Reporting on Science (Part 2)

In the conclusion of Neil’s interview with veteran science journalist Miles O’Brien, the two discuss the inherent conflict between the goals of true journalism and corporate America.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Or at least, that's what I think I am. Maybe you have other astrophysicists. I don't know. I've got Chuck Nice in studio with me. Chuck? Hey Neil. Always great to have you back. This is part two of the interview we started earlier with science journalism. That's right. And you now know one science journalist. Yes, I do. And his name is? Miles O'Brien. There you go. Who I like to call Ballsy O'Brien. Ballsy O'Brien because he majored in history. Majored in history. Busted into the CNN offices many years ago, said, "I want to be your science journalist." And didn't know anything about science. Pulled it off. That's right. Pulled it off really... That is chutzpah, baby. Really well.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I caught up with him with my roving micro... I mean, I couldn't... I saw him in Washington. I mean, we're friends from way back. I saw him in Washington, said, "I want to get him on StarTalk." And we didn't have time or schedule to fly him back here to New York. I got him on the spot. And so, we ducked for cover in this flood conduit.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll call this conduit acoustics. An underpass. An underpass. We're at a highway underpass. Yeah, what's the quietest place in this intersection?

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in this interview, I asked him about many things, of course, but just accuracy in journalism. Do you people care that you're accurate? I'm ready to slap the man. Let's find out what he says. Tell me about accuracy in journalism.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Such a quaint notion. Me lad.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Old fashioned.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I remember the times when we actually had facts and checked them.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I've spoken with journalists. Yeah. Who, because of some journalistic ethos, they would not show me the text they were writing that came out of the interview that we conducted, out of some premise that they worried that I might influence it. Then I said, "Well, do you care about being right?" Right. And they said, "Oh, yes, above all else." And I said, "Well, if I don't see it, how do I know you interpreted it right? Now there's a chance you'll be wrong." Right. So, what's your bigger ethos? Being right, or having the person you just interviewed take a look at what you just created?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I always err on the side of being right, but I I'm not the average journalist. There is an old fashioned notion that if you show people your copy in advance, somehow, some way, they will either try to get it blocked, or will try to manage you in such a way that they change it. Well, if they're managing you in such a way that they change it to make it more accurate, that is actually a good thing. Reporters have got to get over this stubborn sense of, "That's what I heard. God darn it, I know that's what I heard." We're all human beings and we all misinterpret, and especially in the line of work I do where it's very complicated at times, and I'm the history major. I will surrender every time to concerns about that. I generally don't send an email with my script, but I'll go through it.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  If I said this, is that right? Or I'll send a little passage that I'm stuck on. I've written it this way. Does this make any sense? And it almost always works out to the better. But there is a whole journalistic convention that this flies in the face of, and I suspect I'll hear from people who say you're a Satan of a journalist for doing that. But you know what? Think about how scientists go through peer review.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's that's all it is.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  I really started thinking about this journalistic notion of these sacred words which must be published, and everybody sees it at the same time, including your sources, when I started really fully understanding what peer review was all about, and how that does a lot to keep integrity in science. I think journalists would be wise to embrace this.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peer review journalism.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  That sounds good.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting concept.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I I like it.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But because they can be so tight about, and I wrote it, this is the truth, this is what it will be. And people, and sometimes they can define a truth that isn't true, but everyone reads it and it's in print, or it's journalistic, and so therefore it must be true.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, but nowadays, you know what I have? I I got like my Twitter stream. If somebody says something that's not true, I just say, nope, they messed that up.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I can come back at it, right? But there was a day you couldn't even do that.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  No, absolutely.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. But you know, accuracy in journalism, that leads to, what's the, what's this phrase? Is it fair and balanced?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to ask Miles, what's this fair and balanced movement that we've been hearing about? Let's check it out.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Some stories have one side that is represented by, say, 95% of the scientific community of the world. Is it fair, in a story about climate change, which I'm obviously talking about, to do this classic journalistic convention of equal time for both sides? This is a huge mistake, I think, for journalists.