The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: The mainstream media is dying and that’s OK

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Traditional broadcasters, daily newspapers, and monthly magazines are struggling to stay afloat as more people turn to non-traditional sources for their news. The likes of Medium, Substack, Twitter, and a seemingly endless series of small independent websites, are building new audiences by offering up news and information tailored to their users' specific interests and tastes. Some journalists are all too happy to write the mainstream media's obituary, arguing that institutions like CNN and The New York Times have been taken over by activist journalists and can no longer be relied upon to provide unbiased reporting. Others believe that mainstream organizations provide an invaluable public service that new digital news are either incapable or uninterested in providing: careful fact-based reporting on important issues and holding the powerful to account. In a brave new world of “fake news” and “drive by” journalism, traditional news organizations are essential to our democracy and bulwark against corruption and tyranny. Arguing for the motion is Matt Taibbi, author, journalist, podcaster, and contributing editor to Rolling Stone. Arguing against the motion is Ben Bradlee Jr, a former reporter and editor at the Boston Globe where he supervised the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into sexual abuse by priests in the Boston archdiocese. Sources: PBS, CNBC, CBS, MSNBC, CBC The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the monk debates on every episode. we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day, to arm you,

the listener with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, the mainstream media is dying, and that's okay. The past couple of weeks are showing, once again, just how tough the business of news is right now, with layoffs by digital upstarts and by the country's largest newspaper chain, Gannis. I've confirmed with the source closest situation. that NBC Universal has begun layoffs. They're expecting to keep their... The law is for Canadian media. Digital news outlet Huff Post Canada

and Huff Post, Quebec are being shut down by their parent company BuzzFeed. The company says the decision is a cost-cutting measure. Hello, I'm your moderator, Redier Griffith. Well, the writing has been on the wall, so to speak, for quite some time as more audiences seek out independent news sources. Platforms like Medium, Twitter, and Substack

for their daily news and information. long-running TV news programs, print papers, and magazines are struggling to stay afloat and keep their staff employed. Some journalists believe mainstream media has lost its relevance as well as its objectivity. Do you see a difference right now between journalism and activism and what you're doing? I think that for me, the purpose of journalism is to raise the voices of people that maybe don't have a voice. And so I think that in its own right, journalism is a form of activism. Critics of mainstream media argue that institutions like CNN and the New York Times have been taken over by politically motivated journalists who can no longer be relied upon to provide unbiased reporting. Others believe that traditional news organizations provide an essential public service.

Their fact-based reporting on important issues holds the powerful to account. Did you say categorically, Ms. President-a-Roeke, can you give us a question? Don't be rude. Can you give us a question? Don't be... Can you give us a question? I'm not going to give you a question. Can you stay categorically?

You are fake news. Sir, go ahead. Can you stay categorically that nobody... In the brave new world of fake news and drive-by journalism, supporters of traditional news outlets argue they are essential to democracy and a bulwark against corruption and tyranny. On this installment of the Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion,

be it resolved, the mainstream media is. is dying and that's okay. Arguing for the motion is Matt Taibi. He's a journalist, substack star, author, podcaster, and Rolling Stone magazine contributor. Arguing against the motion is Ben Bradley Jr. He was a reporter and senior editor at the Boston Globe for 25 years, a vocation he carried on from his famous father,

Ben Bradley, the former editor of the Washington Post, who oversaw the newspaper's coverage of the Watergate scandal. Matt, Ben, welcome to the Monk debates. Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Important conversation that we're going to have today. This is a debate, I think, that's only become more urgent with the passing of time. Maybe the pandemic kind of taking its importance to us all up another level.

What is the future of mainstream media? And is the slow or maybe rapid, we don't know, the effects of COVID, how it will impact news, across America and around the world, but is the decline of mainstream media something that we should be cheering, a new wave of innovation and change in the media landscape, or something we should be really concerned about and fighting against. So to have the two of you with sharply different points of view, very different lived experiences in the media is just a privilege, indeed, for our monk debates audience. Our resolution today is simple and to the point, be it resolved, the mainstream media is dying, and that's okay. So Matt, you're arguing in favor of

today's motion. I'm going to put two minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you. Okay, well, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this topic. It's a difficult topic for me. I've worked in journalism for almost 30 years now, and I have very strong feelings about the business. And in fact, I could probably argue both sides of this debate. In some ways, I think, The decline of traditional mainstream media is a catastrophe and a terrible thing for this country. But given what's happened in the last 10 years, especially, I would say, in the business, there are indications that the business is in crisis and that perhaps it's time for the news media business to innovate and turn into something else that can once again gain the trust of people.

