Brian Stelter (3:28)

Well, I think the information void is the news right now. These companies have been sparring very publicly, by corporate America standards, very aggressively. Netflix's language against Paramount has been very harsh lately. For example, Paramount has been quite aggressive as well. So now it seems everybody's gone quiet and it's time for Netflix to match. Whether Netflix matches or not is now the big question. We will likely know the answer later this week. And I think we can say for sure this is not going to end anytime soon since the shareholder meeting is not scheduled until March 20th. So we know at the very least this is going to go on for another month.

Peter Kafka (4:09)

Right. There's a possibility that Warner says actually the Paramount offer still isn't good enough, where Netflix doesn't even need to come back over the top, but kind of assuming they'll say, all right, that's a real offer, you've now willing to pay us more. And by the way, if you're Warner

Brian Stelter (4:23)

Brothers in the interest of wbd, aren't they trying to figure out exactly how many billions the company is worth? And every billion is obviously worth a lot.

Peter Kafka (4:31)

Right? And so if you're Warner Brothers Discovery, you would want to encourage Paramount to bid more, and then you would want Netflix to bid more. And then the wild card here is one of the reasons I want to talk to you is Donald Trump, who in a normal presidential administration would say, oh, these two companies should figure out the best, the best path forward, or Warner Brothers should figure out the best path forward. And then if there's an antitrust issue, our Department of Justice will look at it. It seems quite clear that Donald Trump believes this deal runs through him in the White House. Sometimes he says one thing, sometimes he says the other. He said in the past, this deal is going to go through me. Then he said, I'm not going to be involved in the deal. This weekend, he was threatening Netflix with grave consequences if they didn't fire Susan Rice from their board. So it seems like he' back into it. You've been reporting on this a lot. You've been reporting on David Ellison's most recent visit to the White House to try to persuade Trump. How should we think about the president weighing in on this? Not weighing in on this. It's, again, not something he should, by any sort of standard process, be involved in at all. We should just say that's a private

Brian Stelter (5:36)

deal, rather than saying, I think we should take him at his word, because there have been so many words. I think we should take him at his first words. His first words about this were the true words when he said he's gonna be involved. That is the truth. That is the reality. Based on everything we know about Donald Trump, based on how he's acted with past deals, based on his opinions about the companies involved, we know that he is involved.

Peter Kafka (6:01)

And he loves to be involved. It's like a reality.

Brian Stelter (6:03)

Exactly, which is why his comments to NBC's Tom Yamas around the time of the super bowl were so strange. Trump, all of a sudden, when directly asked by Yamas, said he was not gonna be involved. He was gonna leave it at the doj. And that comment came just after a meeting that Trump had with David Ellison. You mentioned my reporting about that. So one has to wonder if Trump chose in that moment to claim he wouldn't be involved because he was trying to help one of the companies involved. We don't know. We don't know that. But look, all of his behavior indicates that M and A, in the words of a media executive to me recently, all M and A runs through the Oval Office right now. And, you know, it is wise to cover this accordingly. You know, with that said, I think you have to figure. We have to figure out ways to separate the regulatory discussion and the Trump of it all from the actual businesses at stake and what the outcome of this deal will be. Meaning, yes, the FCC and the DOJ have been weaponized by President Trump. True, the evidence is overwhelming. All of that is happening and has to be covered aggressively. But then at the same time, we can have a separate, hopefully separate conversation about what is the best outcome for wbd. What's going to happen to movie theaters across America and around the world, what's going to happen to CNN and other news assets. And those are separate, even though they're very hard to untangle. I think we have to try because you can look at this and be really disturbed by the idea of Trump picking winners and losers in big deal M and A. And also you have different opinions about what the outcome should be. Do you know what I'm saying? Do you see what I'm getting at?

Peter Kafka (7:43)

Yeah. In a normal time, there'd be a real spirited debate among people like us saying, oh, this is bad for movie theaters, or movie theaters are done anyway and we shouldn't be trying to prop them up. Or we should be concerned about who owns cnn. Or we should say, well, whoever wants to buy CNN should buy cnn. That's how the free market works. But we're not exactly in that.

Brian Stelter (8:03)

We live in a world instead where Trump thinks X and thus I think Y. You know, that's the attitude you get from some progressives or many progressives you also get from the MAGA media world. Trump says why? So I believe why, Even if I reject all evidence to the contrary. Like there's this kind of. One of the downsides of Trump being such an overwhelming force and being omnipresent and being involved in every storyline is that, you know, we risk viewing everything only through the Trump prism. And I'm just saying we have to view that prism, but we should also be able is as a business story separately about what the best outcome is.

