Tomorrow - Episode 91: Lewis Wallace Isn't Being Objective

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

Josh and Lewis Wallace, an independent journalist and former writer for Marketplace, sit down and get brutally honest about journalistic objectivity. Is there a view from nowhere? Of course not. "Nowhere" isn't a place, silly. So what does this mean for storytelling? What does this mean for reporting? What does this mean for society? These two have some of the answers but, naturally, they are their own opinions and visions of the future. Take in Episode 91 will the full knowledge that it, and everything else you listen to, will not contain objective truth. But it, unlike most things, will be chock full of sharp ideas and meaningful revelations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, welcome to tomorrow. I'm your host, Josh Witspolski. Today on the podcast, we discuss cable news, global warming, and Black Lives Matter. But first, a word from our sponsors. USAAA is passionate about what they do, ensuring the financial security of the military community and their families. As an employer, USAAA creates conditions for employees to succeed. USAAA is hiring for customer service reps, designers, developers, insurance, banking, and more.

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HostGator even offers mobile friendly templates so your audience can easily browse your site on the go. It's everything you need, all in one place, all backed by 24-7 experts support. And right now listeners to this show can get 60% off. Just visit hostgator.com slash tomorrow and take a bite out of the internet. My guest today is a brilliant independent journalist, formerly of Marketplace. I'm of course talking about Lewis Wallace. Lewis, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Very excited. We're working on, I should say this, I'll preface this discloser. We're

working on some projects together that I'm very excited about. And part of what I wanted to do because I think people who listen to this podcast, probably not maybe not all of them know you. So before we get into current events of which there are many to talk about, can you give me like a, can you give like the listeners and give me

like a short history lesson on your background, what you've been doing like in journalism, because we had a really interesting conversation of maybe like a month ago. And you ran me through and I kind of didn't realize all the stuff that you've been doing and where you've been doing it, particularly around the election.

So give me a little history lesson, tell me how you got started in journalism and where that led. Yeah, sure. So I had been a community organizer in a variety of ways for a long time. And I was living in Chicago a few years ago and working with an organization that

works on juvenile incarceration, producing audio and video about youth encounters with police. And it was kind of out of that that I actually ended up in the world of journalism. I got a fellowship at WBEZ in Chicago, which is the big public radio station there. That's specifically for people who do community work to kind of diversify the station

and connect the station to underrepresented and marginalized community. And I was working a lot with LGBTQ communities as well as youth who had been targeted by police violence. And as soon as I stepped into WBEZ, I realized that radio journalism was what I wanted to do and it became my passion, something that I loved. And so I became pretty much a straight news reporter.

Let me ask you a question. So what was it about radio journalism? Like, was it, I mean, because I know a lot of people who write, right? And they're like, I just sit and I write, and then I have this thing, and I put it up, whatever. It's very specific. Like John Ligamarsino, our audio director, is obsessed with this concept of telling stories

in this way. What was it for you about that that made it so interesting? Audio is so personal, and the process of producing it is so interactive and collaborative, and it's just a really exciting environment to go into. I had no idea before I started doing it, that there was a line of work where you could just walk around with a microphone and kind of stick it in people's faces and ask them really personal questions and record all of that. I just loved it. It was so much fun, particularly

the aspect of it. For me, that's about kind of being out in the field and reporting on, you know, untold stories and underrepresented communities, which is something that WBZ values a lot. The next station that I went to after WBZ also had a similar kind of value of being really community driven as a public radio station. And that was WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which is right outside of Dayton. Yeah, that's like deep in Ohio, right? Yeah, deep in Southwest Ohio, so kind of north of Cincinnati. It's interesting.

There seems to be, I was just talking to a journalist recently, who's now a full-time writer, but they started in act, like activism and community organizing. And there's an interesting through line. And I wonder if this is a more modern, and maybe you have some insight here, I don't know, but like a more modern thing that is happening, where you see this line, I mean, I get it, journalism is obviously like, at its best, has these like really kind of wonderful, beautiful pursuit,

the pursuit of like truth and sharing information with an audience. But there's an interesting sort of crossover that seems to be happening between the worlds of like truth and sharing information with an audience. But there's an interesting sort of crossover that seems to be happening between the world of activism and journalism. And I'm wondering, is that something you've seen a lot of in your career? I mean, obviously that's where you came from. Is that common? Did you see people cross over in that way a lot?

