There of the performance of the media and the journalism industry. Why do we need another one . And whats different about. Well, i guess hopefully its got jokes in it. Hopefully it is an engaging and i hope engrossing read. I think i as a journalist do not have much in media criticism. Right. And is not. I have a joke about it which is that its like asbestos abatement. Its its hazardous. You need specialized equipment and its best left to the professionals. So i think theres lots of good media criticism. I think most criticism is trash and most media criticism is indicative of the problem im trying to talk about in this book, which is that its a refuge for partisans. Dont want to talk about what our side did. So lets talk about the coverage of what our side did. So this is not this is not my happy place, but i had a weird experience professionally and i think were all sort of having a weird experience professionally or as citizens, which this stuff is, you know, the changes that have gone our industry in the past 20 years, you know, its been a lot. Theres been a lot going on. And i think were in a time where people are really hungry for for us for the learning curve to steepen and for that for us to get better, faster there you talk about not to at great in the book what happened to you at fox news when you were let go after being part of the team that called arizona for joe biden in 20 earlier than other networks did. But you do say it was part of the motivation for you writing, the book. So explain what happened there and how that fits into the the problem that you were identifying. So i went into 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 called ohio for barack obama in 2012, i was not giving any love notes from the romney campaign, right . Nobody was like, oh, thank thanks. Thanks for that. I had sort of assumed that we were persisting in that the consensus that grew out of really the 1990s. Right the world changed dramatically. The media world changed dramatically in the 1990, with both the rise of cable, particularly led fox, but also, of course, internet and all that. So i thought we were sort of still in the same space. What i failed apprehend was that after so many years where viewers, readers listeners, whomever could be so effectively cosseted, could be effectively flatter and protect it. Right. So in a in a highly segment id media marketplace, there is a lot of incentive for outlets to treat these viewers like little faberge eggs. Right. You dont want to tell them things they want to hear. You dont want to impinge on the sort of climate controlled reality that addicted news consumers able to maintain for themselves. If you want to. In america today, you can in the morning and from from that moment until you go to bed, you could you could process information that reinforced your worldview, that said that you were good and they were bad, that you were smart and they were dumb and that you were virtue and patriotic and they werent just wrong. But they were trying to destroy the country. If i show up in feed, all of a sudden and say, hey, the guy who you believe is the the only thing standing between the United States and oblivion is going to be replaced by. A puppet of the communist party of china. If i tell you that, if thats what you hear, youre to be upset. And thats what made me understand, you know, we the for a a media model that that is profitable and also responsible. Were were in need. Right and i think the events of the past six years, the rise of trump coverage during the pandemic coverage of january six, january six itself, all of that points to we have a problem that is it is it is a problem of abundance. Right . It is a problem related to too much. But i think we are were in serious need as journalists and as citizens to do patriotic duty, which is if you love this country. You have to have a that honors the freedoms that we enjoy here. Thats a fine, broad assessment of the industry and also an encapsulation of. Your book. But what happened to you . You got you got canned for doing your what happened over there at fox news. Fox news does not owe me a job. Fox news can have anybody they on their news because its their news and i am very grateful for the time that i had at fox. I love in the building im recording this is the same Fox News Washington Bureau and i spent a very happy month. Most of a mostly happy decade in this building with my dear colleagues, people like the great bill sammon, my boss, Chris Wallace, bret, a great group of journalists and the Washington Bureau was wonderful place to be because. You know, we were substantially alone to do our thing. And it was great to be part of the decision desk and all that. Fox had ive heard a bunch about why i fired. I can tell you i definitely was. But thats because i know that nobody owes me a job, number one. And number two, this is not a 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 persist lo these many years. Right, since started as a full time professional journalist. In 1997, 1998. In all those years, i have managed to make living and support man children right to do to be a dad and to be a working journalist for all of those years. To me, it feels like ive gotten away with the greatest caper. Right. That that people would pay me for what i write and my analysis is totally awesome. So im not complaining. You talk about kind of an accelerating sense of people of news outlets, kind of cosseting their consumers and telling them what they want to hear. Can you explain briefly as still talking about cable, the cable news of it, which i think we probably all over Pay Attention to, because its kind of where the most active consumers of certain types of political news gather, even though