The Media vs The President? Frank Sesno EXPOSES What’s Changed in America

The relationship between the American press and the White House has never been more complicated.
On this episode of SOS AMERICA, veteran journalist and media expert Frank Sesno joins Charles Feldman for a deep conversation about the evolution of journalism in the United States — from the days of traditional television news crews to the modern era where anyone with a smartphone can break a story.
Frank and Charles explore how the relationship between presidents and the press has dramatically changed over the decades, how previous administrations handled media scrutiny compared to today, and whether the current political climate has created a dangerous divide between government and journalism.
They also discuss:
📺 How journalism operated before social media
📱 Why smartphones changed the news industry forever
📰 The growing battle between the press and political power
🎙️ How social media now influences both journalists AND administrations
⚖️ Whether modern media has become too reactive and opinion-driven
🇺🇸 The changing trust in American journalism
🔥 Why political messaging now spreads faster than traditional reporting
As traditional media struggles to adapt to a digital-first world, this conversation looks at whether journalism is evolving… or losing its way entirely.
#SOSAmerica #FrankSesno #CharlesFeldman #Journalism #Media #Trump #Politics #News #SocialMedia #Press #WhiteHouse #AmericanPolitics #Podcast #PoliticalPodcast #MediaBias

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Donald Trump changed that, as you said. He comes in, one of his first things when he's 27, 16, it's 2017, after he's inaugurated, is to go to the CIA, stand in front of the wall of the fallen, and say the press are the enemies of the people. Journalists are the enemies of the people. What an outrageous thing to say when he's standing in front of a wall of people who have given their lives confronting the real enemies of the people who actually wanted to do our nation in. So, yes, it's a very different time. It's undermined the trust in and the credibility of a lot in the media. It's confused people as to what the job of journalists should be. What I tell young people is you have more power in your hands and more capacity to reach more people more rapidly than anyone in any generation in human history.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

So we've been kind of all over the map on this. The one thing, though, that I realize we haven't yet covered, and that is why we will on this episode, is the relationship between the Trump administration and the press and where the press now stands vis-a-vis the administration, and also how the public seems to have lost trust in so-called mainstream media and what that pretends for the future of this country and the future of our own democracy, or at least what's left of it. So uh let me introduce our guest for this episode. Frank Sesno is the former CNN Washington Bureau Chief. He's also the former director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University. He's a current, uh currently a professor there. Uh before his days at CNN, he was, as many of us who migrated into television, he was also a radio reporter, and he covered for a bit the uh the White House. He's a member, uh, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, Frank, he's a I think you still are a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yep. Okay. And also host of a PBS uh program called The Future of News, which is appropriately titled for this particular episode. Frank, it's a pleasure to have you with us on SOS.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Delightful to be with you, Charles.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So let let's start off. Uh uh I mentioned that the name of the PBS program is the future of news, but let's back it up.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

I did that in the past, it's not stuck. Okay. But that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

But you can still get it, right? I mean, everything lives.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

