The Press Box - Brian Stelter on Fox News, CNN, and Feuding With Rob Schneider

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are joined by CNN’s Brian Stelter to discuss his career in cable news, reporting on Fox, and his response to individuals such as Rob Schneider and Glenn Greenwald. Then they dive deeper into Stelter's book, ‘Hoax.’  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Brian Stelter Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emmy Award-winning producer, actor and comedian Larry Wilmore is back on the air, hosting a podcast where he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the world of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. Check out Larry Wilmore, Black on the Air on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, I've got an important update about our only in journalism word list. Oh, good. As you know, we've been collecting words that reporters use in stories. all the time, but that actual carbon-based life forms will never used in human speech?

Right. So, for example, a reporter might say that a politician is embroiled in a scandal. Nobody says the word embroiled. Would you like to hear three new submissions? We got for her only in journalism word list. Sure. All right, the sports writer Rustin Dodd from the Athletic submits rebuffed. He writes, everybody.

But again, politics is always getting rebuffed. Yes. Have you ever said the word rebuffed in actual conversation? No, I mean, I don't think so. And I feel like I can't even think of a way that I would use it. It wouldn't be just like so embarrassing. When you and I were living together, there was constantly like, hey, did you ask so-and-so out for a date?

I don't remember you ever coming back to the apartment and going, you know, I did, but I got rebuffed. Yeah, exactly. That never happened. John Walter submits a word that's kind of right on the line. How do we feel about fraught? I am embarrassed to say that I... I think I feel like I use fraught with some regularity in my regular speech.

But yeah, it's not a real... I'm not sure that it goes over all the time, you know? It's... Yeah, I mean, it's one of those words that's actually not as sort of helpful a descriptor, at least when spoken. as it is in print for sure. How about this? How about the phrase potentially fraught?

That feels like... Never said that. Never said that in my life. But that's in journalism all the time. A potentially fraught relationship. So I think we'll just tweet this slightly. Potentially fraught occurs only in journalism. This is our last nominee from Aaron Warenko.

And I love this one. Grizzled. You often see a griseled so-and-so, a grizzled veteran perhaps when you're reading sports writing do you ever pronounce somebody as grizzled in your real life? Well, I think you just hit on it.

It's always a grizzled veteran, right? Doesn't this is, I mean, this isn't a sort of separate tier, which is an adjective that only, that is only ever attached to a certain noun? Like the all-important Iowa caucuses that we hear about every political season?

Do they not be like a grizzled sea captain? No one else grizzled out there in the world? Yeah, sea captains, although how often do you encounter a sea captain even in unless your desk as mine is covered with old issues of true magazine? I'm not sure that there's a not sure there's a lot of grizzled or there's a lot of sea captains grizzled or no in your day-to-day reading. But yes, grizzled could be could apply to some other things. I feel like I only ever see it applied to veterans. Coming up on today's show, David and I chat with CNN's Brian Stelter about the world of cable news, including some new

reporting he's done about Fox. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. So media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with Erica Servantes. David, we got ourselves a guest today. A guest from Cable News. Would you like to tell the people who we got on the show today? Oh, I get the honor. Please.

It's Brian Stelter of CNN's reliable sources. And of, you know, Twitter infamy. Twitter infamy. Ooh, that sounds like a potential topic to bring up today. Yeah. We should talk to him about it. Are we going to ask about the Rob Schneider thing? I think you have to, man.

I got so excited when I saw the Rob Schneider thing and Stelter was coming. I was like, okay, well, well, I know what this interview is going to be about. We actually had Stelter on last year when he wrote this book called a hoax, which is about Fox News and Donald Trump. He has the paperback edition out now. He's done some reporting in it about what. happened at Fox after the election, what happened about at Fox around January 6th. We'll get into all that. And I think some also, we should get into some stuff about what it's like to be Brian Stelter, to be kind of the media critic who becomes also the media critic that people target.

So here he is, the man himself from CNN, Brian Stelter. All right, Brian, a lot of very important things to talk about, but can we start with Rob Schneider? I think I know who he is, but you're going to have to remind me. Rob Schneider, the guy from early 90s Saturday Night Live in the Deuce Bigelow movie franchise. Yes, he used to be an actor. Okay. Ooh. We're getting spicy right off the top.

