The Press Box - Post-Twitter Trump With Charlie Warzel and Meghan and Harry With Ed Malyon

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are joined by New York Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel to share his experience reporting on events such as the riot at the Capitol and discuss what it's like covering post-Twitter Trump (2:30). Later, The Athletic's Ed Malyon joins to talk through Oprah's special with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. They talk through Oprah's impressive interview, Meghan and Harry's responses, and how the British press and tabloids could respond (34:20). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guests: Charlie Warzel and Ed Malyon 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, are you familiar with NBA Top Shot, which sells you digital basketball cards featuring moments with your favorite stars? Yes, in concept. I am familiar with this new fad.

Okay. What I want to know is, can we create cable news top shot? Featuring moments with our favorite hosts and pundits. Wait, so like I, and forgive me, I don't understand exactly how this technology, cryptocurrency, whatever it has worked. But is the idea that I would like have a gif of Tim Russert holding up the dry erase board and would somehow, make money from selling that gift to you? Absolutely. Yes, that's it. Like, you could buy Joe Manchin,

Senator from West Virginia, calling Jake Tapper Chuck. That's like the rookie of the year card or something? Is that it, does it matter? Could we go back in time? Can we do like, like is there like a very limited run of, of like, Geraldo trying to open Al Capone's vault? Does that, is that count?

All right. Yeah. Or something more recent. Rick Santorum getting owned by Van Jones. Jeffrey Lord getting owned by literally anybody back in his CNN days. How about Bill O'Reilly yelling at all those producers? Oh, that would be a collector's item. That would be fantastic.

I would pay millions of dollars for cable news top shot of Bill O'Reilly yelling at his producers. Coming up on today's show, we talk about misinformation and post-Twitter Donald Trump with New York Times columnist Charlie Worsall. Plus, what do we make of Megan and Harry's critique of the British tabloids? The athletics, Ed Malian, joins us to understand the Oprah bombshells. All that more on the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Schumaker here. David, we're joined right at the top by one of our favorites.

Charlie Worsel is an opinion writer at large for the New York Times. He's a BuzzFeed veteran. He lives in Montana, but his dateline is our digital hell. Charlie Warzel, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you for having me. Wow, digital hell. I love it. Accurate.

We'll get to some of your recent columns here in a second, but I want to ask you a little about you first. When people ask, Charlie, what do you write about? What do you tell them? I would say I write about the ways that the Internet is changing. everything. I mean, that's the most reductive way to say it is just, like, I started a long time ago being really interested with how, you know, our behaviors were changing as more and more people were starting to use these very nascent social platforms. And now, you know, it's led me to, you know,

in bed with neo-Nazis in West Virginia. You know, it's like, it's like one of those things are as you never know where it's, where it's going to take you. And yeah, I'd say, that's mostly what it is. It's just like the structures of the internet, the ways in which it's warping our minds, our institutions, our culture, all of that stuff. And are you on this beat because that's what you love to write about or because it's what you think is important to write about? I mean, like everything, it's, it's a total accident. I wouldn't say that right now, like, this is probably like what I would have designed for myself, but I'm endlessly fascinated by it.

So, like, I would say that my, everything is always following my curiosities. Like, not to get too in the weeds on it, but, like, I, you know, I was really interested in these platforms, and then I became really interested in the way that people were, like, abusing them and the loopholes and the ways in which, like, the platforms wouldn't enforce their rules.

And then, you know, from there, it was just this, like, very one-to-one, like, oh, look at the people who are abusing the rules. And then it was, like, the rise of the pro-Trump, you know, troll media ecosystem, which turned into conspiracy theories in Q&on, which turned into like literally just covering modern American politics, which turned into, you know, so it's just this, I'm, I guess, more like drawn to being curious about some of the darker things, but it's all really just led from that initial germ of like, the internet's fascinating.

It's really changing us. Let's see how. And here we are. So many questions spinning off of that. But just to set the stage a little bit more. You wrote recently about how rabbit holes are part of the problem. Most people see them as a, I would say, is like a time, a wasted time sometimes, but a net positive.

But I'm interested on, well, Brian said, you know, you're on the internet hellscape or whatever. What level of hell do you find yourself on a day-to-day basis? not just when you're researching something, but how deep down the rabbit hole do you exist on average? I would say less now than I used to. I would say that truly one of the interesting things about like the Trump era was sort of the mainstreaming of a lot of these like really toxic things.

And it's like it's become, you know, and some of that also has to do with my own career. trajectory. Like, it's just a different, you're writing for a different audience at BuzzFeed when you're writing about the internet than you are at the New York Times. So it's a little more generalist. So I find myself actually with sort of like the, I don't know, the, you know, the privilege of the amount of time that I've spent that I can be a little less, you know, in the weeds all the time. But I do think like all of those like message board culture things, they all really like mainstreamed and they just are like apart again of our like you know like

politics is basically like the act of shit posting right so uh in in 2021 uh and so there's some degree of which it's all really mainstream to normalize so i'm spending less and less time in these like weird fringy areas and more trying to sort of think about like the ways in which those fringy areas have just totally changed really mainstream parts of culture. I thought about you on January 6th. So all of a sudden, you've been writing about trolling, misinformation, propaganda for years. And then those shit posters show up at the Capitol and sack the Capitol. When you saw that happening on television, what'd you think?

