The Press Box - Use Your Collusion I | The Press Box (Ep. 553)

Episode Date: December 19, 2018

The power of headlines (03:00), Trump vs. 'Saturday Night Live' (20:00), and the truth about “access journalism” (31:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. We wanted to remind you to check out the ringer's YouTube page. We're publishing new original videos all the time, including a new This Is Us parody called This Is Bus, featuring some of your favorite ringer employees like Bill Simmons, Jason Concepcion and Chris Ryan. And on Friday, we published a video breaking down the staff's favorite moments of 2018 in sports and pop culture, ranging from a star is born to the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty. These videos and more can be found at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. David, the Trump White House announced is not going to have a Christmas party for the media this year. Yeah. What I want to know is if the party had happened, what kinds of scenes and goings-on do you hope would have taken place

at the White House Christmas party for the media? Jerome Corsi, like just scarfing down shrimp in the corner? Okay, that one's fine, yes. Yes. I was like, this is the don't get fired. This is the segment of the podcast. What? You're supposed to all the other ones?

Yeah. I'm waiting for the get fired segment of the podcast, but go ahead. Yeah, no, I mean, it would be really interesting to see, to see how many people were availing themselves of the open bar and how many were just crouching in corners with their notepads, taking note of the people who were availing themselves of the open bar. This might be the least fun White House Christmas party ever, only because everybody in the room is reporting out their book that they've already signed a deal for on the Trump White House. Yeah, it's like, there's Ryan, Liz and Olivia Nuzzi. I'd like with a big notepad open, you know, right in the opening seat. Taking turns, you go over there and talk to this person. I will mark down everything that happens during the conversation. In the other quarter, there's like a game change 2020 that's forming that we don't even know about, you know?

It's like that. If they had the White House Christmas Party for journalists and Trump and the entire White House staff promised to attend for the entire time and mingle and they live streamed it on the internet. Do you think we could pay off the national debt with the amount of money that we brought it? Definitely more than the Tiger and Phil pay-per-view. I think so, absolutely. Yeah, we would do better than that. We are the Pigs in a blanket of media podcasting. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

The Press Box is the media podcast where if you work for a national publication, you're not allowed to generate a top 10 list of the stories you wrote. We saw them. Thank you. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. Three topics today for you, David. First, we'll recount the recent flap of the New York Times over right-wing extremism. and the power of headlines.

Second, we'll talk about Trump's new war on Saturday Night Live. And finally, access journalism is defended and then attacked. We look at the unseemly practice of talking to your subjects. Plus, as always the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, let's start with right-wing extremism. Last week, the New York Times podcast, The Daily, the upper middle brow pod hosted by Michael Barbaro, published an episode called The Rise of Right Wing Extremism and How We Missed it.

and they were doing that sort of too cute headline thing where you try to make people more interested in a story by using the second person to rope them all in, sort of like in the vein of Esquire's women we love. Remember that one? This did not go over so well on Twitter with a bunch of people including Adam Surward, Jiml Smith, weighing in, Charlie Pierce over at Esquire writes.

So there were those of us who saw where this had been heading for 30-odd years and who were not surprised at all of the current president was its inevitable product. And we also take seriously his statement on Wednesday that if he is impeached, the people will revolt. He wants them to do so. His people anyway, we shouldn't be shocked at all by this. I saw this whole kerfuffle as a couple of, and it's our mandatory use of kerfuffle on this podcast, but as a couple of interlocking issues.

The first was the Times, the New York Times, already having one to merit in the right-wing extremism department, at least one, which was that piece last year by Richard Fawcett. about the Nazi sympathizer in Ohio. You remember that? That was deemed tonally wrong and sort of way too sympathetic. There was also a Media Matters piece I noticed by Christina Lopez-Gee, who says that in 2009 this big report on the radicalization of right-wing extremists that the Times did not cover it terribly well.

And in fact, more was more interested in covering the conservative anger about the report. So that's part of it, right? I think the second part of it is Michael Barbarrow has weird. become a, you know, lightning rod of media Twitter, which I guess goes back to that subway tweet from 2014. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

