What's Next For CNN — With Brian Stelter

Brian Stelter was the host of CNN's Reliable Sources until the network canceled it last summer. Stelter joins Big Technology Podcast to look back at his tenure and exit, examine where CNN is heading, and ponder the role of television news in a world filled with digital alternatives. Tune in for a deep conversation focused on the news industry, tech, and business worlds. And stay tuned till the end when we debate whether AI will be a better 'companion' to people than media personalities and influencers. ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 0:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Brian Stelter is our guest today. He spent nine years at CNN as the host of Reliable Sources, which was the network's longest-running show. And then it was canceled last summer, leaving Brian on the outside looking in. As a media critic, Stelter's really lived the story that he's reported on. He was a host at a network that was fighting an unstoppable march of its audience toward digital channels. He was at CNN as it worked to find itself. Was it going to be a left-leaning network, something more centrist? Was it going to be news? Was it going to be opinion? And he was part of the mainstream media as it grappled with its place next to ascending and competing formats like Facebook, TikTok, and, well, podcasts. Also, despite hosting only once

• 0:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  a week, Stelter became one of CNN's best-known personalities, notable for his fierce criticism of the Trump administration and Trump himself. And that, and I'm only speculating, may well have ended up being what cost him his show. I love speaking with people who've recently left their jobs because we can look back on a span of time and see where's the world going. Also, they tend to be more open than they would otherwise, but I definitely recommend paying attention to what Stelter doesn't say along with what he does. And I think, and you'll hear this in the conversation, we can just learn a ton about the state of media, tech, and business by asking Brian, what happened? So, let's do that. My conversation with Brian Stelter, right after this.

• 1:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then, I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get Frontier Compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 2:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razor were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 2:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Brian, welcome to the show.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. I'm a little nervous. I'm a little rusty, haven't been in front of a microphone for a while, but I'll give it a shot.

• 2:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I am nervous because it's great to speak with you. I've been watching your stuff forever. This is the first time we're actually talking live, which is cool. But I will say the Page One documentary that portrayed you and David Carr in the New York Times newsroom was like really instrumental in helping me make a leap from sales and marketing where I was beforehand into journalism, because I actually got a view of what that was like. And the fact that you guys brought transparency to the reporting process was pretty cool. So thank you for doing that.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I love hearing that. I've been meaning to go back and re-watch the film, so now you're giving me a reason to.

• 3:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it was great stuff. I mean, I think between that and The Wire, season five, that was like where I started to get an understanding of what actually goes on in a newsroom.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  And now you're busy at it yourself.

• 3:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's fun, although no newsroom anymore. So it's funny how things go. But actually, that theme of how, I mean, I'm able to do this because of a wave of technology that's changed the way that we do journalism. And I think that theme is probably going to come up a couple of times over the course of our conversation today.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that's a good lead in. Let's talk about your time at CNN. So what happened at the end there? When, can you sort of describe the last month or so at CNN? And why, why do you think it ended up coming to a close?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  So you want to start at the end.

• 4:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Start at the, start at the very end, and then we work our way back.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  You know, the entire summer of 2022 is a, is a, is a foggy one for me.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  But I look back now, it certainly was surprising in the moment to have Reliable Sources canceled. I had hosted the show for about a decade, almost a decade. It had been on CNN for about thirty years in one form or another. And, you know, I, you know, I look back and to me, that was a big surprise at the time. But now, now that I've been able to hang out at home, be a stay at home dad for a while, just, you know, have a different experience with the news and not be hooked into the cable news world minute by minute. I now feel a real sense of contentment about it. I now look back and I, I feel like I completed the proverbial video game. Like I feel like I completed the challenge and my time at Reliable Sources feels complete.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  So I, you know, I think more than anything else, I'm thankful that I was able to sign off. You know, and that's a credit to CNN management that I was able to have a final program and talk to the viewers and book some great guests. That's, that's a rare gift in television. It doesn't happen very often. So I think maybe that's why it feels complete to me.

• 5:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I just went through the last show on, I guess, right before we came on air. So it was very interesting.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Does it hold up well?

• 5:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does hold up well, and there's definitely going to be themes that you brought up that I think we're talking about. It was, there were definitely interesting things that, that came up on it. I'll tell you one thing that I found interesting right off the bat, and I have it noted down. So you had actually asked a media reporter, I think it was Claire Atkinson, on air, whether she had any information, whether John Malone, who was the Warner Brothers Discovery Board member, who said that, you know, he had nothing to do with the cancellation of the show, but he also said that he wants the news portion of CNN to be more centrist. And he's like, I'm not in control or directly involved. And you had asked, hey, do you have any reporting that sort of lets us know whether or not he was involved or not? Well, okay, now, now we're a few months after the fact. That was in August, we're in January twenty-three now. Have you found anything out about that?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  I guess you're asking if I'm gonna go and and report out my own life or my own story. And the answer is no, I think I'm never, I'll be the last to know.

• 6:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  About why Reliable Sources was canceled. I know the show was popular, I know it was relatively inexpensive, it was relatively cheap to produce. And I know that there's now a void in the marketplace as a result. But I also, I don't look backwards at it because it's been so fun to have this time with my family and so fun to, you know, freelance for the places that I've always wanted to write for. So I haven't really gone back and thought about, thought about that past, you know?

• 7:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And I definitely want to-

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I do think, I do, I will say, the CNBC, you know, your contributor to CNBC, John Malone's interviews on CNBC are very significant.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  I guess I could be partially blamed for the creation of a lot of news networks, including yours. Yes, I know that. But certainly Fox News, Fox News, I think, in my opinion, has followed a, an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news, I mean, some actual journalism embedded in, in a program schedule of all opinions.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  And there's been a lot of reporting from, from about CNN that lots of staffers there were worried about what he was saying. That's not, I know, I don't know myself, I don't know anything about myself and that, but I know that his interviews on CNBC were really significant.

• 8:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, do you want to say a little bit more about that?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Well, think back to last November, when he made comments on CNBC saying he wanted CNN to be more like Fox News. That was a very significant comment. And, and, you know, it's been reported that some people at CNN were very concerned about that.

• 8:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  I do want to ask one more question about this. The questions or the answers that Chris Licht gave in terms of what happened, he said that there was, and it's kind of interesting hearing your perspective here also. He said that there wasn't room to do that show on a Sunday, and he still wanted to have that reporting, but just integrated into daily, day-to-day stuff, and have that done with Oliver Darcy and Sarah Fisher. And then Kara Swisher was speaking with him, and she asked, "Well, what about Brian?" He's like, "I don't really want to comment on that."

• 8:55Speaker 03

  According to Dylan Byers, Brian told friends he considered himself a sacrificial lamb. He had three years left on his contract, so it wasn't the money. I'm curious why you didn't offer him a different day, or digital, just like you're talking about.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  I don't really want to get into specifics on that, but I don't think that's fair to him.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  All right.

• 9:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  So there's the gap, right? You had the show, it was doing well, by your account, and then it was sort of like, cut, and there was like, "Where's the space for Brian?" And he won't talk about it. So have you thought about that at all? Like, what's your thought about what the situation is there?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think Chris Licht, who I've known for 15, 16 years, who I've always had a lot of respect for, I think he was being respectful to me, and by not talking about our private conversations, then I'm being respectful to him by not talking about it either. I think that maybe it's okay to have a little mystery in life, right?