I get on Twitter last week and Rob Schneider is tweeting this. The Toad that is Brian Stelter commenting on Glenn Greenwald, who is arguably the most important journalist of the century, is like listening to a hot dog vendor discuss Michelin Star restaurants. All right, Brian. we are giving you the forum in cable news style here. How do you respond to Rob Schneider? Wait, I don't think I,

I don't think I saw this tweet and I, and I hate to disappoint him because I would have thought of, that that's such an incredible sentence. I wish I could come up with an equally incredible sentence combining animals and food and, okay, but let's just take it word by word, okay? Toad, okay, great, no objection to that. That's funny.

I look like a toad, that's fine. Glenn Greenwald, Did you say arguably the most important journalists of the century? That was Mr. Schneider's contention, yes. What year is it? Is it still 2021? So how about, listen, Glenn Greenwald, certainly a groundbreaking journalist. Let's check back in in 2009. I hopefully we're all still with us.

Okay. And then we can ask Rob Schneider, who was the most important journalist of the century? Does that seem like a fair play? Does that work for everybody? So your argument here is he was just, he was just speaking a little too early about I think he might be 79 years too early. Okay. But no objections about anything else.

The hot dog vendor. Totally. Listen, you know, ever since Fox News, folks started calling me a eunuch. I think there's, there's no, no insult can get under my toad like skin. But I'm really sorry that I missed Rob's insult. I would have replied on Twitter. So I'm, I'm grateful to you for flagging it for me. You can go back and grab it after the interview.

No, I'm sure it's, it's so relevant enough. What do you think he does now? Do you think he's a professional Twitterer? I believe I've seen him, I've not seen him, but seen like an ad for him at comedy clubs out here in L.A. You know, kind of. Oh, I'm sure he's hilarious. Do you, are you sure about that?

I mean, I, listen, I laugh at everything, so. That's great. Well, that question actually leads me. to another question that I had. You've been, Glenn Greenwald's been kind of going at you lately on Twitter. I have seen that. Now that I have seen.

I don't know. I mean, he's also become sort of, I don't know if he's trying to move in on your corner because he's tweeting a lot about cable news ratings. And that's, you know, he's sort of become a media critic of a sort in his own right.

But what do you think just in general? You mentioned the Fox News thing. But what do you, what makes you, a good target for, well, some people on the right and the Glenn Greenwalds of the world and anybody that kind of has a bone to pick. What is it? What do you think that it is about where you sit in the media landscape that makes you a target? I would like to keep making jokes, but if I have to be serious about it, I would say that being at CNN, which is, of course, institutional and, you know,

in some ways the Coca-Cola of news, you know, the brand that's synonymous with news, I think that has something to do with it. And then I think my beat, being a reporter who covers the media in an age where everybody's a media critic, you know, maybe makes me a little more visible and a little bit more of a, a, I hate to use the word target, because then it sounds like I'm complaining and I think it's all part of the job and I think it's all part of the gig. but I do think what's happened in the last 10 years taking me out of it is everybody is a media critic, especially on Twitter. Everybody thinks they're a media critic. A lot of people have really insightful things to say about the media. There's a lot to critique and a lot to improve on. And I've actually

kind of evolved my thinking about my job as a result. I, you know, certainly I do share some critiques from time of time, but I want to view this more as a correspondent. I'm a correspondent. I'm a reporter. I'm covering the media while everybody else is commenting on it. That's how I approach it. Certainly, Gun Greenwald approaches this work a different way. That's great. But I think I end up, you know, becoming a kind of a face or a symbol for the media, so to speak, because I'm on CNN talking about media. Does that make any sense or am I totally lost it? No, it's absolutely. So you become an avatar for CNN and then it's like, aha. That's the word. Avatar. And also, as you say, for media critics.

Aha, we got the media critic. We have exposed the media critic as being whatever they've exposed you. Right. Once in a while, someone will discover that I'm not perfect. And I will say, you're right. The media criticism thing is fascinating to me because there was a time when that was a very, very small part of journalism, which you and I are old enough and David two are old enough to remember.

And then I just remember the early stages of the blog, sphere number one and then Fox News number two and going, oh my gosh, media criticism is like one of their biggest subjects, maybe on certain days their biggest subject. Do you have an answer for why that became so appealing as a way to draw eyeballs? It's absolutely true. And it wasn't always this way at Fox News and then right with media. To some degree, right way media has always been a counter to mainstream media and exists as an alternative and presents itself that way. But Fox spends far more time talking about the media than it did 10 years ago. And I think that's partly, oh, this sounds so cynical.