I think you're right. I mean, I think that it has a lot to do with the daily. And people's both, their fascination and their and their discomfort, it's not the right word, but sort of like a comfort with what the space the daily occupies. Is it just that it's good and slick? produced? Is that the problem or is it just kind of too timesy? What's the... Well, I think it's, I mean, some of it's podcasts in general, right? I mean, every, all of the, I mean, it's, how many times have you heard somebody in the media say like, you know,

in the middle of a conversation about how good a podcast was, just be like, oh, yeah, well, you know, I wrote that piece four years ago with the Atlantic. They didn't even give me any credit. You know, I mean, there's, just because like podcasting is a new, is a new ground. And like, by almost, I mean a new media, almost by definition, like, you know, heavily produced journalistic podcasts are going to cover some ground that's been covered before in a sort of like eyes wide open, mouth, agape sort of way, right? I mean, that's the, you're reaching a new audience and that's sort of the point. That said, you know, my longstanding critique of the, you know, the sort of pinnacles of the form, the prestige stuff like, I mean, I think, I think the bad lesson that

that like serial season one taught the world about podcasting is that what you really need is like three quarters of a reported piece and an artful shrug to wrap it up. You know, I mean, and that's... And even though this episode of the Daily was like a thoroughly reported piece and based on reportage,

it still clings to that artful shrug as like a means of expression, right? At the end, it's just sort of like, how could we have known? Or, and they had that montage of like, of right wing, of news reports of right wing, you know, atrocities. And it's just sort of like, this seems feels like maybe one of those things that we don't need to kind of pritify. We don't need to, we don't need to gussy it up in post-production. It just sort of speaks for itself.

So the artful shrug is in the headline or starts in the headline here. Yeah. Where it's just kind of a tick of podcasting and that's what's driving us all up the wall. yeah absolutely yeah no I think that's right and that sort of goes back to that sort of you know universal serial NPR voice that everybody but the two of us is apparently adopted on podcast we just don't have the skill for it otherwise we know I think that that's absolutely true and listen I think

the part of what people I mean you hear this every time the daily comes up it's this sort of like it's there's a great tension between this is the greatest podcast that's ever existed and well whatever the flip side of that tension is Here's the way that they're not a good journalistic enterprise. Here's a way that they're not a good performance, you know, a good entertainment form. You know, I mean, there's, they walk a fine line there. I mean, it speaks to the really good work that they do. Yeah, it's almost, it's not that different than the kind of reflexive hating of the times itself, right?

You know, that's a good. We recognize this is good. We recognize this is like kind of in a way. way, you know, in the pantheon, a pinnacle of the forum, however you want to say it, but we also just feel like, you know, we should not only subject this to higher standards, but we should just kind of hate on it as a matter, of course. Yeah. And, you know, it's not.

For sure. You don't get any points for praising an episode of the Daily on Twitter, right? No, you're right. If the exact same thing had been produced by Gimlet Media, there would be people falling over themselves to, I mean, the headline be damned to, or title be damned to, to praise. Yeah, it does feel, I mean, this was when I saw that Leon Nafak tweet from a couple weeks ago, which I think we meant to talk about and never did. Uh-huh. We compared podcasting in the, here in the teens to working in magazines in the 60s, film in the 70s and TV in the early odds.

Mm-hmm. And said it was just thrilling and that was in that, I think, was one of, had kind of a nice run in the Twitter dunking booth. you know, we're just against podcast giddiness. We're against the, we're against the shrug and the ticks, and we're also just now against giddiness of podcasting. Yeah. That it's just sort of, it just feels like that, that moment has become tiresome, right?

As we plan our own narrative podcast that we hope becomes the next slow burn or serial, we are also reflexively against talking about podcasting and, and using the phrase the next slow burn. for the next year, something like that. Yeah, I think that's probably true. The other thing kind of mixed in all this is a discussion. You and I've had a couple times, I feel, which is just the power of headlines in the Twitter era.

Yes. And so I listen to this podcast, not somebody who listened to the daily, daily or weekly even, but this actual podcast is not how we, this kind of racialized, gendered, we missed right-wing terrorism. it is very specifically about how U.S. law enforcement missed right-wing terrorism. And they subsequently changed the headline to reflect that.

Yeah, and it's based on that cover story that Janet Reitman wrote for the Times Magazine last month. Here's a clip just to give people a sense of this of Reitman talking about what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. And so after Oklahoma City, the FBI and the DOJ, they sent FBI agents into the field. to infiltrate various militia groups, they arrested people, and they kind of succeeded in driving the far right to some degree underground. And then 9-11 happens.

And then what happens after that is Robert Mueller, who was then FBI director, and other senior national security officials across the entire government, they direct all of their agents to focus their energies on this new mission, which is countering Islamic extremism abroad and in the United States.

And people aren't talking about Timothy McVeigh anymore. No. The entire national security apparatus is focused on preventing another September 11th. So, as you can hear from that clip, this is actually, this podcast is actually, this episode is actually legit and focused on exactly what you would want it to be focused on. but it's the headline that drives us all to distraction. And I find this just keeps happening. We kind of seen the version of this with like the Reuters when it's like Trump,

colon, Hillary is a crook, you know, and everybody gets really mad. And then if you just, if you click through, it's just like fine, you know, just like a normal wire report,

you know? Yes. But I guess I go back and forth on this because the criticism, including this time, is almost always right. And yet I sort of wonder, is like, does any, is that headline and that sort of pull quote on Twitter really driving in anything? Is it actually that important? You know, I don't mind and have no problem with the sort

of dog pile, but I'm also like, does it really, is anybody care that much? You know, does this, is this changing the way we process these things? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think it matters. I think it's, I think it's, you know, whenever, whenever this happens, you know, it's sort of a race to see whether, you know, kind of what takes over Twitter first, whether it's the, you know,

anger at the headline or, or, you know, it's a race between that and the, whatever magazine editor tweets out, hey guys, sometimes these decisions are made in the office and they,

you know, it's not the writer's fault. And if that gets pre-tweeted enough times before the anger takes hold, then maybe it does, it sort of soothes the savage beast or whatever. But, um,

