The Press Box - Rueben Bain Jr.’s Measurables and JD Vance’s Humiliations. Plus, Scott MacFarlane on Life After CBS.

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and Joel discuss the recent news about Rueben Bain Jr., and they discuss how much we should know about NFL draft prospects. Then, they talk about JD Vance (20:41), media sales news (27:53), and the Masters (32:25). Then, they are joined by MeidasTouch chief Washington correspondent Scott MacFarlane to talk about covering the attempted Trump assassination, his last few months at CBS News, joining MeidasTouch, and much more, including a Joel Anderson lightning round (39:54). They wrap up the show with the return of J School (1:23:16). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonGuest: Scott MacFarlaneProducers: Bruce Baldwin, Isaiah Blakely, and Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox Thursday. It's Brian Curtis. It's a man I'm looking at in a Zoom window. It's Joel Anderson. It's producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Coming up on the old press box, how much should we know about top NFL draft prospect, Rubin Bain?

We'll talk about the humiliation, or should I say, multiple humiliations of J.D. Vance. They saved the newspaper in Pittsburgh. and what happened with CBS and the Masters. Plus, former CBS newsman Scott McFarland is going to join us to explain why he became a Midas Touch newsman. But, Joel, let's start with the NFL draft. All right.

Next Thursday, you can be sitting there watching round one of the NFL draft like me? I'm going to do the best I can because it happens in the evening and you know that usually is around bed, baths, time, yeah, dinner time around here. so I'll get to it at some point. Ruben Bain is somebody that everyone has going high, though he might have the biggest variance of any top draft pick this year.

Well, you know, Brian, I don't know if you've paid attention to the Joel Anderson Big Board 1.0 that ran on Ringer Tailgate. I had him at the top of my draft board. I had him number one. Yeah. I was a big Ruben Bain football player fan because nobody is more of violence.

violent than him. He just has heavy hands. He has a knack. He led the country in pressures last year. Everybody knows he's coming. I just don't see how that doesn't translate, even if he does appear to have the arms of Bushwick Bill. For people who come to this podcast for politics,

Ruben Bain is a defensive end at the University of Miami who kicked ass all season, and especially during the playoffs last year. We got a story about Ruben Bain this week from Ali Connolly in the read optional newsletter. I'll read you some excerpts here. Ruben Bain was involved in a fatal traffic collision in Miami in March 2024, according to records and reports

viewed by the read optional. Dott, dot, dot, dot. Bain then a sophomore at the University of Miami was driving on Interstate 95 in Miami at 4 a.m. on March 17, 2024, when his vehicle struck another car before careering into concrete barriers on both sides of the highway, according to a police crash records reviewed by the Reed Optional. One of the four passengers in Bain's car destiny Bess, a 22-year-old college student from Georgia,

who was visiting Miami for spring break, suffered incapacitating injuries, and was rushed to the rider trauma center from the scene. She never regained consciousness. Betts died on June 13, 2024 after spending almost three months in a coma. Connolly notes that Bain was cited for careless driving. That charge would be able to be able to. was dismissed approximately two weeks before Betz died while she remained in a coma. So that was story number one. Story number two came from Trey Wallace over at Outkick. I know your site, go-to site, Joel for draft news.

Man, it's that and bar stool. And yeah, I can't, I got to go there first to get my news. Wallace notes that Bain was cited, as he said, for careless driving in 2024. he was also issued a citation in 2025 for careless driving. That was also dismissed. So those were the two stories that came out about Ruben Bain. And then there was a fascinating reaction from the NFL draft media world. How would you summarize that reaction?

That we were wrong to be surprised. Okay, so first it was that not a big deal. The NFL already knows about this. and we've known about it for several months, and it's not a big deal. And in fact, if you make it a big deal out of it, you may be a bad person because you're trying to tank Ruben Bain's draft stock in some sort of way. Does that seem about a fair recreation of the conversation? That's exactly what it was. Yeah.

We already knew about this. NFL teams already knew about this and processed it. So how dare you report this news? and for the rest of you who are reading Olly Connelly's report, how dare you make a big deal out of it right before Ruben Bain gets drafted by an NFL team? Is that as deeply weird to you as it was to me?

Oh, absolutely. Well, first of all, I think top line issue is, how did they keep that quiet for so long about a player so prominent? So is this a case of local media just not existing? anymore. Like you're telling me a guy who was played for the University of Miami football team,

who was the ACC defensive rookie of the year, the fall before this accident, was in an accident and somebody died. Yeah. And that was never reported anywhere. Never reported. Yeah. No questions asked whatsoever. I just, I guess. But I mean, man, do you have to suppress things now when there's no local media left to cover anything? That, I mean, that's, and that's a, that's still a big beat, man. I mean, Miami was just in the national championship game. It's, I mean, I don't think it's arguable. Ruben Bain was the best player on the national champion runner up. So even if they didn't get that information at the time,

you would have thought there would have been enough whispers around the program. There was like, man, I got some shit going on. And somebody might have reported it. Now, apparently, those conversations, the whispers were happening, among a group of certain reporters, but they just didn't think it was worth telling anybody else because the NFL already knew, and they'd already vetted it,

and they thought that it was okay, which, yeah, that's extremely weird. That was the part that got me, because there are two different questions here. One is, will this incident affect Ruben Bain's draft stock, which is the most draft-centric question you could possibly ask, especially when you're talking about the loss of human life? Right.

But then the secondary question is, do those of us who weren't at the combine, who aren't covering the draft and talking to GMs and scouts about these players, do we deserve to know information like this? Should we know information like this about Ruben Bain? I think that's a great question. So there are people who clamor for draft news because, like me, I'm a fan of college football,

and I want to know how they project at the next level. And then there's NFL fans who want to know what to expect from, draft picks coming to play for their favorite franchise. And so among that group of people who are not privy to that information, we're also, we've just gotten used to a range of whispers and tidbits about medical records and off-field concerns. So we're already- Red flags, so we're used to hearing this stuff.

Like, even if we don't think we have a right to hear it, this is so common. Like, just in the last draft. people wanted to know, what the hell? Why is Shadoos Sanders? Following in the draft, man, what's going on in the background of people that made whispers? Oh, he didn't. There's some concerns and he didn't do well.

The James Pierce Jr., who, you know, was a first round pick last year. I mean, was one of the top rookies for the Atlanta Falcons and was recently arrested for, you know, I guess, in short, domestic abuse involving his girlfriend who was a WMBA player. And they're, but going into that draft, there was like, some red flags around them, some behavioral concerns. We're outfield concerns. We don't know. So we're used to this kind of stuff. And given that that's the standard, that at least we didn't even know that there was a red flag attached to Ruben Bank. Like they didn't even say, like, he's got something in his past that may, you know, put a cap on his draft status. But that's, you know, but, you know, the NFL teams know about it, right? Like, in that, don't you think, like, even if you don't think we have a right to that information, we've already gotten used to a world where it's available to us.

Well, here's the irony. We've gone so deep into this NFL draft thing. Yeah. That all of us, and I mean all of us, know that Rubin Bain's arms measure exactly 30 and 7, 8 inches. Yeah. But somehow. Some of the shortest arms for an elite NFL prospect in history of come to understand. We all know that.

Yeah. We are all supposed to know that. You can't comment on the NFL draft if you don't know the precise length of Rubin Bain's arms down to the eighth of an inch. But we don't know, and maybe in some people's eyes, we don't have the right to know that Rubin Bain was involved in a car accident in which somebody died. That doesn't make any sense to me. You can't go completely down the rabbit hole. Not to mention, as you say, kind of nodding at things about play, oh, there's some red flags or some quote-unquote character concerns there. And then say that this is off the table. That makes no sense at all. Our colleague, Todd McShay,

he was talking about this on his podcast. He called the leak disgusting. That was his his wording for this. I'm just like, I don't understand that. I don't understand how we how we go this, this crazy into draft world. And then we decide that other stuff is off limits. How could your curiosity be so stunted about this incident? I would think too, right?

Because look, I don't want Ruben Bain to go to prison. I don't, you know, I mean, I don't know enough. First of all, I don't know enough about these incidents to even. to even have that in the range of realm of possibilities. But normally that a situation like this, they'd be like, man, they didn't get this due to sobriety test. He was out driving at 4 a.m. the morning before St. Patrick's Day in Miami,

that ain't a little weird to y'all. Y'all don't want to, nobody wants to ask any questions about how that may have happened. And I mean, also. Or it's just a public figure, and this is something that happened to a public figure or something a public figure was involved in, right? They, you know, they were driving the car. So, like, of course we want to know. That's news.

There's a police report that's in Ali Colley's peace, right? That's the old rule, right? If there's a police report, there's a story. Right. And Brian, also, they're telling us that, oh, this is not a big deal that NFL knows about this. Your sources are telling you that. Do you know what Ali Connolly's sources are telling him?

That they're continuing to investigate. Quote, it doesn't feel like Bain has been transparent with us. Quote, we are concerned about multiple incidents. We are waiting for the other shoe. Quote, we are still looking, quote, we need more details. So you guys who have this information refuse to tell us about it. You want us to trust you that, oh, it's all been adjudicated, the NFL teams know about it.