its, you know, at its height, three and a half, 4 Million Viewers on the most popular show. But can you talk about what used to be something of a division between, a news desk at a cnn or fox and even a separation between the dayside, as they call it, programming with the evening opinion mongers. Is there there used to be a division that that division seems to be disappearing over time. What can you like for people who are not familiar with the business, can you spell that out a little bit . So the the way it worked, 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 and that there are two separate things in the same way that the pages of a newspaper and the section. So maybe you can detect a slant in the coverage of this outlet versus that outlet. But its supposed to be basically usda meet usda minimum standards for journalism. Now, its always been a little different for msnbc because they have nbc news and the nbc news. Nbc news doesnt arrange itself around msnbc, or at least it hasnt in my experience, its goal. Its focused the 6 00 news, right . Theyre thinking about holt. Theyre not thinking about feeding the beast of cable news. And that. So its always worked a little differently for nbc thats been to their advantage in terms of the resources they have. But it also has been a sort of a reagent on some of opinion mongering, leaking in or watching cnn. Now go through a dramatic remaking of itself because cnn had tried to own the of just the news and for a long time could track in the ratings when there was national or interNational News, cnn would boom because everybody who doesnt normally watch news, 24 hour news would turn it on a reliable source. But then as soon as the crisis or whatever would be, cnns ratings would plummet. So in the trump era, they really in on real, really obsessive trump coverage, right . It got thick over it got really over there and they all the way in. Well, now they have a new president in chris licht and they have new ownership. And the objective is to get back balance, right . To get back to aspirational. So theyre trying to unwind a commercial decision that they made i quote in the book the moonves the former head of viacom and cbs who said of donald trump, you know, may be bad for the country, but its great for viacomcbs. So keep going donald. Ha ha, ha. I think lot of networks and i think fox is included, that trump was a ratings bonanza and people were so terrified either or terrified he the the either it was a limbic response from American Consumers of either delight or real fear and anger and those forces created incentives for these networks to go really heavy on trump from the beginning and we see sort of the wreckage the after you know after the party. Its sort of time to clean up. You quote on a couple of occasions, some of journalistic essay writing of George Orwell from the 1930s and 1940s, which was period of time when people had kind of lost faith in liberalism ocracy in things like truth seeking for its own sake. And as against a backdrop of insipid fascism. There are a lot of people in the media who see the rise of trump as being incipient fascist or authoritarian and they think that what the media needs to do is to abandon what they call both sides ism. Right. And to call out as margaret sullivan, whos the former public editor of the New York Times and washingtonpost. Com on this several years in her final column in august in the washington, she said that its journalists to tell their readers that electing donald trump is a threat to democracy itself since they at least some of your foreboding about the authoritarian winds. Do you think theyre wrong in their approach about how to respond in the media . Well, i will let. Margaret sullivan in on a little something. The readership of the Washington Post agrees with her on the readership. Shes art. Shes already got them right. Shes she is already the the the loyal subscribers. The Washington Post probably skew and i dont know this is not research the book but lets guess and say that its at least 70 democratic. Right. You its hometown paper for a democratic i dont know what do we call washington a big city . I would say a medium a medium city, but the Washington Post readership is skews liberal and democratic. The histrionic. I think the post is a good example of this when there was a i forget im i apologize cant remember the name of the media scholar journalism scholar who said that the post was optimizing for anger or better after failing cash in on this trump bonanza. So thats when the post goes to democracy, dies in darkness, and thats when the clickbait ness of these headlines for online consumption go crazy. I chronicle the book how on the day of the fall of kabul right, which to that point was the biggest Foreign Policy story in a long, long time, right on that day, the number one story at the Washington Post was a sneering slap together from press releases and archives story about Roman Catholic cardinal who was in the hospital with coronavirus and he had been against the vaccines, which is a ha ha ha of trashy story. And that is what look, the journalists who believe that we have the power to tell people what think should remember that it is more likely that our audience will tell us what to think than we to them right . We dont have the power. Look, republicans spend a lot a lot of time complaining about the media. Oh, my gosh. And we often hear because we like it part of us. Right. It may be condemnatory, at least it says we have power. At least says we have this enormous power to these things. We dont. And what many journalists sacrificed in the era of trump i hearken back a great speech Chris Wallace gave. I forget, welldeserved honor. He was what award for excellent journalism