I think it does matter. I mean, it's crazy to say that it doesn't, right? I mean, otherwise, what's the point of headlines? And it does shape the way that we, shape the way that we read. I mean, I, you know, you, I think we all know from working, I mean, you and I both know working on the, you know, this end of publishing that if you read, if you read a Google doc without a title on it, your perception of it is going to be totally different than if, then when you read something with a headline in a printed publication.

Yeah. I guess my question is when it's something like this, what it's like the headline is off. The headline is not wrong. It's just off and tonally kind of dumb. But then the actual product is fine and actually pretty interesting. Yeah. I think that what that does is it opens up the door for criticism from every direction, right, as opposed to it just kind of being, I think what you say is exactly right.

but then what you get as a response are the people who, regardless of the content of the podcast, see an opportunity to address, to take issue with the title or with the argument of the title. And that ends up drowning everything else out. All the good is sort of drowned out by, you know,

people who can claim that they were aware of this for the past 10 years or, you know, people who were not blind to the rise of right-wing extremism. Yeah. And, you know, and again, like this one is like, particular, this headline has particular resonance because, you know, if you were in groups that were, were and are terrorized by right-wing extremists, Nazi sympathizers, actual Nazis, et cetera, then it is sort of offensive.

It's just funny because I think, you know, people, there's this kind of reflexive thing for a lot of people. They say, oh, that, you know, media criticism is so shitty now on Twitter and everything is, people leap on you and all that stuff. Actually, I don't think that's true. I think it's just really hyper-exam. efficient now. And it is really good at quickly pointing out the soft spots of a piece or a headline.

And it's so efficient that it's like, you know, the drop of blood goes in the water and here come the school of piranhas. But it's rarely wrong, exactly. It's just like, you know, like, oh my gosh, you know. It's just like, whoa. And then you, like I said, you sort of listen to the thing. But it's so funny because I do feel like we've had as many. media fights about headlines and poll quotes and, you know, wire service, sort of deadpan,

wire service, Trump quotes, than we have as about actual stories in 2018. Yeah. Well, those things are easier to, I mean, they, they're more potent when you screen grab those and put them on Twitter. Yeah. You know, than a paragraph with a highlighted sentence or whatever. Also, by the way, as a press critic, you love a clean hit, you know? A clean hit is better than a complicated hit.

And so that's nice too. By the way, also the weird irony here is, remember a couple years ago when everybody was like in internet land headline, the art of headline writing is dead because it's all about SEO now. And you really want functional clear headlines rather than, you know, Frank Sinatra has a cold. And now it's like that may still be true artistically. But actually, it turns out to be wildly important. Oh, it's still very important. No, I think it's more important because, you know, I mean, it's not that it wasn't important before. We talked about fighting the Wimp Factor with George H. W.W. Bush the other day, but on the cover of Newsweek.

But like now, like, that can just get you just murdered on Twitter in this very, again, this very hyper-official way and people aren't wrong. So anyway, that's funny. All right, David Towns-Sy for the Overwork Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. I did not have a ton of stuff this week. Some stuff. Joaqu Nagle sent us the thing from the other day when Kevin Hart withdrew from the Oscars. And a bunch of people tweeted y'all won. And I just feel if I try to explain that joke, I will seem like the squarest person on planet Earth, even more than I already do.

So anyway, thank you, Joaquin noted. Ditto David Mulhern sending in the Donald Trump smocken gun tweet from the other day, which accidentally mirrored a bit that Trill Ballins does. Again, I just will, I've already, I already sound square. So we're good. just the noted, it checked off the list. I did want to reach back to this one from November.