• 10:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, for sure, for sure. But it is interesting, because it does sort of point to like, what direction the network is going in. And there's been like, this discussion. We talked about Malone, but broadly, there's this meme that CNN is trying to become a little bit more centrist. And there's even this report from Dylan Byers and Puck that had you saying that you thought you were the sacrificial lamb in order to make way for this change. And so, like, CNN is an important institution, and now you're playing kind of an important... What happened with you plays an important role in sort of determining where it goes, don't you think so? I guess I am curious, like, of course, mystery is okay.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  I think the content speaks for itself. Yeah, I think I think the programming speaks for itself and the articles speaks for the the, you know, the homepage, the the articles, the videos, they all speak for themselves. So you can have folks on the on the periphery saying CNN is trying to do this or trying to do that. But what's most important is, you know, what's the what's the news coverage? What's the content? What's the programming? And to me, as as a as a reader and a viewer, the news coverage, the programming is outstanding. You mentioned Oliver, my longtime friend who writes the Reliable Sources newsletter. I read the newsletter every night. I love his version of the newsletter. So, you know, centrist, I'm not sure what centrist means.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I think, you know, but I know that the programming right now is outstanding. And that's that should be the measurement. I think actually, it's one of the taking stepping beyond CNN for a minute. I think this is one of the critiques of how the news media covers itself, which is that we'll talk a lot about the personalities, the players, the conflicts, but not enough about the content, what's actually on screen or on the website. And that's what we should focus more on because that's the more important piece. And by the way, like, obviously, as a media reporter for a long time, I believe deeply in media criticism and media coverage, that we do need to cover ourselves, that we do need to be a mirror, you know, onto the industry.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  And there is there is a void of that right now. There's not enough of that right now. And the industry would benefit from having more introspection and more coverage of itself.

• 12:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt. And I think that, like, are you sure you can appreciate this? That the the gravitation towards covering the characters is actually a way to, I mean, what is news if not the world's events presented through personal lenses, right? So I think that, of course, you can look at the stories, but. The way that this industry works through individuals is also pretty important. So I think that's what's behind the fascination with so many people.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  By the way, I'll take that a step further and say that's going to be even more and more and more true as robots increasingly write a good portion of the internet. And as AI is responsible for producing more and more of the content that we consume every day, personalities and hosts and anchors are going to become, in my view, even more prominent. Because that personal connection, that human interaction, that that sense of companionship is what generative AI will not be able to produce, at least not for a while. So for this, you know, short to middle term of our futures, personalities and companionship are going to become even more valuable, in my view.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  But I just don't want the content itself to get overlooked, that's all.

• 13:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt, yeah. And especially when you think about TV news, right? The content, in many ways, is the people, right? The hosts, I mean, obviously you know this, right? But the hosts, the guests, that's what you're getting. Like, having a Tucker Carlson or having a Joe Scarborough, like, that's the content. But anyway.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that's kind of like, when I'm asking questions about your, you know, your departure and the network's, you know, post Stelter direction, that's kind of where it's coming from, less about the gossip and more just like, what is CNN going to be? I think that's what a lot of people are asking.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  And it's only awkward for me because

• 14:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  at the end of the day, I don't, I don't know why the show was canceled. So I feel like I'm the least reliable source about it. But I think you asked just now the bigger, more important one, which is, what's CNN going to be? And look, I'm just a viewer now and just a reader now. But I know what CNN has been for 40-plus years and what I believe it'll be for the rest of our lifetimes, which is one of the world's biggest news brands that people can trust when something great happens in the world and when something terrible happens in the world. That's the way that I viewed CNN when I was there and how I viewed my role. Look, I was one hour on one day, so I had this little tiny sliver.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  But, you know, I had moments where big news was breaking on Sunday morning, when news that had nothing to do with my beat happened to be breaking, whether it was a mass shooting or a space launch. And in those moments, those are the big moments for television news. Those are the moments where people know to go to CNN. In the same way, they know to go to CNBC when there's market turmoil, and they know to go to ESPN when there's sports drama. They know to go to CNN in those big moments. And that is the core. That's the essential that I think will never change. And then, of course, there's, you know, what's big news to you might not be big news to me.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  There are reasons to be checking in with TV news and digital every day and every hour. But on those really big moments, you know, that's what you protect above all else. And I think that's what they're doing.

• 15:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure. And it was, it's interesting.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Do I sound like a total TV news shill or junkie?

• 15:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  A little bit. I mean, I, you know, I understand your perspective for sure. But TV news is in a very interesting moment. I mean, yes, all of that is true. And viewership is, I would say viewership is declining. So here's a stat about CNN in, let's see. It had its worst week in nine years from January 16th to the 22nd for only 444,000 viewers in prime time and 93,000 in that 24, 25 to 54 demo, which is what advertisers want. And also, 2022 was the lowest rated year in history for CNN. And you're also seeing just tremendous amount of cord cutting going, going on.

• 16:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it is, when you think about the essential, yeah, how essential TV news is, these are some kind of interesting, I don't want to use the word headwinds, so I'll just say challenges that it's running into.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I think headwinds is an appropriate word, too. Is that over? Is it an overused word?

• 16:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's just, yeah, it's become analyst jargon at this point. Like, yeah, anything, everything is a headwind these days.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Everything's a headwind.

• 16:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Go ahead.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess the way I see it is, yes, there are, let's take the Today Show at NBC, which is one of the most important brands in America. We can take CBS Evening News or any other brand that we choose. The ratings challenge is real because there are fewer people available at any given time to watch on the big screen TV in a way that's going to be raided by Nielsen Company.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  There are, there are ways to address that, and I think we can get creative and talk about ways to draw some of those viewers back. But there's just a smaller available pool. And at the same time, you have all of these brands trying new ways to reach folks that don't have that big screen experience and don't want that big screen experience. And to varying degrees of success, you know. The, and I think the story in some ways is happening slowly, but there are moments where it feels like it's picking up pace and accelerating because of technology, because of cord cutting, et cetera. You know, here's my, here's my like crazy idea for Comcast, because I'm now, I have Xfinity at home.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  It's 6:59 a.m. My phone is connected to Comcast Wi-Fi. It knows it's time for the Today Show. Why doesn't Today Show pop up on my TV automatically? Now, some people might not want that, but I would love that. I think we should think about ways to use technology to put these, you know, these television shows that are fantastic, that deserve to be appointment viewing, but sometimes are not, you know, sometimes my kids are running around the house and I forget to turn on the TV at 7:00 a.m. I would love to have more automation, more connectivity between devices, so that my cable bundle, so that my television options are more accessible and I'm using them in more ways.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  And this is the kind of stuff I think about when I'm just enjoying being a news viewer now and not a producer.

• 18:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, yeah, here's my fear about the declining amount of audience that's out there and what networks are going to do about it. So I wonder if the fact that there's fewer viewers out there.

• 19:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do the networks then become more inflammatory in order to win them over? I mean, everything we've heard about from, I'll just use CNN as an example. Everything we've heard from CNN, you know, more centrist and all this stuff. And here's a quote from Chris Licht also. He said, I think this was one of his first memos to CNN. We are truth tellers focusing on informing, not alarming our viewers. And you've already seen less of the breaking news banner across our programming. The tenor of our voice holistically has to reflect that. And so I put that together with the fact that, okay, so they've taken, maybe trying to take the temperature down. Now they're getting the worst ratings in their history.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  I don't think it's fair to connect the two.