Peter Kafka (8:38)

But let's keep the focus on Donald Trump as he would like right now, for the moment. So last fall, the conventional wisdom and the wisdom you heard from Paramount itself was Paramount will get this deal through because Larry Ellison is a big Trump supporter, has been one since the 2016 campaign, is doing a lot of deals with Trump. Obviously, Trump will, will want this company to go to an ally full stop. And then we found out that actually Netflix has been. Has been trying to butter up Trump as well, like you would do if you knew this was the world you were entering in. So Paramount has been. Has been lobbying Trump, but so has Netflix. Again, you've been doing a lot of good reporting on this. If you had to bet right now, where do you think Trump will land if he does land on one versus

Brian Stelter (9:28)

Well, I go back to what the President said in very candid comments. I think it was back in December when he said it's imperative that CNN be sold. I think that's the closest thing we have to a real sense of Trump's priority in this conversation or in this discussion. The President and his personal animus towards CNN is clearly a big factor. You know that based on his body language and his comments that come from time to time during photo ops and other events of his. When it comes to this deal, he said it's imperative that CNN be sold. And then he called the current owners a disgrace. Well, in the current plan, as it stands today, with Netflix buying Warner Brothers and hbo, CNN and the rest of the channel assets, they go off to the new company called Discovery Global, but essentially controlled by the same people. So this idea that he thinks it's imperative that CNN be sold, I think that tells us a lot about what's going on and about what he wants to have.

Peter Kafka (10:26)

The Paramount deal would have Paramount buying all of Warner Brothers Discoveries. So you connect the dots and it's. The implication is he'd rather have Paramount owning everything than Netflix owning part of it.

Brian Stelter (10:37)

I think it's also important to recall the Wall Street Journal's reporting from the wintertime describing how Larry Ellison had made commitments or suggestions, at least to White House officials about changes at CNN in the event of a Paramount win. So those kinds of suggestions or insinuations which have not been confirmed by the Ellisons, those I think are important to this and it's important not to lose sight of those.

Peter Kafka (11:04)

And when he was praising Ted Sarandos late last year after Netflix seemed to have won this deal, do you take that as sincere? I believe that was sincere as well. Right.

Brian Stelter (11:19)

I take that as sincere, but in a separate universe, as a totally different

Peter Kafka (11:24)

matter, this guy came and flattered me. I like him.

Brian Stelter (11:26)

Right. He likes Ted personally because Ted says he likes him. Yeah, it's one of those situations. And I was struck by something that Sarandos recently said about how Trump doesn't watch Netflix shows. He's never seen K Pop Demon Hunters. He only watches news. So it's not as if Trump has some automatically negative idea about Netflix. He doesn't have an opinion about the programming. Yes. Many MAGA media influencers are telling him that it's woke. There's this I find really unhinged claim that Netflix is trying to turn kids trans and trying to indoctrinate them with liberal programming. As someone with a 6 year old and an 8 year old who has Netflix on In the House all day, I don't see that happening. I don't think there's a report put

Peter Kafka (12:09)

out by an offshoot of the Heritage foundation that is sort of the basis for all these stats everyone cites. Yes, yes, it's weird that it has not gotten more attention because it's when you see Ted Cruz grilling Ted Sarandos, that's where all that theoretical data about Half the programming is pro trans, et cetera. That's where all that comes from.

Brian Stelter (12:28)

It's a great example of this right wing media machine pushing talking points that all the GOP senators and others have repeated. Trump has not actually climbed onto that bandwagon, though he must be aware of it. What he has recently done is jumped onto Laura Loomer's claim about Susan Rice. And that was interesting last weekend because here's Laura Loomer taking Susan Rice's comments, which were kind of standard issue Democratic argument, saying to the companies that have bent the knee to Trump, you better look out what happens in a Democratic administration because they're not going to forget what you did during the Trump years. Those comments amplified by Laura Loomer, immediately seized upon by President Trump for him to denounce Netflix in that way. It was the first really vivid example of Trump opposing Netflix, despite Ted Sarandos attempts to visit and talk to Trump in the White House.

