The Press Box - All the Hot Goss That’s Fit to Print | Damage Control (Ep. 561)

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced this week that he and his wife are getting divorced (1:51); shortly after, the National Enquirer published a report detailing Bezos’s affair (10:41). Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson received blowback after several journalists called out her book for being factually incorrect (16:33)—an example of what happens when you let Twitter become your fact checker (25:47). Hosts: Kate Knibbs and Justin Charity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. The NFL conference championships are here, and on the site, Robert Mays is writing about why this year's chiefs are the team that Andy Reid has been waiting for, and Kevin Clark breaks down the era of the old dominant quarterback. Also, don't forget to check out all of our sports video coverage. We've got Master Sports with Roger Sherman, Slow Newsday with Kevin Clark, and NBA desktop with Jason Concepcion. You can check it all out on YouTube and the ringer.com. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Kate Nibbs. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets,

excites, and divides us. We're talking about the former New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson, whose new book about news and truth is reportedly riddled with slander and falsehoods, strangely enough. But first, the richest couple in the world are breaking up. And we're going to talk about how the divorce of Jeff and McKenzie Bezos has inspired, a lot of very strange speculation. So I'm just curious, why is it that they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and go to extraordinary lengths to try to destroy the life of Jeff Bezos, a man who has been enemy

number one of Donald Trump, almost from the beginning of this administration? I mean, are they, are they still doing this? same thing for Donald Trump that they did before they struck a deal with Robert Mueller? Okay, so last week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife McKenzie announced that they were separating. Shortly after that announcement, the National Inquirer released a very detailed investigation about how Bezos had had an affair. And, you know, we don't usually talk about celebrity gossip on this podcast, but I wanted to talk about the way that this affair has turned into this sort of speculation free-for-all. So tabloids have covered scandals of the very rich for decades. So in one sense, this seems like something that shouldn't really raise

any red flags. Like, this is just sort of the National Inquirer's bread and butter. A lot of commentators speculated that the National Inquirer was going after Bezos for a different reason. The theory is that Bezos was targeted because he is one of Trump's biggest rivals. Yeah. What does that mean, though? It's, like, weird because Donald Trump has, like, a lot of rivals in a lot of different contexts.

But, like, to simplify, Jeff Bezos is one of many people that Donald Trump does not like. Yes. And occasionally gets on Twitter to vaguely threaten. Yes. In terms of, like, threatening to sick the United States government on Amazon. Yeah. And he criticizes the Washington Post a lot by calling it. like the Amazon Washington Post.

Right. Bezos owns the Post. Yeah. This theory that Trump orchestrated this really humiliating tabloid story for Bezos does have logic behind it. Because the National Inquirer, we know now it's not a theory, it's a fact that the National Enquirer was doing Trump's bidding throughout his candidacy in 2015, 2016, through his. through his election. As president, we know that the National Enquirer was just straight up, paying people off to be silent about damaging information about Trump.

They were killing stories. Like, if it hadn't been Trump, stories about an affair, they would have published it. And it was because David Pecker, who owns the National Enquirer is like a long-standing friend of Trump. And they would also publish really damaging false stories about Hillary Clinton. So when people make this argument, it's not like it's coming out of no left field or something. Right, right. And Joe Scarborough is one of the people who's been saying this. He called it a hit job.

I understand why he's saying that because he and Micah, his co-host and now wife of Morning Joe, they were threatened by Trump that a negative story would run about them in the National Enquirer. right they were directly threatened that the national inquire was going to do trump spitting so like i get before they'd sort of announce themselves as co-hosts who like or yeah who were dating and eventually right yeah it was something about like their romantic life trump basically threatened to out there before they had sort of stepped out by using the national inquiry yeah so like this is they divorced they actually left their previous partners basically yeah oh they did yeah that's the thing That's why it was sort of a sensitive matter.

