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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation," from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, how the media flunked its big moment of reckoning, and how it should change to better serve the public.
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Basu, Narrating: Americans' trust in media has dwindled to an all-time low. Back in the '70s, around 72% of Americans said they had a good or great amount of trust in the press. Last year, a study by the Reuters Institute found that only 29% of Americans say they trust the news most of the time.
Margaret Sullivan: People will often say, Just gimme the facts. Leave your opinion out of it. I just want the plain old facts.
Basu, Narrating: Margaret Sullivan is a longtime media critic.
Sullivan: I get it. I get why people say that. They're very tired of what they see as biased media. The problem is, every story, every broadcast, every photograph, there are choices behind that.
Basu, Narrating: She's spent her whole career analyzing and criticizing the choices that journalists make. She started at her local paper, the "Buffalo Evening News." She went on to become "The New York Times'" public editor, a sort of internal watchdog role where she wrote critically about the "Times'" editorial process.
Sullivan: So, very weird job. It's kind of like being in internal affairs in the police department, or kind of like being the inspector general of a federal agency.
Basu, Narrating: Earlier this year, she retired her media criticism column at "The Washington Post," and now she's out with a new book called "Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life."
The truth is, Margaret told me, she is worried. About bad media moves that eat away at trust, about the political climate, about democracy. But she's also got some ideas for how journalism can reorient itself to respond to the times.
Sullivan: Now I refer to myself as an author and pro-democracy media critic. I see media criticism through the lens now, more than ever before, of doing things that serve the American public and the democracy.
Basu, Narrating: We started our conversation by talking about her time at "The Washington Post," she started there in 2016, and what it was like to be a media critic during a big journalistic moment of reckoning.
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Sullivan: I really wrote about two major things when I was the media columnist. One was Trump, and what I increasingly saw as the press's failures to cover Trump adequately. And secondarily, and this is a separate topic, but I was also writing about the decline of local newspapers, which was a subject near to my heart. So, you know, I wrote about a lot of different things, not just those two subjects, but I would say those were sort of the dominant strains.
Basu: Yeah. So, let's stop on that first topic for a little longer: failures of the press. And we'll talk about the failings of the mainstream media in just a moment, but I thought maybe we could start here. In your book you write, if you had to sum up in two words how we got here, the two words you would choose are "Fox News." Tell us more about why you chose those words.
Sullivan: Well, Fox News, which is such a dominant news organiza-- Well, I mean-- I hesitate, honestly, to call it a news organization. I'll call it a media organization.
Basu: Yeah. Why's that?
Sullivan: Well, because I don't think… In many ways, I don't think it's a traditional or even acceptable news organization, and during the Trump administration, it really became almost an arm of the administration. Sean Hannity, the prime-time host at Fox, practically was-- I mean, really was a Trump advisor. And that's not a role for anyone who considers himself a journalist.
Basu: Right. I mean, he appeared on stage at rallies with the president, right?
Sullivan: He did. He did. He did. And even though Fox gave him a little bit of a tap on the wrist about that, nothing substantial. And Tucker Carlson, I find him to be a vile force in the media sphere, and I'm far from alone in thinking so. For example, the people who showed up on Jan. 6 and tried to overturn the results of a legitimate election, many, if not most of them, had been immersed in the Fox media world. Maybe not just by Fox, but by other right-wing media organizations, Newsmax, One America, but all certainly led by Fox, and Fox is the dominant media organization. So, it's a place that people have had their minds changed in a way that I don't think is tethered to reality often.
Basu: So what's been the impact of Fox News on some of the mainstream media organizations? You call them in your book "reality-based media." What is the effect of having something like a Fox News posturing itself in the media landscape?
Sullivan: Well, something that happens in mainstream media, in many cases, they react to the dominant force of Fox News by edging over to the right. They are put on the defensive, and so they kind of slide the Overton window over to the right. And so there's this sort of idea that, Oh, the mainstream media is so liberal. I don't think that's the case in general.
Sullivan: I mean, there are certainly plenty of liberal people at news organizations, but in general I think they're trying to be more centrist and often end up being kind of center-right. So the impact of Fox News is that because it owns that space way over to the right, and often will attack the mainstream media and say "Look how biased they are. They're so liberal!" "Isn't this terrible?" "These are all the DNC's talking points that they're spouting." And it's really important to reality-based journalists to be seen as fair. It's really important. That's a high value. They wanna be seen as neutral, they wanna be seen as impartial and fair. Well, those are, in general, good impulses. So when they're being attacked from the right, they seem to sort of ask themselves, Well, is that right? Am I doing those things? Or, at least, I don't wanna be accused of doing those things, so let me adjust myself and come over to the right. But what I don't think they realize or sometimes don't realize is there's no satisfying the folks on the far-right. It's not as if they're ever gonna say, That's good. You moved over to the right. Thank you so much. And now we're good. It's always more, more, more. And it's never enough. So that's sort of the dynamic that's been taking place. And it's very, very troubling.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the criticisms that you have of a lot of mainstream media is an unwillingness or reluctance to admit mistakes and to admit fault in the way that they go about doing things. And of course there's-- that reluctance is there because they don't wanna undermine themselves, right, and undermine their own sense of fairness or balance. So it's a bit of a catch-22. Can you talk a little bit about how to break out of that cycle? Cause it's a-- it's tricky one.
