There are a lot of books out there, critical of the performance of the media in the journalism industry. Why do we need another one and what is different about yours . Guest well hopefully its got some jokes in it. Hopefully it is an engaging read. I is a journalist do not have much interest in media criticism. I have a about it which is that its like an abatement. Its hazardous and you need specialized equipment. I think there is lots of good media criticism and most media criticism is indicative of the problem i talk about in this book which is that its a refuge for partisan. We dont want to talk about the ideas of us talk about the coverage. This is not my happy place. I have a experience professionally and we are having a experience professionally which the stuff, the changes that have gone through our industry in the past 20 years its been a lot. There has been a lot going on and its a time where people are really hungry for the learning curve to deepen and for us to get better lets go you talk about at great length in the book what happens at fox news when you were let go after being part of the team that called arizona for joe biden in 2020 earlier and other networks. He said it was part of the motivation for your writing the book could explain what happened there and how that fits into the problem. I won to the 2020 election cycle. I didnt understand the way that the world had changed. I have been part of calling races that made republicans unhappy before. Trust me when fox calls ohio for barack obama in 2012 i was not getting any love notes from the romney campaign. Nobody said thanks for that. I had assumed we were insisting on the consensus that grew out of the 1990s but the world changed dramatically in the 1990s. Also of course the internet and we were still in the same state. What i failed to apprehend was that after so many years where viewers readers listeners whomever could be so effectively flattering and protect it. In a highly segmented media marketplace theres a lot of incentive for outlets to treat these viewers like faberge eggs. Dont tell them the things they dont want to hear and you dont want to hinge on the climate controlled reality that news conservatives are able to maintain for themselves. If you want to America Today you can rise in the morning and from that moment until you go to bed you could process information that reinforced your worldview. You were smart and they were dom and you were patriotic and they were trying to destroy the country. If i show up in your email as say hey the guy who you believe is the only thing standing between the United States and oblivion is going to be replaced by the communist party of china if i tell you that and thats what you fear its going to have effect and thats what made me understand that request for a media model that is profitable and also responsible we are in need read the rights of trump coverage of the pandemic and coverage of january 6 and the january 6 itself or at all of that stuff points to that we have a problem that is a problem of abundance, right . Its a problem related to too much. We are serious as journalist and as citizens to do our patriotic duty which is if you love this country have to have the journalism that honors the freedoms that we enjoy here. Its a fine broad assessment of the industry and encapsulation of your book but what happened to you . You got canned for doing your work . What happened over there at fox news . Guest fox news can have anybody they want because its their news and im very grateful for the time that i had at fox. In the building where im recording this i a very happy, most of mostly happy decade in this building with my dear colleagues people like my boss Chris Wallace bret baier a great group of journalists in the Washington Bureau is a wonderful place to be. We were substantially left alone to do our thing. Ive heard a bunch about why i got fired. I can tell you ive definitely was. Thats okay because i know nobody owes me a job number one and number two this is not, i know this business. Ive been working in this business since i was 17 years old. It is remarkable to me that i have been able to spend load these many years since i was a professional journalist in 1997, 1998. In all of those years i have been able to make a living and support children and to be adapted to be a working journalist all of those years. To me it feels like ive gotten away with the greatest caper. People would pay me for what i would write in my analysis which is totally awesome so im not complaining. Host you talk about accelerating sense of people of news outlets and telling consumers what they want to hear but can you explain briefly as we are still talking about the cable news aspect which i think we all Pay Attention to because its the most active consumers of certain types gather. At the height its 4 Million Viewers on the most popular show. Can you talk about what used to be the division between the news desk at msnbc, cnn or fox and the bayside as they call it a programming with the evening opinion. That division seems to be disappearing over time. For people who are not familiar can you spell that out . Guest the way it works when i started at fox and i think this was the concept across cable news was that you have the News Division and youve got the opinion division. There are two separate things. The news pages of the newspaper in the editorial section. This outlook versus that outlet but it supposed to be basically usda minimum standards for journalism. Its always been a little different for msnbc because they have nbc news. Abc news doesnt arrange itself around msnbc or at least happen in my experience. It is focused on the 6 00 news. They are thinking about last year