Episode Summary
Donald Trump has been on the national political scene for more than 10 years, but in a lot of ways, it seems that America’s top news organizations have yet to figure out how to cover him properly. That’s a serious problem because during his second term, Trump is encountering much less resistance from within the Republican party, and as a result, is breaking domestic and international laws much more frequently and blatantly.
In 2015, the national media were not prepared for a politician who lied as easily as he breathed, and who viciously attacked anyone for telling hard truths about him. A year into his second presidential term, they still have not been able to adjust.
Despite the many failures of America’s media with regard to Trump, however, it is also the case that in 2025, some journalists, like the Pentagon press corps, showed courage and alacrity in dealing with the bullying and the deception—including from corporate executives eager to show fealty to an administration that loves to deploy government power against independent media.
But Trump himself is not the only one assaulting American journalism. It is coming under attack from within thanks to billionaire oligarchs like Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos who have bought up marquee journalism institutions and corrupted them through paying off Trump’s nuisance lawsuits and hiring Republican spinmeisters like newly installed CBS editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who has made a career out of passing off conservative dogma as moderate pragmatism.
There’s a lot that happened in 2025 with Trump and the media, and so in this episode I wanted to unpack some of it with Margaret Sullivan, she’s the executive director of the Journalism School at Columbia University, the former public editor of the New York Times, and a former columnist at the Washington Post. She also writes for the Guardian and for her newsletter, American Crisis. Be sure to check out the series she wrote on journalism ethics at Columbia Journalism Review as well.
The video of our December 22, 2025 conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.
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Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
07:12 — What Trump could have done with a Fairness Doctrine
12:15 — Bari Weiss and the myth of the moderate conservative TV audience
21:22 — Media organizations pushing back on presidents
36:03 — Journalism as public philosophy
40:38 — Rethinking objectivity in journalism
45:16 — Democracy cannot function properly without a public that thinks soundly
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So it’s been the first year of the second Trump administration and I thought it would be good to do a retrospective of how things were in this first year in the media, from your standpoint and whether you see things changing for the better or for the worse. There’s a lot to talk about, so why don’t we just start overall with what are the main differences in the way that Trump is being covered this first year versus the previous term?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: Right. Well, I wish I could say that I saw a dramatic difference in the way he’s being covered in this second time around, but I don’t really think that’s the case. My feeling is that the mainstream press never really learned how to cover him to begin with. And I don’t really see a huge change in that.
You have to deal with the fact that he has a lot of lies and misstatements in what he says. But they’re so constant that I don’t think that the mainstream press has sort of ever—there’s fact checking, there’s an effort to say, oh, well, that wasn’t true. But there’s still there’s still a lot of the same stuff that I think beveled the press and the public, [00:04:00] frankly, in his first term.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s right in terms of the coverage. In terms of the owners though—
SULLIVAN: Oh, that’s, that is different.
Yeah, that is different. I mean, we’re seeing in big media just this really very fast consolidation of ownership that is continuing to progress. So these media conglomerates are getting bigger and and they, and then the decisions, this is particularly true. But not only, but particularly true in the world of, TV news. So, ABC is owned by Disney, CBS is now owned and controlled by Paramount Global, and that too is probably going to grow and get, bigger or different. CNN is in the mix because of because of their ownership and, it kind of. Goes on and on like that. So, I think what happens is that the priorities are less coming from the journalists. Not entirely, I don’t want to overstate it, but certainly there have been decisions that have been made about settling lawsuits. That Trump has has begun that seem pretty clearly to be coming from corporate concerns rather than journalistic values.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. One definitely with ABC, that was the case. And CBS as well. And yeah, the, I think what, a lot of this has shown though is that really, what we, what the media had in terms of, standards and things like that, they were norms. there was no real mechanism by which the public could hold them accountable or the staff could hold them accountable or something, organization professional associations or whatever.
These didn’t exist, and [00:06:00] that’s, I think is the kind of biggest thing about the 10 years that we’ve had of Trump on the scene is that norms are nothing. Ultimately they exist only in your mind, they’re enactments, they’re not actual, real things to stop problems.
