently wrote an exhaustive piece.

I mean that in the most positive way in the Columbia Journalism of you. Exhaustive. Exhaustive. Chose my words for a reason. And I really thought it was terrific. Did it run at about 12,000 words, something like that? A little more than that.

Yeah. The longest thing I've ever written. Is that right? Yeah. Two questions about that. You make a distinction between independence and objectivity, and I'd like for you to explain what you see as, that distinction, and why it's important. And the second question is maybe even simpler.

Why did you write it? Should I take the second question first, maybe? The essay is basically making a case for a vision of independent charge. journalism that I believe in and that has a long history at this institution. My great, great grandfather writes the phrase, you know, in his first day as publisher, you know, to give the news impartially without fear of favor, regardless of party or sect or interests involved. And that vision, which then was quite radical in the era of the partisan press, and then became quite mainstream, right, sort of through most of the 20th century and into this century, is more

fiercely contested than at any point in my lifetime. It's also harder than at any point in my lifetime. Like just the act and process of independent journalism is harder than any point in my lifetime. And, you know, I talk to reporters, you know, every day who feel like if they're going to cover controversial topics or write things that, you know, certain groups don't want to here that they basically feel like they have to wake up and put on a suit of battle armor to to prepare themselves for the harassment and trolling and threatening and efforts to damage or destroy their reputations. So it's, you know, which I know you at the dispatch are aware of, right? A lot of your folks or folks who have been really serious recipients of those

campaigns. So it's more contested than ever. It's harder than ever. I also really believe it's more important than ever. It's clear to me, it's become clear to me that it's not intuitive to the public why. And I felt someone should make a case for it. And to make a case that doesn't just, you know, sort of assume, you know, why independent journalism is a good fit for any moment, but particularly this moment of misinformation and polarization and tribalism, but is a particularly good fit for this moment. In fact, in my view, is actually the antidote to this moment. So that's why I wrote the essay. As for why I talk about independence, you know, because, you know, obviously this is sort of an academic, esoteric topic that us journalists think a lot about. But a pretty important one,

but exactly. I think central to democracy, but maybe not one that, you know, the average voter feels grounded in. So why not choose the word that most of the debate has sort of historically revolved around this word objectivity? So for one, independence is more of a history at the New York Times, right? So it's actually the word my great-great-grandfather gravitated towards and describing his vision for the Times. And it's the word, it's actually the only word he uses twice in his direction to the family about how the Times should be led into the future. But I actually think there's also just a more practical reason, which is objectivity is for better or worse, one of those words that just inspires people to pull out the dictionary. And it inspires these very academic debates over can a person be objective or is it the process that's objective?

And beyond even that, I think it's incomplete. I think independence, you know, captures objectivity, captures neutrality, it captures impartiality and fairness. I think there's a lot of words that feel core to me about the journalistic posture that we want to see that ladder up into independence. And independence is a colloquial word. It's a word that when you say it to a person, they know what you're promising them.

So that's why I use that word. You've had some in recent months, some sort of old bulls of the profession make something of the opposite argument. Like, no, no, now it's time to take sides. We have to be explicitly and aggressively pro-democracy. or, you know, the argument takes many forms. Was part of what you were doing responding to those claims, to those cases?

So, I mean, the thing I'm, you know, slightly ashamed to admit is just how long it took me to write that essay on the side, you know, it was like... I mean, it could have been a mini book. Yeah, so it was nights and weekends for longer than I'd care to admit, as you can imagine, like, you know, real life of running the times. I kept intervening. So it took me a long time. wasn't a response to any single argument. What it was a response to is that general phenomenon that you just described, which is I felt like all the intellectual firepower was going towards dismantling the case for independence. And I felt that the folks on the other side of this

debate felt their position was just sort of intuitively right and didn't need to make the argument. And as a result, I felt like our industry and the people who believe in the vision of independent journalism that I believe in, I felt like we were losing the argument largely because we were sitting it out. And so I really wanted to try to reckon with, to forcefully and assertively make the case for why I think independence is suited. You know, not, again, not just for any moment, but for this moment, you know, this moment when we know the stakes, right? You know, you guys at the dispatch are writing about the stakes, you know, constantly. And in some ways, it's probably the animating thought of many of your careers, right?

You know, and the career pivots that you all have made. So I wanted to anchor it to a moment. And then I really wanted to reckon with the criticism, with the steel man version of what we've heard rather than the straw man version. Arthur Brooks a couple years ago wrote a piece in the Atlantic. the headline was reading too much political news is bad for your well-being and his overall point

was, this is actually his overall point is so play wordal yeah exactly I do every day I'm very dedicated to it I bless you I'm on a 128 day streak and what the problem with that

is that I now take it so seriously every day like you build up this problem yeah I know my streak is not as impressive as that but I know the feeling. Well, I just, you know, when you're at 20 days, you're like, whatever, I'll just guess. But like, as it gets higher and higher, all of a sudden, the cost, just, it's overwhelming, though.

It's a pretty nice, humble brag to sneak in there, isn't it? Well, you don't know how short some of the streaks were before that. All right. So he writes this, and he has, you know, a very Arthur Brooksian line and basically says, reading all this political news, sharing it with your friends, on social media, all of this, might make you less happy, less well-liked. less accurate and less informed. Contradictory, right? This idea that you're reading more news,

but in fact you will be less accurate. And there's lots of academic studies about this that are really fascinating. And I wonder how you think then of the role of journalism that can be this double-edged sword. Obviously, it's an important role in any self-governing democracy in public

to inform people about what's going on with their government, to ask questions to the power, And yet at the same time, it will make you less happy, less well-liked, less accurate, and less informed to consume too much of it. You know, are you selling the French fries and cheeseburgers of this generation? I've never heard someone describe the old gray lady as the empty calories of the diet. You know, I tend to hear that reserved more for the entertainment products. But it's an interesting take. look, I don't think any of us really believe, you know, the broader interpretation of that.