Mika Prasinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC. It was like a sensitive story. I think a lot of journalists knew that they were dating, but the problem was that they were also buried to other people at one point. And so there was this weird transition period where their marriages were ending and they were dating and Trump basically tried to blow their spot as it were because they had become somewhat antagonistic toward Trump. Yeah. So I totally get why this theory is appealing. I don't think it's true. So the National Inquirer, I don't think it has much incentive to do Trump spitting anymore because David Pecker has obtained immunity from criminal prosecution because he basically flipped on Trump. Like he is cooperating with prosecutors in the Michael Cohen case.

He's not really in a position. to be doing what he was doing in 2016. It would be super risky, I think. And also, like, the Bezos story is a National Enquirer story. It, like, goes back to the National Enquirer's long history of publishing, humiliating exposés on, like, the personal foibles of the rich and famous. So I just think that it's more likely that the National Enquirer pursued the story, because it's about the richest man in the world saying really weird things to his married lover.

We'll get into this specific weird things. I want to seize on the word you used at the top to describe this story was orchestrated, right? Or it's sort of people think Trump orchestrated. And I think you're right. You're basically right that what Jeff and McKenzie Bezos are a profoundly wealthy couple. The wealthiest. And even if they weren't enemies of Donald Trump, like, they are prominent enough people that, like, that's just the duh story for the National Enquirer. But I think the sense of orchestration and conspiracy really comes from, I think, the characterizations of the National Enquirer investigation in the press, which don't, they don't just describe, like, tabloid reporters sort of sitting on a beach and, like, catching some.

shots, or they don't just describe, like, one reporter sort of intercepting some, some text messages that they end up reporting. Like, the National Inquirer's story reads, like, a SEAL Team 6 against Jeff Bezos. Like, it reads, like, a year-long, like, they literally followed this guy uninterrupted around and, like, seemingly gained access to every. No, I don't think it's that unusual. No, I don't think it's that unusual, but it's just I, in terms of how this story was sold to me, I don't know that that many other stories have been sold to me in that way.

Like, even if you think of the Tiger Woods story, like the Tiger Woods story, in contrast to the Bezos story, the Tiger Woods story was, I forget Tiger's ex-wife name, but like that was a story of like a thing happened at their home in public view. And that, that like was the story. Whereas this feels like much more deeply reported and it just feels so elaborate. I think that's why people see it on the idea that like, again, this was orchestrated and it was like. It was just reported out. Right. So the National Enquirer was considered for a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on John Edwards's affair. Right.

It was following him around. It was, you know, I don't really think they did anything wrong in this circumstance. Right. Which I feel very gross defending the National Enquirer, but I just don't think it's as, as, that this goes that deep. I think that they did this because it's a good story. And maybe if it like happened to please Trump, some people who are still maga folk in their office, we're happy about it. But I don't think there's a conspiracy here. Yeah.

But I mean, also think of it in terms of like, think of, I don't know, think of journalism we do. even middle-broad journalism is a thing that I feel like lots and lots of people, even people who read it regularly, don't really understand how it's made. And I think tabloid journalism is an even more extreme version of that. Like, I think that's what encourages the sort of like the weird conspiracy mongering about the National Enquirer's scoop about the Bezos marriage or the Bezos divorce, rather. This story kind of reminded me of something that Valleywag, which is like on the... the ideological other end from the National Enquirer published in 2013. They published a story about the Google founder, Sergey Brin's mistress. It's like the same story, basically.

Right. I feel like we're avoiding the uncomfortable center of this story, which is the actual intimate evidence of the affair. I don't ever want to think about the sexting again. I know. I don't want to think about the sexting again. Can we just, okay, so there's a, there is, some of it is poetry. There's a point at which.

What kind of poetry are you reading? Well, I don't, you know, you know, there's some Victorian vibes to the way Jeff, you know. Like part of how this was all on earth is through text messages and like romantic exchanges. And kind of like flagrant exchanges for two people who are both cheating on their spouses. and one of those people being Jeff Bezos, there's this weird dynamic to the story of like, these people got caught in a way that like some regular ass people might have gotten caught, right?

Like they were sexting each other outside of their marriages and stuff like that. And I don't really, this is like one of those stories that sort of brings me back to my profound, like, split with millennial culture, which is I do not really understand the logic of sexting. Well, not just millennial culture, obviously, because Jeff Bezos, you know. Yeah, can we just come out and say that damage control is a sexting negative podcast? Yeah, yeah, I don't get it. And in fact, I wish we had an advocate for sexting here at this particular moment because I don't really.

