The Press Box - How the Shannon Sharpe Lawsuit Is Being Covered. Plus, the NFL Draft Media Economy.

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Hello, media consumers! On this Press Box Thursday, Bryan and Joel discuss the Shannon Sharpe lawsuit, Stephen A. Smith’s role in negotiating ESPN’s public response to it, and how the rest of the media world has reacted to this news (10:00). Then, they assess new entries in the “worst question asked at the White House” genre (32:00) and talk about the NFL draft as a media property—the TV show vs. attending in person, the overwhelming amount of mock drafts, and the line between fans of the NFL and fans of college football (39:00). Finally, they react to the turmoil at ‘60 Minutes’ following the $20 billion Trump lawsuit against CBS (52:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel D. Anderson Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Folks, it's Jay Kyle Mann from The Ringer, and as always, basketball is so freaking, freaking good. It's so good, in fact, that the Ringer's NBA draft show is finally back just in time for a ramp up to June. We've got you covered every week as we take an in-depth look at who's got next for the NBA's future. We'll talk the rising and falling stocks of the best and the brightest prospects in the 2025 NBA draft class. From Cooper Flag to Dylan Harper, the BJ Edgecom, and more. tap in with me on the Ringer NBA draft show every Wednesday and make sure that you follow, subscribe, and hit us with those five-star ratings. Media consumers, welcome to press box. You've got Brian Curtis.

You've got Joel Anderson. You've got producer Bobby Wagner. Coming up on today's pod, the Shannon Sharp lawsuit and how Stephen A. Smith became ESPN's chief spokesperson. Plus, we may have a new champ in the contest to choose the worst question ever asked at the Whitewater. White House. The clock is ticking at 60 minutes and our favorite takes about tonight's NFL draft. Speaking of which, with the first pick, I want to select the school with both the highest ceiling and the highest floor. There are no character concerns. Welcome to J-School. You know, my 40 isn't nearly what it used to be, but I've got a family to feed, bills to pay.

I can promise not I'll play to the echo to the whistle. We can do that here at J-School. Brian, I really, and I'm sure you've heard some of this, I really enjoyed the interview with our very own Chris Ryan that ran Monday. I'm sure you got a lot of good feedback on that, huh? Thank you. I mean, I could listen to Chris talk about anything. Yeah, yeah. But the seeds of his journalistic and podcast career was particularly interesting to me. Oh, of course, of course.

And it took me back to sort of a very different time in media when it seemed like people had faced. figured out how to connect with readers in a more intimate way. And it sort of gradually opened up these other avenues into the business. I'm thinking of like, because he started even before I'm thinking of. I'm thinking like 2006 to 2010 when it felt really alive. And then it led it to like that next era of media where all these general interest startups like BuzzFeed tried to absorb some of that energy. And there were so many people and like so many poster read.

It was overwhelming, but in a good way, right? Yeah. And that was part of it. I mean, it's hard to describe if you weren't there. But there was a time in media where stuff didn't just update all day. And then there was a blogosphere where you'd refresh your computer at work and it'd be like, oh, there's a new post. Now I have something new to read. That was actually a problem circa 2002, 2003.

Oh, yeah. I remember very often, I'd say, I think I've got to the end of the internet. You know, there's nothing else for me to read. Before I get into the rest of this, though, I want to say, I did not know that he had eulogized stack bundles. That has to have been the first time. Stack Bundles has appeared on the press box. Is that fair? Number one and probably one of one, I guess one or two now. New York mixtape rapper who came up with the podcast impresario Joe Button, I ordered his mixtape. Back in the day when you had to order mixtapes online, and so I had to stack bundles mixtape, him in the 18. And I have another question for you. So he said the Black album, what's the best JZ album? So what's your favorite JZ album, Brian? Well, I go with Chris on all these things,

a black album, you know? Yeah. I'm following up, you know, who am I to dispute Chris Ryan's taste? It's also my choice. I'm a real big fan of the song of Lure. You know, it's so nice. We're all in agreement about this.

Yeah, I think it's universally considered one of his better albums. So it makes sense that you'd end up there. But I was thinking back to what Chris was talking about. And as a writer, I was thinking about the blogger's fear showed that maybe you didn't have to spend the first few years of your career listening to a police scanner and coming through arrest reports to maybe someday write about things you enjoyed and had more passionate about,

you know? Like, I think that there is value in that path, right? But I'm also going to be realistic about the idea that sometimes it leaves out people. So, like, as a reader, there were all these sorts of voices and formats to become familiar with. And it felt, this is maybe not fair, but it felt more lively and fun than reading a news website. Like even if those blogs were just feeding off the work produced by reporters and editors at those outlets, it still felt really alive and fun in a way. Like you say, when you would wait for that blog post and he'd be like, oh, yes, I got this person whose voice I really want to hear talk about something in the news.

Yeah, because they cared about what they were writing about. You know, I mean, you and I could probably find some times early in our career where we were doing something that may not have been our first choice, but we threw ourselves into it and all that stuff. But again, how much of that is ever going to be transmitted from a newspaper story? Oh, yeah. Especially a newspaper story given to a 22, 23-year-old novice reporter. Right. And I guess then the question is like, how do you learn the tools of journalism? Right.

Part of it's just writing, figuring things out. But, you know, again, a lot of what one of the secrets of journalism, a lot of it is on the job training. It's absolutely right. I mean, there's a lot of- graduate from school being like, I know everything. Now I'll put this to work. No, no, no, no. You actually figure out even the ethics of it. All that stuff is figured out on the fly. Absolutely. You learn so much doing the job itself. And I mean, I would say, I remember when I graduated from journalism school, one of the editors I interviewed with or something like that said, you know, I actually like it when we have journalists that didn't major in journalism. I'm like, shit, why did you say that, you know? Why did you say that earlier? Maybe I would have majored in history or something, right?

But you said you weren't much of a blog reader. How did you avoid? Were you just talking about like the sports blog world, like free darko and stuff? Or are you talking about, you know, everything? I was talking about the CR blog world, the highly personalized. This is my fever dream in print blog world. So I was reading political blogs back then. Okay.

I was certainly reading Deadspin, Gawker, when it becomes a little more industrialized. Is that the word? Yeah. But those very highly personal blogs, you know, again, I was just, I say this, I don't say this one ain't probably. I was just too much of a normie. So I'm like, oh, Andrewsullivan.com. Let's see what this commentator has to say about the news of the day.