That's what your sources say. Ali Connolly, the only person who trusted us enough to give us this information, his sources are saying something else totally different. Why should we believe you since you didn't even want to tell us in the first place. Why should we believe your your your your your your your your your your your your your your your your your your your yours yours is it doesn't make any sense to me. I just want to be clear I don't think you or I are trying to high horse this thing and condemn Ruben Bain. Of course I don't even think you and I really care all that much about

how this affects Ruben Bain's draft stock other than that that's just kind of a sports story that's going to be part of the draft next week. Yeah. I'm just fascinated by the idea that that something is that something gets declared off limits I was reading Albert Brewer's column in sports illustriest. that I first heard about it in February when I was gathering information ahead of the NFL Combine. Really? And it wasn't something that was like worth mentioning?

Do you not tell your editor that? That said it was like, hey, man, by the way, Ruben Bain, who's involved in a car accident? Somebody died. And they're like, oh, yeah, you probably don't need to put that. Maybe you do it a notebook item later after he gets drafted or something. How many thousands of words are we going to write before we get to that about a top prospect who's a very, very famous football player? I just find it all, I mean, again, it just doesn't, it doesn't compute to me.

And it also, you know what it does to me is I'm, again, and I say this without condemning, without really even being that interested in the whole the fall of Ruben Bain through the draft and will the team, you know, trust him and all that kind of stuff. I just think it's, I think this draft process has almost gotten so complex as to be inhuman. Mm-hmm. Where we're interested in how high the guy can jump and how fast he can do the cone drill and you know how he does on the spark test tell me if I'm getting any of these terms wrong but we're not actually interested in them as a person or as a human being yeah it's only things

that are quantifiable that are a number and we're really not even interested in like if we're throwing out character concerns and red flags we're not even interested what they are just that it's a mark on a sheet and this the whole thing feels to me like it's becoming very very inhuman when I see a story like this. Yeah. And to your to that point, like, Brian, I think so if you get to be the NFL insider, right, and you get to hang out at St. Elmo's in Indianapolis or you get to talk over draft prospects of Tutsis in Miami and you get to do your gossiping, cool, fine. You know, if you, you get to pick and choose what these folks are telling you and some of it gets to say secret. Some of it you tell us and it comes out through your, you know,

draft boards, whatever. Great. I admire that information. But the minute a real motherfucker steps up on the scene and it's like, wait, what did Ruben Payne do? And tells the rest of us, like, you all should shut up. You know what I mean? Like, you get to be the insider that doesn't have to go through the scrutiny and like the weird looks around NFL front office. And why did you tell that information, man? That's not cool. Or you don't get to burn your sources. Fine. But if somebody wants to do that and inform the rest of us and tell us a story or tell us about an incident that we have pretty much heard about every NFL top NFL prospect that came before Ruben Bain, I think that you all should shut up, man, you know, and let him tell it. You get to have the

cool job. You get to do the stuff. You don't have to do the hard shit and make people mad. Somebody else is willing to step into that role. So I just, yeah, I found it offensive that people were like, oh, this is not a big, I can't believe somebody reported that. Man, get to fuck out of here. It's like retroactive gatekeeping. Yeah. Like, and again, I made a business I sat on it. I made a business decision. I didn't think it was important. You know, I think there's people

that probably just thought, okay, he was, you know, the charge was dismissed, the charges were dismissed, okay, it's not that important. Whatever made a decision. But yeah, the fact that you'd come out and be like, how dare you, sir? Yeah, I don't get that at all. Yeah, I will introduce one complication here. Okay. Which, you mentioned

Shador Sanders. Now, when that's stuff came out about Chodor Sanders last year, about how he did not impress teams when he was doing the interviews and was acting like, oh, I'm going to be drafted before your pick comes up, so I don't need to worry about impressing you. You and I reared up a little bit. You and I

were like, I don't know these, you are you're throwing this stuff out there about a person, and I don't want to, I feel like in retrospect, maybe I was a little, we were a little dismissive of that. And it turned out to be

you know, it turned out to be that that whatever happened there was obviously something people were thinking about with Shador Sanders, given how he fell in the draft. Yeah, I, I, so, and I gave Ty McShay credit for initially being one of the first people to say, hey, Shadur ain't going to go as high as I think he is, you know, like, and there's some stuff going on in the background. Now, the thing is, is that, I mean, of course, I always want more information, right? Like, I think that as a football fan and a person that covers football, I always want as much I understand that there's limitations around that.

But sometimes it can be used, like the subtext can be used to puncture the draft status for people over things that are not really red flags. Like it could be, this person is uppity. Like maybe it could sometimes, like I felt like that was a lot of the talk around Shador Sanders. And like, he ain't good enough to be uppity. If that's what the analysis is, I have a critique of that. But it also is true that it affected his draft staff.

But silly sports, silly sports writer stuff is what you're talking about. Yeah, silly. Age old, yeah. I was involved. This guy was involved in our car accident and somebody died. And a year later was charged with a similar, you know, was cited for a similar infraction that got dismissed. I don't know, bro.

Like, that seems like a real big difference to me. But I get what you're saying. Also, I just, one quick thing, because people were trying to frame it as like we were being disrespectful to the family of Destiny Betts, the young woman who passed. I have real sympathy for that family. That must be a horrible thing to go through. But unfortunately, and you know this as a reporter, we don't determine newsworthiness based on the victim's family.

Like, that's just not how it works. We don't even determine criminal charges based on that, right? And so, like, look, they did what they were supposed to do. They say, look, we don't want to talk about this. It's been resolved as far as we're concerned. We're still grieving. That's how it's supposed to work. Now, well, we can't report that because it might make.

them mad. That's not how reporting works. I'm sorry. I think if character stuff is going to be on every NFL draft prospects read out if we're going to

if we're going to play this game I think the best way to do it is just for people to be forthright about what they're talking about. Yep. To be transparent and then you and I reserve the right to read that stuff and be like that's silly. Yeah.

that's ridiculous. Or that's a thing, but I don't know that, I don't know how, you know, important that is, or I don't know how that translates to the NFL or to take a case like this. And again, not to, you know, not to condemn, not to overjudge it. But just to say like, okay, I'll understand what this is and we can have a conversation about it. Yeah.

You know, if the draft is really going to take over our lives, shouldn't we just have a conversation about all these things to talk about actually what they really are, how we know them, you know, where they whispered to Bob McGinn by an anonymous person, or is there some, you know, reporting behind it? Is there something? And then consider it because I think these teams care about this stuff. They definitely try to figure out all, everything they can about a prospect.

How they're wired, how fast they run, all that stuff, you know, grinding tape. They do everything on these guys because it's a big deal. But shouldn't we just be straight about what we're talking about? And then we can have a conversation about how worthwhile it is. Right. Do you think, so, you know, the next step of this is that Ruba Bain is going to get drafted, probably in the first round. Definitely. He's going to stand up at a press conference in his new hometown.

Are people going to be offended if they ask him about that case and why it never came out before? Yeah. Like, I mean, he just is going to. But you know they will be because now the team that drafted him, their fans are going to be like, well, we made this pick. How dare it? Why are you bringing up all this, all this kind of. I understand the whole message board mentality of sports journalism. Yeah.

Like, oh, you guys are just making a big deal. This was nothing if you're a University of Miami fan or you're a fan of the Jets or whichever team drafts, Ruben Bain. I totally understand that because that's just like pure fandom. Yeah. It's the media part I don't get. I mean, I guess like the thing is they had three years to get in front of this, right? Like there was an opportunity for the University of Miami to help him

to craft a narrative or craft a story that put the circumstances into more favorable light. Right? But by keeping it a secret and trying to sneak it by everybody, they have actually made it worse. So, you look, Ruben Bain, those folks did you a disservice, man. I understood that you probably wanted to get past it. It probably was traumatic to deal with. I can only imagine. You know, shit, I'd probably be scared to drive again, right?

But those people didn't do him. The people trying to protect him, they're doing him a disservice because it's only going to get turned up from here. The humiliations of J.D. Vance. Let us count them. Okay. Donald Trump sent J.D. Vance to Hungary to campaign for Victor Orban. Man, didn't get the Trump bump, huh? He didn't get the Trump bump. He got crushed.

