Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Of The Nation 20240622

Record of the nation during the andod of Victor Navasky from the current period when katrina vanden heuvel is the editor and leader of the nation. It is a great privilege, to have the records of a journal of opinion. The strength of our democracy believe rests on the survival of opinion, and the opportunity for the expression of those opinions. To be in a position, to protect forever this material is a great privilege. We now have the opportunity to learn some of the back story, magazine, so writing its 150th anniversary. I promised victor that i would start by asking how the heck he ended up coming to the nation. Victor thank you. Edgarscame from funeral. He played a role that is not publicly known. Was thedgar when he editorinchief and then publisher of dial press where he i see in the audience marvin, he would go to he wouldd say put his manuscript on the desk. Edgar was working on what became the book of daniel, a great novel. I knew edgar from those days. We collaborated on a number of projects, one of which we can talk about later. That thecame evident nation was up for sale, i spoke to hamilton, who lie at from the ramsey clark campaign. He was a fundraiser and everyone took his phone calls because one would jam fish be working for ramsey clark. He was a great fundraiser. When the story appeared, a great documentary filmmaker made this, he was fired from his new film. Called him up. He was fired three British Company and it was supposed to be a onehour film and by the time they got to the third hour the company said enough already. Called and said if i can raise the money will you continue making your movie. It did very well. When the nation was up for sale he ought to do for them hat they did for marcil opels. I grew up in a household that got the nation and the new republic. I was working on a book and i had to read through all of the magazines of the mccarthy years and i came to admire the nation more than any other for his coverage of those years. I said do you want to do that . And he met with the owner and he came back and said i will agree to do that on one condition. You agree to be the editor. Well, i left the New York Times to write this book. Let me think about it. I had a wife and two children at that point. He said suppose i pay you whatever the near times is paying you, suppose you have a total editorial control, suppose you tell me how much money i have to raise for the magazine to survive. And you dont have to start until you finish your book. If you meet all those conditions, how can i say no . In the end i had to do as much fun raising as hamm did and it took longer. To raise money i made one called to my friend, ed doctorow. Nations a fan of the and edgar was [indiscernible] he wrote a check for 10,000, Walking Around money so hamilton could raise money while he was spending edgars 10,000. That was important. In the middle of that situation the publisher didnt want to. Ive us an option to buy it it was for sale for 150,000. We needed 1 million to go into business because it was losing a certain amount of money every year. Ifold him, it it is useless you dont have an option because who knows what will happen. Edgar came to a meeting with ralph nader and a man named [indiscernible] who is a wonderful guy. Option,d us, to get the they spoke eloquently with edgar leading the way on why he ought to give the option and how, etc. , etc. They had a funeral this morning for the family. I blame edgar for the next 20 years of my life. He was responsible as anyone else for my getting there. I came to the nation when it finally, the funding was in place, and we got the opportunity to go there, i had not finished naming names. I spent too much time raising money. I was pleased to start at the , and it was 1978 the ideal job for me. I had been working at the New York Times as an editor. My inclination was to sit at the desk at times when my boss up behind me when i had an idea, to turn around, and felt the first iy i got to the nation turned around and there was my reflection in the window. Timothy naftali were unite timothy for your nice to yourself . I realized it was on my shoulders. Of ourthe great aspects Intern Program is sitting to my left. The rest is history. Timothy what was it like working for him . Katrina to pick up on what victor said, i grew up in a different family. Vital figure. A he cared deeply about political values. I came to the nation in college because i traveled to the soviet union in 1978 and i was always interested in why americans, those who had been disillusioned or found hope in repressediment were ,r subjected to marginalization to committee hearings, to the in this country predicted a course about politics in the press run by clark. R and, i did my papers on press, on ain the journalist known for clearing people. On how ordinary people suffered during the mccarthy. Period. I found the publication that never capitulated to the conventional pressures of the time. Where clark said go in turnout go be an intern at the nation. It was my journalistic boot camp. It was my political education in many ways. I did have great professors challenge conventional orthodoxy dervish andirling Christopher Hitchens who had just come on an exchange program. M. D you cal and i had theuch fortune to work with amy willens. I will never forget, she mar ched into victors office and said the lead editorial is going to be john lennon. We all thought victor thought of another linen. John lennon has been killed. Things, it was a Different Program than victor can speak to this. People have come to this. , nicholas clegg. Emotion has put into the american and other journalistic systems 800 extraordinary journalists, activists over the time. Work was to of my editor of thereat nation, Terry Mcwilliams, the only editor west of the hudson from california in 1952 and never went back. I spent half the day every weekday at Terry Mcwilliams apartment, never met him, got to know his widow, and learned about the Nation History through that. Timothy it is 1978. Jimmy carter is president. Nation what role is it playing in the american left . Victor it is hard to