Did politics destroy journalism, or was it the other way around?
Author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, host of The Drill Down, sees the case for both but believes journalism has done more damage to itself than politicians could manage to do to them.
Schweizer says, “a friend of mine who used to be a producer on 60 Minutes said he thought that journalists became less interested in actual hard news coverage.” On the latest episode of The Drill Down podcast, his guest Mark Halperin, who had a front row seat to see it happening, agrees.
Halperin has been a fixture in political journalism for decades, as political director for ABC News, a senior political analyst at MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), and author of bestselling books on presidential elections such as “Game Change.” He is a critic of what he calls “the dominant media” culture, including all the places where he used to work. He hosts two influential podcasts called Next Up with Mark Halperin and Two Way Tonight.
Halperin is critical of both broadcast media and newspapers for alienating so much of their audience by becoming left-wing partisans. While the Washington Post just announced massive layoffs because of declining readership, the only major newspaper that has seen any growth is the New York Times, and many believe that is at least partially because of their move into adding daily puzzles.
“Wordle hasn’t helped their political coverage,” Halperin says drily.
The media had three big problems going into Trump, Halperin believes, “and rather than fix them they just doubled down on all three.”
“First, there’s a liberal bias that Trump exacerbated,” he says. “Profound liberal bias for decades where Republicans are not given benefit of the doubt on economics or on cultural issues… Michael Jordan used to say he didn’t endorse Democrats because ‘Republicans buy sneakers too.’ When I worked at ABC News, I never understood why they weren’t interested in selling their products to half the country that thought they were liberally biased.”
“Number two — an absolute disregard for the digital revolution and a failure to see that the business was changing, that you couldn’t survive getting revenue from the way you got it for a long time,” Halperin says. “They used to have a monopoly. So, you can understand why ABC, CBS, NBC, Associated Press, the New York Times would say, ‘Why should we change? We’re the kings of the hill.’”
Last, but not least, “is just being a complete elite bubble,” Halperin says, “where everybody in the media thinks all the wisdom is found in Washington or New York. Part of why I was one of the few reporters who saw that Trump might win in 2016 was that I covered Trump rallies in over 30 states and talked to people. Failure to understand the role of immigration as an issue, the role of anti-elite sensibility, the way the economics of the country over the last several decades have hurt people. All three of those things were true before Trump. Trump came in and called them out.”
“The reaction of the press to Trump was to say, ‘Let’s be more biased… Let’s use our old model to destroy Trump.’ What they didn’t say was, ‘Let’s open some bureaus in the middle of the country, and let’s talk to people,’” Halperin says.
Schweizer questions the whole idea of news sources trying to appear apolitical. “I went to graduate school in England, and I remember reading The Telegraph, which was right-of-center, and The Guardian, which was left-of-center,” he recalls. “You knew that they were, they didn’t hide it. But you felt like if you read multiple newspapers, you would generally get the picture.”
“The notion of unbiased media, it seems to me that’s something that’s ending up on the ash heap of history.”
Halperin prides himself that even his good friends don’t know what his personal politics are. “Go read the first chapter of Mary Matalin and James Carville’s book. “James thought I was a conservative and Mary thought I was a liberal,” he says.
He’s bullish on the growth of smaller “alternative media” platforms, citing Megyn Kelly’s and even Tucker Carlson’s successes pulling big audiences. But he warns that there is still a pressing need for big media companies which can do things at scale when necessary.
“If somebody blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City right now, how many people from your team would you send to Oklahoma City? None. How many would Megan Kelly send? Probably none… How many would the New York Times or CBS News send? 60 people. And I can tell you from having gone to cover big stories like that you need economies of scale.”
Have people lost interest in hard news coverage?
“I don’t think people our age have lost their interest in hard news, but I do think our kids and our grandkids are not currently interested in it,” Halperin says. “You can’t make boring products… But if you can make interesting products that are hard news, I think people would be interested in that, even young people. The challenge is — who’s going to do that? Is CBS or the Washington Post going to do that? Is the Wall Street Journal going to do that?”
Co-host Eric Eggers mentions this week’s media story — Stephen Colbert claiming he was prevented by CBS Network executives from airing an interview he did with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico because of fairness doctrine “equal time” regulations of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). CBS denied Colbert’s allegation.
“The main lesson is we’ve got to get rid of this anachronism where the FCC regulates the broadcast networks and not everything else,” Halperin answers. He believes the old distinction between over-the-air networks and cable channels is simply a “vestige.”
“There’s so much media now. Stephen Colbert doesn’t have to interview Jasmine Crockett [Talarico’s primary opponent] if he doesn’t want to, whether it’s a news interview or an entertainment interview.”
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