I don't think there's any question that the news business as both Mr. Bradley and I understand it and probably our fathers both understood it. I'm also the son of a journalist. It has changed dramatically, especially in the last five to ten years. There has been a catastrophic loss of trust in the news media. Towards the end of the presidential season last year, there was a Gallup poll that said only 9% of people in America had a great deal of confidence in the media versus, and there were only 31% who said they had a fair amount. So roughly six and ten people in this country don't have confidence in the media. This loss of trust has taken place at a time when the profitability of, especially cable news, has gone up.

So people are watching us more, but trusting us less, which to me means that the news has moved into the entertainment space. It's become more of a consumer product, a type of entertainment. But people believe us, listen, I think this has directly to do with mistakes that we've made from WMD, the misreporting of the 2008 financial crisis, to the failure to see the Trump election coming, to misreporting on stories like Russiagate. You know, that that combined with the siloing strategies of the modern news media, where we have basically left media for left-leaning people and right-leaning media for right-leaning people. has led everybody to believe in this generation that the news is basically a politicized entertainment

product and not to be trusted. And the old style objective media is disappearing and something needs to come along to replace it so that people in a crisis like COVID can have a place to go just to find the basic facts and trust them. And I think that's, we're in a place right now where we don't have that kind of system and we need it. Thank you, Matt. Great opening remarks. setting up this debate nicely. Ben, we're now going to turn the podium over to you, two minutes or so on the clock to make your opening statement in this debate. Okay. Well, I guess I'm the Luddite here by definition age, also being a consideration. I have spent most of my career in journalism working for what one would call mainstream newspapers starting out in California as a young reporter

in my 20s and then coming back to the Boston Globe for 25 years. I would not certainly want to see the demise of the MSM, as it's known, in Internet parlance, mainstream media. I do think that there are troubles, certainly, with those newspapers today. Trust is certainly part of it. We seem to be evolving more towards a European model of newspapering where newspapers represent the parties, the political parties they serve with the Times and the Post, the Democratic Party, Wall Street Journal, straddling the line. And then, of course, in television, Fox News would represent Republicans and MSNBC and C. CNN, the Democrats. I'm not sure that's all bad. We're in a transition period, but I certainly wouldn't want to see mainstream newspapers go away. They have faults, certainly, but they also set the agenda secondarily for television, radio, and blogs. But I don't think we want to see an

Internet Wild West just yet. Thanks, Ben. Now chance for rebuttal. So, Matt, you're up first. what do you want to react to in Ben's opening statement? Some of what's happened to newspapers isn't really the fault of newspapers. There have been radical changes in the economic structure of how the business works. As somebody who's worked both inside and outside mainstream media, I have been the editor and owner of independent newspapers. I've worked at the companies like Rolling Stone for 20 years where I did traditional news media. and now I'm doing independent work on the internet again.

But once upon a time, a newspaper like The Boston Globe was the only show in town distribution-wise for an entire region. And they had basically a built-in automatic revenue base through classifieds through want ads. And that sort of thing. If you wanted to put an ad up for a job or a business, really the globe with its distribution network was the only way you could. reach that many people at once. That advantage evaporated instantaneously with the arrival of the internet. The people get their news now through the internet and typically through one of a couple of platforms like Facebook and Google or Twitter. And in addition to that, we had the development of the 24-hour news network, which put tremendous pressure on newspapers to create more

content to compete, not only with other news organizations, but with other things on the internet, whether it's Sasquatch sites or, you know, blogs, it didn't matter. And so those pressures have resulted in this situation where newspapers now have to reach to make money in ways that they never had to before. And what are they doing? They're using a formula that I think was pioneered by Fox in the late 80s and early 90s, which is you identify demographic and you dominate it by feeding it news that you know that demographic is going to be.

going to like. And that's how we end up with the system that Mr. Bradley referenced that European system of one newspaper for Democrats and one newspaper for Republicans because that's how you make money. You identify your audience and you feed that audience news that they agree with and don't show them the other side because you're going to lose your subscriber base that way. And that's what's resulted in, I think, in this siloing is a huge part of this is the desperation to make money that didn't exist before. Thanks, Matt. Those are interesting insights. Ben, your chance now to react to Matt's opening statement or what you've just heard from him now? I think he makes a strong point there on how the economics of the business have changed so radically with the rise of the internet.

