Stephen Colbert, South Park, and Donald Trump’s War Against the Media

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm Tommy Vittor.

It is a very scary and unsettled time for the media business, especially political media.

After decades of shifting business models and consumption habits, corporate consolidation and downsizing, news outlets now have to navigate the threat of lawsuits from the President of the United States, who is more than happy to use the full weight of the U.S.

government to punish his enemies.

In the last several months, we have seen Trump initiate lawsuits against CBS, ABC, against a pollster, who released some data he didn't like.

The ABC and CBS suits resulted in eight-figure payouts to Trump, reputational damage to the networks involved, and a major shake-up at 60 Minutes.

And then earlier this week, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, News Corp, and Rupert Murdoch.

You know, that big lib, Rupert Murdoch.

That context is why CBS's decision to cancel the late show with Stephen Colbert did not sit well with a lot of people.

CBS claimed it was a purely financial decision, but CBS's parent company, Paramount, was in the process of trying to get the Trump administration to approve a merger with Skydance Media.

And firing a longtime Trump critic like Stephen Colbert sure seemed like a good way to placate the president.

On Thursday, we learned that the Federal Communications Commission has approved that merger.

To try and make sense of all this, I talked with Brian Stelter.

He is the chief media analyst at CNN Worldwide, where he also writes a reliable sources newsletter.

It's an excellent newsletter, by the way, you should subscribe.

He's also the author of three books, the most recent being Network of Lies, The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy about the effort to steal the 2020 election.

And look, as long as we're talking about changes in the media business, I'm going to ask you to help crooked media by subscribing to Pod Save America on YouTube.

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They get the Daily Wire, they get TPUSA.

In fact, a known plagiarist who literally took money from the Russian government had the fastest growing political or politically adjacent YouTube channel over the last three months.

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That is not great.

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You've got lots of fun, original stuff, too.

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What's the harm?

Okay, here's my conversation with Brian.

Brian Stelter, welcome to Pod Save America.

It's great to be here, I think.

I don't know how this is going to go.

We'll find out.

I think this is going to go great.

All right, let's talk about some breaking news or big news.

Last week, CBS announced they were canceling the late show hosted by Stephen Colbert.

CBS insists this is a purely financial decision, but it came just days after Colbert unloaded on CBS and its parent company, Paramount, for caving to Trump in what most people think was a pretty frivolous, ridiculous lawsuit.

Now, you know, Brian, you know better than anybody, these are tough times for broadcast media, for late shows in particular.

The late show is reportedly losing $40 to $50 million per year.

Do you buy the claim that this was a purely financial decision?

Or do you kind of entertain that the timing at least could have been part of a broader effort to make Trump happy as Paramount sought Trump's approval for a merger with Skydance Media?

Narrowly, yes, I buy it.

And if any other president were in office, that would be the end of the conversation.

You know, when I would call up sources at CBS last week, even on background, even when they're given anonymity, even when they know I'm going to protect them because I've known them 20 years, they still say, they still insist that this was financial.

And I do narrowly believe that.

I wrote about James Corden ending the late, late show a couple years ago.

That was on after Colbert, and it too was unprofitable.

And that show went off the air in 2023.

So there is a history here.

It does make a lot of sense.

But

when the President of the United States hates Stephen Colbert, wants him off the air, trashes him on True Social, when CBS is trying to get a merger approved, when you have this entire political backdrop, then I think you have to consider the broader context of all of this.

And Tommy, I think it's one of these situations where when you're really close to it and you're zoomed way in, you can talk about all the details of the financing and all that.

When you zoom way out, you actually might have a better perspective of what's going on.

Do you know what I mean?

I totally agree.

Yeah, there's a lot of context here.

You're also reminding me that a couple of years ago, I had breakfast next to James Corden at a restaurant, and he kept saying to his little daughter, I believe, please stop playing bungoes on Daddy's bum bum.

And I thought that was the funniest, cutest thing I'd ever heard was this adorable little moment.

See, maybe, Tommy, that's what we're losing with the death of late night television.

And that's the problem.

As a business story, that's an important business story.

It's an important cultural story.

It's just impossible to disconnect it from the politics.

Well, so that my next question is, is it a matter of time until some of these other late night shows are canceled, given the changes to the industry, people are cutting the cords, advertisers are moving elsewhere, or does it make more sense to downsize a show to make it financially viable?

I mean, weirdly, in the short term, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel might benefit.

You know, yes, the pie in general has been shrinking for years.

The radiance had been slowly declining.

And that's not necessarily the fault of these comedians.

Look, there's a thousand other options now on our phones at all times.

Actually, millions and millions of other options.

So, of course, the late night audience pie has been shrinking.

But in the short term, once Colbert is off the air next May, in theory, Fallon and Kimmel should benefit.

You know, for the people who are up at 1135 and are flipping channels with their old-fashioned TV remotes, and I'm still one of them, I still have my old-fashioned cable connection.

For those folks, maybe Kimmel and Fallon will actually draw new audiences.

But that's in the short term.

In the long term, the trend lines all do look the same.

And here's the unanswered question that I have about CBS.

The late show trend lines were what they were.

The show is becoming unprofitable more so every year.

Why not take action in 2023 or in 2024?

Why not right-size the budgets?

Why not cut costs?

Now, maybe some of that happened and we're unaware.

I've not heard that from sources personally.

Stephen Colbert's contract was coming up next May.

So maybe in that contract cycle, there would have been a renegotiation.

Maybe he would have taken a pay cut.

Who knows?

But my point is, why not try to save the show rather than let it sink?

Yeah, it's an iconic show.

There's not many, you know, there's not a lot of monoculture, you know, properties like that.