I think there's clearly some studies that, you know, that suggests that you can, news consumption can take, you know, unhealthy directions or in particular you can get locked into filter bubbles, right, that end up sort of locking you into a, you know, a worldview more than having that worldview challenge. So, you know, I think that there are certainly like risks that, that everyone should be aware of and in how we provide journalism. But I think journalism is, it's a pretty nutritious part of your diet, right? I mean, like at its core, I think of facts.

So journalists unearth facts, right? You know, we're one of the main sources of new facts. And very specifically, not even journalism, reporting unearths facts and reporting unearths new facts. And I think of facts as, you know, the essential lifeblood of a democracy. democracy, right? Like you go back and you read the, you know, the writings of the founders and all of them, you know, understood so plainly that the democratic experiment depended on an informed electorate. So no, I believe that, you know, what institutions like the Times is selling, but also, you know, the posts, the journal, you know, smaller places, the Atlantic, the New Yorker dispatch, right, you know, where we're trying to give fact-based information to the public. I, I, I I think is essential. And quite frankly, I, you know, my critique of, you know, what's gone wrong in this moment is pretty much the opposite, right?

Which is 65 million Americans used to pay for a newspaper at the peak of print. I think the average was something like 1.8, 1.9 may have even been over two, right? So it's 130 million newspaper subscriptions. No newspapers were as big as the magazines, right? It's a time newsweek. US News and World Report, you know, readers digest, you know, consumer reports, all these were much, much, many, many factors larger than the newspapers. So we had in a, you know, a public, a citizenry that was really steeped in their communities and their nations. And this, and this

has, you know, been particularly lost at the local level, but also to some extent lost at the national level, right? You know, you know, that shared evening broadcast ritual, right, is something that has disappeared, right? The modeling of engaging as a citizen by spreading the newspaper over the kitchen table and having your kids watching you in the morning, you know, to understand what it looks like to be engaged. Like that, that to some extent is disappeared. So I feel like, you know, news organizations like ours are trying to build back up that civic expectation that you need to be informed, that you need to be engaged. There are plenty of news organizations, well, maybe not news organizations, plenty of media outlets

that aren't doing that. I mean, what you're describing is a certain, I would argue, slice of the media, as we understand it now. There's a large group of people who are dedicated to uncovering facts, new facts, if you can, and the truth in a broad sense. but there are also an increasing number of media outlets that are either dedicated to making people angry, monetizing clickbait outrage, criticizing the people who are trying to find the truth. And there was a very interesting moment in your interview, recent interview with

David Remnick of the New Yorker, where you're talking about how the importance of sort of on the ground reporting good journalism. And he says, says, are you saying that's changed? That's not happening anymore. That reporters are just sitting in rooms in front of a screen. I don't think that's the case. And you jumped in and said, of course it's the case. It's the least talked about and most insidious result of the collapse of the business model that historically supported quality journalism. I'm on your side on that. I think you're right. And there are news organizations in Washington, D.C. that require their young journalists to crank out as many as 10 stories, quote unquote, that are nothing more than

stealing reporting from the New York Times, slapping an outrage headline, and trying to get a drudge link, basically. Let's talk about that. What is happening? Why is that happening? And how does it relate to the collapse of the model that you're describing? Yeah. Well, as you could tell from my response, I find this profoundly worrying.

So, I mean, what happened is that the business model that supported, reporting is really expensive, right? It's expensive work and it's uncertain work, right? You can spend a lot of time on a story and then find out that your hunch was wrong. And then, you know, your work product is a disproved hunch, not, you know, not one story, let alone five. So reporting is expensive work. and as the business model that supported journalism collapsed, you know, I don't think we tracked how much the time spent of the jobs that remain. So the industry hemorrhaged tens of thousands of reporter jobs.

And again, tens of thousands, you know, every community in the country had a reporter. When I was covering the tiny little town of Narragansett, Rhode Island, I went to every town council meeting and every school board meeting on Mondays and Wednesdays, And I sat at a table. I was working for the big paper, the Providence Journal, which is basically the state paper. And I was sitting next to two other reporters, one from the Narragansett Times and one from the South County Independent, right? So this tiny little town was, you know, of 8,000 people, 10,000 people was still big enough to support three full-time journalists. And that's remarkable.

That has disappeared. So what's replaced it, what's replaced it is a digital model. that is much as you describe, you know, people sitting at their desks, those desks are increasingly located in, um, in four American cities, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and L.A. And when I say increasingly, I think it's, you know, basically the percentage of journalists in America in those four cities has basically doubled over the last decade or so. And they sit at their desks and they have, they have to produce. The, the downside of this is, So the, you know, the surprising upside is that next generation, they're very good writers.

Why are they good writers? Because they have to be fast. And they're writing about the same thing everyone else is writing about. So they have to have takes, right? And they have to make those takes interesting. So it produced very good writers, but it's also produced a generation that's just not being exposed to the breadth of the country. You know, and what I said to David Remnick when we, we chatted is you literally went from

a model in which reporters are spending their days out in the world being confronted by the complexity of the human experience, right? Like literally back to back, you will interview someone who's been evicted from an apartment and you will interview someone who's evicted someone from an apartment. You'll, you know, you will go to a court case and you'll listen to the prosecution and to the defense. You'll talk to the accused and to the victim, right? You know, and if you're lucky, you'll get a few jurors to talk to you at the end of this. So it's It's impossible not to be confronted by the complexity of this incredible diverse society we live in.

Now you're going to a model in which you're sitting at a desk with people who live in the same city, work in the same industry, indeed, work for the same employer. And instead of having your views challenged all day, you're having your views basically hardened all day. and I think that that has contributed in a meaningful way to this moment. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important.