So it's interesting when, you know, I want to say, so that was a Wednesday on, like that Monday when the sort of steam was building online in the communities that I, you know, follow in the Twitter lists that I've built and things like that to track this stuff. I was like, I told my editors, like, something's going to happen. And I did not think in any way it was going to be that. But I was like, I should probably write about how this is like the, you know, sort of, like, a real, like, kind of make or break moment sort of seemed like kind of kind of. you know, like a zenith of something, right? Like, it's like the, you know, the, maybe it's like,

maybe it's the logical endpoint of the Trump error or something like that. And so I just sort of like started talking to people and gathering string and like writing out this like kind of column. And I'd say I had like 800 words of something that was, you know, kind of waiting for January 6th to transpire. And then as it was happening, I was like, oh my, like, it's the same thing that's always happened, which is like you prepare yourself for something stupid. or bad or outrageous and it's somehow even even girding yourself for that like it exceeds your expectation so i actually like you know i was a i i had a column up i think at like three o'clock that day like just like it was there were still people in the capital building and it was

like sort of a i didn't even really know the extent to what what was taking place before me but it like made complete and total sense. You know, I just sort of saw it as like, here's the culmination of like every force that had just been building speed and momentum, you know, up until this, this moment. And I really do now, like, I see it as this kind of, you know, really as like the apex of the last five years.

And I think every day we get further away from it, it just seems like the tension. in the pressure, not to say these things have gone away, but just like its centrality is just like we're sort of on this, you know, trajectory down because it really was like, yeah, it was the culmination of so much. I saw you say in an interview one time. You said the proud boys and the Bougaloo movement, all these, all these elements are cosplaying Civil War. So did you think we would get from cosplaying Civil War to actually doing insurrection-style activities? it's it's hard because like I feel like for the last you know yeah half decade or whatever

I've been constantly trying to balance two things in my in my head which is like the the seriousness of all of this and the and the true like the true stakes of it and alongside this you know like the ridiculousness and not trying to over index on this, right? Like a big problem about covering online movements of any kind or movements that just start online is like you really don't understand the size of footprint. Like I spent a long time not covering Q&On while still tracking it quite a bit because I just like wasn't sure what it really was. You know, like I think as I worry a lot about, you know, amplifying something at the wrong moment and like giving it, you know, some purchase when it's not really actually there yet

and being a part of the problem to some degree. And I think with so many of these things, it's just so hard to know what the actual size and scope of it was. So it's been this long struggle. And you see the guys in the Hawaiian shirts, you know, and they have these, you know, dumb, like, internet meme patches on their very real bulletproof vests in, like, AR-15s. And it's just this very hard thing to do.

So did I like anticipate that? Not really. But at the same time like none of it was, none of it was at all surprising. So it's this really hard, weird sort of like, you know, asymmetry there. Well, I feel like that what you're describing is something that sort of the news media at large has had to contend with or has been trying to contend. with a lot over the past four years and more and more as we've got to the present day, which is that there's so many of these things that we have to choose whether to dismiss or to treat them seriously in the national dialogue, right?

That, like, I mean, it's as it goes back to the beginning of Trump's campaign, really. I mean, that people were, I mean, wondering to what degree they should be covering some of the things that he said or covering him at all. But is it, is there, is there, Is there a formula for determining which of these things is newsworthy and at what point they become newsworthy? And I guess I know that you are, you know, you can take your time and be considerate about when you write about Q and on. But from what you've learned, what would you, is there anything that you could teach the mainstream media, sorry to use that term about when to start acknowledging these things and not giving them undue attention? Yeah, I mean, it is, it is not easy.

And I don't like, I, I really worry about, you know, sounding condescending. Like, I don't think that anyone, like, people, I have so many, you know, peers in this industry who do, like, the kind of, like, real, like, trenches work in covering these things and writing, like, the daily stories on them that I think, you know, are really very important. And I don't, I don't mean to dismiss any of that work at all. And I think that all of us are having these internal and also sometimes with each other like these conversations about all this and struggling. So I don't think it's like it's unique to me. But right now I'm really kind of obsessed with this issue, just like thinking through our issues in terms of like, you know, the lens of attention. Right. And like the, and I'm, I read this paper by this, this researcher, this professor.

named Whitney Phillips in, I think it was 2018, called the Oxygen of Amplification. It was basically about, like, how the media is amplifying these people and the ways in which, you know, it's playing into their narratives. And it really changed my own way of thinking because I, you know, I got really fascinated in 2017 with Alex Jones and spent four months profiling him for this piece. And in the researching and reporting process, you know, I interacted with him sometimes. I was just like, and I was watching a show a lot and like retweeting clips of him that, you know, and it was basically just like at times, I was uncritically sort of like just amplifying his message just because I was in my own world. And anyway, I've struggled a lot with this is I guess what I'm trying to say. But I think what we need to start doing broadly, like thinking about more in the media to use the broad term is, is like, power and proximity to power.