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially if you get 95%, and then there's the 5%, so you get a person from that 5%.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now it gets 50% of your time.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Is that serving the truth? I would submit to you, not. As a matter of fact, that is feeding obfuscation. That is actually perpetuating a myth, dare I say, a lie. And so for journalists who are hung up on this idea, "Well, we've got to go out and get the guy from the Cato Institute to balance out all this global warming stuff," I fought long and hard. I did an hour-long documentary for CNN back in the mid-'90s, and it was about 90-10, basically saying, "The scientific jury is in here." That was the word I used.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not out, it's in, yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  It's in. There's no more scientific debate. There's a political debate, there's a debate over, you know, money, over how we should spend it, what we should do, but there's no scientific debate, okay? Let's just get over that. And this caused a... Remember, I'm talking to these science-phobic, poli-sci guys in the newsroom who don't really follow this the way we do, and they thought it was just a journalistic aberration. How could you write a piece this way? Where's the other side? And I started sending them papers, and I started going through things and trying to explain to them where the science really was, and where the peer-reviewed science was, where the fossil fuel industry, and I'm using the, finger quotes, "science" was at the time.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And I managed to convince them. It didn't end up 90-10, but I got to probably about 75-25, which I considered a victory at the time, because that was big for them. It was hard for them to wrap their heads around this. This was not journalism, in their view. This was advocacy. But I managed to at least move the needle and get them to the idea that doing 50-50 on this is not accurate.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  You know, you have to fight that battle. It requires doing your homework and understanding a lot of nuance. And those are two things that TV reporters do very little of.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's totally, totally getting on the case of all his colleagues. I wonder how they, what they think of him.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Well, you know what? I'm so glad to hear somebody actually say this because that 50/50 argument is stupid. It's like four out of five dentists recommend brushing. The fifth dentist, he actually works for the National Sugar Council. You know, come on, let's, you know, do some homework and find out who are these scientists that are saying that this isn't the case.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right. And so, so this, this concept of fair and balanced implies that everything is a 50/50, or even that there are always two sides to a story. There could be three, four, or five, or six.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So, so it's, it's an odd ethos that they've put themselves in. I think maybe it's because journalists historically would report on politics and religion and all these other social, cultural factors where you always had warring factions and so you gotta give everybody time.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, when we come back, more of my interview with Miles O'Brien.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice, right here with me.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Chuck Nice Comic.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  That is correct.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. So, so Chuck, we're talking about science journalism, you know, and do they do it right? Do they do it bad? I got my interview with Miles O'Brien. I caught up with him in Washington. Miles O'Brien, the leading science journalist of our times.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  And the only one that I know.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta get out more, man. I don't know where you hang out, but we, we, we gotta work on you. I'll give you a list of places to visit and shows to watch. I always wondered, you know, in the old days, you would send your story back in via telegraph or something, you know? They're invading over the border. Stop. You know, and they're coming, it's beginning to rain. Stop. Right. And so now, obviously, everything is instant and, and it's, I've always been intrigued by all the ways technology has affected science reporting, or reporting in general. And so I asked him about it because he's old enough to have been there in the old days and then in the new days.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. I got it.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mr. Newsreel.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was your first job back in 1938. Newsreel reporter.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's find, let's get Miles's reflections on this topic.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Go. CNN was chicken noodle news until which night? Oh, yeah, of course. Well, it was Gulf War. Thank you. The first Gulf War. And if you really think about what happened that night. I saw the plots of CNN's audience. Oh, yeah, you've seen that. Yeah. It matches the real event. They hate that graph because they'd like to figure out how to fill the gaps. Because it's all been. I mean, there isn't a war. Yeah. Yeah. They either manufacture wars or, you know, Anderson, what's going on, Ann? Come on. Right. Talk to me. So anyway. That night, if you really want to know how CNN won that night, it was technology. It was a young producer by the name of Easton Jordan, who had the foresight to buy a dedicated line, audio line, into Baghdad, back to Jordan.