It does seem shocking just to kill it off 10 months from now, fully.

Last question on CBS.

There's been been a lot of rumors out there that CBS might hire someone named Barry Weiss to sort of oversee their journalism.

Someone named Barry Weiss?

Are you playing like you've never heard of her?

So, for our audience who doesn't know Barry Weiss, I'm just trying not to assume knowledge.

I'm trying to be a pro like you, right?

Got it, okay.

Barry Weiss, she worked at the New York Times.

She quit, you know, sort of like citing feelings of that cancel culture had run amok within the organization.

She started a company called the Free Press that she is now reportedly trying to sell for something like $200, $250 million.

But there's also these rumors of her maybe going to CBS and just, I'm not entirely sure what the role is.

What are you hearing about that?

We know the talks are happening and we know the talks are serious enough to involve bankers and lawyers, but that does not mean a deal will get done.

Barry Weiss has been at this with this startup for about five years.

She may well feel that, you know, another two, three, four, five years from now, this is going to be twice or three times as valuable.

So maybe she will decide not to sell.

But I understand why from David Ellison's perspective, he's the incoming Paramount owner.

He's the CEO of Skydance.

Skydance is taking over Paramount now that the FCC has approved the merger.

I understand why from David Ellison's point of view, hiring the free press, aqua hiring Barry Weiss and bringing over the free press as an acquisition,

it's a dramatic move that makes a statement.

It's a way to put your stamp on a news division.

I can see the logic.

Like it's like an interesting and sexy story, you know, to bring in an acquisition in this way.

And yes, it does also, again, you can't disconnect it from the politics.

It says something about his politics, perhaps, and definitely about his desire to change CBS News.

This idea of the free press as an anti-woke brand, as being heterodox, as being center-right.

There's lots of different ways people describe it.

I think of it as a, you know, more centrist or right-leaning version of The Atlantic.

It's more of a magazine than a news outlet.

Meaning, it's about essays and analytical pieces and columns and first person.

It's not a news operation gathering news 24-7 the way CBS News is.

So if you believe that CBS News and its website and its digital assets need a jolt of energy, if you believe they need a subscription business plan, if you believe they need live events and podcasts, well, bringing in the free press can make a lot of sense on paper.

Do you buy it or am I totally, am I totally bullshit?

I hear what you're saying.

I kind of think that there's a very small, very kind of elite audience for what Barry's selling.

It's sort of a center-right

take on the world.

I'm a little skeptical of people that are kind of say they're anti-cancel culture, but then don't have a lot to say when pro-Palestinian activists are being thrown in ICE detention centers for months, right?

Like that seems to be the kind of front of the cancel culture wars that we should really worry about when we're talking about government censorship.

But I don't know.

I'm not trying to diminish her or cast aspersions here.

I just kind of,

if I were, like, it's hard not to divorce it from the context, as you just said.

I mean, you know, in April, like Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, resigned.

He told told his staff that he said, quote, over the past months, it has been clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.

So over time, I did what I could.

I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward.

That really struck me, Brian, because, I mean, I'm not sure what not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it meant.

I'm not sure if you know.

But it does seem like he felt like there was a chilling effect and the sort of corporate overlords telling them what to do.

Installing someone like Barry seems to be kind of the next step in that.

Yeah.

Bill Owens is referring to pressure from Paramount, especially from controlling shareholder Sherry Redstone, who is the one trying to offload Paramount to David Ellison.

Pressure from the top of Paramount to

try not to make a bad situation worse.

And what I mean by that is Trump was already suing CBS over 60 minutes.

There were signs that the Trump FCC was very slow walking the merger review process.

And so from the Paramount corporate point of view, guys, you're reporting the news.

We don't want to.

We don't want to bother you.

We don't want to get in the way, but please don't make our terrible corporate situation worse.

Like from the Paramount point of view, they've been subjected to a form of, you know, corporate torture by these government regulators who've been reviewing the deal and by the president himself, right?

Whose criticism of CBS has been scathing and very personal.

So from the corporate point of view, that's the kind of interference that Bill Owens was then feeling in February, in March, in April.

You know, Paramount bosses wanting to know in advance about stories, maybe trying to view them in advance, that kind of interference that he was not at all accustomed to.

And it wasn't just about Trump and politics.

It was also relating to Israel and Gaza.

Sherry Redstone has been an outspoken supporter of Israel, an outspoken.

She has been very vocal about anti-Semitism in the United States.

She was upset about a CBS morning show segment that she thought was

unfair, that was bent in the wrong way.

And so that concern also was affecting 60 Minutes.

And here's the important part, I think, Tommy.

David Ellison shares Sherry Redstone's point of view when it comes to Israel.

He is also a strong supporter of Israel.

And I suspect that when we talk about Barry Weiss possibly coming over to CBS, that has something to do with what we're talking about, because the free press shares some values that Ellison has, and that would potentially impact the news division.

And look, we don't know what Weiss's role would be if she does decide to sell the Free Press, if she does go to CBS.

You know, I've seen people describe her as, you know, some sort of editorial shepherd or thought leader.

What I don't think, I don't think she's going to be put in some actual management role.

They're not going to make her the president of CBS News, but they would give her some sort of role looking at the editorial.

And

I think the relationship between Ellison and

Barry Weiss with regards to denouncing anti-Semitism and supporting Israel, I think that's part of the stew in the pot, so to speak.

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In the lead-in to our conversation, I talked a lot about the lawsuits that Trump has waged against news outlets that include CBS, ABC, a pollster at the Des Moines Register that he didn't like, News Corp.

Are you hearing from your sources and various newsrooms that these lawsuits are having a chilling effect on their

reporting decisions?