Sullivan: Well, you described the cycle very well. There's a kind of a circling of the wagons: if we admit fault, aren't we then opening ourselves up to criticism? And in fact they are, because the minute, let's say "The New York Times," says "We got this wrong," well, the right-wing media and right-wing politicians will have a field day with that. So, news organizations that are good and valid do admit fault, they do make corrections, they do see their errors, and they do admit them, but there's a backlash. And so you don't do it blithely, and you kind of hesitate, I think. So, how to get beyond that? I think really one way to get beyond it is to have an ombudsman or a public editor, the way many news organizations did. "The Washington Post" had one, NPR actually still does have one, "The New York Times" had one. A lot of big news organizations had someone who readers or listeners could appeal to, could say, I feel very upset about this, and I'm not getting any response. What can you do? And that person could at least be a sounding board, and then if the complaints rose to the right level, could take those complaints to the decision makers and ask them to explain themselves. And so there was this kind of forced transparency, which was a positive thing. Having said that, I don't think those positions are coming back anytime soon and maybe ever.
Basu: I was hoping maybe I could ask you to talk about an example of a specific failing that you saw unfold across mainstream media. There's a few examples to choose from. I'm thinking of the Steele dossier, I'm thinking of the Mueller report. You described these as instances where the media's actions, choices made at some of these big legacy media organizations, harmed the public's trust and public's faith in it. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you saw as the big problems there.
Sullivan: Well, let's take the Mueller report. The Mueller report-- Everyone should remember that there was this huge amount of anticipation about what it was gonna do. Oh, it was gonna take Trump down, and it was gonna be… it's Mueller time.
Basu: There were countdowns on TV networks.
Sullivan: There were countdowns, people were on Twitter with their little cannon emoji, and it was all kinds of "Oh, we can't wait!" So then Robert Mueller, very reserved, very understated person, and totally by-the-book kind of guy, comes out with his report. Now, did it exonerate Trump? It did not. It did not. But the way that it was managed and played was that then-Attorney General Bill Barr issued a letter, the Barr letter, and in it he essentially characterized the report as-- He downplayed its findings and he characterized it in a way that strongly suggested there was not much here. Nothing to worry about. And then of course his boss, Donald Trump, took that and he claimed that it totally exonerated him. And the press, to varying degrees, largely fell for what Barr said. He was the Attorney General, they quoted him, they ran headlines that characterized the report the way he characterized it. And it wasn't accurate. And so while the report itself probably fell short of what many Trump opponents or liberals, progressives, would've liked, it was pretty tough. And so the way the public in general, unless they were very careful readers and people who were deep into the weeds on this, they tended to say, Well, there wasn't much there, and that wasn't the case. And a lot of that was the press's fault.
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Basu, Narrating: So far, Margaret has laid out two common mainstream media mistakes: an unwillingness to admit when they get things wrong, and the journalist acting as stenographer, taking someone's comments at face value without much scrutiny or context.
Here's a third common media mistake — getting tripped up by false objectivity. Sullivan has a whole chapter in her book about how objectivity is a perfectly good goal for journalism, but there's a debate in the journalism world right now about what objectivity really is and how to achieve it.
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Sullivan: If you ask most members of the public, they totally want the press to be objective. And they understand it in a sort of more traditional way, which is, and I think this is right, that you approach a story with an open mind, that you're not on anybody's political team, that you weigh the evidence, that you let the evidence and the facts drive your reporting, just as you would want a judge or a police officer to view your case. You want somebody who's gonna leave their own baggage behind. The problem is that objectivity has come to be seen as-- Well, for one thing, many younger journalists who may be journalists of color, maybe women, will say, Oh, yeah? Well, whose objectivity is that exactly? Whose sort of foundation are we standing on, and isn't it a bunch of old white guys who have run media organizations forever? We don't like that. So the word gets very caught up in that, and as a result… I mean, again, I believe in the ideas behind traditional objectivity: the fair-mindedness, the evidence-based, the open-mindedness with which you go after your reporting. I do not believe in both-sides-ing things, and what I mean by that is, you know, "Many people believe that the climate change is caused by human behavior, and many people reject that idea, so let's take it down the middle." Well, there's a truth there, and the truth is that it is deeply affected by human behavior. So to both-sides that question puts the wrong idea out there. It's not fair.