I think it's out there somewhere, most everything is.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah, nothing, nothing disappears in the in the internet universe. So I'm sure you can, anyone who wants to watch it, go ahead and find it, and and I'm sure it's great to watch. Um, but let's backtrack from the title. And and and before we get to the future of news, let's talk about the current state of the news media and the attacks on it by this current administration. Now, to be fair, uh I think every president in modern times has had a rocky relationship with the press. Uh John Kennedy did, certainly Lyndon Johnson did, God knows Richard Nixon did. Uh I think one would be hard-pressed to find any recent president over the past 60, 70 years who has had a love affair with the press. I just don't think that's the nature of the relationship. Having said that, Frank, is there something fundamentally different about the relationship with the press and the Trump administration?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, yes, um, of course. Uh, but I do think it's worth pointing out that uh this has, as you say, been something that has evolved over time with very few modern presidents loving the press. You mentioned Richard Nixon. He had an enemies list. There were a lot of journalists on his enemies list. Um but I think you know there are a couple things that that we should say to kind of define our terms for this conversation. First is what, you know, the idea of the press. There is not no one the press, right? Media, which is a word we all use, is one of the most plural words out there. It's the media plural, not the media singular. So the Wall Street Journal certainly is not Gateway Pundit, certainly is not CNN, certainly is not Steve Bannon, certainly is not Rachel Maddow. I mean, these are wildly different um news or media organizations, and they're they come from very different perspectives. Secondly, I think there's a very substantial difference between, and again, let's define terms, a news organization and a media company. Anybody with a microphone or a keyboard is a media company, let's face it, or a media enterprise. Um, a news organization, and we can look back to some very quaint, we hope not outdated, but very quaint guidelines by society of professional journalists and others who describe in some great detail what journalism is all about: seeking the truth, providing sources, providing context, updating information, correcting errors. There are very specific ethical dimensions and professional dimensions that guide what a news organization is supposed to be doing. One of the standards that I use, let's keep this in mind as we have this conversation, is an actual news organization holds people and organizations in power accountable for what they have said, done, promised, planned, you name it. So there are plenty of news organizations or media companies that pass them off themselves off as news organizations that do not actually hold those in power to account if those in power align with their particular ideology. That then is a media company, not a news organization. So all that being said, by way of definitions, what's changed? There are several things that have very fundamentally changed, Charles, and then we can talk about them all you want. One is it used to be from the one to the many, right? Clay Shirke wrote a book about this, and it is whether it's the New York Times, CNN, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, it was a person or an entity that broadcast or published to the many. With social media and digital media, it's the many to the many now. This podcast that you're doing is going to be shared more by people to people than by a particular entity or company you work for distributing it to a set group of subscribers. The world has changed. Secondly, um, social media. Social media has created a um sort of an ecosystem of um outrage, opinions, some can say more democratic engagement, and that's true too, but also more outrage. And so that has fundamentally changed things. As a result of that, uh media companies narrowcast, they don't broadcast. So they know that they're going to young white women in rural America aged 18 to 27. And there's all kinds of things in that regard. One of the biggest changes that has taken place in my and your career is people in power who used to not particularly like news organizations and the media, but they had to live with us because that's how they communicated to the public. They don't need us anymore. Donald Trump has far more followers on Truth Social than he has watchers, viewers on Fox News or CNN combined. So the the need for a president, a uh a governor, a mayor, a school board chair to communicate with the public still exists, but they don't need traditional news organizations in the same way. All of this, and the technology that's changed and the corporate ownership that's changed, leads to a fundamentally different media news ecosystem. And that I think is what we're talking about now. Where are we? What does it mean? How does it change the way people in power, whether it's President Trump or anybody else, communicate? And even more fundamentally, how does it change the way the public gets, absorbs, absorbs, and acts upon the information that's out there?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

You know, we we both worked at at CNN for quite some time. And I wonder if if you would agree with this, uh, because I've long thought this. I do think that for all the the good things, and there are many, that CNN contributed to uh the world's knowledge. I think that CNN was was largely responsible for the the climate where politicians now feel they no longer need to answer a particular reporter's line of questions. They don't need to sit down for that one-on-one because they can go, they can have a news conference live, refuse to take questions, and they know that CNN and Fox and NBC, you name it, are all going to take it live. And I and I I say CNN being responsible because I remember when I started there in 1983, I had come off of uh I was working for some local TV stations in New York. And yes, we would cover news conferences, and if it was something really major, you know, a blackout in New York City, maybe we would take it live, but but not really. Mostly we would go, we would come back as reporters, we would sit down with an editor, producer, executive producer, figure out what we were going to do, edit it, uh, and then put it on the air. And I remember when I went to CNN in '83, I was somewhat taken aback when I used to be told, well, go to you know, Congressman So-and-so's press conference. We're taking it live. And I remember saying to the powers that be, Why are we taking it live? It's not that consequential. Why don't I just do what I always do? I will filter it, I will write a story about it, I will take the requisite sound bites and put together a well-written and fair piece of journalism. And the response I got, Frank, was we need to fill up time. Because 24 hours a day, seven days a week was what CNN was all about. So I think that there is a responsibility that CNN has for contributing to what we now have. You agree or don't agree?