You know, newspapers lost their main source of revenue overnight, practically, which was classified advertising. And they've struggled to develop the right internet. strategy, most have now gone to a paywall after initially meeting a lot of resistance to that. Papers have to rely on online paywall revenue, but really only pre-national papers, Times, Post, and Wall Street Journal are making money with their online ads. Most papers are losing money. And so what we've seen from 2008 to 2020, American newspapers lost half their reporters. And we now have what the trade calls news deserts in some areas of this country, where smaller communities, rural communities have no newspapers at all. So these are issues that we have to grapple with.

Thank you, Ben. Now my chance to join the debate and kind of think through some of the questions you've raised in your opening statement. and just more generally what our audience is thinking about our motion before us today. Be it resolved, Main Street media is dying and that's okay. And Matt, I want to come to you first because I think a lot of people are concerned about what you've said. You've painted this picture of these kind of changes in our media ecosystem in the last five to ten years and this worry that we are rapidly entering into a kind of post-truth world where it is exceedingly difficult to verify. what is in fact a fact and what is a fiction.

And I want to hear from you a bit about why you think we can have a world and a conversation and a civic dialogue still grounded in facts when the mainstream media that you're decrying here has been so instrumental for generations, really since the post-war era, in ensuring a responsible portrayal of news and information grounded in. in factual reporting by professionally trained reporters. I love your take on that, Matt. Yeah, that's a great question. I wrote a book 10 years ago, I in fact called The Great Darrangement, where I argued that we were heading towards a situation where Republicans and Democrats would be eventually living in separate factual universes, that we were moving away from a place where we would have

a commonly debated set of facts because the media ecosystems were now so different. People can essentially go reality shopping when they go online. But all of this has been, I think, exacerbated by changes in the media business, which go away from the traditional posture of the news business, which was to remain independent and separate and to see itself as a separate institutional entity. That was a watchdog on both parties. People in the early 70s and then again in the mid-80s, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted person in America because he had credibility across the spectrum with people who are Republicans and Democrats. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then

will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could. This is the World of Grand Guide. Good night. That kind of figure doesn't exist anymore because that kind of news organization doesn't exist anymore. We no longer really have figures in the news media who are trying to reach the entire audience. They are basically creating news that they know one side or the other is going to consume and that other people are not going to consume, which leads to sloppiness because you know that your audience will forgive you if you make a mistake. the Bounty Gate Affair, which was a massive media phenomenon last summer.

The idea being that Donald Trump had ignored warnings that Russians were paying bounties to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Since we've been on the air tonight, we've got some brand new reporting from the New York Times concerning this growing scandal about Russia offering Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan bounty money to kill U.S. service members in that country. And this was reportedly briefed to President Trump multiple times, including in February of this year, and he has done nothing in response. Officials walk that story back, and that's one of many stories that are similar to that, where, you know, again, the sort of Democrat-leaning audiences are not going to mind that so much, but conservatives are going to lose their minds over that story. And similarly, you know, Democrats are looking at what's being reported on Fox News with,

whether it's stop the steal or Q&N or whatever it is. And they don't understand that at all. What they see is a completely different approach to factuality than what they have. And so you have two completely separate audiences, both of whom are convinced that they are in possession of the true facts. But neither of them are, really. Really, you have two different audiences that are both living in a bubble, and that's not a way to have a country going forward. One of the key public goods that the media provides is investigative reporting, kind of public accountability journalism. It's expensive. It takes time. It takes training. You know, it takes a methodology. And it's arguably critical to the role of the estate to hold power to account.