Oh, yeah. Man, so I mean, I was shocked. How can we have been working all this time and I did not know that you had worked with Andrew Sullivan and you were basically, I mean, how many jobs did you have? Oh, that's, that was number one. Okay. And he was fun. I mean, that was so funny just because, and I feel bad now.

in retrospect, we never got to smoke pot together or anything like that. I could actually have a better story for you about the memoir. But yeah, I remember doing his research all the time. I'll tell you one funny story before we move on to, you know, important journalistic subjects here. But one time, this was at the New Republic, our email system crashed. Yeah. So we had to start using whatever email we had at hand to just, you know,

communicate with people. And my nickname in high school and college was, the curdo what brian curtis was the curdo the curdo okay all right usually just curdo and hey curdo and my friends from that era still call me that and so i had i think it was a yahoo address the curdo at yahoo dot com okay so not thinking i'm just like oh here's my personal email let's you know email andrew whatever research he needs or whatever it is and he comes into the office with the british accent he goes the kuddo the kutov the kirto Like right in front of the whole staff. And I was like, oh, whoops.

Did it catch on? Did anybody else call calling you Kurto? Yeah, there's definitely a couple people from there, some of the younger people, which I don't mind. I don't hate that nickname. Oh, okay, cool. Well, look, I find that fascinating because I was one of the people that read Andrew Sullivan at that time.

Like, I was, in fact, it made me dig back into my old blog, which I can talk about a little bit here is that so I'm going to just I'm going to set the scene for you because if not for the blogosphere there's no way that I would have lasted in this business and that's either because I would have given up waiting for an opportunity to emerge somewhere and I would have gone to grad or law school or I would have taken the PR exit route like consider Brian in 2011 I flew to Tulsa for an interview to work in communications for a fracking company oh no that's how badly I wanted out I finished in second for that job is by understanding. Thank God.

I would have taken it. If they ain't given it to me, I would have taken it. Thank God, you for a second. I was ready to grow up and get a real job and have regular hours and have a house like all my other friends. But anyway, let me take you back. So, 2008, I'm working in the Hernando County Bureau of the then St. Petersburg Times. Now it's called the Tampa Bay Times. During the interview process, the recruiter had warned me, Rob Hooker.

I mean, I need to check in on Rob Hooker. I don't know where Rob is now. But he had warned me that it could be a tough place for black reporters. The county seat is named Brooksville in honor of the pro-slavery congressman Preston Brooks who cained and seriously injured Charles Sumner, the abolitionist from Massachusetts. So there's a Confederate monument in front of the courthouse there. It used to host a major Civil War reenactment. So you can kind of get a sense for the flavor of this place at the time.

But I took the job anyway because I'm a resilient guy. I can get along with anybody. my apartment was an hour away in New Tampa, so I'm commuting at least two hours a day. And I just felt so far removed from the journalism career that I once envisioned. So one day I'd go home and I decided to start my own blog because there was so much other shit I wanted to write about.

And I called the blog False Hustle, and my pseudonym was Black Ink, which is a line from a root song, okay? So up until about 2014, if people had heard of me or knew of my work, they probably knew me as black ink. Okay. And so my goal was to post about twice a day,

mostly responding to whatever news from the day interested me. And I put like a small following. So like I know Chris said that he didn't care about the metrics, but I kind of did. I wanted to know, is this going to go anywhere? So I had about 200 people a day. And sometimes I'd get like a thousand on the really good post, right? But, you know, those people that are really interested in which you want to say,

it can make you feel really important, right? You feel like a responsibility to them. And the key for me was building an audience and, like, leave comments on other blogs. And you try to find people who occupied your same corner of the blogosphere. So, for instance, I was commuting with Tanahasi Coats. He had his own blog, and it would be like two comments under his post. Like, this is before he's at the Atlantic. This is before Madaglase has helped him get on.

I don't remember if it was a think progress or whatever. But, like, Tanahazi was like a relative nobody, right? So you could talk with him. And so after a year of this, I got an email from Gene Demby, who was running the post-Bougey blog that I love so much. He invited me to write with them, which is cool. And basically anything I wrote there, I'd crosspost over at False Hustle. And from there, I made contact with him and Shiny Hilton, who later went on to become the deputy editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. And today is the editor-in-chief of the Civic News Company, which is like chalk beat, vote beat, and health beat.

So in between, you know, I'm at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the worst place I've ever. worked. And then I went back to the Times to cover sports. And at this time, I'm not telling people about all the blog stuff I'm doing, right? I don't, I'm not, I'm a reporter. I'm not really supposed to have an opinion about some of this stuff, right, in my day job. But when I went in for my job interview in BuzzFeed, which I've now mentioned twice on this show, it was the first time I shed the cloak of anonymity to show the kind of work I was doing in my free time. And I can't remember where I read this, but somehow I got access to internal chatter about my job application. And Ben Smith said something to the effect that I wasn't necessarily a beautiful writer,

which I agree with. I think there's a level of like elegance and beauty and writing that I just, I don't have access to it, right? But he said that I had an impressive range of interest and I kept up with so much that he was curious what I could do if I got to do that kind of stuff full time. So I had like a package of stories I'd written in Tampa about like a four star offensive of Lyman who had to retire because of concussions, a coverage of a trial about a guy who slaughtered an elderly couple in their home.

I did a very extensive profile of former USC quarterback John David Booty. But that's not what got me the job. That's not what got me the foothold into new media. It was the work that I did as an anonymous blogger. And so I just, like Chris, I don't think substack is really like exactly the right replacement. for that, right? Because, I mean, I don't know. It doesn't feel quite the same. But like, I wish there was, it was as lively as it was then because I feel like it's another way for people to sort of get in there. People that you would never, you know, not necessarily writers, but people

that can write. And maybe they have a voice and you could find a place for them at these media outlets, you know? Absolutely. And for people like you, there were at an old media outlet, there was just so much of your brain that had no place to go. That was not going to get into the paper. even if you wrote what they thought was the best story you'd ever written. It was not going to be in that story. No, absolutely not. Yeah, I mean, they did not. I mean, and it's understandable that they did not want to hear the opinions of a 28-year-old, right?

Kind of understandable, but it's also the beginning of their demise that they don't want to, right? That they're like, here's the way we do the news and there's no other way to do the news. And there's no such thing as, you know, a blog within this thing or a podcast. That's part of the problem, right? Eventually. They'll eventually figure that out. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I guess like they kind of, I mean, I guess, you know, they welcomed them in and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, man, if it had not been for the blogosphere. So it was just, it was just a lot of fun hearing Chris Ryan talk about that. I had a pretty cool blog role too. Like, I was looking at, I was looking back at some of my, the blogs I looked. Did you ever read Talking Points memo? Oh, absolutely. Joshua Micah Marshall. What a, what a byline that was. I'm going to throw your name out to you. And it could have gone into the media graveyard. You're not going to root.