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Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Do you know the percentage of your New York Times staff that are people of color? Off the top of my head. We publish these stats publicly, so that's easily available rather than say the wrong number. I think it's about 35%. Women, that's increased, I know. Women, I think, is about like 54%. What other type diversity statistics you're all keeping track of? Do you know what percentage of your staff came from community colleges or go to church every week? or own a gun? I think there's a question implicit in there that I very much agree with, which is there's all sorts of kinds of diversity,

you know, in this country that matter. And if the goal of diversity in a news organization, right, is to better cover the world, right? And the reason to care about diversity, aside from, you know, the moral reasons, right, is that you will better cover the world if you better reflect it, right? you know, you know, the, you know, the example that I always use is, like, you can never imagine

having a parenting blog without any parents, right? You know, expertise matters and, and background and experience matters. And we benefit from that. Race and gender, that's a big, you know, that matters. And, you know, if we're being honest, as an industry, as a society, women and people of color were systematically excluded from the workforce for far too long, right? Like, even when I was named publisher, I think we had a dozen columnists. I think two were women. One was a person of color. You know, it's, you know, I think there's really good reason to track, you know, those, those things. But they're also not the only forms of diversity, right? You know, talked a lot about this, and I want to give you credit for that, because you talk a lot about

what you just said, right? There's this hardening. There's a lack of diversity of other types of diversity. But I find it interesting that in your organization, you know, you sort of measure what matters. Why not measure those other types of diversity that I think you do care about? Yeah. So, you know, I once had a U.S. senator sort of grill me, say, you know, I want you to ask every single person who you voted for in the last election. And actually a leader of a conservative news organization, jumped in and said, Senator, we would never do that. I have no idea who's done that.

And I'm guessing you guys haven't asked. Have you guys asked how many of your staff own guns and whether they're, you know, attending services every Sunday? To me, that feels like an inappropriate intrusion into people's personal lives. Now, that said, I also think it's really important to recognize that, you know, a huge number of this country is going to. owner. A huge percentage of this country is going to church every Sunday. And, you know, I'll give you one example of, so, so, you know, I've pointed to, you know, David French, you know,

I think I mentioned this, you know, in a recent interview, but, you know, David French, you know, your former colleague who is doing such an astonishingly good job for us. Yeah, we know he's good. Thanks. But look, you could, you could point to something obvious, like say he's, you know, the only evangelical Christian on the page. And that's true, right? You could also say, I think he's the only lawyer among our columnists. And I actually think we benefit just as much from that law degree as anything. Because, you know, I mean, especially in this, you know, remarkable stretch of Supreme Court cases.

And, you know, you may have noticed there have been some indictments of some prominent individuals. So, you know, he's really applied that background. So I, you know, I think it's really important to look at these. at diversity in a number of ways. Do you think that you're... I actually, for instance, think that you probably have more pro-life or gun-owning or religious attending staff

than people would otherwise think about the New York Times. I'm sure that's true. But what's interesting to me... But what's interesting to me is that I know they wouldn't feel comfortable saying that out loud, right? This idea that there are still favored and disfavored there's, you know, cultural aspects to any workplace, not just the New York Times, God knows.

And that it comes with a certain credibility judgment, I think, in reporting. I think there's this idea that if you are a gun owner, you're going to write more gun-friendly pieces. That is not my point on diversity. I don't even think that's true. I grew up in a gun-toting part of the country, and I think it makes me both more sympathetic and more skeptical of certain arguments. But it's a credibility issue when someone who agrees with you walks in and says a fact you sort of assume that's true if it fits with everything you've ever known living in San Francisco or whatever and that if someone walks in and says the opposite you're fact checking it six ways to Sunday that seems like the bigger problem and that if folks don't know that 20% of the people that they work with are pro life it can create more of a monolithic culture than there even actually is so you you've said a few things there I mean one is would would people be comfortable talking about this stuff. And I'll push back on you on that. And, you know, I'd encourage you to ask, you know, David French or, you know, or some of our other, you know, conservative colleagues, why am I pointing to the opinion page? It's because we wear, you know, opinion columnists wear their

politics on their sleeves, you know, about whether they felt welcomed and treated collegially here. But let's, let me also agree with your underlying premise. And I talk about this in, in my piece, which is journalism is disproportionately pulling from two populations, right? And actually, almost exclusively pulling from two populations, college-educated people and people who live in big cities, right? Going back to the statistics I, you know, shared earlier, pretty much everyone at the times, college educated, not everyone, right? Our executive editor didn't have a college degree, right?

Dean Beckay, you know, who ran the paper for almost a decade. and stepped down last year. So not everyone, but disproportionately. And everyone does work, you know, work in a big city, right? You know, most here in New York, but we have big offices elsewhere around the country and in the world, but mostly in cities. If you just look at, you know, polling,

you know, those populations are less likely than the general public to own guns, less likely than the general public to be pro-life and less likely than the general public to register as a Republican, right? That's just objectively true. So then the question is, are you a prisoner

to those blind spots? Whatever blind spots may emerge there, right? Or can you actually create a culture that is built around constant interrogation of one's own blind spots? And that's what independence is to me. right. Independence isn't like, you know, like a spirit that lies deep within us that only, you know, the strongest have or, you know, it's a continual commitment to journalistic humility, right? It's a willingness to have an open mind on the things that people say you should not think and have a skeptical mind on the things that people say you should think, right? It's a willingness and a genuine curiosity, right, to talk to people who are different and to really engage with their ideas and

a willingness to be surprised. And so just to go to the abortion example, because I think it's one of the easiest to point to because it's such a polarized issue. And I think you'd be absolutely right to say that most American journalists are probably on one side of that issue. But if you really look at our coverage, right, you know, we're sitting in a podcast studio used by the daily and go back and listen to the, to the, you know, I think we did maybe a five-ish podcast after the Roe v. Wade leak and then the ultimate decision. And, you know, the first one was entirely, you know, an episode entirely from the view of the pro-life movement, you know, that was celebrating this victory and what it meant and what, you know, what they plan to do next.

Then the next episode was the exact opposite, right, from the pro-choice movement and, you know, what it meant, you know, and then another, you know, a number of other episodes that explored, you know, the various complexities of, of the decision, about, you know, the consequences, you know, where the battle lines are going to be redrawn. And if you look at our opinion pages, you know, we had guest essays from all those points of view. You know, we have Ross Douthit as a columnist, you know, fiercely making the case, you know, for life, you know, for, you know, against abortion, and then you have, you know, columnists like Michelle Goldberg, fiercely making the case, you know, for choice and, you know, for abortion rights.