hold. They are thinking about feeding the of cable news. So its always worked a little differently for nbc to their advantage in terms of the resources they have have but it also pits its been a limiting agent. Watching cnn now go through a dramatic remaking of itself because cnn had tried to own the model of just the news and for a long time when there was a big national or International News cnn with move to everybody doesnt normally watch 24hour news would turn it on as a reliable source. Then as soon as a crisis or whatever would be over cnns ratings with plummet. In the trump era they really leaned in, really trump coverage. It got really sick over there and they leaned all the way in. Well now they have a new president and new ownership and the objective is to get back the balance and the aspirational fairness. They are trying to unwind a commercial decision and i quote in the book les moonves the former head of viacoms cbs who set up donald trump it may be bad for the country but its great for viacom cbs so keep going donald. I think a lot of networks and fox is included in that people were either thrilled or terrified of either it was a limbic response from American News consumers either delight or real fear and anger. Those forces created incentives for these networks to go heavy on trump. Its time to clean up. You talk about the essay writing of George Orwell in the 1920s and 1930s. We lost faith in liberal democracy and truth seeking for its own sake and its against the backdrop of fascism. There a lot of people in the media who see the rise of trump is being incipient way fascist or authoritarian and they think what the media needs to do is to abandon what they call both sides is some end to call out as Margaret Sullivan who is a former public editor at the New York Times and the Washington Post column for several years in her final column in august and the Washington Post she said a journalists job is to tell their readers electing donald trump is a threat to democracy itself. Do they share some of your foreboding about the populist authoritarian wins and why do you think they are wrong in their approach about how to respond . Guest i will let Margaret Sullivan and im a little something. The readership of the Washington Post she is already the loyal subscriber to the Washington Post and i dont know this is not research in the book. Lets say its at least 70 democratic. Its the hometown paper for a very democratic to recall washington a medium, bigcity . The Washington Post readership skews democratic. And i think the post is a good example of this. A scholar said the post was optimizing for anger better of her failing to cash in on this trump bonanza. Thats where the post goes to democracy and thats when these headlines for offline consumption go. I monitor in the book out on the day of the fall of kabul which to that point was the biggest foreignpolicy story in a long time. The number one story at the Washington Post was press releases and archive stories about a Roman Catholic cardinal who was in the hospital with coronavirus and he was against the vaccine which is a patchy story. That is the journalist who believe that we have the power to tell people what to think should remember when it is more likely our audience will tell us what to think that lead to them. We dont have the power, look republicans spend a lot of time complaining about the media oh my gosh. We often hear it because it may be condemnatory. We have the summer ms. Power to shape these things. We dont and what many journalists have sacrificed in the air of trump i hearken back to a great speech of Chris Wallace and the well deserved honor that he was receiving but he gave a stern talking to a to a group of very would we say now legacy our elite Media Outlets a stern talking to about the fact that while we have to do our work is object to betty. We know that we wont be objective and fairness is aspirational and something we are really going to obtain. Its all removed from the game that gives us whatever power we do have and it can be true that donald trump represented a unique threat to the First Amendment and the free press in the United States. That can be churned at the same time it can be true that the press sadly, sadly botched its response to it. Instead of elevating and going back back to the first principals and of basics many got down in the mud with him and that was a big mistake. Pliskova response back from the criticism establishment we can call it that brian felter who is a reliable was canceled by cnn in august is that we are living through an asymmetry right now between the two major parties and the people who support them and one side is uniquely to truth. The republicans are out there electing people who flat disagree with your call of the air is going to vote even today and they are campaigning on it and winning in arizona. Because of that the normal both sides public and say this and democrats say that is actually a way to allow people who are wrong. Liberal in the classical sense who are wrong about the truth and who have authoritarian aims giving them equal weight to the side of truth, what is your response to that is in the port as an approach . Guest his work on economics ive gotten a lot from. He wrote a newsletter for the New York Times in a row one after the Dobbs Decision overturning roe vs. Wade and he said the Supreme Court is out of hand. The Supreme Court is superseding the appropriate role of congress and the Supreme Court and i had to laugh because it was like nag you know its been with conservative stuff in the previous 50 years but a lot of whats going on around the things that you describe is again is true that the authoritarian bent inside the Republican Party