You're going to, your face is going to just, when I say that, Romanesco. Oh my God. Remember Romanesco? Absolutely. Yeah, man. Your OG media blog. Yes, man. Absolutely.

Feministing. Paul don't lie. Every day should be Saturday. You know, Spencer, I mean, Spencer Hall was a blogger, dude. Like, that's how we found him. Yep. Yeah. And there was another guy, undercover black man, which was authored by former post reporter David Mills.

Do you remember, does that name sound familiar to you? David Mills became TV writer David Mills. That's right. NYPD Blue, the corner, the wire, Tremay. Unfortunately, he died when he was working on Tremay. So he died pretty young. But yeah, man. And I kind of clicked on some of these blogs. And like Chris said, they're not there anymore.

But I did have somewhat clicking on one called Obsidian Wings. And it was still being updated. Like I was like, oh, there's still some people out there blogging. It was really sort of nice. It was like a nice little close to this. era. I was like, okay, well, maybe it's more lively out there than I thought. So when we get to the end of the internet today, we're going to go back over there. I know we have some very important news to talk about, but I just want to say, like,

you getting a hold of the remarks that were made about you when you were applying for a job, there should be like an FBI style statute of limitations for us journalists where we can all get a hold of those eventually because I want to get a hold of those as well. I mean, maybe not. I was really hurt by the fact that he didn't think I was a beautiful writer. But I got over it because I'll do like, well, you know what? There are some people, all writing serves different purposes. And it didn't have to be beautiful. And it didn't necessarily stop me from good where I wanted to go. But anyway. And it could be your nobody believed in me for the next 10 years. I, like, I am very much nobody believed in me type

motherfucker. So it does. Yeah. I'll show that Ben Smith. Yeah. I mean, it will never, I will never let it go. Anyway. We'll do some headlines? Yeah. Do you want me to start this time? Maybe. Why don't you, yeah, why don't you take number one here for us? Okay, let's just acknowledge up top that these are some very serious accusations at the heart of a media story involving people who are sometimes silly. So let's lay out the accusations first and then get to those people and what it means for media. I'm assuming most of our listeners are aware that Shannon Sharp, the Pro Football Hall of Fame tight-in turned sports media supernova, has been sued by a Nevada woman who claims that he raped and threatened her. during a two-year relationship. Earlier today, Thursday, Sharp announced that he planned to step away from his role of ESPN due to the lawsuit. In his statement, he said that he planned to return

at the start of the NFL preseason. Here's a quote from the statement he released on social media. Quote, I will be devoting this time to my family in responding and dealing with these false and disruptive allegations set against me. Here's some of the details. The lawsuit was filed Sunday in a Las Vegas district court by attorney Tony BuzzDub. The suit seeks damages for, quote, pain and suffering, psychological and emotional distress, mental anguish, embarrassment, and humiliation. Brian, we were talking about a little bit. You're familiar with Tony Busby.

We're both familiar with Tony Busby. In a sports context, or at least that's how we were first familiar with him. Yeah, absolutely. I was first made aware of him when he tried to get Kevin Sumlin fired at Texas A&M. Yeah, there was that. And then later, Roger Clemending Roger Clemens. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So Busby, of course, has been involved in a number.

of other high-profile sexual misconduct lawsuits over the last few years. He represented about 25 women who accused then Houston Texans quarterback to Sean Watson of sexual assault. Most of those have been settled out of court. Terms are confidential. We understand that. Busby also filed a lawsuit against Sean Diddy Combs and Jay-Z last year, but that complaint was dismissed in February after the victim dropped the case. Jay-Z has responded by suing that woman in Busby for defamation. And I mentioned that case in particular, Brian, because Sharp referenced that case in defending himself against the accusations in the lawsuit. Here's a clip. This is all being orchestrated by Tony Busby, who was targeted Jay-Z.

Tony Busby targets black men, and I believe he's going to release a 30-second clip of a sex tape that tries to make me look guilty and play into every stereotype you could possibly imagine. And so Busby has released snippets of audio on social media over the past few days. days, including a clip where a voice that appears to belong to Sharp can be heard saying that he would choke the woman if she accused him of manipulating her. Sharp's attorney, Lanny Davis. Another piece of work, by the way, right? I mean, that was my first, like, oh, my God, Lanny Davis is involved in this. Lenny Davis, man, popping back up. Lanny Davis said the audio was, quote, edited in a warped and distorted way. So here we go. So that leads to our current media.

environment where Sharp's friend and colleague on ESPN's first take, Stephen A. Smith, address these issues on his own podcast Wednesday. And I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to read his comments here. He says, it's important to point out a couple of things. Number one, I was not there. I cannot provide, I can provide no eyewitness account. And even though I've got love and respect for Standing Sharp, and I'm sincerely hopeful and prayerful that he's completely innocent of the allegations that have been levied against him. I can't sit here and speak to his innocence or guilt from a knowledgeable place because I have nothing to do with this. I haven't seen anything. I don't know anything. I don't even know this person. The podcast went on for the other

15 minutes, even though he doesn't know anything. So, Brian, I know we talked a little bit offline about how it came to be that Stephen A is responding to these allegations, but like, what did you think of that? I mean, it was a remarkable moment, and I texted you because he was going live, with it when I saw it. And I felt like I was riding, you know, on the back of a mule going down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on my vacation where you're just holding on for dear life going, what's he going to say about this? Yeah.

Yeah. Because number one, he's Stephen A. Smith. And number two, there's a problem when talking about cases like this. And it's part of the reason I'm always a little, I don't know if hesitance, the right word, but careful about talking about them on our podcast is because not because it's a sensitive topic necessarily, but because once you say the allegation and then you say the denial, what is it that you're going to say? Right.

What are we going to add to that at that point? Because as Stephen A said many, many times during the 20 or so minutes he did on the topic, we don't know. We don't know a lot more information than that. So it's hard to just spin off and talk about something else. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, so I thought that it was.

was he was a master at work and building tension over things that really were just a recitation of facts and like sort of obvious points. I talked to Shannon Sharp. Oh, really? Of course. I talked to Jimmy Patero. Well, I kind of figured that you would. You've got a line into that guy. I don't know what's going to happen. No shit. In fact, here's a couple of, I wrote these down. Here's something from the 16 minute mark. I don't know where this is going to go. I can't speak to anything else at 1844. I have no idea what direction ESPN and Walt Disney will go in when when it comes to this matter. All I do know is it won't be me making the decision. Another one, but I don't know. Neither do you or the rest of us. And only time will tell

what the truth is. I mean, it was 20 minutes of that, but it was still captivating, right? Because he just has a knack for holding your attention, even if he's not necessarily saying anything that's advancing the story. And there's a few moments that you pointed out, even if they feel a little rote to anybody who's ever talked about these things because you're being careful. You're trying to honor both sides. You're trying not to put your finger on it either way. The fact that Stephen A said, I don't know what's going to happen with Shannon Sharp. I don't know what his future is like at this network was interesting to me.