Did you see Reggie Bush's anti-vaxxer tweet? It's a sentence I thought I'd never say. Reggie Bush's anti-vexer curious tweet. He says, I've been reading and watching videos on flu vaccinations

and other vaccinations for kids and the dangers of them and the side effects. What do you guys think about this stuff? Are you for it or against it? You do remember, of course, David,

Bush was a running back at USC, the dumb NCAA scandal that involved, that retroactively involved them losing a bunch of wins that they had actually won on the field. Anyway, it was an overworked Twitter joke to say, Reggie must have thought USC had to vaccinate the wins, not vacate them. That's thanks to Nicholas Dubon. I believe he nominated himself. But really, an overwork Twitter joke, Christmas miracle, David. Brooks Gate.

the trade Friday between the sons, Grizzlies, and what Joe House calls the Wizards, fell apart because of a dispute over which player named Brooks had been traded from the Grizzlies to the Sons. As their own, Paul O'Gettie put it,

the Sons, thought they were getting Dylan Brooks and the Grizzlies thought they were sending Marshawn Brooks. That was a huge moment. Twitter, Keith Holberman said maybe they met sports by Brooks. Zach Lowe over D.SPN or old pal said, if someone on the Wiz of the Grids has a Mel Brooks autographed photo

that could grease the wheels of this trade, It's also a good line. Somebody said the trade was canceled when the suns found out they were getting Doc Rivers instead of Austin Rivers. That was kind of the second level joke. And our boss, Bill said, mournfully tweeting the next day, I wasn't online for the whole Brooks jokes things. Please respect me in my family's privacy during these trying times.

Thanks to Taha Heisen, Isaac Chips, and Dan Murphy for sending that in. All right, David. Topic number two, the Sunday morning, Donald Trump was on his Twitter race car to the finish line. By the way, it's been an amazing week for Trump tweets. Still happening as we record this on Tuesday morning. But here he was on Sunday morning. A real scandal is one-sided coverage hour by hour of networks like NBC and Democrats spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and dim commercials should be tested in courts can't be legal only defame and belittle, exclamation point, collusion.

question mark Jeffrey St. Clair of counterpunch tweeted will he attack Murphy Brown next any opening thoughts on Donald Trump versus Saturday Night Live well on the one hand

I feel like the Murphy Brown thing the Murphy Brown joke while funny that undersells what Trump was doing there you know I mean it's one of these we go through these

you know Trump tirades all the time you know at some point, you kind of have to take him at his word if you want to have a discussion about it, right? So, I mean, he's talking about, you know. Collusion. Collusion. But on the other hand. So, I mean, yeah, the Murphy Brown thing, you know, this is way worse in saying, like, you know,

there's SNL is setting a bad example for our kids. Yeah. But, you know, on the other hand, I'm not sure that you could really. you know, land a neater jab to Trump's chin than to just compare him to Dan Quail. I mean, I'm sure that probably probably has a lot of relevance for, I mean, a lot of resonance for him. But who knows if he would have, you know, if he's, if he was aware that he even did anything questionable.

I mean, it's just so, it's just so wild. It's just so wild. I mean, that you would, you have to, you have to now give an entirely new reading to everything he's ever said or written about collusion because it's because this is like the you know the proof you were looking for that he doesn't understand what the word means well that's his best rhetorical gambit right it's just to sort of use

collusion which is being investigated between the Trump campaign and the Russians and use it in the context of Saturday Night Live and Chuck Schumer I mean I don't know who it's colluding with whom right but just to devalue the words so much and make

them into it's like you know I mean that's like such a Trump thing right it's like you know who colludes. What about that Saturday Night Live? Like, no, no, we're talking about undermining the American electoral system here. Not like, I didn't like this sketch. But yeah, then you use the C word and

that sort of becomes a thing. Also, also, just like, you know, the other Trump tactic, this is clearly a part of, is something bad is happening for me, which in this case is Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn today as we record this, etc., etc. And so I'm going to just

attack something. and try to bring somebody else into this arena to distract people as much as possible. Do you think, do you think Trump, here's my question for it. Here's actually, who cares about all that? Here's what I actually,

none of us watch Saturday Night Live anymore, right? Nobody on. Actually, why? No, no, no, no. I watched, I watched this week the day after, weirdly, because I heard, because someone said something nice about the, about some of Matt Damon's stuff.

But in my household, we have been watching, we've been watching this season's, reruns this week, weirdly. It just in an amazing bit of serendipity. Okay, but on time delay. Oh, yeah. Not not sitting down at 1130 on Saturday night.

Right. Yeah. So, I mean, that's, so that's the first question is, does Trump consume Saturday Night Live like everybody else, which is he waits to the next morning and sees what the funny sketches were? No, I think he watches it.