SPEAKER_00 11:51

We can have a debate. We can bring back crossfire for people who remember it if you want. God knows. That is something that CNN did, and we can talk about that. Yeah, I did. Look, I think I I think I think the the the the general contribution that CNN made in the early days was fundamentally positive. Because what happened before that? There were national broadcasts that lasted for 30 minutes. Uh a president, a governor, somebody would speak for for an hour and it would be turned into a 15 to 30 second soundbite, uh, determined by a bunch of guys in suits in New York City. And what CNN said was if something is of importance, and that's where we can talk about this, if something is important, we can take it in real time, live. You can hear not just the soundbite, but the rest of it, and you have the context to understand yourself. Now, what you were giving, and what you were uh you know, talking about there, the example you gave certainly is is is uh is was the risk that we ran, which is when something was not newsworthy and we took too much of it, or we took it, CNN took it when it maybe shouldn't have in its in its live um uh iteration. But I will tell you that for in the years that I worked in Washington, and certainly when I was a bureau chief here, we had long conversations about what was worth taking live. Did this constitute something that had value? Was it newsworthy? And how long should we take it if it's live? And if we're taking Mary live, what about Joe live? If we're taking a Democrat news conference live, what about a Republican point of view? And we had, I wish the public could have been part of the conversations we had, because if they had, they'd actually have more understanding about what we do and perhaps more trust, because it was not just put something on the air and walk away. I remember one time we were, we, we had uh some dueling congressional members, it was a budget thing or something. I was the I was the bureau chief. We took 17 minutes of one party and seven minutes of another, and I got a call from that other party. Outrage, why were we giving the other side more time? And that was an ongoing conversation that that brought some reality to what we were doing. I think where CNN certainly shares responsibility for this moment that we're in, actually is in the crossfire world. Crossfire started as a well-intentioned sort of intellectual in-studio debate, but it became a parody of itself so that finally Jon Stewart showed up and yelled and screamed, and CNN pulled it off the air. But that was the sort of shout fest that led to something of what we've got today. Um, we had a guy named Lou Dobbs on the air, and Lou Dobbs decided to take up of his own cause, this immigration thing, and shout the outrage that he had. That wasn't, in my view, what an certainly wasn't what I did when I was an anchor. It wasn't about my opinion that mattered. My job was to put other opinions on the air and give people a fair shot at expressing, explaining, documenting why they held the opinions they had, and to challenge them on all sides, right? So, yes, I think what CNN did, the revolution that Ted Turner, may he rest in peace, led when he put CNN 24-7 news on the air, is it made it, it made, it turned our information world into a real-time world. It took elements of deliberation away from a prof process that you were talking about a moment ago that prior to that had gone into the evening newscast or whatever. But it also brought great democratization to the process. It brought people into events and crises and decisions and controversies in a direct way that they hadn't been in before. And for those of us who worked at the place, who took it seriously and felt that we were professional journalists who should bring our journalistic perspective to the discussion, it provided great opportunity for us to really be thinking critically and deeply about how do we serve the public? In a real-time world, how do we serve the public? That was a question that I think was present. And unfortunately, we don't reflect upon that enough now.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

But didn't it also open the gate for somebody like Donald Trump who, and I think it is totally fair to say consistently lies about all sorts of things. Uh I mean, sometimes I wonder if he lies about his name. But he lies, I mean actually maybe he does because his family name way back wasn't Trump. But that aside, uh we'll give him that, Charles. Come on. Okay. Well, it's great. Well, okay, we won't go into that. But but uh but but but didn't it open up the floodgates for a politician, whether it's Donald Trump or now many sort of Trump clones, to take advantage of that live uh ability where what they say is unchecked, it is impossible, you know this, Frank, it's impossible to fact-check somebody real time, and the audience doesn't hang around. We'd love to think that we put somebody like Donald Trump on and they do a one-hour news conference and they say all kinds of stuff that isn't true. And we'd like to think that, okay, the audience is going to stay with us when we dissect that afterwards, but they don't. They move on and they're left with hearing stuff that just isn't true.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

And that's that's but that's that's today, Charles. I mean, that's today. And that's a function of social media, it's a function of the explosion of YouTube channels by influencers and people who are not tethered to the journalistic rules that you and I understood and embraced when we worked at Scene. And in the early days, you know, no, people did not just come on and assert. You brought them on. We had very serious, substantive conversations. We did specials on, we did hour-long, multi-hour specials on Medicare. You know, we we assigned reporters to do reporting. And yeah, sure, there were a lot of guests on television. But in the early days, there were newscasts. Bernie Shaw host, you know, uh anchored a prime time newscast that was mostly filled with reporter packages, we called them, where they would go out, write a script, the script would be approved, there were sound bites in it, and it was done in a traditional way. It was not the talk radio with cameras that we've got now in the same way. And so trying to go back to the early days of CNN and say CNN is responsible for the mess we're in today. Well, partly responsible. Partly responsible. Well, there were there were things, like I say, Crossfire, you know, led the way for let's let's have an on-air, real-time duel every night on you know, asserting opinion. Okay, fair enough. You could you see some roots there. But I think both the original intent and, though it didn't always deliver, the the early approach to the news that CNN had when it went on the air was uh a very serious, very professional approach to the news. Let's remember something else. CNN went on the air in 1980. There was no Fox or MSNBC till 1996. I got yelled at one time when I asked one of our bosses, Ed Turner, no relation to Ted Turner, you'll remember him well. I asked him about the ratings for one of the shows I was doing. He said, Don't you ever ask me about ratings again. I don't give a rat's patootie about ratings. And we were told not to think about ratings, but to think about the stories we were doing. Okay. In those early days, there was sort of this idealistic sense that CNN could be the Tiffany cable network of news. And that that's what we lost. And certainly, if you want to say that by taking news 24-7, by making real-time decisions to put something on and all the rest, that it laid some of the groundwork for where we are now. Yeah, but it was it wasn't until the technology existed and the channels existed to do what we're seeing now, did the, I think the doors come flying off the barn.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Fair enough. And I have by the way, I remember in the early days of CNN when Ted was very hands-on. If you remember this, Frank, we weren't allowed to use the word foreign.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