say. Aople would talk about stereotypical image when they talk about the nation. It was a place where you could have a debate. The debate would not be between the democrats and the republicans. It would be between the radicals and the liberals. The libertarians eventually joined the debate. Nation was one of the few places you could have the debate. Its influence on american politics or World Politics is hard to document. To me it takes place over time. You said you wanted to talk about the iran contra thing. The nation invited the Great British social historian ep thompson to write for us and we published his version of his British Nuclear Disarmament Movement but also it may the social case for Nuclear Disarmament and explained all of the ramifications. I personally believe the iran partlydeal going on is the result of ep thompsons writings, and that is the result of the nation discussion that kerry,people like john and hillary grew up being exposed to the ideas in the nation whether they subscribe to them and not. Who came toeone the nation when victor was editor and i had the fortune to work with jonathan, a decade before president obama called for the abolition of Nuclear Weapons. Jonathan wrote about the case for abolition. It takes time. The role of the journal of opinion is to see those ideas. It may take a decade, 15 years, 20 years. One of the values is you stand for values and ideas which may seem heretical. I use the word carefully. A decade may seem more in the mainstream. Abolition of Nuclear Weapons is wasl but president obama influenced by the Nuclear Freeze movement which began with an editorial in the nation in 1980 reporting on the freeze movement, a year and a half later there were Million People in central park for one of the marches ininuclear the world. Victor the nation had its own contention in the march. Katrina we are people of values and principles, but there is the question of i feel it now because there is a movement movement. We are not activists. We are thinkers, journalists, writers. That is something in the same way the debate isnt just between republicans and democrats. The nation has a special time recovering how to cover movements in the way the Mainstream Press does not. To go inyou dont have Chronological Order but talk about the challenge of covering occupy. Let me step back and say in 2008 the nation decided to do an issue on the new inequality. We thought the inequality was going to lead to at best protests, at worst violence, and this came out you could tomorrow. T the nation wrote an editorial castigating the repeal of glasssteagall, which key people are calling for the reinstatement of. Three years later, occupy emerged. I felt with occupy that because and victor may speak to this. Because Terry Mcwilliams published 68 editorials opposing the vietnam war, published bernard fall calling for a 54. Tiated end to vietnam in he didnt capture the countercultural protest in the streets. I thought when occupy iraq did it was key to send a couple of young reporters down there to embed, at occupied. Nd report give a sense of the voices, the lee, politically in the beds and streets, and the confrontation with cops, which precedes what were seeing. T wasnt as an activist there was coverage and a debate over whether this was a movement. What kind of movement was it . It didnt have concrete demands and concrete leaders. We continued this debate. My husband and i interviewed Edward Snowden had a discussion with him where my husband who isnt here, stephen cullen, he said occupy what did it lead to . They zig and zag. They dont have outcomes you predict in the beginning. My favorite sentence for the launching of a magazine of all time is the first sentence on the first page of the first issue of the nation magazine, 1865, a sentence which ive committed to memory, and the cover hangs in our Conference Room to this day. It is as follows the week was singularly barren of exciting events. [laughter] sentencen i love that would teena brown have had the courage to publish that . Ntence the reason i love that sentence is what it really says is not singlyat the week was barren of exciting events, it says that we are not going to play the game of false sensationalism. We are not going to hype stories that do not deserve it. You can trust us. We are going to tell the truth. Were not going to do what the New York Times would do in on , theresd paragraph another opinion that the week was not that barren of exciting events. That sentence today was one half donation stood for. The other half is what katrina has been talking about with reference to occupy in part, that the nation inherited 5000 garrisonrs from oswald excuse me, from William Lloyd garrison magazine in favor of abolition, and his favorite sentence was, i will not excuse, i will not compromise, i will not retreat a single inch. You put those sentences together, the idealism and the willingness to fight all by yourself on behalf of the ideals that you believe to be right, and a journalism of trust, and youve got something that at its best, it seems to me, is what the nation helps incarnate. Journalists opinion writ large all attempt to do that, but i , which hasation been in business longer than any of them, for good reason, does it as well as it has been done. Mr. Naftali how did you strike the balance . Ask katrina that question, too, but ill tell you in my case, it probably was unbalanced, and it depended on which week. When you get a great investigative story where you can reveal something that no one , you go published on with it, and you devote your resources to it. On the other hand, when you have opinion journalists like , alex cockburn, and others, you give them space to have their say. They had shared values, but there was a great difference of opinion between our various ublemaking columnists and so, its a week by week balancing, and i have to say, now that katrina is running the show, you know, when people come to me and complain about something, i say, i have nothing to do with it. Its katrina running the magazine. On the other hand, when they praise the magazine, i take full credit for it. Ms. Heuvel i have one point behind my desk a famous line, cant