So how, Matt, in your universe of the death of mainstream media and the rise of, I don't know, platforms like the one you're on, substack. How is that critical public good function going to be fulfilled? And why would we have any faith that it would be fulfilled with the same quality and attention to detail? And again, concern for the facts that traditional mainstream outlets like Ben's former employer, the Boston Globe, bring to that critical public service of investigative reporting. Yeah, that's a great question for probably 15 years, I was one of the few people in the country that had a traditional investigative reporting job, which meant that I would get an assignment and I would be told to go off and work for three and a half months on, you know, some story about credit default swaps or the ratings

agencies on Wall Street and, you know, come back with a six or seven thousand word story that would have to be fact-checked from beginning to end every line. These are expensive endeavors. They cost a lot for the companies, and there's also a lot of logistical work that goes into them. In the internet age, when everybody's revenue is tied to content, people are surfing constantly, it's very difficult now to financially justify that kind of work because you can get the same return from a 200-word article or a tweet or just a viral video. And so companies are very tempted to forego that kind of investment. They've figured out that audiences, for the most part, don't require it in the same way

that they used to. And so people are no longer really investing in that kind of work with the same passion that they used to. And it's a serious problem. Where are we going to find people to do those massive exposés? anymore. And this comes in the heels of a long decline in this kind of work. Some of it had to do with things like big corporate commercial news agencies realizing that there was a significant litigation risk associated with this kind of work. And so what they figured out is that

financially we don't really need to do this. We can get the same kick from doing an expose in a local Chinese restaurant that has a health violation, something along those lines. And they started to go away from that. And so there's a problem with this. That mixed with the fact that audiences don't seem to have the same attention span. You might remember a couple of years ago, the New York Times did like a 35,000 word expose on Donald Trump's finances. And it was the kind of thing that once upon the time would have sort of galvanized the entire country for a while, you know, maybe a week, two weeks. That thing, it lit up the internet for about a day and a half, and then it kind of petered out and was replaced by other stories. Newspapers can't afford that anymore.

They can't afford to put that much work in and not get that kind of return. So, Ben, in your career, which is a storied one, you were the editor at the Boston Globe, responsible for the paper's really important reporting on the Roman archdiocese of Boston and its kind of serial cover-ups of children being abused by priests. Reporters frequently don't come off well in the movies these days, but the new film, opening in many cities this weekend, is built around the investigative journalism that uncovered a major scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

I mean, you're not talking about government abuse here. You're talking about the abuse of children. I mean, how in this new kind of world that, Matt is part of, is any of that public accountability journalism going to happen? I mean, or is it just, or do we just accept that it goes away? And I don't know, we leave this all to law enforcement and the FBI to figure it. No, no, we shouldn't, we shouldn't abandon it. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I think this is mainly tied to the lack of resources that newspapers have anymore. I mentioned earlier the loss of half,

of the nation's newsrooms in the last 10 or 15 years. So increasingly, especially the local and regional papers, are viewing investigative reporting as a luxury they can no longer afford, as Matt alluded to. This takes time. The spotlight team that I used to oversee at the globe has full reporters. They're sequestered in another part of the newsroom, and they often can take up to a year on a project.

But these days, with fewer and fewer resources and fewer reporters able to put out the paper anymore, I think too many editors are viewing investigative reporting as a luxury they can't afford. Hi, Monk podcast listeners. I wanted to let you know about our spring 2021 Monk Dialogue series on the fate and future of our democracy. These are in-depth online and interactive video conversations with some of the world's brightest thinkers.

We'll feature over the next number of weeks, everyone from Jonathan Haidt, to Scott Galloway to Douglas Murray, to Nazarene Malik, to Timothy Snyder, and Irshad Manji, all reflecting on how has COVID-19 reshaped our democracy. How are we dealing with the forces and stresses of this pandemic on our institutions and on our shared values? You can find out more about the monk dialogues on our website, wwwwmunkdebates.com forward slash dialogues. Now back to our program. Probably the kind of seminal media event of the Trump era was the ongoing investigation of the president and his campaign regarding the possibility of illegal dealings with the Russian government vis-a-vis.