Are they less likely to do tough investigative work on Trump given that backdrop?

It's almost impossible to answer the question because we don't know what we don't know.

We don't know the stories that never get published unless someone else publishes them and says, I wasn't allowed to print this at X, Y, or Z, so I'm printing it over at ABC.

That dynamic is so confounding.

And I've struggled with it in the past few months because there is a chill in the air.

But that chill in the air does not mean that stories are going untold necessarily.

It means, you know, the temperature's dropped a little bit.

I would put it this way, and tell me if this is naive.

The temperature's maybe changed a degree or two, but the climate has not changed.

Meaning, there are lots of news outlets doing fearless reporting on a daily basis, the kind of journalism that President Trump does not want to see published.

It's out there for everybody to read and view and see.

I do get concerned that there's lots of people that never interact with it because of media silos and media bubbles and all of that.

But the work is being done.

The climate hasn't changed, but the weather definitely has.

The temperature has changed.

And so I'll give you a very specific example.

When the Wall Street Journal came forward with that story about Trump's old relationship, his old friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and now Trump is suing the journal, one of the journal's follow-up stories mentioned that ABC News was pursuing some of the same reporting the journal had.

Not exactly the same story, but ABC was going after it.

ABC was digging into it.

In fact, when ABC called the White House for comment or called the DOJ for comment on July 9th, there was a fight among some of the Trump officials as a result of the ABC request for comment.

So I went on the ABC website.

I tried to find, was a story published?

Was this reporting that ABC was pursuing?

Did it actually air or be published anywhere?

And the answer is no.

ABC kept reporting it out, kept trying to confirm it, but never published a story.

And this is one of those unknowables.

Did ABC decide to hold back from the story because it didn't feel confirmed?

It didn't feel solid enough?

The bosses were not confident in the reporting.

Or did they hold back because Disney's, you know, the ABC's parent company Disney settled with Trump last December for $15 or $16 million

as a result of a Trump lawsuit against the network.

And as a result, the network is hesitant to go there and break a big story about Trump.

It's unknowable.

And here's what happens when I call and ask this question.

Number one, you're never going to comment on the record.

Number two, you'll hear some understandable defensiveness saying, you know, you can't accuse us of going soft or of holding back or of not having journalistic standards.

You know, there's a real,

you get it, I think, right?

Yeah, I mean, I would be incredibly defensive about that.

I mean, it's sort of like core to the DNA of not only these organizations, but the people who work there, like they live and they breathe this stuff.

You're right.

I'm sure it is sort of impossible to quantify.

I do wonder what it's like being

a younger investigative reporter in a very unsettled industry where there's more layoffs than hirings.

And you think, not only like, will my bosses have my back if I report this out, but will my bosses like this?

Is this the kind of thing they want me to pursue?

Or am I a troublemaker if I'm going after this, you know, Epstein document or whatever?

Interesting.

I can only tell you that from my personal experience, I've been back at CNN now about a year.

Every time that I write a story that I find is really tough, that, you know, when I'm writing it, I think, is someone going to wince at that paragraph?

Is that going to go too far?

Am I being too analytical?

First of all, the answer is no.

It's important to share with the audience what we know, to be honest, to be very clear.

But number two, I find that those stories that are strong, that are, that are not holding back at all, those are the ones that end up on the homepage.

Like those are the ones that end up getting push alerted out to millions of readers.

Those are the ones that end up having big, big audiences.

And I find every time that happens, I view that as a positive sign.

But, you know, take me out of it.

I see that happening with colleagues at CNN.

I see that at other places as well, where big scoops, tough investigations, really strongly worded pieces of analysis, they do get rewarded with attention and traffic and engagement.

So even though the pressures are so real and Trump's attacks against the press are so intense, I want to recognize how much good work is still getting out.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Reporters are doing amazing work.

And one piece of this that I find fascinating, Brian, is kind of the Rupert Murdoch role in this world right now.

Because as you mentioned, like the Wall Street Journal has done some of the toughest reporting on Trump, period, especially there.

The recent reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the journal's editorial page has been a harsh critic of Trump's tariff policies.

And now Trump is suing the journal, News Corp, and Rupert Murdoch for, you know, only $10 billion.

It's a little tiny lawsuit.

You have reported on Fox News and the Murdoch family for years.

How do you make sense of the disconnect between the journal's tough coverage and then the 24-7 propaganda and cheerleading we see on Fox News?

Rupert Murdoch wants to have it both ways.

Having it both ways benefits him,

probably I would say emotionally, definitely financially.

You know, because Rupert, in his heart, even though some listeners will laugh at this, he views himself as a newsman.

as a newshound, as an old-fashioned newspaper man with ink in his veins, so to speak.

And that is how he grew up.

That's how he built his media empire.

It was on, it was through newspapers.

So for him, he's really proud of the Wall Street Journal.

He loves a good scoop.

I think he also sometimes likes to poke the president in the eye, as one person close to Rupert said to me.

He doesn't mind being in these confrontations.

We're talking about a 94-year-old who filed a legal battle against his own children a couple of years ago, trying to change the family trust to figure out how billions of dollars is going to be split up.

This is a guy who likes to fight.

So number one, we shouldn't be surprised that he's willing to battle with Trump when he feels it's appropriate and necessary.

But But then, number two, he has Fox News as well, right?

So he has the journal, he's proud of the scoops, he loves the paper, he reads it in print, but then he knows that Fox News makes him incredible amounts of money.

It makes the shareholders a lot of money.

It is what keeps the profit machine humming along.

And so I think that's how he has it both ways.

Why do you think Fox has figured out how to make it work, providing like MAGA comfort food for years and years and years?