It's a 24-7 ad for Fox. The whole time they're bashing the media, they're also telling you, don't trust anything else, don't turn the channel, don't watch anything else, don't trust those other guys. Which is, I think, very cynical and probably negative, because if I were sitting down with you like a nutritionist, I would encourage you to get a well-balanced news diet, a well-balanced media diet that might include some Fox, but would include a lot of other outlets as well.

So media bashing is a 24-hour ad for Fox. It's also really cheap and easy content. It's the cheapest and easiest form, just talking about some other channel. And it also, it's part of this GOP narrative of, you know, institutions, elites out to get the little guy, which, you know, if you walked inside CNN, where I am right now, I'm at the CNN office in New York, and you walked around, you know, you just see a bunch of guys and a bunch of men and women just trying their best to tell you

what the news is. And, you know, there's no, there's no shadowy conspiracy behind the scenes, but that is the claim. That is the narrative. That's the storyline Fox presents. And Brian does have his Zoom cam on just for people listening to this. So we, there isn't true. There's no shadowy conspiracy behind him in his office right. No, and I'm in my t-shirt and shorts because there's not a lot of people here yet because the building is gradually reopening. We're in this like kind of soft reopening of the building phase. And it's really good to see everybody again. And I guess I kind of love the view that if you actually work in one of these media outlets, then you know better than the crazy theories out there.

Like, you know, all the sort of, what's the old thing about people are, you know, people are too incompetent to pull off a grand conspiracy. Isn't that the best argument against UFOs or the best argument against secret government coverups of UFOs? You can't keep a secret to save your life. I think that's kind of how newsrooms are. Yeah. I think there's probably a lot of truth to that. The paperback edition of your book just came out. And we want to get into a little bit of the details.

But you know what the way you just answered that question, that there would be somebody out there on the internet saying, well, if he wants to say Fox has this narrative, then what does it say that the media critic on CNN is writing a whole book about Fox being full of it? Oh, good question. So, I mean, I'm not saying I would say that, certainly not. But, you know, I mean, this is...

I dig it. So you're right, so you write a whole book about Fox News. I think most of the people listening to this podcast would say that's a pretty easy target. But like, do you feel that there's any conflict there? How do you go about writing the book in such a way that there isn't one? I think there are two answers to that question. I think the first answer is I think Fox is a worthwhile subject because it's bigger than a television network. It's bigger than a media enterprise.

It is for its fans, almost a way of life. Certainly for President Trump, it was his guiding star. It was his viewfinder. I think of Fox News as being like the glasses that Donald Trump would have worn if he had ever admitted he couldn't see well and warn them in public. It was his way of seeing the whole entire world. And for that reason, I think Fox was so important to study and understand, especially in the Trump years. Now it's important for other reasons, but that was my main driving reason for writing the book. Fox was changing.

Fox was informing and misinforming Trump. And that was a story that was bigger than like, hey, I'm going to go write a book about a TV channel that happens to be on the cable dial close to CNN. Right. But I think what you're raising is significant. And I thought about it a lot when I was working on this. And my approach to taking that on was hopefully, and I hope I succeeded, but I certainly tried to be really transparent about it and honest in the writing. In other words, to say in the book, hey, look, I know, I'm this guy on CNN. where is this Navy Blue Blazer and does this and that.

And I know these folks at Fox and I know how they think because I think, you know, I get the same ratings data they do, right? I think that in some ways my closeness to the story allowed me to tell it in a much more honest, I think, way. So let me put it to you this way. When I worked at the New York Times covering TV, covering Fox and CNN, I thought I understand, I thought I understood ratings and I understood ratings to some degree, but not in a gut emotional way that I understand them now.

So when I was out talking with producers and hosts at Fox, trying to get to know them better, trying to source up for this book, I felt like I connected to people because I'm on television and have that experience. So in a way, working for a channel that, you know, whether it's a rival or not, we do live in the same part of the cable television world,

I think it benefited my work as opposed to Hurtain. The best way to write it. about cable news hosts, maybe to be a cable news host yourself. You got me. I think that's the secret. Oh, I love it. All right, more from Brian Stelter in a second, but David, let us pause to do the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media

Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David from the world of sports, or I guess sports gimmicks, there was a pretty disappointing Floyd Mayweather Logan Paul exhibition boxing match last night. I guess it went the full eight rounds. There was no scorecard per the rules. So we just did eight rounds.