Yeah, well, I think on the activist side that a lot of activists and organizers have become more and more aware of kind of the power of storytelling and media and are using that. I mean the most sort of powerful and prominent example of that is Black Lives Matter which in some ways is a storytelling organization right. It's an organization that produces media and draws attention to untold stories or stories that hadn't been making it into the mainstream news and tell Black Lives Matter push for that. And so it's not a coincidence at all for me that I was working on narratives about police violence

before I became a journalist. Certainly I see a lot of connection there. I also wonder on the journalism side, something I've been thinking about is how many women journalists I know who are feminists and who sort of come to journalism from a place that's kind of grounded in women's empowerment, women's equality, whether or not that's talked about in the organizations that they work in, I think that's, you know, often true. And in general, you know, people who have been systemically and historically marginalized

and oppressed have had to kind of push in different ways to get a seat at the table within journalism and they're sort of an activism to even being there, you know, an activism to that. Right. Not only a seat at the table in journalism, but it's funny like thinking, just hearing you talk about it and thinking about it, it's like, you know, there are stories that will remain untold and last somebody tells them and who would tell them, like, okay, getting a seat at the table is one thing,

but then getting other people to essentially have a seat at the table in like that canon of storytelling. I mean, you just see how the blind spots are so massive. And, you know, and like, I feel like the media actually gets a lot of criticism, maybe rightfully so, where it tends to focus on, and I'll say, I guess we, because we we're a part of it and hopefully we're not doing those same things, but focusing on the same story over and over again. I mean, I think actually like we're very much like the outline one of the things we've strived to do is like let's not focus on the thing that everybody else or let's try to find the other part of that. But you know, you think about, it's not just about where the story is told, it's really about who does tell the story and what their visibility into

what their visibility into another world or another narrative is. Yeah, and one example of that that I think about all the time, I mean, there are many, but disability is such a sort of huge range of issues and identities and potential stories about which there's so little coverage in kind of the mainstream media. And there are all these intersections that we've seen a little bit of reporting on when it comes to disability and police violence and how many of the black people who have been killed by police have been actually people who also have a disability and how that factors in. There was like a big story recently, right, where it was about someone with autism, right,

the police shot or, you know, I don't know, it was like one of those things where it's like the levels are kind of crazy, like to that point. It's like not just like, oh, wow, there's racism or oh, there's this sort of systemic like training problem with the police, but then it's like not just like, oh wow, there's racism or oh, there's this sort of systemic like training problem with the police, but then it's like, there are a hundred other things that have nothing to do essentially with either of those things and our problems under themselves

like that we're trying to solve and figure out. Yeah, and I think she was like better often being talked about for years and years in communities, you know, that are marginalized or that don't have as much representation in the media before they get picked up by mainstream media transgender issues are like another excellent example of that where you know they're still not very many trans journalist working at the national level. And just really just over the last few years that some of those stories have started to be portrayed in more complex ways, or that there's been somewhat more representative coverage. There's also kind of the Caitlin Jenner

celebrity coverage side of it. Which is, I mean, I'd be curious to maybe we'll talk about this a little bit, like if that's helpful or not, in those narratives. But I will say this about the progress of, like, let's say, coverage of trans issues, like, in my view, as like a white guy in journalism, like, I feel like we have, it's surprising how much more we are talking about it now. Like, you know, the leap has been to me so much more rap

but I feel like growing up, like growing up in like the 80s like and through the 90s, you look at like just in terms of like stories about, you know, the gay community at all being part of the mainstream conversation. We're like, nonexistent forever. And it really felt like that was like, okay, now this is, we're like non-existent forever. And it really felt like that was like, okay, now this is something we're talking about. Now it's okay to talk about it. But to me, it's like, I do feel like the track for, oh, like getting, and maybe this is the internet,

maybe it's because there are other ways into media that aren't just purely through like the gatekeepers that have always existed. But there has been kind of a pretty huge accelerant port on those stories, right? Like that, yeah, and a lot of people are talking. Yeah, and I do think the internet has to do with it. I mean, I came out of transgender in the late 90s and at that time there was just, there was like no representation of people like me, like a non-binary or genderqueer person,

or you know, there might be a little story here and there about a person who'd had a sex change or something related to the politics of that and sort of the controversial idea that someone would have a sex change, but in terms of all the diversity within trans communities as well as all the violence, the way that I learned about that was through Zients,

was through like paper, you know, about that was through Zeeance, was through paper, you know, magazines that people sent back and forth. And so those stories were being told. You're saying in the 90s? Well, I mean, Zeeance in the 90s, that makes sense. Yeah. It's actually kind of, that's interesting. Like, I'd love to, I don't know if anybody's done a history of that, but that seems

really interesting to me as a separate thing. Yeah. I have no awareness of that piece of like, zine culture. Just interesting. Right, and I feel like trans people, and I remember this, like, we're probably some of the most dedicated customers of like live journal

and like the early sort of blogging platforms and things like that, because it was the only place where you could find other people like you. And so, people are so involved with that. Well, it's so interesting to, I mean, I, you know, not that my experience is anything like, you know, could be compared to just somebody going through like that experience.

But being a weird nerd like in the 90s, growing and like finding on the internet the only places where those, those are the places where I actually just was having conversation about this to the day with somebody. And it was like, you know I kind of you see this weird thing that happened like I was this like very socially awkward Like didn't feel like I had a place in life like spent a lot of time on the internet finding communities on the internet

Where I felt like I people supported me and I felt like I could talk to people and I think like for a lot of people That was true certainly in the 90s, clearly not just for regular lonely nerds, but all sorts of different people. And I think what's interesting is to see how those communities have developed into some of them who have developed into kind of incredible forces for good in the world.