You know, to me, a lot of what I'm pushing for is, like, these aren't intrinsic qualities necessarily that we have, right? It's a process that we commit ourselves to. And when we really commit ourselves to it, I think we produce better work. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one.

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save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I think it's important for you to articulate that. I mean, I like the phrase journalist to humiliate. And the fact that you're saying that, I think, probably will be, it sends a message to the newsroom, I think. Let me, if I can, go a little bit further on this question, sort of ideology, philosophy, partisanship, covering politics. you pointed out in your Columbia Journalism Review essay that journalism faces this pretty massive credibility problem right now and I'm tempted to go through all the numbers I won't

but suffice it to say that the latest Gallup polling bears that out 34% of Americans trust the media to report the news fully fairly and accurately 7% of Americans say they have a great deal of trust and only 27 say they have a fair amount of trust It's a big gap. And I think people are, you're right to talk about it in terms of a broad credibility gap. And it's worth saying that those numbers are the lowest in American, in recorded polling. Yes. When Gallup was first asking these questions, 72% of Americans had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence compared to just 26%.

Who didn't. And that was in the mid-1970s. So I think it's important to look at that in sort of a broad perspective. But there's a bigger problem and I think a better discussion. of this involves the partisan gap between. It's not, it really isn't just all Americans of all stripes don't buy what they're getting from journalism. For sure. It's Republicans and conservatives. Yeah. And if you, if you go back and you look at that partisan gap, and it's really striking, starting around Eisenhower, which is basically the sort of, you know, the beginning

of consistent polling in the country. So around Eisenhower, you see basically a 5% gap between Democrats and Republicans, that 5% gap basically holds to early mid-2000s, right? So to G.W. Bush in, you know, in office. And then it starts to spread. I would describe it as gently, mildly, it starts to spread. And then with Trump, it widens into a chasm. And I haven't looked at the latest numbers, but at one point it was something like 80, 20. So it's a 60 point gap. Five-point gap, most of modern American history, 60-point gap, you know, as recently as a few years ago, maybe even still today. Yeah, let me recast those numbers a little bit by relying on Gallup for consistency's sake, because I think the break comes earlier. If you're looking at the mid-1970s, when Gallup began asking these questions, you know, was 75 to 63.

Democrats trusted the media more, Republicans, a little bit less. And then you saw it sort of gradually widen until you get to the point where you're in 2014, 2015, a little bit before the Trump era. And you have a much more significant gap. You have Republicans saying that they, it's like, I think, a 25 point gap. I don't have it right here in front of me. And then the Trump era comes. And you have Donald Trump weighing in and calling the media the enemy of the people. And the gap widens significantly to the point where.

It's a crisis. I think it is a crisis. I guess my question or a starting point for the question is it seems to me there's a reason that Republicans were so open to the argument that Donald Trump made that they shouldn't trust the media and that there were pretty significant differences in the way that the mainstream media, and I would include the New York Times as sort of a driver of this as, you know, the leading media company in the United States, covered Republicans versus covered Democrats. Do you buy that? Do you understand why conservatives and Republicans brought that skepticism and were open to the arguments that Donald Trump was making? Look, I certainly understand it. And, you know, I hope you saw in the piece and are hearing me today, you know, point to the grants of truth. I think there's grants of truth in that critique. I also think there's grants of truth and some of the critiques on the left, you know, such as our coverage of minority communities that weren't represented in our news. room, right? You know, or other newsrooms as well, right? So I think I think there are definitely

grants of truth. I also think on the other side, we have to reckon with the reality that there has been a systematic campaign to discredit, you know, what you just called the mainstream media. And, you know, I think there was a really interesting episode that is worth pointing back to. So, like, if you could think of someone who is like a classic, you know, American political figure who sort of, you know, core to their identity was sort of riding above partisanship and, you know, and not participating in sort of broad campaigns, you know, calling the journalists the enemies of the enemy of the people or fake news, right?

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone better than John McCain, right? So if you're someone who believes in John McCain, you know, for the last 15 years since he ran, you know, ran for election, you know, was a Republican nominee for president, you would have had good reason to believe that the New York Times tried to sink John McCain unfairly and his candidacy unfairly because we wrote this scandalous and untrue thing that John McCain, an honest man, you know, said was a lie,

and that the Times was pressured into, you know, I can't remember if we corrected or sort of amended it, but, you know, basically walk away from. And that was an article we wrote about a relationship that the article said he had with an extramarital affair. An extramarital affair with a lobbyist, a prominent lobbyist. And, you know, I think there was, it's been a while since I read the article, so I won't characterize it. So, you know, for 15 years, that had been used against the New York Times, right, by conservatives.

Like, as yet another example of how we're just trying to knock people out and, We were trying to help Obama win or whatever. Last year, his either chief of staff or campaign manager, I can't remember, wrote a remarkable document coming clean that he had been asked to lie about it by McCain directly. And he called it an unforgivable thing that he had been asked to do. And an unforgivable that he had done it. And so for the last decade or longer, you know, three of my colleagues have had the stain on their reputations, not because they wrote something that was wrong.

You know, this chief of staff or campaign strategist acknowledged it was correct. They had to stand because someone was trying to avoid a political hit, and it was really easy to say, blame the media. And so anyway, so I'm not saying that there's never any legitimacy to this. I'm certainly not saying we don't ever get things wrong, right? We publish more words than Shakespeare published in his entire career every single week here at the New York Times. We basically publish a number of words as Encyclopedia Britannica every six to seven months.

So it's a huge amount of output. So we get things wrong, but we really move heaven and earth to get it right. You may have heard that we've been attacked for our work exposing Hillary Clinton's email server. We were the first to report on the existence of that email server. and continue to report on it aggressively because it was a noteworthy news story through the campaign, something that a huge swath

of Democrats believe contributed to her loss and Trump's win. So, you know, I think one of the realities of this hyper-polarized moment, right, and particularly one of the realities of this hyper-polarized moment when trust in media is very, very low,

is that when the media's attention turns to you in an unflattering way, it is pretty darn easy just to, you know, to blame the media. Yeah. Can I push a little bit further on that? Please. I think the McCain example is interesting. There's one from four years earlier that I wasn't going to bring up, but I think it fits the

moment in this conversation. There was reporting from the Times, I think it was about three weeks before the 2004 presidential election, on a weapons depot that was insufficiently guarded by U.S. troops. And that was the report. It was basically this weapons depot was left alone. Bad guys came and got the weapons. You're going to have me at a disadvantage because I know nothing about this story. You'll have to just trust that I'm describing it accurately.