Do you think it was sort of leading that like something could actually happen to him, that this is not, I mean, it makes sense, right, that we would not know given the allegations themselves. It does make sense, except that he was on television on. Tuesday on first take. And I think a lot of us were like, wait a second, how did that happen at ESPN? But I also think you mentioned another thing, Stephen A said that I found very interesting, which is he said, this is not my decision. This is not my decision. Now, that's, again, from what we know about cases like this, extraordinarily serious cases like this, that makes a certain amount of sense,

right? It seems obvious. But you and I've talked a lot about that there is a new power granted and a new power enjoyed by people like Stephen A at ESPN. To virtually do everything they want. It's one of the first times I've ever heard Stephen A in any capacity say, this is not my decision. This is not under my power ultimately to decide what happens to somebody that I went out and recruited to put on first take. Isn't that also sort of, I mean, I'm sure he's very excited to not have to make that

decision, right? And to let people know that not only that I'm not undercutting Shannon in any way, that I don't, you know, I'm not backstabbing him or anything, but I have no power here. Like, I think it's just like, I don't think he would want to have to make that decision anyway, right? I think there's probably something to that. Yeah. I really do.

And we should also note this 20-something minute statement monologue, whatever you want to call it from Stephen A, is happening when ESPN is saying not much or nothing about the Shannon Sharp case. Yeah. I texted somebody over there today and said, hey, is there an official statement that's been put out? Or is it just 20 minutes of Stephen A on his non-ESPN podcast? Is that the statement? Is that functionally the statement from ESPN?

And I didn't get an answer yet. I'll update that if we get one afterwards. That's itself kind of telling. But I'm just like, you know, like, okay. So we're just going to do 20 minutes on that. And this is what we're going to say about this extraordinarily serious thing. And again, Shannon Sharp puts. out his first statement on social media about this on Monday.

Yep. And then he was back on first take on Tuesday. Yeah. That's a sequence of events that happened here. Yeah, man. I mean, I guess, you know, these are very famous people. It's a civil suit. It's not a criminal matter.

Stephen A. Smith said very deliberately and dramatically. So you had a man, knack for drawing out like the facts of the case. And so maybe that is why they're proceeding with caution here. And Shannon Sharp, you know, there was discussion about, oh, man, he might be up for a hundred million dollar deal for his podcast now. work, right? So obviously he has a lot of influence and there's a lot of interest around him, but I was just kind of like, huh, okay, you know, maybe they just, they don't want to, you know, put their foot, put their thumb on it on the button right now and just kind of see how this is

going to play out, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. But like Stephen A, uttered the words, in that monologue, I can speak about ESPN and Disney. Like, he said that. He mentioned talking to Jimmy Pataro and also that Jimmy Pataro had given him permission to mention his, that is Pataro's name in the monologue. The thing is, too, and I was thinking about this and actually talking about it with a friend of mine,

Stephen A. Smith, if he didn't say anything, it would have been weird too. Like, I mean, he's a guy who goes on air every day, multiple hours per day and says, I'm willing to talk about anything. I've got a lot of power. And if you're going to be that guy, you kind of got to talk about this then, right? Like, people are going to look at you funny.

If it's like, hey, that's your boy, why haven't she said anything about this? What's your statement? And so I guess like he's sort of backed into a corner in a way. He has to address it. I just didn't know that it was going to be a 20-minute piece of media content, you know? And it's something that everybody's addressing? Oh, my God.

I mean, Marcellus Wiley did like eight minutes on this. I mean, Marcellus Wiley, who it should be noted, is facing two separate lawsuits from women accusing him of raping them while he was a student at Columbia University, right? So it's funny to hear him weigh in. Are you a fan of Cameron and Mace? Am I a fan of Ken? Well, of course I am. I mean, mostly I defer to Chris Ryan on such show.

Yeah, right. You're a big dipset fan. But it is what it is. So spent a lot of time on this case, which I mean, there's ostensibly about sports like a lot of these are about. And you can also, guys, I forced myself to listen to Jason Whitlock talk about this too. He was in on this as well. An hour and 12 minute episode titled 10 million reasons, Shannon Sharp is cooked.

Stephen A. Beck's bus over Sharp. So to put aside that just, again, as you underline, the serious issues going on here, I think that's almost a separate discussion and separate places that's going to be adjudicated, is just all content now on the table for everybody, like, thing happens and we're all going to do, and I realize we're talking about this on a media podcast in which we are talking about the Shannon Sharp lawsuit. But is it just so, thanks folks, I understand the irony of this question. But do we all just jump in on something like this?

Like everything is content in this way? I mean, man, how can you not talk about one of the biggest media personalities in the country facing a multi-million dollar sexual assault lawsuit? Plus, yeah, I mean, and then he goes on and addresses it himself. Like, we have to talk about it, right? Yeah. He has, and that was one of the, it was an interesting thing to hear Stephen A question that part of it. Yeah.

the way he had addressed it, the things that they had done. Don't you think the way that he talked about it, it made me think that he, during that conversation, he said, this is what I'm going to say. And it gives you, it sort of gives you, because he did do the thing where he sort of questioned his strategy, but he let it, he went right up to saying, I don't know if I would have done that, but then he pivoted to, well, you know, Tony Busby has this history of bringing lawsuits or whatever. And again, it's not like he impugned Busby's character, but it's,

I felt like it was a way to create a little bit of distance without necessarily separating himself from Shannon, right, without looking like he was publicly betraying his buddy or his colleague, you know? Yeah, your point about the outspokenness thing is exactly right. Because we have this whole podcast world built on, this is where you get the real truth. Yep. Those other people are lying to you or they're constrained by saying things from their, you know, corporate bosses. This is where you get the real stuff.

And so everybody then, whatever the topic is, you have to just be in that mode. Right. Like, I saw Lebitur do a segment about this day with David Samson. I'm like, okay, oh, that's interesting. But I was like, I guess that's what it is now, right? Okay, we're a podcast. We must talk about everything, everything that's happening. And we must talk about it in that particular mode or at least try to replicate that particular

mode. If you're Stephen A. Smith, you can't allow other people to feed at that trough. and not go ahead and use it to promote your own business, right? I mean, I guess that's a really cynical way of looking at it, but I mean, it's the reality. I mean, there's an attention economy. You have the biggest platform. I don't know if you got to, but it would have looked funny had he not. I just thought it was interesting that he decided to go 20 minutes on it.