• 19:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, so this is what I'm, I want to turn it over to you. I'm curious whether you think that there's a connection.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  So I think Licht was brilliant to come in and say right away, let's tone down the breaking news banner overuse. I thought that was a brilliant move because it set a tone right away. And in our editorial meetings, you know, when I was on on Sunday mornings, we would talk about, is this news actually breaking? Are we being honest with the viewer? Because the overuse of the breaking news banner is really, it's a matter of honesty and how honest or dishonest you're being. So I thought that was a brilliant move. I think in general, what we've heard from CNN leadership is, you know, yes, bring the temperature down. And at the same time, you're referring to a tendency, I think from other networks,

• 20:35Speaker 01

  to raise it up, to stoke the fire. And that's also true. That's clearly what Fox News does day in, day out. It's incredibly inflammatory programming. And yes, it is very successful. So sometimes those two things are linked. I think Fox, let's just take Tara Carlson's show. It's a fear-based show. It's about what to be afraid of, what buttons he's pushing to stoke your fear that day. And viewers do come back for a lot of reasons. One, to see what he's afraid of and what he wants you to fear, but also because of his presentation, his version of humor, his performance skills, there's a lot that's packaged in there that makes it a compelling and popular show.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  I I think the the ratings problem for some from from news programs is a different problem. And I think of about a little bit like this. Um, let's take Good Morning America. Well, I I wrote a book a long time ago about morning TV, so uh, my heart still pumps and pounds for morning TV. My my wife's a morning TV anchor in in New York. So the way that I think about morning TV ratings, it's kind of like a buoy in the middle of the ocean. And uh, there's only so much you can do to raise or lower the water. In fact, there's nothing you can do if you're a television producer to make the water level go higher if you're in the middle of the ocean. There's hurricanes that raise the water and there's maybe climate change trends that change the water level, but for the most part, you're just out there in the middle of the ocean, just holding on for dear life.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  And and that's a little bit how I view television news ratings. Maybe this sounds like I'm letting producers and bosses off the hook, but uh, when there's a lot of news, the viewership rises and when there's not news, the viewership falls. And viewership also falls in the summer because it's fun outs, hot outside and viewership rises in the winter because it's darker earlier, you know? There's all of these things that are out of the control of the networks that affect the ratings. And I I guess I'm trying to draw a distinction between um, propaganda programming or, you know, uh, incendiary programming that's trying to stoke fear and hate versus just your day in, day out news coverage in the US where there's not a lot you can do to affect the ratings.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Do does that make any sense or am I like totally lost?

• 22:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, of course, of course it makes sense. And but I I look, I haven't been inside a production studio. I never had a show and this is an awesome opportunity to ask you who did. What sort of drives, and I'm not maybe, maybe it didn't happen with you, but I just like as a layperson, I would imagine seeing that you have this ability to like, kind of turn up the, make it spicy, right? That's like one of David Carr's terms, like spice it up.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  I loved, I loved, he always said spicy.

• 23:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Or keep it, keep it kind of. Straight shootery, right? And you know that if you keep it a little bit more level headed, you're not going to get the ratings as if you spice it up a bit. And I'm curious how much of a temptation there is to spice it up. And now, again, going back to the viewership thing, because it's a lot of this is driven by business. Like, it seems people say it's driven by agenda, it's driven by business, right? If the ratings aren't going to come in there with the more level-headed stuff, you know, does, do we end up, as the viewership goes down, having cable news channels that just decide to go all in on the inflammatory? I guess that's the real question.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  You know, I think, so we're talking in 2023, and we're coming off of a midterm election environment, and we're not yet into a 2024 campaign season. There is no overarching world event that's dominating the news. The war, the Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, but it is not top of mind for most Americans. There is not a single unifying news event story or theme that is dominating the news. And so you do have soft ratings at a time like that. I would suggest if, you know, if I look at the history of CNN, there's always a big news event that occurs that draws attention and eyeballs and outstanding news

• 24:36Speaker 01

  coverage and award-winning reporting, all of that. And sometimes it's happened close together, and you don't feel the peaks and valleys. And sometimes it don't happen for a while, and you do feel the peaks and valleys. And that's like another version of my buoy in the ocean.

• 24:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so we're in the valley now.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 24:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're in the valley now, is sort of, I guess, this is a way of saying the stuff that I'm talking about with the low ratings, that might be the valley.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Well, if I wake up in the morning, I don't feel the need to turn on today or GMA, then yes, then we're in the valley. When, when I wake up in the morning. And by the way, I mean, look, the challenge, the overarching challenge that's affecting this entire conversation is obviously the smartphone and the idea that when we roll over in the morning, and we look at that screen, and we see our notifications, we know whether we need TV news or not. I mean, that is the fundamental, that's why the Today Show and GMA and all the morning shows are in a softer reins environment. That's, that is the ballgame. But but in that environment, there are things that television producers and hosts can do, right? They can meet the audience more where they are. I'm always nudging my wife when she finishes

• 25:44Speaker 01

  her show to to post clips on Twitter. And I know that's, you know, that's not a new idea. We've been doing that for a decade, but it's still of an opportunity to reach folks who otherwise weren't watching. And I was always nudging myself to do it when I was on on Sunday mornings, you know, there's, there's, we have not seen breakout success on TikTok for news, for the news business. Maybe the Washington Post is closest to that. You know, there's just, there's so much opportunity.

• 26:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but they're followed by so few people. Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Even them, it's not, you have like individual influencers that are

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  much more highly followed. The Washington Post does great stuff on TikTok, and I'm surprised every time I look at their channel, how few people actually follow that thing.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Interesting. Well, and, and, and look, maybe that supports TikTok's argument that it's an entertainment platform, and it's not an information platform, although I don't, I don't personally buy that, but that, you know, that's certainly what they've said to you and me and others.

• 26:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so no temptation to spice it up when the ratings are low?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on what you can buy spice it up, right? There's lots of ways.

• 26:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, I mean, being, being like, yeah, being more inflammatory. I'm just wondering, can, can level-headed TV news survive?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  I know for a fact, not for a fact, I believe 100% that level-headed TV news will survive. And I like the, the phrase level-headed, it's perfect. Because sometimes people, people, you know, grasp for what to call, what they are looking for, what they want out of, out of this medium. The way I think about television news, it is both journalism, and it is television.

• 27:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  There's a Venn diagram there, and hopefully there's a lot of overlap. But sometimes it's just television, right? Like when we're, when I was doing Richard Branson blast into space one morning, there was a little bit of journalism, but it was a lot of television, right? And then there are other times you're doing incredible journalism, it might not be great television, but my, my point is, there are both happening within television news. And Excuse me. Yes, you may. Yes, you may go and try to book a certain number of guests because you think it's going to make for better television. It's going to be spicier if you have more guests around the table, or you have four topics instead of two topics. Those are the sorts of things I think, yes, you do to change the level of spice.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  But I think fundamentally, you have journalists in charge of these outlets, these shows, these programs, and they are trying to be responsible. They are not trying to inflame or poison the public discourse.