SULLIVAN: No, there’s no, it’s not as if there are media cops out there who are going to say, let’s consult the, society of profession or professional journalist, code of ethics and issue tickets. it’s, and this, as you say, a lot of what’s happened. During both of these Trump administrations is that we found out that people were acting out of norms that had developed for a long time and that the norms have been smashed. And oh, I guess, oh, that can happen and not, and there’s no consequence for it. And maybe the norms weren’t so great anyway, but in some cases they at least sort of, There were some good things about them. So, but we find out that, in a way, this is, again, a little bit overstated or maybe a little falsely stated, but it’s like, it’s like we were all on the honor system and now we find out that’s, oh, there’s no consequences for doing things another way.
What Trump could have done with a Fairness Doctrine
SHEFFIELD: and there’s an interesting paradox to that topic more generally though, that when we look outside of the United States. Some countries, like the UK for instance, have agencies, government agencies like Ofcom, and these agencies exist in many different nations, that do have regulatory power on media.
And I, it, I think a lot of times people have said, well, that would be nice if there was something that could administer accountability. But gosh, can you imagine what Donald Trump would have done with an Ofcom under his control?
SULLIVAN: I mean, i’m always very nervous about the idea of the government, whatever, government having, direct regulatory or funding power [00:08:00] over the press. So, I mean with, the funding piece of it, I, think about this in terms of the demise of local news, which has really, continued at a really fast downward pace. And people say, oh, well, certainly you wouldn’t want to see direct funding of news organizations. And there was a long time in my many decade career where I’ve said definitely not. and now I am like, well, I don’t know. Would it mean the difference between keeping. Some local newspapers coming operational or not.
And maybe in some cases if there could be some guardrails built in, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But, and people always, the public likes to remind me that there once was a thing called the fairness doctrine, which had some which had some power over, kind of. Kinds of issues for, broadcast news and that, went away long time ago.
And people, I think it’s more that they like the idea of it. I’m not sure they would really like the reality of it too much, but.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that’s right. And when you look at Brendan Carr, FCC i, it’s obvious that this would be something that, that, Trump and his cronies would a hundred percent abuse in ways that would be appalling to even the most ardent
SULLIVAN: Yeah, I think that’s right. Yeah, that’s true.
SHEFFIELD: The other thing also is and of course this is, I can say this as a former member of the liberal bias industry is that, the, Trump administrations, especially in the second one here, is this is the apotheosis of the liberal media bias complex. Since Reed Irvine and Richard Nixon in the seventies had spent basically 50 years completely undermining and attacking the, national press and saying that it was [00:10:00] hopelessly, permanently irrevocably biased and must be de-legitimized.
Trump is, this is the fulfillment of that Nixon project. And in a way that I think a lot of people, that’s not something that I think, has been remarked upon enough.
SULLIVAN: Right, Right, And I think another thing that came out of that era was, the birth of Fox News. You know that, oh, we can’t kind of Roger Ailes, Nixon, the idea that we can never let this happen again. We can never let a Republican president be drummed out of office again. this is the, thinking on it.
I’m not saying I subscribe to this, but so we need to have our own media and now, and then, Fox is born. I think 1996. And, we see what a profound impact it has had. And then of course, everything that’s kind of cropped up around that. But Fox itself is still, powerful in its own way, influential. Influential, I guess I’ll say.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, it’s, yeah, it still remains the biggest node in the right wing media
SULLIVAN: Right, right, right. sure.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I mean it, and that, that, project that you, that we’re talking about here, it is. I mean, they, literally did Roger Ailes and other people wrote a memo for Nixon, to, create television news Incorporated which launched as a proto, CNN, actually, that’s actually where CNN came from. I just a, I don’t, I’ll link to I think it was Gabriel Sherman that wrote, about that with regard to Roger Hales in that end. That’s it’s a little bit of history that’s, it like, I, and it’s, it, created satellite television in, in a large way for news integrated in, into a that way.
SULLIVAN: That Was a time too, when basically social media didn’t exist. And so we really are living in a very, different world [00:12:00] now in the world of podcasters. She said, well, on a podcast and, very powerful media figures who aren’t traditional journalists, but rather, influential voices, whether we like them or not, they’re very influential.
Bari Weiss and the myth of the moderate conservative TV audience
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and one to that to that point, one of the other. Kind of dynamics of the first year of Trump from the corporate standpoint is that it does seem like, especially when we look over at Skydance and Paramount and the installation of Bari Weiss at CBS News that there seems to be this thought that there’s just this massive audience out there of, of right wing voters who want a staid broadcast news that it has more Republican talking points in it. And I don’t think that
SULLIVAN: Right. Right, I mean, I guess I would tweak what you said a little bit. I think the thinking is that there’s this that there’s this huge demand for some sort of center-right kind of mostly centrist, but also kind of right-leaning like the, Scott Jennings, Scott Jennings, who as your listeners probably know is, on CNN for the most part.