we all get together . Fromed to get letters readers that you guys are all a circular firing squad squabbling. Theres a line between the debate. At one point, you had columnists writing 5000were denunciations 5000wordhers cap denunciations of each others cat. The old media order is disappearing and a new one is yet imaging. I say that because what is a magazine . The print remains our anchor, but you try to have pacing and different forms each week. You might have a 5000word investigative piece reporting on new forms of warfare, covert special ops before people even knew what that was, and out of , or yourged blackwater might have had a position of the iraq war, but in that opposition abolishinga case for Nuclear Weapons. Verynk the nation plays different roles. I think the important thing is when there is a consensus. I think one of the most important moments for me was in the runup to iraq, when the conventional wisdom was coercively brutal. We forget the liberal hawks, and there were very few who were opposing that more full throated late full throatedly. Is not a path to oppose government fulltime. Calledtion was unamerican, but again, as i say earlier, that opposition, which was considered heretical, 10 years later, everyone is saying iraq was a debacle. Part of that is that the nation for 150 years, if there is a consistent thread there are not fully consistent threads, but it is the belief that empire is toxic for democracy. In that belief, theres also the understanding that militarism is toxic and that you find. Lternatives to war were not a pacifist publication, but i think it was that animating principle that has animated editors through time. That was in our dna. Mr. Navasky the other part is that even when you have , one of thewriters things that the nation interns do is they fact check. Does not hide inconvenient facts, no matter how passionate the case it is making on whatever the subject is. It deals with them in a direct way, and it seems to me that is part of the journalistic nonopinion side even of opinion pieces. Mr. Naftali i was watching werenas face when you describing debates that occurred at the magazine. I wonder if we could talk about some of the people you have edited. Tell us a little bit about editing gore vidal skate gore editing goree but all posses editing gore vidals piece. Both of you had that opportunity. Me, avasky he was, to great writer and a lot of fun and a troublemaker. He agreed right away to join our board because he had a lot of inration for the nation years past. I had known him a little bit. In correspondence. I used to put out a satire magazine, and he was an admirer of it. So he agreed to join our board on the one hand. On the other hand, you could suggest assignments to him, but he also had his own things that he wanted to say. The first article he published was an article i forget what it was called, making thebasically argument that the jewish should besuit the supportive of gay rights, and he made it in a gore event all a Gore Vidalian way. He was a lot of fun to be with, but he was not someone who you somete or assigned to editor to say, we want you to put the beginning at the end or do end in the middle and things that editors do, often for purposes of clarification. The thing was that was one half because of his temperament, but it was one half because he was a superb writer and advocate for the things he believed in. He was terribly funny, and he , so youout words a lot stayed out of his way when you. Re editing him basically my experience was you said yes or no to what he wanted to do. You could say no and its not for us, but i like to say yes to gore vidal. Ms. Heuvel i was going to speak of someone else in the tradition of great writers and essayist contributing to the nation. Tony krishna, who are brought on to the editorial board. In 1994, he was so incensed by an Andrew Sullivan piece on the case for gay marriage because it was in a very patriarchal, capitalist, militaristic framework, and we talked about it, and he wanted to reply. I knew that, as victor has done brilliantly over the years, he wanted to put tony krishna together with not only a great editor thinker, and i put him together with andy comecon, who was really someone who came to the nation came to the nation with a sensibility and had not previously had. Piece tony finally produced called the socialism its an extraordinary piece about liberation and the project of liberation and also about the importance of utopia and the sight of utopian vision, even as it is grounded in today. Tony, in some ways, does not fully agree with that piece anymore, and thats fine. Many people in a different context are people who came to the nation of the left and turned to the right, but that is victor also brought Toni Morrison onto to the editorial board, so the tradition is one of having great essayists. Writer iky another will tell you a story about, what it was like to edit him, Christopher Hitchens, who was the supreme stylist. Christopher had his own differences, even before he left over what he decided was a political reason to leave. Because hishe left column was called minority report, and i encourage him to say even though he did not agree with much of what we were saying about the war in those days, it was a voice that it was worth hearing, it seemed to me. Anyway, christopher used to have on issuessagreements of abortion, feminism, this and that. To theher he came nation because i had written some i had read something she had written for the new statesman, and i invited him to write for us, and he sent us two or three pieces that we were publish. To they were brilliant and dealt with politics in Different Countries he was traveling to in europe and the middle east. , this person stuck his head in my door, and christopher had a deep voice, and it was Christopher Hitchens. Very beautiful to look at. He said one word, which was, drink . So we went out for a drink. In those days, the office was down the block from the lions head. When i say age rink, im understating christophers drink,y when i say a im understating christophers capacity. When i would have a drink, christopher would have two or three. When you would to lunch