We had it was a time when we couldn't use foreign. When I was hired, uh, and and and probably you too, I was literally told when I was hired, we do not have stars. The news is the star. There was not an I anchored. My show, I had the show that I anchored called The International Hour, and another one called Uh The World Today or something like that, right? There were no anchor names. It wasn't AC, Anderson Cooper 360, or the lead with Jake Tapper. And it was not until after Fox and MS were on, there had been another merger at CNN. It was after the AOL merger, disastrous merger, though that was, that we were told, oh my God, there's all this competition out there. And literally the comment then was people watch people. And so then the decision was made to elevate personalities. And that too is something that has proliferated in the industry. And so we see this personality-driven programming that's more about the personality than it is about the news.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

So, right after Watergate, uh around the era when uh all the president's men came out, uh, there was great, and the polling showed this, there was great admiration among most Americans uh when it came to the press. Now, maybe that was because it was Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford playing the key roles in the movie, but but they were you know kids were lining up to get into journalism uh classes, journalism schools. It was the thing to be an investigative reporter uh for a major news organization. Now, skip ahead all these decades, and it's I think fair to say that that the uh the public has a very low opinion uh of press. Uh and yes, to to go back to how we began. And uh one does have to be careful about how one defines the press. But uh for the sake of of this particular discussion, mainstream media, uh New York Times, CBS News, NBC News, uh CNN, even Fox, what accounts for that?

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Changing audience, changing um culture, certainly changing technologies, changing politics. Uh I love the Watergate example. You know, a whole generation, I'm included. I was a I was a high school student when Watergate, the hearings were happening. I had this summer job, I had the radio on, I was listening to Watergate hearings. It was a fascinating thing. And out of Woodward and Bernstein came this expression that the press had gone from lap dogs, right, largely accepting often the lies that were put out by the White House, whether it was Vietnam and LBJ or Richard Nixon and Watergate, from going from lap dogs to being watchdogs. And the role was to be the watchdog on power. Then we had some of the new developments, and people got carried away with that, and they went from being watchdogs to attack dogs, and it was not, you know, there was not anything that could happen where the press wasn't yelling and screaming. And now maybe we've gone from being, you know, attack dogs to being mad dogs. And it's just whoever's on wherever they want to be can yell and scream and pontificate all they want, and with no particular accountability, you know, except to what you know, niche of their audience may or may not get angry with them. You look at some of the podcasters and the influencers and how much of an audience they have, from whatever perspective, hinged or unhinged, it's pretty remarkable. Um look, I think that you know, what we went through in that Vietnam and Watergate era was I mean, the 60s and 70s, for those who either have lived them or studied them, were searing times. You know, presidential assassinations, assassination attempts on presidential candidates, sometimes successful with Bobby Kennedy, sometimes not, George Wallace, Martin Luther King Jr., the whole Vietnam experience, where people were being drafted, sent off, dying in faraway places, you know, tens of thousands of young people dying there, civil rights uh protests in the country, women's rights protests, the environment, you name it. It was a time of great upheaval. And the role that the press played, and it was then a different press, completely, it was a press. A newspaper got delivered to your house at six o'clock in the morning, a paper boy drove by, or maybe a paper girl on her bike and threw the threw the newspaper through across the sidewalk into your driveway or on your porch, those days just don't exist anymore. Those are long, long gone. And so I think, you know, what we're talking about now is what is the role of journalism? How do we even define journalism anymore? What I hope still, and what I think still should be the core element in the context you and I are talking about now, because there are many, is this notion of accountability. That in an open society, an alleged democracy, you know, people in power, whether they be a president, a prime minister, uh a governor, a mayor, a priest, a CEO, should be held accountable for their actions. And the the press is a vital place, the media, journalism, whatever you're gonna call it, for that accountability to happen.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

But there's another thing that's changed, though, uh Frank. You you mentioned that maybe now the uh journalists are considered attack dogs as opposed to Or mad dogs, yes. Or mad dogs. But it's worse than that, isn't it? Because Donald Trump, President Trump, says that journalists are the enemy of the people.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