And then we said, okay, well, that was an exhibition boxing match that everybody paid for. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, I didn't even pay for the fight and I feel like I got scammed. thanks to Ty Yeager for that one. David, we missed this story last month.

Guy Fietti, the star of a retired press box bit, signed a new contract with the Food Network that will pay him a reported $80 million. $80 million. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, Guy Fietti will be taking the Food Network to the finals.

Thanks to Kyle's beard. See, that crosses. You get extra points when you cross anything in pop culture with the NBA here at the ringer. And finally, I must ask this, did you see the conspiracy theory about Donald Trump's zipper over the weekend? No. Donald Trump gave a speech in North Carolina. I'm sure people saw highlights of that. This was later strenuously debunked by some poor person at Snopes.

There were camera shots that made it look like Trump had no zipper. on his trademark blue pants. Oh, that's better than where I thought you were going with that. Okay, go ahead. Well, yeah, it just was kind of an odd flat front. Mm-hmm. I don't know why it would be a conspiracy that Trump would not have a zipper. I don't know who would be conspiring to deprive Trump of a zipper or what the end game there was.

But it was an overword Twitter joke to write, Donald Trump has evidently been put on the no-fly list. That's great. Thanks to Chris Lazo, if you came up with a Trump conspiracy that was even too much for me and David, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right. More for Brian Steldon.

In this paperback edition, we had you on last September. You talked about Fox News and Trump and all those other matters up to that point. You then update this through the election. And you outlined something that happened after the election, which was Fox eventually said that Joe Biden had won the election. I believe this was on Saturday, November 7. Newsmax and OAN are not so eager to say that Joe Biden has won the election. So Fox and suffers this very substantial ratings dip, I think we could say. Right.

How does Fox fight back? What happens inside the network at that point? It is an amazing story. And it's why I went a little overboard writing this paperback. I added like 20,000 words. It was way more than I was supposed to. And I'm grateful to the editor and the publisher of letting me publish all of it. But I had never seen anything happen like this.

in television history before. I don't think it's ever happened in sports. I don't think it's ever happened in entertainment. There was a day when Newsmax had 10 times the audience it had the week before. Like, you know, pre-election day, they were getting 50,000 viewers on a good day, 100,000 viewers on a great day. After the election, half a million, almost a million viewers. I had never seen it happen.

10x growth, a thousand percent rating's growth. you know, you see doubling, and that's an amazing thing in television. This was 10 times growth. So it's true. That Fox, that activist Trump base, that used to be the Fox base, flood Fox. It happened on Saturday and Sunday, and by Monday you could see it in the numbers. Fox's problem was that the audience now had somewhere else to go. They didn't have somewhere else to go, you know, when Mitt Romney lost in 2012,

although that wasn't as much of a gut punch as Trump losing. Fox lost its monopoly on right-wing TV between November 3rd and November 7th of what we now think of as election week. That's when Fox lost its monopoly on right-wing TV. Newsmax was available. It was an option. One American News was an option. Greg Kelly on Newsmax was refusing to call Biden president-elect. So it was this amazing moment. Newsmax's unreality found an audience. Now, your question is, what did Fox do in response?

They ran as fast as they could to the right. further to the right. There were a couple of really obvious things that they did. They were watching Newsmax to see what guests were coming on Newsmax. And then they were basically saying to those guests, you got to do us first. You can't go on Newsmax. You know, you got to go back to Fox, trying to get the guests to come back home. But to get the viewers to come back home, fewer Democrats on the air, fewer news reports, more Tucker Carlson, more hard right opinion. It happened day by day. So it felt gradual. But when you look back six months later, it was really obvious.

It was really clear. And the result is a network that is much further to the right than it was six months ago. And I think the result is Fox's, if you think about a Venn diagram, a picture in one circle, the American mainstream news media. You know, I'm thinking about like the Associated Press and NBC and ESPN and CNN. And then on the other side, Fox News, there's less overlap. We are covering fewer of the same stories. We are, it's, Fox is just increasingly in its own world because it's moved further to the right.

But guys, it works. This works. The ratings came back. The audience came back. Newsmax has sagged. Fox has risen. Fox is back to number one on any typical day. So it worked.