assistance in the 2016 election. There was a lot of controversy around that investigation. What did it actually reveal? You know, was that for you, Ben, mainstream media journalism at its best, or is there a cautionary tale embedded in how the American nation and your politics got wrapped up and some would say twisted out of shape

by what the president characterized as a witch hunt? Well, it wasn't a witch hunt. I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that the Mueller report came up with the overarching finding of systematic Russian interference in the 2016 election and cited about 10 specific examples of obstruction of justice. Good evening. The Mueller report is. out the good news is that it provides a detailed look at how the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election. The bad news for the president is that despite his claims that he's been completely exonerated, that is just not true. The Mueller report explicitly does not clear the president of attempting to obstruct justice. In fact, it details repeated attempts by the president to interfere with the investigation. The Mueller report documented dozens and dozens of

interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. So just because Mueller didn't sign off on a formal conspiracy blessed by Putin doesn't mean that there wasn't, and Matt has lived and worked in Russia, I know. That's not how it's done. It's outsourced to operatives and troll farms. Thanks. And Matt, your take. I mean, you've had a strong point of view on this that the investigation of the president, its effects on your politics and culture, affect the reward versus the return, in some ways, in your view, was an indictment of much of the mainstream media. Let's hear that analysis. You know, I would disagree with Ben a little bit on this. I think it was a very, very

damaging episode for the media, even just at the level of the constant predictions that this investigation would result in the end of the Trump presidency. We heard over and over and over again newscast leading off with segments saying things like, is this the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency? We had anchors saying things like Trump is done. It's over. And there was a widespread expectation that was raised in audiences across the aisle that when Mueller delivered his report, that it was going to result in Trump leaving office. And when that didn't happen, I think it was a shock to a lot of people. We also saw the spectacle of people in the newsmen of sort of openly rooting for that outcome, which I think was really unseemly, especially since we got it wrong. And, you know, for a lot of people who aren't, you know, sort of confirmed Democrats, that whole situation looked really, really bad.

Matt, one of the features we've seen recently in a lot of mainstream media is a kind of intramural warfare breaking out within papers and between journalists around what is permitted debate, what is permitted reporting. You're doing a lot of writing on this through Substack in your newsletter. And I think it'd be interesting for our audience to hear a bit more from you about why you think this is a really pernicious feature of mainstream media today and something that you think kind of heralds its demise. Yeah, that's another great question. And it's a difficult one. I grew up in a family of journalists. My father was a journalist again. and the people I knew in the news media, reporters were always, in my mind, loners, difficult people.

Some of the best investigative reporters that we had, you know, when I was growing up were basically impossible people, but that's how they became the people that they were. They were relentless, dogged, distrustful, suspicious, and were not team players. You know, that was part of the character makeup of a good investigative. reporter was they were kind of lone wolf types who were more devoted to, you know, sort of seeking the truth than they were to getting social rewards or acclaim from within the organization. That just tended to be that kind of personality. In modern newsrooms, there's this thing that's happened, especially in the last four or five years, where, you know, the kind of intellectual

diversity that I think was normal in a newsroom once upon a time is vanishing. And, you know, There's an expectation, especially among younger reporters, that everybody is going to be a team player, that they're going to be devoted to sort of pursuing the same ideological framework. And we've had a lot of sort of controversies within news organizations where one or two reporters will try to report something and the rest of the newsroom will revolt. We've had episodes in organizations like the nation where somebody has done a story and the rest of the newsroom will write a letter to the editor. There have been similar episodes in The Intercept and other places. And now there's a situation where reporters feel like if I don't write something that the rest of the newsroom agrees with, I'm going to end up with a problem. And that's, I think, resulted in a lot of conformity and an unwillingness to go anywhere near where the perceived line might be. And it's also made people unwilling to go near an unpopular opinion.

So, you know, even if you have a situation, you know, take the Bountygate story. Again, there were a lot of people I knew who worked in the news business who were like, yeah, I don't know about that. Like, where's the proof for that? If you look at, you know, fairness and accuracy and reporting, they right away did a story about that last year saying we don't see the evidence for this. But within news organizations, the commercial ones, there weren't those voices because people were, I think we're probably afraid to say it because it would be perceived as a pro-Trump comment. when in fact it isn't, you know, you're actually just trying to be accurate.

And I think that's a big problem. It was always that way, I think, on Fox News and in right-wing media, but it's increasingly also a feature of news on the other side now, and that has created a problem. So, Ben, let's hear from you on that, because I think there's a perception here of, I'll just say it, of kind of political correctness run amok through a lot of the mainstream press.