Peter Kafka (13:18)

And as we'll discuss, Trump flip flops on a lot of this stuff too. He called for a Microsoft executive to get fired last year. She's still there.

Brian Stelter (13:25)

I never know how much attention we should devote to any of these, you know, episodes. Look, last September, after Jimmy Kimmelgate, Trump threatened to sue ABC and suggested he was gonna go after the network and never did.

Peter Kafka (13:40)

He is suing Rupert Murdoch and has Rupert Murdoch in the White House, which I wanna talk about in a minute. But this idea of this stuff, there's the stuff Trump says out loud that his administration does, that we can see in public, where we can see him having a direct effect on institutions, in this case media companies. When, you know, Paramount agrees to hire an ombudsman who's got no experience in media but has a conservative politics bona fides to see if there's misdeeds at CBS News. That's a direct connection to Donald Trump telling a company, you need to do this if you want to get approval. There's stuff we imagine is happening, like the Stephen Colbert cancellation where lots of people believe that Paramount canceled Colbert as a way to please Trump, although there's not a lot of evidence for that. And by the way, Colbert still still on the air, so it doesn't seem like he's being silenced. Then there's the third category I'm very curious to talk to you about where there's stuff I think, and you've got a pretty good sense of this that is happening at media companies or not happening at media companies because of fear of Trump. Trump doesn't need to say anything at this point, but people are sort of checking themselves. So that's the sense I get. You work at cnn. I don't think your reporting has changed. But do you see that either in your newsroom or do you hear about that in other newsrooms and other media companies? This is not something we're going to do in 2025 and 2026 because we don't want to poke the bear.

Brian Stelter (15:08)

You say bear, I say ghost. Like, how do you. How do you show. How do you prove the ghost? I'm not saying the ghost doesn't exist, but it's just so hard to be able to point to an example and say, here's an instance when a news outlet pulled a punch, decided not to publish that story, decided not to go big on that topic. You know, it's the. It's the unknowable. It's the unknowable about what's not being done. And so I always say all I can go on is based on my personal experience, that I have not changed, and I don't think my colleagues have changed what they're doing. But I understand the fear that there is self censorship going on or there is a softening of news coverage to avoid becoming Trump's next target. I get the fear. I just think it's almost impossible to prove it's actually happening.

Peter Kafka (16:00)

Yeah, I think about it. I can imagine scenarios where in edge cases where this is a pretty good story, but we're not 100% confident. Or is this the thing we want to go to the mat over? If it's a different kind of story, maybe we push because it's important for us as a newspaper or TV network to push through this. But if it's more marginal, maybe we drop that one and we wouldn't have done that four years ago. Does that sound plausible?

Brian Stelter (16:30)

I agree with you, it's plausible. But I think it's just very hard to document. And what we have not seen are examples of journalists in newsrooms coming forward whistleblowing, saying, this is what's happening. I'm being suppressed. If you want to look for what's not present in the last year that's not present, we haven't really seen episodes of that. Now, when we did see something a little bit like it at 60 Minutes, Sharon Alfonsi's memo decrying corporate censorship. There was widespread coverage of that episode. Embarrassment inside cbs, regret on the part of Barry Weiss. You might say the system worked, meaning more attention was paid to the topic as a result of perceived attempts to suppress it.

Peter Kafka (17:10)

And yeah, and that is one of the examples in that second category I was talking about where a lot of people say, oh, 60 Minutes pulled this story on El Salvador and Gulags. That's because of Barry Weiss trying to suck up to Donald Trump. We don't actually know that's the case. And there's an entirely plausible other explanation says actually, Barry Weiss just kind of screwed up and didn't really think this through. And, and not that there aren't a lot of politics involved in Bari Weiss being appointed to run CBS News, but this is not necessarily a case of CBS pulling a punch because of that relationship.

Brian Stelter (17:44)

And I increasingly am of the view that what you just described is the, is the accurate assessment. I think Barry Weiss has arrived at CBS News trying to do too many people's jobs. At the same time, she is trying to be her title editor in chief overseeing content, but also trying to totally reorient the business, trying to overhaul the entire staffing structure, trying to create lots of new products, trying to figure out revenue sources. Right. Hosting a town hall, trying to figure out a strategy that's going to keep the place sustainable in 10 or 15 years. All of that is important, and it can't all be done by one person. And I think some of her early missteps were a result of trying to do everyone's job, so to speak, rather than in the case, 60 minutes. Trust the team that's been doing it for a long time.