I think so. And again, like I said, 20 minutes with the relative silence of the corporation. that he is again outwardly saying I am speaking about I can speak about ESPN and Disney like he is saying he spoke for Potaro I mean that's what if you think about it I mean he

he he made Jimmy Pataro's public statement not Jimmy Pataro ESPN and by the way that's more than you would have ever gotten in whatever you say however hedged it was and careful it was that's more than you would have ever gotten in a corporate statement from ESPN about this and perhaps ever will get in a corporate statement from ESPN about this Absolutely. Just a very funny place we find ourselves in this world. By the way, Stephen A then followed up by having Megan Kelly on the podcast. That was his next move there. So I mean, man, I mean, if you're going to run for president, you got to talk to everybody, right?

That's Gavin Newsom about that one. Yeah. Speaking of presidents, Joel, we have a feature here at the press box called the worst question ever asked at the White House. I can't wait. I finally get to participate in this. Yeah, I'm sorry. You know, we've been mostly doing this. Monday. I didn't want to keep it from you. But you know, it's kind of has like a WWE championship belt feel to it. The title

changes hands every few days. Oh, yeah. Of course. Just like I did at WrestleMania over the weekend. So for people who have not been following this on the Monday podcast, the original holder of the worst question ever asked at the White House was Brian Glenn,

who was the White House correspondent, a real America's voice, and the boyfriend of Marjorie Taylor Green. I don't know the current relationship status, but at least was the boyfriend. He's the one you remember, Joel, who asked Vladimir Zelensky when he was in the White House, why aren't you wearing a suit?

Then he asked the Irish leader who was in the White House, how do you feel about Rosie O'Donnell moving to your country? So those were actually, he was the first dual title holder because he won for both of those. And by the way, we've done the research here at the podcast. Bobby's been all over this. This is the worst question ever asked, at the White House. This goes back. Obama, Clinton, Zachary Taylor, we're going all the way back

here. We can definitively say. He's making some waves, man. I mean, you know, he's making history. He really is. That's right. The title changed from there to Kara Castronova of Lindell TV. That is Mike Lindell TV, yes. She was asking why Trump looks so healthy has he been working out with RFK Jr. and eating less McDonald's. So she was the current chance. Until last Wednesday, and then Joel, I want to ask you, do we have another title change? Sir, go ahead, please. Photos of emerged of Senator Van Hollen sipping what appears to be margaritas with the Brago Garcia down in El Salvador. Do you encourage other Democrats to fly down to El Salvador to meet with this illegal alien who's an accused of life?

I like this guy. See, now, this is the kind of a reporter we're like, there aren't enough of them. We've got to get some more of them. So a couple bad signs there. One is that Donald Trump said you asked a great question. Yeah, I mean, that's a real tell, isn't it? The other one is that the question you asked is more or less quoting a tweet or a social media post from the president of El Salvador who tried to do the whole sipping margaritas thing. Yeah.

And Chris Van Hollen, who was the Democratic Senator, went down there and said, no, no, no, I was trying to have this meeting with Abrago Garcia. first they wanted us to have it in front of a pool. So it looked like, hey, he's just having a nice time down here. Right. Then he says drinks were placed on the table in front of them. So it looked like they were enjoying a couple of cold ones when in fact they did not take sips from the drinks. You know, my tell was the illegal alien. I was like, that's not really the nomenclature anymore, you know.

You had another tell. Yeah, there was another tell. Uh-huh. All right. So that's nominee number one for worst question ever asked at the White House. Nominee number two is Tim Poole. Oh, man. Tim Poole. That Tim Poole. He was in the new media seat on Tuesday.

He was wearing what looked like a stocking cap. I don't know if Brian Glenn was jumping in about what he had worn to the White House. But after a generous introduction from Carolyn Levitt, here is Tim Poole's question. Many of the news organizations that are represented in this room have marked in lockstep on false narratives, such as the very fine people hoax, the Covington smear, and now what's being called the Maryland man hoax, where an MS-13 gang member adjudicated by two different judges, I believe, is just simply being referred to as a Maryland man over and over again. Now in an effort from the White House to expand access to new companies, you've created this new media seat, so I'm wondering if you can comment on following this expansion.

you've had numerous outlets to disparage the companies that you've had sit here as well as the reporters. I'm wondering if you can comment on the unprofessional behavior as well as elaborate if there's any plans to expand access to new companies. Man, diagram that sentence, man. I mean, where was he going? He lost interest in his own question midway through. Yeah. And this is a little bit of a problem, right? Because there's a whole argument that Trump administration is making about, hey,

Why does old media get to ask all the question? Why doesn't new media? Why are we defining a journalist like this? And to me, like the question of who's a journalist and who's not a journalist is a pretty pointless one that just leads you down a lot of rabbit holes. And I had an old boss that said, anybody who wants to be a journalist is kind of a journalist. And I think I'd line up with that mostly. You know, those bloggers we're talking about, right?

Are they journalists? Like, do they have credentials? I won't cite anybody who wants to be known as a publicly. known as a journalist because it's not like you're going to get a lot of praise for being a journalist, you know what I mean? I think we'd happily have people in the White House who write for a liberal magazine or work for a liberal television network like MSNBC. I don't think the ideology is what's at stake here. I think what's the issue at hand is you have to ask a question that you want the answer to. Right. The time should be spent

with you trying to find out things you don't know rather than making a statement in support of the president or the administration. Well, Brian, he wanted to know if they were going to expand the opportunity to other new media properties. We did work that one in there at the end, yes. Yeah, yeah. Tim Poole, by the way,

former director of media innovation and a senior correspondent at Fusion. It's sort of a strange credulity to say that he's new media. He's been working in media for like 15 years, by the way. He just has his own website because nobody else is going to hire him. But surely if you're at a pro-Trump media organization, surely there is information you want to know. Right. Like about the tariffs.

Hey, is this, these tariffs really the tariffs, that's it, that's the end? Or is this a negotiating tactic? Because the Trump administration essentially said both of those things. So which is it? Let's have more information about this. Totally perfectly reasonable question. Whatever it is. but you just think like you have you should ask a question.

Right. They're eating up clock, but I do wonder counterintuitively if having a few of their friends ask them some friendly questions, if it makes it more possible for people to ask the questions that they don't want to answer. I don't think that's, I don't agree with how this is going, obviously. But I just wonder, it's like, all right, well, now Trump is happy. Throw this question at him, right? You know, you got him off balance.