he was receiving. But he he gave a stern talking to to a group of very how do we say now legacy or elite Media Outlets gave them a stern talking to about the fact that what have to do our work is objectivity our remove and we know that we wont be objective and we know that fairness is aspirational and a its something were not really going to obtain but it is our remove from the game that gives us the whatever power we do have and it could it can be true that donald trump represented a unique threat to the First Amendment and free press in the United States that be true and at the same time it can be true that the press badly, badly botched its response to it because instead of elevating and going back to First Principles and basics, many got down in the mud with him to wrestle. And that was a big mistake. The response back a lot of people in the media criticism established print if we can call it that for brian stelter, whos a reliable source, this program was so canceled by cnn in in august. Is we are living through an asymmetry right now between the two major parties between the people who support them and one side is uniquely hostile to truth. You know the republican guys are out there electing people who flat disagree your call of the arizona even today and theyre campaigning on it and winning in arizona among other places and so because of that the normal kind of both sides republican this democrat says that is actually a way to allow people who are wrong who are illiberal in the classical sense, who are wrong about the truth and who have authoritarian aims, giving them kind of equal weight to the side of truth. Whats your response to that . An approach. David leonhardt, who is a good writer, whose work on economics i have brought a lot from over the years, writes a newsletter for the New York Times and a while back he wrote one. It was after the Dobbs Decision overturning roe v wade, and he said this Supreme Court is out of hand. This Supreme Court is superseding the appropriate of congress and this Supreme Court that it added up. And i had to laugh because it was like, oh, now, you know, conservatives felt or previous 50 years, a lot of whats going on around the things that you describe is, again, its true that authoritarian bent inside Republican Party is scary, intense, right. The the yearning for a strongman for authoritarian among many a disconcertingly large number of republicans is something that should concerning to everybody. Right. So that piece and its true but i think part of the problem tom is that in the media world, the existence of this thing. I dont think that most conservatives and here im talking not just these authoritarian yearnings but of real conservatives. Right. People of the of the mainstream seem traditional. Calvin Coolidge Reagan variety of conservatism in america. Those people dont think that those people thought that the left was authoritarian. Those people thought that the left and still thinks that the left, that progressivism authoritarian and that progressivism crushing to the hopes and dreams of humanity and that it is the rise. A socialist, authoritarian state. They believe that people the left seeing sort of the Dystopian Nightmare that they had been of for a long time. Take, for example, this, who would have had on their bingo card left venerates cheney family right who would have said who would have said boy you liberals are really going to dig the cheneys you would say, no, they want to put the cheneys in prison . What you talking about . But because of the donald trump represents what many liberals or many progressives, 20 or 15 years ago thought was underneath bushism or neoconservatism or whatever else. So i think we have some category errors are going on in peoples thinking, how this stuff works. You have a quote near end of the book saying the percentage News Coverage that is either explicitly or implicitly political is unhelpful, in large part because creates a false impression. The polity itself is a worthwhile passion. Take it from a man who devoted his professional life to politics elections. It is not so. Did you the lead and is this a hostage slash suicide note . I know. I think political coverage is awesome. I think its. But im to be the weatherman. Im not supposed to be the lead of the news except for when its election time. Right. Im supposed to be the thing like. Well, chris, lets in with chris and see what goofy stuff is going on in the world of politics. Thats good. What the polls say. What is all stuff . Thats fine. What happened . Over the past 20 years is, in my experience, is that politics a shortcut to intensity strong emotional connection. Polity x is is the shortest way, especially in national media, right . Partisanship of the kind this this intense toxic negative partisanship that were experience in america is partly a function that theres not enough National News that really affects all americans to about all day. Right. There just isnt. If you in and think about how of the National News narrative is about really kind of dragging or not picking right so it if you are a conservative and you live in alabama or lets say florida, if youre a conservative or a republican and live in florida, you are being told about drag queen story hours taking place in Washington State as far away from you as possible that has no consequence on your Childs School or anything. But it can be a big, big story. Conversely, if you live in washington, you can hear endlessly. Ron desantis is dont say what they called the dont gay bill in florida it will have no effect on your life. It doesnt affect your kids or their education but you can hear about it and be outraged it if you want if you choose and news providers who are trying to