So do you feel like when you say that Fox ran to the right, I mean, the way you described it made a lot of sense. But would you say during the Trump years, they were further to the right than they had been in the past? Or define them as just being more pro-Trump than any sort of political ideology? This is the dilemma for me as a writer. And I'm not going to claim that I'm great at this. What I find myself trying to figure out how to describe this slow but steady shift.

this march that's happened, right? So the Fox of 2021 is further to the right than the Fox of 2020, but compared to 2015, you know, it's a mile down the road further to the right. Maybe I should have written that in the book. I mean, one way I did write in the book, I said it reminded me of a drunken night out when you've got a, you know, an empty pint glass in your hand and you're, you're in that point where you're making that fateful decision, right? Like, do you settle your tab, call an Uber, sober up, go home? That's what you should do. right? That's what the responsible voice in your head tells you to do. Don't order another beer. You know that you're at that point where you're going to regret it in the morning.

But, you know, the booze beckons you to order more. Like we've all been there. Like the, you know, you will want to get another round. I feel like Fox not only ordered another beer, they ordered shots for the entire bar. Um, like this, it's a massive hangover as a result of, of this election. And it's not just me saying that. It's, it's folks inside the network. I had a commentator, an on-air commentator say to me, we turned so far right, we went crazy. And obviously that's a dissenting voice inside Fox. A lot of people at the network are happy about where things are today.

But I think it's this hangover thing. I think it's the have another beer, go home at the end of the night, and they go for that next beer. Which brings us to January 6th, speaking of the next beer and the siege of the U.S. Capitol. I think there was a pretty widespread, opinion on this podcast, on some of the things you wrote on just a lot from a lot of people that, hey, Fox News and the things that were being said on the air there were one of the many elements that got us to January 6th. When you talk to people inside Fox, was there a reckoning? Was that

idea were they upset? Were they worried? How did they feel about that? You know, I wish I could survey every staffer there. But to the sense that I know, and my goal, of course, has talked to people in different cities, on different shows and different places and different ranks of the network, high, low, in between. I think the way I would sum it up is there was a minority that was disturbed, that wondered about culpability, that felt shame. I had a staffer, a veteran staffer text me the morning of January 7th and say, what have we done? And that is certainly a real view that was inside Fox, but a minority view. And then there were a lot of other folks who did not look backwards and did not take stock and did not feel any amount of involvement or, I mean,

again, culpability is a strong word and a big word, but did not feel any culpability. I guess I think if we look back through the course of history, do you get to the point of an insurrection without Fox News for 20 years? And I don't know how you can possibly get to that point without Fox News. Fox is, of course, one of many factors. And maybe without a Fox News, maybe something else would have come up in its place to lead to it. But, you know, this environment of right-wing rage TV and radio, this environment of

choose-your-own-news, conspiracy theory thinking, the ability to have a mass delusion, which I think is really what January 6 was, a mass delusion. I don't know how we could have gotten there without Rupert Murdoch launching Fox. But what I find in television news is very, very infrequently, much of an appetite to look backwards, right? You got to put on next day's show. You got to get out there and do the show again. You got to get out there and get the audience. I suppose, you know, if your political project for four years was to defend a president who then lost re-election, who failed to win re-election, you might wonder, should we do things differently?

Maybe we shouldn't put on so many right-wing screamers. maybe we shouldn't put out so much propaganda. But, you know, look, everything that's happened since November 3rd has been to do more of that, to go further into Trumpism, further the propaganda lane. There's very little self-reflection that I've seen. With all that said, Brian, can I get you to solve a mystery that Dave and I have been interested in? As long as it's not about Rob Schneider. It's not about Rob Schneider, but in the same content universe.

Why did Fox get rid of Lou Dobbs? So this is a little bit of a mystery. And people who buy the paperback will see that I have a theory about it, but that Lou Dobbs has never said. He's never explained it himself and neither has Suzanne Scott, the head of Fox News Media. I think the theory goes like this. These lawsuits were bearing down on Fox. Lou Dobbs was one of the promoters of the big lie that led to these lawsuits. You know, his program was full of this voter fraud nonsense that led to the lawsuits.

But so then they fire him one day after, well, technically, definitely they, so you guys now, the language of television works, right? They pay or played him. So they're paying him not to play. They're paying him to sit on the bench until the end of his contract, which means they didn't fire him. They canceled his show and kept him off TV, which that's how it works in TV news sometimes. That's within their rights.