I don't, I mean, I'm sure it's not working like that. Oh, I'm not sure. But I'm sure the whole eat the clock thing is part of the strategy here. Oh, yeah. I mean, that is absolutely what it is, right? It's four quarters offense in media. Yeah, they're just passing a ball around the perimeter, you know, trying to run out the clock. Yeah, which is much of the election was, right?

You know, we run out the clock. We don't go on the big, you know, mainstream media programs and we win the presidency. Yeah. It's a strategy. I mean, it seems to be working one way or another. Want to talk about a little bit about the NFL draft? Yeah, well, so, Brian, as you know, tonight, this is Thursday night. Thursday we're recording it.

The draft is later tonight. And it's the pinnacle of the NFL off season. It kicks off at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and you can watch it on ABC, ESPN, or the NFL network. This year, the event itself is being held in Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers, as most of us know. Have you ever been to Green Bay, Brian? I've been there. I've stood on the sidelines at Lambeau Field following a cameraman around for a story.

and it was snowing. Oh, my God. And it was unbelievable. So you enjoyed it then? You didn't look like Tom Cufflin face freezing off down there. I had to go buy some Long Johns because I realized how cold it was going to be when I was there. Yep. Which I had underestimated by a tad.

So I went to Cabellas. There was a Cabellas. That's real. I don't have a lot of receipts from Cabellas in my lifetime. I think it gets Cabellas. But I bought some of that stuff you, what is you crush it up and put it in your gloves. to warm your hand warmers, you know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know what you're talking about. I mean, it was that cold. And I'm trying to write on a notepad, by the way, with the giant gloves on full of the hand warmers. That was kind of a challenge. But it was a magical place. Oh, magical. So you would go then? If like, would you go for the draft if you would.

Oh, hell no. Absolutely not. Just stand there and watch them announce names from a stage. Seriously, you and I would go to just about any sporting event. Yeah. And have a great time. Yeah. Well, maybe not a great time.

But we would go with an open mind. Yeah. I do not think the NFL draft feels like a great time. I don't either. And the older I get, the more I'm like, oh, you know what? I actually did not watch a lot of the draft. This is just, you know, I'm romanticizing what those days were like. Because really, it's like after like maybe even 16, it's like, okay, I get the idea here, right?

Hey, and I'm going to watch a ton of the draft, certainly the entire first round tonight. And I really do enjoy that. I was a draft nerd going back. But just the idea of standing there at a stage and knowing less about the draft than I could by just watching it on television. Oh, my God. And there being no like high of like, hey, I'm in a stadium full of cheering fans. Like, they would be at a football game or something like that. Yeah, I'm all good.

Michelle Steele of ESPN.com. She still writes over there and I could find her byline. How hard you have to look? Yeah, pretty hard. Because I lost the link and then I had to find it again. And I was like, oh, shit. Here we go again. I got to find that.

She wrote that the draft could bring as much as $100 million in economic activity for the state of Wisconsin. And look, any serious economists can tell you that those economic activity numbers are sort of funny. Like, you can sort of play games with that. But the NFL draft in Detroit last year set an attendance record with, get this, 775,000 people over three days. What's wrong with those people? I mean, man, dude, what? I mean, don't you want to go someplace nice?

I mean, no offense to Detroit. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Joel Anderson, please direct your notes to you. I like Detroit. I have a lot of affection for it, but I'm not a lot of people going on for vacation. And here's the thing. If you watch the NFL drafts on television, okay, let's say the Lions make a pick. They go to this very suspiciously aggregated group of Lions fans standing near the stage.

And they all go crazy and jump up and down the moment the pick is announced. And I'm like, wait a second. And they do this all into like the third or fourth round. Like I remember a couple years ago, Patriots drafted somebody that nobody but the most hardened draft nerd draft Nick had ever heard of in their lives. And the Patriots fans, they're just jumping up and down. I'm like, I don't like to use the term crisis actors like these new media types. These are not real fans.

I don't know who these people are. but this is not, I'm watching this and I'm just like, maybe these are people that are just the cameras on them and somebody's telling them to jump up and down, but that's not how people experience a draft. Like tonight, if the Cowboys screw up at pick number 12, I'm going to call my uncle and be like, well, that sucked. Yeah.

Like, I'm going to have an opinion about this. Like, I'm not going to just be like, yay, we made a pick. We got some guy. We got some guy. Yeah. A pick has been made. Yes, yes, let's do it. Well, you know, maybe.

Go back to the old Jets fans at the draft. Like the whole point of it was they were pissed off when the Jeff took, just took Jeff Loggman or Kyle Brady, whoever it was. I mean, but man, maybe these people are really, I mean, I used to get like a really into it. They're just sitting there. This is ridiculous. Man, look, are you not reading all your mock drafts?

I'm a big, Deonté Lee, Danny Kelly and Shale Capadia, you know, like I read those mock drafts and Todd McShay. So maybe they're, do you have any opinions on Matthew Golden, you know? Matthew Golden's an interesting one because he's. He's a Texas wide receiver. He's in that conversation for wide receiver one in the draft, because that's how we talk about the draft, right? It's wide receiver one.

It's not the best wide receiver in the draft with Tedroo McMillan from Arizona. But this is one of those who I've seen people talking about Matthew Golden's stats. This is one of those interesting draft things to me because, like, as a Texas fan, I am old enough to remember when the message board saw Golden transfer from Houston to Texas. And they're like, that guy is going to be the third receiving option, special. teamer. Yep. Maybe.

And by the way, I think if we gave true serum to Steve Sarkis and everybody, they'd be like, he is not going to be wide receiver one at Texas. Right. Forget the NFL draft at Texas. Right. And now he is potentially wide receiver one in the NFL draft. Dude, I saw him play at least six or seven times last year. I did not see anything that indicated to me that he was wide receiver one.

But, I mean, maybe he looks really good in. heights, you know. But that's where the story part of it comes in, because I think people look at his stats and be like, well, he didn't, you know, he didn't really catch up a lot of balls in the season. I'm like, yeah, he was a third option. Then Isaiah Bond got hurt and Ryan Wingo hit the freshman wall. And all of a sudden, he was the guy and he balled out for the last couple of games. He did.

He did. I don't know if that argues for him or against him, but if you don't understand that story, you look at his stats and look at his 429 in the combine, and like, eh, what? I don't understand. Why is he such a high pick? Well, that's why he's such a high pick. Well, the highest pick of all is West Columbia, Texas's own Cam Ward, who's, you know, he's the big favorite to be the number one pick in this draft going to the Tennessee Titans. And because the Tennessee Titans are boring and they're thieves, they stole their NFL franchise. Nobody cares.