And as a reader, you know, I don't want my reporter's ideology. I want facts. I want information that I can use and that I can trust, not a priori argument about any one of the big issues of the day. Yeah, I agree. I think in many cases, political correctness has run amok at some of the bigger papers, notably Tom Cotton affair, the senator from Arkansas who wrote an op-ed at the Times. which caused an internal uprising and got the op-ed editor fired.

That's too much. And, you know, we can't have the thought police intervening to that extent. Just before we go to closing statements, I want to push you a bit on this, Matt, because I want to remind us of our resolution today, be it resolved. Mainstream media is dying, and that's okay. So I think we've talked a lot about why it's dying, the forces that are aligned, arrayed against it, the potential cost to the public good of its death. But I want to hear from you, Matt, a bit more why that's okay, because I think that's the kind of contentious part of this resolution that would give many people myself the most pause. Sure. You know, in many ways it's not okay. I mean, I think my preference would be that everything turn around and that we, the country would once again have confidence in the news media and that it would, it would, it would,

would serve the function that it did once upon a time. And, you know, please don't think that I'm saying that in the old, in the old days, the news with the panacea, it had all kinds of problems, especially sort of lack of diversity in the news business. But what I would say is that the problem has reached the point where I think it's inevitable that we're going to have innovation, that there will be new forms of media that will come up. And they will either replace. the kind of old legacy media outlets that serve that role, or they're going to provide a model in a way for those old legacy media outlets to reform themselves. I don't think that CBS, ABC, and NBC and PBS are going to disappear from the face of the earth.

I think they're going to continue to exist. The question is going to be, you know, in what form are these companies going to exist? And I just have to believe that what's going to happen is that audiences are going to continue to migrate to other places. And these companies are going to see what's happening and start to adjust their formulas a little bit and change some things about how they cover the news. There are lots of sort of interesting experiments that are going on all over the place. You know, I'm working at one of them at a company called Substack where a lot of people have kind of left mainstream media and sort of well-known names. Now, the substack has not addressed

the problem of like, where do we get good investment? investigative reporting. I don't think you're going to get that from, you know, a subscriber-only model. But we do see that there are huge audiences there and that there's, this model is financially sustainable. So I'm assuming that sooner or later somebody's going to come in and figure out that the public is hungry for sort of just-the-fax-ma'am approach to doing the news. They're going to be looking for, you know, sort of basic reporting and investigative reporting as well in a non-ideological way. somebody's going to come in and fill that role, and that'll be a good thing. I have strong confidence knowing the history of the American media, which has always been incredibly innovative and resilient,

that we will find something that will fix this problem. So, Ben, before we go to closings, I mean, what's your confidence level? As someone who's spent a career in media, thinking deeply about media, what's your confidence level that this, you know, these critical public, good functions of the fourth estate will continue in a disrupted, highly kind of technological news world that maybe looks nothing like what we're used to in terms of the mainstream media. I think they'll continue and that they should continue if we're talking about the mainstream media. I think we need more media, not less, especially in this country, especially at a time when

so many local papers are endangered. So there will be innovation. Matt's right. It's the mainstream media. The larger papers have to adapt or die. And that's not a bad thing. And do you think, Ben, that governments have a role to play here in terms of these aspects of mainstream media that maybe won't be able to make the transition as easily to the kind of

digital future that Matt is already. kind of living. Here in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, we've seen governments step in in a variety of ways with subsidies to mainstream media to allow them to continue to provide public accountability journalism. I don't know how you get around the partisanship problem there, like a Trump government wouldn't subsidize the Washington Post or the New York Times. We are seeing more and more nonprofits getting involved in journalism, which I think is a good thing. Maybe government support could be channeled through non-profits. And, Matt, what do you think about government having a role here?

I mean, government supports all kinds of public goods, roads, airports last time I looked, sometimes the opera. Hey, that's getting pretty close to the Boston Globe. Yeah, if you look back at American history, you'll see that they're going back a long way. there's always been either a director and indirect subsidy of the news business at times when it flourished. Go back to the 1800s, the U.S. Postal Service allowed newspapers to be transported free west across the Pony Express. After the Telecommunications Act of 1934, I think it was, or 33, that was basically an implicit subsidy because what it said was, the government is going to lease the public airwaves at a very very cheap rate to news companies. But in return, they had to do something in the public interest.