No, that's completely totally different. Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Look, I when I covered the White House years and years ago when when Ronald Reagan was president, there was a press secretary who said, Look, you don't tell me how to manage the news, I won't tell you how to report the news. And that was fair. We knew what his job was, we knew what our job was. Neither side liked necessarily all the moments of the other, but there was an understanding. White House Correspondence Association dinner, I went to a million of these, okay, and now we have this horrible thing that happened at this last one where there was a shooting. But every president I heard, from Ronald Reagan forward, said some variation of, you know what? I don't really like you guys a lot all the time. I don't think your coverage is fair, but I get it. And you have a role in our democracy, and I respect that. When I was Bureau Chief Charles at CNN, I was Bureau Chief when 9-11 happened. Ari Fleischer was the White House press secretary. We got a call, there was a Bureau pool call after 9-11 the next day. So it was me and Fox and CBS, NBC, ABC. And Ari said, and I will never forget this look, I can't tell you what to do. You have a constitutional right to report the news. But I want to ask you, now that we have been attacked, to please be mindful, and would you not report, please, the whereabouts of the president or the cabinet when it's assembled? So however confrontational or adversarial these relations were, they were fundamentally respectful. Donald Trump changed that, as you said. He comes in, one of his first things when he's 27, 16, it's 2017, after he's inaugurated, is to go to the CIA, stand in front of the wall of the fallen, and say the press are the enemies of the people. Journalists are the enemies of the people. What an outrageous thing to say when he's standing in front of a wall of people who have given their lives confronting the real enemies of the people who actually wanted to do our nation in. So, yes, it's a very different time. It's undermined the trust in and the credibility of a lot in the media. It's confused people as to what the job of journalists should be. And in the process, it's undermined faith in a lot of other very critical institutions in this country.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

And by undermining it, what are the ramifications of that?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

We're shattered as a society at some level. We see a public that's increasingly fixed in its ideological beliefs. We see a congressional gerrymandering process now that by any reasonable uh measure is is deeply alarming. We see um fewer congressional swing districts where actual public opinion can lead lawmakers to be accountable to the public. I have heard lawmakers, lawmakers have told me that they are actually punished in their districts if they are seen as compromisers because it means they're selling out their base, their side. So we have a very challenging set of political and cultural developments in this country that that we need to be, if it's possible anymore, um that we need to stop and think deeply about and try to discuss and deliberate in a way that we can appreciate what's at stake and what might need to be done.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

But how does that process begin, Frank? Uh and I agree with you that there needs to be a reevaluation as a society. But how does that happen and who starts it? You. You. That's a big burden. Seriously.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Well, it's a big burden, but you know, you've been around for a while, Charles. You can do this. No, it's seriously, though. I mean, it's now it starts with every influencer, every podcaster who wants and who can to try to engage people in thoughtful conversation, even if they've got a strong position. Bring people in who can you bring people in who disagree? And, you know, Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, uh, and I've engaged with him over this, has this whole disagree better campaign that he's tried to start, and which is a way of saying, look, we can have civil discourse and still disagree deeply about things, right? You're a pro-life person because you think that moms should have choice. I believe abortion is a sin because God creates, okay, we're probably very far apart. We'll probably never agree on this, but can we just can we talk about this in a respectful way so at least we understand where one another is coming from in a different way? Um, that's gonna be very hard to do, Charles. You ask how we do it, that's gonna be very hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

I was gonna say, I mean, do you see any indication that that's happening?

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Um yes, in the sense that people are trying and they're talking about it. You and I are talking about it now. Yes, in the sense that I think there is a deep alarm across the country on multiple sides of this. It's wrong to say that this alarm lives on one side or the other. Um but there's not what there's not going to be is there's not going to be a quick one size fits all presidential commission, we have a report and we move on. I don't think there's going to be, as there was after Watergate, a national reaction that was clear and decisive and in its own way bipartisan to create more and better accountability in the executive, for example. I I think the deep divisions we have are here for the longer haul.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Now we have a situation or soon will, if the uh paramount deal goes through, the the paramount uh uh acquisition of of uh uh Time Warner, Warner Brothers, where a company that is headed by uh a person who he and his father both are are very openly um uh advocates of of Donald Trump, uh friends and and I think uh uh ideologically kindred spirits in many ways. They will be, if this acquisition, acquisition goes through, they will in effect own CBS news, CNN for younger folks, TikTok. Um that's a lot of power. And how does that lead to the kind of of of change in discussion that you were just talking about, a change in perhaps societal attitudes, when so much of the powerful media companies that will reach a very wide demographic, from older folks down to younger folks, will potentially be owned by the same people.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

