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Center for Strategic and International Studies Bob Schieffer’s “About the News” with H. Andrew Schwartz Podcast Subject: “Alt-Facts and Journalism That Holds: NPR’s Editorial Director Michael Oreskes” Speaker: Michael Oreskes, Editorial Director, National Public Radio Hosts: H. Andrew Schwartz, Senior Vice President for External Relations, CSIS Bob Schieffer, CBS Political News Contributor; Former Host, “Face the Nation,” CBS News Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2017 Transcript By Superior Transcriptions LLC www.superiortranscriptions.com (Music plays.) BOB SCHIEFFER: I’m Bob Schieffer. H. ANDREW SCHWARTZ: And I’m Andrew Schwartz. MR. SCHIEFFER: And these are conversations about the news. We are in the midst of a communications revolution. We have access to more information than any people in history. But are we more informed, or just overwhelmed by so much information we can’t process it? MR. SCHWARTZ: These conversations are a year-long collaboration of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. (Music plays.) MR. SCHIEFFER: We’re joined this time by veteran journalist Michael Oreskes, who runs the news operation at National Public Radio, a post he came to after running new organizations in the United States and overseas. His two big broadcasts now are “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He joined NPR in March of 2015. He came from the Associated Press, where he was a top executive and managing editor of the wire service’s daily feed. Came to the AP in 2008 after many years as a reporter and editor and chief of the Washington Bureau of The New York Times. He was also editor of International Herald Tribune, based in Paris, which the Times owned. Well, Michael, welcome. You’ve seen a lot in those various posts. And I’m guessing, now you’ll say you’ve seen a whole lot more, as you watched this campaign and the inauguration of Donald Trump. So just – MICHAEL ORESKES: Bob, it’s great to be back together with you. And I think between us, we’ve seen a whole lot. MR. SCHIEFFER: We have. (Laughs.) Well, what I want you to do here is just take a deep breath and tell us what you make of it all now – this inauguration, the campaign that came before. What do you think’s coming? MR. ORESKES: Well, I mean, it’s – it is a remarkable moment. I know a lot of people say that. But I think what’s really striking is that we now have a president who came to office by attacking the key institutions of the society – both the government and us, the press. And I do think of us an important institution in a free society. And that’s a bit unnerving, frankly, because, you know, you can tear away at those things only so far, and at some point you’re left with nothing standing. And I do believe that an independent press is crucial. And I believe that, frankly, the key branches of government, the Congress and the courts are important. And you can talk about draining the swamp, and no doubt there’s all sorts of things that need repair and fixing, but at some point if your mission is to tear it all down you have to ask yourself, well, who’s there at the end? MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, what do you make of the inauguration – a very unusual inauguration? MR. ORESKES: I must say that you and I between us have seen most inaugurations, certainly at least back, what, to Nixon, to – I’m not sure whether you were at Johnson. MR. SCHIEFFER: Yes. MR. ORESKES: But certainly, yes. There hasn’t been anything quite like this. It was remarkable for the way in which we got Trump. That’s who he is. You know, we didn’t get soaring rhetoric. OK, you can imagine that he wants to speak more like ordinary people. That’s part of the Trump thing. But the idea that he took almost no advantage of the moment to expand who he was speaking to, that it was really about this core that he – that brought him to where he is. And you got to respect that loyalty, in a sense. But presidents have to govern the whole country. And they need more than just the people who elected them. And that’s true of every president. So why he chose not to do that in that speech, and why he painted such a dark picture of this country – I mean, you and I both have lived through some dark times in this country, but the principle that seems so established in this country – and, you know, who Reagan was obviously the great exemplar of – was this idea that ultimately hope and optimism are the thing that leads you forward. And he just tossed that out. I mean, when he got to that moment about American carnage I thought, wow, this really is a different president. MR. SCHIEFFER: You said the other day that 2017 will be the year that journalism gets back to basics. Tell us what you mean by that. MR. ORESKES: Well, I think the more under pressure we are – and we’re under pressure both in a – in a broad sense, the digital transition, the business crisis of so many news organizations, and now this struggle we clearly are going to be having with this new administration. We’re under a lot of pressure. And I think when you’re in that kind of situation, you really have to go back to your knitting. You have to figure out exactly who you are. And I think our key role is to provide reliable, authentic information to the public so they can be who they need to be. They can be citizens. They can be who they need to be in their lives – not all our work is about citizenship. It’s also about living your life. It’s about shopping. It’s about, you know, consumer protections. So I think it’s really important for us to recognize that’s our role. That’s our key role. We’re not – you know, there is entertainment in the world. And obviously journalist has always had a certain entertainment quality that’s been relevant. But ultimately, we are the information that keeps the society moving. And we have to recognize that. And we have to be really good at it. And we have to recognize that our credibility hasn’t been great. And we have to rebuild that credibility. This was an issue before Donald Trump decided to take off after us. But we need to be authentic and reliable and believable. And we need to rebuild trust with a lot of people. MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, when the Nixon administration came to Washington, they began to attack the credibility of the press. We became their favorite target. Spiro Agnew was the – was the main attacker. MR. ORESKES: Oh, yeah. MR. SCHIEFFER: There are reminders of that in the approach that the Trump team seems to be taking. MR. ORESKES: Yeah. I even wonder at times whether they haven’t looked back at some of those nattering nabob of negativism attacks. I think one of the biggest differences is that we’re in a much less stable position today than we were back in that era. MR. SCHIEFFER: You mean, we, the press? MR. ORESKES: We, the journalists. We, media. You know, we’re much more fractured than we were then. I think there’s a lot more confusion among journalists about what we really represent and who we are. And that makes us, I think, more vulnerable. And just in terms of the resources of a president, this president has a much greater ability to go around us to the public than Richard Nixon had, frankly. And that’s a big difference. And it creates a different strain on us. MR. SCHIEFFER: The whole business of fake news and alternative facts, as the new president’s aide Kellyanne Conway put it on television, is getting a lot of attention. I mean, what is a reporter to do? How are you telling your people to handle this? MR. ORESKES: To stay calm and not to be provoked into feeling that we’re – have to retaliate against any of these things. What we have to do is create real news that’s believable. You know, to think – you know, journalism, as you well-know, Bob – journalism’s a process. It’s a way of gathering information and thinking about the world. And we have to stay steady in that – in that way. I mean, fake news is a bad phrase because it covers so many different things that it’s almost not helpful. There’s the kind of fake news that someone makes up because they want to produce a political result. Well, that’s propaganda. There was a good word for that, and that word’s still good. That’s propaganda. And then there’s this other category, which is not entirely new, but which is more common, I think, and more accessible to more people, which is the fake news, the phony story that people can make up because they can make money by doing it. It’s a commercial thing. Well, that is pretty scary. But that’s where, I think, being a credible journalist and having a name that people recognize or a brand that they recognize, and having that name or that brand stand for something – I mean, to be honest, when I used to hear Bob Schieffer on CBS News, I knew that both Bob and CBS News stood for something, that they were trying to be honest and accurate and authentic about what they were covering.