So, like, I think I'm kind of obsessed with the way that the media covers Marjorie Taylor Green. And, like, I think that there's so much of, like, you know, people are kind of looking for someone who outrages them as much as Donald Trump. And there's so much, like, retweeting of Marjorie Taylor Green, so much so that she's putting fundraising links in the next tweet in the stream. And you see that in here just sort of like, what do we do? here, right? Like, this is, like, there's, this is not the way to do it. And then when you think of

someone who is a freshman, congresswoman who has been stripped of her committee assignments, like, this person doesn't actually have a lot of power, but they do have a lot of, like, social and cultural capital because they're great at triggering the lives. And so I think, like, if we start to reframe a little of this around, like, who has, who has power, like, what possible power can they exercise? Um, I think. that that's one one possible way. Also, just like, you know, reporting that works towards answering that first question of like, what is the size of something like this? What, you know, that's why I love, you know, people who do cover Cuban on who, like, are on the ground and, like, going to actual, like,

you know, rallies that they have for, you know, anti-VAC stuff or whatever it is. It's like, you start to get a sense of the reality of this. And I think the grounding it in reality is really, and power is really helpful. It's been two months since Donald Trump lost his Twitter accounts, speaking of attention. You wrote a column about it the day it happened. What do you make with a little hindsight now of post-Twitter Trump? It's so fascinating to me that he has not like sort of like the, I don't know if it's some kind of like strategic thing. I don't really sign strategy with him ever.

So I'm going to sort of err on the side of it. being that but he's wild to me that he's you know he hasn't called more into you know fox and friends or or you know just establish some kind of newsmax perch where you can just kind of pontificate you know whatever like there was some reporting that was saying he was like you know writing tweets out on like postits and sending him to people and saying like hey you should you should tweet that like just very desperate stuff from like a former president it's not really a position of desperation usually. And so I'm really kind of stunned by how effective it was,

and I think that that amount of power should concern people, right? Like, just in the sense of that, you know, there's basically two or three people who have power over these information networks. But I think, I mean, I think there's just like there's a really, it provides a super interesting counterfactual, right? which is like what would the presidency have been like if in 2017 when he like provoked war with North Korea, Jack Dorsey just deleted his account. Like I honestly don't know.

It kind of sends me into a bit of a spiral thinking about it. Like it's the most sort of mystified I've been. I sort of thought he was going to find a way through just to continue to suck up oxygen. and I don't know whether he's just, you know, for the moment, kind of cowed or what if he's going to come back even louder than before. But it's one of the biggest shocks for me. I really didn't think one platform would be that central, but it just, it seems it is. Well, I mean, I think I said this earlier on a different episode of the podcast, but I feel

like if he had lost power, I mean, if he had lost his Twitter account halfway through, his term, then he would have, even if he had started posting on a, you know, a WordPress blog, then the media would have been forced to cover it. And the WordPress blog would have eventually garnered some degree of the power that his Twitter account did. Right. But now, I mean, I guess if he was blogging, people would be talking about it. But I think now, I mean, he's, he's gone and he's, he's without any other options. But I agree that it's, it's really weird. I mean, is it, but I feel like there's also an issue of Trump, the man, Trump himself, being so despondent or confused about life without Twitter. I mean, I feel like that's a reflection of what we've been through the past four years a lot as well.

I mean, there is definitely a frightening amount of power within the hands of Jack Dorsey and a few other people on the tech side. But we also had, or just, you know, just done with the Trump years in which the president, I don't think ever fully understood the power. that he had outside of tweeting things. You know, I mean, there was a lot of, a lot of power that he just sort of punted on because he would rather just tweet. And I feel like that's part of it, too. I mean, do you think that it's incumbent upon us as citizens just to be aware of the power, the frightful amount of power that Twitter and other, other major tech platforms have?

Or is this a, is this something that, you know, that the government's going to have to take a look at? Oh, I mean, it's so interesting. Because I think I'm sort of of the mind that like, I mean, obviously this stuff has, is, you know, going in a straight line to the capital on one-sixth. Like, this stuff has had huge, you know, impacts on our lives, these platforms and the, and the discourse of it. And, like, I mean, just, like, it's in need of some kind of moderation, regulation, you know, deeper understanding for sure. But to some degree, too, it's like, it's so new. And we're all just, like, grasping for, like, these quick, this quick understanding.

Like, I look at, like, it's very clear that this is a problem because both sides of the aisle agree that there is a problem. They just completely disagree about what the problem is. And one issue is that, like, we don't really even, like, have the language to describe this. Like, you know, we talk about all this, like, censorship stuff and content moderation as, like, a free speech issue. And it's like, well, it is in some cases, but in most cases, it's like an amplification issue, right? Like, it's, like, who has access to, you know, the pipes and the levers and the algorithms that make something go viral, you know, like, is it speech? is it, you know, is it free speech or is it, you know, free reach or unlimited reach? And,

and, like, we don't really have, like, a vocabulary for a lot of this stuff, because I think it's still so new. And we're, like, what we're seeing is we're, we're just getting acquainted with the power, which is, I think, why it's so scary. And I don't, I just don't believe that, um, I think it's going to take some time, you know, like, when you look through the history of, like, grappling with a lot of really disrupting. technologies, like it takes 20, 30 years. Like, there are these, like, you know, stepping stones on the way to it. And I just think, like, you know, we're really only, like, you know, 15 years into these platforms.