I don't. It seems like an entirely liability. Like, it seems like all downside. As a form of romantic exchange, it is all downside. The fact that dickpicks are still sent. in the year of our Lord 2019 is incredible to me. Right. I'm like, that is going to get around.

Right. Honestly, I tried not to like, put, I didn't really thoroughly even read the National Inquirer story because I was like, I don't want to know this. Yeah, don't listen to this podcast episode on the Sabbath people. Don't do it. I don't get it. I don't get sexting.

I don't get how these two people, who both in their own way, are like public figures. It's just that like Jeff Bezos is a much larger public figure. I don't. It seems like exceedingly poor reputational management to have. Well, yeah. People get horny. They get stupid.

Yeah. But yeah. I don't want to talk about the specifics of the texting. What I do want to talk about is how this story has set Bezos up as this sort of opposing figure to Trump. God damn it. And this is not the first time that this has happened. Because Trump goes after Bezos, they have sort of been held up as opposites. I actually read a Bloomberg story.

I forget when it was published, but it was, I think, headlined about how Bezos is the opposite of Trump. And to be fair to Jeff Bezos, he is seems like a much better person than Donald Trump. he opposed the Muslim ban. He has come out in supportive immigrants and supportive refugees. He's better than Trump, okay? He's better than Trump. But like the opposite, I don't know. They're not opposite.

They're not, yeah. Well, I think that like to deposit that, it's like, what else? It's like, like, Bezos is bald, whereas Trump has, like, anti-matter hair. And like, what are the things that are, I don't know. That's something they have follicular challenges is something that they have in comment. Yeah, but they've handled them very differently. They have. Yeah.

Really, it all comes down to the hair. Yeah, well, that's. Bezos is at least honest. Yeah. About his shortcomings. Well, okay, so that, like, resistance. I don't know. Like, are people really, people really leaning into that with Bezos?

Because I feel like we are not even that far removed from the period where it seemed like it was increasingly popular to characterize. Amazon as like corporatism gone, like run amok, right? And like bad labor practices run amok. And like Bezos trampling over every mayor and governor in America to figure out where he wanted to like put a second headquarters for Amazon. He's an apex capitalist. Right. And Trump wishes he was.

Right. And I think that's the root of their conflict is that Bezos is better at doing what Trump has built his career. Well, that's the other opposite. It's like Bezos is actually wealthy. Yeah. I really think that Trump hates him because he's just richer than he is. Right, right.

Like that's the root of the conflict. Totally. I understand when people feel sorry for Bezos that this got leaked because it is humiliating. I think it's actually going to be a boon for him in the long term. Why? Because. First of all, a marriage ended here. I know.

And they didn't have a pre-up. They didn't have a pre-up. Oh, yeah, because that's right. They got married like... Yeah, like a long time ago. 25 years ago. I think he's obviously going to lose a lot of money, but he's so rich it doesn't really matter. It seems like they're going to have an amicable divorce.

He's going to likely still retain control of the Amazon shares. He doesn't seem that sad about it. Like he's been out in public since this all went down with his... Oh, for sure. What he is sexting, I don't want to know. I don't know, but, you know. You know. I think that this is just serving to sort of humanize him a little bit.

I don't really think it's going to hurt him. I think people are going to say, well, that was a sleazy story they did on him. It's just going to, I don't know, I think it's just kind of not really going to cause him to lose much in the end. And it's going to end up being a bit of a PR gain. Yeah. Listen, Kate, we have other hot goss to talk about that is not salacious and doesn't have sexting elements. Okay.

That's what you're worried about. We got plenty of hot guys. Okay. We don't have to talk about tabloos. We've talked about the New York Times. Ooh. So what's the goss about the New York Times? Okay.