And they're dominating the ratings.

They're dominating financially at a time when other networks

are struggling.

MSNBC is getting spun off.

There's major changes afoot.

It just doesn't seem like there's a sort of equivalent network on the left that has been as successful.

And that's been true for 20 years.

You know, if you go back into the history of cable news, when MSNBC started to become clearly left-leaning with Keith Oberman, which really was 20 years ago, MSNBC was

never able to grow to become as large as Fox News.

CNN, of course,

trying to report the news and not be as much of a talk show about the world the way that Fox News is.

That's how I view Fox.

I view Fox,

it's got a small news operation and it's got a giant opinion arm and also as an entertainment arm, if you think about it that way.

Fox is mostly a rolling talk show about the news.

And in some ways, that is inherently more popular versus

live shots from around the world and detailed reports.

So I want to acknowledge there's just a difference in the marketplace.

Fox is selling a different product than everybody else.

And most importantly, Tommy, to answer your question, Fox has a stranglehold on that audience on the right.

You hear about Newsmax once in a while.

You hear about One American News.

These channels are tiny flies on the back of the Fox elephant.

And even though Newsmax has been out there for years trying, fighting, it has struggled to become even one-tenth as large as Fox News.

So, you know, whether you buy into the idea that it's a cult-like relationship or not, Fox has that iron grip on the audience, unlike any other channel on television.

And I have looked for signs of that changing.

I've written two books about this and wondered if it would ever change.

In 2025, I see no sign of that changing.

Yeah.

And look, I have Fox on all day, every day in our office.

I don't agree with a lot of what they report, but the number of times I've looked at Achiron on the screen and laughed out loud is like too many to number.

I mean, I think they do a good job putting out an entertaining product.

It's one that I don't find to be factual, but it's fun to watch.

Listen, Roger Ailes talked about this a long, long time ago.

One of the only times I ever met the man, he talked about how bright the screen was, how colorful the screen was, how he wanted not just people, but the banners, the pictures to pop.

And, you know,

if that's the business you're in, right, which is an entertainment and political propaganda business, then he's wildly, he built something that's still wildly succeeding a decade after his death.

Yeah.

One duo that's not pulling any punches are Trey Parker and Matt Stone over at South Park, South Park's Creators.

Did you catch the first episode of this season?

Well, I had to watch for work, yes.

Yes, I did too.

I was getting texts about it.

What night was that?

Wednesday night.

I started seeing people posting on Twitter.

The final scene is the first scene I watched, which was an AI Trump crawling through the desert completely naked before his penis starts speaking.

And then it says, I think the tagline is Donald Trump.

He has a teeny tiny penis, but he's for us.

Right.

So the LA Times reported that Paramount rushed to finalize their merger with Skydance before the premiere on Wednesday to

avoid a PR fiasco when I think the creators were at Comic-Con in San Diego Thursday.

Puck reported that South Park flagged the content of the episode to Paramount execs, who then told the top brass about it, and then that those top brass had to explain the episode to Sherry Redstone.

What I would give to have been in that room.

Have you heard anything about, you know, look, ultimately they decided to air this episode, right?

I mean, they probably were smart enough to know that if they tanked this thing, it would be bad.

But it's just the context is remarkable given that Paramount just gave Parker and Stone $1.5 billion with a B for 50 new episodes and their entire back catalog.

This season premiere actually was delayed two weeks.

So add that to the mix here.

Interesting.

The creators were working on the new season, ended up not coming out till here we are almost the end of July.

And that does line up perfectly with this this merger review timeline.

Because if you unpack the entire month of July, Paramount settles with Trump on July 1st, agrees to pay $16 million to make that 60 minutes lawsuit go away.

That court

settlement, that out-of-court settlement was only finalized in court on Tuesday of this week.

So you then have on Thursday the FCC voting to approve the merger.

So drop into the timeline, South Park on Wednesday night.

Here's why it's more complicated than that though.

South Park is on cable.

It's not on broadcast.

So technically, officially, the way the law works, the FCC has nothing to do with cable, cannot say a word about South Park, cannot make a peep about it.

So if we're looking at this by the book, then South Park shouldn't matter.

But of course, this world seems more complicated than that.

Right.

Yes.

Or more or more transactional than that.

When people look at the Paramount settlement over the 60 Minutes lawsuit, they see a quid pro quo.

Elizabeth Warren has called this a bribe.

Other Democratic senators senators have called this a bribe.

And by the way, how interesting it is that we've seen these Democrats even bother to weigh in about a media merger.

It speaks to the environment we're in and the desire of some Democrats to show that they are fighting, that we've seen statements from these lawmakers about what's going on at Paramount.

Because right now, like all roads lead to and from Paramount.

The Colbert late night show is about Paramount.

The Daily Show in Jon Stewart.

South Park, 60 Minutes, all of this under the same parent company.

And my take on South Park is that because it is on cable, not broadcast, because the creators are known for taking shots at everybody, they're equal opportunity offenders, emphasis on offenders.

They've been going after the left for years and what they think is excessive wokeism.

Well, now they believe the biggest bully in the room is on the right.

It's President Trump.

And there's really no way to tell them to knock it off without losing South Park, without

losing the brand.

And that's why the most important number you said is 1.5 billion.

The Paramount just signed this new deal to keep streaming South Park.

Well, to be able to stream South Park for years to come.

So how do we square the circle, right?

Late shows going away, but South Park, vicious Trump criticism, it's worth 1.5 billion.

The answer is in what matters on streaming.

What matters on streaming are shows like South Park, shows that have a long shelf life, right?

It's a great library.

It's a 27 season library of television that people might be watching 10 or 20 years from now.