I think he is Trump. Trump doesn't seem like a DVR guy, right? He certainly doesn't seem like he uses Twitter in the sense of like, I'm looking for funny content from last night. right? No, I don't think he does DVR. He seems more like the kind of guy that would like, that would

you know, whereas like his employees or his, yeah, his assistants will like put on Fox and Friends on record the moment, you know, whenever he's watching TV and then he yells about it not being on the next day at the same time. Yeah, but that, but yeah,

he's not DVRing anything. You and I, I don't think, side with Donald Trump about anything. But if he had used this tweet to attack the Weezer sketch, would you have finally sided with Donald Trump on something? I might have.

have. I might have. I mean, if we're going to, if we're going to knock Trump for being old fashion, can we also just address, even though this is like so old hat, but can we, can we address the tweet style? I mean, he seems to be getting better at getting better at times, and I know that he doesn't always write his own tweets, but just the syntax of this, of this tweet, the anti-SNL tweet. Yeah. It is nothing less than unfair news coverage and dim commercials, period, should be tested in court. This, this, for some reason, it reminded me of when they were like, uh, of, of like the scene in the three amigos where they're trying to send a telegram and save

money. Like Trump doesn't understand that like you can just write as much as you want on Twitter now. But it's just like, should be tested in courts can't be legal. Stop. Only defame and belittle. Stop. Collusion. Like it's it's sort of wild. Like in an effort to

save letters, he has made the most befuddling attack in the history of Twitter. It's very, very strange. I also love the random ampersand always thrown in. You could just written and that's very like, defaming and belittling is a call, is it calls for, I mean, you can

you can call that collusion. It's just absolutely wacky. Random ampersand is like mom email too for us, I feel. Just like kind of, there's a normal sentence going and then all of a sudden there's an ampersand in the middle of it. That's always kind of funny. It's also, we should also point out that this is,

that like this is just an insanely silly. tweet. I mean, that of all of the thing. Yeah. I mean, but many people, you know, I mean, many outlets did, I mean, unsurprisingly, and I'm not trying to knock

anybody, but many people ran with no Donald Trump, you're not allowed to do this like, you know, articles in response. But it's like, this is the best thing to ever happen to Saturday Night Live because actually, it's like Donald Trump may be the only person who cares what's on Saturday Night Live, besides you and your lovely fiance this year.

Well, listen, the ringer office with Bill Simmons is our boss is a very pro-Sin-O place. He is. Bill still in. He is. But yeah, it's been a long time since I paid this much attention to it. That's for sure. Yeah. It's like that old AJ labeling thing where he said, you know, people would be mad at the American Communist Party.

And he said the way to get everybody to quit the Communist Party is to print their minutes and full in the newspaper because everybody would be so bored. I feel that's what this is. If it sounds mildly scandalous, just watch Night Live and you'll be cured of that right away. Nobody will watch it again. Totally great. I will say one more thing at the risk of at the risk of straw manning this argument. It's sort of funny.

Go for it. It's sort of ironic to me that Trump is blissfully unaware of entertainment's exemption from any sort of legal test. Yes. when that is that's the argument used over and over again to defend Fox News the only channel he likes watching where they say

whenever anybody goes after Hannity it's oh no no he's not news he's entertainment the news happens until 8 o'clock and then we go to the entertainment segment of the channel yeah that defense is just always at the ready for anybody that wants to defend that channel

against their wilder excesses. And that's just... You would think that Trump would have caught that headline. That line of argument, you know, on Breitbart at some point, but I guess not. Yeah, I mean, it was this like... I mean, Donald Trump has been the subject of parody sketches for his entire campaign and presidency. So that couldn't have been what triggered it.

It was on like weekend update? Was that he was, like, mistaking his news or thinking was like... No, no, no. no, it was the parodies. I mean, I think the biggest thing was, it was the, it's a wonderful life that posited he had never, that he had never become president. And I think that, I think that that there was just, it was, it was, it really was just a, you know, one hit after another. Like, every joke you could make at the expense of Trump in his administration and, and, you know, under the guise of, of Christmas and, and, and, and, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

implication being that the entire viewing public would be happy if Trump had never been president, coupled with all the things that are obviously going on behind the scenes that are driving him to tweet at this pace. I just don't think. I just think he took exception to put it kindly. Just by the way, think of that. And it's a wonderful life sketch. Oh, my God. It's like the bottom of the barrel of comedy.

It's a wonderful life. Yeah. I mean, dude, that's just, that's not fresh, you know, that's not, that's not cutting edge. That is like the, that is the comedy drawer of, you know, 1885 that just got emptied out. Again, I didn't watch. So it was funny. By the way, I was thinking of this, if Trump wanted the truly creative attack on SNL, if he wanted to attack it in the Dan Quail Murphy Brownway, what would he do? Like this, you know, driving cat, this cat who drives a car, setting a bad example for America's,

motorists, this lawyer who defends you in court, you really should get better representation than this unfrozen lawyer that was dug up in the Arctic Circle. Sorry, these are a little dated too. Yeah, it has been a while since you watched it. Yeah, go back to the Phil Hartman era. You know, I'm trying to think what else. What is a good one? You know, these, this samurai shouldn't be cutting things. It's very dangerous. Is that the same? Yeah, we're going with. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger. Yeah, there you go. You shouldn't eat that many cheeseburgers. I don't think that would be Donald Trump's particular attack. These two teutonic, you know, supermen are probably not a good way to, not a good way to work out.