provide too much national. Look i think a big big of all of this is local is should come first. Right local should come first. We should think about news in consent circles around us 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 know that they can reliably go where it will have meaning and relevance across country. So and also, by the way its cheap its real to do the saying tv news is talk is cheap its real expensive to send crews to go interview people and get the story. Investigative journalism is really hard because most of your leads dont deliver the blockbuster stories that you want. Its expensive. Its time consuming. Its hard to do well, need top notch people to do it. You know its not hard put in to heads in a studio and having them yak at each other youve already bought the you already have the crew. So you know, why not do that . And so much of what is on tv and and also its versions online is that and thats thats a low nutritive quality thats junk food as opposed to the kind of journalism that we should be doing. You talk a lot in the book. Its if i could characterize it, about half of it is aimed the media itself and half of it is aimed towards the consumers. Theres a demand side problem issue here as well, often does not get fully explored. Can you talk a little bit about what are the mechanics why do we get to this kind of National Versus local conception of politics and delivery of of political coverage . And also just you know covering policy as politics. I will get i will get these numbers a little wrong, but just to give you the the. The newspaper industry did not reach its peak profits. Until 2005. Oh. And by the way, interestingly, the peak viewership for television on average per american household, weve heard a lot about cord cutting and all of that. Yes. It didnt hit its peak until 2011 at Something Like almost 9 hours a day, wolf. But anyway, the those industries were rare rarely making tons of money well into not well. But in the beginning of the 21st century. And when newspaper industry started to collapse in 2005, it fell totally apart. And its something. Like 50 billion is 55 billion or something in lost revenue. And it was a 90 or something decline. When you look at the chart, you just see its peaking and the ad revenue for newspapers is doubling pretty reliably every ten or 15 years. Going back to the Second World War that, you know, is working and then it falls the cliff. It fell off the cliff not because of social media. It fell off the cliff because it started with theres great survey on this or theres great theres great Market Research on this when do you remember oh, whats the name of the where you could post something that you were trying to sell or buy craigslist when craigslist. So they documented when craigslist came to town newspapers took a beating. Right. They were losing these classified ads, living off of legal ads. And the newspaper industry was badly because you could always borrow money to buy a newspaper because in those days were making joke, you know, 30 profits. But it was profits in the low 20 range were expected. And so you had all of this conglomeration, you had all of these big newspaper chains that bought up newspaper after newspaper after newspaper, but they were heavily leveraged. So when the profit stream started. Shift what did the newspaper industry do . They did exactly the wrong, which is they cut content. They cut the content at a time when they should have muscled up and they couldnt because of some of the overleveraging. But also it was just dumb kind of corporate thinking, which is, okay, revenues down, weve got to cut. Where are we going to cut . Were going to cut in the newsroom. Were going to get rid of reporters. And we i documented in the book that the bloodbath of newspaper and news reporters, a category in the american over this period. It is it is i my heart aches for so many friends i mean i had a newspaper basically closed out from underneath me in West Virginia i have part of the reason im so sanguine. You know, the disruptions to my career in the past few is this is an industry where you know people get fired a lot things but newspapers closed stations change whatever but the newspaper industry responded to these pressures by stupidly content. The thing actually gives them a competitive advantage right. They had the newsrooms they had local knowledge to do that, but they didnt the right thing and they slashed and so this giant void opens up and the consequence is for communities across the country have been dire theres a very persuasive that says that in communities a newspaper closed that the cost of borrowing money a bond issuance goes up dramatically and they can document the rise because nobodys watching. Right. If theres nobody at your county Commission Meeting boring, sitting there listening to you prattle on, then youre not going to as good at running your county right and corruption might sneak in a little bit. Its like the ring of guy. Geez, maybe, you know, if nobodys watching, im going to try to do. Good. And im going to try to help my friends. And pretty soon your brother in laws gonna got the contract to issue the bonds, or youre just not running the county as well, and the prices go up, so this hollowing out and and the devastation that rolled the local news industry, what came in to fill that . Well, dom Political National blabbermouth. Right. That came in and the we turn the telescope around instead being focused on whats around us and. The news that actually matters in our lives. The as would happen in the 1990s in the aughts. What else was going on right as the local industry is sinking to the bottom the ocean whats happening nationally in cable news segmentation and of course the