So Jill Abramson is the former executive editor of the New York Times. She is the executive editor immediately preceding the current executive editor, Dean Paquet. So Abramson was a sort of strange figure when she was at the New York Times. Or she was there for a while, but she led the times from 2011 through May 2014, when she was fired amidst a sort of, what seemed like in media reports, it seemed like a sort of staff, like a soft staff revolt at the times. a lot of people seemed very unhappy with their leadership and there was sort of a lot of talk in the hot goss media reports at the time that she was sort of like a chaotic, unpleasant leader for a lot of people at the time. That's interesting because I admit I was only, I was following this like very casually in 2014,

but I remember coming away from her firing reading. stuff about how she, it was a sexist firing. Like she was only fired because she was a tough woman. If she had been a man, she would have been able to get away with that behavior. Right. I remember back on that thinking, at least at the time I thought she got kind of screwed over there. Right. And there was a lot of, so, you know, we're talking about Jill Abramson.

And I say the phrase executive editor of the New York Times. And like, that's not exactly like a celebrity position. You know what I mean? It's like the editor of a newspaper, right? But I think Jill Abramson, to set up. what you're describing Kate. It's like a lot of the writing about Abramson, I want to say, like around 2010 and certainly from when she became the executive editor of the Times, sort of cast her as like a punk rock

personality. Like she was the first female executive editor at the Times, we should say. And like I remember the big hang up in every report, every profile about her is like she was the executive editor who had tattoos. She has like four tattoos. I think she had like one tattoo of the Times logo. And like that was like radical. That's like the dorquiest tattoo you can get.

Yes. Right. A tattoo of the New York Times T. But I think that set up a lot of this sense of Jill Abramson, not just as the first female executive editor at the Times, but also like as a broader sort of like feminist statement. and a very rebellious statement. And so her getting fired in May 2014

leads to, I think, the conclusion that you're talking about, right? Which is like, well, she only got canned because she was too much of that kind of rebellious, feminist statement for a place as supposedly stodgy and conservative as The New York Times. She writes now. She writes, like, a lot of political commentary online. Do you read it?

I read it every now and again, when I was on Twitter, certainly, like, during the election season specifically, when she, she would write about Hillary Clinton every now and then and about sort of perceptions of Hillary Clinton. And she was very much the sort of person who was like, you guys are giving Hillary Clinton a raw deal. She's a woman. Like, your standards for her are ridiculous. Like, that was sort of her angle on Hillary Clinton. And I would read her every now and again when she would publish stuff. But, yeah, like, she's a web. contributor and she now teaches creative writing in the English department at Harvard. I think more

importantly, she has a book coming out. And it's called Merchants of Truth, the business news, and the fight for facts. So like that title sets up a lot of things. One, it sets up kind of like, I think a lot of people have read into that that at least part of this will be memoir, right? Because she has a perspective, she has like this career perspective on the Times at least as a merchant of truth. But it also sets up, sets up some ideas that have been in some of her web writing and some of her public statements since she left the Times. And I would say specifically in the past year, she has spoken about the Times is basically a place that expresses too much of a point of view about Trump as opposed to like just reporting the hard news about Trump.

She seems to think that it's succumb to a bit of like the whimsy that I think we'd otherwise associate with like the Times op-ed page, which it always seems to be this like battle between liberals trying to do the whole like, how dare you, sir? and the sort of token conservatives trying to blame, like, liberals for the fact that Trump is president. And, yeah, I don't know. She seems to have lapsed into this mode of thinking that, like, the Times has strayed too far from its mission to just... Did she say that in the book or... No.

So she said that in interviews recently where it seems like she... She denies this, but it seems like she's trying to pick fights with Dean McKay. Okay. Which is the, I mean, we should note that he and her, like, were basically the two main people in contention for the executive editor job when she got hired. And they've spent, like, a few years denying that there has ever been tension between them. But it also seems like there's always this sort of passive sniping between Abramson and the current New York Times leadership. I feel like if you have to publicly deny that you have tension with someone. Right, right.

Repeated for several years. Yeah, that you are enemies. that you fucking hate each other. But funny enough, her beef at the Times is not why we're talking about this book. Yes. We're talking about this book because apparently Jill Abramson is also picking fights with other media companies. I would say specifically millennial media companies, including vice. So, Kate, we should, you know, we were talking before about how people don't understand journalism all the time.