And so that allowed these companies to make money doing things like sports and entertainment and all sorts of other things. But they always were sort of encouraged to think of the news as something that could be a loss leader. News never had to make money previously until the internet came along. And I think this is what people have to understand is when we think about subsidizing the news, we could also think about changing how we regulate the internet. Right now, we have a situation where most of the ads that used to go to media companies and news companies, they've been swallowed up almost entirely by Facebook and Google, which use a kind of a surveillance-based ad model. Their ads are much more effective than traditional media ads are. And because they're the

distributors. They have a much more effective way of reaching audiences than we do. But they're also making money on the fact that there's all this content out there. And they're making money on the backs of news companies without really funneling any of that revenue to reporters. So I think there, you know, maybe there's a way that we can tweak the sort of regulation of the internet in such a way that it would funnel some of that revenue back towards the news business without having to do a direct subsidy. Hey, thanks, Matt. Let's go to closing statements.

So, Ben, your opportunity, two minutes on the clock, just to sum up the key points you want to leave our audience with, our resolution that we've been debating today, be it resolved. The mainstream media is dying, and that's okay. You've been speaking against the motion. Let's have your concluding remarks. I think eliminating any media or wishing any media to die is wrong,

You know, I think the more voices we can get at this point, the better the business models of the mainstream newspapers will change and have. I think that, you know, the key thing is how do we come together on defining facts so that there's less of a chasm between left and right on this? And that that, despite mistakes that are always made, means trying to make those more and more rare so that one side can't more easily scoff at the other. And more diligent fact-checking. Anyway, this is the partisan, part of the partisan divide that we now live in and hope that there can be more. more of a coming together around what constitutes a fact. Thanks, Ben. Now, Matt, we're going to give you the last word in today's debate, be it resolved.

The mainstream media is dying, and that's okay. You've been arguing in favor of the motion. Wrap this debate up for us. I think in the best case scenario, I would hope that the mainstream media didn't die or didn't lose its authority. But I think we're heading into a situation where something has to change pretty dramatically. You've mentioned a couple of times, and so has been the news deserts in this country. We've lost thousands of local newspapers since the early 2000s. The situation that we're in right now has resulted in a major, among other things,

a class schism in journalism because so many of those local news reporters, in those smaller papers, these aren't rich people. They're not children of privilege. They don't have a lot of money, but they, they served a very valuable role in small communities, and they reported on things that were important to ordinary people, and also they were in touch with the people in their own community because they live there. And what's happened with the disappearance of those types of organizations is that the only thing left is the national news media, which increasingly,

and I watched this process happen because I've been in the business, it's increasingly made up of people like me who are sort of upper class white folks from Big cities of the coast of the east coast and California, you know, if you go on the plane on the campaign trail, most of the people in the plane now are graduates of Ivy League universities. They live in very, very rarefied areas of, you know, expensive cosmopolitan neighborhoods. Socially, they see themselves as being the same people as the politicians they're reporting on. And that's a terrible situation. I think it's an underrated problem with the modern news media, which is that it's lost some touch with mass audiences in part because they're no longer the people who are covering sort of the affairs of ordinary people.

You know, when I was growing up, it was it was normal for figures like, you know, so Jimmy Breslin or Mike Barnacle or whoever. They always had the sort of voice of the common man columnists in every newspaper. and those figures are disappearing, unfortunately, as this more and more becomes an upper-class profession. And so I think that's something we got to fix. We got to find a new way for a press that better serves ordinary people. And when we do find that, I think it'll be a great thing. Awesome. Thank you, Matt.

And thank you, Ben. We just had a debate about the media where normally that conversation is filled with contention, vitriol and something I think far less civil and substantive than what we've enjoyed in the conversation between the two of you today. So thank you for coming on the monk debates, for sharing your insights and wisdom with us. It's greatly appreciated by our community. Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having us. And thank you, Matt. Thank you very much. Well, that wraps up today's program. I want to thank Matt and Ben for a terrific debate. They've certainly given us a lot to think about. If you've got comments, feedback, suggestions on today's

debate, or any of the debates that you're listening to on the Monk podcast feed, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Again, that email podcast at MonkMUNK, Debates with an S.com. The Monk Debates is that special place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. From climate change to progress to geopolitics, we cover it all with thoughtful, informative debates giving you important information and insights on the big issues of the day. Thanks for listening and thanks for contributing to our effort to bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffith.

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