• 28:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, let's talk about that for a second, because one of the things that I found, so I'll just admit, like, I'm coming at this mostly from a layperson. I don't know anything about what goes on inside cable networks, for the most part. I mean, I'm lucky to contribute to one, but in terms of like, how the editorial decisions are made. And when CNN transitioned from Jeff Zucker to Chris Licht, I read that Jeff Zucker was in, in, running the meeting, that sort of defined the programming for the week. And I kind of felt kind of curious about that, is he's, because he's coming from the business side, maybe I'm mistaken. But it was sort of surprising to me that someone who's like, sort of answers, you know, to, to the corporate side, who's responsible for the ratings, is then, inside the meeting,

• 28:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  making programming decisions. What, what am I missing? It's not, it's not a kind of a weird thing for that sort of business and editorial to be married together inside a network, whereas like, maybe in a traditional newspaper, okay, like, you can't get away from the business and editorial relationship completely, but in the newspaper, they're, they try to be separate. Or maybe I'm naive about it.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  I don't think you're naive, but I think we need more media reporting to get into all this and, and show how it works. I, I think that Joe Kahn at the New York Times, or Sally Busby at the Washington Post, cares deeply about subscriber metrics and making the Post, or the Times, or, or name your outlet, more popular and, and, and more appealing to more people. I think in television news, it is, it is unique in that you're programming, whether a 24/7 network, you're programming these flagship shows on broadcast, and, you know, a lot of, and, and so, maybe there, maybe there is a different, different dynamic. I hadn't thought about it, newspapers versus television in that way.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  To me, though, what Zucker did that, you know, was so powerful was he, he helped everyone row in the same direction. And, you know, you still pick whatever paddle you want, pick whatever boat you want, you know, wear whatever, do whatever you want, but at least row in the same direction so that, you know, people knew CNN's mission and purpose. And I think past leaders did that. Also, and I think future leaders of CNN, present, all of that. But what Zucker was doing in the 9:00 AM editorial meeting was, you know, giving a sense of what priorities could drive the network that day. Because otherwise, you've got so many programs, so many hours, so many producers, so many correspondents. You're, look, you're still going to cover 100 stories a day. You're gonna, you're gonna do it in

• 30:42Speaker 01

  200 different ways. You're gonna book 300 different guests. But to have a clear sense of direction and purpose. And, look, let's, let's, let's just, let's not beat around this, Alex, like, most of, most of Zucker's tenure at CNN, whether he wanted to be or not, I mean, Zucker's tenure at CNN was defined by the Donald Trump years. And, you know, first as a candidate, then as a president, then as an ex-president. And when we were in the, in the Trump years, in unprecedented situations, with a level of lying and deception that had not been seen before from an American president, it was important to have a leader

• 31:24Speaker 01

  encouraging people, supporting people to row in, row in that direction. And, and not, not fear telling the truth about it. I think that's what it kind of comes down to in a way that's hard to remember, because this was several years ago at this point. As a journalist, you want to have the support of your management team, your ownership, you want to know that they have your back. And that's what he was doing, in my view, on the 9:00 AM calls. He was giving the support of the leadership to call it like it is, to, to tell the truth on the air, and, and not worry that it's gonna, you know, it's gonna cause, you know, lots of drama internally. Does that make sense?

• 32:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does, yeah. And Zucker, can I just say, the way that he left the network was like, the strangest thing to me. I mean, the story that everyone's read is that he had a consensual relationship with somebody in the network. And it was something that everybody knew about, but he got ousted as part of the Chris Cuomo lawsuit. I mean, I remember you speaking about his, about him leaving, I guess he left on his own accord, that's the headline. But I'm curious how weird it was for you.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Well, no, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but it was it was a year ago this week and I was in my one of my show meetings talking about what to do on Sunday's show. And we all get an email at 11 a.m. from Zucker. It's like a, you know, two paragraph email saying he's resigned. And I just, I rushed straight to the flash camera. We call it a flash camera. I don't know what they call it CNBC. A little remote camera, a little remote studio. Yeah, like a remote studio, size of a closet up on the up on one of the higher floors. So I rush up there and like eight minutes later, I'm live on the air covering the head of CNN suddenly leaving. Now, I think what we know now is that it was a forced, he was forced out. And I reported that same day that he was actually forced out by management.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's certainly a royal CNN, but the fact that we were right on the air covering that news, treating it like it's, you know, the news that it was, you know, that's, that's the way it should be. That's the way it's supposed to work and I'm glad it did work that day.

• 33:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but the actual circumstances of the departure. Well, anyway, I guess you don't want to get too deep into it, but I can at least say it was.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Well, I know, I think the circumstances are pretty clear. I think it, I think it's pretty clear that, you know, because he didn't disclose his relationship with his, with his number two, that that gave the company cause to make the change. You can get into whether they wanted to or not, and that gets into, you know, into people's theories about the case, but we know for a fact that it was that, that lack of disclosure. And, you know, after Chris Cuomo was fired, that, that lack of disclosure became prominent.

• 34:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  He set that in motion. Right. But the, the story that everybody was telling was that this was something that was maybe he didn't write it in a letter to management, but everyone knew that this was the case. Or is that wrong?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  I personally don't view it, I personally don't view it that way.

• 34:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Okay. Okay. So maybe the sources I'm reading are, are wrong on that. All right, let's, let's go to a quick break and come back here. Brian Selter is with us. He is a former host of Reliable Sources on CNN. It's been super fun talking about the network with him. Brian, you also have a new position, fellow at Harvard's Kennedy Schorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, working there this semester. Maybe some other fun stuff on the way. So we'll be back right after the break. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it,

• 35:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. Avpoint, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to avpoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 35:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Violent threats against executives are growing at an alarming rate. When a company experiences backlash, executives are the first people blamed. When their address and other personal details are sitting online, this backlash can lead right to their front door. The team at Ironwell knows this better than anyone. They've protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades. As a wide-glove enterprise security service, they protect your people with continuous personal data removal, proactive prevention tools, and human-led emergency support. So when someone goes looking for your executives, Ironwell ensures they hit a dead end. So here's what to do. Go to ironwell.com/bigtechnology, fill in the quick form, and request your free risk assessment. Their team will show you just how exposed your executives are

• 36:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwell.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 36:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Brian Stelter. Brian, thanks so much for chatting with us. Really appreciate it. So what are you, what are you doing at Harvard?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Well, for me, it's always day one, Alex.

• 37:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great book title.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Had to drop that in.

• 37:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thank you.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  I am, I'm a fellow at the Shorenstein Center. I am convening events, holding events and meetings, doing office hours with students, kind of doing whatever they want me to do and whatever, whatever I want to do. But, but it's all with the aim of talking about and covering and examining media and democracy. You know, what we've seen in the last couple of years is the rise of the democracy beat, you know, reporters and newsrooms focusing more than ever on both democratic trends and anti-democratic trends around the world. This so-called democratic backsliding that's happened in some countries. So, you know, that's what, that's what I'm analyzing at Harvard. And it's been, it's been, I mentioned earlier, it's how much fun it's been to be

• 37:54Speaker 01

  more of an ordinary news consumer. And, you know, Harvard's a chance to think about that as well. And how, how do, how do people actually engage with the news or not? And what are the potential audiences out there for different kinds of news coverage?

• 38:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you optimistic about the youth? People have all these stories about Gen Z. I'm curious what your experience has been being in the classroom.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I, I also taught journalism 101 class at NYU last year. So between that and Harvard, I think, number one, yes, I'm incredibly optimistic. Number two, what I want to learn more about, and as I say this, I'm 37, and I was on the news treadmill for 20 years blogging about TV and then working at the New York Times and hosting at CNN. Now that I'm off the treadmill for a little bit, I'm able to think about news differently and how people consume it differently. And so there's a lot of people that, that don't want to live in that news junkie stream or that environment, right? There's some people that do.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  But for those who don't, can we create more on-ramps, more ways to get interested in what's going on? Or can we, is it, you know, and can we do that in with new forms of storytelling and through new mediums? You know, I think about folks that are half my age who communicate mostly through pictures. And not just memes, but you know, instead of texting back and forth, they send photos with each other back and forth. Right. To the extent that, you know, we're going to become even more visual creatures. What should newsrooms that have always been text-based do to catch up to that? And to, and to, and to take it, you know, and to harness that. Those are the sorts of things that I wonder, um, now that I've had a little break from the news cycle.

