Since we launched this show, back in September, we've had a bunch of responses and tips and ideas rolling in from listeners. 

To prove that we do read these, and welcome them, and sometimes use them to direct the thinking of the show – and also to prove that I’m a masochist (see also episode one of Question Everything) – I’m going to share with you here a takedown of our work that helped inspire our most recent episode – And The Award Goes To…The Circuit Court Of The Nineteenth Judicial Circuit In and For Okeechobee County, Florida.  

This criticism came in as a review on Apple podcasts. It’s mostly in response to the first episode we aired after the presidential election – the one where we told the story of the prep we did for an interview with Donald Trump that never ended up happening. 

In that episode, one of our contributors compiled a master list of all the insults and threats Trump has made against the media since 2015. And then right after the election, that contributor and I had a conversation with a friend of his, a Trump voter named Chaz Polson, who thought we were overreacting. Chaz basically made the argument that Trump was right to be mad at the press, and the public is right to distrust us, because we've treated Trump unfairly.

After the episode aired, a listener named Jaime68356702 went to our feed and wrote this:

I was excited about the premise for this show and I really enjoyed the first episode, which came across to me as a genuine self-reflection on the ethics of profile pieces (I loved S-town, and also felt at times, a little uncomfortable listening to it for the reasons that were discussed). Unfortunately, I've found the episodes since to be pretty disappointing. The show positions itself as an exercise in critical self-reflection aimed at regaining public trust, but if anything, I have found it to be merely a defense of the very kind of journalism that has eroded the trust of the American people.

The Trump episode was particularly infuriating. Without descending into a political rant, l'll say simply that I am absolutely no fan of Trump (to put it mildly). However, there is no question that the media (and not just cable news pundits) have only ever been interested in portraying him in the worst possible light. Reed begins the episode by saying his primary purpose for wanting  to interview Trump is to find out what he'll do to journalists if elected. In other words, his starting point is, "Trump is the enemy of journalists - how bad will he make it for us?" On a personal level, I understand the concern. But as a journalist who ostensibly wants to communicate with the largest swath of the American public possible, starting from a deeply biased position is not helpful, to say the least. What about asking Trump what his experience with the media has been? Why does he feel so attacked? Why does he think his own rhetoric has evolved in a more radical way over time? Does he value journalism at all at this point? Does he think it's possible to do good journalism?

These are the types of questions a good journalist asks - ones that are focused on genuinely trying to understand their subject, not the impact of their subject on them. The rest of the episode is Brian and his research assistant trying to convince a Trump supporting friend that he's missing something - they see the truth, but he's overlooking it. Again, not good journalism (or journalism at all?).

They might have done their own research into how journalists have represented Trump since 2015 and recognized that their constant criticism is at least partly to blame for the fact that the public has become numb or unfazed by Trump's serious actions because they can no longer decipher it among all the noise. I hope that the show reconsiders what it's doing while on break and directs its focus toward genuine introspection and consideration of trust building with the American public.

Well don't be afraid to say what you really think, Jaime68356702. 

So, my first, kneejerk reaction after reading this? It was: Come on! We weren’t trying to convince Chaz that only we see the truth! We heard Chaz out, and we asked him to hear us out, and he graciously did. There are wildly different views about Trump and the press in this country and we were trying to offer a conversation you don’t hear often – with people from different sides of the argument discussing our different views civilly. Chaz told us he appreciated the episode and thought we treated him fairly. Also, why would I ask Trump open-ended questions about his feelings about the press? There’s copious evidence of how he feels about us (see above: master list of his statements.)

Then I calmed my body down a bit, as I often say to my 4-year-old. Read it again. And saw in it a critique that I think is valid. This part: “They might have done their own research into how journalists have represented Trump since 2015 and recognized that their constant criticism is at least partly to blame for the fact that the public has become numb or unfazed by Trump's serious actions because they can no longer decipher it among all the noise.”

This…this resonates with a lot of the frustration I’ve heard about the press in the last 10 years. And I thought it was fair to say that in the show so far, we hadn’t really tackled that head on.

Reading this critique reminded me of an interaction I had with Mike Pesca in the fall, when I went on his show The Gist. He was making a related point, about how when the quote-unquote “mainstream press” (I hate this term, because it’s imprecise – Fox News is mainstream; Rogan is mainstream – but resorting to it in a lazy moment here) gets a big story wrong, the correction, if there is one, rarely matches the offense.  

From Mike: “It's just been shocking to me over the years, the things that the media got wrong and reckons with in a kind of very, ‘Well…we won't not acknowledge it…’; but the ratio of the acknowledgement and the grappling versus the tonnage of reporting the first time is a gigantic ratio.”

Then Mike and I started talking about Russiagate, as an example, and he asked if I’d read the massive four-part Russiagate post-mortem that the veteran reporter Jeff Gerth wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review. I hadn’t. But after the interview, I did. It took the better part of a week – it truly is massive – but I did find it engaging, and compelling. I had blocked a lot of that stuff out, I think, the Russiagate stuff, and revisiting it, on the verge of a second Trump administration, made me think about what lessons journalists could take from the first go around.

That’s something I wanted to figure out a way to tackle on the show. I pitched our team on interviewing Jeff Gerth, and did reach out to him, but honestly we worried about a story where the lead was “Hey folks, let’s revisit Russiagate!” Not the most enticing way in.

Then…I read Ben Smith’s take on the Pulitzer board lawsuit. And I thought: that’s the way to do it. Something strange, that’s happening right now, with big stakes, that gets into these questions that Chaz, and Pesca, and Jaime68356702 are pointing at. 

Hence: the genesis of this week’s episode. Which is about a strange legal case against... an award. Check it out if you haven't. And Jaime68356702, if you're reading this, let us know what you think.

Brian

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