And that's that's true whether it's Paramount or you know gray media or any of these others. There are big media companies now that own stations and in some cases papers and digital sites all across the country, and this consolidation of media power or power in the hands of folks like that is something that everybody should be concerned about. We should be holding them accountable in the same way we're holding everybody else accountable. You know, there was a time when um media and the news were very highly profitable enterprises. They're not so profitable anymore, but they're very influential. And so that's why there's still an evening newscast on ABC, NBC, and CBS, I think. Not because that's a great profit setter, but because it leaves these companies still in the middle of events in ways that still is influential to people and potentially to their advertisers. I, you know, we don't know where the Paramount deal is going to go. We don't know if Barry Weiss moves into CNN, how much change is made, whether CEO Mark Thompson hangs around and loses his job, how deep the layoffs are going to be. And as you and I both know and have experienced, CNN has gone through multiple mergers and acquisitions in the past. Arguably each time the the the piece and the profit that CNN represents shrinks when compared to the larger corporate parent. And as that component shrinks, the value of the enterprise arguably becomes somewhat less. Although I it still would appear that because CNN is so influential and seen all around the world that it will continue to get that scrutiny. There's some things some people who think that Barry Weiss isn't gonna last very long because so far what's been going over on over at CBS has been this just this side of a disaster.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

By the way, let me interject for for somebody listening or watching who doesn't know. So Barry Weiss uh is the current, I guess her title is what, managing editor of the CBS Evening. Something like that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And she was brought in, she she editor in chief or something.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Yeah. She was an opinion journalist, nothing wrong with that, but she was an opinion journalist for the New York Times for a bit, and then left the Times, because I think she felt that the Times was too left-wing for her particular tastes. And then she started up um something called, is it the free? I should know this, but is it the free press? Is that what it's called? Yep. Free press. Uh and then in this ever-shifting world of acquisitions, uh the uh the folks that own uh Paramount ended up buying uh her her uh enterprise, if you will, if you will, the free press. And in doing so, gave her the added responsibility, because she is still, I believe, attached to the free press, but she now has this uh she's the the de facto head of CBS News. There's a president of CBS News, but apparently uh Barry Weiss runs the the show. So I my apologies for interrupting, but I wanted to make sure that people watching know who she is. But so continue.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

No, thank you. I'm I appreciate that as important. And one of the things Barry Weiss has wanted to do is remake CBS News, refashion 60 Minutes, the one of their most successful broadcasts, been on the air for more than 50 years. Um, and she's quite controversial. Um since she's been in at the helm, the ratings of the CBS Evening News have tanked. Yeah. So the you know, one of the questions is how, you know, is she immune from the same pressures that everybody else who's been in a job like that have endured and in some cases succumbed to, right? I mean, you're supposed to grow the audience, not shrink the audience. Right. Um and I think the other thing that you and I experienced in our years at CNN is it's it's it's important to understand that the cable audience is not the broadcast audience. It's a different audience, it behaves differently, it's looking for different things. We've had other people who've come from very, you know, wonderfully pedigree backgrounds on on network news and elsewhere, not succeed because they don't understand the audience and what you do when you've got a 24-7 news thing. So we'll see what happens. But I think the question that you raise, which is, you know, what are the implications for the journalism and the future of CNN given these this transaction, that is very much up in the air. We will see. It's quite likely that they will somehow merge or seek synergies as the as the as the terminology goes, uh to to to say pull savings from a merger when CBS and CNN are under the same corporate roof.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

The animosity toward journalists certainly didn't uh start with Donald Trump, but it certainly has been. Oh my gosh. No, but it certainly has been the flames have been greatly fanned by Donald Trump. When he eventually leaves office, and I'm going to presume, for the sake of our discussion, that he will follow the Constitution and leave office, although I guess nothing is beyond consideration at this point in our history. But presuming that he leaves, whoever follows him in the White House, Democrat or Republican, how does that relationship between the White House and journalists get repaired? Does it get repaired? Or are we are are we now on a sort of a permanent uh relationship that is a very, very bad one?

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Well, I think I think the answer is yes to both parts of your question. Um I think we're on a very different ground that can be bad simply because no matter who's president, the influencers aren't going to go away. People who have audiences in the millions, um, yourself included, um, but people who have audiences you'll get there. Um people who have audiences in the millions, um, some of them have audiences in the millions because they traffick in conspiracy theories. Wild-eyed stuff. You know, I mean, the idea that there was somebody on, you know, uh an influencer who had millions of followers who tried to say that the Parkland shooting was uh a hoax and that real people who had real losses, they lost their children for God's sakes, were actors or some horrible thing like that. And it took years to get that through a you know a court system to drive accountability there. But he had and has an audience. It's astonishing. That's that unfortunately, I don't think, is going to go away as long as we have a First Amendment. But what can change is a leader, and again, this can happen at any level, who says, you know what? We need to be an informed society. We need to respect our differences, we need to bring people together to debate and yes, disagree. But Spencer Cox, we can disagree better and we can get to a much healthier, happier place. There's a place for that message and that result, Charles, and I think there's an opportunity for somebody to make you know, have some real traction with that. Does that person come along? Is that a central part of their, you know, campaign or their their mindset? We will see. But so, yes, I think the moment can be repaired. I think some of the structural changes won't go away. You know, there are cyclical changes and structural changes. Some of the structural changes are here to stay. But I I believe that we're in a cyclical uh moment right now. There are very few people who could who could do and get away with what Donald Trump has done and got away with. I don't think JD Vance could do this. I don't think Mark Marco Rubio would, and I'm not sure they would want to, you know, when it's really their administration, their name, and their reputation. They all want to prevail, they all want to win. But the question is, who are they and what do they stand for?