with him, after lunch where you might have two or three drinks to start, he would say he had to go and he would meet me back in the office, and that was code for stopping at the bar for another glass of wine on the way back. Some years started ago a fundraising crews, and various of our writers would come on it, and the first cruise christopher came on, the heing thing happened was on a panel at 8 00 or 9 00 in the morning, and he put a bottle of scotch down in front, and he said, let me begin with a question or joke, however he put it. Why is princess di, who was still alive at the point, like a landmine, or what do they have in common . Answer was they are both difficult to lay and expensive to remove. At which point, the audience started booing or laughing. A womans caucus was organized to protest, and the rest of the cruise dealt with how to deal with Christopher Hitchens. My advise to incoming interns with christopher was at the in Fact Checking christopher, you should give him your report before lunch because after lunch, he would not accept of what came in and you got your fact wrong here or there, but before lunch, he was reasonable and would listen to what they had to say. We saved a lot of aggravation that way. But christopher would go to lunch, have three tricks, come back and sit down at his typewriter and right dutiful editorial prose, not of word not a word of which had to be changed, but the facts of which had to be checked, so that is how you edited Christopher Hitchens. Recommend toi everybody history of the nation. Story at the back of the book, which is where you have your book reviews. There was a very harsh review of Jesse Jacksons book. You had an editorial in favor of Jesse Jackson in 1988. I think it says a lot about the character of the magazine and of the editor that this could happen. Could you tell us a little bit about it . It shows how you really did have sort of a marketplace of ideas. Mr. Navasky among other things, independent has an book review section. An hiring an editor for the back of the book, before i came here, i have to say i had lined up someone to be the editor, and then i met elizabeth, who was already there under blair clark, and i had a long talk with her and asked her for a memorandum of what she would advise for a successor because i told her i had someone i had already spoken to as possibly coming, and it was so brilliant that i told whoever was going to come in to forget about it, and betsy. Tayed but the deal was that when you have someone whose values and intelligence you trust, that basically, you dont interfere with what they are going to do. You feel free to give them suggestions. You talk over what comes in, and they will in the healthiest environment ask what you think about this or that and alert you to problems that are going to come down. But the understanding at the nation was always that the back of the book was independent, and this goes back to Terry Mcwilliams. During the height of the cold war and before that, the back of the book editor did not agree with what the front of the book editor was assigning and doing, so it had a history. Katrina, i dont know how its played out for you that way. I was going to drill down a little bit. An editor at large and at liberty living in moscow, but the reverberations were so deep that i could feel the waves in moscow, and i later learned tell me are wrong, victor, but that Jesse Jackson editorial, which was a very important editorial, an endorsement of Jesse Jackson in the new york state primary in april, 1988. That precipitated you know, i cannot say i mean, i think its a great thing, but it precipitated fistfights. There were almost fistfights inside the office because there was a real division on the Editorial Team. I will not name names. That is our mantra at the nation, but it did. Never really talked about how you resolve that because it was you know, you had tough people on both sides who were making the case, and then people weighing in. This is before it email. This is way before social media. You can imagine now, but people on the west coast and abroad were weighing in on which side the nation was going to take. Mr. Navasky to me, you dont resolve it. Of beautiful the beauty having a weekly magazine is you move onto the next week. That editorial is a very important statement, and somewhere, somehow, there was a resolution that the magazine was going to endorse Jesse Jackson and do it it was an endorsement of Jesse Jackson and the movement. The endorsement of the movement was the advanced way to resolve the question. There were questions about him personally. There was, it seemed to me, a consensus on the values that his movement stood for, and i tried to be as careful as possible in the language of the endorsement, that it was an endorsement of , but nevertheless, what you say is right. Just in terms of endorsements, the history of endorsements, the magazine is structured it had been making a profit five years under victor, two minutes under me. Anybody that wants to contribute, email me. Contact me at the nation contact me at the nation. Ralph nader, who wrote his first ifor the nation think one of the sick the best parts of the history was when he became divided. Half wanted to endorse ralph nader for president , and have felt that the history of third parties nationally was not a happy one. There had been a division over Henry Wallace with the magazine not enforcing Henry Wallace in the end. So it was people on the barricades. The resolution was we called it the molly ivins principal inside the office, which was if you lived in a state in which your Electoral College mattered, vote pragmatism. If your state Electoral College did not matter, vote your conscience. I dont know, somewhere in there the liberator founder is not finding the parity of the great idea. This was the consensus of the group that this was the principle that would be followed . Ms. Heuvel there was an editorial, which was we believed i dont make light of it we believe what is at stake is the supreme court. We believe in that lives will be lives are in the balance. There was an argument, but it was complicated. Another thing that should be said is for many