Basu: The famous example being one person says it's raining outside, one person says it isn't. Your job as a journalist isn't to say…
Sullivan: Yeah, "We're equal." In fact, your job as a journalist is to walk outside and see what's up. Is it raining?
Basu: Literally. Yeah. Yeah.
Sullivan: That's right. I think one of the ways I try to deal with this objectivity question is to talk about it in different terms, because the word is so fraught that you get into an argument about it right away. So I like to talk about accuracy and fairness and facts and evidence, and I think that those are less emotionally fraught, and therefore a little bit easier to hold up as ideals.
Basu: Yeah, yeah. I often think about Christiane Amanpour's sort of motto, right, "Be truthful, not neutral."
Sullivan: I like that.
Basu: And the thing is, there are so many value judgments that need to be made on the journey to truth.
Sullivan: Absolutely.
Basu: Right? You have to decide, right? Am I gonna take someone at face value? Am I needing to look into the subtext? Should I look at their track record and take that into account?
Sullivan: Right. People will often say "Just gimme the facts." The problem is, every story, every broadcast, every photograph, there are choices behind that, and the inside-journalism word for that is "framing." Like, how are we going to frame this discussion? How are we going to frame the coverage about the Mueller report? Are we gonna take the attorney general at his word and put his language in the headline, or are we going to take a step back from that and bring some skepticism to it, and bring some facts to it? So, this business of "just the facts" is hard to accomplish because every piece of journalism has choices involved in it.
Basu: Yeah. How would you suggest… People who consume the news, how should they think about framing that's happening at different media organizations?
Sullivan: Well, I think one thing that people can and should do is to do a little bit of comparing and contrasting, so don't just have one news organization or one form of media that you depend upon. I taught a class at Duke called "The News as a Moral Battleground," which-- it might be the greatest title of a media ethics class ever. And I asked my students at the top of the class, "What's your news source?" And many of them said "The New York Times," "The New York Times," "The New York Times." And I thought, Wow, that's really interesting. Well, when I dug a little deeper, what I found out was that they all listened to "The Daily," and that was actually, in some cases, their only form of news on a particular day.
Basu: Oh, interesting.
Basu: Which is out of "The New York Times."
Sullivan: It is out of "The New York Times," but it's hardly everything. And it's useful-- I think it's an absolutely a useful part of a media diet, but I'm suggesting that there be a balanced diet. I don't mean balance, like, Oh, let me make sure I read the "Daily Mail" as well as "The Washington Post," but rather that when you see a story, a big story, an important story, don't take it at face value. Stop, and think "I'm gonna check this out just a little bit." And yes, it does require a kind of a curiosity, it does require maybe a little bit more time, but to say "I wonder how different places are covering this?" and just to do a tiny, tiny Google search to see how it's playing in different places. In journalism, we have this expression that "you should report against your own biases." In other words, if you think that something is the case, make sure you do the reporting that will challenge that. And I think that news consumers could do a little bit of that, too.
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Basu, Narrating: Margaret says there are some journalists and outlets that are doing great work and handling this moment really well, and she makes a point to shout them out in her book. One journalist she names specifically is CNN's Jake Tapper.
Sullivan: Jake, on his Sunday show "State of the Union," simply wasn't having the election denialists come on. That was a strong statement.
She says some of the big newspapers like the "Post" and the "Times" have dedicated special coverage to democracy.
Sullivan: They're doing some really good reporting about what's happening at the state level, what's happening in Congress, that could end up really hurting the idea of free and fair elections in the future.
And she appreciated the way that some TV networks started to provide more context and transparency during Trump's term.
Sullivan: "Here's why we're not taking this COVID briefing, which is full of lies, live." Well, we're not taking it live because we want to have a few minutes to fact check it and put it in context before we take the bunch of lies that can harm people's lives and put it out there for everyone to say, "Oh, wow! That must be true because it's on the air."
Basu, Narrating: In spite of some of these positive examples, there's still a lot of room for improvement. I asked Margaret what does she want to see media organizations do differently, especially as we head into the midterms, but also beyond that?
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Sullivan: I would really like the top leaders of news organizations to reframe their thinking something like this-- I mean, it sounds so basic, it's almost laughable… "How can we best serve democracy and serve the American public?" Not "How can we get the most traction on this story?" "How can we attract the biggest audience?" "How can we convert readers to subscribers?"