Trump sent J.D. Vance to negotiate with the Iranians in Islamabad. Meanwhile, Trump and Marco Rubio went to the UFC event. keeping them as far away from D.C. as possible. Another one. Trump picks a fight with Pope Leo and Vance gets sent to argue the case at a turning point conference. Here is the vice president of the United States. When the Pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword,

there is a thousand year, more than a thousand year tradition of just war theory. Okay? Now, we can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think that it's important, in the same way that it's important for the Vice President of United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. And I think that one of these issues here is that there has been, again, hey, random dude screaming, I told you I'd respond to your point. I just want to respond to this question first. But I think one of the issues, here is that if you're going to opine on matters of theology, you've got to be careful. You've got to

make sure it's anchored in the truth. And that's one of the things that I try to do. And it's certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they're Catholic or Protestant. Recent Catholic convert, J.D. Vansk lecturing the Pope on being careful about matters of theology. That's a hope-splaining, you might say. I like that. That's really good. Did you read, did you come up with that or did you see it somewhere else? I might have seen it somewhere else, but I don't remember. I like it. I'm not, I'm not lifting it on purpose. So there's an obvious ha-ha here. Yeah. Which is J.D. Vance has been humiliated like just about everyone who has worked for Donald Trump has been humiliated or run on the same ticket as Donald Trump. What's interesting to me about

this story is it seems obvious. If you don't know anything, that Donald Trump is trying to humiliate J.D. Vance. Whether he's mad because he senses the fact that J.D. Vance is going to be the next nominee of the Republican Party, hence Trump's replacement. And Trump disagrees with the very idea that he can be replaced or have any kind of error. Whether Donald Trump's mad that J.D. Vance was against the Iran war. And that information came out in that recent article by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Whatever it is, it seems like the normie political opinion here as Donald Trump is trying to humiliate this guy. Is it that? easy? Is that it? Is this one of those stories that's so obvious that you almost talk yourself

out of it at the end of the day? Well, do you think that he, I don't, do you think Trump expected that he would perform in quite that way? And after having spoken with the Pope, you think he thought that he would say that? He was like, oh, well, JD's not going to be able to help himself. And so, of course, he's going to embarrass himself. Or he's just like, I don't really want him around here. I disagreeing with me, arguing, looking like a leader. leader. And so I'm going to send him on all these like, you know, yeah. We should know, we should note that Pope's explaining is not worse than calling the Pope weak on crime. It's probably probably a mild version of what Donald Trump was trying to do.

But you hit on one thing, like he's trying to defend the indefensible. Right. As every Trump minion has to do. Right. So that is kind of an impossible task anyway that J.D. Vance signed up for. Right. And there's a way you can do it. but not make yourself look worse in the process. Like the Orban thing, I mean, I don't know there many people would hold that against him, negotiating with the Iranians. Like, that's, you know, that's going to get lost to the sands, you know, to the sands of time.

You know what I mean? Like, that's just not, I don't think that would ever be held up against him. But the Pope thing is where he, like, notably kind of stepped in it. And it made headlines for himself. And I just, I wonder if Trump actually just wanted him more out of the way. But then J.D. Vance humiliated himself by trying to take on the Pope. Let Trump do that. Like, only Trump can get away with that, sort of, right?

Sort of. But Vance, again, that clip we just listened to betrays sort of like the arrogance he has about like what he thinks of his place in the world and, you know, that he could disagree with the Pope on theology. And I don't know that maybe Trump knew that that would happen, but I don't. I don't know that he intentionally sent him out there to son himself, but, you know, maybe he knows him better than we think he does. What a way for Vance to get book publicity. I mean, man, that's right.

I have a new book about religion. Here are my feelings about Pope Leo. I mean, man. Also, the Turning Point USA event was just another, like, humiliation form. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the pictures from that event that night, which were taken by. Did you know this? We talked about this. The Jake Traylor, who is the son of UTSA football head coach, Jeff Traylor.

I was told this by Dave, Dave Wilson of ESPN put me onto that, which is crazy. But so he goes there, speaks in front of this audience of, you know, hundreds. And then Erica Kirk is like, well, I can't, I decided not to speak because there were threats against, there were threats made against me. Security concerns. Security concerns. Man. So the vice president could talk, but not Erica Kirk in front of the audience.

That's just kind of just an indication of where he ranks in the hierarchy of the right wing right now, I guess. The other surreal scene was Pope Leo on the papal plane doing a scrum. This is where he said that he had, quote, no fear of the Trump administration. Did popes always do scrums? I don't think. I mean, I've only ever seen the pope in that bubble moment. You know, I'm talking about... Yeah.

Have you ever seen... Didn't feel like he was in a lot of wild news conferences. John Paul II back in the day. No, no, man. It was just the Bubba mobile, man. Maybe he was, though. But I have a... We need a papal expert of somebody who was the Bureau chief in Rome to catch us up on whether

Pope's doing, you know, maybe Pope Leo is just doing in a way. It's reaching us in the social media age. He's an American. He's a, you know, a creature of this country in our media. White Sox fan. White Sox fan. White Sox. fan. I mean, he may have a whole different way of trying to talk to us, man, and reach folks.

So, yeah, I mean, the papal plane. I'd like to get on that paper plane. You would? Yeah, I'm a old Catholic school kid, man. You know, I went to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to strike Jesuit. Certain thrill to get on the papal plane. Yeah, I'll mind that. Another item for you that saved the newspaper in Pittsburgh. All right. I like to take on that, too, man. So the owners of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette had announced the paper was going to shut down next month. Yeah. And that's always really bracing. It's like when the Washington Post said they were going to shut down the sports page.

Yeah. We were like, wait a second. No, no, that's not the play. The play is you don't shut it down. You just turn it into a zombie and trick people into buying it forever. Which the Washington Post later got around to that strategy with the sports page. It's filled with wire copy and three reporters. But there's good news from Pittsburgh.

This is via Katie Robertson of the New York Times. The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which runs the Baltimore Banner. Yeah. And is financed by Hotel Magnate Stuart M. Bainham Jr. said on Tuesday he had reached an agreement with the newspaper's current owner block communications to buy the assets of the Post Gazette and run it as a nonprofit. Mm-hmm. That's amazing news. Great news. Some other amazing news also from Katie Robertson has said that,

a source told me that the other higher bidder for the Post Gazette was Alden Global Capital. Oh, boy. So the owners took a lower offer. Yeah. From someone who wanted to buy the paper and turn into a nonprofit, then Alden Global Capital, who would have almost certainly turned it into a zombie as well. They would have gutted it, and yeah, it would have existed as the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in name only. It would have been nearly the same thing, right?

Because we know that's what Alden Global does. I mean, they owned it with the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News, stuff like that. So, yeah, it would not have been the same thing. So we're really, really fortunate because I read some of the Baltimore Banners work. And it's pretty good, you know what I'm saying? Like I consider them a reputable news source, and I read their articles from time to time. And it just, it's nice to, to know that there's a plan to keep it as a robust journalism organization, right? Because if it was sold to, you know, Gannett or Alden County, you know that that's kind of the end.

And it'll be two people in there working, you know, on a hamster wheel, basically. Just want to mention this. And we can talk about the story a little bit more next week. But Dylan Byers in his puck column last night reported that in the coming weeks, I'm told Vox Media, CEO Jim Bankoff is likely to agree to multiple deals to sell various assets of his company, including the Vox Media Podcast Network, New York Magazine, and the portfolio of digital brands that includes the Verge, Eater, and SB Nation. More media sales news.

New York Magazine is so good. I cannot tell you how, you know, has anybody other than the New Yorker figured out how to be a magazine in the internet age better than New York Magazine. They are fantastic. And I'll just tell you, I've worked at some places that you pass their work around to Slack and they're like, man, you know, you can just see the jealousy just sort of dripping off them because like, man, they have a real neck for doing really good work that also draws attention and drives traffic, you know what I mean?

Wins the internet. Wins the internet. They just like, I, we follow them on, I think we follow them on Instagram and our press box account. I'm always just like, oh, look at that. Look at that headline treatment. Look at this thing that I'm about to click on that I would not have otherwise been interested in. Absolutely.

Because you seduced me to read it. And then the thing is, the pieces by and large are really well edited, well reported. There's big, aggressive, ambitious magazine journalism of the old school. It's just incredible how good that place is and continues to be. That should be a story about that, man. You know what I mean? Maybe there's a story about how they managed to avoid, which afflicted all the other magazine outlets out there because, yeah, they really are a standout right now.

One of the few that are still standing and still producing really good work. See, Charlotte Klein's there so she can't write it. Normally, she would write that. She just wrote the piece of Bethanyard Times Magazine. Did you read that one? I don't know if I... I may miss that way. Please send me the link to it.

Okay. I will. Once we get off here. Last item for you, did you watch the final round of the Masters? I mean, Brian. Joel, who's your favorite master's champion? Tiger Woods.

Who's your second favorite master's champion? Did Leo? No, he didn't ever win. Chi Chi Rodriguez, did he ever win? I don't believe Chi Chi won the Masters, no. Damn. Okay. Roy McElroy.

Rory McElroy. We're going to count that. Okay. He won his second Masters tournament in a row. on Sunday when you were not watching. And let me tell you something. 18 for CBS.

Rory went into that hole with a two-stroke lead. So he needs to bogey to win the tournament, essentially. CBS just the whole broadcast came apart. They couldn't find one of Rory's shots on that hole. Yeah, yeah. Then we get to the final tap in. All he does is need, he just needs to tap it in. he wins the Masters.

Somehow we got a camera angle behind Rory McElroy which is not a great camera angle. You don't want to shoot athletes from behind normally unless they're running into the end zone. And you could not see the ball going into the hole. Oh, man. That's an essential element

for a golf tournament. Yes. You see it in and then. You want to see the ball go in or out. Yeah, absolutely. I said people say, oh, it's not a big deal. I'm like, I don't know. I think it kind of is a big deal.