of , ie magazines, the nation suspect for the National Review , and the weekly standard, the editor is a dictator. The editor has the final say of everything that goes in. , katrina is much more democratic than i was, but at the nation and much more consultant and then i was and in a much smarter way, but at the nation, the exception to that rule was president ial endorsements. From at least the time i was there, we would always open that to a discussion. It was not that we would count of the votes at the end, but we would try to reach a consensus. It did not mean everyone joined it, but we came as close as it was possible. We are going to open up the session to questions. We would like you to use one of these two microphones and lineup behind the microphone if you could. , ile youre doing that wanted to ask victor about a report from Iron Mountain, which the one of the great spoofs in literary history. The report from we were in dis the Book Business at this point, and we would get ideas for books and then have basically, they would be ideal books rather than written books. Like a collection of famous funny telegrams and then have a. Esearcher collect them one day, i read in the New York Times, i believe it was, a story called peace scare breaks out and the stock market had taken a fall because of a scare about peace. The stock market goes down because of the possibility of these. It is supposed to go up. We had this idea for a book that would tell the story of how a the government had commissioned a study of how to make the transition from the wartime to the peacetime economy under the kennedy administration, but the commission, which met at this secret place called Iron Mountain, which had underground vaults, which was a real place, and included people, and we did not identify the names, but you they were. Who a harvard professor with a guttural accent you know, you could figure out who each of them was. The commission had a series of meetings and concluded that you have a transition to a peacetime economy because the economy would tank if you gave up all of the military investment that the government was making, so they killed the report. That was the idea, and we hired a writer who had written a brilliant parity parity write thisre that to story, and leonard said, i cannot write the story of how they killed the report until theres a report for them to kill, so he wrote a brilliant parody of a government report which made the case for ending a planned transition to a peacetime economy because you could not do it. All of theas footnotes were real, too real real sources. We were looking for a publisher that was willing to publish this and not tell its sales force that this was a hoax, a parody, and would treat it like a real study. We found an unknown editor named who had a quirky publisher named richard baron. Together, they agreed. We had worked with them on a previous book. Together, they agreed to list it as nonfiction, and the result of that was when the catalog went out, the reporter for the New York Times called to ask questions about it and was told by prearrangement that and this prefigured anchor edgar possibility to take fiction and nonfiction and do something ally original with them they did not lie to the reporter. They said if you do not believe it, check the footnotes, so the reporter checked the footnotes and then called the white house, and the white house was the Johnson White house, and what did they know . Maybe kennedy had commissioned such a thing, so instead of saying no, theres no way we would have published such a rp, although they suspected it was not, they said no comment. The result was the reporter for the New York Times wrote a story that ended up on the front page saying that this possible hoaxes possibly a real government report, and the book ended up on the best tell her list. In a weird coda many years later, it turned out that the liberty lobby, this rightwing organization, on the assumption that it was a real report, without clearing copyright, published their own version on the theory that it was a government document and anyone could publish it. Leonard lewis and sued them, and they made a settlement, and they had to withdraw that. That is the brief story of how the report from Iron Mountain became a bestseller. Sex a lot. That was a terrific talk. Really, because we are on the premises of the law school, im interested on the intersection of journalism and law. We have, of course, three branches of government. One of them is judiciary. Operating, in my experience you know, the ministry of justice. Right gave themselves the to replace an argument with their own imaginings so they can adjudicate a case which ever way they want. All of this is in the open. The press expresses not the slightest interest. Here is this absolute cesspool of iniquity, corruption, federal are essentially legalized fleas. Andit that the press not just the leftwing press but the rightwing press, the conservative press, the professional press they all want to look the other way from the judicial procedure and treat judges as supernatural creatures where they would have ripped to pieces any member of the executive or any member of the legislature who would have whatmed to say, you know . A judge writes it in his opinion, and its mostly kosher. If you could extend the journalism of all this, i would appreciate it. Ms. Heuvel i want victor to reply, but i would say that the the courts as a political instrument. I sat here a few years ago after we had just published a special issue. Of the nation the court intended to attempted to invalidate key elements of the new deal. If you read, theres a book called supreme justice that aboutut a few years ago roosevelts and the courtpacking plan. We called it court reform. The nation divided in those thes, and this was in 1930s, to the point where the thenowner of the nation, maybe better known now as barbara tuchmans father, essentially sold the publication to a group of editors because he was so sick of the infighting, the debating, the vitriol. You had a group saying roosevelts plan was worthy, had a different proposal that it be a constitutional amendment and others lacerating it, so