I'm just trying to give you a sense of why there is some of the skepticism. It was called the Al-Cacaa Weapons Depot. The Times wrote a piece. It was, you know, hey, this is what happened. This was unguarded. This is bad. Then there was a follow-up piece. This is the Kerry campaign's response to what the Al-Qaqa Weapons Depot was.

And as the Times does, it led a wide media coverage of this, right? CBS was doing stories. Because the Times did it, it was on everybody's radar. And there were follow-ups all the times. In total, I think the Times wrote three dozen, maybe more stories about this in the lead-up to the 2004 election. It was sort of one of the big discussions in the lead-up to the election. If I'm remembering this correctly, after the election, the story basically banished from the Times' pages. I think it was mentioned like twice in subsequent years.

And, you know, certainly you have Bush administration figures and Bush campaign figures who will say, this was just this campaign to get George W. Bush by hyping this thing that they then just, it was newsworthy as long as it was part of the presidential debate and then it wasn't newsworthy anymore. So I really, I'm sorry, I can't talk to the specifics. I mean, I think I'm still in college probably at that point. So I really can't. This is why I wasn't going to bring it up. But I do think it's, but what I'll say. It helps explain some of the skepticism.

I really, the thing that I want, I want to convey as much as anything is that no matter who is sitting in your chair right now, we're sitting right next to each other in a podcast studio. No matter who is in that chair, they feel this way about something, right? So like the Clintons felt that way about New York Times coverage of Whitewater. Then they ended up feeling that way about our coverage of the email server. Biden literally just was, you know, at the White House Correspondence Center said the only, you know, person who cares about my age is my doctor in the New York Times, right? Because we've been reporting really aggressively on Biden's age and his capacity, right?

Because it's a noteworthy and important story. if, you know, if you were, you know, a supporter of Israel in that chair, you would have, you know, a half dozen examples like this. And if you're a supporter of the Palestinians, you would have a half dozen examples like this. It's one of the defining truths of this polarized era is in-group narratives are as sharply baked in as they've ever been, right? And again, not to say we don't get things wrong, it's possible. Again, I don't know that story that we got something wrong in that story, right? You know, there's the question of volume. It was just more a matter of emphasis.

The question of volume is always, emphasis is always a tricky question, right? You know, that's the big critique we've had of the Clinton coverage. It's the big critique we've had of our recent coverage of trans medical care for transgender minors. these are always tricky questions. This is why, again, I go back and back to process. Like, do we have a process to hear those critiques? Right. Do we have a process that's fairly reckoning with the critiques?

Yeah, I don't bring this up. Just to be clear, I don't bring this up because we should relitigate this story in 2004. No, I really understand that. But because we were talking about this credibility crisis, not a broad credibility crisis. Among Republicans and conservatives, it is the case.

I'm certain that you hear this all the time, if anybody representing any of these groups was in the chair I'm sitting in, they would have their grievances. They would come to you. But I wonder if when you see this a result. I recently had a university president ask about our anti-university agenda. It's ridiculous. So I agree with you that that's ridiculous. But given the results of this polling, given the fact that the New York Times, I would argue the most powerful media institution in the world, certainly within the United States. And you have all of these Republicans and conservatives saying we don't buy it.

I mean, it's like 57% say they have zero trust in the media broadly. So look, I'm not, I'm really not blind to those numbers. There's something I reckon with all the time. And I take very seriously and I think about it. But like I said, I don't think we're perfect. Like I said, I'm sure, you know, we have certain blind spots, you know, and there's stories we miss. I'm sure there's the stories that we cover too much.

I also know that we're trying to get this story, these stories right. At the same time, I don't think it should be lost on us, right? That the former president of the United States, the current leader of the Republican Party, just spent six years, seven years now, calling the New York Times by name, fake news,

calling our journalists enemy of the people accusing specific journalists of treason by name if you are someone who supports Donald Trump and believes in Donald Trump what are you supposed to think about an institution that the president of the United States says

is fake your enemy and committing treason of course there's going to be skyrocketing numbers of people who doubt what we do. But what if the causal arrow goes the other way? I mean, if we broke down those conservative Republican numbers, I don't think they're that much different

if you look at the never Trump Republicans and conservatives. So what if the causal arrow isn't that Trump made people believe in the media less, but their lack of faith in the media made Trump very attractive? So look, again, you know, just going back like to the McCain example, right?

Like, if you're someone believes in John McCain. And John McCain has just said that we tried to sabotage his campaign at the last minute by lying about extramarital affairs. What are you supposed to think about this institution? I just, I think we need to be clear that, you know, the times is used often as a proxy in larger fights. And that's true from the right and the left, right? Like, you know, if someone from the left was here, they'd be talking about, you know, not about how against the or against the Bush administration we were, they would be talking about how complicit in the Iraq war we were, right?

But by our credulous coverage of, you know, of the intelligence as they were asserting it at that time. So, you know, it's, again, I'm not saying we're flawless, but I guess one of the questions I had asked to you is you guys know the media landscape pretty well. How many institutions? And beyond that, you know, I think you guys are, classic institutionalists, right?