And, is a defender of Trump’s, and, has been recruited as I understand it, by Bari Weiss at CBS as he’s oh yeah, if we could only have more of that. And I agree with you, Matthew, that I, don’t think there’s a huge demand for that. CNN tried a version of that a year or two, I can’t remember now, a couple years ago where they tried to go very, very sort of center, right?
I think and, it wasn’t successful. In fact, it failed pretty badly. So, I mean, CNN always [00:14:00] struggles, so who knows? Who knows what, what can work there. But yeah, the, this sort of thinking that, yeah, the Bari, that Bari Weiss is the answer because she’s anti woke and she won’t be like the rest of these liberal media, people. And in fact, she’s, that is turning out to be the case. But whether it’s a successful formula, I have my doubts, especially when you. Do things that alienate your newsroom pretty badly, like she’s doing.
We’re recording this. The day after we find out that Bari quite unilaterally has with, held back an already reported, already vetted, already lawyered piece. On 60 Minutes about these El Salvador prison that would make the Trump administration, attempts to hold them to account and they tried very hard to get comment from different heads of agencies and departments and so on and, probably from the White House and, this happens. You don’t get comment. Well, you, run the piece anyway, and you say they wouldn’t comment. But what she’s saying is, no, we’re not going to run it because it’s lacking in that comment and it needs more reporting. Well, the, that reporting piece of it has already been done. And when you have. When you have a staff like you have at 60 Minutes, that’s very experienced. They, don’t like that. And I think that, you don’t really want to lose your newsroom, which I would imagine she’s in the process of doing just that right now. Yeah.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and a lot of them have already quit. And I have to imagine that, people are, looking, are the people who are still there are, looking for the exit and trying to find a place to land. I have no doubt about that. Now with, yeah, with regard to her though, one of the other initiatives that she has put into place which will be launching in 2026 is a, debate series, which [00:16:00] seems to be trying to recapitulate the, the debates of a b, c news filed in the, 1960s with or I think it was, or was it the seventies? I forget the, whatever that was with William F. Buckley Jr. And Gore Vidal.
I think that’s what they’re trying to do, because I mean, for ABC they were the, and also ran at that time, they were new network. And they use them to get more ratings. So I think that’s what she’s trying to do.
But the problem is she doesn’t know how to have debates and she doesn’t have relationships with people who can actually have a meaningful debate. so she’s booked basically a bunch of Alan Combs, liberals.
Or, people who are conservatives like stephen Pinker to represent the left. And it’s like, well, this is not, this is a Potemkin debate. and, the topics that she wants people to debate are tired and boring. And one of them being, has feminism failed women? Well, the fact that a a woman is allowed to be the editor in chief of CBS News and also one who is not straight that would seem to be kind of a, an indicator
SULLIVAN: Yeah. And also one who’s never, and also one who’s never been a journalist. How about that? Add, that into the list of qualifications. Certainly, and certainly, anyway yeah, I mean, it, it doesn’t seem like a super compelling topic to me.
But and also she, had this vaunted town hall interview with Erika Kirk, which, from what I’ve read, the ratings were poor. Not that everything should be about ratings, but I don’t think it sort of caught the public imagination in the way that might have been hoped.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, I think the reason for that being that the people who like Erika Kirk do not like CBS News, they’re not going to watch it. And then the people who [00:18:00] are watching CBS News.
SULLIVAN: Right, right. And I think that’s, and I think that is a, actually a lot of what happened. A version of that happened at CNN during that period we were talking about, which is who’s your audience here and who do you think your audience is? Because I’m not sure there is one.
So I mean, there’s something, there’s, to me, there is something appealing, of course, about trying to. Get an audience and a readership or, people, citizens, if you will, who don’t necessarily agree with you or may have very different takes on things. I mean, I think that’s good, that’s what AmErikan democracy is supposed to be about.
But this version of it that’s kind of, it’s seeking an audience that is in somebody’s fantasy world and turns out not to really, it’s what you said. The, fans of Erika Kirk don’t like CBS. The people who are traditional CBS watchers don’t, don’t like Erika Kirk. So you’re kind of. You’re kind of missing them both there, I think.