Peter Kafka (18:36)

Yeah, that's a generous way. To put it another way, maybe she isn't prepared to take on a management role this big. Doesn't mean she can't learn it one day. But she's not there yet.

Brian Stelter (18:47)

But that's the concern I hear inside CBS and I also hear outside CBS when it comes to questions about Paramount trying to take over cnn, whether that would increase her portfolio someday in the future. There's no indication right now that that would happen. But it does create this question about whether she's able to manage this large organization. At CBS News, last week's news about Anderson Cooper deciding not to renew at 60 minutes is also an interesting data point. To that end, Bari Weiss wanted to keep Anderson Cooper. And for all the folks you know, the Daily Beast has this headline now for everything about CBS News, the MAGA coded CBS News. The MAGA coded Barry Weiss. There are some interesting data points that contradict the phrase MAGA coded. Right? For every episode that has been actually embarrassing. For example, on January 6th, the CBSME news, both sides January 6th in a way that was shameful. But for every episode like that, there's also an example like Barry Weiss trying to renew Anderson Cooper's contract. That's not exactly an attempt to turn 60 Minutes into Breitbart. It's an attempt to keep the news quality at 60 minutes.

Peter Kafka (19:50)

It goes bigger than CBS News, right, that you see that same dichotomy with Paramount canceling Colbert but keeping south park, which treats Trump viciously, and the Daily

Brian Stelter (19:59)

show with Jon Stewart renewing Jon Stewart's contract. It's confusing and I feel for people who are confused by it. I'm confused by it sometimes, too. David Ellison was a Biden donor. He donated a million dollars to Joe Biden. Some folks at Memory hold that for convenient reasons. But it's a really interesting data point because it suggests to me at least, the David Ellison's trying to be very savvy in the political maneuvers he's making.

Peter Kafka (20:25)

We'll be right back with Brian Stelter. But first, a word from a sponsor.

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Brian Stelter (21:16)

beyond the headlines at the trend lines, what is really going to matter? Even if you're not worried about AI per se, you certainly ought to be concerned. Do we have the cultural, you know, strength and resilience to get it right? Now imagine we had to write a new constitution today, put aside AI. Like, how good a job do you think we would do? I'm John Finer. And I'm Jake Sullivan and we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week we're joined by economist and author Tyler Cowen. We discuss China, the AI race and aliens. The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts. In the wake of the release of millions of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, the rich and famous are

Peter Kafka (22:03)

finally feeling some pain.

Brian Stelter (22:04)

But even with corporate resignations here and with former Prince Andrew being arrested in

Peter Kafka (22:09)

the uk, the question remains, how did Jeffrey Epstein remain a thriving member of

Brian Stelter (22:14)

the elite for decades when everyone seemed

Peter Kafka (22:17)

to know what he was up to?

Podcast Advertiser/Host (22:19)

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Brian Stelter (22:27)

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Peter Kafka (22:31)

That's this week on Today, explained every

Brian Stelter (22:34)

weekday and now on Saturdays.

Peter Kafka (22:44)

And we're back. Speaking of Paramount, I want to talk to you about last week in the Colbert show and not putting the James Talarico interview on. And that story is muddled as well because in some versions of it is this Brendan Carr from the fcc, that is the Trump administration told them not to do that. That doesn't seem to be the case. What does seem to be the case is Brendan Carr, Trump's appointee to run the fcc, has been basically telling late night talk shows and daytime talk shows essentially that they can't have political candidates on their shows. Am I interpreting that correctly?

Brian Stelter (23:21)

I think that's correct. And I think that's the intention. I think there's a broader intention also to signal, hey, we are the cops on the beat and we are watching and we are paying close attention. And if you don't use your right turn signal, we're going to pull you over and we're going to give you the most expensive ticket we can. Because the reality is the FCC cops have very little real enforcement power, but they do have visibility, right? To me, Brendan Carr, his biggest power is his microphone. When he has a press conference and he gives all of his talking points, that's where his power derives from. There's not much he can actually do to these stations for people who are wondering about licensing. These station licenses only come up for renewal every eight years. These key licenses will not come up for renewal until the end of Trump's second term. And if the FCC actually did try to revoke a license, it would go through a lengthy court battle. It would be a legal fight. The only recent time the FCC has revoked a license was because the owner was found guilty of bribery at some tiny little station no one's heard of. So that's not realistic. What Carr can do, though, is use his bully pulpit. And he's done that really well. And I could tell because my phone looks, when he called me last week for the first time in months, he saw an opportunity with this story to send a message. And he did.