SPEAKER_01 41:59

But are you presuming that that in the absence in the future of Donald Trump that that the road is more likely to be one that's repaired? Or could it not get worse?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Oh, anything can get worse, but I I I have I have look, I like to refer to myself as a glass half-empty optimist.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Okay. So the journalist. No, the journalist in me always looks for the class that's half empty, right? The what is the story? The story is sadly the plane that crashes, not the plane that lands on time.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Okay. So that's why journalists have a negativity bias, and they do. Okay. But the but the the human being in me, and the person who's done a lot of journalism where I've seen astonishingly great people in their communities doing beautiful, wonderful, generous things, believes that there is a goodness out there and a logic out there. Just look at the polling numbers. People don't like where the country is right now. They don't want this kind of division and nastiness. Do they? Do they want somebody who says when when somebody dies, I'm glad he's dead? Do they want that?

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Referring now to Donald Trump uh talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Yeah, I I don't think they want that. Do they want to raise their children to say please and thank you and send them to their room if they're disrespectful, or at least, you know, chide them on that? Yeah, they want people to fight for them. They want them to be tough. They certainly want advocates on their side. And in some cases, the the stakes are so high they want to prevail no matter what. But most people want a balance in this. Most people want a reasonable, civil, happy life.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

You know, you're talking about uh that you want uh that your your view is sort of uh half and all journalists. Right, uh a glass being half full, and it reminded me of what's that old thing about the the difference between a what's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist is an optimist with better information.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

So uh look, I I'm I'm I just want to say this. I I have two little grandkids. They're adorable. And I was dropping one of them at his school, he's four years old at his preschool the other day. And um, there was a crossing guard. Uh and it was a black woman who is a crossing guard. And the kids who were crossing over to the school were all shades of the rainbow. And there were women with hijabs bringing their children to school, and this crossing guard was saying, Hey, how are you doing? And and and and greeting everybody. It was the most wonderful, sincere, hopeful, pleasant moment. And I saw this incredible kind of rainbow of America, right? And I stood there and I thought, wow, take all the politics out of this. These are just people dropping their kids at school, and there's something fundamentally decent and hopeful about it. And that's a story, too, that the media should be reporting in this country. It's not all hateful stuff. There are a ton of people out doing good things, and that's why I think I, and this is the optimist in me, that this is a cyclical moment and that and that our national DNA, which is fundamentally a hopeful DNA.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Let me ask you one one. Let me ask you one one last uh question. We'll let you go. I I'm curious, what do you tell students who might be interested in a career in in journalism? And and and let me before you answer that, I'll I'll mention that uh I had a conversation very similar to that, uh, about that, with um someone who's in charge of hiring faculty at one of the major, well, I'll say that USC uh here in Los Angeles. And I I I asked, well, what do you tell students? Because I I did teach at USC a few years ago, and I noticed even then there was a really marked shift uh in what students wanted to do, and and what I, as the professor facing them, felt I could reasonably tell them in terms of expectations for their future in this business. Uh, but that was a few years ago. So I asked him, I said, this is only about a year ago. I said, what do you tell students? And he said, Well, I tell them that they have to now think of themselves not only as journalists, but as entrepreneurs. That they have to think of themselves as no longer being, you know, the employee that goes to work for CNN with the New York Times or NBC and or a local newspaper or a local radio station. Right, or local, right, any of those things. And you know, they're gonna have a 25-year maybe career and get a pension and all that other stuff. They have to think of themselves as being entrepreneurs. Do you agree with that? And what exactly does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 47:29