rise of social media. So what filled the void was not healthy and i think we are only sort of just now coming out of the stupor theres a lot of good news on the local news front. Theres a lot of good things that are happening. But this is a long, painful rebuilding process. Speaking of mouths and raises to the bottom, i think its a its its a stiff competition between the journalism industry and congress having the lowest public Approval Rating of any sector in the country. It might be counterintuitive to some people watching to hear that you think that there is a relationship between the abdication, the self, the willing abdication of responsibility by congress and the blabber mouth ization of our politics. Can you talk about that a little bit . Lord yes, the i did not ever expect that i would be quoting florida congressman matt gaetz in a book, but i did because he said in his book and he wrote a book he said in book that the real people who run country are the bookers on Cable News Networks and that theyre the ones who decide and they really pick the president s and they really do this stuff. And he was both he was sneering them, saying that these were you theater nerds from high school. I dont know what kind of nerd matt gaetz was in high school but the theater but the Theater Department was cool, bro. It was cool. V that these people are really running the well, they aint right. Theyre 27 years old and trying to afford their apartment in a slightly sketchy part. Hoboken, right. Theyre not running anything for the people who are running things. My my friend and colleague, Jonah Goldberg uses the phrase parliament pundits and have a congress that wants my job. I dont want to do their job. I am interested in being a member of congress here. My prayer for the for my own good and for the good of the nation, i am not interested in being in politics. I am in analyzing politics, talking about Political Trends and voting trends, how this stuff goes. Im fascinated by it, but they dont want to do their work they want to get reelected in the way that they want to get reelected is by being famous, being viral and being on television and do those things. You cant do your job well the way it used to work in Congress Long ago is my old daddy would have said when the chips were made of wood and men were made of iron long ago in the before times, the way that congress was that people werent paying that much attention to congress right. It was boring and was boring and the coverage was and every every every major newspaper had a bureau in washington. And the newspaper chains had bureaus here that would provide coverage. And what they would say is, you know, senator hornswoggle gave an exclusive interview us here at the austin americanstatesman, whatever, to talk about how whats in the bill will bring a new dam or a road or what its going to do. This military base is going to be shut down, but that ones going to be reopened. And a lot of that news about congress had a locally facing feeling because they were the press was the way to communicate to the folks at home but thats not necessary anymore and the way to get fame. Look at ron desantis. Ron desantis broke every rule for running in a republican primary in florida when he was running against. Adam putnam. Adam putnam had done everything right. He had paid all of his dues. He served in congress. Then he got elected statewide as agriculture commissioner. He had all the correct supporters, jeb bush, everybody, everything up for adam putnam to be the governor of florida in 2018. What did ron desantis do . He went on fox news, he went fox news every day. It seemed he was there and shows were booking him and he just went on fox and under old thinking this is a big mistake right because people want to be in their community. They want to see you at, you know, the gator wrestling or whatever do whatever, whatever, whatever florida is version of of a West Virginia ramp dinner or a being dinner is. Thats where they want to see you. And its about being local and its all that stuff. Well, ron desantis didnt do any of that and he it right. He crushed that primary and he was right. The high stature ratio of fox among the republican base, particularly in florida, where fox does well and you know beats the local right. Fox beats the local news and National News in some of the markets. Florida. So that saturation that desantis went for paid off. Now thats a different thing, right . Thats a different of thing. People talk about the fox primary on republican side and you i dont think its what it is cracked up to be. Dont think its as powerful as supporters and the tractor say. But you cant deny the potency and you cant deny how much of a part of republican strategy fox has to be. All right. I want you to bite the hand is currently feeding you chris alt tell us why you think its a bad idea for cspan to put its cameras in and further, it would be bad for the Supreme Court. And if you want to dodge all of that, just get into the difference between. Transparency, accountability. Well, first, let me say that i admire brian and i love his project. I love what he what . What cspan set out to do. And by the way, i love the other content on cspan, right . This is such a privilege for me to get to be on this broadcast because i watch it. I think its cool. So this is a this is a nice treat for me. Brian lamb is an american. Lets just say that for the record. Go stipulate and cool socks. So thats stipulated. Now i think we can say and you can read this Steve Kornacki is great book the red in the blue talks about how the the Newt Gingrich and the one minute speeches in the house where no one is listening and they go down to the floor now. R. I. P. , jim traficant. And and his