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  And that is the only reason CNN was on the map was because of that one line. Nobody else had done that. Nobody else guaranteed transmission. Most people think, well, I watched that on TV. Actually, you didn't watch that on TV that night. It was all audio. It was just a phone call. Later, you saw the footage come. We had the boys from Baghdad. Mm-hmm. Peter Arnett, John Holloman. The late John Holloman. Yeah, the late John Holloman, and Bernard Shaw. And most people don't remember who was there or whether they saw it on TV or heard it, but they just know that it happened. So that was a long way of saying that CNN has always had at its core, embracing technology to get the story done. So while I was there, I was schooled in a lot of this by some of the best in the business, who were always looking at new, different ways to get signals back from remote places.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  And as time went on, those big live trucks were shrinking. Pretty soon, it was, you know, a suitcase. And pretty soon, it was a Mac attached to a phone. And it's getting to be Dick Tracy time pretty quickly, right? And I know as a comic book hero, you understand what I'm talking about. Only of late. Yeah. I've been in a Superman comic, yes. So when I was summarily dismissed along with the rest of the science and technology unit, because after all, what do we know about the Kardashians, right? So the entire unit disbanded from CNN, gone, we pink slipped. I was really crestfallen because I thought, certainly it's bad for me, but I figured I'd figure out some way to make a living. But really, I actually do care about making people understand how important all this is that I cover. I really do.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  It means a lot to me and I think it's so important for our nation and everything else. So I was really upset about that. And then I realized, I don't need no stinking truck. I don't need no Time Warner Center. I don't need all that stuff. You got fired at just the right time. I did. Technology's waiting for you to be your own one man newsbag. You know, remember way back when on Saturday Night Live with Al Franken, he had the satellite hat? Yeah, remember that? It's classic. Anyway, so I was fired and frankly, I just did not want to miss a shuttle launch. That's what it boiled down to. So I called my friends at Spaceflight Now, Stephen Young, and I said, do you have an internet connection? Spaceflight Now, the internet site that tracks every single launch. They have a great, space nerds love this site. And I say space nerd as being one of them. I don't say that as pejorative at all. On this show, nerd is a compliment, a badge of honor.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you, of course. Anyway, so I said, I mean, what's your internet connection like there? I'll bring down my Mac and a DV camera and we'll just stream out coverage and that way I won't miss a launch. So we started doing this and it got progressively a little more complicated. We do a three camera shoot, but basically, we were doing it for the cost of the travel down to Florida and the T1 line to the Cape, to the launch pad 39. It was no money at all. Toward the end, we did seven or eight launches this way and we would do six, eight hour length webcasts. You were on them. It was great for a guy like me who loves space to have six or eight hours to just keep talking. Everybody's there. And they're all there and they all come in and... And we all love you, so we'll talk a couple of minutes out with you. And then people were tweeting back questions. It was fantastic.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  And toward the end, we were getting a couple, 300,000 people watching the world over. Now, it's not a huge thing, but we weren't spending any money. We were just there with our little Mac. And so I realized suddenly that we are in the boutique age of journalism. I mean, if CNN is the department store or the Walmart, and think about what that does to quality, there is room for a Madison Avenue boutique still, right? For people who care about things that are specific to them and they will seek you out. They will find you. They'll find you. They will find you. Build it, they will come. And you have learned this by the way you tweet, by the way you use all the tools out there. You really can do it on your own. I used to think, well, it's just gonna be this group of already interested folk.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  But the truth is, that shows you have no appreciation for what social networking is all about. There is an exponential nature to it that is just infused in it. And yes, you might have this core that begins with you, but inevitably, it gets bigger. You've probably seen this study, Pew did a survey. They asked people, what's the thing you care most about that you see the least of in the mainstream media? Answer, science, science. So you and I know that there's an audience out there. The mainstream media has decided, for whatever reason, they're scared of it. It's too complicated, it's too expensive to cover it. I can just throw people in here in a studio and have them yap about the election, whatever.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe they're still burned from their science classes.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Could be.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were never wounded because you never had science.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  I think that there is much work to be done, admittedly. But there are avenues for those of us who care about this to share our knowledge and passion and interest that lead me to believe not all is lost.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so he's liking the technology.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we've both seen technology taken a little too far.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it can go awry.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I saw, what was it, CNN where they had a hologram of-