We should tell people a secret that before books come out, there are copies of books called advanced copies and galleys. And they get sent to journalists. We get free secret books. A lot of times books I really don't want. Right. People send, sometimes publicists send us multiple copies of the same book to force us to read their book. But overall, it's a very great perk. Right.

It's a good perk. It's an unfortunate perk in the case of Jill Abramson's book because here's what happens. happen. So Jill Abramson has some passages in Merchants of Truth where she's talking specifically about like Vice News Tonight and BuzzFeed. And she's talking about young millennial journalists at these publications. And because these people are young millennial journalists, two things are true about them. One, they get advanced copies of books. And two, they're on Twitter. And the combination of two things means that like a few people get copies of Jill Abramson's book and they find that they're mentioned in the book and they're mentioned instead of like condescending, unflattering

ways that importantly have like some factual just like mischaracterizations of said reporters. Like in one instance, Jill Abramson misgendered one reporter from Vice News to night as trans. And in other, like, she also, like, there's basically a Twitter thread where this reporter is, like, going through just, like, how Jill Abramson describes what they're wearing. And they're like, I don't even own this outfit. I have no idea what Jill Abramson is talking about. And then there's this thread and this, you know, this journalist and vice news tonight,

because they are young, millennial journalists, they have a social media following. it's easy for them to sort of take these screenshots of the advanced copy of the book and then you see other journalists emerge and they're one siding with the vice journalist and two they're sort of they're just fact-checking the book in real time they're not even looking for mentions of themselves they find a part of the book where and again this is an advanced copy of the book so it's not a finished like publication ready copy of the book but like they find a part where she's talking about the charlottesville protests and it's like mislabel Charlottesville as being in North Carolina as opposed to Virginia.

And you see a lot of tweets like that where it's like people are sort of rallying to the defense of these journalists who are sort of randomly criticized in the book and sort of like, I think Jill Abramson sort of sets them up as she leans sort of toward this language of describing these people at BuzzFeed and Vice as diversity hires. right, as people who are young and don't really know what they're doing and aren't like New York Times caliber reporters. And this all culminates with like that generation of reporters using their greatest strength, which is Twitter, to fact check the shit out of Jell Abramson's book and make her look like an idiot. Despite the fact that like she is a former executive editor of the New York Times and should know a thing or two about fact checking. Which brings us to the great expose of this podcast segment, which is that, in case you didn't know, books aren't fact-checked. They're not necessarily fact-checked. They're not necessarily fact-checked. You cannot assume that the book you're reading is accurate.

Right. Even if it's nonfiction, this isn't just like, you know, Finnegan's week isn't fact-checked. Well, no. I mean, yeah, we're talking about non-fiction books. Right. A journalist writing a non-fiction book, even if you know that journalist from a publication that has fact-checkers, that book is not necessarily fact-checked. And that has created a sort of fiasco for Jill Abramson, who, I mean, her latest statement has been, she's actually acknowledged that, like, Twitter is slam dunking on her book. And she's been like, it's an advance copy.

like read the actual copy when it comes out in February. So it is an uncorrected proof. Apparently some of the inaccuracies are fixed in the final copy, but it's really unusual for a book to have like that many huge mistakes in it that far along in the production process. Like it is sort of evidence that this book was not properly. fact-checked. I feel very bad for the journalists who got done dirty by Abramson. I think this is good that we're talking about this issue finally, because the fact that books aren't fact-checked

needs to be widely known. We need to change how the publishing industry operates in this way. like feature stories and magazines are thoroughly fact-checked. The publication is usually the one that takes the blame, not the individual writer. But with books, it's like the publisher seemed to get off Scott-free for publishing shit that's just not true. And I think that's bogus. And we should clarify that fact-check doesn't just mean like somebody goes through and Googles every sentence and is like, is this thing true? Did you spell Barack Obama's name right? Like, if Jill Abramson is recounting basically any falsifiable thing, like a fact checker is the person who will pick up the phone and call the person and say, hey, did this happen?

Yeah. Right. And they'll like ask for. And none of the people got calls, basically. Right. I don't know. These people are saying that like no fact checker reached out to them at any point. And yet here they are as like plot points in Jill Abramson's nonfiction book.