And it's going to, it's just going to, it's going to take more time and understand that and wrap our heads around it. Because we don't even have the vocabulary really to describe what, what is happening. one thing that's been so striking to me about Trump after Twitter is he's put out these very long press releases about Carl Rove and Mitch McConnell. They've been very Trumpian, but you look at them and read them, they've gotten coverage, and they're really boring. They're almost, and they're boring because they're so long. And I do wonder if, you know, obviously Trump benefited from Twitter's platform, but he also benefited from Twitter's particular form, the pithiness, the shortiness, of it. What do you think of that? Yes. I think that I really, I very much agree with that. I think he, I think that there was also

just, like, you know, he's a, from everything we know, he's a very lazy person. And Twitter is like a very, like, it's a, to some degree, it's a, you know, it's a bit of a lazy medium, right? Like, you just rifle off the take, you rifle off the thing. Uh, the reaction. The reaction. to it can be really lazy. Everyone can just sort of assume their standard position and just, you know, react from it. So I think, I mean, I absolutely think he benefited from the forum. And I think that, like, what's really interesting about the absence of him from it now is, like, I just noticed, like, I have my super broken brain looks and just like pays attention to, like, you know,

the metrics of lots of tweets that I see like oh and and just generally like I don't know if there's any scientific evidence for this but it seems like like there's less and less like you know really like viral stuff coming from a lot of people on like media Twitter and I just like the volume of the conversation is sort of like like down and I and I just think like I think he was like a very central node in this system like he was the reason why everyone was there because everyone's sitting in this crouching position waiting to react. You know, is all tensed up,

which causes people to react to other things really aggressively. I just, I sort of see him as like the lynchpin to this, this system. And I don't know, I'm not saying that Twitter is going to fall apart tomorrow or anything, but I just think that there's like, there's less of an urgency.

There's less of a, whatever, you know, whatever. But was he, I mean, he's the, like the genius of the form, right?

Like, he truly was able to, I mean, it's ridiculous. He, he, you know, governed the country via 280 character, you know, missives and really kind of like compelled us all to react in kind. You mentioned the virality of some people in media Twitter and, I guess, all of Twitter in the shadow of Trump. I want to pivot if you'll let me to Well, I think of this is the uplifting section of the interview Where you can teach us how to be better people

I mentioned earlier this The column you wrote a couple weeks ago Called Don't Go Down the Rabbit Hole I guess the sad part is Everything is conspiring against us To steal our attention Which is our most valuable asset But

But you have some advice on Or Michael Caulfield the academic you interview as some thoughts on how we break this cycle. Would you just give us a little bit of information there? Sure. Yeah. So this Michael Colfield is a, because he's an academic who works on media literacy issues and he's helped develop this system called SIFT, which is like without walking through all all the principles. Like the real idea about it is like to first, when you encounter, this is when you encounter a piece of information that like, it's something you're like, you're not an expert in, you're just sort of seeing it across your feet and it

catches your eye or somebody sends it to you and it's like, whoa, this is crazy, right? Maybe it's something about, you know, coronavirus, about masks or vaccine efficacy or something weird like that. And the first thing to do is like to basically stop, right? Second thing to do is to like investigate the source, which is just like, okay, this is coming from where is this coming from? And I mean, these things are all very simple, right? So, like, do just like do a Google search, right? And if the first thing that comes up from this source is, like, a source that you trust

saying, this is a conspiracy, right? Or this is a conspiracy theorist, like, known, known Huckster, whatever, involved in the siege of the Capitol, you know, like, if you see all these different signs that are pointing you towards, like, whoa, what is this? Then just, like, you can probably just out of hand, if it's not something that's super important to you if it's not, you know, a matter of, you know, somebody's health or whatever. Like, you can probably just say, okay, like, I'm going to disengage from this one. Like, this is probably not worth my time. And this is sort of this idea, right, of your attention

being valuable. Like, his idea is basically that, like, the way that we are taught the notion of critical thinking, both in schools and just in life is, like, to engage seriously with every piece of information that we see, right? You see it across your screen. Like, the best thing you can do is go as deep as you can into this thing in order to understand it, debunk it, whatever. But, you know, a lot of people who are hijacking our media ecosystem are, they understand that that's the way you're going to engage with something.

So they make things really complex. The best example of this is like these three hour long YouTube vloggers who, like, dabbling conspiracy theories. They start off by basically flattering you and saying, like, I'm going to share with you all these deeply scientific, you know, studies or whatever that I'm cherry picking from, giving you all these stats, overwhelming you with information that you're not qualified to just handle because you don't have an advanced degree and whatever. And by doing that, they take advantage of you. They say, you know, oh, you should trust, you can learn anything. And people, you know, kind of get put down these rabbit holes and they start going.

And it can, and it just can be dangerous. And so that's really what he's trying to say is like, your attention is worth something. And if it's not an issue, like, if you want to go down the rabbit hole, then go, go down and try to do so in a, you know, in a smart, reasonable way. But you don't have to. And we're sort of not used to directing our attention into. intentionally. I'll also note that that piece, which I thought was relatively straightforward and kind of almost a little bit anodyne, is the most I've ever been harassed or like, like, bullied by trolls and conspiracy theorists in my long storied history of being bullied and harassed by conspiracy theorists. And I think it's because it spoke to this like very fundamental thing that like it sort of showed this is, this is the tactic. This is the way people are trying to manipulate you. And giving people that agency and that understanding, I think just like made a lot of people really furious. So just to put a bow on that, you wrote a piece about how not to fall into rabbit holes of misinformation

online. And then purveyors of misinformation came and misquoted you or took things out of context in order to essentially pull the plug from your story. That just all happened in one episode. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was pretty amazing. I framed it a little bit provocatively. It was like critical thinking as we're taught, you know, isn't helpful in the fight against misinformation.