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yes, Wolf Blitzer's hologram, which now is not just Wolf Blitzer using the hologram.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is everybody-

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Not everybody, but they're like, you know, they're using it for specific stories.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if I remember the story correctly, in 2008, during the presidential election returns, Wolf Blitzer brought in via hologram Jessica Yellen,

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A reporter, and we see her floating in the middle of the space. So apparently, it wasn't an actual physics hologram because he would have seen it. It was only, it was put into that space for we, the viewers.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she was three dimensionally photographed image, teleported, put here on our screen. But why does anyone want to see all sides of a reporter?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't get, I don't-

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Who cares? Who needs a three dimensional reporter in a two dimensional medium? That makes no sense whatsoever.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could just have her pirouette while she's speaking.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'd get the three all sides of her.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I didn't understand that. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe we should applaud it for the experiment. Cause you gotta step in new places to see what works. Maybe that's what.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  But see, the experiment would be, I'm sitting in my living room and Wolf Blitzer shows up in my living room as a hologram. That's cool, but you know, watching it on, watching a hologram.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watching a 3D hologram on your 2D.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  That's stupid.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On your two dimensional projector.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  And the fact that she kept saying, "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope", really got on my nerves. It just.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Star Wars, Episode IV.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So, yeah, so technology, it can always be overused and I think you need time to have it sort out. Do you remember when CDs first came out?

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? It could capture so many different channels of music with such accuracy. The early CDs went overboard. And they just piled on all instruments and all, and they had the stereo running back and forth ear to ear and they were.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  They called it overproducing.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there's a phrase for it, okay, yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  It was overproduce.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, maybe you had to go there to fill out the space and then pull back on it, you know? And so, what you really need the technology for is if you're gonna go to Mars and like, like he said in the first of these two interviews with Miles O'Brien, he, he wants to report back from Mars and they're gonna need some technology, right?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a breathing apparatus.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Not to mention a Motel 6 or something along those lines. Cause I hear there's not a lot up there.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you'd have to like terraform Mars first or something. And so, uh, so no, technology is good and if you can get news faster, but maybe you don't need any more technology now that we have Twitter because somebody's eyewitnessing every news event in the world.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I was just about to say that, you being a, a big presence on Twitter. I mean, you know, we had the whole Arab Spring and it happened pretty much on Twitter.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Happened on Twitter. And it's nothing a reporter's gonna tell me that I, that's better information than people actually live in it.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  In real time.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In real time. What, what are you gonna do to that story that's gonna improve it?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  That, right, exactly.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. And it happens when, when there's earthquakes, you get instant. Accurate reporting on when people felt it, what time it happened. And each tweet is time stamped.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. So you know exactly when it happened, how it happened, where it happened. And then I am happy that I'm here.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And alive, sending out the tweet in the first place. When we come back, more of my interview with science journalist Miles O'Brien.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson here, Chuck Nice, sitting across from me.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're in studio, New York City, and we're slotting clips from my interview with Miles O'Brien, science journalist extraordinaire. And I had caught up with him in Washington to get this interview. And we were talking about everything. I mean, he's been around long enough. He's got a story about everything. And I finally had to ask him about, you know, nowadays, news, there are news sources that are just aggregators, right? They don't actually have their own reporters. They just pick and choose.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  True.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an interesting, you know, I mean, Huffington Post is largely that.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Right, and Drudge, a Drudge reporter.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Drudge Report, yeah. And so what would happen if everybody were an aggregator? Then no one would actually be getting any news. They'd be aggregating each other's aggregations. Let's see what Miles's reaction is to this.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Well, eventually, somebody's gonna have to go to the city council meeting, right? I mean, somebody's gotta show up for the launch. Somebody's gotta be there. I mean, we can aggregate all we want, but we're running out of actual primary news gathering instruments here, right?

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it gets repeated that many times because it only has one source. And then everyone thinks it's that much more true.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it shows up in more places.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yes, and you can be reading in the midst of Hurricane Sandy, making stuff up from whole cloth about the stock exchange being flooded, and it gets on TV! Because this is where it's all come to. We don't have reporters there anymore.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  We don't bother with that. Silly. We can just read the tweets. So, yes, it's a big problem. However, when you think about journalism, you can almost always say the goals of true journalism will be an anathema, dare I say mutually exclusive, to the the goals of corporate America. There will always be a conflict there. Because if journalism's job is to poke questions at the status quo and the establishment, what is corporate America but the ultimate embodiment of the establishment? So, there was a time when the networks, there were three of them, right? And they had the fairness doctrine, and they were worried about the FCC, and news was a lost leader. And they had unlimited budgets

• 20:42Speaker 01

  and the ability to give us people like Cronkite and Murrow and great television journalism.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And have bureaus in all the cities around the world.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  There was not a money motive. And then, things changed. The fairness doctrine went away. The cable began. There was much more competition. Suddenly, the news divisions had to...