Whereas, is anybody really going to watch an episode of the late show with Stephen Colbert five years from now?

Probably not.

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Let's turn to the sort of White House and the White House press corps.

The Trump administration has cracked down on the White House press corps in ways that would have been unimaginable to me when I was, you know, a very young flack working in the press office for Barack Obama.

They took control of deciding which news outlets are part of the White House press pool.

For those who don't know, the press pool is the group of reporters that's much smaller that attends events with the president when there's limited space in the room.

That process used to be controlled by the White House Correspondents Association, by the journalists themselves, but the White House took it over.

They banned the Associated Press from pooled events for several months.

They have moved to fully restrict pool access for major wire services.

The White House has also now barred the Wall Street Journal from some events because they're mad about the Epstein coverage.

Brian, what do you think the impact of these sort of changes, when all taken together, has been?

You know, first of all, in Trump 2.0, if there is a button that Trump or his aides can press to punish disfavored media outlets, they will press it.

Like that is my takeaway from the first six months.

We've seen a dozen different examples of pressure points that have been exploited, whether that's the FCC opening investigations, whether it's defunding PBS and NPR, whether it's legal battles in the courts, like all these different pressure points.

And you're describing a really interesting one that

matters a lot to insiders that I think most outsiders never hear about.

This idea of who's in the press pool and thus really who is able to ask the president questions on a daily basis?

This is now a legal fight by the AP.

The AP was basically the first to be punished this year.

And should we refresh people's memories about why?

It was about the Gulf of Mexico.

Please, because it's so stupid.

I just feel like it's important to bake it in every time I talk about this, because otherwise you start to think, oh, maybe the AP did something wrong.

What did they do?

The AP, when you're growing up and you're in journalism school, the AP style book is the Bible.

It is the manual for what names to capitalize and how to spell certain words.

So in the AP style book, the Gulf of Mexico is is still called the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump's proclamation that the U.S.

government must now call it the Gulf of America created a challenge for all these global newsrooms.

What do you do?

What do you call the Gulf?

And, you know, the AP and other outlets basically decided other countries recognized it as the Gulf of Mexico.

That's been the name for hundreds of years.

We're going to call it the Gulf of Mexico, but also acknowledge Trump's decree about Gulf of America.

So, you know, when I'm on TV, I call it the Gulf.

I say it's the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by Trump as the Gulf of America.

You just explain it.

You know, you just bake it into the news coverage.

Not a big deal, not controversial, but Trump wanted to pick a fight.

So he started to ban AP reporters from White House events.

And here we are, a big, giant legal battle that's probably going to go on for months where the AP is trying to fight for its access.

In the meantime, the White House has totally rewritten the rules about access.

So the legal fight may not matter as much as it did.

Basically, Up until now, an independent group of press corps folks, the White House Press Correspondence Association, decided who was in the pool.

And Carolyn Levitt and her aides have taken that power.

Now they decide on a daily basis who is in the press pool.

For the most part, most news outlets that were in in January still are.

We should recognize, you know, for the most part, it hasn't changed.

But the mix has evolved over time.

There are now explicitly pro-Trump outlets that don't do reporting.

They're there to provoke and opine, not to report.

They are a regular part of the press pool now.

And

places like the AP are in the pool less often.

What I think has changed this month and is, you know, we have to watch out for is the Wall Street Journal being kicked off a trip, kicked out of the press pool for a trip because Trump didn't like the story about Trump and Epstein, because he decided to sue the journal.

So that's a clear, very specific example of retaliation against a news outlet for a story Trump didn't like.

And the fear, of course, among White House reporters is that that's going to become more common, that Trump is going to start to do that on a more regular basis going forward.

And there's nothing really to stop him from doing so.

Yeah.

And for those who are thinking, like why are you guys talking about this why does it matter i mean just imagine if every pooled press event you just had questions to trump from like marjorie taylor greene's boyfriend i'm forgetting his name brian brian that's a real thing he shows up right now yeah now yes and you know what he did a couple days ago he asked a question about a bill that his girlfriend had introduced in congress isn't that an interesting way to promote no conflicts here right yeah that's uh that is remarkable um you know look i again these are like seismic changes for the nerds like us who know how this stuff used to work.

I have found the White House Correspondents Association response to be basically non-existent.

Like, I think they sent a letter, they wore like pins one day.

I guess

I don't want to be mean to them.

I'm not sure they have that meaning.

Yeah, I know you do.

I think it's pathetic, but I also think that it's almost impossible.

to figure out a way to respond collectively when you have a press corps with a bunch of competing interests.

And I'm just, I'm wondering if I'm being unfair to them.

No, you said it.

You said it.

Therein lies the problem.

The audience can say and does say to me on Blue Sky every day, show solidarity, work together.

You should all walk out.

And I don't think we live in a world where if 10 or 20 or 30 reporters all banded together and walked away and refused to ask Trump questions, I don't think we live in a world where another 30 won't rush back in,

will not rush in.

There will always be reporters or people posing as reporters reporters who want to ask the president questions.

And so

I think this is one of those areas where the White House does have a lot of leverage in terms of who is able to ask questions on a daily basis.

And we should just, you know, as people like yours, truly, all we can do is point out, is Trump doing any real interviews?

Is he only going on Fox?

When he goes on Fox, does he only go on with his friends?

You know, his daughter-in-law is a host on Fox.

The president recently sat down with his daughter-in-law for a promotional interview.

Is the word interview even appropriate in those circumstances?

Like, all we can do is observe it, point it out, recognize what is happening.