And, it’s, we, experimentation is fine and great but I think you have to know a little bit about what you’re trying to do. And so far it doesn’t seem like that’s happening at CBS News.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and as somebody who was, in, in a past life, in, coming from a more mainstream, moderate, conservative viewpoint which I’ve since changed from I, I can appreciate what she’s trying to do, although she doesn’t want to admit that’s what she’s trying to do. I think that’s part of the problem is that she tells people that she’s a liberal when basically there’s no position that she has that’s liberal other than that she supports seems to support abortion rights and seems to support lesbian and gay marriage.
But that’s, those are positions [00:20:00] that lots of Republicans have in fact. And we can see that obviously with these abortion referendum, they all, they pass everywhere, they’re, allowed to be on the ballot.
SULLIVAN: Yeah, there those are, that’s become sort of mainstream thought, so it’s not really liberal. So Yeah. it’s, it’s a weird, it’s, it’s interesting to watch it play out. I don’t think it’s, it know, it’s sort, of disturbing, but it’s, and just to, so sort of see the, As you mentioned, the settling CBS settling that lawsuit that Trump filed over 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris LA last fall before the election, which, was pretty standard editing. From everything I know.
And so, to sort of say, oh, this was edited to make her look good. And then for CBS to say, here’s whatever they said, $16 million for your presidential library. I mean, I’m, I don’t, I’m not a hundred percent sure of those numbers, but you know, they settled it.
What they didn’t do was say, this was standard editing and we’re going to defend ourselves. So then when that happens. When ABC does what it did, which was also subtle it gets much harder for the next media organization to stand its ground.
Media organizations pushing back on presidents
SHEFFIELD: It does. But I do, we do have to give some credit to the, New York Times and CNN for resisting Trump lawsuits against them in that regard.
SULLIVAN: Yeah, no ab absolutely, and I would say even more, well, as much as that the Associated Press, which, because the Associated Press has a global audience. It’s not just people within the boundaries of the United States. When this thing came up about, oh, we’re now going to call this body of water. The Gulf of AmErika, something that had been called the Gulf of Mexico for many, years, and to people around the world, it is known as the Gulf of [00:22:00] Mexico. the AP said, well, no, we’re not going to change our style book because of a, what appeared to be a whim. And then Trump. Punished them by keeping them off of Air Force one and keeping ’em out of briefings and stuff like that. And so the, AP has sued and they, it’s still happening.
This, they sued, they won one round. There was an appeal. They lost a round. So, but they have not just sort of said, oh, okay. And then I think the other thing, Matthew, that we saw was all these, almost every news organization walking away when. Pete Pentagon said, you basically in essence said if you want a press pass, if you want credentials to enter this building and come to briefings, you need to only publish what we say is okay. And really hardly anyone would agree to do that.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And that was a, definite, bright spot for sure. but it does also contrast with the White House Press Corps, I think in a bad way for the White House
SULLIVAN: You mean Because it, it suggested some solidarity, which we don’t see from the White House. Yeah. You’ll, get a, like a strongly worded letter, but, But you know, when, the president, points to a reporter and tell, orders her to be quiet and calls her piggy, there’s basically very little reaction in the moment at least.
It’s just kind like, we’re just here to do our job and we’re, and some of that is about competition. Some of that is about fear of losing access. So I would like to see that improve.
And what I mean by improve is I’d like to see some collective [00:24:00] action there, even if it’s, honestly, even if it’s just the next person up saying I or several people saying, I’d like to repeat the question that I can’t remember her name at the moment from Bloomberg News said, because
To point it out and say, I don’t think it’s acceptable because it’s really not acceptable.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and I, think it’s worth looking back to the Obama presidency because there was, they, there was solidarity against something that Obama did that his White House was they were contemplating, or I think they did at one point talk about. Banning Fox News from briefings because of its obvious partisanship.
And that was pushed back even by CNN and all the, television networks said, no, you can’t do that. And and look, I’m not a fan of Fox. I, they lie pretty much all the time. And but they still are a part of this country. Like it or not. And they have a right to, to be there as a, as an organization that is professional and that does produce, yeah. New shaped content
SULLIVAN: Yeah, no, I think that was good to see during the Obama administration. And they backed off very fast and, which, obviously these are two very different administrations, but it does suggest that some kind of collective action and pressure might have an effect, but we don’t know because we’re not seeing that. So that’s, unfortunate.