And then others have developed into these really corrupt, really dark, really evil. You think about the four chans of the world. And then others have developed into these like really corrupt, really dark, really evil. Like, you know, you think about like the four chans of the world or whatever. And it's like, that kind of was born out of the same culture where people were able to like find themselves and find their like, you know, families, if not real families, they're sort of new families. Anyhow, this is a I'm on a tangent there, but that's really interesting to think about, to think about also how that, how Zine culture is part of that,

because in the 90s, I feel like I'm very, oh, I feel I sound very old right now, when I was a kid, but I was into Indy Rock, and then I was into Rave music, and all of that stuff was I had a very physical component to it where it was flyers and zines

and like trading CDs and stuff like that. So it's interesting. But of course, I wasn't aware of like, that, you know, a trans, the, the zine community for trans people, like in the 90s that didn't, was non-existent to me. But now would be like impossible

to not be aware of it, like if you're on the internet, essentially, which is a good thing, I think. Yeah, yeah. And certainly trans activists have made and just trans people out in the world have made really good use of the internet. It took a really long time, from my view, for mainstream media organizations

to start telling those stories. And they're still usually told by non-trans people. So that's, you know, it's definitely been an opopad of it. Yeah. And, sorry, we got off track. I'm sorry, we completely segue it, but I, so wait, I want to go back because you were like in Ohio, where were you working in Ohio? Oh, yeah, W.Y.

So in Yellow Springs. Sorry, I wanted to go through a little bit of the history. So you're in Ohio, you're doing radio, and how long did you do that for? I was there for almost three years through the sort of first part of the presidential primaries. So one of the last things that I did before I moved to New York for a job was cover to Donald Trump rally, one of the kind of notorious ones in Vendelia, Ohio, the morning after his rally in Chicago had been shut down by protests.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was, which, which, it seems like a footnote now. Like, there are so many insane protests. It's like, oh, yeah. And, but that was the first, I remember that rally was the, the one that was shut down, was the first, I felt like really clear indicator publicly that something was fucking wrong. Like there is something weird about

like what was going on with Trump, that it wasn't just like, oh wow, people are riled up about like the reality TV start. Can you talk about the, we talked a little bit about you and I, not on this podcast about that rally. Can you talk about the one that you attended in Ohio?

Yeah. So a lot of it, I think, would fit with what people have heard about these rallies. I mean, thousands of people, more people than I'd ever seen in a Dayton suburb lined up really, really early in the morning and had come from all over. It was almost entirely white. And the mood was kind of positive and excited going in. And then the speech, particularly coming off of what had happened in Chicago the night before, which I think Trump felt a little bit vaguely humiliated about.

The speech was very dark. And he said, you see, the humiliated Trump is a bad Trump. Sort of aggressive. And there were protesters who were interrupting every like five to ten minutes someone would interrupt and then they would get dragged out and as the speech went on the crowd got more and more kind of riled up and angry and Trump was really encouraging that and then that was the that was the speech when somebody rushed the stage. And everybody saw on TV, he sort of like ducked and put his hands over his head. And it was a college kid.

It was like a theater student who wanted to grab the mic and say, like, end white supremacy and didn't make it to the mic. But it was charged with a felony afterwards. So anyway, it was a lot of drama. I heard some very disturbing things just in the speech. One of them that I may have told you about before was that story that he told about general George perching, dipping the bullets in pig's blood

and then shooting quote unquote Muslim terrorists with the bullet. Yeah, no, I remember. I don't think that was the first time he talked about that. But I remember the hearing about it. And I was like, what the fuck is this guy don't think that was the first time he talked about that, but I remember the hearing about it. I was like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? It was really distressing.

It was the second time he told the story before in Charleston, but the thing that I noticed about that day, there were a lot of things, but something that I really noticed was that that story, which would have just been kind of an outrage like six months before that in the national media, wasn't even the news of the day. It didn't even make it into the national news reports about that day. Like it was far from being the most dramatic thing that happened in the 24 hour news cycle. Even though it was like outrageous story. Yeah, I mean the gist of the story is like, it's like extra offensive to kill someone who's Muslim by killing them with a bullet that's dipped in pig's blood

because, I mean, the idea of it is so reprehensible. The idea of a person running for president in the United States saying it is crazy, but what's really shocking is the idea that like, we, it's like not even a big deal anymore. Right, and the implication of the story was that America used to be tougher on this kind of thing. Yeah. Well, law and order. This is, you know, he's the law and order president. So, so okay. So you're, you're covering, I mean, you're in the middle of Ohio, you're

covering crazy Trump rallies and then you went to work at marketplace. Yeah. Am I jumping ahead? Yeah. No, that's what happened in the Bureau in New York. So I'd been a contributor for a few years from the fly-over states and then moved to the New York City Bureau to do daily news there. And I was there for about eight months doing also feature stories quite a bit about wealth and poverty and housing and racial inequality that growing racial wealth gap. So I went to Detroit, I went to Florida and Georgia to report some of those stories.