And this summer at least, yeah, Trump holds a lot of so-called gaggles where he answers questions from the press pool, but he is almost never sitting down for real interviews.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Although, I do find myself, you know, wanting to kind of check my own views here because Trump is broadly more accessible than any president that I could ever think of in history, right?

I mean, he is doing constant, I mean, he, he, there was a time when he was having foreign leaders to the White House.

Normally, when you have a foreign leader come in, you bring the press pool in for something called a spray, where they basically just shout questions and take photos, and they're out in two minutes.

And he would do like 45-minute mini-press conferences there.

And then they would go to the East Room after the meeting and do another 45 minutes.

I was like, what the hell are these guys doing?

This is such a waste of time.

They've slimmed that down a bit, but he is still willing to take questions from the press basically every day, which is very different than Biden.

It is very different, but whether he answers them honestly is a completely different matter.

Absolutely.

And we live in an environment now where the president calls a reporter a maggot, where he decides to respond to South Park mocking his genitalia.

You know, we live in an environment now that is just, yes, it is an attention war.

Yes, Trump is able to win the attention war, but at what cost and is it at all tethered to reality are the really hard parts to measure?

That's right.

That's right.

Do you think that the wave of media unionization over the past few years has impacted or changed how outlets cover labor or sort of cover power generally?

Like, what have you seen from this trend?

I haven't written about this, but I do think that there's more nuanced coverage of labor issues as a result of that unionization movement.

And so that's the main thing I've noticed is I personally, I see more coverage of the topic and I see more nuanced coverage as a result.

Interesting.

So, Brian, I spent like 30 minutes asking you about traditional mainstream media because like like I have all this muscle memory of it from when I was in government.

Yeah.

Right.

But but podcasts, TikTok, social media, like that's I've heard they're becoming popular.

Yeah, that's the stuff people think got Trump elected.

I may have co-founded a media company, a podcast company.

You still haven't saved America, though.

God,

people don't seem to always get that that was sarcastic, including Hunter Biden.

I read that this week.

Yeah,

he had some thoughts.

It has been interesting to watch a lot of these new media voices turn on Trump over Jeffrey Epstein.

I'm also fascinated by the ways the Trump team is trying to spin these influencers and get them on sides.

Like Trump is making calls to people like Charlie Kirk.

JD Vance invited a stand-up comedian and podcaster named Tim Dylan to Washington, D.C.

to have dinner with him.

Now, it doesn't seem like...

any of this has really worked, but I'm wondering if you think there's a takeaway from, you know, this moment and the Epstein story and how diffuse media power has become and what that says about your ability to control a narrative if you're a White House.

In some ways, it is similar to the relationship between Trump and Fox News, even though that's an old school brand, because

the hosts on Fox News, they have a lot of power.

They benefit from proximity to the president.

It's a mutually beneficial, back-scratching relationship most of the time.

And yet,

It also, they also can pull apart sometimes.

They can go separate ways.

There can be breakups and then reunions.

And I think that's, you know, there's a version of that now in MAGA media, social media influencer world, where

the relationship is clearly mutually beneficial.

There's an element of propaganda underway.

And yet, sometimes these men and women will break away, where they will speak out because they believe they're doing it for the good of the movement.

And in some cases, they're doing it to help Trump.

Some of the MAGA media influencers calling out the administration of Repstein, they think,

I believe they think, they're actually helping Trump.

They are guiding him to what is the right answer or the right solution.

Furthermore, some of them clearly feel betrayed, you know, deeply betrayed.

And

that's what's going to happen sometimes when you buy into a years-long lie,

an entire architecture of lies that has been built around this topic.

I don't know about you.

I found this hard to analyze and talk about on TV because there's both a very real and horrifying scandal about Epstein and his crimes and his accomplices.

And there is a lot more that could be revealed and there are documents that have not come out.

That's all real and important and reality-based.

But then there's also this

sickening conspiracy theory that has festered and built for years about a child sex trafficking plot at an industrial scale, abusing women, abusing girls on behalf of...

democratic elites.

Like, let's face it, this conspiracy theory is about treating the other party as evil.

And that made-up conspiracy theory that's happening over there,

you know, a lot of people have conflated the two.

A lot of MAGA media influencers see them as one of the same, and they feel betrayed because they've bought into those lies for years.

They've also helped sell those lies for years.

Am I making any sense about the difference between the two stories?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, I do think there's a lot of different flavors of kind of where people are coming from on this story.

There is what you just described, which is like kind of almost a basically QAnon continuation, where people think there is literally a cabal of liberals that like maybe even drink the blood of children, like the adrenochrome thing, like that is a real thing people think.

Then there's folks who just

think that some of their political enemies are on this list and they're going to get to finally prosecute Bill Clinton, for example.

And then there's folks who I think just thought Trump is pledged to be, he says he's outside of a system, a system that we hate, and that he's going to burn it down.

And he's going to take down all these elites that we hate.

And now he looks to be covering up for them.

And I think that's why it's been so damaging kind of across the mega media,

you know,

universe.

And he has really struggled to get on the right foot, even with all this talk about, you know, summoning Ghelene Maxwell to testify before Congress or releasing grand jury testimony.

That is just clearly insufficient for a lot of people, including people like Alex Jones.

And maybe that's in part because

Epstein, as this is all shorthanded, but really the elaborate conspiracy theories, as well as the reality of the unsolved mysteries, all of it is is content.

All of it is fantastic content for some of these producers, for some of these Instagram stars, for some of these podcasters.

It is a storyline that keeps on giving.

It will never be fully resolved.

No matter what happens, there will always be an unsolved mystery at the heart of it.

And that is, in some ways, it's the reason why true crime podcasts are so popular.

You know, that's what some of this, you know, alleged news content is about.