SHEFFIELD: It is. Well, and this is really a, classic case of the tragedy of the commons in a lot of they’re not they’re not used to an administration, but so constantly and blatantly, viciously attacks their profession and, their content and their, the things that they make. And so they just think, [00:26:00] well, if I don’t, they don’t say anything, then it will go away, or that everything will blow over.
SULLIVAN: Some Some of this I really think is competition and, journalists are always been competitive. It’s not, it’s, it doesn’t tend to be a kind of all that much sticking up for each other. It tends to be quite competitive and as I said before, nobody wants to lose access.
And meanwhile, your bosses are probably like, just stay in the room and so we can put your question on the air later and show that we’ve got someone in the briefing room. I mean, that’s the motivation more than sort of press rights writ large.
SHEFFIELD: Well, and it’s, and it’s an antiquated. Idea, I think because, I mean, nobody, the audience, they don’t give a shit. If you have somebody in the room there or not, they do not care. They just want to know, do you have news that is interesting to me? And important. That’s what they want to know.
they don’t care if you’re in the room. They don’t care if you get on camera with a question. It doesn’t matter to them. They don’t even know who your journalists are for that matter. So you’re not accomplishing anything. But this is just this very antiquated mentality from. going back to the idea of, when televised news briefings were novel, so it was a, a status point to have your correspondent on camera and everybody knows, oh, so and so from X, Y, Z asked this question.
But those, incentives do not exist anymore for
SULLIVAN: not as, Certainly not as much. I mean, I do see, for example I mean, everybody likes to make fun of the evening news broadcast that they don’t matter anymore, but actually they have pretty big viewership,
SHEFFIELD: Still bigger than any cable news show. Yeah.
SULLIVAN: Exactly.
SHEFFIELD: show.
SULLIVAN: It’s like if you look at them collectively, the three of them, the three, big ones, it’s like, I think it’s something like 20 million people a night, or it [00:28:00] was, and ABC will say now, and I, I don’t know whether viewers care about this, but I do see it, here’s Mary Bruce, she’s there, and we’re going to hear, they don’t say it just this way, but we’re going to hear her question to the president right now.
And I think there’s some sort of pride of, pride of place there. Whether that is meaningful to the public, I don’t know. But then again, ABC is the leader on, among those three. So maybe there’s some effect on,
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the, there’s definitely a, solidarity problem. And I guess one of the other stories of 2025 that kind of did illustrate that also, or that came out in 2025 was the absurd saga of. The reporter, Olivia Nzi and her basically some sort of affair involvement with Robert f. Kennedy Jr. And seemingly actively working to protect him from, damaging news or to get ahead of it and giving him a strategic advice. I mean, this is, i, we haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. time Seems like.
SULLIVAN: No, I mean, I have been, the whole time that was happening and coming out and developments were coming out, I was teaching an ethics course, a journalism ethics course at Columbia University. And, we, would, it was like it became this like ripped from the headline class because it was, one week we seemed to be talking about the coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein files and, or, what was coming out in the early releases of those emails. The next week we were talking about Olivia and Noie and we, former fiance Ryan Lizza, who was writing on Substack all the time.
I mean, it was. It was pretty wild. And, I would say to my students who are graduate students in journalism, one of my mantras throughout the course was [00:30:00] like, there’s a, in the, in journalism ethics, there can be a lot of, there can be a lot of gray areas. Not everything is cut and dried, but I was, when, the Olivia Nzi thing came along, I was like, no, th this actually is something you should never ever do. Th I can tell you that this one is black and white. Don’t do that.
SHEFFIELD: good. You, could have just put her picture up on the wall and say, okay, that’s it. Just follow this story. Don’t do this stuff. do this.
don’t,
SULLIVAN: don’t
do this. So, but, I mean, it’s it’s been a, soap opera for sure. And it’s also something that regrettably, I think if you already hate the press and you don’t. Bring a ton of nuance to it. You’re like, see, what they do. And That’s
SHEFFIELD: yeah, and that’s, an, important point because, actually, I, recently rewatched the, the, film Broken Glass about Stephen Glass. And, it was really notable to me when I was looking at the production credits as they flash on the screen, how many huge. Movie stars had financed this film.
Because, I think that a lot of the public, and thanks to Trump and Nixon and all these other people and have, they really do want, the public to think that all journalists are unethical, all journalists are liars. All journalists are trying to manipulate you. And so, this, the, news, E story and, glass, this is exactly what these people have wanted and it, really propels their narrative so so far.