I was going to say, why could you possibly be angry at the Tennessee title? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've got beef. But the biggest name in this year's low-waters draft class is definitely Shador Sanders. I think everybody knows the former Jackson State Colorado star son of Dion Sanders. And as someone said in Diana Rusini's collected notes on the draft, there aren't a lot of Robert De Niro's at the top of this draft.

Now, what does that mean? There aren't a lot of Robert De Niro's at the top of the draft. Well, yeah. I mean, it means that there are not a lot of top prospects with a following or the sort of, I guess, name recognition. I'm sorry, Chodor Sanders. Like, could you get any bigger for a college football player than that? So it's after Shadour, but after that, who are we talking about?

I mean, you're a big Abdul Carter guy. Could you pick out Abdul Carter if you walked by him on the street? Maybe you could because he's probably a big guy. Yeah. I mean, I don't think I could recognize, like, him, you know, face to face. But, like, as a football player, he was a very famous football player who played in the playoff last year. Oh, yeah.

And also balled out in the playoff with a bump shoulder last year. Absolutely. I mean, this is part of it. You and I are Normie College, well, let's say we're Normie draft watchers. I don't know that we're Normie College Football fans. We're Normie draft watchers. And I remember a smart person years ago saying to me, it's like there's two kinds of people in the world. People who see college football as a minor league for the NFL and people who see college football as an end in and of itself.

That's it. That's it right there. You and I in the latter category, I'm like, Cam Ward, I watched Cam Ward play. He was amazing for a team that had no defense. Shadour Sanders, who had zero offensive line help his entire. He was awesome. But he was an awesome college football player. We are college football sickos because I should not know that Abdul Carter got hurt.

that playoff game by tackling Ashton Genty. You know what I mean? But I know that. I remember that. Did you read this story? And it's by Sam Fortier. It ran in the Washington Post on Wednesday about the mock draft industry. And it starts with the godfather of the whole enterprise, the late great Joel Bushbaum.

There you go. And it has this line in there that sort of sums up the appeal. Every team has hope. And fans can look forward to the draft as they would a big game without the fear of a devastating loss. And that's what keeps us all tuning in, right? Yeah. I would disagree with the devastating loss because I think just as many people are going to be pissed off tonight as happy.

You don't think people just talk themselves into a pick unless it's like, because this isn't like missing out. What sports fans are those? I mean, just look at every bill tweet about what the Patriots are going to do it for tonight. That's a good point. I do, I do think, though, the whole, the way that it reverses. So like the Titans, as you say, were just absolutely wonderfully, magically irrelevant last year. Yes. They're the number one team in the draft, right?

All of a sudden, hey, this is our draft. Like, there is some magic to that. And what I love about the coverage is people trying to make an event exciting that happens once. It's like, Schoer is falling in the draft. Well, he hasn't fallen because the draft hasn't happened yet. Right. He could fall tonight. He could fall out of the first round, but it hasn't happened.

So what we got to do is pretend lots of crazy things are happening before. any name is called. What's the bigger news story? Shadour going like third or fourth or fall into like 21st or 22nd to the Steelers. The latter. I mean, don't you think? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I don't mean, you say now that we've created such an expectation that he's going to fall if he did the Giants did get into three. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. It's like,

well, he's falling. He's not going to. If somebody trades up or like just picks him at that spot, it's like, oh shit. We maybe we didn't know what we were talking about. Two draft day things I want to run by you before we get out of here.

Yeah. Do another topic here. The one is one of my favorite things I hear every year. I swear I hear this every year is, hey, there's not much difference between a guy you pick a 10 in this draft and a guy you pick a 30. I swear we do a version of that every single draft. Yep. And the numbers change slightly.

But there's always this massive cliff somewhere in the first round. Yeah, where it falls out, then you're just picking guys. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, and everybody says it like that says huge insight every year. It's like, yeah, okay, we got it. Like that's every single year that there's, you know, Mount Everest happens at like pick 10.

The other one comes from Mitch Goldich of Sports Illustrated, who sent this to us on Blue Sky. An NFL draft observation, he writes, it used to be a flex to do a lot of mock drafts. This is my version 8.2. But this year, I'm seeing lots of people go the other way where it's a flex if you only do one. This is my one and only mock draft. I kind of have been seeing that floating around on the internet now, right? Because it almost seems a little silly because, you know, we don't know who's going to trade, what's going to happen in the offseason. Because they're doing these mock drafts starting back in like, during the season, during college football season. Yes. And there's all these

apps that let you do the mock draft. So people like tweet them out like, like, look what I did. Like, okay. So I think then if you're an actual draft guru or like top tier draft guru, do you try to create a scarcity by doing fewer and fewer. Absolutely. And it makes it seem, because the thing is, if you keep getting things wrong or whatever, or it seems, it makes you seem like maybe you don't have the sources that you proclaim to have, right? You want to have a nice, tight record of like what you've done and not have, oh, well, why did you have Shador number one last year? And now you got him at 23. Like, what happened in the interim? Yes. Yes. It's been a real source off the last few days, too, by the way. Everybody's got Intel. And I just want to, I want some.

somebody just to organize it all for me on Friday so we can see who traded up and who really wanted to trade down and, you know, how far this guy was going to slip and all that stuff, because it is, it is pretty funny. Oh, yeah. Finally, Joel, the clock is ticking on 60 minutes. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. That's right. I like that.

I try to steer away from got a job, lost a job stories here on the press box, but this one is very interesting. Yeah. Bill Owens, executive producer of 60 Minutes, stepped down this week. According to Oliver Darcy's very well-sourced account on status, Owens told the all-conference team of CBS reporters that were assembled there, Leslie Stahl, Scott Pelly,

Anderson Cooper was calling in from Rome on the Zoom. This is what Bill Owen said. He said, it's clear that I've become the problem. I am the corporation's problem. Now that problem begins with Donald Trump's suing 60 minutes. Yeah. I mean, you figured that there was going to be some sort of fallout as a result of this, right? I mean, it's a very ominous case because even if we don't necessarily, we can debate the merits of the case, but the fact that it is brought itself.

Actually, no, we can't because because the merits are ridiculous. I was trying to be, I was trying to be nice, but yes. Yeah, there you go. Yes. But you're right. The fallout is crazy. I think I just want to under, just underline how dumb the Solacid is before we start.

Oh, please. In October, during the presidential campaign, Kamala Harris went on 60 minutes. Donald Trump did not go on 60 minutes. Right. Perhaps because it was not hosted by a comedian in a stocking game. If they had said Theo Vaughn can be the 60 minutes correspondent, maybe he would have been shown right up.