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be entertainment.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Well, they had to make money. So therefore, they had to be entertainment, right? They had to make their own way. And that was the beginning of the end for serious journalism, in my view. And if you really look at it, there are two kinds of truly successful journalistic endeavors. There are family-owned enterprises. The Times. Newspapers, the few that are left, that are run by families in communities. This is actually how Ted viewed CNN. There was an element of cocktail-party braggadociousness that goes into this, right? You want to be the upstanding citizen and the pillar of the community. And whatever the case may be, you're not in it just to make a buck, right? Then there are the outright nonprofits now, like the Poynter Institute, which runs the Tampa Bay Times in Florida,

• 21:47Speaker 01

  or places like ProPublica or the Center for Public Integrity, that are actually doing true journalism funded out of the goodness of people's hearts. That's where the journalism lies. When you get into corporate ownership, a big chains of newspapers and TV, you don't see a lot of good journalism. You really don't. And I don't think that's a coincidence.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all the three networks are owned by corporate interests, right?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So ABC is Disney?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? NBC is GE?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Now Comcast or...

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, GE, Comcast, whatever they are.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CBS is what?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Well, CBS is Viacom. So, there is hope for journalism. It's just journalism doesn't fit well into the corporate business model. And so maybe we're evolving, we're in the middle, but you don't believe in evolution, right? Maybe we've had some intelligent design into a new era where journalism is bashing of these entities who, going back to that, it fits in with my boutique idea.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, boutique journalism. Journalists not, I mean, imagine a story comes up that is really bad for Disney. What will ABC do with that story? You wonder. I got a feeling that Mickey is not talking about it. Mickey's. Mickey's silent. Mickey's not been available for comment on the story. Mickey's not available for comment. You know, a few years ago, Peter Jennings did a round the world New Year's Eve program where they had reporters in every time zone, which I thought was cute. It was a little slow, but I applaud the experiment. And they invited me in right at the time that scientists at the South Pole moved the location of the pole.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that freaked people out, said, what's going on with Earth's rotation? Someone had, I had to explain that their glaciers moving and this pole that's stuck in ice is moving with the moving glacier. So, so you have to realign it to the actual rotation axis of the Earth. But, fine. But in there, Peter Jennings, he's smooth and he says, I wonder how they're celebrating New Year's Eve in Disney World. Let's check it out there. And so Disney World is an icon of America. Of course. We're going to, but I thought, why didn't he go to Universal? Why? And then I was reminded. Exactly. Disney owns ABC. But I'm thinking I was duped by that little smooth move of his. He should have said, oh, by the way, they own us, so we have to go there.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. To tell this story. You know, I was, I was taken in at that brief second, thinking that there was something honestly genuine about going to Disney World for that, for that story. But yeah, I mean, and that's, who cares about a New Year's Eve? We're talking about real stories and what's the future of news if corporations are going to own it. But more of my interview with Miles O'Brien, science reporter extraordinaire, when we get back.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Startalk Radio, Tyson here. Nice on the other side of the table.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  That is correct.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice, they call him.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  That was very fun.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Nice, Chuck Nice.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Chuck Nice.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like my chicken baked, not fried.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Because if you weren't black, I'd be like, why's it gotta be chicken?

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so here's the thing. When you, when, how soon do you know when you want to be a reporter? That's a que, you know, how do, when does that happen?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I ask myself, and of course, I ask that of Miles O'Brien. And I wonder for you, when did you know you wanted to be a comedian? Was it the teacher saying, what are you, a comedian?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  You got it. Pretty much every comedian, I think, has that same experience.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same experience. So what great, that happened in like, elementary school.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Elementary school, when you get in trouble for trying to be funny, that's, and but...