Like you believe that institutions matter in our society, whether they're academic institutions or the military or the church or media organizations like this one. How many institutions are you aware of that are more explicitly trying to bring different people together,

trying to actually go to every part of the country when 15 Republicans return, you refuse to return our call, you know, calling the next 15 to make sure that we're fairly representing the views. Again, not saying we do it perfectly, but

we really believe in this. Can I ask a philosophical question about the independent journalism thing that touches on this as well? Because you talk about it in your CJR piece, and I know you've talked about it publicly, this internal tension between independent journalism, and

there are things that we all agree are off limits. You know, we're not really going to have a debate anymore about whether Nazism had some good points, you know, like whatever that thing may be. Yeah. And it would be so much easier if we could say there's no red line, you know, there's nothing out of bounds, but there are in terms of what we're going to debate. And it'd be much easier if we could say, you know, it's all red lines and we have red lines

on every single thing. We know what we can debate and what we can't. But that's not true either. And so you're constantly having to agenda set. And that's what people are complaining about from the New York Times, and in particular, and this is what you've talked about, is this idea that the New York Times is unabashedly pro-democracy, for instance, is something that I think David Remnick brought up probably, and this idea of like, well, maybe that's not independent enough. Maybe you should be, you know, contemplating that question more, and how that could affect one's coverage of, say, a former president running on potentially a really explicitly anti-democracy agenda or saying

that the last election was stolen. I love this question. Can I jump in? Because I really, this is the heart of what I want to talk about as much as anything, right? So the, look, there's basically two ways that society decides something is, you know, is settled, right? It's beyond

reasonable debate, right? There's fact. So it's factually settled. And then there's there's morally settled right so there's like there's no fact that one can point to to to say that you know women deserve equal pay right it's not like a factual matter right it's it's a it's a moral matter we just know that to be true and society is no longer litigating that or or interracial marriage should be allowed right it's not you know that's not like a factual thing it's it's we've

that's a moral truth in this country at this point now on facts you will always find french people who say, you know, that the facts aren't the facts, right? You will even find some people say that the last election was won by Donald Trump, right? So it being factually settled, you know, doesn't necessarily mean that you won't find out. It's not really much of a fringe anymore, I'm afraid. And you'll find that on the stuff that's, that's morally settled. Here's my view on those two categories. On the first one, you cannot ever pretend the facts, aren't the facts in order to try to signal fairness, right? Because that's actually not what fairness is, right?

Fairness is, you know, a full and complete and accurate representation, you know, of the world as it is. And so our job there is to unapologetically follow the facts. And look, I'm like, I'm keenly aware of this. if more than two-thirds a Republican still believe as many polls show them that Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the last election

and we are treating that as factually inaccurate and just very plain unapologetic language I'm aware that's going to make it harder for us to reach this giant audience that I would love to be able to reach, right? I would love to be able to reach because I think what we're doing

here is valuable to everyone right, but you've got to follow the facts so that's one. Then the second one, I think you need to have a lot of humility on what is settled. So again, we can't be chasing fringe views to your point about Nazism or whether women have a role in society, you know, just to, you know, to try to pretend that there's two sides of these arguments. Society is, or whether democracy maybe isn't that important at all, after all, right? These are things that society as regarded as settled questions, and I think journalism should legitimately treat them as settled questions. So I'll say two other things. One, right now, there is such a poll on both the right and the left to expand the realm of settled questions, right?

Everyone wants their question to be settled, right? So for example, my guess is something like 80% or 60% of America wants abortion to be treated as settled, regardless of which way it is, right? But it's a profoundly unsettled question, right? It's, you know, America's working through it and will probably always continue to work. And we'll never stumble upon the fact that says this is the moment

in which abortion becomes okay or doesn't become okay. So I think we need to have a lot of humility on that. And I think, to the degree to which we err, I think that we need to err on the side of inclusivity. because airing on the side of inclusivity actually means airing on the side

of fully representing the messy debates our pluralistic democracy is having. So that's one. So I think we need to resist the journalistic urge to treat more and more as settled. And honestly,

going back to one of the things we talked about earlier, the more we're out in the country, the more intuitive it is that you can't treat everything as settled, right? Because you're just dealing with all sorts of different people

from different backgrounds and you can just see plainly that society is working through questions that you may have strong views on. So that's one. The other tricky thing is even if something is factually settled or even if something is morally settled, it doesn't mean everything underneath it is settled, right? And the other form of pressure that gets put on independent media organizations

like ours is, you know, so we treat climate change is settled. It is real. It is happening. It is human caused. And if unaddressed, it will continue to have worsening and devastating consequences, right? That we treat as a settled fact pattern. You won't see debate on that. How fast it's going to happen. Whether human innovation will remedy any of it, be able to mitigate any of it, whether specific remedies like wind farms or solar power, you know, are the right, or nuclear power are the right answer. We can't treat any of those as settled. Society is working through those questions. Science is working through those questions. But we regularly get protested by anti-climate change activists who come in from our building once every few months and have a huge protest about how backwards our coverage of climate changes.

And what they're doing is it's a standard thing that other activists do as well, which is they're trying to get us to treat more and more things. things as off limits, right? And, you know, on the, on the, you know, the sort of the moral side, right, like I can, I can point to another one, which is transgender people exist in this country and, you know, and I think everyone in this country deserves basic human rights, right? The science of care for transgender minors is, is still developing, right? So, you know, at no point have we ever written a story saying transgender people don't exist or shouldn't exist, something that we have been accused of many, many times?

That's just not true. But we will write stories about debates within the medical community, about the appropriate time and methods of intervention for children who identify as transgender. And, you know, that's gotten a lot of blowback by people who want to say, that's settled. The science is now settled there, and it's not. And I'll say one last thing. Sometimes we get this wrong, right? You know, I think we treated the lab leak story is more settled than it than it end up being, right? And we ended up reporting a ton on it and very aggressively on it. But at the beginning, it was treated, you know, throughout, I think, mainstream media

as a bit of a fringe theory. And it probably too tidily fit some of the president's natural biases and he had had a history of misrepresenting intelligence. So there was there was good reason to be skeptical, but skepticism can go too far as well. And now it's, you know, it certainly hasn't been confirmed, but it's one of two legitimate theories that, you know, lots of smart people are arguing about. Quick follow up on that. So if you say democracy is one of those settled moral questions, for instance, to take that one, and a candidate is running as a against democracy, your reporters think that he is a threat to democracy? What responsibility then do they have to say, you know, here's this story?

We shouldn't publish it because it could help him. See, that's where I think people get themselves into real danger. You know, so this essay, I start this essay with this really remarkable moment. Do you mind if I share it with your listeners? You know, it involves me. Oh, I don't know what that involves you. Sorry about that. We're going to have a bit of a hole off...