• 39:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so do you, do you think, well, is there, is there media consumption largely on apps? Or like, what are they doing? Are they podcast, listening to podcasts? Are they watching TV?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  You know, look, when I surveyed my NYU class, I, I had everybody, you know, I had people, you know, one breath they would mention CNN, the next breath they would mention some podcasts I'd never heard of. So I think in the spectrum is, is so wide and, um, you know, fundamentally, the way I think about the news business break, you know, break, breakdown, it goes like this. There's, there are, there are news brands, there's not that many, there's a, there's a, you know, maybe a couple dozen big news brands that actually gather most of the raw materials that we think of as being what happened in the world today. And then there are so many other brands that talk and talk and talk about them and analyze and interpret and decontextualize and, and memify all of that raw material

• 40:33Speaker 01

  that's gathered by CNN and the AP and the ABC News and the New York Times and the Washington Post. So I think it's helpful to distinguish between those two. Because what you're getting on a podcast most often, um, is people interpreting, analyzing, making fun of the news that's been gathered by those, those core brands, right? When, when people say they get, it's, it's what people said 15 years ago, that they get their news from Jon Stewart. Well, Jon Stewart didn't get his news from Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart got his news from CNN and the AP, right? And Reuters and the New York Times. And then he, and then he contextualized it. So I think that the, what make, one of the things that makes me optimistic is that we, we are in an environment where Yes, those core news gathering brands, they are under pressure.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  But, you know, they they are still functioning quite well. We we get a lot of facts, information and raw material and data from those brands. And then we have this constellation that's ever growing that interprets and and and analyzes and laughs about it and all that. And I hope that no matter our ages or our generations, people can see the difference between those two types of of media outlets.

• 41:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  But there there is this, yeah, this growing split. And in fact, a lot of those analysis shows have overtaken the news and are becoming much more influential than the than the primary sources. I mean, if you think about-

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I know, isn't that interesting?

• 41:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is interesting.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  It's an interesting challenge.

• 41:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why don't we talk about it a little bit? I mean, so we just talked about CNN's ratings, under 450,000 viewers. And then the average Joe Rogan episode gets 11 million downloads, at least according to the latest.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Oh, come on, you can't do apples and bananas like that.

• 42:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, yeah, but okay. So but since you since you're the media critic, I'm kind of curious, like, why don't you talk it through?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  I'll talk it through this way. I would say CNN, CNN, the way that I look at ratings for CNN, MSNBC or Fox is not the hourly rating, but the cumulative rating. How many tens of millions of people are watching on any given day, week or month? And that number, to me, is is an important one. It's not about any individual show, it's about experience with the brand. And with CNN getting tens of millions of viewers a month, I think that's a healthy place to be. And that's, I think, a fairer comp to Joe Rogan, where, you know, Rogan obviously has a big fan base. But if you were to look at his, how many people are listening to him this hour? It wouldn't be nearly as big, and so that would be, you know. So that, to me, is the apples by apples. You know, what's the weekly or monthly cum?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Now, that cum decline, again, it goes back to the boo in the ocean. The monthly audience declines, there's less less going on. It rises when there's more going on. But overall, you still have people, I think vast majorities of Americans who know that Reuters and Associated Press and Yahoo and CNN and NBC are out there gathering the raw materials for everyone else to talk about. Now, I also think we have to inject into that recognition of hyper partisan landscape, right? That that there is a right wing media universe that's almost entirely separate from the what people usually call mainstream, which I think is not the right word to use because it's been turned into a it's the

• 43:42Speaker 01

  word mainstream has become a derogatory word, you know, among a lot of folks. So there's this right wing media universe, almost entirely separate, creates its own storylines and stuff out there. And then there is actually a left wing media universe. It's not nearly as big, but it's actually left wing media that pushes a liberal or democratic agenda. And that exists as well. So you have these different within that constellation, you have all these different sources. Here's where I come down, Alex. People are overwhelmed. They are confused. They don't know where to go, what to believe, what to trust, who to watch. And that I think is a situation that's only accelerating. And so that leads

• 44:26Speaker 01

  me as a to think about technology and think about startup world. What can be created to help people navigate through information saturation? We know it's only going to get thicker and more saturated. We know it's only going to get crazier with the amount of content produced by robots that appears to be from humans. We know it's only going to get more saturated. And so what should we be making? And how can we be helping people get through it? And how can we help people figure out and navigate it? That to me is a fascinating thing.

• 44:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's go a little bit deeper onto this because, okay, maybe instead of saying it's CNN and it's Joe Rogan, it is, you know, the mainstream news and the people who are investing in news gathering, right? Paying reporters to gather news. And then you have you have Rogan, you have the right wing podcasts, you have the left wing podcasts, you have the YouTubers, you have the activity on TikTok. In a lot of these areas, it seems like people would much rather go to a Rogan than to a mainstream network. Why do you think that is?

• 45:24Speaker 01

  To the extent that I buy the premise, I think it's because people already know the headlines or they think they know the headlines and they don't feel like they need more of that raw material. Now, you know, I love reading a magazine cover story in print. I'm old fashioned. I, you know, I, I want more of that, you know, like raw material news gathering, you know, interpretation. But, but I, I think that there is clearly a sense that you've seen it all on your phone. You know what's going on. You think about the way that, you know, I, I like to think about my brothers instead of, you know, back when I was at CNN, I would think, how, how do my brothers consume the news, right? They want to know, is anything going to affect their commute?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Is anything happening in the world that's so interesting or so crazy or so scary? They need to pay attention. And if not, great, leave me alone. And in that case, it's more fun to go and listen to a podcast or watch a football game than, than to engage in the news. I think the news industry and, and I, I'm a part, I was a part of this problem that I'm about to identify. I often would start my stories in the middle instead of starting my story at the beginning. What that means is a story or a TV segment kind of assumed you already knew what I was talking about before it started, rather than starting at the beginning of the story. And a lot, a lot of news materials created that way where the story is in the middle. So I, I,

• 46:48Speaker 01

  I think there's so much space for innovation and creativity and new, you know, new ways of, of telling the news that might appeal to people who right now don't feel like they need it or don't feel like it's for them. And they end up listening to a cool podcast instead.

• 47:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And the, the fact that we have technology now, it enables that sort of explosion of different content in a way that sort of you, yeah, it, you used to only have the me, like the media to tell you what was going on. And now you can put a pair of headphones in your ears, hold a smartphone, and there's so many different sources. And it's sort of what you signed off with your show on.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Every single person's a member of the media. Most of us are creating content at the same time we are consuming content. And that's, you know, the fundamental power dynamic shift that that that all these companies, all these entrenched companies have to grapple with. And that's true, I think, in entertainment to some degree, as well as in news. You know, I, you know, the problem that I see across news and entertainment is a discovery problem. I know that there are so many shows on Netflix that I should watch and I would enjoy. And it is still hard to discover them. You can croak, you know, you can rave about the algorithm, and Netflix has done a lot right. And I think right now it's still underpriced. I think there's

• 48:07Speaker 01

  so much growth still to come. But I, I look at Netflix and I think it's still, we're still in the early days of getting to this, solving the discovery problem. And not just for me, but for my mom. I was at my mom's house last week, and she still did not know, and I don't mean this to rag on my mom, okay? She still barely knew how to use Netflix on Roku. And she didn't have her own profile. She was still using mine. Now, I know in a few months, we'll have to stop sharing passwords, and she'll have to pay up. But she will be happy to pay when she has a fully built out profile, when she knows how to actually navigate it. I think we sometimes underestimate this stuff ain't easy, you know? This stuff is not always easy. I know it's easy for my five-year-old on her iPad, but it's not easy for a lot of the rest

• 48:51Speaker 01

  of us. And so I see a lot of potential there, both in news and entertainment, to try to make the technology work for us rather than the other way around.