one minute speeches. But you go down to give a a a thunder press denunciation of whatever and because of the rules that congress set for cspan. It looks like you dont you cant tell that alone, right . You cant tell that its an empty chamber and theyre not talking to anybody it looks like theyre saying something must be important. Theyre there on the floor of the house. It must be important, but its not. And there is social psychology. There is something thats like the social psychologic version of the heisenberg principle from the hard sciences, the observing something, we change it or that stuff in the social psychology we talk about the hawthorne effect, which came from a i think it was a mccormick electric. The hawthorne works. And they were doing a study for efficiency i think this is the twenties theyre doing an efficiency study about how does lighting affect worker productivity and what they found was regardless of the change in light productivity up everywhere. And then they realized what it was the workers knew they were being observed and simply because they were being observed, they changed their behavior and worked harder and were more efficient because they knew the bosses were watching that had the same the cspan, the similar effect in congress i dont want to take the cameras out of congress. Im not saying that but but the committees please get the cameras out. These Committee Rooms it theres a reason that the intel Senate Intelligence committee is widely regarded the best one. Right. That its the most bipartisan, most effective. Yes, the stakes are high, but also theres no camera. Theres nobody to perform for and, you know, these apes, when they get up there, you put that red light on, they see that camera out. They know that they get caught being an effective legislator. And what is, by the way we heard a lot about how the 2022 republican primaries were a referendum trump and no denying that, but it was also a referendum on do you want a legislator or . Do you want a entertainer . Do want somebody who will get things done or and help your district or your state . Or do you want somebody whos going to be a celebrity kind of politician and perform. Junk one out in my home district, the First District of West Virginia, they pitted two republican members of congress each other, David Mckinley and alex mooney. Now, alex mooney couldnt get post office name that guy to. My knowledge has never had any single serious legislative accomplishment, but he is a fire breathing maga trumpster. Whereas david, who has been a very effective legislator for his district and is quite conservative, but because he had voted for it and think about this David Mckinley vote for a transportation infrastructure bill that, i guarantee you would would be popular in West Virginia to, 70 , right . West virginia in memory of Robert C ByrdWest Virginians cool with pork spending. They really like it. But in that primary that thing that would have been popular, the general electorate was unpopular Republican Voters and they they went with mooney over mckinley and the the in those Committee Rooms guarantee and by the way i want to give special acknowledgment here to the discipline that the january Six Committee was able to muster. Right. I was expecting an adam schiff disaster. Right. Performative histrionic because know these guys are mugging for the camera. They dont care. The hearing is good. They just they want to create the clip that they can fundraise off of. Right. They want the story so that it can say ted cruz destroys soandso. You know, whoever it is, is, is he ends mazie hirono. They want the clickbait they want that stuff and they dont care whether not the hearing is effective. So we deprived of the ability of these individuals to reason together and we want them to reason together. We want committees to do their work. But instead what we get is no regular order hearings and markups are performances not actually reasoning together and we this and so have a congress that wont be congress. There have been periods in american politics where weve seen a surge of populism that has been associated with new media technologies. You write in the book, kind of the dawn of the republic, the mudslinging back and forth of this great video. My employer had reason about the election of hundred and this nasty, nasty was. But you also talk a good length about the 1930s and the rise of radio and huey long and father coughlin. Coughlin allowed to pronounce his name. Tell us how those fevers were. Is there anything that we can glean from the way that those popular ists, media fueled moments pass out that might give us some succour here in 2022 when were still smack dab the middle of a populist political moment . So radio the rise radio was really good for bad people. Adolf hitler was aided enormously by the rise of radio so that his speeches could be broadcast around germany, the world radio was great for dirt. Like huey long and crazy lunatic racists like charles coughlin. The this it really effective because it allowed them huey long had claimed to have 7 million members in his our wealth societies and. Nbc was giving him a platform and every week to go on the radio and basically say were going to confiscate these fortunes. Huey long, a guy who said and people accuse him of being a dictator he darn near was the dictator of louisiana. He heres a guy who tried to hold both the governorship and the senate seat of the same state at the same time. But huey long he said, you know, somebody said, call you a dictator. He said, well, if i perfectly the wishes of the people wouldnt that look an awful lot like a dictatorship and at a time in the 1930s where a lot of americans. Joseph kennedy the future president s father