They can pay or play you. And so he's off in a witness protection program until his contract aspires. So why do they do it? Well, they did it one day after this lawsuit. So obvious it's because of the lawsuit, right? Well, here's what I think. I think he was the pain of the butt. I think he was a pain of the butt for management.

He had been for a while. I think they already were looking around saying, this guy is this program advertising bases week. You know, he's not, he's not making, maybe not making money for the network. Maybe he, and also, if you throw one overboard, as NPR's David Volkenfoot has said, if you throw one overboard,

others might learn from that. That I think might, might have been the story of what was happening. There are some folks in the Fox that swear he was going to be dismissed even before the lawsuits. So, you know, I think the answer is it's complicated. It always is. But if you are not, if you have a reputation as being a pain and annoyance, you know, in the eyes of management, you know, these things happen sometimes.

In your last answer, you mentioned the Murdox, mentioned Suzanne Scott. at when people, I guess the Murdox hold, you know, obviously I'll hold an incredible place in the imagination of anybody that pays attention to this stuff. But when we, or when anybody else hears about these things going on, Lou Dobbs getting fired, or I think more broadly, the sort of political shifts, the ideological decisions that get made behind the scenes, do we ever read the tea leaves correctly? I mean, do we ever, like, is there, is this a, is this a long-term political campaign on the part of the Murdoch family? Or is this all just sort of, capitalism in the way that you describe their, you know, lurch to the right when, when,

when faced with competition? I mean, is this a, to what degree is this a political project, Fox News at being, and, you know, you can lump in other things? And how, to what degree is it just a capitalist one? The first thing comes to my mind is, it is, it is, it is, it is first and foremost, a capitalist project. I think, I think that that is where I would come down on the answer. Um, but it's a capitalist problem. that does advance a political agenda and does come with certain perks when your favorite politicians are in power. And that's appealing and important and part of the story. And but I think it's primarily for the Murdoch's a business, a profitable enterprise, something that he's he's actually

largely hands off a lot of the time, which I would argue is an unpart of the problem. But, you know, people say to me, you know, why is he not reigning in the talent? Well, he prides himself on giving the talent autonomy. Autonomy is a great thing in the media business, as long as you're not promoting dangerous anti-vaccination theories or encouraging people to believe lies that cause them to attack the capital. You know, I'm all for autonomy, but there's a rudderlessness. There's a lack of accountability that is a problem that comes from the Murdox. But here's what I think, here's what I try to remember about Rupert.

You know, going on 90 years old, you know, he's got, he's got, you know, daughters graduating from, from my, I think it's either high, it must be high school. It's not college yet. You know, he's got, he has his, you know, lovely family. Of course, he's a lot of drama within the family with James Murdoch, you know, leaving the family business. But, you know, big family, lots going on.

Lots of interest, lots of newspapers. So what I'm trying to get at is when I see something, you know, outrageous happened on Fox News, and I think to myself, well, what's the internal reaction going to be? Our advertisers is going to pull out? Is the company going to do anything? Is there going to be fallout from this? Rupert's just sitting back reading the Wall Street Journal and hanging out with his family. You know, like there's a disconnect between what, how I think folks might imagine

the places run or not run and how it actually works. It reminds me of something that the media CEO, not CNN, not Fox, said to me a long time ago, when I asked about their news operation, they said to me, I just don't want them to embarrass me. Like, they can do whatever they want. They can do this, you know, just keep making money and don't embarrass me. You know, I'm not telling them what to say. I'm not canceling certain guests. I'm not messing with their editorial product. I just don't want them to embarrass me. And of course, What are you going to say to that? You're going to say, well, doesn't Fox News embarrass him for Murdoch? Well, clearly, it does not. And, you know, his fingerprints are not on the minute-by-minute coverage.

His fingerprints might be on the themes, right? Big tech reckoning, you know, censorship, cancel culture. You know, his fingerprints are on the themes. But he's, you know, he wants it to make record profits, expand, and in advance a GOP agenda in, I think in that order. A couple quick questions about your own network, Brian, before we let you go. Trump was a scramble the Jets moment for cable news. How has CNN changed after Trump? Ask me again in a year. But what I've noticed on reliable sources is I always kind of knew what the lead story was going to be on Sunday. There was always an obvious lead story in the Trump years, almost always.