Agree to disagree on some aspects of it. And actually, some of this comes from that. So the transgender story, or the story about Rod Rosenstein saying that the 25th Amendment should be invoked. Those stories are treated much more carefully. I mean, I've spent 20 years being on the other side of your reporters. It's actually kind of a fun thing to get to talk to you and explain what it feels like to be on the other side. this idea that like, well, we have to be really careful with this story because it could help Donald Trump.

It doesn't mean we won't report it and it doesn't mean we won't follow down the facts. All of that is true. But they're more careful. And on the care for transgender minors, what you'll hear is that, you know, they're going to run all this by people within that community to make sure that it was written sensitively enough,

that it's, you know, accurate. All of those things are good. But that sensitivity then doesn't carry over to the other side. There's no, this could help Joe Biden. Let's make sure it's really, really accurate. Look, I don't buy it. And I get that how it's felt on one side is like as a, as, you know, as you've been a partisan player, right? And candidly, like one of the things I often say to people is, even I, I work at the New York Times.

Even I, the New York Times drives me crazy on the things I care most about, right? So, like, I'll sometimes read, you know, media coverage in the Times. And as you can imagine, I have strong feelings about media coverage. And I'll be like, why didn't they get this nuance? Why didn't they, you know, this is too tough. This is too hard. Give us a specific story in mind. Just kidding.

Just kidding. I mean, there are plenty because we report really aggressively on ourselves, too. And that's part of, you know, literally, just to give you a sense of what independence looks like in practice, we hire a new CEO. The New York Times at this point is really on the brink, right? You know, we've got this huge amount of debt, you know, really unsustainable amount of debt. You know, the financial crisis has made the ad market just absolutely fall out. We don't yet see a path in digital, right? So it's a really dark moment for the institution.

We hire a new CEO, right? The old CEO leaves in a sort of a noisy way. It's a tough moment for the institution. We hire a new CEO. Something within days or weeks. of the announcement. It may have even been within days. There's a news breaks of a scandal.

This previous employer, the BBC, and there are questions about whether he knew about it. And it's a bad, ugly scandal. And so what does this institution do? The executive editor at the time decides that it's going to be too hard for a reporter to, you know, I mean, it's like this is big and hard. And she wants the most independent person she can find.

So she takes the investigation's editor, right? So one of our most experienced journalists, one of our most senior journalists, and says, I'm detaching you for two months. You're going to get to the bottom of the story, whatever it leads. And for two months, we're trying to onboard this new CEO while the institution is also reporting on him incredibly aggressively. Now, was that fun for him? It was not. But, you know, my point is everyone feels a version of this.

Now, to go to the Rosenstein story, because I want to explain to your previous question about do you have an obligation to make sure that your reporting doesn't allow bad things to happen? I think that's really insidious. Because I think that's, once you start doing that, then the conspiracy theories are right. then the public does have a reason to believe that you have an agenda, right? So I, you know, so the Rosenstein story, basically we find out that Rod Rosentine seen, the number two official in the Justice Department, has raised secretly recording

President Trump early in his administration, out of concern for Trump's fitness for office. Again, something that Rod and the Department of Justice through his spokesperson disputes. We feel really solid in our sort of thing. So anyway, as you can imagine, you know, the right was extremely unhappy about this story, extremely unhappy about this story because it painted President Trump in an unflattering light. I raised questions about his fitness. that raised questions about his own team's loyalty to him.

The left really lost its mind over the story and went very aggressively at us. And the reason was that Rod Rosenstein at that point, you call him Rod, I shouldn't call him Rod. I've never met the guy. But Rod Rosenstein at that point was overseeing the Mueller investigation, and people on the left thought that the Mueller investigation was in a safe America from someone

and that they regarded as temperamentally unfit for the office of presidency. And the reporting could lead to the firing. So the left believed that we had offered the pretext to fire Rosenstein, thereby Trump could directly meddle and end the investigation. And the thing I kept saying to folks who raised concerns is, do you really want to live in a country? You really want to live in a country in which one of the country's leading news organizations finds out that one of the highest ranking law enforcement officials in the nation

has profound concerns about the fitness of the president of the United States, his ability, his very ability to serve, and that we hide that information from the public. I mean, to me, it's just a disastrously bad idea. And, you know, when you look at, look at some of the other criticism we get from time to time, so much of it comes back to these two questions, volume, right? And can it be misused? Right. But can it be misused is often, sorry, let me restate that. The can it be misused argument is often dangerous. So like, let's just imagine like us covering the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and suddenly, and the reasons behind it. And one of the reasons as we know was government corruption. Right? Right. Like the, you know, the Afghan people really believed that there was this corrupt and somewhat incompetent government there, right? You can make a case that every time we report on government corruption that we're actually making the Taliban stronger. I would argue that it's a dangerous, dangerous argument to make because I would argue that in a democratic society, we still have troops on the ground there. We're still officially at war in that nation. you know, we need to know if the people we've put in the power are corrupt, are incompetent.

And so, so, you know, that argument, you know, it's not that we never consider arguments like that. You know, sometimes we'll be told by the CIA or the military that reporting a certain information, a certain moment will lead to direct loss of life and, you know, and very rare cases will hold. but I think we should be incredibly skeptical of arguments like that. Everything you say leads me down a different path with a different question that I have and I know we don't have endless time

but I would love to push you on the decision to run the op-ed by Saraj Haqqani or the reporting on the Times that the Times did on the Tom Cotton op-ed but I'll table those in order to ask you a question about something that was a thing the paper today, which I think is interesting, and I'm just eager to get your thoughts on this.