and ambassador to the court of saint James Charles lindbergh, henry ford, a lot of people were of a mind that the american concept, american was finished right. Was an it was an archaic system would not work anymore. We needed modern, effective, efficient progressivism promised these things in the United States at the time. But there was also a rise the right about hey lets you know lets get over these niceties and lets go for strong men and in that time radio was hugely disruptive because it it created a space for demagoguery in a emotionally connected way that just wasnt possible before. You could read a William Jennings bryan. Right. And you might find it thrilling. Right. The people who read that he would not be crucified. A cross of gold in the newspaper. I mean, clearly it had a magnetic effect at that convention because the democrats nominated him by acclamation based on one speech. He wasnt even in the running. But its effect would have been minimized around the country by the 1930s. You know, you from basically zero radio in america in 1924 when kdka broadcast the first Radio Station broadcast. Its the result of the 1924 election go coolidge. There was no one in the radius of the broadcast to hear it because. Nobody would have had a set. They could have tuned to listen, but they were still broadcasting it. By the time you get to 1930, you have and like 80, 90 of homes, the disrupt and of we we these hand computers we carry around with more power than the apollo. The computers that sent the apollo astronauts to the moon. We carry these things around and we are rightly aware now of the huge disruptions that have followed. But we have to remember that radio itself was probably an even disruption because from time immemorial, from, you know, from the dawn of history, the word, our language, the way that we understood one another, primarily and the written word was how we organized ourselves and societies. That was how we could understand here, especially a big continental republic like ours. It it had to words, written words to get it done. The arrival of possibility that you could hear adolf hitler screaming in and the screaming throngs around and these incredible passions, or huey longs thunderous denunciation actions or i mean, when you listen to the old tapes that you can find of long and colin its scary because there effective right you get goose because they are effective in that way and no one in the world said this totally new and the disruptions from television were just an intensified portion of that but the real comes with radio and it took us a time think about this by time i forget which year orson did war of the worlds 3839. I forget. But when orson welles did war the world and you know the folks stuffing damp towels under under the cracks in there under their door so that the martian death gas does not get into their house even more than a decade in we were still not super sophisticated consumers of radio it is taking us a long time to get good at these hand computers were hearing around and this new way of consuming news and media. But i do believe that we are, at least through the first part and the first part is acknowledging that were all screwed up here and that things need that that corrections are necessary. A lot of people have different ideas about what corrections are necessary and are the right steps to take, but at least i feel that weve gotten to a point of acknowledgment, the depth of the disruption and some the consequences. You dont really into it much in your book, but im curious to get your reaction. Theres been a defection. You do talk about how like post trump, at least postelection, a lot a ratings and audience cratered at a lot of institutions because people thank god got back to other other pursuits in their lives there has been a also a defection a talent to brain drain away a lot of legacy media institutions not everyone got pushed out the door chris but a lot of people, you know, felt like were about to and they started their own banks. You see a rise in, particularly in podcasts, the kind joe rogan ization of life and on substack do you see something that is in there, or at least analytically interesting, as people go away from our childhood of like you subscribe to the newspaper, if not two or three, because thats part of your civic, its your eat your wheaties subscription has now wither away and we have much more of a i like an affiliate with this i trust this person even if i disagree with him or her i would be happy. Give them ten bucks a month on Patreon Substack or something. Well you know the media scholar, andre miller calls it post journalism. Um, and in journalism its about a strong emotional connection with. Your audience, right . That it is, they feel a in the old days its top we have information were going to deliver it to you and were either going to sell the attention that youre paying us to advertisers or youre going to pay us a subscription. And then we will give you access to the information that we have now, the energy goes the other direction, which is the audience has feelings. Oh, do people have so many feelings . Oh my gosh. And they have strong feelings and they want to see their feelings reflected back at them from the outlets or providers that they choose. And in these podcasts and i have a podcast in substack and i work for the dispatch, which is on substack. So im certainly not exempt from. This, this is even narrower where its sort of like you when you when you get together a group of lets say libertarians you said, okay, were to get a group of libertarians together and. This guys like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Im in a narco capitalist libertarian. Oh, well, im actually like a social