Biden has changed that, I think, in a way that's quite refreshing. There's certainly no shortage of news with Biden. but I feel a little more free to lead with X, Y, or Z because we don't have a president trying to destroy American news outlets. So there's a little bit more of a, I feel a little bit more of a range of stories that I can be thinking about on Sunday morning. But that's me on Sunday mornings. I think more broadly that that range is true.

We're seeing that. And there's obviously a different tempo, a different pace to the news. in a way that results in folks spending a little bit less time obsessing over news. But, you know, I remember 2014. I remember 2015. I remember the pre-Trump news cycle. And this feels a lot like that to me. I don't know if you noticed, but your interview with Jen Bessaki, who is the White House press

secretary, got a lot of attention. This might bring us a little bit full circle to some of the detractors that we talked about at the top of the interview. But you interviewer yesterday on your show, obviously. I think there's always going to be a little bit of a disconnect when we're talking about a, well, you said media critics, not exactly what you are anymore, but a media reporter talking to a press secretary for the president. This is somewhere between inside baseball and, you know, outside of the ballpark.

I'm not sure which one. That's okay. But like, what is, what are you trying to, when you book this interview, what do you go in? What is the goal? And do you feel like you accomplished it yesterday? Oh, I love that that's the way you frame a question. What is the goal? Because I think that's what sometimes is not thought about on the receiving end. So let me summarize the criticism for you in a way that you're trying to be kind. I'll summarize it in a tougher way. People are saying, you're too, the people on the right are saying, you're too soft on her. You're too soft. And then I got some liberal saying, why are you pestering her about press conferences? Biden doesn't owe you any.

anything. So let me deal with the right wing criticism because that's the louder, the louder side. My point of view is that I'm not anchoring state of the union or the situation room. So I'm not interviewing about policy or news of day. Certainly, you know, sometimes I would bring that up and if I have the chance I would. And if I had been able to tape the interview with her on Saturday instead of Friday, I would have asked her about the New York Times gag order revelation because that was shocking and disturbing. But that hadn't come out yet when I had interviewed or taped on Friday. So my point of view is I'm not doing a news of day interview because that's what my colleagues do much better than I would. So I want to do much more of a setback,

personal interview, talk more big picture about Biden's relationship with the press. And as a result, the right winger is on Fox are coming at me saying I'm too soft and I'm too gentle. But I thought was the more interesting criticism was from the left, from people trolling me, because I asked, why isn't Biden having more press conferences? Why isn't he more accessible to the press? And the reaction from some folks on the left is, you know, that's an idiotic question. You don't deserve, you know, you don't need to, Trump was evil. You don't need access to Biden.

Biden's, like, there was a lot of blowback. I thought the more interesting blowback was from that side. there is a there is a there is a sensitivity to questions about Biden's availability that I was not expecting that I was struck by

so I think the answer what is the goal of an interview like that is can we take a breath have a bigger picture conversation and and not deal with news of day but the consequence of that choice as an interviewer is

people who only watch clips of the interview on Twitter are going to be dissatisfied. And people who only watch clips of the interview on Twitter are not going to understand my goal and not give it a chance, not give it a shot. And that's unfortunately a consequence of our decontextualized media landscape, right? That clips and moments and outtakes or people's hot takes about an interview actually get consumed instead of the product itself. So really what they're yelling about, if I'm being honest, is they're not yelling about

the interview. they're yelling about a byproduct, almost like a, does that make sense? They're reacting to a deconstructed, decontextualized thing that provides a source of rage or anger or hostility. And that's the point where I turn off my Twitter mentions and I don't look for the rest of the day because there's no way I'm going to persuade Joe Blow 2513821. that he should watch the entire interview, that's not going to happen. I'm realistic about that. I would say that's fair enough.

I would say also, though, that cable news hosts do benefit from little Twitter clips all the time. Anderson Cooper's facial expressions. Jake Tapper busting some Republican, you know, House member who's on there, you know, about the big lie or whatever.