And I did not end up being there for long because I got fired and that. Yeah. So this is something I want to talk about. And is it kind of critical? It's actually how I became aware of the stuff that you had been doing in what you were, obviously gonna do next, but I wanna take a quick break and then we're right back and we're gonna talk about it. You can't build tomorrow's innovation on yesterday's technology.

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And you decided to write a piece or you felt compelled to write something you wrote sort of a personal essay or just some personal thoughts on medium. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so this was actually right after the inauguration. And I had been- Oh, okay, oh, there was that much of a gap from, okay, so this was actually right after the inauguration. Oh, okay. Oh, there was that there was so much big gap from, okay, so my timeline's all it's all a blur, a dark blur to me.

After the election, I went almost directly from New York to Ohio to kind of cover the environment there post election and met with a lot of people, people of color in that community who were very afraid about the kind of immediate spike in racist violence that had happened directly after the election and this sense of fear around the possible increase in deportations. And there was just a lot of fear on one side. And then there was also a lot of celebration and a lot of not surprise in Ohio as compared

to in New York where there were a lot of people sitting in newsrooms going like, oh my god, I can't believe this. But in Ohio a lot more people kind of saw it coming. So was there really- But the people in the newsrooms in Ohio sought coming? Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, interesting. Because it really is a mixed community there in Southwest Ohio

and reflective of pretty much all of the dynamics that then sort of exploded into the national news when people realized, oh, this is real, including the dynamics around white supremacy. Anyway, a few months past, I did a bunch of post-mortem stories as we all were doing in Marketplace's newsroom, and I went and covered the inauguration, not for Marketplace, but making my own recordings at the inauguration events. And so I had been there and seen the kind of, you know, trickle-y crowd on the day of

the inauguration and then seen the outrageously huge crowd on the day of the women's march. And then, you know, came in on Monday and watched the Kellyanne Conway moment from TV that weekend where she had talked about alternative facts and that Trump's claim that there had been more people at the inauguration than Obama's inauguration was just an alternative fact. And so I was kind of having a personal moment of crisis and questioning what the point is of what we do in newsrooms. Because I believe in reporting the facts,

I love that process. And there's a sense that we're like fighting against something almost bigger than that when you have people at such a high level of power who can just completely dismiss facts. And so I was thinking about the implications of that and wrote a blog post for my personal medium blog that was called Objectivity is Dead, and I'm okay with it. And it didn't really make just one argument, but a few of the issues that I brought up or this idea that objectivity,

journalistic objectivity and journalistic neutrality have never really been real. They've always been kind of contested spaces. And that none of us can be neutral on our own kind of humanity in a sense. And so whether for me as a transgender person, for people who might be targeted in different ways, by not just Trump's policies, but the policies

of any government. That it's hard to be neutral in a debate about your own humanity. And then I would also argue in a lot of ways that there's a lot of non-neutrality that comes from a place of privilege as well. So the stories, as we talked about already on this podcast, that aren't being told because of who's not in the newsroom, right?

And sort of a bias towards stories about people who are also white and upper middle class and educated, that plays out all the time. And so my argument was, you know,, it's okay that there's no neutrality and what we need to do as news organizations in this moment is kind of figure out what we do stand for and be even more aggressive about telling the stories of people who are oppressed, be even more aggressive about diversity in newsrooms, be even more aggressive

about the defense of free speech at an institutional level. So not the form of free speech where people talk about anyone can say anything anywhere, but at an institutional level when you have journalists who are being arrested. You know, that's a real sort of institutional violation of free speech rights. Which happened at the inauguration. Right, and had happened to a public radio journalist at a Black Lives Matter protest just a couple months before,

and hard-leave and talked about or covered. And so my sense is that it was and is time in some ways for journalism organizations who care about the truth to take the gloves off and kind of say, this is what we stand for and are about. So I published that on my personal blog with a kind of caveat that said, you know, these are just my views and it's stuff that I'm thinking about. And what do you guys think?

Thinking that I would promote some sort of conversation among fellow journalists about how to cope with this moment, this time period that in some ways felt really overwhelming. A couple hours after I published it on my blog, I got a phone call from some sort of higher-up managers at Marketplace, the executive producer and the managing editor that I was going to be suspended from being on air and needed to take the blog post down. So initially I did that after sleeping on it for a second night, I ended up deciding to put the post back up and kind of laid out why for my employers at the time and said, you know, that I think trust in the news media

is as we know, kind of born out by statistics extremely, extremely low. And people don't believe us when we say that we're not biased or that we're completely neutral. And in some ways, I feel like that ship has already sailed. And so I've suggested that you may be rather than sort than punish me for openly saying something that a lot of people are saying privately or behind closed doors in newsrooms already. Or at least, or at least thinking. Or at least thinking. What if somebody from Marketplace rebutted me and we had that conversation publicly?