100% agree with that. Uh, the little radio station that I started no longer it employed full-time reporters and a bunch of stringers and all the rest in a town of 16,000. Tiny little town. No longer exists. The Washington Post recently laid off a third of its staff. So it doesn't matter whether you're small or big, the world is changing. The business models that propelled journalism in the early earlier times are gone. Every one of my students has one of these. Okay. When you started when you and look what we're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Okay. When we started in this business, if you went out to do a story, if I went out to do a story, a camera person went with you, a lighting person went with you, an audio person went with you, a producer produced your piece, and you were the correspondent. That's five people. Now one person with this can do all of that. When we started in the business years ago, a camera cost $20,000. This thing costs $1,000. Okay, adjusted for inflation. Figured out. But but so I think what I tell young people is you have more power in your hands and more capacity to reach more people more rapidly than anyone in any generation in human history. I had a conversation just today, in the last couple of days, actually, uh, with students who are doing just this. One of them is leaving an internship, a paid internship in Washington to go back to his home state of New Mexico, where he's going to be working in a completely entrepreneurial way, doing short-form videos and documentaries for community organizations. He's doing storytelling, but not for a journalism organization. Another young man I'm I just had coffee with this morning is he's graduating and he's taking a part-time hourly paid job, no benefits, with an investigative uh startup. But he's also going to be establishing a YouTube channel and doing other things to try to tell stories in his own way. Will that be a will these be turned into lifelong careers, like you say, that can be sustaining them and maybe a family in 20 years? Hard to tell. Not everybody. I mean, there are still some who are going to work at Politico or they're going to work at, you know, the the Des Moines Register or something. There are entry-level jobs that still exist in these places. But it's it's it's more challenging, it's much more varied. And the entrepreneurial notion is probably the defining element of this generation of people who are graduating out into this media world.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

I gotta tell you one quick story because you mentioned uh about uh how television has changed. Uh so way back when uh the current King Charles, then Prince Charles, was getting wed to Diana, Diane Spencer, uh, I was in those days a TV uh producer in New York. And so I was producing, I was assigned to do a documentary uh on the wedding, the then upcoming, what they were calling at the time the wedding of the century. And we hired a British crew because it was just too cumbersome to hire uh a US crew to go there. And so I spent a good deal of time in the UK going all around with this camera crew. When I say a camera crew, and this goes to what you were saying about how it's changed, because now people go out with a phone and it's on the air, uh, I had a camera person, I had a sound tech, I had a lighting guy, and then there was another individual. And as the weeks went by, I kept thinking, I get what the cameraman is doing, I get what the sound tech is doing, I understand what the lighting person is doing. What does that other guy do? So I finally got up the backbone to because they were all older than me, you know. I was I was a young guy, and these were all people that were in the business for years and years and years, and they had shot stuff over the world. So I finally got up the courage, I went over to the guy, and I said, Excuse me, but I I have to ask you this. I've been watching you for the past few weeks. What actually do you do? And he looked at me and he said, and I always remember this, he said, I make this whole thing possible. And I said, Excuse me? He said, I make this whole thing possible. I said, How do you do that? So he takes his hand and he reaches it into his pocket and he pulls out a big wad of paper money and he says, When you go to shoot in a church or a university or an office building, and we have to plug into their systems and all that, how do you think they're letting us in and allowing us to do all this work? I said, You mean you've been paying them? He goes, Absolutely. And if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have a documentary. And he was right.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

We call them fixers, I guess. Yeah. Well, just just because your story, you know, brings back fond memories. I was a young reporter in my early 20s in London at the time, and I covered that royal wedding. And it was it was just me in a microphone because I worked for the AP at the time, and they said you can't spell cheap without AP. So anyway, it was a it was a good thing. No, look, I I I think that the world has, and and you know, this is kind of capture, you know encapsulates this conversation we've had here, Charles. I the world has changed dramatically. Yeah in many ways for the better. There's a democratization of information. People have access to technology, they travel, uh, they have health care, they have things that they never would have had 50 years ago, or 40, or even 30. But with that has come the complications, the coarseness, the instant judgment uh uh of the moments that we are now seeing. And they are very challenging. And what this young generation, back to who this new crowd is that's going to be telling the stories and providing the information that we need, what they're gonna have to figure out is how they navigate the pressures of the moment and the temptations to be quick and glib and outraged, versus the the the deeper thought and reflection that humanity needs to make the decisions that need to be made. And it's not going to be the same. We are not going back. That much we know. And so that's why we need very thoughtful, creative people, younger people, figuring out what that future is going to look like. And we don't know. And what we can do is we can cheer them on, and we can there are certain things that can that can and should persist. And um that's I think going to be the tension and the suspense of of these next several years as we see where this how where and how this shakes out.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

Frank Sesno, uh a pleasure uh to have you as a guest. It was great seeing you again, and and I enjoyed our conversation. Uh and for those of you who uh have been following us and watching or listening to SOS America, as always, we welcome your comments. And uh if you'd like, uh we also encourage you to subscribe. It's totally free. Until the next episode of SOS America. I'm Charles Feldman. Thank you!