And yeah, there were a lot of, you know, ellipses being used that conveniently allied some of my points. Anyway, that's what you get. But it was, it was like a good encapsulation of like where we're at right now, I think, on the internet. Well, I mean, yeah, what is it about the right-wing internet world broadly defined that every time you say an insult,

they immediately see themselves in it, right? It's like every time you hear someone say, like all these racist trolls on the internet and then people are like, why are you calling me a racist? I'm not a, well, wait a second. You know, and when you're just like, well, here's a way to avoid online hucksters and people who proclaim to not be online hucksters are like, I take offense to everything.

Yeah, it's the like, it's the, my, I'm not an online huckster t-shirt. Creating a lot of questions answered by the shirt, right? Like that whole, that whole thing. Totally that. You can read Charlie Worsall's columns and reporting at the New York Times where every ellipsis is honest and well-earned. Charlie, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, David, let's 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. How would you like an all Harry and Megan interview edition of the Overworked Twitter joke of the week? Well, that would streamline things. So yes, that sounds great. There was so much great stuff last night as Harry and Megan. bared their souls to Oprah Winfrey. For example, why I'm leaving the royal family and moving to substack?

We had Harry and Megan have joined All Elite Wrestling. Thank you. They need help over there. I put that in just for you. Harry and Megan just Lexington and Concord. Lexington and Concord. After the mini bombshells last night, it was an overword Twitter joke to write, Queen Elizabeth has got to get on Clubhouse

and explain herself right now. Did you see all the tweets, by the way, with a pick of the queen that said a lot of lies on my timeline tonight. I got to get here and speak some truth. I love that. Somebody put up a picture of Queen Elizabeth with the bit. I'm deeply disappointed to hear allegations made by Megan and Harry. This is not who we are as a family,

as that's a drive to deep left field by Nick Castellanos, and it'll be a home run, and so that'll make it a 4-0 ball. game. We're still doing the Tom Brennaman Bitsy. Wow. Yeah, we had the inevitable British Royals NBA All-Star weekend crossover tweets. Megan Markle deserves a 10 for her dunk on the British monarchy. Or, if you prefer, both Obie Topin and Prince Harry dunked on their dads on TV. Wow. Wow. When England started trending in Massachusetts, Massachusetts.

It was an overword Twitter joke to write historically a very bad sign for England to be honest.

And perhaps my favorite of all of them, once again, America will defeat the British monarchy by spilling tea.

Thanks to Jody Canada Lou MacBizzo, Wesley Balds, Travis Barnett, Enquite, Duda, Torqu Mason,

Steve Holesupville, Kelsey Anderson, Alex Frost, and the acting secretary of Balarky. If you perfectly set up

our next segment on Harry and Megan. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dumped, David. We got to talk about Megan and Harry's two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey on CBS last night, which had an enormous number of bombshells, including the fact that Megan once worked at a frozen yogurt shop called Humphrey Yogart. My pilgrimage to Humphrey Yogart has already begun.

I'm calling you from the bus. Here to help us make sense of the Royals and the story about the British. Press is Ed Malian. He is now the athletics director of content strategy and analytics. He is a former sports editor at the Independent, former European football correspondent for the Daily Mirror. Ed, welcome to the press box. Thank you for having me. What a, what a wonderful evening that was the one of the best interviews I've seen in a while, I've got to say. Let's just go around the table here and I'll start with Ed. What will blew your mind most about that interview last night? I love that she didn't hold back. I love that she didn't hold back. I love

that she just lit a flame under the royal family in a way that no one really has ever probably. I think that we will look back on this interview as likely a turning point in the history of the modern royal family because, you know, I think they're already gathering questions about the viability of it beyond Queen Elizabeth's reign. I had an Australian friend who said to me that he thinks that they'll get rid of kind of the monarchy as an oversight body when Queen Elizabeth dies. But like this is just accelerated everything because it's exposed the family ructions to the whole world with no filter. It's just pure Megan spilling the beans. I just loved it. David, what about you? What blew your mind from last night?

I mean, to me, I was just sort of assessing off sort of formal, maybe technical journalistic things. One, I mean, everybody said it, and I'll say it again. If you forgot why we love Oprah so much, why we put her on such a pedestal, that was one of the most masterful interviews that conducted from start to finish you've ever seen. The flip side is the interviewee, ease, but I start with interviewee because I was sort of shocked that Megan Markle was sitting there by herself. It was a one-on-one interview for so much of the, I mean, I just, I just can't, there's so much of this that's unprecedented.

But there was never a moment where I saw the teaser photo where I didn't think they would just be out there together the whole time, right? This really, like, this got into a, it immediately went to a human level because of the way they set it up. And I think, I think that there was, especially in Megan Markle's presentation, I guess, but also Harry, that they both seemed prepared in the sense that they had had these conversations before, but they didn't seem staged at all. Like, they were kind of talking over each other to answer questions a little bit.

And, like, it just seemed, it seemed so human that it, that it just came off as undeniably true in a way that I just don't, I can't imagine being so convicted of the truth of something after an Oprah Winfrey interview as I was just watching that whole thing happened. your Oprah point is brilliant because there was the point. The question she asked was, were you silent or were you silenced? And I was just like, damn. Like, I wish I could ever ask a question in an interview that that just comes that good and you're on TV and everything. Like, she knew the buttons to push. Obviously, like, there must be some sort of level of preparation.