So I, me and a colleague go back and forth and sort of say, well, here are the problems raised by that. Right. You know, if we abandon objectivity, how do we report stories fairly about XYZ? And I think these are really important and interesting questions that most journalists are thinking about. So that was what I suggested, just sort of this, not a new idea in the world, but what might have been a new idea for a marketplace of kind of taking up more transparency about how we do the work that we do.

Which interests me and I think would interest our audiences. In any case, I send a letter to my bosses suggesting that idea and also kind of laying out out my perspective on this perceived line between politics and, or sorry, between activism and journalism and how in some ways for me, because of my identity, that's a very false line because I'm kind of always on the front lines of the trans struggle, no matter what I'm doing, because I'm like visible as a trans person in every situation. Right. And so it's just sort of silly. I can't really not have in some ways

an activist orientation toward whether or not I can use a bathroom, et cetera, et cetera. Right, like your existence is you have to battle like that on a certain front, like it, whether you want to, whether you want to be in that on a certain front like it in Whether you want to it whether you want to be in that conversation or not like you're in the conversation It's politicized my identity is politicized whether I and that was in a position that I chose right? And so that's sort of something that I'm always in and a lot of people I know are always in. And I articulated all of that in a letter and got a call to meet the CEO of the organization or the VP of the organization a couple days later and was fired from my job.

Yeah. See, I think, I mean, to me, I think this is like the great one of the great. First of all, I think you're 100% right. I think this view from nowhere, this gray area, like I think there can be places where you can maintain objectivity where you can say like, it's fine to say like, I can look at this in a neutral way, but also it's possible to say,

I can look at it in a neutral way, and but I personally feel this way about something, you know? Like it is possible for human beings to use their intellect a little bit more of a sophisticated manner than like, I vote Democrat and I'm pro choice. Therefore I can't possibly report on a pro life story with any level of fairness. Like that's not actually the way that people operate. But there is something that's really misleading. And a little bit like, to me, I feel like almost more detrimental to the process of journalism

about this idea that we're all in this gray zone between this side and that side and that we don't have opinions. And that when you report on it, that it's not infused by your experience or your opinion or a million other factors. Like I would actually prefer that I knew from a journalist where they leaned when they wrote something or when they talked about something. Like it's actually useful to me to be able to go like,

oh, like I agree with your point, even though I know you're coming from a totally different, like it's actually there will be places where it's better, but I think that the idea that we would want to maintain this false position, which I don't think has ever truly existed in journalism historically, I think that the idea that it exists is a very modern construct that you have this like middle of the road position. I mean, the most famous newspapers in the world

were certainly never middle of the road about their positions. And so, yeah, I feel like it's crazy. And I think it's crazy for them to have, it's crazy to keep propagating the myth. I think it does a road, an audience's trust because they go, well, I didn't think this person is bullshitting me. They can't possibly be down the middle when I feel that there's something else driving this narrative. You see in the New York Times, the New York Times is so desperate to present themselves as a centrist publication. And the New York Times historically is not a centrist publication, and they've had their moments of war, mongering, or their moments of like leaning into the right, but they tip more often than not. They're from their in New York publication,

and they have, there's a certain set of New York, the New York values that we hear all about. So I think it's interesting that their reaction was to fire you, what did they say? What was the reasoning there? Was it just like, if you don't think you can be objective when you report like we don't think you can work here, was that as simple as that?

More or less, I mean, the marketplace ethics policy has put a restriction on reporters expressing their political views in public and there was also some back and forth about the role of neutrality and objectivity. In the policy it talks about impartiality, which to me is like a slightly different concept and wasn't one that I had addressed in the post, but the policy talks about impartiality. And so I was told, you know, marketplace believes in

impartiality and in objectivity and neutrality. And so essentially you can't be out there representing us, but with a different view. Marketplace believes in robots. We are just getting totally neutrally program robots to do the report. But I just think that, yeah, I think that's such a wrong, it's such a bad place to go right now. I mean, that pursuit of objectivity

is create so many false equivalencies in reporting that are so damaging. You know, I think that not to go, not to try to litigate, relitigate like the Hillary situation, but I think you look at how the New York Times sort of blasted the FBI, you know, shocking revelations or whatever. And I feel like in a pursuit of showing that they were, that they could be tough on both candidates.

But it's like, you've got a candidate who's definitely fit to be president, who's got problems. And then you've got a person who is in no way fit to be president who has problems. And it's like, you can't treat those people are not the equivalent thing, right? They're not the same. And so, it's like we end up in all of these traps

that create, you know, not fake news because that's a whole other thing. But create bad journalism. Yeah, and I found, you know, even particularly since my firing in a lot of ways that just, I think, so much of that is about perception, is about this idea that some types of news organizations, not all, have that it's important to be perceived as neutral. It's about the optics.

Yeah, it's about the optics, yeah, which is sort of just for me personally kind of a hard framework to swallow because I'm interested in the truth and I'm interested in kind of dissecting and talking about power. And when the optics don't serve that, you know, too bad so sad. And it's like things that are real and provable.