So there was a lot of criticism. on Twitter, including from yours truly. Because I'm watching this and be like, that's just bad. It's just bad television in a huge moment. Final putt of the Masters. Jim Nance, who's, of course, calling that for CBS, went on Pat McAfee's show on Tuesday. Of course, pause to absorb that news.

And here's how Nance reacted to the criticism. Do you have any thoughts on that? And in me asking this question, put you in a terrible position with anybody. And if that is the case, feel free not to answer. Patrick. Pat, it's live television. We all make mistakes. First off, for the record, the putt was that long. If he would have missed it, and we would have had the all-time story in the history of golf. But I'm really proud of our crew. You're making, as you said, so many decisions, split-second decisions, the things that were shown produced by our crew, hundreds of people involved over the course of four days. So two things there. Don't you love McAfee building a fire escape on the question? Oh, yeah.

He's like, if you don't want to answer. He can, he asked a good question. Like, if you have Jim Nance on two days after everybody takes a dump on CBS's coverage, especially in 18,

he can ask that question. That's good. The second part of is what Nant said about split-second decisions. Now, we know he's going to be a good soldier. That's being a good teammate, man. He's not going to go crush the truck.

Right. Right after the Masters. He's never going to do that. And I think if he did that, people in the industry would be like, what are you doing going out there and blasting your colleagues as much as we might like somebody to come out and say what they really think about that. But here's the thing. In sports television, split-second decisions are the whole ball game.

That's everything. That's it. Yeah. The most exhilarating thing, one of the most exhilarating things I've ever done on the media beep. And granted, you know, that's like, you know, a lot, a lot. There's a different level of exhilaration than if I was covering something else. But it's to sit in a truck during a football game and just watch how they dial up one replay. Yeah.

And watch how quickly that happens. And the magic of your producer sitting there and watching a bank of 20 cameras, figuring out what he wants in what order and within a second or two going, take one and then take alpha and then take, we're going right here. And you're watching at home and the play's been over for half a second. And all of a sudden, the perfect replay is coming up for. you. And then the second shot, and then the third shot from another angle, all that's happening in the split second. That's TV. And doing that well versus doing it in mediocre fashion or doing it poorly as CBS did in the 18 hole of the masters. That's the, that's it. That's the whole thing. That's what people are trying to do. That's the quality of their work. So to say it's split second decisions. Yeah, exactly. That that that's television. In terms of shots, and again, you know me, not necessarily the biggest golf watcher of all time.

That's pretty much the only shot that matters, right? Like in terms of which you capture on TV, because if you're going to see anything from the Masters, like let's just envision, make it 2006, and you're watching, you know, the replay of the Masters that day, and the one that matters most that the audience wants to see is that final shot, the final putt that clinches the victory, right? So, like, at the end, it's, I get that it's a split second thing, but, like, that's really the only shot. It's not the only shot that matters, but it's the most important shot.

And you kind of got to get that, right? I thought they would, I assume that there's, like, some, they run through practices and like, hey, we're going to get it like this. If it happens this way, we'll shoot, we'll hit that camera angle or whatever. So, yeah, it's hard to believe that they would have made that sort of mistake in that moment. That's exactly right, because you want to see the ball go in the cup, and then you want to see the elation on the golfer's face. And CBS had to switch because we were seeing Rory's back as he's going like this.

We're seeing his back. We can't actually see the human emotion here. 2006 Masters tournament was won by Phil Nicholson. You're still looking for it. Your second favorite Masters champion. I don't think he would be it. No, Phil ain't going to make that cut, buddy. I'm sorry.

Lee Elder's highest finish at Augusta, tie for 17th. Cici's highest finish was tied for 10th. Okay, hold up. The late Cici Rodriguez. Oh, man, that's right. Chi Chi die recently, man. That was one of the first golfers ever heard. Okay, let's see.

He was like the funny golfer when we were kids. Yeah. Yeah, he had a little style with him, too, buddy. I'm going to go with, oh, Jack Nicholas. Maybe Nick Faldo. Maybe Nick Faldo. I might give him. This is so great.

This is like Brian picks a hip-hop album. Yeah, Fred couples. It really is. Joel, Joel picks favorite golfers from... Yeah, man. I'm remembering the guy... You're going to Freddie Couples?

University of Houston. I mean, that's what I was going to say. That's what it was. It was the Houston connection. I was going to say, did he go to Houston, right? With Jim Nance. With Jim Nance. You know, man, what happened to VJ Singh?

That's a guy that I heard a lot about it. He's 63 years old, man. What happened to be? VJ Singh. I had to do a story on VJ Singh many years ago when I worked at the AP. I think he was golfing at one of the, you know, PJ tour stops near Houston. I think they had won at like the Woodlands or something. So I had to write about it.

Oh, yeah, in 2002, he wanted to show Houston Open at the TPC at the Woodlands. So shout out VJ Singh. Check out Press Box Plus for more of Joel's golf analysis and favorite masters champions of your. Joel, right now we got a special guest. I can't wait, man. We were trying to get this guy on here. Didn't we've been talking about him before? We have.

Yeah. There he is. All right, Joel, let's bring in our special guest. Scott McFarlane is now the chief Washington correspondent for the Midas Touch Network. Before that, he was at CBS News where he covered the Justice Department, among other things. His official bio says that he is a super fan of 90s R&B, something I know that Joel's going to have more questions about. Scott, keep your head on a swivel. And welcome to the press.

box. Long time listener, first time caller. Thanks Mike and the Mad Dog for having me on. All right, let's start in the beginning here because when I watched you on CBS for the first time, I thought, there's a guy with the bearing of a classic TV newsman. There's a guy with the voice of a TV newsman. Why did you first want to become a newsman? So I was in high school, the most awkward 14-year-old you could ever picture all the things going to. wrong with me. And I didn't really fit in anywhere. I was a mediocre player on the basketball team, a mediocre player on the baseball team. The grades were fine. But then they needed somebody to play on the quiz bowl team, like the academic bowl. It's like the kids play jeopardy against each other

on TV. And I said, sure, let me give it a try. And a freshman year, first match, somehow I'm actually playing. I'm on the stage. And I was killing it, Brian. I got like 14 right in a row. And I'm the dumbest kid up there. So I'm like, what's going on here? Why am I winning at this? And it occurred to me and occurred to my mom, God love her, that I think you were the only the one who wasn't scared of the cameras. And you were the only one who wasn't, you know, frightened and kind of doing the turtle

on their chair. So I'm like, maybe I should look into this. Maybe I'll be less awkward and I could fit in if I try to do something at the local radio station. And then once you start doing that, you develop this love. and this passion for communicating, for broadcasting, for talking about your community. And if it's a contagion, you can never kill. I love it.

Well, did you always have this voice? And did you know, like, until that moment, did you know that you weren't afraid of being on camera? Part of it is, you know, finding your voice is both literal and metaphorical. You know, post-puberty, I did okay. So we started off with good footing. Finding your voice metaphorically, that is a process in broadcasting, and it's really the reason why I left network news. And not a lot of people quit network news. Not a lot of people quit the job of network news correspondent, but I know I had to because that wasn't my voice anymore.

I just, I'm not keen on like sitting in one of those big airport hangar-style TV studios with all those lights and monitors and the teleprompter. it just felt so artificial after a while. And I'm a radio dude. Like I come up in radio, you just open the mic and talk to people. Now that there's like a vibrant, independent journalism out there, like that's for me.

That's where I need to be because I don't, I'm not a big fan of all this theater, even though that's where you play the Quiz Bowl match. We'll get to quitting in just a second. But when you were at Syracuse, you worked at W.A.E.R., which is the radio station that every single person who ever called a basketball or football game worked at once upon a time.

Did you ever think you might want to be a sportscaster? I did. I think everybody who walks through those doors thinks about it and you measure it. You're like, if I'm going to do this, this is all I'm going to do while I'm here on campus. This is an 80 hour a week vocation at this radio station calling the Syracuse basketball lacrosse in football games and it's your life. And I wanted a little more diverse life on campus. I met my wife on the first day of college, so I was kind of enamored with that, and I had other

interests. So I didn't go down that path. But WA, let me give me 20 seconds to talk about WAER. It's preposterous that this thing exists. It's been there for about 75 years. It is the starting pad for Dick Clark, Ted Cople, Bob Costas, Mike Tarico, Sean McDonough, and Dick Stockton. And that's just the first few. You can go down through every ESPN roster, every network NFL college basketball roster and find dozens and dozens of them, including the ones who should never be omitted. But I like to look at this way. I and Eagle and Noah Eagle, both those guys went through WAER. It's father and son now. It's everybody.

And it's, oh, by the way, it's some news people like me too. You're doing that. So what made you want to leave? Maybe you didn't want to leave radio. But how did you find yourself getting pride away from radio for TV then? I'm of the belief, Joel. The radio industry had a cataclysmic event in 1996. The radio industry got wildly deregulated when I was just about to graduate college.