Peter Kafka (24:40)

I was wondering if he was gonna sort of quiet down after Kimmel because he did. Yeah, it seemed like he did. And it seemed like he kind of lost that one. And we can talk about nexstar and Tegna in a second as well. Cause that's involved. But any idea why he's popping off again? And I guess another question for you is what happened to Brendan Carr? He was prior to this administration a pretty normal conservative when it came to the FCC. He was the author of the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. And you can go through that still today. It's a standard sort of Republican. We should, you know, we should have more consolidation, we should allow more ownership, we should have less regulation essentially. There's nothing about monitoring jimm Kimmel's comments or anything like that. What happened to him?

Brian Stelter (25:36)

To quote the Free Press, Bari Weiss is the Free Press. Brendan Carr once defended free speech. Now he is Trump's chief censor. By the way, when is CBS News gonna start to cover the news that way? That just sidebar. I'm really interested in the answer to that question. The Free Press states it very plainly, very accurately. I wonder if CBS News is gonna move more in that direction. But I digress. I think the answer is that Carr has a once in a lifetime chance to wield this government power to advance political and cultural goals. And he knows he's doing that for an audience of one. You could see him on Laura Ingraham's show last week speaking directly to the President very vividly. All of this ultimately is about advancing, I guess cultural power is the right phrase. It's about power, but specifically when it comes to the FCC comes from this deeply held conservative view that these progressive institutions in Hollywood and New York are pumping up programming that is, that is against their worldview. Right. That is hurting America. Just to take it to a Fox type extreme, if you have these tools at your disposal and you're Brendan Carr, of course you're gonna try to pressure ABC and NBC and cbs.

Peter Kafka (26:48)

I mean, I guess the difference is his predecessor under Trump, 1o, Ajit Pai, didn't do any of that. And he played it down the middle, more or less. He was pro deregulation, he was against broadband net neutrality stuff. But again, pretty standard Republican stuff.

Brian Stelter (27:05)

Yes, but politics today feels much more existential. You think about the narratives that you see in MAGA media about this being the final chance, the last opportunity. Look what Democrats are gonna do when they come back in office or if they come back in office. All of the rhetoric is so much more extreme than it was even in Trump 1.0. I think cars, FCC is a reflection of that new political reality. And, you know, so he's able to play it both ways. Right. It's kind of a clever game. He can say, I didn't do anything. I just reminded everybody that we have these rules on the books. And it just so happens these rules are going to punish liberal talk shows.

Peter Kafka (27:43)

Yeah, I'm not involved. You guys got it all wrong. Stuff no longer seems clever to me.

Brian Stelter (27:49)

He kept saying, well, sure, he kept saying the word hoax. Hoax. It was very Trumpy. Right. This was just.

Peter Kafka (27:52)

He also said that after Kimmel. I didn't, I didn't say we should do anything about Kimmel. And of course there's tape with him saying we should do something about Kimberly.

Brian Stelter (27:59)

But that's the game people need to see. Right? That's the game people need to see for what it is. And they're gonna keep playing it. What did he do? A few days after this Colbert controversy, he encouraged local stations to air pro America content for the America250 anniversary. He has no legal ability to require anybody to do anything. And he acknowledged that. He just said, hey, here's what you should do. And I'm sure some of the more Trump friendly station owners will do it.

Peter Kafka (28:26)

So related to this is this nexstar Tegna merger which was part of the Kimmel controversy. This is a merger between two giant owners of broadcast TV stations is something Donald Trump said he was against last fall. Now he is for it. I'm curious about why you think that he has changed his mind. But more broadly, why is a merger of two broadcast TV stations, why should we care about that in 2026? I can't tell you the last time I watched broadcast TV full stop.