SULLIVAN: I mean, the thing is that, journalists do mess up and news organizations do mess up, and then when they kind of come clean or are forced to come clean and talk about it, when they, for example, have a public editor [00:32:00] or when they have to give back a Pulitzer Prize or any of that stuff, it actually seems to, even though you know the transparency and the. And the fessing up is necessary and the corrections are necessary. They actually also add to the problem of people’s mistrust, which is at a low. Very trust is at a very low level anyway, so it, all kind of makes it worse and it’s difficult to know how the press recovers from that because it’s been going on, as we’ve been talking about it, it’s been going on for decades.
And I think Trump has really because he’s been so constant about it. About fake news. Charging mainstream reporters with being fake news and talking about what a terrible reporter this person is or you’re a loser and all that sort of thing. And even though a lot of people don’t like that and they think he’s being rude, I think his message still resonates to
SHEFFIELD: It, it does. Yeah. And, you as a former public editor have some credibility to talk about that topic in particular.
And, but, we, those positions have basically entirely, mostly been eliminated. Although, ironically now CBS News has one, and he’s a Republican donor donor.
and activist, so.
SULLIVAN: Yeah. I mean, that’s not exactly, I don’t think. I don’t think that’s a true ombudsman or public editor. I mean, usually if you want to do it right, and I think I was the public editor of the Times, and I, think I, I think it was a good position to have. You, know what you want. There is a veteran editor or reporter, someone who is a journalist who kind of knows how this stuff works and is not. As you said, and not an activist, not clearly political and not chosen to have a particular point of view.
I mean, when I did the job, I was trying to just reflect what the [00:34:00] readers of the New York Times were saying to me. I wasn’t kind of trying to bring my own politics into it, but rather to say, Hey, I’m hearing from a lot of readers and they’re upset about this story, so how about it, Dean Beke, what, went on here and what is the reason this story was reported this way?
And then, I would kind of be able to report it back out to the readers and to synthesize it and draw some conclusions myself. But it wasn’t like it I think the CBS one is it, that’s not an ombudsman in the traditional
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. no. I, don’t think so. Well, and, but these, dynamics of organizations that issue corrections and fess up to mistakes and ethical breaches the, paradox as you, noted, is that when you tell the truth about your mistakes and your fallibility, it makes. Captious critics more likely to say, see, they’re all this way. And they themselves do not ever admit mistakes. They do not admit lies. They do not admit ethical breaches and, and, that’s not something that they’re fan base ever. They, never are able to draw that juxtaposition in that
hypocrisy.
SULLIVAN: right. I mean, what I have said a lot is that you can. That a bare minimum for judging whether a news organization is credible. And a reasonably good source of news is do they have a corrections policy and is it, can you find it somewhere and do they follow it and do they run corrections? If not, then whatever mistakes they make or whatever falsehoods they put out there, whatever they’re doing, it’s just onto the next thing. And so, I think that’s a litmus test. But in order to, get that idea across to the public, we would have to have like mandatory [00:36:00] news literacy taught in schools. And I don’t see, I mean, I’d be afraid right now of what that would look like.
Journalism as public philosophy
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, if Trump’s around the class. Yeah.
Well, all, of this does point to the. A larger dynamic, which I think a lot of journalists and editors and producers, they don’t want to think about, which is that journalism is public philosophy actually. If it’s going to be any sort of approximation to reality and not just peer advocacy if you’re doing reporting, what you are do, you are in the epistemology business, whether you realize it or not.
SULLIVAN: Yeah, I mean, we’re trying to determine what’s true. We’re trying to seek. Publish the truth and, the truth as close as we can get it. you in, when you’re on deadline and there’s a developing story, you, at least want to stay close to the facts and then try to, try to get as close as possible to truthful information that you’re sharing with the public.
And it’s not just, I mean, it isn’t just that, it isn’t just, here’s a bunch of facts. But it’s also what stories do we choose to do? How are we framing these stories? What’s the headline? What’s the photograph? What investigations have we decided to put a year and a half into? So when people say, I don’t know why these places can’t just tell me the facts and get outta the way.
I understand why people say that, but I also know, because I’ve been in the business for a long time and have run a newsroom that. You’re constantly making choices. And that’s a part of it. And that the purpose, one of the main purposes of journalism is to hold powerful people and institutions to account to the public, so [00:38:00] again, I think this stuff is kind of, is not really well mis well understood. Matthew, when I, was at the Washington Post as their media columnist for a while, and while I was there, it came to my attention that there were a number of people who, when they saw a source and a story that was given an anonymity, so they weren’t named they actually thought that those sources were also anonymous to the reporter.