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's counted as something bad.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that you can make a boatload of money doing that later on in life.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  No, it's just awful. And it just gets your life into complete peril. But you're like, I can't wait to do this again.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  That's when you know.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's when you know, you're on to something.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  You're on to something.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you knew early. Let's find out about Miles, how soon he knew he wanted to, how early he wanted to know he would be a journalist.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I remember wanting to be a reporter. You know, just watching the old Al Primo-style eyewitness newscasts in Detroit in the 70s. And just thinking that was the coolest possible job. But at that time, in Detroit, not knowing anybody who ever did it, assumed it was out of reach. Because I couldn't even go to anybody and say, how do you do that? Those people could have come in from another planet.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, who knows anyone who's a reporter? That's not a common trait, when you think about it.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  It isn't a common trait. And especially when you're in Detroit, in a, you know, automobile town. It's not a town that celebrates the media, right? So, I didn't see it as a job. So I went to school at Georgetown, majored in history because I found that of interest. I was always on the newspaper, photography, you know, news editor, all those things interested me. And I gravitated toward them. But I always thought, this is way too much fun to be a job. And so I never saw myself doing that until... It sort of got to the end of the line at Georgetown. I thought, what the heck am I gonna do? And I took an internship at NBC.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NBC DC, in Washington.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  In Washington, at WRC and NBC. And I walked in that newsroom and I just knew immediately I was home. You know, it was just like, this is the coolest place ever. These people are having a ball.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's busy and they're enjoying it.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And they're getting a paycheck. I was like, I can do this. And suddenly it all clicked. And I just never turned back.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a drug?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's absolutely.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're in there, it's fast paced. And we all saw the movie, what was it? Network News?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Network, yeah.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not Network, but Network News, right, right. Or Broadcast News.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Broadcast.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go, there you go.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  I'm mad as hell!

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's, no, that's Network.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  That's Network, okay.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yes. It was before your time.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, I don't know Broadcast News then.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, you know Broadcast. It had Holly Hunter in it and William Hurt.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, yeah, but it was, it showed the fast paced, it's highly energized and they have to be on time. And the tape has to be working and the interview's gotta be in place. And the anchor's hair has to be just right. And everything's gotta come together. So there's gotta be some kind of, uh, drug going on, drug influence.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, but that's a good drug, you know. Unlike comedy, which is like crack.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Just straight up crack. It's awful.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think the universe is a drug.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Really?

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Is that your personal drug? Your drug of choice?

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's ecstasy.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  It's ecstasy? I can see, I see you right now with a couple glow sticks, just getting high on the universe.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much higher than the universe can you possibly get? It's not, it is as high as it comes.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  That's so true.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so what I wonder is, in journalism, if they print something that is not true but people think it's true, how long does it stay how people think it's true? Is there, does it stay that way forever?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  You know, for a lot of people it does.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Especially if it lines up with what you already believe.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the bias. You don't even put in energy to ask if it's not true.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  That's right. You just accept it because it already lines up with your beliefs. And then at that point, if the redaction is made.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Redaction?

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That retraction.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  A retraction.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Redaction.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Well, yes, well, I'm looking at it in a, in, in print form, so. But if a retraction is made, at that point, you're like, oh, well, you don't even hear that. That doesn't even register.

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a famous bias that we have. It's a selectivity bias.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We remember and pay attention to the things that we already want to be true. And we remember the hits and forget the misses.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. When we come back, more of my interview with Miles O'Brien. Science journalist.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your astrophysicist. Can I say I'm people's personal?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  I love it when you say that.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You like that.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Your personal astrophysicist.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I really want is there be a whole bunch of more astrophysicists and I can just go to Bahamas and not be anybody's. At that point, that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah, it's no good if it's just me. I want company.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  We should get some Neil impersonators.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that it? Okay.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like they had Elvis, Elvai.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but what about me would you impersonate? That's what I'm asking.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  What?

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do I have ears that stick out? Do I have some weird facial feature? I don't know.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  No, you don't. Well.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do I say thank you very much? No, I don't. I don't have any. I don't have. So.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  You have a very distinctive voice, though.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. Oh, yeah. So you come back one day and you will try it.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  We'll try it.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You know, they tried it on Saturday Night Live.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I saw that. And I gotta say, that was the worst.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't like.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  That was the worst.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the only Neil impression there ever was. So how could it be the worst?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  It's not the worst, it's the first.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the first. Get through the first and then you start comparing.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  All right, I'll give you that.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Saturday Night Live. It was very flattering.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be imitated. Back to Miles O'Brien, journalist. Yeah, so, you know, he survived CNN in the beginning pink slip there and he had his little, his freelance interval for a while and now he landed on his feet at PBS. And so let's see. Let's see how that is going for him. Find out.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I was available, as we know.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were between jobs.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Between jobs, as they say. I was flailing about. Actually, I was living large. CNN gave me.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Severance, yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  I still have the contract. And I was like, you want to send me home, you got to pay me. Anyway, the news hour was approached by a bunch of funders who said, we want you to do more science. Well, who do you call?