there is a long history of the nation covering the courts as a political instrument. Victor and i brought him on. We had one of the great legal correspondence in this country in david cole mr. Navasky he is great, and before david was herman schwartz, and i invite you to read the column and essays of davidrman schwartz cole and herman schwartz. Are tremendousse gifts you have given to the library, tremendous archives. Everyone interested in researching and writing will be interested for decades and decades and decades. Nervelked about several and issues, but theres also nerve and fights. What is making people fight right now . Ms. Heuvel i dont i fear that there is less well, let me give you an example. This is not a fight within the Editorial Team as much, but we did a cover story interview with senator Bernie Sanders about a week or so ago, and, as some of you may know, Bernie Sanders was at something called net roots nation, which is a major gathering of net roots activists. The hall was occupied by black lives matter activists. This was about a week ago. Bernie sanders, who has a history of speaking out against structural racism, fighting for civil rights, and spoke about this in our interview with john , came out and instead of engaging that audience, was angry at being heckled. Said, listen to me. Ive been there all these years. I sponsored civil rights. I marched in 1963. The hall thatr in Bernie Sanders did not seem to be listening to them and was not putting their issues at the forefront. Today at our editorial meeting we have a weekly editorial meeting on thursday mornings. Victor is always part of it. Our executive editor helped launch this beautiful website. We have a huge following on facebook. 85 to 90 of the readers were angry with something we had just. Comed at thenation criticizing Bernie Sanders for not engaging activists, for not speaking more directly. Its going to be an emerging debate, and its going to be a capte that raises issues of you fuse Economic Justice and racial justice, does one take priority these are issues that are not new and that the nation has engaged with over time. If it was james baldwins report from occupied territory where he laid out issues we are grappling but these are back, and i think its incumbent upon the nation to have debates about where these different movements come together and diverge. Mr. Navasky i totally agree. I would add this is another example from a cruise because i go on the fundraising cruises with katrina. We had a panel, and jesse this, and on the is a, our columnist, who very smart person, who goes out keep telling him, to make unnecessary enemies i love eric, and hes a really good writer, and i look forward to his column regularly. Eric said after jesse was off im boat just in passing, very glad the first black president obama had been elected was not Jesse Jackson but barack obama, at which point jeremys cahill said, that is the most racist comment i have ever heard, and all hell broke loose. And other things happened on the cruise, but thats another kind of issue on which there are differences of opinion in the liberal Left Community and in the black white community. Is not immune from having differences, and im very glad katrina is dealing with them these days. Mr. Naftali i was also going to say that the nation is also changing the whole concept of the cruise. Heuvel i am proud that one thing i started last year, a trip to cuba, and i say that because Charles Bittner has been involved, but i was at the reopening of the Cuban Embassy this past monday, which was an extraordinary moment to see the 1961 lag be raised at the embassy, but it is very values aligned. The nation has been fighting for cuban independence. But its also a mark of a changing journalistic environment, not to get too down to earth here, but i dont know if you saw National Journal closed its print edition a week or so ago, and the publisher, in doing so, basically said weekly print journalism cannot survive anymore. I would disagree. I know victor would disagree. The nation is not National Journal or publication of views, not winning the morning. Try to do, what we but we do seek additional revenue, and it exposed something where you build a community, what these publishers call events. These are our events. We do not have sponsored events like the atlantic,. We are not going to aspen to mingle with the inside the beltway crowd. Andtrips have been powerful informing both citizens but also in our coverage and making new. Inds of alliances mr. Naftali and the mosquitoes are very good and the mojitos are very good. You have a question . Ive been very impressed with the discussion, the willingness to be open, to talk controversies about the press room, having to do with covering , whether or not to endorse him, how to endorse him, and so on. m curious about your coverage the coverage deals primarily with income inequality or poverty. Recently with Police Brutality and ending it, but at the same time, he has been very involved in promoting diversity, particularly in the work setting , and yet, there is almost no of hisin the nation work. 1996 with to executives disparaging blacks and talking about withholding evidence for a federal discrimination lawsuit, and Jesse Jackson actually spoke out and called for a boycott which hastened the settlement of that lawsuit, and yet, there was not a single thing mention in the nation. Ms. Heuvel i might refer you to a 5000 word article written 10 years ago. It really was a full, wideranging portrait. Jesse jackson comes to the or six monthsfive i said to give us our secular sermon. He walks around the conference table to talk to the entrance, ask if they have student debt, meets with everyone and talks about what is on his mind, and its the case he has been very involved these last couple of years in Silicon Valley and trying to push for more diversity in an area which is going to define this countrys future. We have been meaning to, and ive talked to people who are working with him, but we do follow that. I will say we have given more attention, partly because it he comes to talk to us at the end of what he usually talks about, he mentions the Silicon Valley work, but