You know, it does go both ways. I agree. That is a very good point. And I'm glad you said that. I should be grateful for Snapstream and all. those other services that let me post short clips to Twitter. And so I am part of the problem as I am also trying to be part of the solution. And then the sun goes around the earth again and

again and again. And we all, we all hopefully are going to live till 2009 because I am committed to that plan. We need to revisit. We should have a poll at the end of the century who was the most influential journalist of the century. And I can just say it's not going to be me. So I'm out of the running. Oh, let's see if Glenn gets to number one. As Rob Schneider predict it? Anything's possible. Brian Stelter, paperback edition of hoax, Donald Trump, Fox News,

and the dangerous distortion of the truth is out right now. Brian, thanks for coming on the press box again. Thank you. All right, David. Man, so many things there I want to, I want a post game with you. I did like the part where he said about

how in order to be, in order to truly understand cable news and cable news hosts, you get really helpful to be a cable news host. I feel like now I have to host an opinion show on ESPN in the morning and argue with Max Kellerman to truly understand to be able to write about sports television. I'm not going to really fully understand until that moment. Yeah. Well, it's like if we interview other podcasters, there's some point of connection there. know, we can, we break the ice by complaining about taskams or whatever, you know,

there's, there's got to be a little bit of common ground. And the party said about interviews out of context, it really is funny because it does, it does make, you know, burnish the star of the cable news host and then make the cable news host into the pinata at the same time. Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, it's, what you said is correct. the news clips on Twitter are valuable.

You know, I can't help but just immediately think of the last thing I was looking at before we came on the air, which was a tweet that had a brief clip of the Floyd Mayweather Logan Paul fight. And the tweet was just like implying or stating that Mayweather at some point during the fight knocked Paul out and then held him up to keep the fight going, you know, just to keep because this is totally a sham. and the clip that was attached was I was I had already copied the URL to put it into ring

or a slack and then of course I read a few comments down where somebody had the full clip and it was you know what I was watching was totally false right yeah it was Donald Trump zipper exactly it was a Donald Trump we should maybe Donald Trump Zipper should be the new milkshake duck but Donald Trump Zipper

I feel like yeah hosts get I mean people on TV get Donald Trump zippered a lot And it's, I think it kind of comes to the territory. Brian seemed kind of surprisingly well adjusted about the whole thing. That's not a reflection on him, but man, he lives through a lot of it. He strikes me as that. Let us say there are other cable news hosts in the world, I think, who are reading their mentions and taking things a bit more personally.

I always think of Brian is at least fairly zen about that. Maybe that's because he thinks of himself as a reporter more than as an opinion guy. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, listen, part of what makes him work on television, you know, part of what kind of gives, allows him to, to stand out is that he's, is that he's sort of more, I mean, he's not, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, on-air personality. He came from the print journalism world. And I don't know if that makes him more well-adjusted, but it certainly seems like it, you know, he does seem, he does seem by

personality to be separate from, or, you know, purely by disposition to be separate from the rest of the, some, or a lot of the goings on in the cable news world, you know, which I'm sure helps his reporting too. He was wearing shorts. And a t-shirt, yeah. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. You've heard of casual Friday. This is gradual reopening Monday. It just come like you're about ready to get on the Peloton. I love that. Oh, my gosh. All right, it's time for David's Shoemaker.

Guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Friday's headline about a theater that became a craft beer venue was the taming of the brew. We got a vote for ails well that ends well. Just pretty good, considering that's a happy outcome for the theater-turned craft beer venue. Today's headline, David, comes from my wife. My wife, she was sitting there reading the New York Times on Sunday morning, and she turns to me and said, hey, did you see this pun right here on the front page?

She probably did not imagine her life was someday going to be turning to her husband and say, hey, did you see this pun here in the paper? Maybe you could use that on your podcast. I will read you the subhead that was on the front page of Sunday's New York Times. Quote, after nearly a century, Kara Stan's North Carolina, factory closed, marking the end of the wonder rug of America. The factory in North Carolina, though that's not particularly important, is no longer making the rugs. There will be no more rugs here.

What was the New York Times' strained pun headline? A rug factory is closed. Yes. Rug, uh, um, farewell, uh, good. by the end of an era, the end of, um, let me give you a little help here. What is a machine or apparatus that one uses to, oh, okay. Looming, looming demise, looming, uh, the, the end is looming, the, um, the looms are, aren't

humming anymore. Looms are shut down. There's, there's no noise coming from the looms. And quiet looms? Well, I have no idea. Silent loom? Silent loom? What is the one?

The silence? Silence of the looms. Oh, gosh. Silence of the looms. Oh, my God. That's terrible. I was terrible. It's a great headline.

Thanks to my wife and the New York Times for that. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Later, Brian.