Sullivan: I mean, those are the questions that tend to be at the top of mind. They're important! These are for-profit news organizations that need to stay in the black. But what actually has to be done to serve the public? And I think it's a sort of a… it's a mindset change. Can both of these things happen at the same time? Yes, they can. So they're not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would argue that many, many members of the public want straight-ahead news coverage that tells it like it is, and that they will seek out quality journalism and they will pay for it, too. So I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. But it's hard. It's hard when somebody is throwing claims of left-wing bias at you, which is what right-wing politicians and their media allies are very, very skilled at and relentless about. And so you have to kind of stand up to that and say, Well, it's not our top priority to defend ourselves against these claims. It's our top priority to put out the best information that serves the public.
Basu: Well, to your point about traction and clicks, I think what's difficult is that there's this… it feels like there is this disconnect between what people say they want their news to be like, right, they want it straightforward and just the facts and no opinion, and then what they actually seem to respond to the most, right? So, what are media organizations supposed to do with that?
Sullivan: That's right. That's right.
Sullivan: Well, one thing they can do is-- You know, there's no law that says there can only be factual reporting, or there can only be opinion writing or opinion journalism, whether it's writing or broadcasting, whatever it may be. These things can both live in the same news organization. It's really important to label them and to let people know what it is they're reading, especially at a time when everything is so disaggregated. It's all coming at us on our phones, it's coming at us through our social media feeds, so "What is this thing I'm reading? Is it an editorial? Is it a column? What does that mean?" I found it really helpful-- It was really shockingly helpful when a couple of years into my time writing a column, which was an opinion piece at "The Washington Post," when the "Post" started labeling things. They would label my column "perspective." So once that happened, I no longer was getting emails from people saying, I think it's just terrible that you're so biased and you put your opinion into things, because I would often write back to them and say, Um, actually hi-- Hello, I'm a columnist and my job is…
Basu: That is my job.
Sullivan: Yeah, it's my job to write… to include opinion in my work. And when I would do that, I would sometimes hear back from people who would say, I see, thank you.
Basu: Well, a lot of the practices you're describing right now would be considered media literacy, right? And that's one of the solutions, the way that you lay it out in your book, is promoting media literacy. So, what does that look like to you, practically speaking?
Sullivan: Well, some of it can be done in the classroom. Having said that, the classroom has become a very fraught place, too, so saying "Let's do it in the classroom" comes with its own set of challenges. But-- And it's not just children or young people who need to learn this stuff. I think there could be an industrywide ad campaign or sort of get together and try to put out some information in the form of ads or in the form of public service announcements, whatever it may be, that helps people think through this stuff. Because it's a morass. There's so much information out there, so much of it is wrong, and we really need to have kind of a foundation of truth in order to function as citizens who go to the voting booth and know what to do because they've learned about it in some way that makes sense.
Basu: Right. Right! That's so interesting, that idea. I mean, what would a public service campaign look like if it were led by media organizations?
Sullivan: I mean, I don't know the answer to that, and I think it's worth exploring. There are organizations, there's the National Press Club, there's the White House Correspondence Association, there's the Society for Ethics and Journalism. These kinds of places could put their heads together and say, you know, What would be helpful? What could we do that might cause people to stop and think? Maybe it's something that urges people to stop before they share. That's kind of simple. It's kind of like when you're driving and you see the signs that say "Texting is dangerous" or…
Basu: "Click it or ticket."
Sullivan: It can wait five minutes. Is it practical? Would it be attacked by the right? Absolutely. And would that end up being more trouble than it's worth? I mean, possibly. Would Tucker Carlson take off on it on his show? Yes. But I don't think we can just sort of say, well… "Oh, well, there's nothing we can do about this."
Basu: Yeah. I don't mean to suggest you've exited journalism, but you have ended a chapter of your journalistic career. Why did you decide to end now? To stop writing the column, I should say.
Sullivan: Yes.
Sullivan: I don't expect to ever stop being a journalist, I think it's probably in my blood too much for that. But the column at the "Post," a media column, I wrote it essentially twice a week for six years and I felt like it had kind of run its course. I leave places eventually. I left "Times" when they wanted me to stay on. I could have stayed as editor of "The Buffalo News" for a longer time. I guess I just wanted to do some different things and to expand my horizons. The idea of going through another cycle of Trump running for president… You know, for one thing, there's a lot of online harassment. I've experienced a lot of it myself. It's pretty brutal out there. And I didn't have to, you know? And I do have a message, but I felt like I could get that message across in some new ways.
Basu: Yeah. What's the underlying message that you're now carrying forward?
Sullivan: That we need journalism to be at its best, that it's extremely important, that journalists need to do their job of serving the public above all, and that our democracy is on the brink. Journalism can have a key role in making sure it doesn't tip over, and we better do that.
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Basu: Margaret Sullivan, thank you so much for your time.
Sullivan: Thank you very much for having me. This was a great conversation.
Basu, Narrating: You can read Margaret Sullivan's book, out now, called "Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life" on Apple Books. You can find a link on our show notes page.
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