It's interesting that you think that they came off as like very unrehearsed and stuff because I don't know if you've seen the British reaction this morning. but the British reaction seems to be that, you know, they are like she's an actress and there's a bunch of lies that they had clearly mapped out beforehand to try and smear the royal family. It's the Oprah, I'm glad you brought the Oprah skill thing, Ed, because it is true. Like he's, she just, one, she seemed super prepared, which may go to her friendship with both of them and the fact that they are virtually neighbors or maybe actually neighbors in California. Business partners, that's right, all the way. there was the silent or silence question. The other one I thought was so good

as Harry said something like we moved away to take a breath. And she just so simply said, take a breath from what exactly? And in his answer, he said history repeating itself, talking about his mom's death. And it was just like, whoa. Sensationally powerful line. Yeah.

And the flow of the interview just went so well. I know they edited it and everything and there's some stuff that wound up on the cutting room floor. But it seems very weird to say that Oprah is back because Oprah's just never left. Oprah's just off doing successful things that maybe David and I aren't watching on a weekly basis.

But in terms of having a TV mega event interview that didn't deliver one or two things over the course of two hours, but delivered like five things in every segment. That's what I said to my, my fiancee last night. I said, there's about 10 front page splashes in this interview. You know, like they could have, you know, and fair play to CBS, they could have divided this up and done it over four consecutive nights and they would have had front pages every single night. And I don't know who's behind the decision

to just compress it into a two-hour thing, but like it doesn't really matter. All you've done is condense it down into like one really small packet of semtex that just blew up the entire story. The backdrop was also incredible because apparently they found the British countryside in California down to the columns with the vines snaking up them

and the sloping lawns, you know, sort of running out behind them. You've seen that classic, the Austin Powers scene where it comes up at the bottom says British countryside and they're clearly just driving through those winding California roads. It's a bit like that. Absolutely. There is, at a critique of the British press, specifically the British tabloids that ran through this whole interview. What did you learn? You've obviously been sort of consuming this story for your entire life, perhaps.

What did you learn last night about Harry and Megan and the tabloids? I guess that, I mean, it was actually, I felt like you learned more about the relationship between the royal family and the newspapers than you did about Megan and Harry and the newspapers. And why I say that is, okay, one, incredibly powerful, multiple uses of the firm and the institution. Now, the fact that they even call it, that's such a faceless kind of weird adjective, like weird descriptor. It's just like the firm, the institution. and obviously she's talking about people because these are senior aides. And like one of the things that it comes back to for me is if you're born into the royal family, like Prince Harry, I'm fairly sure Prince Harry never talks to journalists,

apart from in like arranged media performances. I don't think he's texting anyone from like a random newspaper to tell them tidbits because he was born into this. And think about his like, you know, the life events that have happened to him. I don't think that that's high on his agenda. but what you realize is that there are lots of people who surround the royal family who only really care about the royal family. They see the royal family as like a divine right.

They see the royal family is the most important thing. And they've clearly prioritized protecting senior members of the royal family over Megan and Harry's well-being and also obviously like, you know, their reputation as if they choose to leave the royal family to these people within the institution, within the firm, It reminds me of, if you've ever watched prison break when they talk about the company, it's the same thing, right? Like, there are people who are doing dark work behind the scenes. And it is these people who I believe are those who talk to the newspapers.

You don't get, like, Princess Anne texting a journalist. It's the AIDS. It's the press secreties. It's those people who live around the royal family who are complete, their lives are completely intertwined with the royal family. And they are, all they want to do is protect the royal family. and how that ties in with this culture is that when someone becomes an enemy of the royal family, it's very, very quickly, you know, you see that turn in the tabloids and you see the turn.

And the Society of Editors, which is a body that speaks on behalf of British newspapers, released a statement this morning saying that we're not bigoted and we're not racist and we actually were very supportive of Megan and Harry. And the first thing I always think is it's not your job to be supportive of Megan and Harry. is your job to report like the marriage and all the stuff that goes with it. But the bigoted, the racism part of it is the most interesting. And as someone who's been around like sports journalism, we've seen this with the treatment of young black English players.

So Rahim Sterling is the most obvious example. Might not be familiar to your audience, but he was criticized for buying his mom an expensive house. And then there was a white English player who plays for the same team as him who was praised by the same outlaw. there for doing that. And in sports, that's kind of had its reckoning a little bit. You know, a couple of years ago at the SJA Awards, the Sports Journalism Awards, the sports editor of the Daily Mail accepted an award. And he said, like, we hear the criticism and we're working hard to improve

on this, right? And for me, it's just something that doesn't appear to have gone through to the front pages, because how can you look at the treatment of Megan compared to the treatment of Kate? And actually, I tweeted that BuzzFeed article last night, where it compared to, the headlines. And again, it's exactly the same things that she's done. And the treatment of them is 180 degrees opposite. So like, I don't know what it looks like to you guys from the outside. But for me, it's clear that these two people have been treated differently. And, you know, you have to point to the obvious difference in the two of them. They're both princesses. They're both beautiful people. They're both successful. But one's black and one's white.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the sort of ambiguousness of the firm, the people who are leaking, the people who, I mean, the, the, the sort of tabloid industrial complex makes it easy, it makes it natural to speculate in that direction in the absence of other facts. I guess to me, you know, the novice viewer like me probably came away saying, you know, the crown was very. right, right? I mean, all the, like, the sort of dark side of the royal family is, it turns out to be exactly what's going on. And I'm sure, you know, there was some deliberate decision to sort of Anglin that way. But I, but I do think that it felt like the royal specifically, you know, princes, queens, whoever you want to point a finger at, you know, they're the public faces. And we all go, the tabloids and TV shows alike all lean on the sort of constructs of narrative, right? And so, we don't really have a concept beyond the protagonists of what's going on over there. So when they talk about the firm, it seems incredibly insidious, but I can't even begin to