So the reason I think that publishing houses need to be shouldering way more of the blame when books fuck up to this extent is because I, so when I write something for The Ringer, I don't pay a fact checker myself. The Ringer has fact checkers that do that. With books, the author, if they want to be fact checked, they have to pay a fact checker out of their own pocket. Right. Generally out of their advance. Yeah. their advance money and apply some of that to paying fact checkers. So when you write a book, the responsibility is yours as the author to make sure your book is accurate in a way that in like magazine writing, newspaper long form writing is not. And what that ends up doing is allowing publishing houses to put out books that are full of lies. Which, funny enough, I mean, that's been a problem for a long time.

But the problem seems different with this book and with other books in the past couple of years because Twitter communities have taken it upon themselves to fact check. You know what I mean? It's one of those things where it's like if a publishing, like if a publishing house is not going to, and an author isn't going to pay someone to fact check a book. And the people writing these books are these high-profile people who live in the world of opinion and who have like factions of people who disagree with them or have reason to sort of quarrel with them in sort of like the op-ed space. One way of fact-checking for free is to just publish like a bunch of questionable shit and then let a bunch of journalists with nothing better to do like screenshot it. And, like, make threads about it and humiliate you on Twitter.

I just think it was so bold to write about journalists without fact-checking. Right. Of all people. Right, right. These are the most touchy and in touch with how to publicly shame you for getting things wrong. Right. But also, like, the most, like, personal brand-minded people, too. Yeah.

Like, the idea. I mean, I would be furious. I would do the same thing as them. Yeah. But that's the thing that strikes me so strange about this story. Like when you say journalists are the weirdest people to do that too, but it's like her characterizations in the screenshots that sort of angered people from the book, I think her problem in the first place is like these are people she doesn't really take seriously.

The Jill Abramson doesn't take seriously because they don't work for the New York Times or the New Yorker, you know? And I think that's where she fucked up. Her attitude? Right. I think on some level it's like she doesn't necessarily think that they're journalists. Yeah. So much as they're like Twitter people. Maybe this will change your mind. Way belatedly.

It's just so disappointing. When I heard that this book was coming out and I heard what it was about, I was excited to read it. Because I think that we do need lengthy examinations of what has happened to news media in the past decade. And like the problem of truth is. very urgent in 2019. This is a pro-truth. And then, yeah. And then it turns out that this book about how the media is getting corroded and it's so hard

for things to be correctly put out into the world ends up being blasted as full of inaccuracies before it's even published. It's just depressing. It's like she ended up illustrating her point in a way that she probably didn't intend to. Well, I think, okay, so there's that. But I think there's a secondary thing too. which is like, you have Jill Abramson who has like an interesting, she really does have an interesting perch to do that sort of examination

of like the transition from old media to new media. But the nature of how she fucked up here, it demonstrates the mindset of a person who doesn't actually get new media. You know what I mean? Like the fact that she wouldn't pay for the fact checkers out of her advance and doesn't really seem to have seen any of this like, preemptive backlash coming. To me, that's like a person who is like, I don't want to read that person's take on

vice and BuzzFeed. Like, they don't even get how Twitter works and like how journalists. Yeah. If she couldn't see that coming, then I'm not like, that is not a good look for somebody who's trying to sell me like a take about modern web media. Yeah, it's like how am I supposed to think of you as an expert on how media works if you were blindsided by this behavior, which is like really emblematic. Right.

Yeah. Right. So wait, are you going to read her book? I'm not mentioning this shit. Ain't catching me doing no journalism about Ebola. I'm not in the book. I might read it. I'm just not going to trust what I'm reading, which is a shame.

So the lessons from this episode, number one, sexting is bad. Number two, fact-checking is good. Anything else, my alive, boy? Fact-checking is good. Sexting is bad. Yeah. That's the position of damage control. I'm not on Twitter anymore, so at Kate about this.

Don't at me. You literally cannot at me. Any complaints? Kate Nibs, that's her screen name, username, Twitter.com. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibs. And you'll hear from us again in two weeks.