It might have been a tad more interesting to Donald Trump. So CBS wind up using two different clips from that interview on two different shows of Kamala Harris talking about Mideast policy. Donald Trump steps in and says, aha, see you deceptively edited these clips to make Kamala Harris look good to make her answer look more coherent. CBS said no, while that might have been confusing, I think legitimately confusing if you just presented two different things. They say, here's a transcript. You can see. it's actually two parts of a very long answer that she had given about this question. Donald Trump is suing for $20 billion.

Yeah, man. $20 billion alleging election interference. In election, he won just in case anybody's not up to date on that. Yeah. Now, the people at Paramount, which is the parent company of CBS, they reportedly want to settle this case, not fight this case, not laugh this case out of court, settle this case. right. Sherry Redstone reportedly wants to settle. Everybody, and I'm going to use a word reportedly for the final time here, is afraid Donald Trump wants to block the sale of Paramount to Skydings. There's corporate machinations behind all this. Right. I think the thing is, is that everybody has just sort of seen that bending the knee is going to get you nowhere, Paramount and Sherry Redstone. You know, that it really buys you nothing to, I understand the fear. of going into a courtroom and maybe facing a hostile judge or jury.

But I mean, doesn't your journalism credibility matter a little bit more than that? Like what are we tuning into 60 minutes for if you're going to give you in on something this dumb, right? I mean, it's just that's exactly what it is. And the way Bill Owens enters the chat here is that he was not willing to apologize as part of any potential settlement here. He said, I'm not apologizing. And obviously you're like, of course, imagine putting your own journalists in the position to apologize for something that requires no apology. Just crazy. Again, to the president of the United States.

Just think about that. Oh, it's, I mean, it would be humiliating. First, I mean, it would be humiliating. Like, how could you go on in that position after you've done that for the people, you know, the people that you work for that are asked? you need the people in Bill Owens' position to defend you in your reporting because they're always reporting on like very like things that have a lot of legal liability, people that are very powerful, that don't like the media. And so if that guy is forced into a position where he's going to apologize and like take a position that you know doesn't make any sense, how can you continue to do that job? And I sort of know somebody that is familiar with the machinations there. or knows a little bit about the 60 Minutes team.

And he was like, you look, that guy has his flaws, like everybody that works in media. But the fact that he walked away, it shows like, I mean, he is a very principal dude, he said. And for him to step away from this, it is a really, really bad sign. He gave a quote in that goodbye meeting. This is according to Oliver Darcy.

People have asked, should we walk out? No, the opposite. I really, really, really believe that this will create a moment where the corporation will have to think about the way we operate, the way we've always operated and allow us to operate like that. Now, I'm not sure of his confidence in the way the corporation is going to behave in this case, but him telling everybody else, no, no, you stay here, you keep doing your jobs. It's pretty interesting to read that.

It's a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice, man. You know, maybe he fell on the sword for everybody else. We'll see how that turns out. It'll be interesting to see how they move on as a result of this, you know. Dylan Byers had a note in his piece for puck, David Ellison. from Skydance is who he's referring to here. He said, David didn't buy Paramount for 60 minutes. He bought it for the studios, the library, the NFL rights, etc.

At the end of the day, CBS News is vulnerability given its diminishing place in the corporate structure. Not Owens may be the real seed of the problem. And, you know, that's an interesting way to put it because if you think about TV news, if you go back to those days when the networks were losing their monopoly on what we now touchingly and innocently called television. The news organizations or the news I should divisions were the first ones to get hit a lot of the time.

Oh, you're not making money. We're not making money hand over fist. So we're coming to you, right? We're going to close a bureau. We're going to lay off correspondence. We're going to shrink your budget. This feels like an enormous step in that chain, right? Oh, no, no, no.

We're now going to, you know, settle with the president of the United States. States about ridiculous journalistic disputes. I apologize and we come on now. That to me is such a crazy, crazy step in that. Oh, it's horrible. And I mean, again, like we all know news doesn't make, when it does make money, it doesn't make a lot of money. And like the people that want to support news, they do it because they're mission oriented,

right? They believe in the mission of news and holding people to account. But once you start moving away from that, or somebody gets a little scared of a lawsuit or, you know, getting through, you know, getting threatened by the president, then it's just sort of like, all right, well,

what are we even doing this for? You can just sort of see the logic sort of folding in on itself. So it's really sad. I mean, 60 Minutes is one of those things that came on the other week. I remember,

and I was just like, man, it's just really comforting to hear that tick sometimes. It just takes me back to my childhood, you know, and the idea that it's been compromised and could somehow,

you know, be threatened by this. It's just really, I mean, it just is a symptom of where we are in this climate, totally anyway, right? Like, all, you know, at risk of this,

but you kind of hope that 60 minutes would be sort of above that, right? Lots of good reporting about this story out there in the world. I do unfortunately have to invoke the Dan Jenkins rule, Joel. Oh, okay. I came up with this rule

because I wrote myself multiple obituaries for Sports Illustrated. And I would either find myself writing or deleting the sentence Sports Illustrated, the once-storied home of Frank DeFord and Dan Jenkins. So I came up with this rule saying that when you are writing about the current sorry state of a publication or television show, you may not invoke any writer or correspondent that started working at that publication more than a half century ago.

Fair enough. Fair enough. So folks, if you're thinking about... No. Well, morally, yeah, probably no morally safer, but the ones I saw Walter Cronkite. Yeah. Walter Cronkite did his last broadcast in CBS Evening News in March of 1981. Wow.

Forty-four years ago. Man, don't say it like that. I saw Edward R. Murrow's name. Edward R. Murrow died in 1965. Wow. So Uncle Walter and Edward R. Murrow will not be victims of the Skydance merger. They are not the ones losing their jobs. If you want to talk about the house of Scott Pelly and Leslie Stahl and Margaret Brennan and Ed O'Keefe and all those people, that's great.

But let's just leave the guys who have not been born in CBS News in forever out of the equation. Thank you. I mean, they use those guys cynically, right? I mean, they're floating on those reputations in the hopes that you will believe that they still matter in quite the same way. and that there is, you know, is rigorous and it is, you know, whatever, that the reputations can sustain itself. But yeah, it don't quite work like that, bro. It really doesn't.

We have to invoke the Dan Jenkins rule. These are, there are rules here in the press criticism game. I like the Dan Jenkins rule. That's a TCU alum right there. I've got a whole list of these. Maybe we'll do a pod devoted to him someday. All right. He is Joel Anderson.

I am Brian Curtis, aka the Kirto, production of magic. by Bobby Wagner, David Chewemakers back from WrestleMania. He joins me Monday. Joel, I can't wait to talk to you next Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media.

Likewise, my brother. See you then.