Story Today in the Times, written by Glenn Thrush, Michael Schmidt, two, I think, reporters with terrific reputations about the Hunter Biden stuff. And I will say the Hunter Biden, covering Hunter Biden is one of the most difficult things that we wrestle with at the dispatch. How do you cover it? How do you treat the laptop story? How much should we trust the people who are telling us stories who are involved in the oversight when some of the other things that we've listened to them on haven't checked out. There's a volume question or what's news question. Today there's a story about some documents that were provided by whistleblowers that allegedly show Hunter Biden sending text messages to a Chinese businessman with his father there present, in effect

threatening this businessman. Hey, my dad is sitting here. He really wants to know why you're not being responsive is sort of the close paraphrase story goes on and the the times piece sort of says you know on the one hand this is what these people are saying on the other hand this is what these people are saying these two whistleblowers one of them by name one of them not by name are cited throughout the piece and then there's this extraordinary statement in the 21st paragraph of the piece and i want to read it so that i get it exactly right there's a discussion of this request that the U.S. attorney has made to prosecute, potentially prosecute, honor Biden on these things to bring charges.

And one of those requests takes place in California. And the Times reports that episode was confirmed independently to the New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation. So I'm reading this, and I think you've got two whistleblowers, one of them by name, saying on the record that this thing happened. and the Times independently verifying that the Department of Justice may have blocked this investigation

into the son of the President of the United States. That felt to me like a holy shit, like a top of the fold, bold letters. Oh my gosh. It wasn't played that way. And there are all sorts of reasons you can imagine that it wouldn't have been played that way. Maybe that was,

maybe that verification came in at the last minute and I'm not asking you to comment on that. But given all of that, what do you, what do you make of the Hunter Biden story generally and what do you make of this story specifically? So I should be honest, I really don't get deeply involved in the day-to-day of editorial decision-making. And I think there's good reason for that, you know. You know, I do get involved at the level of standards, at the level of, you know, sort of big questions, you know, you know, I was involved in, you know, decision to beef up certain desks, right? But, you know, at the story level, like, I literally know nothing about the specific decision-making

of that story, so I really can't comment on it. But I will say just, you know, sort of going back to the broader theme about, you know, how the, you know, which seems to be one of the main themes of this conversation, how the Times covers the American riot or, you know, or, you know, or. or conservative issues, you know, the question we often hear is is one of volume

and one of play, right? So like, but I would point out that according to the, your version of the story, we're reporting on this. And we're putting it on the front page. And to me,

that's what independent journalism looks like, right? It's, and, and crucially, we would rather, rather be, be,

be right, and I think that that is, stands really counter to this moment as well, you know. I think that's one of the reasons this hit so hard for me was because it was in the Times. I've read similar claims anonymously sourced in some conservative outlets that I don't find credible and I didn't have the holy shi moment.

It was because it was in the Times that I thought, this strikes me as a huge deal. If the Times believes that they're independently verifying that the DOJ blocked this investigation, like, That strikes me as a major deal. Well, can I say, like, that's the dream. This is why independence is so important, right? This is why society needs neutral actors.

Because when you actually have neutral actors, independent actors, right, it means something different when they say something. And it's why, you know, the desire of everyone to make us partisans, you know, in their often quite worthy campaign, the campaign against global warming, campaign for democracy. Like, you know, I think the way we are contributing to democracy is to be an independent actor that is covering the challenges to it. And I don't think if we dialed our level of volume up to Fox News and MSNBC levels, we would somehow have more impact on the world, right? you know, I don't think that if we hid the stories that were inconvenient or could yield damaging outcomes, we would have more impact.

We would contribute to greater goods in the world. I really believe that, I don't know, I have a fundamental optimism in people and in democracy. And I believe that if we commit ourselves to as much as humanly possible, you know, with all our human flaws and failings, to try to arm the public with the information that they deserve as fully and fairly and independently as possible, that, you know, that it'll just bring some more of trust into the system. You've given us so much of your time, and we're so appreciative. I do have one last question for you.

Okay. I'm guessing from your expression that it's going to be a doozy. It is. No, it's actually just something that I don't, I, I'm just curious about, you're a dad, your sixth generation in this business. not this business, this job. You think you parent differently knowing that your kid may take your job

someday? Are you inculcating them in independent journalism from the get? Do you make sure that they feel like they can go do anything they want? Or you know, God, in my household, we're two lawyers and every day anytime he's like, what do you do for work? We're like,

don't worry about it. Be a doctor. Is this your first? This will be my second. Second. Okay, well, congratulations. So I just had my second, actually. So we have a five-year-old and a nine-month-old. So if I see him a beat slower than you expected, I should see him. You're probably correct.

So I love that question. Actually, I haven't gotten that question before. So look, there's so little that it's early. I feel very lucky, actually, and I haven't said this publicly, but I feel very lucky that I had kids late. So the one thing I can be damn sure of is that my child will not be a successor

which allows me to focus on the broader family and this is a family enterprise the family's not quite large. We're almost 100 people and there are so many brilliant people in this family who have been steeped in the values of independence again do you mind if I do something corny

So the phrase I taped above my desk when I was named as publisher was the phrase from my great-great-great-grandfather Adda Fox, who was a working-class Jew from Tennessee, who started in the printing presses and worked his way up to running the paper in Chattanooga, and then levered that to buy what was then actually the failing New York Times. He was in bankruptcy, and to basically start in American journalism on this path towards independence, right? And the phrase he left in his will, which is the charge to his family, and he had put the New York Times in trust. And he wrote this phrase that the mission of the family is to maintain the editorial independent and integrity of the New York. York Times, and to ensure it remains an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence, and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare. And if you open up the proxy statement, we're now a public company, you know, with a controlling shareholder base. And if you open up the proxy statement that we have to put out every year, you will find that

same statement is, is the core of our family mission. So what am I excited about? I'm excited about, you know, being able to put that energy a beat farther from home, you know, to the next generation of people in my family who, you know, are steeped in those values and continue to believe so, so deeply in that mission. So you're not reading him the front page and, you know. Her, her. She is aware. that I have an unusually deep relationship with the newspaper. But the thing I tell myself is it reads as less neglectful than just staring at your phone and reading the digital version, right?

I think there's something about modeling that this is what it means to be a citizen, right? Like engaging news about the communities you live in and the world you live in. So I hope it's not just maternal neglect. I hope there's some modeling in there too. Thank you so much for your time today. Oh, it's a real pleasure. Thank you both. Thank you. And good luck with everything you're building.

I really admire it. Thank you very much. You know what I'm going to be.