You should have a safer kind of Pilates workout. All right. I think we're good all there. All right, David. Topic number three. Access journalism. Elena Plott wrote a piece in the Atlantic recently in which he quoted a number of great passages from Richard Ben Kramer's book, What It Takes to defend so-called access journalism.

Kramer, Richard Ben Kramer, had access. of course to people like George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart back in 1988 and wrote a great book about them. Therefore, plot argued maybe access journalism is not so bad after all. Then Libby Watson wrote a big reposte over at Splinter. I thought we should have a little chat about access journalism because this is something I think that has been kind of a continuous theme, especially over the Trump years. you know, in the Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Olivia Nuzzi,

reporting on Trump, reporting on the White House kind of thing. First, my first point here is, I'm not really sure how useful a term access journalism is. You know, when we get into this as a general term,

right? This just means interviewing your subject, essentially, like talking to people. Yeah. It's sort of like long form, you know, it's like,

and it just feels like there's, you know, on the one hand, access journalism could mean your, you know, most credulous, chiddiest celebrity profile. On the other hand, it could be Stephen Roderick writing about Johnny Depp, right? Yeah. So it's sort of like, it's weird to argue about a term that could mean almost anything, both defending it and then ripping it. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's the right way to look at it. I mean, I think, and it's, it's useful to look, to read journalism with a skeptical eye.

and to question and to always question, you know, what potential trade officer may have been, never assume that you know if you don't. But, you know, I think that at its worst, when people talk about access journalism, yeah, I mean, we see it, I feel like, more frequently in the sports world where, you know, you get a big profile with a major athlete and there's a clear, you know, there's a clear, there's the terms are set in advance, right? some sort of implicit trade-off. Mm-hmm.

And there's a difference between that and, you know, having a good text message relationship with a, with a, you know, well-seated in the White House, there's always going to be people that, I mean, everybody has sources, right? I mean just having a source doesn't make, doesn't mean that you're doing journalism the wrong way. Just having someone on your, on speed dial doesn't mean you're doing journalism the wrong way. But probably no. I don't think so. But if you're making concessions,

if you're making concessions that are, I mean, if every, if every interview is based on some, is based on some implicit concession, then yeah, it's a problem. Yeah.

I mean, it's like, I think when I read Watson's thing, like the, the kind of access journalism she's talking about is shitty access journalism, right? That's why starting with this defense of the term,

of this kind of nebulous term, you know, that the plot data, the Atlantic is just so weird to me because I don't know what that means and you're kind of defending everything. I mean, first of all, it's a little weird to write about this about what it takes, which is a fantastic book. And that Kramer was, you know, had all this time right. In fact, published four years after that election was over. You know, and in his, you know, those portraits, I think were probably mostly liked by the participants, but they were big, big thorny warts

and all portraits that showed those guys and how they, you know, made decisions. and how they came to be and all that kind of stuff and written in this kind of really interesting style and everything. So it's just weird to say like Richard Ben Kramer wrote a good book and interviewed the presidential candidates, therefore anybody, you know, therefore this may be a good thing after all.

Well, of course it is, right? It's like saying, you know, gait to least write a good profile, so maybe long-form journalism is good. I did think when you say having things on speed dial on the implicit compromises, I just think it's so interesting

because all those things happen, I'm sure a billion times a day in journalism. But I think that people often don't quite understand how they happen. And they often assume they're happening. They're just like they read a New York Times piece or a piece in the Washington Post or in Axios or Politico and they find it wanting. And they just start imputing bad motives or tradeoffs that happened. And they actually and they probably didn't. Sometimes a journalist just sucked on that particular day.

Sometimes the journalist just sucks overall. Sometimes the person just didn't write it right. Sometimes they didn't get stories. There's just all kinds of ways to do it. I thought there was this interesting recode interview between White House correspondents Haberman and Jonathan Swan from Axios, who I just mentioned. Swan and Axios, you remember, were pilloried in the Axis journalism zone correctly

a while back when he asked Donald Trump whether he was thinking of canceling birthright citizenship and kind of imply that Donald Trump could just sort of do that. Here's, but here's some interesting things. Here's Swan talking about, even when you have quote-unquote access to the Trump White House, just how tricky it is to cover it. So the first thing I do, just as a general principle, is if I'm told something by a senior administration official, I assume it's false until proven otherwise.