• 49:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So do you think at times the mainstream media can help play into what this, the alternative sources are trying to do? I mean, a lot of ways that they get an audience is they sell themselves against what you're seeing on CNN, for instance. And, you know, I called a friend who's, you know, he's not a media personality, but kind of interested in all these worlds. And he immediately pointed to like the ivermectin thing, where CNN said that Rogan was on, or suggested that he was using a medicine that was a horse tranquilizer, where it was prescribed by his doctor.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Discouraged by the CDC and the FDA. But when you have a horse deworming medication that's discouraged by the government, that actually causes some people in this crazed environment we're in to actually want to try it. That's the upside down where we're in with figures like Joe Rogan.

• 49:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, Dr. Win, ivermectin, apparently given to deworm animals. Why are people using this?

• 49:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm curious if that, you know, there's a bar that the mainstream needs to hit that's so high when you're saying, okay, you can come to us for like the primary source reporting that if you don't hit it, then you can sort of push people to other directions. What do you think about that?

• 50:10Speaker 01

  I think if you're gonna expect, so I think the nature of news is, by the way, all this is gonna sound like bullshit defense when it's actually true. Okay?

• 50:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, it's good to hear what you have to say.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  If you expect, you know, you have to recognize that the news coverage is iterative, iterative, it evolves, that stories evolve, that so much of what happens on television news is fleeting and ephemeral, and a clip that made total sense three years ago might make no sense now, you know, when stripped of all context. And by the way, I think that's something that happens to Fox News as well. It's not just, I'm not just saying it happens on one team or another, one side or one tribe, you know, when, when stripped of context, things take on different meanings. So, news is iterative, stories change, science evolves, studies evolve, we learn more, we should wanna, you know, we should want it to work that

• 51:02Speaker 01

  way. It's the right way. All that said, I feel like sometimes there are grifters who will go out and they will place a hundred bets, okay, and then 10 of their bets will turn out to pay out, and they will go and they will celebrate those 10 and delete the 90 and pretend that the other 90 didn't happen and pretend like they were right 100% of the time when they were only right 10% of the time. That is not journalism, that's not, that's not responsible media production, that's bullshit grifting. And yet, we see a lot of that in, in the disinformation world. Well, let me just back up, disinformation is not quite the right word for that. Disinformation is much more, I think malicious, but I think

• 51:43Speaker 01

  we see a lot of this attempt to say, we're, I'm, and I'm, I can't think of like an exact name of a person, you know, I don't want to call out one person on this, but I think we see a lot of it. They say I'm an alternative to the mainstream, which always gets it wrong. Well, they get it wrong a lot, too. It's just that they bury their errors or their whatever. And they're not investing in the raw material journalism out there gathering facts. You know, it's easy to point to the local news crisis in this country. It's easy because it's true. We have a local news crisis. We have a lack of reporting on the ground. But those people who are actually gathering material news on the ground, they're the ones we should celebrate, not we shouldn't, we shouldn't point out when they screw up one out of a hundred times and then condemn them for eternity.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  We should try to help make their work better and stronger, you know, rather than be destructive, which I think is where we see a lot of media criticism from the right that's focused on trying to destroy media. We should be constructive. We should try to make it better. And there are great conservative media creators like Jim Garrity and others who do that, who say, try to encourage the media, whatever you think of as the media, because the media is everything to different people, to make it better and not try to tear it down. And I guess this sounds like crazy defense, but that's where, that's like, that's the way that I see this environment where you have, you have these folks trying to claim that they knew all the, I don't know.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  The COVID stuff, you could spend a decade, you know, where it seems like some people want to live in 2020 forever. There are some people who, you know,

• 53:19Speaker 01

  there are some people who want to live with 2020 forever and never embrace the fact that it's 2023. And that's probably all I should say about that.

• 53:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. And you know, it's interesting because it is, news is iterative. And I think what folks would want is like news to be more open when they do get things wrong. And, you know, I kind of, I guess there was never a real walk back or never like a real like, hey, this person wasn't on horse tranquilizer. It was a human medicine. And I kind of, I mean, maybe I missed it. So that's kind of where I think that the media could.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Well, but that's, but that's a fair, well, first of all, that's a fair point in two ways. Number one, I am sure that there was that follow up and I am sure that most people missed it. Like, you know, how could you possibly in this saturated information environment? Let's, let's just for fun, do a hypothetical.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Let's say CBS News aired a report to 10 million people that had several mistakes. Let's say they ran corrections three times, right? Like even then, you're not going to reach all the people that heard the original report. What you are going to do is you're going to have lots and lots of other outlets beat the shit out of you for both the mistake and the correction. And your credibility gets ripped down for, you know, probably innocent errors that should have been caught earlier. I don't know, I just, we live in an environment where, well, and maybe there's a technology problem, right? Maybe, maybe we should, maybe there should be technology to reach everyone who watched the original report to show them the correction.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  I mean, that doesn't sound like the hardest problem to solve, although we're in an environment right now where, where I don't see anyone solving it. The other day, I'm looking at my phone and I get an alert from Facebook. I get a notification and it says, it's from a neighbor. It says, I just heard an explosion on this road. And I open up the app, I'm thinking, what just happened? Are they okay? What happened? It's from 17 hours ago. And I'm thinking to myself, and it was fine, somebody was doing demolition. And I'm thinking to myself, why did Facebook decide to send me that alert 17 hours late about an explosion down the road? Why, why in 2023 are we still this? I mean, I'd love to know the answer, if you know the answer, by the way.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  I just think there are so many, there's so many problems involving the media ecosystem that should be, that, that should be fixable, right? That should be solvable. But instead, Facebook is still feeding me up crap that's outdated and, and, and, and, you know, why is that still happening?

• 55:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, obviously.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  But, but I'm just, I'm trying to, I'm, I'm, I'm pushing a little bit away from, from the media to say, look, you know, Facebook, one of the most powerful companies in the world, can't even get its app to properly send me news. So, you know.

• 56:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. No, I'm with you. I mean, especially with the limitations on Facebook. Like, again, there was this whole, like, okay, I'll just say this. If Facebook can't get, get the news of an explosion on your block to you in, in the, at the right moment, it just seems like a lot of like these capabilities that people have talked about with Facebook, like its ability to control your mind, might also have been.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  That's what I thought. I was like, it was a version of the advertising problem where, once you buy the necklace for your wife, every ad you see on the internet is of the necklace for your wife and you've already bought it. And if, you know, why is that still happening? You know, why is that? And I think in some ways that causes people to lose, I don't want to say like cause people to lose faith. But I, I want to be in a world where people are constantly thinking, okay, how can we improve this information environment? How can we improve the advertising you see instead of looking at these cheap shitty ads for crypto on the front page of the Wall Street Journal? Like lowest common denominator crap.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  You know, we should all want an information environment that's high quality, that's accurate, that's reliable, that's diverse. That's, uh, that's, you know, that's, it's not just an echo chamber. Like, we all deserve to live in an information environment that's not polluted. And unfortunately, right now, there's a lot of pollution. And I keep thinking, and this gets to, you know, like, what the heck am I going to do with my life? And, you know, I'm not in a hurry, but I, I am thinking to myself, are there ways for technology to help reduce the pollution rather than add to it right now? Um, are there ways to help cut through information saturation? And for example, tell you whether what you're reading is written by a robot or a human. Um, that's an interesting opportunity.