It's really an ongoing

thing in that way.

I've also, I gave up up a long time ago on being able to convince people that their elaborate fantasies or horrors about these crimes, that you can talk people out of their beliefs about them.

I remember there was a meme that went around Twitter, like in, I don't know, 2018, 2019, a picture of my face and a couple other CNN anchors.

And it said, why are they on the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs?

And like, what are you supposed to do with a lie like that?

Now, I know you and your former boss have dealt with this, you know, every day for a decade plus.

But like, like, what do you do with a lie like that?

Obviously, you know,

to say it's not true makes you feel like an idiot because you're having to debunk nonsense that comes from a fever or something there.

But the point is, when those kinds of meet, you know, and everybody,

what do you do?

You cannot talk people out of these lies.

Yeah, it's horrible.

And they can say some pretty extreme, scary things.

And you can feel like you're on a real island about how to deal with it.

Right.

You'll hear more of my conversation with Brian Stelter in a moment.

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I want to change gears a little bit to AI because I read an interesting article by the Nyman Lab.

It was about a newsletter company called 6 AM City.

6 AM City purchased a network of AI-generated local newsletters called Good Daily.

So Andrew Deck, who's the reporter at Nyman Lab, who wrote this piece, said that when he first discovered Good Daily,

each local newsletter tried to present itself as being run by someone in the community.

They were kind of like fake testimonials, but really it was all run by one guy in New York City.

Now, 6AM says, we're buying this AI newsletter network to kind of seed a bunch of small markets with these AI newsletters.

And then if they start to see success, we'll invest in editorial with human beings and the ones that get traction.

Now, we'll see.

But for me, like this was a reminder that AI is common for media jobs.

AI is common for my job, just like any other industry.

And I'm wondering if you are starting to see the impact of AI across newsrooms.

You're making me think of FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who, when he was out on his media tour acknowledging the CBS deal, the merger approval, he kept talking about trust.

He kept indicating that, he kept claiming that his focus on Paramount, his, you know, trying to get concessions out of Paramount was all about restoring trust, that the American people don't trust the media and they need to rebuild trust.

Well,

I understand complaints about bias and all the other topics that you hear about.

But the biggest source of distrust, the most damage being done to trusted media right now is all this AI slop, all this AI garbage.

In some cases, right, AI-generated newsletters or news articles that are maybe mostly true or might be true or maybe seem true and it's hard to tell what's true or what's human made versus what's not human made.

The biggest pressure on trusted media, I think, is coming from this AI environment.

And

in that, there will, of course, be winners and losers.

I hope that really, really handcrafted, human-made outlets are going to be the ones that can benefit by promoting themselves that way, by identifying that way, by winning over paying subscribers.

And we see some of that happening on Substack every day.

We do see some of these subscription models working.

The more human-made, the better.

The more personal, the better.

But there's no doubt there's going to be further damage at the local level with even

smaller amounts of local news being gathered in the first place.

And then what little local news is actually gathered by humans will be collected up by the AI bots and

spat back out at you, you know, and regurgitated toward you.

I don't know.

Maybe this dates me.

Maybe this just shows how old I am.

But the piece of mail I look forward to the most every month is a monthly newsletter from the town near where I live.

Human-made, real advertisers, families who write in letters, pictures from the local schools.

You know, that handcrafted newsletter is the most valuable piece of media that I consume every month.

And I'd like to believe that if we're all overwhelmed by AI slop on Facebook, then enough smart entrepreneurs will want to go out and build more of those newsletters.

And also obviously digital versions and podcasts and TikToks.

But I have to believe that in an environment where you can't believe a word of what you're seeing on your social media feeds, that hopefully people will seek out more local personalized handcrafted versions.

Now I'm going to get a bunch of emails from people who say this is just totally naive and the business model is completely cratering and there's nothing we can do about it.

No, I think you're, look, I think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying.

I think there will be people like you and people like me, people of a certain age with certain consumption habits who want human beings to generate their news and who like really care about that kind of curation and seek out authentic, real stuff.

And then I fear there's going to be a generation, probably a younger generation, that's really not used to consuming the news like we have.

And they're like, I don't give a shit if, you know, my local town's newsletter is AI, like whatever i just want to know the the sports scores of my high school historically though as people grow up as they get older they do age into news meaning you know if you're a cable news network a new 25 year old is born every day in the 25 to 54 year old demographic that advertisers really covet so in in theory you know as you grow up as you maybe if you have kids you start a family maybe you're going to care more about the schools you're going to pay for your local news you know that has historically been true the big difference of course now is there are fewer of those outlets to sign up for in the first place.

There are more and more people doing the reporting themselves, right?

More and more citizen journalism efforts that you do see on Facebook and other outlets, other platforms.

Some of them are not half bad, by the way.

I suspect that, you know, if you're 35, you're 40, if you're living in a town and you hear about some scandal, you hear about something that went down, you see something in your community, you're going to want to figure out if there are reliable sources, not going to, you know, whatever, the Zing, the reliable sources.

You're going to want to see if there are reliable reliable sources about it around if not you're going to hunger for that so I'm I'm hoping that basic human impulse will stick around and that the business models can catch up and it can be frankly easier and easier to pay for news there are there are times where you know media brands make it very hard to become a member to become a subscriber to support the brand the easier we can make it to pay and become a part of it the easier we can make it to be a member the more these brands will benefit.

God, amen to that.

The number of times I have paid for an outlet and for some reason, it just doesn't keep me logged in when I like click a Washington Post link on Twitter or whatever.

And I have to, it just drives me insane.

Like, how is this not seamless at this point?

A hundred percent.

But conversely, you know, I was down the shore.