And I've just had to take that approach. I'm now hedging in a way that is almost comical. So, like, I recently broke the story that Trump had settled on Pat Cipollone for his White House counsel. And when I wrote that story, I think I published it on a Saturday afternoon, I knew that Pat Cipollone, the fact I had was that Pat Cipollone had started filling out his paperwork. So I didn't write, my lead sentence wasn't, you know, I could pull it up now, but it wasn't Donald Trump has decided. It was, I literally wrote, Pat Cipollone has begun filling out his paperwork.

work, but, you know, for this, because I knew that that was a fact. The sentence Donald Trump has decided, I made a big mistake early on. It was, my story was correct. I wrote, I broke the story that he was pulling out of the Paris climate deal, but I made the big mistake of saying Donald Trump has decided because, yes, you know, he told people he decided, but then after I published my story, he spoke to a White House official and he said, what do you think I should do? I thought that was so interesting, because here's Swan often denounce.

as an access journalist, you know, White House, you know, friendly journalist, however you want to say it, talking about the fact that he can't believe anything that anybody in the White House tells him. And he is, you know, sort of terrified to write a sentence because the president either doesn't know

what he thinks or he's trying to, would then, as I see later in this podcast, go back and undermine the journalist by purposefully changing his mind, right? Mm-hmm. So, you know, that White House is so, strange and treacherous to report on, even though it leaks like a sieve often.

I just thought that was fascinating. Here's another thing that I think often gets sort of misunderstood in these things. Swan talks about a lot of people thinking sort of how, you must be spoon fed. This was, you were spoon fed the scoop. This story was planted, right? You often hear that on Twitter. Here he is talking about how journalists get information out of the White House. The funny thing about this whole access idea,

it's a serious conversation and there are always tensions when you're doing up-closed reporting. But the irony is sucking up, like being sycophantic actually doesn't get you anywhere. People need to be slightly afraid of you. They need to know that you have information. And that's the way you leverage people. It's not by saying, oh, you know, how wonderful are you, et cetera, et cetera. Because if that was the case, we would see bigger sycophants breaking a lot more news. And his sort of point there is like

if the access journalists were the ones that were so good at sucking up and they were the ones who were getting everything, why wouldn't all the Fox News people just break all the news from the Trump White House? Why is it people like Caberman and him and stuff that are essentially finding things out

playing off the rivalries, figuring out the fissures in the White House and sort of figuring out how to ferret out information that way? I mean, I think that the kind of skeptical answer is that they know what questions to ask, or they're more interested in pursuing stories that have a resonance. Yeah, more skillful.

Yeah, more skillful. And I mean, listen, I mean, it's not like, it's not like, like, you know, even birthright citizenship. I mean, maybe that has a little more resonance with the Fox News audience, but there's some, some of those stories that are, that, you know, the Fox just wouldn't be covering if they weren't being raised by other media outlets. So, I mean, I think that that, I mean, that's, that's partly the answer. And also I think that, you know, it's, Trump likes, I mean, as anyone, like any, every president in history just has personal, I mean, you know, has, there are personalities that he prefers regardless of the outlet. And those are the people that he sort of, whether it's by their, because of their outlet and their stature or just because he likes them as people, he sees value in, and, you know, and responding to those people, they're talking.

of those people or, you know, maybe it's just as simple as having, you know, the right connection with someone standing next to Trump that you can get that sort of access. But yeah, I mean, I think that it's worth, it's worth, you know, just pausing on Axios for a minute because they do do a different sort of access journalism and it doesn't mean that they don't do a good job. But I think that, I think that would really complicates people's opinion and feelings about Axis is that their their target audience, just like Politico, you know, is a very, I mean, despite what, you know, any amount of success they have out there. But it's, I mean, they're targeted at this very kind of like DC intelligentsia audience. And, you know, I mean, politics as a game, you know,

and I think that there's, I think that for Trump who's, who's, you know, in particular, but for, for, for, for, I'm sure every president going forward, there's a certain safety in that, right? You can go and sit down for an interview and you might get surprised with a question about a policy proposal because you know like happened with Trump you know because someone heard something that you didn't know had gotten out or whatever but I don't think but you know they

you don't get the impression that they have the you know they're going to they're going to pin you down on some like deep moral question or anything they're interested in the horse race of it and and there's a yeah and the scoreboard right you know yeah exactly right

this is a scoop yeah birthright citizenship. Yeah, he's thinking about this. This is a school. And we saw that by the way it was by the way they pitched it. I mean, by the way they released it after the interview happened. You know, I mean, it's a, um, yeah. I mean, I think that that's a different kind of conversation than, than the conversations about, you know, the, the best versions of access journal, you know, what it takes or whatever. I mean, it's just, I mean, you mentioned before also on what it takes about the length of time that he had to write the book. I mean, again, you see, you see. You. said it. People, you know, most, a lot of people commenting on Twitter don't know how the best

journalism works. Um, but if you have that kind of time to write it and also if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're a respectable writer at a good outlet or with a good, you know, a good publisher, um, and you're going to, and you're going to write the piece and you're going to write this thing and you're going to write it well, then it becomes, uh, an interest of the subject to, to, to, to participate and to, and to have their, have, you know, and to contribute to the, to the, to the narrative, right? And we saw with, wasn't even with Michael Wolfe that Donald Trump kind of called him in the midnight hour, was like, can I please be in the book? You know, and people understand that getting their voice in there is important.