he is leading with moral issues on his mind. Not that this is not. Good. Im delighted. I looked to see if you had covered his work on pepsico. I could not find a mention on it. Im delighted by that. The president ial race is shaping up pretty asymmetrically. Ms. Heuvel i like that expression. Since clinton would be the new john kerry, i , if Bernie Sanders would ie new ralph nader mean, if people would view Bernie Sanders as spoiling clintons run. I also, as a side issue, wondered what you think the future of donald trump might be. Mr. Naftali wow. Mr. Navasky it doesnt matter what i think. Im happy to tell you what i think, but i think its very important that Bernie Sanders is running. I dont want to speak for the theon here, but one of consequences of his running is that Hillary Clinton has adopted the domestic program, and it think its good for the country. I think he has very little chance of getting the nomination, but i hope the dialogue and conversation continues to play out. Part of me hopes that im wrong in what i think is going to happen. , i would call on marvin kittanning, who is sitting in our audience, who is a new jersey lapsed columnist, but he publishes his own stuff online, and hes my expert on anything that has to do with trump and people like that. When we ran our satire magazine, we ran marvin for president of the United States. He was running against Barry Goldwater and running on abraham lincolns it and 64 platform which called for the freeing of the slaves, the Unconditional Surrender of the south, and the reinforcement of the garrison at fort sumter. Sitting behind him, Richard Lindemann was his holy ghost writer. Ms. Heuvel one thing i find fascinating about Bernie Sanders run is how you see millions of americans meeting him for the first time, which is a testament to our media system, which has block someone like Bernie Sanders. Last year was the first time he appeared on meet the press. John mccain is on every other week, and it contributes to this downside of politics of excluded alternatives. You have millions of people looking beyond the label socialist, saying these are ideas that i agree with. These are ideas i have not heard of before. The nation last year started an editorial line. We are not endorsing anyone right now for sure, but we seek a competitive primary because what we want is new ideas. We want debate. I think its very exciting. Someone weers is been covering for close on 230 years. He comes through every time he show,he Stephen Colbert which is over, so he has not been in a while, but he came in november and told us about his ideas, and he asked any people in the room if he should run inside the Democratic Party or as an independent candidate. This was an insight to be because there were 35 people in the room. I figure would have been different preralph nader. To the people said run as an independent and the rest said the Democratic Party. Ralph nader did not want to do that, and in that, he did expose the antidemocratic nature of so much of our system. To get on the ballot would have cost Bernie Sanders half of his time. I think it is exciting. Donald trump i think elections are a mirror of a country, in addition to other things. The knowe is not in nothing tradition, which elevates him too much. I think he is someone who is an but has decided and do so in sync with the Republican Party platform that the rich can do anything they can rewrite the rules. They can do anything, and he will be above it all. Hes not going to be constrained by the rules. Stage ine on that cleveland. ,leveland, i was just saying not this weekend, the following weekend, is a convening of lack black lives matter. The following weekend is the gop debate. Good to see both of you and see you looking so well. You alluded earlier to the time it takes for the seat of a social change idea to germinate and bear fruit. I wonder if you would venture any guesses as to what seeds are being planted now that we can look at well, some people can look at 25 years from now and see the fruit being born. Mr. Navasky i had trouble hearing that. Mr. Naftali talking about the seeds of future change, the seeds of teacher important ideas are sowed decades before they appear. What seeds do you think are being planted now that will be politically important . Mr. Navasky great question. I think, to take something that resolved in my own mind, the whole impact of the internet on questions of privacy and how it affects the First Amendment it relates to our intelligence community, how that plays out in the long run it seems to me will have a deep impact on our Democratic Society , and to me, its cause for alarm, rather than a seat being planted. Ms. Heuvel i was struck today that one of our longtime contributors was in the New York Times with a really interesting editorial called socialism americanstyle which was essentially retrieving the radical socialist elements in our countrys history. Going back to the alaskan sovereign fund. I think there is a fundamental questioning now of capitalism, and i dont need to tell you why. You have a pope who was extraordinary, making Bernie Sanders seem like a centrist. I think that is in question. At the same time, i think we are in the fight of our lives in and the Corporate Power lack of citizens control of their lives, but somewhere in there, it is certainly not a and i think that is very important. Thelly, the future lifting up again of diplomacy as a way of resolving conflict is something this countrys , but at thehas lost same time, we are possibly on war. Usp of a new cold timothy is the cohead of the. Old war center i think you should have a discussion about are we confronting a second cold war . What does that mean for not just the future of this country, but i dont believe we are entering a new cold war, but that does not mean there are not. Eople who want one the difference now is that the is not one that could involve our institution our extinction. Our differences with russia, which are, i believe, great, are not at the level that they were when the United States and soviet union were super powers. Ms. Heuvel i would disagree, but i think thats a different debate. Then, and rules theres reckless