I live in Jersey now.

So I was down the shore with my family the other weekend and I wanted to know about Fourth of July plans.

Is there a parade in town?

Is there this?

Is there that?

I would have paid in that moment $3 via Apple Pay for some sort of, you know, alert or information for the weekend like i might have paid five or six bucks um but of course it wasn't that easy it wasn't that simple so i'm that's where i find a little bit of faith about the future of media is that if we can get to the audience get to the consumer if we can make it really convenient there is an audience that wants to know if the parade's happening I think that's right.

I think that's true across industries.

Like, I want great curation, whether it's a playlist, a menu at a restaurant, a wine store, or news.

I don't need the Cheesecake Factory version.

That's too much for me.

I'm overwhelmed, right?

I just want something good.

Speaking of sort of

new types of media that's out there, this is kind of a generational thing.

I was talking to a younger YouTube creator yesterday who was asking me what I thought about Jubilee, which folks have probably seen clips of this.

You know, there's a bunch that went around recently this week.

Mehdi Hassan from Zatteo News was basically debating 20 like fascists.

And when I first heard about Jubilee, it was, you know, it was like Pete Bootage Edge with 20 undecided undecided voters.

And I was like, oh, this is really interesting.

There's some real value here.

And it has evolved to this place where it is kind of everything I hate about media.

It's like debate versus conversation and owning people and the most insane, you know, out of bounds views sort of pitted against each other.

And like that, none of what I'm saying is a critique of Netty.

Credit to that guy, right?

Like he could debate anybody.

He did an incredible job.

He is one of the smartest, sharpest people I've ever met or heard talk about the media.

But I do wonder what you think about the value of this product from Jubilee because it's very, very, very popular with Gen Z and younger people.

But I'm all kind of skeptical of it.

This is gonna

get me in trouble.

I'm a big fan of it, but I'm probably wrong.

Like I feel like I know I'm wrong deep down inside.

Like just before we started having this conversation, I was about to read a piece on the bulwark that's all about why Jubilee is bad.

Sonny Bunch writing, these are really bad for society.

I haven't clicked the link yet.

So listen to me, but then go read his piece.

And I'm sure that he's right.

Okay.

I'm sure that he's right.

Here's what appeals to me about it, though.

Okay.

It is very long form, like, you know, almost two hours long.

You hear a lot.

People are moving quickly.

You hear a lot.

You get a real sense of how people's brains work or maybe don't work.

I don't know.

You really hear those extremely online arguments and you.

come face to face with what politics is really like in America.

It's why I loved every diner story of interviewing Trump voters, even though it was very popular on social media to denounce diner stories.

I always want to hear more.

I always want to read more of those stories.

Now, here's the caveat maybe, right?

I am abnormal and news junkies are abnormal.

Jubilee appeals to that news junkie brain, you know, but I also think Jubilee's, I think the company was surrounded.

They're trying to appeal to a broader audience.

Like maybe they're trying to bring in people who have not had these conversations for years and cannot anticipate every counter argument.

Maybe that's a good thing to be making more forms of media for people who are not already so saturated.

Because that's been my takeaway in the past few years, especially when I was able to take a little time off.

Well, I got fired, but you know, take a little time off after being fired and I could hang out with my kids, like to look around the media world and realize it's really well designed for junkies and it's not very well designed for normal people.

You know, if you just want to know what happened today, there's some CNN products I would recommend, but there's not a lot out there compared to if you are a junkie, you know,

you will keep scrolling.

You'll never be able to stop doom scrolling.

So

if, if the intent of Jubilee is to try to bring in people who are not otherwise engaging in politics, I would favor that.

Yeah, I think that's really interesting.

The most compelling criticism of Jubilee I heard was actually from another bulwark star, Tim Miller, who said

he started watching the Jubilee clips because he had Medi on the show.

And then he started seeing Medi going back and forth with some of these creators and looking at their feeds.

And then all of a sudden, his ex algorithm algorithm was full of these like neo-Nazis, right?

And there is a change.

There's an interesting conversation to be had about how consuming this content can impact your algorithm, which,

as we know, can fundamentally change what you do.

Of course.

My favorite button on Instagram, it doesn't pop up often enough, but sometimes it pops up when Instagram feeds me something that I'm not, from someone I'm not already following.

And it says, interested or not interested.

You know, there's an X or a check mark.

I love when Instagram services that.

I recently said to an executive there, I wish you would show me that even more often.

I'm glad that I, you're giving me at least the perception of having some power over the algorithm.

You're giving me a chance to opt out of the junk.

And

it would be nice to be able to watch Surrounded on Jubilee and then say, I don't want to see any more of it.

Yeah, me too.

Final question for you.

Thank you so much for giving us all this time.

One of my questions today was written verbatim by ChatGPT.

Which one was it?

Which one was it?

Shit.

The The union question?

No.

Yes, you nailed it.

Oh,

here's why.

Here's why I went there.

Because it was short and pithy on like all my other fucking long-winded nonsense.

No, because I thought it was the least related to the other topics.

Even though it's foundational, it affects, you know, unionization and labor.

It affects every other topic we've talked about.

But it was a little bit out of left field.

And so I don't think that the chat GPT understands us well enough yet.

God,

you know me better than I do.

You nailed that one.

Brian, thank you so much for doing the show.

Where can folks find you?

What should we promote here?

I suppose I'm on CNN, and when I'm not there, I'm writing the Reliable Sources newsletter for CNN.

It's at reliablesources.com.

Thank you.

Subscribe to Brian's newsletter and thank you so much for doing the show.

Thank you.

That's our show for this week.

Thanks for listening and see you guys Tuesday.

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