SHEFFIELD: Oh, yikes.
SULLIVAN: A phone
call, like, Hey, here’s a hot scoop. And when in fact, places like The Post and the Times and many cnn, there’s like a whole process for using an anonymous source and the reporter and probably at least one editor absolutely knows who that person is. And it’s a decision to, are you going to let them, speak anonymously?
I think it’s overused. It’s not just because somebody called you up and gave you some supposed
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Wow. I did, I, didn’t
SULLIVAN: kind of goes
SHEFFIELD: thought that, yikes.
SULLIVAN: yeah. It’s, it, I thought it was amazing, but, and I would hear it from time to time, not, there obviously are more sophisticated readers and, listeners and viewers done that too.
But some people think that, and, we don’t do a great job of explaining ourselves to people. And that’s part of the trust problem.
SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. and, ultimately, I mean, really what the, fundamental questions of journalism are, what is truth? How can we know truth? What in this instance is true and what is meaningful? And these are all philosophical questions that have been being shuffled
SULLIVAN: I mean, I never know.
SHEFFIELD: of years.
SULLIVAN: Yes I agree, but I also don’t think that journalists tend to spend a lot of time thinking that way. Maybe they should, but I do think that most journalists are, pretty interested. They, they want to [00:40:00] get it right. They really do. And so that speaks to your idea about, truthfulness or not.
But then, you have politicians who lie and what are you going to do about that? When, maybe one of the politicians who lies a lot is the president, what are you going to do about that? Are you not going to quote him? Are you not going to put his lie into a headline? What about if he wants to give an address to the public across the broadcast airwaves?
You’re going to take it live and just let it all spew out there. I mean, these are all decisions that have to be made. And there, there’s no rule book really.
Rethinking objectivity in journalism
SHEFFIELD: No there isn’t. Well, and, that does, circle to the question of objectivity, which is something that you recently wrote about under the headline. Is objectivity still worth pursuing?
So first of all, what I mean is, and you, quote the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has is very relevant in the context of machine learning and AI as well. Now but in this context, you talk about the, view from nowhere whether that can
even exist and it
SULLIVAN: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a change. There’s a change in the way we talk about objectivity. But there it’s, if by objectivity you mean I enter a story, I’m a reporter, I enter reporting this story with an open mind, and I am looking for evidence that I’m going to then present to the public. If that’s objectivity, I think that’s great, but often what ends up being. Called objectivity or seen as objectivity is just well, we’re going to take, we’ve got two opposing points of view and we’re going to present them as equal. And people call this, both, sides. Both sides and things, which means like, well, there’s, no such thing as climate [00:42:00] change. And a group of people who say, no, actually climate change is a big crisis. And like if we were to present those in a story as kind of equal that’s, and if we were to present them as equal, I don’t think that should be called objectivity. It should be called laziness. Because you’re not actually trying to bring anything to it except sort of st this person says this and this person says that.
So, if that’s object, if that idea is objectivity, then I think it’s out of date.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
SULLIVAN: Maybe it had a place once. But if objectivity is, the idea of entering a story with an open mind and looking for evidence based. Facts that you can make into, what you’re referring to as, truth?
Well, that’s a different matter. So it’s, sort of how you
SHEFFIELD: yeah, it is. Well, and, then there is also the question of who you is. And I think that’s been probably one of the biggest ongoing problems of the national press in the united States, is that it tends to overwhelmingly be the same editors who have worked there for decades, and they hired the, their, alumni from the university they went to, or they hired their friends, or they solicit op, op-eds from their friends.
Like there isn’t and so basically what it’s done is it’s created this insular community, which sometimes people call the village, quote unquote if you remember that and like there’s this, and it is insular and it’s, not only not able to see certain stories but also it’s, excludes most of the public from the conversation. conversation.
SULLIVAN: Yeah. And then I think then there has been. This effort to have what’s been known as diverse voices. And [00:44:00] particularly in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020, there, there was sort of this reckoning in newsrooms about, well, we see things from this old school point of view and we need to look at it differently. And that had its moment, but I think that moment has. Passed quite.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It has, and I mean, ultimately. I think what has to be done is that people have to, they have to figure out how to bring, bring in new, voices, but maybe not necessarily directly. In other words, you can say these are things that people are talking about. Because a lot of times they might be somebody who’s not used to being interviewed, they have no idea how to do it.