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Science busters, right here. And what's really interesting is, when I was at Georgetown, my first ever taste of television was in that very building at WETA, where the PBS NewsHour is located. And my boss at the time was Linda Winslow. Now Linda Winslow is the EP for the news hour. So I've come completely full.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  EP, executive producer.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Executive producer. So there I am back, and it is extraordinary. I mean, here's the thing. You work at CNN. CNN is on 24 hours, 365, right? I believe that is all the time we have, right? Pretty much? And yet, they would say, when I came in with a two-minute and 30-second piece, we don't have enough time. I'm sorry, you have all the time. And I go into the news hour and I say, I've got a 13-minute script here. And they say, well, can you trim it to 11? And I think to myself, I have died and gone to journalistic heaven. Thank God for Big Bird. What would I do without him?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so he goes from people asking why his two-minute shot is worth anything to,

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  can you trim a 13-minute segment to 11 minutes?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  You know what? That is the beauty of what I call crowdfunded journalism. That's why I listen to NPR. You know, not because they have a particular bent.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't listen to StarTalk radio?

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Well, I listen to StarTalk all the time. I'm listening to it right now.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You created it.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  But, you know, the fact is that they don't have to worry about corporate financing.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  They just do what they do.

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do what's right, as they got to do it.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, I'm old enough to remember that the, was it NBC, the local news in New York. All right, they, you know, they give their half-hour news before the evening news. They said, we're going to go to an hour. And people said.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Right, you can't, that's, that's, how do you do that?

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you do that? Oh my god.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  What are you gonna talk about for a whole hour?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  How can you do an hour's worth of news?

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hours worth of news, before the news, you're gonna do an hour's worth of news? And they said something that's, well, I thought they were just BSing. They said, they said, if you're wondering how we could fill that hour, actually, we had a hard time finding out what to cut.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, no, he's, that can't be right.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And sure enough, they filled the hour and, you know, the rest is history. Now we-

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Now we have 24 hours.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  24/7, 365.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus Leap Day. May- maybe Leap Day should be a day without news.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Oh god, that would be great.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's not, you know, is it, it's not every, it's, it's one day in four years.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Four years, right.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, just give us a break, for goodness sake.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But that's it, 24 hours a day?

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  24/7. And so, then you look, are they actually filling it with 24/7? If you look at Headline News, they're not. They're on a loop.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You almost, you, don't you have a gig coming up on Headline News?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  I can't talk about it.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry. It's a secret, sorry. We might see you on Headline News.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  You may, very soon, very soon or you might not.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, uh, there's a loop going on there and, and Sports Center.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Same thing, same loop.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They go on loops.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  You know what that is?

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're not really filling 24/7?

• 35:24Speaker 02

  No, they're not. And you know why? That's the radio model. I, I mean, I don't know if this is what they actually call it, but I remember when I worked in, uh, terrestrial radio, you know, the-

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Terrestrial radio, that's old fashioned radio that doesn't come off a satellite.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Thank you, sir. Absolutely. So, we would say, why can't we play deeper cuts on the album? And they said, well-

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deeper cuts, you mean more than just the top hit?

• 35:44Speaker 02

  More than just the top hit. And they would say, nope, you gotta play the hits. People only listen for a certain period of time, so you gotta play the hits. You can't, you can't show them what else this artist might do.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because then they won't hear the hits in the time they're tuning in.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you gotta, just while they're in the car.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  That, that's it.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just while they're at the beach.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  And that's the news. That's what we're doing now with the news and the information that we have.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  It's awful.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're lying to say their 24/7 covers, the 24/7 repeats. Absolutely. We're finishing up my interview with Miles O'Brien, science journalist extraordinaire. I had Chuck Nice in studio. Always good to have you, man. It's always my pleasure. And you're always doing good stuff. We'll try to keep up with you. Please, thank you. You've been listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson, four-star talk radio. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.