• 57:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So I actually thought about your question. So I have a couple of answers to how we get these correct. First of all, I think there's a problem that corrections are always at the bottom of stories. And they should actually be at the top. I think these organizations could probably do a better job, uh, identifying what they've done wrong and being more prominent about it. As opposed to being like, okay, we've done the necessary work of pending a correction. Now we move on. The second thing I think is that we, we do have an information ecosystem. And I know we started this way, so let's keep talking about it. That's personality based. So like the people that are like listening to a podcast or watching a network, they'll keep coming back. And unfortunately, I think what we have right now is a media ecosystem that is

• 58:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  and a political ecosystem, a society that's so divided and sort of brought out into, into silos. And when there is discussion among the two groups or the two sides or the people who might be mischaracterizing each other, that's actually where you end up in a much better position. So that's my thought.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah.

• 58:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe naive, maybe wishful thinking.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Well, we're talking fundamentally about human nature and how humans interact with their world and how they come to know what is true and not true in the world. And there, yeah, it's maybe it's unsolvable. Maybe to some degree, some of this is unsolvable, but putting corrections at the top of the page and at the bottom is an easy solve.

• 59:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I feel like, you know, that story is not going to get as much distribution as it did at first, but knowing that it should be an easy decision to be like, okay.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why don't you put it here? So you talk about what you're going to do next. Is it a technology thing? I mean, it's kind of interesting that that's sort of where you went when you started talking about it.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  You know, there's a part of me who, you know, I launched a blog in 2004 and then sold it, but I always viewed it as a hobby and it was a kind of a college job. There's always a part of me that wants to go try to do a version of that again. And of course, now we're much more in the newsletter era. I, well, you know, and look, if I was going to launch a Substack, I probably would have done it the day I left CNN, you know, I probably.

• 1:00:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, why not? Yeah, what sort of steered you away from that?

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  It's interesting you ask that.

• 1:00:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  I do miss reading your newsletter. I, it was a must read for me.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Well, I still read Oliver's version and love it.

• 1:00:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  It lives on.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I think, I think what steered me away from that was when I left CNN, I joined a fraternity that I didn't know existed. And it is, it is of folks who had high profile or public facing jobs who their turn on the treadmill suddenly stopped, just like mine, and they all give the same advice. They reach out and they all give the same advice and they say, go slowly. Take your time. Don't rush into a job. Don't take the first offer. Don't, don't, don't feel like you need to immediately run into a new job. What they say is, this is the, probably the only time you're ever gonna have a break in your life, you should appreciate it and

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  savor it. And however slowly you're going, go slower. And, and that was the advice to a person that I was given. And if you look at, if you look at folks who, you know, executives, you know, you see a lot, you see a pattern that's sort of apparent, where folks do take that time to decompress and think and, and, you know, process what they've been through. I mean, I don't, I don't want to make it sound all that, that dramatic, but, you know, I was very lucky to be inside CNN for some of the most important years in that network's history. We were in an environment, especially with the former president, that was extraordinary

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  and, and dynamic. And, look, he was trying to destroy American media outlets. And to, to cover that story and to explain what the media really does versus what Donald Trump thought was, was a privilege. But there wasn't a lot of time to, to take a deep breath or have introspection in that moment. So, so that's why I didn't launch a Substack on the day I left CNN. That's, I guess that's the long answer. But it's been amazing to see that fraternity step into gear and get all that advice. And I think those, I think everybody was right to, to take the time. You know, the, my, my kids happen to be, I have a kindergartner

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  and a preschooler. And to suddenly become a stay-at-home dad, you know, I used to have, when I was at CNN, I had a nanny get to my house at six in the morning, because I never knew what day I'd be on the morning show. I never knew what day I'd have to go into work. I mean, there were, hell, there were mornings where I would take my daughter into the office, because I had to do the five, you know, I was on the 5:00 AM show, you know, and, and she would be in her, in her, what do you, what do you call, I don't remember, because she was a baby. I blocked all those years out. But anyway, I, it's been such a blessing to, to do it myself and to be in that role. But that said, I know, you know, some point I'll get back out there. In the meantime, what I've been doing is writing

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  for some of the outlets that I've always wanted to write for.

• 1:03:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I've seen you in the Boston Globe. Hey, they say that you're interviewing for the New York Times media columnist job. Are those still ongoing?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  The stories that had me spotted in the New York Times newsroom were accurate. And a couple of weeks ago, I was in Davos and A.G. Sulzberger was on the panel and I was asking him about disinformation and versus real journalism. You know, that's the role that is comfortable and natural to me is like interviewing, you know, trying to get information out of people.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Whether it's the New York Times for me, or whether it's a startup, or whether it's some brand that I haven't heard of yet. That's the fun of this time off is not knowing what exactly is going to be the future. How was that for a dodge? Was that a decent dodge?

• 1:04:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was a great dodge, but we can read between the lines. I'd like to read you that.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Why? What did you read?

• 1:04:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, if, I don't know. If you ask me to like, interpret your answer, it seems like those interviews are still ongoing.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  I will tell you something. I'll tell you something I haven't told anybody.

• 1:04:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  You mentioned Page One, which is this documentary by Andrew Rossi. This was made at a very different time era in the New York Times history. This was when people wondered if the New York Times was going to be around in 2023. This was, you know, not just pre-Wordle, it was pre-digital subscriptions as a business model, as a foundation. And so, you know, we had this camera crew following us around and I was a young reporter then. I was brand new at the paper. And going back into the building, you know, and I hadn't, I had been there maybe in 2017, taping something, it had changed a little bit then, but to be back in the building, it's really remarkable because, you know, every department's in a different place now.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  You know, it's the same bones, same place, but every, you know, it has really transformed from a primarily print institution into an entirely digital institution. In a way that I think a lot of other papers are still trying to learn lessons from. So that was a cool experience. But, you know, I think what you, what... I've been talking about technology and how can we solve these problems because

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  whether I'm, whether it's up for me to do or others, we need more startups in the news world, in the news business. We need more ventures that are trying to crack some of these, these, these eggs. We, there are so many ways to deliver news differently and tell stories differently. And I, I, you know, to me, I, I, I'm on the sidelines cheering for all the ones that are trying to do it. Cause we need more of that, not less.

• 1:06:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So if you get that job offer, you taking it?

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  I forget what job offer we're talking about. I'm sorry.

• 1:06:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Times media columnist.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  I don't know what I want to do six months or a year from now. I know, I really don't. The reason I'm, the reason I don't know is because

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  I don't think I'll get this time off again.

• 1:06:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. It is precious. That's the time between jobs. Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  It's, it's more precious than I can like put into words. I, I, I'm a bad podcast guest because I can't put it into words, but I, I really, it's been a blessing. I, I, you know, because I left CNN in, in August and then, you know, Labor Day comes around and my kids are going to school and, you know,

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  I haven't even unpacked all the boxes and now it's January and I still haven't unpacked the stuff I want to unpack from, from last summer. It's like, it's funny how time can fly in that, in that way. But I've been really grateful to, like, for example, I watch a lot more CNBC than I used to. I listen to a lot more CNBC than I used to. Weirdly, even though I'm off the news junkie treadmill and I don't feel like I have to be wired in, I still want to be, but in a different way. So it's been good for me as a media reporter to like, think about these brands differently.