And I got the warnings from those little, you know, I was working some part-time hustles in radio in Syracuse. I was DJing at night. I was doing news for the local AM station. And the bosses were warning me. You'd be careful about this guy. This may not go the right way. It may, but it may not.

The deregulation allowed for these mass mergers that have cannibalized so much of radio. I mean, the local radio stations we all grew up listening to, the ones that kind of spoke to your community, that read out the school closings, the ones that had commercials for the restaurant down the block. That's not what radio is anymore. Radio is this kind of vanilla commodity in so many places in so many ways that has been centralized, automated, and killed. There are some really good ones still out there, but there's a really good one still out there,

but they're a declining bunch. WTOP in Washington, elite, KNX, Los Angeles, WSB, Atlanta, really good. WTMJ in Wisconsin's crazy good, but they're a declining bunch. And there wasn't much of a future there to me when I graduated. So I'm like, hey, maybe TV's got some more jobs. And that's really how I ended up doing television. Did local TV wind up at CBS News in 2021? A couple of stories there we want to ask you about.

You were covering that rally in Butler, Pennsylvania two years ago. when Donald Trump was nearly assassinated. What do you remember about that day? It was a horror. I remember hearing kids scream. That's hard to erase from your minds. I remember watching the medics carry these men off the stage who got shot just for going to a political event. It was hard to see that.

I can imagine what was like if you were even closer up. And I remember in the days after texting people I'd met in the crowd, just trying to like I just had to process it. Political violence is a different kind of violence to witness. And it was awful. And they pulled me out of there after a few days. I stayed in Butler to cover it in the aftermath. But my bosses saw in my eyes something wasn't right.

That like he's, he needs to go home. He needs to go spend some time with his family, take as much time as you need. And they said, they sent me home. And I don't think I'm revealing a secret when I tell you how they did it. one after another, a boss would call me and say, Scott, probably time for you to go home. And I'm like, no, no, this is my story. I'm on this.

I'm dedicated to it. I'm living in a sheets parking lot here in Butler, Pennsylvania. Let's go. And then one boss called and said, Scott, I need you to go home because you're not quite yourself. We can see it. And that's a risk for our airwaves. You're a liability. You need to go home.

And a lot of us were sent home after Butler. Because it's something, a few others have. ever experienced. It's just different. I'm no victim, but he just was hard to process it and keep working. You were on a press riser there at the rally when the shooting happened. How'd you perceive that that act had happened? It's not something you're expecting at that moment, obviously. No. And I've lived a relatively soft life, Brian, I don't know what gunshot sound like. I thought somebody was throwing fireworks. And I'm looking around going, what idiot is throwing firecrackers at a presidential rally? Because certainly nobody got a gun in here.

So, I think somebody's being stupid, and I think a lot of people in the crowd who weren't familiar with gunfire are like, oh, there's some knucklehead here. I was given security. A lot of media are given security at Trump events. And my security guard did wartime. He's like, those are gunshots, get down. And I didn't believe him. And then kindly, the reporter next to me, a woman named Rachel Scott with ABC News, standing right next to me on the risers, pulled me down. You need to get down. We don't know what's, these are gunshots. So we hid the, neat the press risers, which was a luxury at the time because at least you feel like you're contained and you're somewhat safe.

But listen to the timing on this, Brian and Joel. The shooting took place roughly 6.08 p.m. Give me a little grace. I may be off a few minutes on that. We're on the air across America for the weekend news at 6 p.m. Eastern. So I had just introduced my piece about this rally about a minute before the shooting took place. I was still standing there back to the stage. Trump was on the stage.

So I'm not seeing anything at first. But we're on the air, dude. Like, we're literally on the air across America. And the president's just been shot. We got to get back on the air. Like, we need to tell people what happened. And all I can remember is the frustration because somebody either shut down or disabled the cell signals.

And we had trouble getting back on the air. We didn't have cell service, which is we're using partly for our communications. And there's no more maddening feeling that you're a reporter with access to America. The president's just been freaking shot. You can't get back on television because of technology. And, oh, by the way, you can't text your wife and kids tell them you're okay. And that's my clearest memory of it. But hearing those kids scream who were at the rally, the ones you saw standing there for six hours in the baking sun, excited for this unique moment in town, that's horrible.

It was horrible. Had anything else shaking you up? Because, I mean, you've been out in the field before. You've covered a lot of things. And anything else shaking you up quite like that before? It's one of a kind. It's a unicorn. And a lot of us went home.

I felt somewhat weak, but a lot of people were sent home because it's just different. You know, we're not victims, but we're witnesses to something that's hard. And you can't just, sometimes you can't just process that immediately. I cover January 6th for five years. I developed the thickest of skins, Joel, because you will get some unsolicited nasty grams by the 100 every time you open your mouth on TV or on social media about January 6th. There is so much pernicious, cancerous misinformation in America's bloodstream about January 6th that you can't report the balls and strikes of what's happening there without catching all kinds of hell.

You get accustomed to it. A lot of it's just political speech in the form of menacing. But you do, after a while, recognize people are agitated in a distinctive way in America because of our politics. And that's going to make being a media member. covering politics a lot harder. I'm glad you mentioned that because just yesterday, the Justice Department moved to toss the conspiracy convictions for a lot of the January 6th rioters.

And as someone who was right in the thick of it that day, why do you think that there's still so much like public dissent and debate about how that day is remembered now? Because you were right there. So like, what do you think accounts for the idea that people can't come to agree on what actually happened there that day? if I've grown disillusioned with some mainstream media, it's over this. It's because we have so consistently given platform to lies.

When the president speaks, he gets a national audience to say whatever he wants. Cables networks will carry it. Radio will carry it. Sometimes the broadcast networks will carry it too, but it's a big news conference. And he will sow seeds of doubt about truth, about reality. He'll lie about January 6th. he'll lie about the 2020 elections. And that type of platform, even without an intent, even without trying, will find its way

into the information ecosphere and contaminate it. And people think he's right. The 2020 election was ranked. The January 6th was staged. And that's why it's a debatable political point. And you have to ask yourself, are we not to believe what we all watched on television? We saw the cops get beaten. We saw people storming the Capitol.

They were all Trump flags among the flags or Confederate flags or don't tread on knee flags carried by Trump supporters to storm the Capitol. Are we going to pretend it didn't happen? Like, yeah, it was all staged. That's an incredulous, preposterous thing. Yet, it's driving our politics, which is why January 6th is not a piece of history. It is a current kinetic part of America's story. It is so contaminated our politics that Congress acts like they're acting now,

that people truly hate the other side. A lot of that's rooted in January 6th. That's why it's a current story, not a piece of history. In August, David Ellison was able to get approval to merge Skydance in Paramount Global, giving them control of CBS News. When that happened, what sort of expectations did you, have for what your work and what your colleagues work was going to look like going forward then? I think there's a lot of pessimism over major media mergers. It's a lot of scrutiny over them, too.

I'm going to go back to what I said about 1996. It feels like that again. When all this deregulation and consolidation cannibalized a good chunk of a vibrant radio industry, these types of mergers risk doing the same unless there are safeguards put in place or best practices instituted in these organizations. You start combining things. What happens? There are fewer editorial voices. Yeah, that means layoffs, and everybody's concerned about layoffs. I can tell you that was a systemic concern at CBS for many years. But when you start many newsrooms, you have a less diverse newsroom.

That's awful, unequivocally awful. Fewer people of color. Fewer older people. Fewer people who've been around a while and make a little more money. Fewer people who come from blue collar or white collar. You have, respectfully, more people who look like me at the table and fewer people who don't. That's not good for the editorial process. You need a diverse editorial process to properly cover America and cover news.

I don't have the same values and priorities as my kids or the 80-year-old woman who lives down the road. We need all those voices around the table. And a big old merge, Paramount and Time Warner, CBS, and CNN, I'll guarantee you it's going to be fewer people making editorial decisions. It's never good for America. Ellison brings in Barry Weiss to be editor-in-chief. What did you know about Barry Weiss before she became your boss? I knew she had started a media organization with the mindset of news can't be a commodity, Brian. Like we can't just treat news like we're selling soap and bread because there's too many other people selling soap and bread.

We can't tell you things you find on your phone at 629 and have a newscast at 630 that will continue to get viewers. Even my mother watches TV with the phone on her lap and she's about to turn 80. So we can't just do that. And Barry Weiss had started up this remarkable enterprise that had found all these subscribers, all this monetization and came with an idea that news is not a commodity. She had a town hall meeting in January, which was fed to us to watch in all the bureaus across the world. I watched it on my computer in D.C. And she said that.

We can't treat news like a commodity. We can't put on the newscast at 630 and do things that people can find on Google at 5. I believe wholeheartedly she's right about that. Whether you can execute that running a legacy media organization is a much different question. I hope she can. I hope they can because I'd love to see all my colleagues stay employed because they're really talented and they're good friends of mine. How did she remake CBS News during your time there? I never, ever once got an editorial note from her.

So I may have the best visibility on that. Typically what happens in network news is if you want to exert some leverage editorially from the top offices from the big suites, you don't get into the nitty gritty of telling people what to say and not say because that's not even possible. We're on TV, in quotes, 10 times a day. I'm on the radio 20 times a day. I'm writing things on social and on our website several times a day.