Brian Stelter (28:57)

Sure. During the recent blizzard, though, local stations played an invaluable role, helping to inform the community and frankly, to show people why you shouldn't go outside to show people what it's like out in the elements. You know, I do think severe weather is a great demonstration of why local TV and radio matter a lot and why they're powerful. And, you know, look, let me ate Brendan Carr's argument about this. His argument for why he should be more aggressive in forcing the equal time rule boils down to this. He says, yes, we live in a world of infinite options, YouTube and streaming and all the rest. In that world of infinite options, broadcast is even more special because it's the only thing that uses the public airwaves. It's the only medium that uses the public airwaves. Thus we should protect it and we should ensure that it's meeting its obligations. So that is his argument. If you apply that to Tegna and nexstar, you would say it should concern everyone when these stations are being gobbled up, when consolidation is happening at the local station level, because only a couple of people will ultimately be in charge of what is being seen at all these local stations. And I know that there are journalists in these local stations who are worried about a more cookie cutter approach about less local coverage and more national, generic repeat type stuff.

Peter Kafka (30:11)

What we've seen in local media in lots of mediums, local radio is most likely programmed by someone who doesn't live in the city. You're listening to it. Your newspaper, if you have a newspaper, is likely owned by a national chain. And a lot of the content you get is not coming from local reporters.

Brian Stelter (30:27)

And there are reasons to believe that'll continue and be exacerbated by the techno nextstar deal. The deal requires the FCC to change the rules in order to allow it to go through. It does seem, going back to this theme of M and A running through the Oval Office, that Trump flip flopped or at least really changed his view on this based on lobbying, especially by nexstar, by the CEO of nexstar who said, we're the anti fake news company. Gosh, somebody's gonna write a great chapter of a book someday about all of the ways that different media companies tried to speak Trump's language, sometimes literally. And none of us know how that's gonna age in 10 years, but I can't wait to find out.

Peter Kafka (31:05)

But prior to him coming out and saying this is a good deal, he's saying this was a bad deal and somehow if this deal goes through, it's a boon to leftists. Who was pitching Trump on that line?

Brian Stelter (31:17)

Well, aren't you referring to Newsmax CEO Chris Reddy? I think that's one of the examples of a Trump friend, a Mar A lago friend, urging him not to allow this deal to go forward. There's a fear from Newsmax and One America News that nexstar is a big rival, or at least a rival because of nexstar's cable channel called News Nation. And it is curious how News Nation has made some moves to appeal to the right, even though the channel was founded with the idea of being nonpartisan. No nonsense from the middle, straightforward news, just the facts, yada yada, yada, for the record that is not rated well, the audience is not there for what News Nation is doing. They've added these conservative talk shows, for example, Katie Pavlich's show is the best example, which only you can't help but wonder if the channel, if the owner is trying to appeal to Trump that way.

Peter Kafka (32:09)

I mentioned Rupert Murdoch earlier. He is someone you've covered a lot over your years. I've had you on the show to talk about Murdoch and Murdoch criminology a lot. Explain this to me. Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. And the Wall Street Journal for publishing stories about the Epstein files and Trump's involvement in that last summer. He continues to watch Fox News. We know that based on his tweets and true social posts. And it seems like Murdoch still has access to Trump. What's the status of their relationship? I always got the sense that Murdoch really, and I think you've seen this now in text, Murdoch really doesn't respect Trump, right? Doesn't think much of him. But he's also the president United States, and he has to do business with him. Where. How are these guys getting along? How are they in the same room while Trump is suing him?

Brian Stelter (33:03)

I look back at that Wall Street Journal lawsuit, which was unprecedented at the time. Just, you know, let's, let's not lose sight of how crazy some of this is. A sitting president suing a news outlet's never happened before, as far as I can tell, in American history, there might have been some involvement with, there was some Thomas Jefferson case.

Peter Kafka (33:20)

Trump has sued CNN, the Wall street and the Times, etc. But that's when he's been out of office.

Brian Stelter (33:24)

Out of office, exactly. And CNN did beat that suit and then was found once again on appeal to have prevailed in that suit against cnn. Suing the Wall Street Journal as a sitting president was unprecedented. But I think now, looking back, it's kind of obvious what happened. Trump wanted to be able to publicly deny that the birthday letter was legitimate. The way to publicly deny it was to sue. And the fact that he can then hang out with Rupert Murdoch afterward and have him over to the White House for dinner and be hunky dory in that way, it just proves how baseless the lawsuit is. It proves that the lawsuit was a PR stunt. And I find myself as a reporter wanting to make sure that I keep that really front of center so that if it happens again, I can be really clear about what's happening.

Peter Kafka (34:11)

Pretty extraordinary to say a sitting president suing a major news organization is A

Brian Stelter (34:16)

PR stunt is a PR stunt, but there's no evidence that it's anything other than that. Right. All the indications are it was just a stunt, just a way to distract, just a way to make people. It was a way to sow doubt in people's minds. Right. Without any other real reason.