And I know there's always another argument, but there's also like consensus and there's also who your sources are. And it's like you can always find a person to deny climate change or to say, well, you know, this winner was really cold. So what's this global warming all about? But like the reality is like if you've got, by the way, I'm sort of referencing Brett Stevens,

who's this new, we talked about a little bit before we started, this new columnist that's been hired by the New York Times. From the Wall Street Journal, he's a climate change denyer. He's like, says the air of mine is diseased because it's genetically anti-Semitic or something. Just a load of bad ideas, right? And the idea is they's like, it's like genetically anti-Semitic or something, just like really, just a load of bad ideas, right? And the idea is like, we wanna create more diversity on our op-ed pages, right?

And when there's this idea of diversity is like, we want a person who says the opposite of what good journalists say. Essentially, that's what they're asking. They're not asking for a guy who's like, oh wow, he's got really rigorous arguments. His arguments are not rigorous, they're asking. They're not asking for a guy who's like, oh, wow, he's got really rigorous arguments. His arguments are not rigorous. They're badly formed.

They're heavily, I mean, of course it's op-ed, so it's opinion that's fine, but they aren't, but you don't reach better understanding by accepting bullshit. You know, I mean, like you just don't. The problem for a Trump supporter is like, I understand the hardships of, sorry, I don't mean to just be rambling here, but I, I do tend to do that. Um, but like, I understand the financial hardships of like middle America of, of the rust belt, where there is like a whole range of things happening that have like fucked up people's lives.

But also, I think it's really important to say like Trump is a liar. Trump is racist. Trump is xenophobic. Trump has bad ideas. Trump has no plan. Trump has a terrible support system around him. Like all of the things that are true that people have said about Trump, and it's not partisan. It's not biased to say it is just a fact.

And like we now see the fact playing out in the highest office in the country. And it's like, this is not a surprise to me. It's probably not a surprise to you. But to the people who read Breitbart and watch Fox, they must be very shocked that Trump seems to be doing a bad job, or they don't think he's doing a bad job because they live in a bubble. Anyhow, the point is, it's very frustrating. So the your idea that like, of course, you couldn't just be

in the gray, makes sense. But how do you convince a world? I mean, you're writing a book on this, right? Yeah, I'm writing about the history of objectivity and its development as a framework in journalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Who started it? Why that is. It was kind of a moment

like an era. Is it a British thing? No, the- I was watching the British you guys that can't be too careful with them. At least the form of objectivity that we know in US journalism is very much a US kind of construct. And it had a lot to do with the same moment when news started to be distributed over newswires, as well as penny papers and so suddenly, technologically, there was this capability to distribute short news stories way more widely than they had been able to be distributed before. And so before that, every newspaper was a partisan paper before the late 1800s. And then people realized, oh, we could sell potentially twice as many papers if we made a paper

that wasn't affiliated with the political party. So because literally the people who own newspapers were like these politicians, or not politicians, like rich guys who just wanted to blast out their message essentially. A lot of these, the herds or whatever. Yeah, and it was sort of propaganda, part news. But in any case, it was how people got information.

So then there was this kind of business model that came into play that was like, oh, we could distribute this more widely. We could distribute it to anyone across political party. So we need to stay out of the partisan fray. And a lot of the so-called nonpartisanship of American newspapers started in that moment. And that was right around the same time

as the professionalization of journalism. So journalism schools started opening up right around 1900 and then sort of teaching these as ideas or ideals, nonpartisanship, neutrality, et cetera. And of course, this was almost completely exclusive to white men who were going to these schools and who were then getting these qualifications for this new profession. But you know, it's funny. It's like, I support, I do, and it's kind of core.

I'm like, it's a wonderful idea. It's like a kind of a lofty, like, lovely concept to be able to say, I mean, if you could do it the right way, which would not be saying like, everybody needs a fair shake, like, because that isn't the, like, I think we've replaced the concept of objectivity, which is like, you know, don't come into this with the story already decided, figure out what the story, which is like, what good journalism is,, figure out what the real story is and then report the facts of the story. The idea that you come in with a tainted view, I think, is only part of the issue, right? But if it could be done, if you could say, well, I'm coming into the story and I have no

predisposition and no, my view isn't limited because I was raised this way or that way or I came from this place or that place. Like it becomes a sure that's perfect in the perfect world version of it. But like to the thing we were talking about earlier about who tells the story, you immediately enter, I mean, with you, you immediately enter the story with a different world view.

And that has to be, it cannot be abstracted from the reporting process. It doesn't mean like you're making up facts, but it's like if you see something that somebody else doesn't see it, it doesn't mean it's not real. It just means they can't see it. And I think that's a huge deal. I think in a lot of our journals, I mean, that idea about the same people doing it. Like white men, like mean, that idea about the same people doing it, like white men, like traditionally, historically doing.