• 1:07:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. This is what I want to end with. Um, you, so you've had this distance from the media. And obviously that allows you to see things that you can't see when you're in it. There's no doubt that having that, taking a step back from having to do a weekly show, even though you were reporting on media, that distance offers some perspective that you can't get otherwise. So can you share and, and let's do concrete answers on this one. One thing that the media does better than you had originally imagined, and then one thing that it, it really needs to improve on. I know the media is kind of a loaded term, but have at it, Brian.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  I know the latter answer. I'm trying to think of what's better than I.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Okay, I think I have both. I think I know the first one. Yeah, I wrote about this with The Atlantic. When HLN, which is CNN's sister channel, ended its morning show, I wrote a piece about that for The Atlantic. And it was titled, of course, the editor, who was wonderful, the editor wrote the title, and she wrote, "The End of Companion Television." And, you know, that was true at HLN because the show was ending, and now they simulcast CNN's morning show.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  But companionship, I think, is an underrated quality about media, especially about television news. But, you know, look, TikTok provides companionship. Instagram provides companionship.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  I live a, you know, a life where I'm on the clock still every hour, and I'm thinking about my kids' schedules and school and all of that, and meetings, and running to Harvard and all that. And, you know, and you're the same way, Alex. You've got another live shot coming up on all of that. A lot of people don't live those lifestyles. A lot of people don't want to live those lifestyles. And what they want out of media, television, their phones, their laptops, is companionship, is connection. And I think now that I'm just listening and watching and not producing it for a while, I think that is what I, you know, it's really great. There's some really incredible,

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  exceptional companionship media out there, you know, whether it's talk shows, television shows, or whether it's Instagram influencers talking to you, right, you know, to your face on your phone. That is the, that's the value that I think I appreciate more about media. And the role, again, the role for these broadcasters and hosts and influencers and creators, that the AI is not going to be able to reproduce for a while, right? Because we know what AI is going to be able to produce in the short to medium term. But it's not going to be able to recreate that connection that you feel, that companionship that you feel. Maybe when you're lonely, or you're feeling like nobody understands you, whatever it is, you know, that's powerful, whether it's TV or TikTok. That's the easy one, though.

• 1:10:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. I'm gonna say I bet AI will create that, but that's a no.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  No, hold on. I listened, I listened to your podcast last week. Uh, I, I, I, I don't, you think, you think AI can create that companionship?

• 1:10:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Most definitely.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  In the short to medium term.

• 1:10:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think it can probably do a better job than media. But I, I just think it because.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  No, no, we gotta.

• 1:10:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  You, you really think that, that the AI can do a superior job to a television host looking through that lens straight to you and talking to you directly?

• 1:10:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. Here's why I think, I mean, I don't think it can do it today, but I think maybe in a couple of years for sure.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  A couple of years.

• 1:10:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And the reason is because, and this is the data that Facebook, Facebook published about what makes people feel bad. If people consume passively, they feel bad. If people participate actively, they feel a little bit better. And I think that, so what we're seeing with chatbots like ChatGPT is going to evolve into avatars with facial, faces, facial expressions and voices that are going to get to know people. I think that that's not a impossible future. That stuff's gonna happen. And when you put that up against someone on TikTok, talking to you about their relationship problems, or someone on television, talking to a larger group about what's happening in the world, that AI is going to be a superior companion. Just my belief.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  I buy, okay, that's a, that's a compelling argument. We'll come back in 10 years. We'll see, we'll see who was closer to being more right. What can the media improve on? Here, here's what grinds my gears.

• 1:11:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Um, and I see this in television. I see, I, I see this more probably in television than I do in other forms of media, but it applies elsewhere.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  A news event will happen at 2:00 PM on Wednesday. And the Thursday morning shows are still leading with it. Or, you know, something will happen Friday night. And on Saturday night, it's still the top story. Or, and you know, not even being advanced, not even being propelled forward. That there is a tendency, and then again, this is where technology can, can help solve this. Once I've heard the news once, why am I getting it again 20 hours later in a newscast? Again, if there haven't been new developments, if the story hasn't fundamentally changed. And I think this, this actually can turn off audiences. I think it can actually even erode trust because it can feel exploitative.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Let's, you know, think about one of, you know, unfortunately, there's a list of recent traumatic news events from mass shootings to, to police beatings where we have seen, where we have borne witness. And if you feel like a news outlet is just milking that for all it's worth and talking about the same thing every hour without any new revelation or new insight, it can feel exploitative. It can feel, it can feel numbing. It can definitely turn people off. I, I, I would like to, you know, that deserves a rethinking and reprocessing. You know, again, I was one hour of one day on CNN, but I always would talk to my producers about how can we make our hour different than every other hour? What can we say differently?

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  What can the banner say that's different on the screen? What guests can we book who have not been booked at other hours? This is all TV producing one-on-one and lots of other shows do it really well. But those are the questions to ask, not, you know, what headline are we going to repurpose that happened yesterday? Or what can we repeat from two days ago? I, I think that kind of repetition, it's, it's a turn off and it, more than a turn off, but I think it can erode trust. And I notice it more now as a more passive consumer because I can tell there's no real news. This, this actually gets to Chris Licht's breaking news thing, why, why I think it was brilliant to minimize the use of the term breaking news. People see through that stuff. They see through the tricks that, that, that news media sometimes employ. And I think there's still a long way

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  to go in reducing those tricks, making sure we're not exploiting the audience's trust and attention. Because ultimately, this is all an attention war. And television news is just part of that attention war that everybody else is engaged in as well. And I think that's what I would try to improve if I had a magic wand.

• 1:14:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that's a great one to focus on. So, Brian, thank you so much for joining the show. Great chatting with you. This was awesome.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Thanks so much.

• 1:14:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thank you. And good luck to your Eagles in, in the Super Bowl.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  That's right. Go Eagles.

• 1:14:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that'll do it for us here on Big Technology Podcast. Thank you, Brian Stelter, so much for coming on. Our first time having a conversation and man, I really enjoyed it. So thank you for that. Thank you to everybody for listening. Great to have you here. We do these conversations, once again, every Wednesday, flagship interview. And then on Friday, we recap the news. Ranjan Roy joins me live on LinkedIn at 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern, every single week. So we hope to see you for those as well. If this is your first time listening, please hit subscribe. If you're a longtime listener and want to give us a rating, that would be awesome. Five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts would make a big difference. And I want to say thank you to Nate Guattini for, as always, handling our audio. This one on a very quick turnaround. Thank you, Nate. I want to say thank you to the LinkedIn Podcast Network. Thank you for having

• 1:15:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  me as part of your podcast network. Super fun stuff. And thanks to all of you, the listeners, once again. We hope to see you Friday. We have a lot to talk about. This big week of tech earnings and plenty more going on in the tech world. So Ranjan Roy and I will be back live on LinkedIn and YouTube and will also drop that on the feed. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time. Thanks again for listening to Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:16:12Speaker 06

  In this life, you can't win.

• 1:16:15Speaker 07

  When the world gets you down.

• 1:16:16Speaker 06

  No!

• 1:16:16Speaker 07

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 1:16:18Speaker 06

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 1:16:20Speaker 07

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 1:16:24Speaker 06

  Shwing!

• 1:16:24Speaker 07

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 1:16:26Speaker 08

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 1:16:27Speaker 07

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  We're not worthy!

• 1:16:35Speaker 07

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.