Peter Kafka (34:32)

And I mean, the Rupert Murdoch can handle a lawsuit from the president of the United States. But it's important to keep in mind some of these other suits, whether from the the sitting president or Trump they filed when he wasn't president, but now he's president. You have to defend those. The one I keep coming back to, he's still suing Gannett. And the pollster for the Iowa Des Moines Register who said projected a Trump loss in the 2024 election. Those that lawsuit is still going on. It goes back and forth between different courts. That's a real burden. Gannett is a big company, but not a huge one. The pollster whose name escapes me right now, J.N.

Brian Stelter (35:11)

selzer. Yeah. And she' being represented by fire fending it.

Peter Kafka (35:14)

I think a nonprofit is helping her. But it's a real obligation if you have to deal with one of those suits. I mean, it definitely has a potential chilling effect.

Brian Stelter (35:22)

And that's why we wonder about ghosts, you know, the ones that we can't see. But are people more hesitant as a result of those lawsuits? It's one of the unknowables of this era. But I would just say and underscore what we know is that when people in this case, when media outlets push

Peter Kafka (35:39)

back, they usually prevail, assuming they can push back.

Brian Stelter (35:44)

Right.

Peter Kafka (35:45)

We'll be right back with Brian Stelter. But first, a word from a sponsor. Let's talk about cnn. I've talked to you for years as a CNN employee. You were asked to leave the company in 2022. Lots of.

Brian Stelter (36:07)

That's a neat kind way to put it.

Peter Kafka (36:09)

You know, it's never clear whether you were fired or left. I'd say encouraged to leave is a neutral statement.

Brian Stelter (36:15)

I think I was fired.

Peter Kafka (36:17)

Okay, you were fired in 2022. You came back two years ago because

Brian Stelter (36:20)

I was hosting a Sunday morning show and it was canceled. It was pretty clear what was happening. Worked out well for everyone involved.

Peter Kafka (36:27)

I'd say you were gone for two years during that period. That's when we started to see lots of your former colleagues at CNN and just big media companies in general leave their broadcast job, leave their TV job, whether they wanted to or not, and set up shop as a substacker or a YouTuber or TikToker or all of the above. When you were and you didn't take a job during those two years you were out, did you consider going indie? Being Brian stelter.com?

Brian Stelter (36:56)

i did consider it and I had what I thought was a half decent business idea, a media company idea. I might have even registered the domain name. I might have even mocked up the website. I might have even demoed it to a few people. No investors or anything. It was not that serious.

Peter Kafka (37:13)

What's the domain name?

Brian Stelter (37:14)

I can't tell. Because you got to have a side hustle or not a side hustle. You got to have a backup plan. But there's a couple reasons why I didn't move forward. One was that I had just been pushed off the treadmill after being on it for 20 years straight. You know, my kids were little and are little. I was having a truly wonderful time taking care of them and freelancing. I was able to actually start to make a living as a freelancer. And it was really wonderful for me as a journalist who had only ever been in institutions at the New York Times and cnn, to know what it's like to have an editor work with you and shape a story and make it better in a freelance life or to have someone be behind on a payment. That kind of experience as a freelancer was really valuable. And I take it, I take it for what it is now. And I try to remember what that environment is like now that I'm back at a big institution. So number one, I was truly, really enjoying that and enjoying the break from all of it, from the kind of the daily treadmill. And I guess I wasn't so confident in my idea. I didn't have. And then Oliver Darcy went off and launched Status. And I have so much admiration for it because he had the courage of his convictions. He had more confidence in his plan than I had in mind, let's put it that way. And I so deeply appreciate that. But the reason that CNN called me back, Oliver headed out to launch his startup. CNN called me back to be chief media analyst. It was a win win because I really like being part of an institution. It's in my bones. I love this big CNN machine. I'm the kind of guy who, when the blizzard happened over the weekend, I pointed a camera outside, wanted to provide live coverage. And that's just for a second because

Peter Kafka (39:00)

you can't take this out. I think a lot of people say, well, no, the people who, the people, these big media companies, they're afraid. They're afraid that if they have to stand on their own work without the backing of the big company that they're actually not going to matter. David Carr, he would talk about this years before there was the idea of a substack that if he left the New York Times, he might just be David Carr. I think he would have been fine.