talk of use of tactical Nuclear Weapons because people have forgotten and are distant. Anyway, the nation has, you know, i think played an important role. There is a congealed consensus u. S. Russianut relations, and the nation, as it has to time, is challenging. Hat you are right, there is a war party. Take another area where the seeds of radical change are being i would not say planted, but are out there right now, has to do with sexual. Dentity there was a piece in the times the new marital law may lead to polygamy. I have a daughter who just made a documentary about transgender children and what is happening with them for frontline. The world is changing on that front in a major way, and peoples attitudes are already changing. With going to happen there, your guess is yet better than mine, probably. Mr. Naftali just think of the social change that we have witnessed in the last decade. Thank you for this presentation. I think it used to be set up reagan that he was teflon coated, and i think that might also be applied to some of our liberal leave. The woman was commenting on Jesse Jackson, but i have not seen his attention on corporations that in many ways were not representative of the populist interest he claims to support. It seems perhaps he would have been better off challenging the interest of wall street rather. Han engaging it would be interesting if people such as he were held accountable in that vein. Robert redford you could call his tv channel the jpmorgan channel. Years ago, he was invested, but nrdc gave us nafta, utility regulation, which the nation to a great extent covered, quite come from a terribly. It has recently green washed fracking in illinois. If you look closely at the corrupt local organization, the daughter of enrons biggest shareholder on their board. Anyway, i find it interesting we could have more coverage of that. Green washed sweatshops, while they were taking money from sweatshop coverage. It would have been interesting to ask some of our liberal leads how you can legitimize this. Thank you. I think weve done some of the toughest coverage on environmental conflict of. Nterest we have pissed off a lot of people. We have not taken of every issue you mentioned, but we have done. T least 2 3 we take on many of the conflicts and do not shy away from them. Wespeaks to the independence prize. We are unlike most publications in terms of the advertising is not really our base. I could cite another example. Anotherpoke about it in example to mark the 150th, which was we were the first publication to expose the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. An advertisingfree or liberated from advertising publication. That independence, i think, is one big reason this place has survived for 150 years. Thank you for this presentation. Im interested in how your work might be affected by the changes in the naturerred of argument on the other side. In the late 1970s that you were talking about, i could read the approachesnk about to poverty, for example, and that i could read the neoconservatives, and they would have different approaches. Now, if you want to talk about an issue like climate change, half of the people deny that it even exists. They sort of have created an , sornate reality of facts when you are trying to express opinions, the question is can they even get through, or do you have to take a step back and say lets go back to the fact first i dont know that has an impact on what you do it seems to me it would probably have to have some sort of impact. Let me give you a personal opinion about magazines of opinion like the nation. Reasons that print should and will survive is that it is a place where you can put rumination longterm issues likehind climate change. Much harder to deal with that in the new media, it seems to me, in a way that people are going to have to wrestle with what is true and what is not true. I think what you are describing is an accurate description, but it is colored by the current political situation where you happen to have a republican whose bass dominates not just the Republican Party, but much of the media itself, so you do not get the kind of exchange that you are calling for, which i think is one of the reasons the nation is in business. Sameeuvel yes, but at the time at the thursday editorial meeting this morning, we talked about transpartisan ship. The limits and possibilities, for example, on criminal justice issues. You are seeing at the moment Newt Gingrich and van jones. The question is what are the common areas. Or you had john connors, the member of congress. It is the case that the mainstream media, cable, and others, still buy into this false equivalent, where they do give the climate deniers equal weight, and that is terribly destructive and something the nation never buys into. I would argue that transparency is our objectivity. We are honest where we come from. We are accurate and our facts, principled, but that false equivalent i think is something that is still embedded both in television, old and new media. Last question. Im curious about how your audience has evolved. You have such a rich history. What do you see moving forward . Ms. Heuvel i was talking about. His coming in i was a different media age is probably early 1960s. We Just Launched an early website. Demographic is 25 to 34. The continuity and change, the ability to bring people in i are, i want subscribers who 105 and readers who are 12. Weve had writers who are 13 and writers who are 104. I think that is a great span, and its complicated. Frank, who many years ago did a cover story for . S what is hip and i got angry calls, what . Bout Health Insurance programs we got straddled, but i take heart in bringing in a new generation, and that is partly the interns, partly the student nation program. We have 60 caps correspondence around the country. Correspondents around the country. Mr. Naftali do you want to add something . Mr. Navasky i agree. Mr. Naftali we have been privileged. Soon, some of this material will be on the soon this material will be on the web. I cant wait to read your papers. Thank you all for your attention. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Quarstein discusses