welfare libertarian whos. Okay, a universal basic and like, wait, what . I thought you guys were, libertarians, its like, no, this is. This is the meat of the leash. Of the leash that im in politically. And you say that for progressives and you could say it for anybody, because we define down very narrowly when. We are highly engaged in news politics. And one of the book, i think in the long run, well all be dead. No, in the long run, things go through periods of consolidation and then go through periods of atomization. We were in a long term, highly and consolidated News Business from basically the end of Second World War to pick your date, lets say 1996 or 1997. So the world that the baby boomers grew up in was gate kept in highly highly consolidated. And then it all fell apart and been going on now for, you know, 25 years or so. This falling apart, what will come out on the other side will be another can, right. The and youre seeing it already in news. If you look at whats going on in the local news, people are buying up the the refuge house right there. Theyre purchasing the shattered remains of newspapers. Sometimes investing and doing good journalism. Other times. Theyre just using it for a url to pump pay to play junk. But the consolidation is happening nonetheless. And you can see it and you will see it on substack and things like that i heard the guy from, i read an with one of the substack founders who was talking about how, you know, were looking at having bundles where you can have you pay one rate and then youll get multiple youll get subscribe to multiple different sub stacks for different points of view, for different points of view and for different coverage. And i said, oh, you mean like a news paper . Is that what you mean . That you will curate and, collect a group of worthwhile information for me to consume . How so . I do think theres a apart coming together, falling apart, coming phenomenon. Let me take one of your quotes terribly out of context from the book. Oh, and have a response to it. You say we have become nation of moral. What are you talking about . How does morality fit into the way that we parties consume politics and news about politics . The most important moral judgments that we make are about our enemies. Most important moral that we make or about our friends the most important moral that we make are not about like, how about this . Im pretty comfortable about what i think about putin, right . I, i have i have strong and feelings about Vladimir Putins character. Got it. Where its important, though, is to police yourself and your your organization, the people who you agree with, what we have because of the siloed. So if you lets say you only fox or you only watched the events. Donald trumps florida home and club are two are happening in two totally different worlds. On one side it is a raid by a lawless justice bent on destroying donald trump and its the scandal, the century. If youre watching the other feed, youre being told that the virtuous heroic Justice Department and the eminently good merrick garland, his middle name fair is is there to do only the work of the people. And by the way, guys, its really much bigger than this. Its been interesting. It was interesting to watch how much of left media is making the same mistakes with trump that they did throughout the mueller investigation. The my my friend and one of my idols, charles krauthammer, as he said about the allegations of collusion with russia in reference to the trump tower meeting that the with a russian operative for the express purpose of getting dirt Hillary Clinton as charles kay said botched collusion in is still collusion. It was evident and obvious on face its or trumps second impeachment or first impeachment. Sorry i get them all mixed. Trumps first impeachment. It was there on its face right . You did not need there was no probe that was necessary. We the transcript of donald using his office and using the power of the president to get dirt on his rival. He was using his office. Now you could say if you were republican. I see it many republicans did see this. And it is a morally defensible position. I see it. I disapprove of it, but i dont think it rises the level of impeachment im going to say im going to pass, thats fine. But a lot wouldnt even get to that because we dont get the correct inputs. We are not too of us are not hearing views that respectfully disagree with our own. We have a lot of the two sides and this is true by how preposterous for cnn and fox to have media criticism shows where they substantially criticize each other right and cnn has canceled their show. But the idea that youre going to have these two Cable Networks and rivals like this just in we think the other guys stink. Well okay you know fine but not so cnn says about fox and what fox says about cnn has no effect on the other side because nobodys hearing it. And we have become morally imbecilic for a lot reasons. And part of it has to do with the with the mob mentality that social media allows and the power that. But its also because in our media diet, were not hearing earnest criticism in the way that we should. We should be hearing from voices that make us a little uncomfortable as i tell people, if the that you consume and the media that you consume in your life doesnt make a little uncomfortable from time to time, then you need to vary your diet because you shouldnt be you shouldnt walk away every day and say, yep, all of my priors are correct. Everything that i think is true. Im good in their. Well leave it there. The book is broken news why the media rage machine divides and how to fight back by stirewalt. Chris, thank you so much i thank you everyone for watching. For cspan, i am matt welch