So if you interview them, they’re going to be embarrassed or, and, or they won’t want to do it. So, but they’re, but what they’re saying is still important and it still matters. and then also just the idea to, as, you said earlier, that the media business has to educate the public about what this is, what you’re doing.
Because ultimately any concept concepts don’t exist in some platonic realm. Concepts are actions. They’re what you are doing. They’re not what you think, and even the act of thought is what you’re doing. I
The challenge of democracy requiring a sound-thinking public
SULLIVAN: Yeah, and I mean, not to get too wonky about this, but there are organizations out there that are trying to do that thing of teaching people how to compare and contrast how to judge whether a news organization is legit or not, or. And I’ll just mention the name of one that I’m familiar with, the news literacy project, and it’s like gone into like, it’s, reached millions of people, but it hasn’t reached even more millions of people, to sort of say oh, and I’m sure you do this too, you see something circulating on social media and you sort of go, really, I wonder about that. And then often. What I do at [00:46:00] least is I start to kind of search around and see is this the only place that’s reporting this and is this place that’s reporting it credible? does it have a history of credibility? Does it correct its errors? We could put the litmus test in there. But there’s a sort of a, learned way to not just go, oh, wow, that’s really interesting. Let me share it, and therefore spreading it all over the world. Which we’ve seen an awful lot of. So yeah, I think we need some, help in that
SHEFFIELD: do. yeah, and, and, one thing on that end, so I is that within, so within, political science and, cognitive psychology, there’s a pretty large volume of studies now over the decades that have noted that people who have more, let’s say intuitionist or somatic ways of thinking compared to abstract reasoning that they, drift toward right leaning parties.
So that the paradox of, what I’m of Bari Weiss at CBS and some of these other initiatives is they, something like that should exist. But it has to be educating conservatively inclined, or, somatically inclined people about abstract reasoning and why it’s good.
and I don’t think that’s what she’s going to want to do. but like, yeah, the conservative assent to democracy is one of the, core ways that it can exist. Because it’s not for somebody who thinks that their own personal feelings about God or the Bible or whatever, that they are the absolute truth. If you think that, then you’re not well suited to participate in a
democratic republic.
SULLIVAN: No, that’s true. It’s true. I mean, people ask me all the time, how can the reality based press, people who [00:48:00] basically deal in facts and, not just share a bunch of lies. how can the reality based press. Get through to the crowd that is so willing to accept a conspiracy theory or declare that an election was rigged or so on.
And I mean, I wish I knew the answer to that. I, really don’t, I don’t think it’s by putting Scott Jennings on the air, I, don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s about the things that we’ve seen. And I, I wish I knew the answer to that. I, really don’t. But I think it’s important because because that, as you just said, if we’re going to have a democracy, which is questionable, honestly you need to have an informed electorate.
And that what they need to be informed of is actual facts edging right up to the truth. Hopefully it’s even the truth at some, level. So, I think there’s some real problems.
SHEFFIELD: There are yeah. Well, and that’s why people like you are out there, Margaret to elevate these issues that the, you don’t have to offer a solution, but we, have to
SULLIVAN: Yeah, we can. We can at least excavate the problem, so, yeah.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so, for people who want to keep in touch with you, Margaret, why, don’t you give some advice?
SULLIVAN: I mean, I, have a Substack called American Crisis and it does not have a paywall, so, I mean. I ask people for money, but you don’t have to give me money. I took the paywall down. So that’s one way. And I also write for the Guardian’s American outlet called the Guardian US. And those are the major places that, that I’m publishing these days.
SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. And yeah. Great. And we’ll have a link to your series in the show notes.
SULLIVAN: Oh, that’d be great. Yeah, the series, I’ll just say real quick, was about sort of a new, of trying to take a, does [00:50:00] traditional journalism ethics need a fresh look? And it was published in Columbia Journalism Review. So in several parts. So, if people are interested in that it’d be great if you gave ’em a link. I’d appreciate it.
SHEFFIELD: Okay. Cool. All right. Well
SULLIVAN: Sure, thanks Okay, Matthew.
SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Flux Community where we have the video, audio, and transcript of this show, and also a lot of other articles and podcasts about politics, technology, media, and religion, and how they all intersect and create our culture. And if you want to stay in touch, you can do so on Substack at flux.community, or you can subscribe on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux.
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