is very intense the yearning for a strong man or authoritarianism among many disconcertingly large numbers of republicans is something that should be concerning to everybody. Theres that piece and its true but i think part of the problem in the media world the existence of this i dont think most conservatives and here im talking about these authoritarian yearnings, people of the mainstream traditional Ronald Reagan friday conservatism in america. Those people dont think, those people tho t was authoritarian for those people thought the left and still do think progressivism is authoritarian and crushing the hopes and dreams of humanity and its a socialist the third authoritarian state. They believe that the people on the left in the Dystopian Nightmare that they have been warning for a long time, take for example who would have had on their bingo card venerating the cheney family. Who would have said you know liberals are really going to dig the cheneys. They want to put the cheneys in prison. What are you talking about. Because donald trump represents what many liberals or many progressives 20 or 15 years ago thought was under neoconservatism or whatever else i think we have category errors that are going on people thinking about how this stuff works. You have a quote near the end of the book saying the percentage of News Coverage that is explicitly or implicitly political is so unhelpful in large part because it creates a false impression that politics itself is a worthwhile passion. Take it from a man who has devoted his professional life to politics and elections, it is not. This is hostage Suicide Attempt . Guest political coverage is awesome. Its great. Im supposed to be the weatherman. Im not supposed to be believed except for when its election time. Im supposed to be like lets check in with chris and see what stuff is going on in the world of politics. Thats good. What do the polls say and what is all that stuff and thats fine. What has happened over the past 20 years is politics a shortcut to strong emotional connection. Politics is the shortest way especially in the national media. Partisanship of the intense toxic negative partisanship we are experiencing in America Today is theres not enough National News that affects all americans to talk about all day. There just isnt. If you live and think about how much of the National News narrative is about dragging or not picking. If youre conservative and you live in alabama or lets say florida you are conservative or republican and you live in florida you are being told about story hour taking place in Washington State as far away from you as possible. It has no consequence on your Childs School but it can be a big, big story. If you live in Washington State you could hear endlessly about ron desantis what they called the dont say bill in florida. It well have more effect on your life and it doesnt affect your kids or their education but you can hear about in the outraged about it if you wanted if you choose and news providers who are trying to provide too much National News, a big part of all of this is local should come first. We should think about news in concentric circles and there just isnt that much National News that a person needs to consume in a day and Politics News is one of the only places where National News outlets know they can reliable reliably go where it will have meaning and relevance across the country and also by the way its. Its real in the thing and tv news is talk is it is expensive to send crews to interview people and get their story. Investigative journalism is really hard to cause most of the leads dont deliver a blockbuster stories that you want. Its expensive and timeconsuming and hard to do well to gain a top notch people to do it. You know what is not hard . To in the studio and have them yaketyyak to other. You are to have the crew so why not do that . Theres so much of what is on tv and its version on line is just that. That is a low nutritive quality food. That is junk food compared to what we should be doing. Host do you talk a lot in the book about half of it is aimed towards the media itself and that is aimed at the consumer. Theres a demandside problem or issue here as well which often does not give fully explored. Can you talk about what are the mechanics and why did we get to this National Versus local conception of politics deliberative political coverage and covering policies as politics . I will get these numbers a little wrong. Just to give you the idea the newspaper industry did not reach peak profits until 2005. And by the way interestingly viewership for television on average for american households we heard a lot about Court Cutting and all of that it didnt hit its peak until 2011 at nine hours a day. Anyway those industries were really making tons of money in the beginning of the 21st century and when the newspaper industry started to collapse in 2005 it felt totally apart. Something like 50 billion, 55 billion in lost revenue. It was a 90 declined. If you look at the chart you just see ad revenue for newspapers is doubling every 10 or 15 years going back to the war that this was working. It fell off the cliff not because of social media. Fell off the cliff because there is great survey research on this or Market Research on this. Do you remember what is the name where you can post something you are trying to sell, craigslist. They documented when craigslist came to town newspapers took a beating. They were living off of classified ads and the newspaper industry was badly overleveraged because you could always borrow money to buy a newspaper because newspapers are making no 30 profits. Profits in the low 20 range were expected. You had all of the conglomeration and all of th