It's like, it was very easy, probably, to agree on the concept of objectivity when you're like, we all went to the same schools and we all had the same upbringing. We basically all know the same thing, so this shouldn't be very difficult. It seems obvious that there would be this sort of scientific process to telling a story that would result in the most fair version of the story told. Right. You know, there's no this sort of scientific process to telling a story that would result in the most fair version of the story told. Then there's no better sort of, I think, allegory, but also reality for that than the way that stories about police murders

of black people have been told. Right, that for decades, it seemed obvious to the mainstream media that it was fine to essentially say, so-and-so so was shot and killed. Police narrative is such and such. That's the answer story. That's the whole story. And the only reason that that changed

was because of people agitating from the outside. And now those stories are being told in different ways. But it's still so prevalent. I mean, that's that method of speaking, of writing. It's still so prevalent. I mean, that's that method of speaking, of writing. It's still so prevalent. There was the story about the guy who came to New York and stabbed. He stabbed like, he was like looking for someone, a person of color, a black guy to kill, killed a black man in New York.

And the story I saw I had learned from the LA Times. And it was like, it was like former Army sergeant, you sergeant arrested on charges of whatever. And it's like, that doesn't matter. Like, we're not talking about the guy and how illustrious past was. I mean, it's crazy the way that the grooves are so worn in in journalism in the way that people talk. And by the way, I'm not like, I think some of that stuff is good. Some of it works.

Some of the grooves work, right? Like, it's not like we throw out all of journalism because some of it's not working. But there is that idea that's like, how you don't even see like, you, the people who make this stuff can't even fathom the other way of doing it because they're just,

it doesn't exist to them. It's like total, and it's not even tunnel vision. It's just like a lack of visibility. You're getting back to that point again, but it's like, okay, they didn't write that headline at the LA Times because they wanted to be malicious. They wrote it because they're awareness of how

they might have written it differently doesn't exist. And like, you know, that's partially education, but it's also partially just changing who writes the headline. And I think that, yeah, it's a, I mean, to me, like this is something we think about here. We talk about all the time. It's like just telling that, that different story and telling it from a different perspective.

But it is very hard. Like even to, you know, and my, I didn't go to J school. I'm not like a, I didn't like when I was 12, I was like, I'm going to be a journalist, you know, I wasn't like that. I kind of fell into this. But even in my limited run of doing it, it's like every day is a crash course in figuring out what you're doing wrong. And I feel like I have to learn that because everything I do is new and nobody is gonna

give me anything, but like the New York Times doesn't have to learn it and the post doesn't have to learn it and like all of these huge institutions, and still the CNNs of the world are leading the conversation on these things. CNN, they are one of the worst offenders in my opinion of, they actually are like, we aren't objective, they're like, we're sent, we have a center, we're going to go platform to everybody, and there's like, and we'll let the non-objective party speak. But even in that partisan sort of like argument, it's filled with this idea,

with this false objectivity that is like, really, really destructive, you know? Right, and that's a frame and in and of itself a value, although I would argue that the values underlying a lot of cable TV news are sort of just about profitability. Right. That is true. They basically are like, oh, people love people.

People will watch this and so we're going to put it on. Right. But when it comes to the, though, I think large swaths of US journalism that are trying to do, you know, trying to tell real stories and trying to get facts across for a reason, there is always some sort of value system underlying that. And I think we're in a moment that really calls for looking honestly at what that value system is,

rather than kind of avoiding it because it's uncomfortable or because it might be bad for optics to sort of say. You know, here's what, why would you tell a story about torture? It's because torture's wrong, right? Well, we don't know. I don't know. What's Trump say? Yeah, and so, you know, and those standards can change in a society.

Right. I don't have if anybody thinks, they're fucking changing already. I mean, we are, we, we Trump has been president for the last 100 days and they're changing. I mean, it's like, I used to think torture was wrong and then Trump told me not to. So no, I love it.

Yeah, no, I mean, it is, but it is true that like we, we, you see how rapidly I even feel in myself. I'm like, I disagree with everything that Trump says, but then I am every once in a while now. I'm like, I disagree with everything that Trump says, but then I am every once in a while now. I'm like, and actually this argument about like, are we being objective? Are we being objective? Are you two partisan? Is it like, you know, I actually find myself going like, wait, do I just think this because I'm siding with like the left or the Democrats or this like school of thought, you know? And I know like the ideas are wrong and bad, but you see how like this chipping away happens of like logic, right? Just like

you hear the message so much and you see it so much and you hear so many other people talk about you start to go like, well wait, am I missing something here? Like is there some, I'm not questioning my own beliefs, but you do see how people build a narrative that is very convincing. And even if you have been well educated, and even if you know where you stand and you know where you've always stood, there is still that, you know, if anybody can crack a little bit of your reasoning around it, a little bit of like what you believe in. It's like, that gives, there's a window there. And I think like when you think about the rest of the country,

I spend every day reading the news, right? That all I do is like look at the news and try to like learn things. Most people aren't doing that. Most people have, that's not their job. They have other things to do. So if you only get like a half an hour of their attention every day or an hour of their attention,

and what you're saying is like, vile hate speech, it does actually matter. It does have an impact. I mean, going back to that rally, it's like, those weren't normal rallies in America. There was like, no, there have been plenty of rallies like that in American history, but that wasn't normal in our political process. Mitt Romney didn't have rallies like that. George W. Bush didn't even have rallies like that.