wrap my head around that. Is that something that the average British reader, the average British citizen has a concept of what that even means besides the abstract idea of people operating behind the scenes? It's an interesting question because basically, I think the answer is no. And, like, you know, as someone who, I don't pay a ton of attention to the royal family necessarily, but like I've worked in newspapers my entire career until I moved to America. I'd never heard of the firm or the institution. But like, it kind of, the name tells you everything you need to know. It's just a group of nameless, faceless people who are working on behalf of someone.

And, you know, it's way easier to get away with stuff when you're nameless and faceless, right? you know, that's the premise of like every spy film you've ever watched. I actually forgot one of the most interesting things as well, sorry to change the topic slightly, was when they almost threatened to out one member of the royal family who had talked about Archie's skin color. Because that was almost left there, I felt as a threat as like, if this carries on, always know that we could let this name out.

And in the mirror today, Susie Boniface is a good journalist. She wrote a piece kind of following the, breadcrumbs and basically concluded that it could only be William or Charles and it's probably William and like that is just another bombshell waiting to happen for me. One thing Harry said specifically about newspapers yesterday was that the royals are scared of the tabloids turning on them. Help us understand why are the royals scared of that? Well, I think the royal family are desperately trying to remain in place for start. you know, they have a very nice life. The whole thing's crazy when you think about it, but, you know,

they are paid for by the taxpayer. They are completely funded. They have palaces. They have a lovely life. They have essentially an enormous real estate business, which spans the entire United Kingdom. I think they're very aware that public perception of them could turn. And in, obviously, the Queen's reign around 1997 and Diana, we saw the... that things can turn against them. And I think they're very worried about that because at the end of the day, if they don't have the public on their side,

then the question that starts getting asked is the question I posed right at the start of this is when do they start losing countries? And when I say countries, I mean, you know, the queen is not just the queen of the United Kingdom, but also of the Commonwealth of, you know, all these countries that recognize her as a monarch. And is that something that's going to be viable long term

with these sorts of stories swirling around the royal family? because for me, that doesn't seem likely. I mean, as outsiders, do you think that this is something you'd want if you were an Australian and the royal family that supposedly oversees your country is behaving in this way? To, you know, again, to like, to a black woman. I mean, no. I would not want that, right? Well, I mean, I guess that is sort of a question I had for you because I know this is very American, very myopic.

of me to even ask this question. But it does seem like we encounter Americans' obsession with British royalty on a daily basis. And I wonder to what degree it's not just the kind of self, like the momentum of the institution, but also the popular imagination that goes beyond the walls of Great Britain, right? It's the, I mean, it's, it seems like there's something

more than just, you know, British statesmanship that is keeping, that is perpetuating this, right? Isn't it something that all of us not just the empire have some stake in? Yeah, I think, you know, the first question that people ask

is if you would get rid of the monarchy is what would, you know, what do you replace it with? Like, elected officials aren't so great, it turns out, you know, you guys have had your own experience of this in the last few years. I mean, the last 200 years.

But like, the fact is that if you get rid of the monarchy, I think the arguments would be in the UK, the arguments would be that they're important for trade, they're important for international relations. Because instead of sending the trade minister who's just some, you know, like pig in a suit, you know, you send Prince, maybe not Prince Andrew, I don't mean he's allowed to leave the country, but like you send Prince Charles on a trade mission.

And that's going to be way more impactful in terms of impressing foreign delegates than it would be anything else. And in fact, this is how they justified recently paying an absolute fortune to renovate the royal yacht, is that it would be used on trade missions. So, like, I think that the idea is that the royal family to some people are the UK's identity globally. They're certainly, obviously, you know, important for international relations because they can be used in a way that politicians can't really be used. But the question is, like, do you want these random unelected people who are surrounded by the firm to be doing that on behalf of your country? And I think that probably comes back to the question you asked me earlier is why they're so worried about public perception? Because it's that, it's that where these things can fall apart.

Because if they don't have the public on their side, and I would say, I mean, I don't know what the latest polls are. In the UK, I'd say most people are still in favor of keeping the monarchy like these days. But I don't know if that's still going to be the case in 10 years or 20 years because I imagine that line is moving firmly away from the monarchy rather than towards them. To return to the question of the tabloids for just one second, the royals or the people, around the royals doing the bidding of the royals, they are convinced simultaneously that readers of the British tabloids, or many of them, are A, supporters of keeping the royal family in place as they are,

and B, consumers of the most aggressive, scabrous coverage of the royal family there could possibly be at the same time? Well, the thing is, when you say, are people consuming this content, I don't think a lot of people necessarily are choosing to consume it, but it becomes part of the accepted wider narrative.