You can't follow everything I'm writing and saying, much less contain it. In network news, CBS or elsewhere, if there's leverage to be applied by bosses, it's to de-platform certain things, stories, or people. I mean, the CBS evening news is a 22-minute newscast, not 30. There's commercials, maybe 20 minutes, some nights. There are many dozens of correspondents across the world that have important stories to tell. Do you get access to those airwaves or not?

Are you among the people who make the cut for the newscast? Now, I think they're chasing their better angels and always have been to find the most dozy things to put on. And I was among the most platform people at CBS. I was on constantly. They were not deplatforming me. I would have been de-platforms to go home in a normal hour some nights. So I didn't see that, but I know that since Barry O'Weiss got there, there have been a few headlines that may have caused some publicity headaches they've got to overcome. Isn't the case of her holding that 60 Minutes piece in December about El Salvador and saying,

no, no, this needs more common. Isn't that the kind of getting into the nitty, gritty editing that you're talking about that's so rare in network news? One of the things about CBS is different. And I will answer this question, declaratively, I promise, is 60 Minutes is literally across the street. The CBS Broadcast Center, which is quite a site on 57th Street in New York in Manhattan, is where all the CBS News operates, all those TV shows you watch, that the radio newscast, you hear at the top of the hour, all the things you see at CBSNews.com, they're headquartered at this big old dairy barn from the 1930s that is now a television hub in New York.

You go across the street, even nicer building is where you find 60 minutes, big suites and big offices and some of the best people in television ever. So there's a delta between those two. I stepped foot in the 60 Minutes building once because the 60 Minutes produced. was about to take over the CBS Evening News and he wanted to meet with me. So I walked over to his office. He eventually migrated back to my hood, the broadcast center. I don't think people inside CBS News have the luxury or the visibility to track what's going on with 60 minutes because it's truly out of the building and out of mind. You have to ask 60 minutes permission to use their clips in a CBS News piece.

You have to go through like rights and clearances, Brian, to get their content to be part of your. evening news piece, it really feels like it's almost, it feels like it's a whole different company. It's not. But it didn't, I don't think it was really something that was being granularly analyzed by the rank and file who work at CBS News when that happened. Well, have you watched CBS News since you've left? And the larger question I have is that is how do you compare the CBS News that you started working with five years ago to the one that is on air today?

So there are so many symmetries. I mean, it's still on the same time of day. In some cases, same anchor people. Gail King's been there. Gail King, by the way, is just the way she comes across on TV. That's genuine. Sometimes on TV you wonder, she's genuine. She's really just a North Star for so many of us.

I don't see visible, tangible differences. I do see things getting platformed that weren't. You can make the argument yourselves, whether this is good or bad. But Pete Hegseth was given 20 minutes of airtime, as Brian wrote back in January, with Tony DeCopal doing a weekend newscast. I was the correspondent in the newscast,

setting up an interview with Pete Hegg-Seth. Maybe that didn't happen a few years ago. Maybe it did. I don't know. It looked different to me. And you have different types of perspectives on what we should be chasing. But at the end of the day,

a lot of times, you know, If the new boss says we should do this, this, and this, what ends up happening is what's practical. We can get some of that done, but not all the things you want because we still only got six hours until that thing goes on television. I also think, though, I think she's right about this. I think we can't even start, we can't even call it TV news anymore because it's like one of six things you do when you walk into the newsroom in the day. I spend 99% of my time doing stuff that is not on television. I am writing articles. I am doing social.

I'm doing radio. I'm doing talkbacks. I'm doing substacks. TV, when I get around to it, I'll put something on the evening news tonight. And I think she's ahead of the game recognizing that's our future. You said something earlier

that when you're at CBS, all of a sudden you think, wait a second, we don't need this giant studio to serve up news. We don't need the graphics. We don't need that familiar CBS theme song because people who want news today

or lots of people who want news aren't seeking those things out. When did that occur to you, that network, news was not serving news to consumers in the way that a lot of them wanted it. Two different ways. One over the long term, and then there was one episode. Let me tell you the long term first.

When I was covering January 6th, I was in the courthouse for about maybe a thousand of the 1,500 cases, most of them, as many as I could get to, I'd walk out of the courthouse, open my phone, tell people what happened, post it. some of those posts which were imperfect and not my best work would get a couple million views. Well, that's what the CBS Morning Show gets. So I don't know that people need all the theater. I mean, it doesn't hurt, but they don't need that. They need Scott without makeup with bad lighting, putting a phone to his face telling you what happened today.

It was the content that was driving it. I also liked it. I hope it was the personal nature in which I told the story. I spoke to the person in the phone. like it was the only person listening, not like I'm talking to some grand audience of millions. So you don't need all that. But the episode that really got me, or at least cemented my mindset, was January 24th. January 24th, I was given the luxury of filling in as the anchor of the evening news.

Somebody was off. Scott's around. Scott says, yes. Scott come up and anchor the news out of New York. So I take the train up in the morning, get there really early, like 9 a.m. because when you do the evening news, when you're the anchorman, you are part of this enormous conference call, like the world's biggest Zoom. There's people calling in from Tokyo, from London, the Bureau Chief in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, all the people in New York, all the people in Washington. And then there's you.

And we have conversations about all the stuff that's happening across America. And what do we want to do in our 22 minutes tonight? Well, that was the day. If you recall, if you had a photographic memory of dates, January 24th was the date that freaking And cement like snowstorm hit the northeast. Like that crazy Saturday storm that was ice in the Carolinas. It was cement in the Mid-Atlantic. It was crazy snow in the northeast.

We're talking about a storm that's going to impact tens of millions of people. So that's going to be our focus today because that's an awful lot of our audience. And then as the call is wrapping, two things happen. First of all, they turned to the anchor man, which I didn't like that title, but that day I was. Scott, what do you think we should do? I think we should do the weather. And then we'll figure the rest out as the day goes along. But then a few minutes after that, Alex Prattie was killed.

And the video was immediately available. As we were wrapping the editorial call, there was a killing by an ice agent of a citizen in Minneapolis. All right, we're going to change the plan here. We have this big storm is still churning, but we have something unfolding in Minneapolis. us we know is big. So we spent it a few hours figuring out, okay, we have a 22 minute newscast. What are we going to do? What are we not going to do? What part of this? Are we not going to go

show Charlotte? Are we not going to show Boston? Are we not going to show the preps being done in New Jersey? What are we cutting out of the weather coverage? And what are we leading with? And the quick decision was quickly made. And I was, and I endorsed it. We're going to leave with Alex Prattie getting killed because the storm's going to hit, but Alex Prattie is dead. And now, You too will appreciate this story more than more than most. It's 6 o'clock on the East Coast, and the newscast is about to begin. CBS Sports on January 24th was carrying a UNLV Utah basketball game. Utah was up by about 10 or 12, and in the last minute, the UNLV coach kept calling the damn timeouts and kept giving the fouls.

Dude, the game's over. It's 40 seconds. You're down 10. What are you doing? And we lost seven minutes out of our 22-minute newscast because of the coach of a college basketball team. We didn't know the meaning of the word quit. So now we've got to cut more. Now we're trimming part of our Alex Prattie coverage.

Now we're short of our coverage of the winter storm. Now we're doing a smaller newscast, which, oh, by the way, is a lot harder as the anchor. So this is going to be throwing me to the wolves here. But we'll do it. We'll do it. what are we doing? We did the best we could. We had the most talented people I've worked with in CBS News, churning and grinding, and we figured

it out. But is that how we communicate news in 2026 to some people? But maybe there's other options of getting news out there that may be better fit for me. Man, you want to blame Josh Passner, head coach of UNLV, did not know. A Houston native. I was going to name check them, but I was showing some grace. Oh, yeah, Claire. showing grace. You were showing the other thing.

Class of 96, one of the founders of the Houston Hoops' AAU team, his dad was. So yeah, he's to blame. Before we move on, Joel, Scott, you did not think about pulling a Dan Rather and walking off the set when sports ran long. I am old enough to get that U.S. Open Tennis reference. That was Miami. Yes, sir. The Pope was visiting, and the U.S. Open Tennis, you can't, you can't predict when a tennis match

is going to end. It's going to end when it ends, and it ran into the evening news broadcast. He paced out. And dead air, right? If I remember correctly for a while. So it happened ever since then. They have backup anchors when anchors are remote. So there were many occasions, Brian, where I was sitting at the desk, CBS News anchor desk,

because Nora O'Donnell was deployed to a hurricane. Or Nora O'Donnell was covering a major tragedy elsewhere in the country. They have a backup anchor now, not because they're going to walk away, but in case the signal dies. So you like the backup QB and you're loose on the sidelines ready to go just in case? You keep your helmet on, Brian. You are ready to play just in case you've read all the scripts. You know where you're going in case it never once happened. But I was the backup quarterback.