I think Sarah Palin kind of did have rallies like that. And Sarah Palin has a lot in common with Trump. Okay, so I know you have to go, sorry, I'm rambling now, and you've got to run, but really quickly, before you do go, who's doing it right? Like, what do you look at? What do you see? Who do you read? Like, who's like saying things?

I mean, it could be a publication, a journalist, even a single story. Like, what have you seen that's like, wait, there's hope for journalism and there's hope for journalism and there's good things. And this is not a fish for an outline compliment at all, just to be clear. I'm just curious, I feel like there's a couple of things

I look at now and I'm like, in mother Jones, I think it's done some really good, really like aggressive reporting on this. And isn't playing, there's no like, we're gonna be objective and tell the whole story, because there isn't a whole story. What do you see that's good? Like what do you feel hopeful about?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things to feel hopeful about right now in this moment. And I'm actually maybe kind of ironically, not one of those people who has a really kind of dark view of the future of the media and what's gonna happen. Like I actually think the internet and podcasts and the whole digital revolution has opened up so many things in a way that I'm excited and happy about.

So I mean, I read and listen to such a wide variety of types of publications. Some of my favorites range from, like I read a lot of Washington Post, you know, I read the New York Times. I don't think it's bad with their doing. That's the thing, right? the Times actually is fucking great. It's just sometimes they do really dumb things.

Yeah, and so do all of us, right? And in that way, like journalism is also, it's hard, it's aspirational. Yeah, it's a work in progress. It's a work in progress. It's a work in progress. Reveal is a really amazing investigative podcast hosted by Al Letson, who is somebody who will really bring himself kind of into the story in ways that are effective

and interesting and honest and just an excellent host. Yeah, I'm always looking for something new to listen to. That's the same. Yeah, that's a good one. So Al Letson is definitely a journalism hero of mine. I'm also a big pro-publica reader. Yeah, pro-publicism is. So, you know, anything investigative. And I'm a big fan of the I'm also a big pro-publica reader. Yeah, the public is amazing. So, I know anything investigative.

And I'm a big fan of the station where I used to work, WISO. It's like a small, just like super low budget community organization, kind of public radio station in the middle of southwest Ohio that's doing so much to kind of bring together disparate voices and bring stories on air that aren't being told and do that in really creative ways. Doing so much was so little. So I think sometimes when I hear from these big

and comparatively much better funded media organizations, like it's too hard to dig in to these communities or it's too hard to know what's going on everywhere, it, to me, often it feels like a matter of priorities. And that's where I feel like the values are important, sort of outlining why we're doing this, so that we can figure out what to prioritize. WISO is someplace that has always been very clear

that actually its founding statement includes the idea that this is a radio station that's going to take discussions about politics and current events out of the ivory towers and out of the sort of elite and into the streets and that's the idea behind that. And that's in the station.

And this is in a high, that's the station in a high up. It's so interesting about that is now, I mean, truly, I don't want to be like the tech guy with like, oh, the internet is the great leveler, but there is an element to the idea that you can now listen to those, I assume they're online, you can listen to those broadcasts where you would never hear them. Go back 25 years and you would never hear them. Go back 50 or 100. It's like, they're, well,

they're probably don't exist with your 100, but this idea that, you know, it's like, well, we're not getting all the stories or we can't hear all the sides. And it's like, well, maybe you're not listening, like maybe you're not actually striving to find the sides. And it's like, well, maybe you're not listening. Like, maybe you're not actually striving to find the sides. And it's like, we think we've got to like beef up this other perspective when the reality is like, there's a lot of that perspective that's out there if you actually pay attention. Yeah. And I think, you know, of course,

you can't do all the stories. Nobody can, but that's why it matters that we know why we're doing them. Yeah. Well, that's a really good place to leave it. Lewis, thank you so much for doing this. This is really good. I'm sorry that we kind of we're doing that. Yeah. Well, that's a really good place to leave it. Lewis, thank you so much for doing this. This is really good. I'm sorry that we kind of rushed through some things, but this is super fascinating.

And we're doing some very cool stuff together. And when you do that, hopefully you can come back and we can talk about it maybe. Sounds good. OK, thanks. Thanks. I have a little announcement to make. We're going to be taking tomorrow to a bi-weekly schedule for a while. My schedule is a little bit insane right now, and I want to give you guys really great shows that you can sink your teeth into and we think the most effective way to do that is just to ease back a little bit on the weekly schedule.

But we also have some great new audio to listen to at the outline. If you're interested a little flavor, a little extremely spicy flavor in your morning diet every day of the week, except for Friday. And then I'll greet you in a sort of normal interval. I think you'll, you know, you're really gonna like this rhythm. I think you're gonna find it very sexy and comfortable. And until then, I wish you and your family the very best, though I've just received word that your family

is no longer capable of being objective and therefore all debates have become quite difficult.