That's not necessarily access journalism, although what it takes, it didn't involve a lot of access. But, you know, if you're going to report out a story to that degree, then even if someone says, no, the first four times you call, when they realize what you have on the fifth call, then they're probably going to, then they're more likely to give you some time. Oh, absolutely. Oh, no, that's totally right. By the way, let's never, let's promise never to use the term access journalism after this segment. I know I wanted to do the segment, but I already hate it.

I'm just so mad. Can we just change the name of the podcast to access journalism? Yeah. How about access colon journalism? Ooh. Does that work? I just, I thought Longford was going to be my least favorite podcast. I mean, my least favorite podcast. Whoops.

My least favorite term of all time. But I think we have a new winner. I did, I do find this funny, which is I think whenever I see one of these things flare up, I sort of think, I just, what I think is that doesn't get said is there is this wonderful symbiotic relationship, right, between the, and this is the last time I'm ever using it, Access Journalist and the kick-ass uncompromising blocker. Because the latter needs the facts often that the former unearths, right? Even if they unearth them in a kind of clumsy, you know, not as well written and presented as you'd like kind of

way. And I thought Swan interestingly talked about that a little bit in the Recode interview. And here's a clip of that. I think a lot of the criticism is phony. And some of the people who've criticized me, some of the publications who've tried to suggest that, you know, my work is devoid of public value, they're quite insistent on aggregating my reporting when it's negative. You know, I reported recently that Trump wants to cut off funding to Puerto Rico. And, you know, I reported recently that Trump wants to cut off funding to Puerto Rico. two of the publications that wrote, you know, that I'm this worthless hack, you know, aggregated it. So that's fine. Like, I don't really like, you know, I read all the criticism.

Like I take it. Yeah, I do. I read it all. And I think, like, you have to. And by the way, it's good. It keeps you humble. And it's good to get your head kicked in every now and again. It's good to get your teeth kicked in.

And, and, yeah, like, I screw up all the time. I try not to. I love that, though. But he is right about this narrow thing, which is I have seen many a journalist like him denounced as completely worthless. And then they break a scoop that makes Trump look bad. And then it just goes right into the aggregation. You know, like, oh, well, he must have stumbled into this one. It's like, no, I probably realized that was his good, a scoop too.

You know, like he probably, you know, he is, he probably, you know, since that was news and understood. why Trump threatened to cut off funding to Puerto Rico's news, just like the birthright citizenship thing the other way. It's funny, but I thought that was a decent point. By the way, I looked up, Marien Dowd reviewed what it takes when it came out. Oh, no. Yeah, no, it's in the Washington monthly of all places. And it was a fascinating review because at the time she had been up to, I believe that point, she had been the White House correspondent for the, for the Times covering George W. Bush's White House, George H. W. Bush's White House. And she writes this review

kind of like you know kind of lightly complaining admits there's some good stuff in a bit kind of like lightly complaining about all the psychoanalizing that's in that book and it's and it really is this it is kind of a version of the

of the journalistic argument we say she is the boots on the ground reporter she knows HW she knows the facts and here's this kind of big footing guy coming in and writing at this new journalism kind of level and then of course the irony is that

Marri and Dad would then shortly after that become a columnist at the New York Times and psychoanalyze with the best of them often in high style. So I just do love that. I think it's like it sort of depends of where you are at your station, you know,

you stick up for whatever practice you're doing and then the other guy is the complete schmuck. So anyway, I thought that was funny. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you can defend access journalism all you want. You can defend anything. I don't say it again.

You said it again. Oh, sorry. Well, the point is you can defend anything that you want as long as you just define it the way you want to define it. And we've all learned a lot from our president in this era. Just change the definitions of things. Just keep using collusion in the wrong way. Journalistic collusion, David. All right. That's the press box for this week. Thanks to Jim Cunningham, our producer, Chris Almeida, with research. He is David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. We are, we're back next week on Christmas Day, December 25th. And we're off the 1st of January. So we'll see you then. And then back again in the New Year with more hot takes on the media.

you. See you, David. See you later, Brian. David? Yeah. It's good to get your head kicked in every now and again. It's good to get your teeth kicked in. Right? Yeah.

Is it actually that important? Yeah. I thought we should have a little chat about this lawyer who defends you in court. You really should get better representation than this unfrozen lawyer that was dug up in the Arctic Circle. I think you're right. And there's a difference between that and, you know, having a good text message. relationship with a complete schmuck.

For sure. Does anybody care that much? For sure. This is the greatest podcast that's ever existed. And how could we have known? Question mark? Yeah.