right? You know, like you see a story about Megan bullying someone and making them cry. And before we have all the full facts of that, it factors into your assessment of her, even if, you know, it turns out like there's no evidence for it. We know that she's been accused of that. It's one of those really kind of shady lines in life, I guess, but also in journalism that you can't escape those. You can't escape those things. And Now that that's out there, you can't put the genie back in the bottle, as it were. So I don't think people necessarily are choosing to actively consume what I think you described as the tabloid narratives around these people. But like, it does feed into the general wider narrative. Even if you're reading about this in the Guardian or the Times or the Telegraph, traditional broadsheet newspapers, you know, a lot of the stuff that they're talking about is going to have originally come from the tabloids because they go bigger on this sort of stuff. You know, traditionally, paper I used to work for the independent didn't cover the royals at all. And I believe when there was

a famous royal wedding back in the day and they tucked it away on like page 19 in the top left corner, about 100 words saying so-and-so I got married to so-and-so. Now, funny enough, the age of the internet means that you can't do that anymore. Like if you don't want to miss out on all this huge amounts of web traffic, you have to cover huge royal things. And I'm sure I haven't been on the independent website today, but I'm sure if you did, you'd go and see a ton of content around Megamarkle and Prince Harry because it's the biggest story of the day. But, you know, it comes back to that thing is, even if people aren't consuming the worst angles thrown around

about Megan and Harry, they are aware of them because they're unbelievably pervasive because what I think traditionally was tabloid angles are now just mainstream television. Like, Pierce Morgan was the editor of The Daily Mirror. I know he was over here for a while and then you guys got rid of him, but like he now presents

Good Morning Britain, which is one of the biggest morning television shows. And he is obsessed with this story. And he has an incredibly strong angle on it, which I'm sure you're all aware of. And that's how these, what you term tabloid narratives continue to get spread, even though people aren't necessarily reading the tabloids in the same way. But the narratives are still constructed that way. I guess that's what, to what degree is, is, forgive me, this is very, very basic. We all know like sort of the politics of the different papers.

I mean, those are things that Americans are very familiar with in our own newspapers and stuff like that. Sure. But to what degree is, is, I mean, do people see those sort of front page headlines about the Royals and just sort of acknowledge them for what they are? I mean, is it, is it, I mean, obviously some people will seek that out. But to the degree to which it's like clearly skewed or false or whatever else, I mean, people are aware of that, right? Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, look, I definitely grew up in an era. Like, when I was growing up, people were still buying a lot of newspapers.

Like, my first job was working in a newspaper shop when I was 14 years old. And I gradually went through and ended up working four newspapers. So, like, it's hard for me to say objectively. I think, like, everyone understands the biases of certain newspapers in the UK. That's a clear thing. And the BBC is, for me, like a very neutral body where people on both sides think it's biased against them. probably the best example of neutrality. The newspapers now, the interesting thing for me is, you're talking about the front pages of the tabloids, but in 2021, in March, during an extensive

lockdown in the UK, who is seeing the front pages of tabloids? Like, the only time I see the front pages, obviously I'm in America, but the only time I'm seeing the front pages of these tabloids is all JPEGs of them online, right? When the guy from the BBC tweets them out every night, in tomorrow's papers today. So, like, people aren't necessarily walking past shops at the train station on the way to work and seeing these front pages and kind of you digest them all at work because they're all next to each other, right? All the papers are next to each other.

So you see all the front pages at the same time and you kind of take a picture in your mind and you amalgamate all the different angles and you can try and work out what the truth probably is. But the interesting thing for me is that because people might not be physically seeing these things, how are they actually consuming it? So you're only seeing the stuff. It's either appearing in your social feeds, right? So it's highly viral content or stuff that you're actively searching for. And I would, I would guess a lot of people aren't necessarily actively searching for this. They are seeing it. It's been brought up to them

via social feeds, which completely changes the sort of coverage you're going to see, because by definition, the stuff that gets shared more is more extreme content, right? Like, that's how the internet works. That's the problem with the internet. So it's an interesting kind of 2021 development of what you're talking about is to how much do the, you know, the tabloid narratives feed into our understanding of it. It's, it's probably enhanced by the internet in the fact that we're going to get more and more extreme viewpoints. They're going to be shared for good or bad and more people are going to see them. You can read Ed Malian's front page splashes at at EAA Malian. Ed, thanks for coming on the press box. All right, it's time for David

Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about nearly canceled sled dog races was the show Mush Go On. Today's headline, David, comes from Andrew Jolson. It's from Politico's New York Playbook PM. I'm going to read you the lead item here. Governor Andrew Cuomo made his first appearance in front of reporters today, apologizing multiple times to New Yorkers and one of the women who came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, but saying he would not resign from office. I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable, he said, dot, dot, dot,

but if that's how they felt, that's all that matters and I and I apologize. So Cuomo apologizes. I'm afraid that's all I'm going to give you. What was New York Playbook PM's strained pun headline? Um, I'm sorry. forgive me forgive me is this

forgive oh man an apology oh okay yeah there we go that's a word we need in this

Cuomo what's another word for an apology a mea culpa a that's it a Mario Coppa or

Mario. Mayacoa. I'm sorry. I'm looking at his dad. Yeah, yeah. But Maya Cuomo. Mea Cuomo. Mea Cuomo.

Mea Cuomo. Oh, man. Oh, man. That's great. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are back Thursday with Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune.

Has there been any news out of Texas lately, David? I don't know. I don't know, man. Seen five or six big stories. Plus, list or mail and more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.