But sometimes, you know, Joel and Brian, that Nick Foll's moment is going to happen. You've got to be ready to beat Belichick. Another native Texan. That's right. Let's talk about the Midas Touch. Ben Misalis, a former trial lawyer out here in L.A., creates this media company with his brothers. It tweaks Trump.

it tweaks Republicans. It posts all the time and posts on YouTube substack, TikTok. Did you reach out to Mysalus or did he reach out to you? We were a marriage that was destined to happen because my audience,

the people who have been kind enough to be loyal to watch what I post, stick with me wherever I go. Kind of in a concentric circle with the Midas Touch audience. They had the same interests. They cared a lot about January 6th, so does Midas Touch.

They care a lot about the gutting of the Department of Justice. which is an under-told story, Brian, Midas Touch cared about the same thing. They care about the whitewashing of history by Trump. So we had all these, like this Venn diagram is one single circle. So we kind of knew of each other

because we kept bumping into each other content-wise. They were using a lot of my stuff as part of their work before I worked for them. And I was reading them to see, you know, what the audience cared about. So it was, I think we, we had a matchmaker who connected us knowing it would be an intuitive fit

And it has been because they want to build a news organization to complement their program. They want proprietary news that they own, that they have first dibs on to launch all the things they want to do. Recognize our journalists to be journalists. And the person I've used as a model, the person I watch do what he does is the best Capitol Hill correspondent I've ever seen. Chad Pergram, you've talked about him, I think, in the past. My man cannot be beat. He is always hustling. He always gets the best interview.

He always finds the person. He works for Fox News. They have opinion in prime time and some people adore. Some people despise, but he's a newsman. And these places that trade and opinions do want to have news. And they're investing in that now. And I was honored to be their investment. We asked to keep Jeffries about him.

We'd be remiss before Joel asks us, next question, if I did not ask, who is the media matchmaker that put you guys together? So there is a, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school, there's, they have contributors who have been in my social circle and my professional circle for a while. Two of them are relatively famous names in this world of independent journalism. Denver Wrigelman, former Virginia Congressman, one of my best buddies in the world. We bonded over our work investigating January 6th. He's been a contributor there. And Katie Fang, she and I did projects together when I was a contributor at MSNBC, now MS now.

She's in fact that. I think those conversations helped hold a bond. It became strong enough where we realized we kind of remit for each other. We have the same interests. We have the same topics we chase and we have, to a degree, the same audience. Now that we're in this new media world, Scott, you know, one that I think about, you know, I'm a mid-career journalist at this point and I kind of got tugged into having to give opinions and being a front-facing personality.

And I'm just wondering, you're going now to an outlet with a specific ideological bin. Do you worry about how that might affect their professional future? Or did that not matter at all? You were ready for this move in particular? If this was a novel thing, I'd be concerned, Joel.

But I'm looking across the landscape. I'm looking to the people standing next to me, Capitol yesterday. I'm standing next to an MS. Now reporter. She's really talented. I'm standing next to Chat and Bergram. He cannot be conquered. When their news online and on the air,

he just opposed next to people giving you political opinions. I think Americas are comfortable consuming news along with their opinion. I think, I mean, I think in its best days, that's what newspaper is, right? I mean, there's an editorial section. There's a news section. And the Midas touch wisely wants to grow its news section because you don't want to just aggregate. You want to have your own content that is proprietary to drive more people to your platforms, also to better launch all your opinion. I mean, how many times have you read an op-ed

in a newspaper that was based on the exclusive or enterprise reporting from that newspaper? I mean, it's a best practice. And I think you're going to see more of that. As legacy media creators, I think this is a pattern or a model that's going to grow. And I take that as a responsibility, you'd have to screw this up because I bet a lot of my old colleagues need to do something like this because this is where the audiences are. And these audiences want news and they don't want commoditized news. They want enterprise news. They are hungry for information.

They don't want crap. Last question. Then Joel's got a good lightning round here for you, Scott. You said this to deadline. You said, I'm concerned by joining an organization that does not have a point of view because you have to have a point of view to ensure that you're not platforming and perpetuating conspiracy theories and lies and whitewashing. So is this the essential difference between what you're doing at the Midas Touch

and what you were doing at CBS News? At Midas, you can say the words, this is whitewashing. This is sanewashing. I'm calling it for what it is. I was able to say that at CBS too. You were able to say like this is viral after a while because in the closing months of my time there,

when there was a lot of scrutiny about CBS and its editorial practices, I was saying that's a lot of, this is whitewashing and it would have a little virality. You're saying that on social media, not to interrupt, you're saying that social media or you're saying that on CBS evening? On TV, on television. We would, I would call out Trump for lies about 2020th, January 6th on television, on the CBS evening news till literally my last broadcast there. There was never pushback on that. When I say point of view, I mean, you have to recognize that there are things that are absolutely false and wrong.

and you need to not draw false equivalencies. You need to not both sides things. And I don't believe I was doing that at CBS News, nor do I believe my colleagues were. I'm pretty sure an awful lot of people who open their phones and have platforms and have social media feeds with a lot of followers are doing exactly that.

Both sides are, they're sanewashing stuff. If you are sane washing, if you are saying, that's all normal. The president dropping F bombs about blowing up civilizations and talking about the Pope, the pontiff, the way he has, if you are platforming that without scrutiny, without a point of view, you are sanewashing. There is no value to that.

And I think a news organization that doesn't call this stuff out and doesn't share a point of view, not a bias, not an opinion, but a point of view that some things are demonstrably false and you need to say it. I'd just say the one exception of that, and we talked about this on the press box, was that moment on the CBS evening news where there was a piece about Jan 6 on an anniversary

that lasted like 16 seconds and said on the one hand, on the other hand, and then moved on. So that did have a question about that. I got a question about that from Katie Kirk during an interview. And Katie had asked the question so well. And my own mother's like, why didn't you answer the question? Thanks, thanks, Mom. I appreciate the support. There was a 16 second voice over read on the CBS EV News about January 6th on January 6th,

on January 6th, 2026, the five-year mark. It was representative of what was happening at the Capitol. representative, what was happening in most media. It was a short shrift to January 6th. It was a summary. It was a, it was a blurb. And that was nothing. CBS was not the only one to do a blurb. I'll tell you who was doing a bigger blurb was the Congress. They didn't mark that day. They didn't have any ceremonies. Didn't have any floor speeches. Nothing official. The majority ignores January 6th. So I don't want to push back on CBS's 16-second video because they aren't the only ones. it was largely ignored and it's been ignored because legacy media institutionally has allowed

the whitewashing to happen. So now people are too scared collectively in America to talk openly about it. That's a problem. CBS did. It was representative of what others did that day. They should not be singled out. It was a problem. And to single them out is doing, is viewing it through the wrong prism. It's a metastasized problem. that is across all media on the right. And it's a problem in a lot of legacy media that doesn't spend the bandwidth they should covering that topic. All right.

All right, Scott, we got a lightning round here for you. Okay, you ready for it? Bring it. All right. Big Syracuse guy, as I've discovered, the only person to ever be inducted into the university's W-A-E-R Radio Hall of Fame and the WJPZ Hall of Fame.

So you're Syracuse through and through. What was your second college choice, though? So the second college choice was the University of Maryland. And the reason we didn't go with that was because I was a nervous 16-year-old and I'd been to Syracuse and I'd been to the dome to watch the basketball games because that was the heart of Biggie's time. And I just felt a little more comfortable on that campus because I knew it. I had a grounding. Most iconic Syracuse athlete. Everybody says Carmelo because he brought us, he brought us the championship.

He brought us the North Star, but Amadonna the McNabb guy. We were classmates. We took a class together, sat side by side, and he bought me a drink on my 21st birthday at 44s far on Marshall Street. So you can't beat that. Wait, did he know you or did he hear it was your birthday and send you a drink? How did that go down? He knew me from class. Probably didn't know me by name, but knew me as the guy sitting next to him and saw it was my birthday.

And 21st birthdays are, you know, a community-wide event. Wait, what was a drink? That's hard. I'm not a beer guy, but so it was probably a shot. Remember when we were young enough to do shots? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, I do.

I do. You've won 20 Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Awards. Which one of them means the most to you? Emmy Awards. Local Emmy Awards are fine. Do you know you have to pay to submit to apply for one? You have to pay them to honor you. God is holding an Emmy if you're just holding an Emmy.

That's right. Next to my storage closet. You have to pay 150 bucks to apply for an Emmy. And I always rub me the wrong way. Like, damn, like if you're going to be honored, you should be honored, right? I did win an Emmy Award for coverage of January 6th. And it's special to me because it was a cumulative thing. I didn't get lucky on a story.

Some of these Emmys are you just got a lucky break. You were for the right place at the right time and had the camera rolling. That was a work for an entire year's work. That meant a lot to me. Best quote you ever got working as a congressional correspondent. From a member of Congress or from a reporter? I mean, you know what? No, it has to be a member of Congress.

Yeah. The secret, I think, that was once revealed to me is, the only people Democrats hate more than Republicans are some of their other Democrats and vice versa. The only people Republicans hate more than those Democrats or some of their own Republicans. Those intramural battles are so much more vicious and sinister and cutting.

You expect back and forth with the other side. But it's that inside stabbing that really motivates a lot of what Congress does and doesn't do and the rivalries are nasty. Have you ever seen anybody like push up but like get close to fighting while you were there? Yeah. I'll give you the 22nd lightning round version of the story.

Oh, please. January, 2023. Okay. There was a 15 round fight, like a heavyweight boxing match over choosing the next house speaker. Tevin McCarthy took him 15 votes to win the speakership. And it got physical. Somebody went after Matt Gates on the floor.

And you know what? Sometimes it's not surprised. I love it. Best piece of advice you got covered Congress. Yeah, respectfulness. People will answer your question, no matter how tough it is, if you are respectful. I don't care how young the member of Congress is. I don't care how often they say, you know, call me John, call me Sue. It's Mr. So-and-so, it's Mrs. So-and-so, and you thank them for their time when you're done. If you do that, whatever you put inside that sandwich, whatever, how hard that, question is, is dissolved by the kindness and the grace on both sides. And I've told this to colleagues, I know there's a 25-year-old running around Congress. That is Mr. So-and-so to me. And that's humbling, but it's a best practice. I got to guess you about your R&B knowledge here. Who's your favorite R&B artists from that 90s time period? All right. That's asking me, like, ask him, pick a favorite child. So I can't give you three? Oh, yeah, give me your top three.

there you go. Tony Braxton's album 19292. It's the greatest piece of R&B ever created. Oh wow. The debut. The debut album.

There's her debut. How do you debut that well? Yeah. The whole album top to bottom. Breathe again to another sad love song

to seven whole days to love should have brought you home last night should be in a time capsule for 90s R&B. I don't know that she had a couple good songs after in 96 and 2000,

but that album is the greatest thing. Mary Jay Blige is the iconic artist because she did a whole generation and she evolved. Real love was a launching point. She hit a new level in 97 when she modernized as R&B did, and she's still cooking today. But top on the list, always top on the list for me, Keith Sweat.

Wow. That is not the name. That is not the name I expected to happen here. Okay. The reason why I bring it up and emphasize it, Joel, is I'm the guy who thinks Keith Sweat's 90s music was the best. He was the inventor of new Jack's wing to a degree. He had all those hits in the 80s.

I want her that that kind of launched him. But that stuff he did would make you sweat, keep it coming, twisted, and nobody. That to me is the sweet spot. It just lands with me. And he's still out there grinding. And I respect the hell out of it. Nobody, man. You know what?

Look, Brian, what's your favorite Tony Braxton song? Well, you know, I was going to say. another sad love song myself. But, you know, I defer to Scott on these matters. Very good song. That's right. That's what the Google AI overview tells me anyway. Let me tell you, Joel, next time you want to do we can do a whole hour on this, because that's my

favorite topic ever. Oh, man. I should spend it on my favorite topic. So we can do it any time you want. Okay, we got to revisit this. There's truth on Capitol Hill, and then there's 90s R&B power rankings. And, you know, we'll get cover number two next time. You can find Scott McFarlane on YouTube at Scott McFarland News on Twitter at McFarland News.

Scott, thanks so much for coming on the press box. It's the best part of my week. I really appreciate you guys having me. All right, Joel, before we go. Yeah. Do we have time for a little J-school? Yeah, man. I, you know, look, I don't want to get into this too much

because I know people will complain about me, you know, being sort of on my soapbox here. What? But if you not, are you not familiar with that? You wouldn't go right back at them on social. media. I would never, I would never respond to anybody in an untoward fashion on social media. And any, any assertion to the contrary is a lie. Were you a big Dave Chappelle fan, Brian? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Chappelle's show, absolutely. Okay. All right. Well, look, I was to, he's back in the news now because of his recent interview with NPRS, Michelle Martin, to discuss his $15 million investment in a new home for the local public radio station.

In his, I guess it's the hometown he lives in now, Yellow Springs, Ohio, okay? For your radio heads, the station is W-Y-S-O. And it's really a touching story. The kind of thing that reminded me of why I was once a huge fan of Dave Chappelle about 20 years ago during that Comedy Central heyday, you know, that is not just that he was funny, but he was just a really thoughtful guy and him talking about the need for public radio and why he wants it to thrive, despite the Trump administration's attacks on the network,

really moved me. Like, I was surprised to come into it that way. But it wasn't a perfect interview. And this is kind of the substance of what I would like to talk about here. He's made a few missteps. And that same interview, he said that he resented the Republican Party running on transgender jokes. And his quote here is, like,

I felt like what they were doing was a weaponized version of what I was doing. that's not what I was doing. Buddy, I'm sorry to tell you what they did was a logical extension of what you were doing. You identified a marginalized group that was easy to attack, and those folks did the exact same thing. It made me think about this, Brian. Have I ever told this story here before? Picture it April 2014. I'm in Las Vegas covering a story about a female boxing judge named C.J. Ross, right?

And it's the buildup to the rematch between Manny Pachial and Tim Bradley. Tim Bradley won in an upset in the first fight, but it was kind of like a questionable judge card by that boxing judge I was going to write about. So they were going to, you know, lace them up again. So anyway, there's a press conference and then there's like Bob Aram. Terrence Crawford was in there, but not Terrence Crawford like we know today, but like Terrence Crawford at the beginning of his career. all these other like boxing luminaries in this ballroom in a casino before the fight. Dave Chappelle comes in and I'm just like, yo, Dave Chappelle. Like, I mean, it's just, you know, 10 years after, you know, the Comedy Central thing.

I don't ask people for autographs. I don't ask for pictures. I had to do it with Dave Chappelle, man. So I took this picture in the casino ballroom. I waited until everybody was done and it was kind of a quiet moment, soddle up to him. He takes a picture with me. And then he starts talking with me. We started talking about Pachia and how he's from the Philippines.

And then just randomly, like remember, this is the first time I ever met him. This is not like some sort of a deep conversation. And he starts talking about transgender people. And he uses a slur that I'm not going to repeat here about them. And I've forgotten about that until all this shit kind of popped back up again. I was like, wait a minute. This has been on your mind for more than a decade, right? And in the way that you mainstream just casually, the bigotry against these folks,

like, you're an influential person, Dave Chappelle. People take cues from that. And so you know that when you know that the reason you make millions of dollars is because people hang on your every word and that you can move culture, you can move people to do things and move the way people feel about things. And so that's what happened here. And I'm a little disappointed that you don't see that. but I am glad that you seem to be taking,

that you realize the error of your ways. And it made me think, Brian, I'll close it out here. Man, so when I first started at the ringer, I really wanted to write a story about this trans woman, Blair Fleming. She was a volleyball player at San Jose State, and they did a big profile on her in the New York Times or whatever, not long after that.

But she generated a lot of controversy because some teams in the whack did not want to play them because she identified as a trans woman, all that sort of thing. So I'm sitting in the stands of their final home game of the year. It was against Colorado State just up there. And there's all these people there that are against her, you know, rooting against her. But then there's also this like really sweet collective of people that are there to support her. And I just wish Dave Chappelle and other people could have been there for that moment because I was so moved by it.

I was just like, this person is so courageous. Like, this person doesn't want anything out of life other than to play college sports. Like, they're not going to get rich out of this. They're not going to become a professional. This is whack volleyball on Saturday in San Jose, right? And I just wish Dave would have had the opportunity to see that person have to endure the taunting and the chance and the bigotry, even from their own teammates, right, about the kind of atmosphere that has been created around this stuff over the last

decade or so. But, you know, maybe the next time I see Dave, we can go do something like that. You know, this is an invitation. I would love to go watch a whack volleyball game with Dave. Or maybe even just to talk about his thoughts on trans folks and what he could do to make amends. But anyway, good on him for saving public radio because that's a, we need more of that. And I'm glad to see that he's moving in the right direction, at least, on this. Can I tell you how much I miss J-School? is a regular element on this podcast. You think so?

Man, you know, look, man. We're bringing it back from time to time. All right. I'm not going to do it all the time. We got to admit. Let's admit something. I was made to do this. I was made Connor.

Connor. Connor made me do this. Yes. Someone made you do this. You're not saying I was made to do J-School, but someone made me do J-School. Somebody made me do Dave. And I wanted to talk about Monterey.

That's what I wanted to talk about. Well, we'll talk about my vacation. next time. You're coming back next week. We got more. We got more press box. I'm Brian Curtis. He's Joel Anderson. Production magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. If you want to hear my thoughts, Joel's thoughts, Nora Princiotti's thoughts on the Diana Rusini story, boy, have we got a podcast for you? Because we recorded most of it before Rossini resigned from the athletic and then we recorded some more after she resigned from the athletic. That went up Tuesday. Please check that out in the press box archive.

David Shoemaker is at WrestleMania. Oh, neglected to say that on Tuesday. He's in Vegas having the time of his professional wrestling life. So he's off this week. But he'll be back next week. Maybe a little show Switcheroo put you on Tuesday and David on Thursday. Okay. Did I run that by you already?

I can't remember. Just let me know. I'll try to be there no matter what. David's here next week, Jolo. So you with more lukewarm takes about the media. Look forward to them. You know.