Brian Stelter (39:23)

Yes.

Peter Kafka (39:24)

But what is it? And you are a hard working person, you generate a ton of content. So it's not that you don't have a motor. What do you think? Is it about having a big institution behind you, a big institution employee that resonates for you?

Brian Stelter (39:42)

For me, it's mostly about feeling like you're part of something bigger. You're a small, hopefully somewhat important, but a small part of a much bigger operation that's operating on a much bigger stage. And I'll give an example from just an hour ago. It's unfortunately a really heartbreaking example. It's, you know, the latest about Nancy Guthrie. Savannah released, you know, I think her sixth video on Instagram. CNN immediately went into rolling live coverage showing the video. Yes. But also providing a lot of analysis and context. And you know, before I was about to tape with you, I ran downstairs, turned on my camera, went live on cnn. I was a small part of that big coverage plan. Right. And that is a feeling that I don't think I can replicate on substack. Maybe someday, maybe in some other way. But in those moments of breaking news, and there are a lot of moments that are actually truly historical that CNN's a part of, that is something that's still really special and still really valuable, which by the way, not to bring it back to Paramount and all the talks. It is why you see in the financials released by WBD that CNN is a very strong, healthy business. Yes, the digital subscription plans are really important. We've got to grow in streaming. But it's a healthy business because there are so many people who do want to know what is going on in the world, good or bad, at any given time, despite all the noise and all the drama, like it is still at its core a really important, vital enterprise.

Peter Kafka (41:10)

It is a big giant news operation, one of the biggest in the world.

Brian Stelter (41:16)

And I get to be inside at a time when, during Trump 2.0, there was, there are all these threats against the media and all these attacks against the media and covering that, you know, getting on the air, for example, when Don Lemon was arrested. But that was an important morning to cover that story thoroughly, to take it seriously, even though the charges will probably get thrown out. He'll probably prevail in court. If it gets to a trial, it's still an important marker. And we covered it aggressively. And that also includes covering our own house. I will break a little news with you if you want, about cnn.

Peter Kafka (41:44)

Good. Cause I have a CNN question.

Brian Stelter (41:45)

Did you see the story about Barry Diller being interested in trying to buy cnn? This was.

Peter Kafka (41:50)

I did see that member of the

Brian Stelter (41:51)

Wall Street Journal reported on that. And so I wrote a story about that night. You know, I am very blessed, though this is the way it should be, but I'm blessed that I work in an institution where you can cover that news straight even though it's happening at your own house. So I emailed Barry Dillo for comment, of course, cnn calling for comment about cnn. He didn't respond. But I emailed him again over the weekend because he went to breakfast with David Zaslav. Did you hear about this breakfast?

Peter Kafka (42:17)

Nope.

Brian Stelter (42:17)

So Zaslav posted about it on Instagram. He posted a picture of Diller and Zaslav and a couple other friends. I think they might have been a Barney Greengrass. I'm not sure. Anyway, I asked Diller if he wanted to comment now. And I just got the comment while we're on the podcast here. So this is a break on this for your show. I said I'm re upping this email in light of your breakfast meeting with Zaslav. Diller says breakfast was overeating, period. So he says he ate too much and maybe no CNN talk. So that's on the record. I believe that is the right from the horse. I believe that is the first on the record comment from Barry Diller about the speculation of his interest in cnn even though it.

Peter Kafka (42:53)

Brian, you're a diligent reporter and also an excellent producer because you segued me back to where I wanted to end up, which is the vibe at cnn. You are back as an employee there. They are gonna be owned by somebody else very likely in the next year. Either the Ellisons are going to own them or they're going to be spun out into this global network, sort of the thing that, that, that Warner Brothers Discovery doesn't want. And from that point, they might get bought by someone. Another buyer could come and get them. Who knows. So you're working at a place where the only thing that's really certain is you're probably going to have a new owner in the next year. So how do you, how do you work through that? How are your fellow employees handling that uncertainty

Brian Stelter (43:37)

I'm not trying to avoid it, but I don't want to speak for my fellow employees. I don't talk to enough people to claim to have the pulse on the entire employee base. I think, in general, look, because I was there during Trump 1.0, because I covered the AT and T transaction, I always go back to what happened when the Trump DOJ sued to block the AT and T Time Warner deal. What we now know that we didn't fully know at the time was that there was quite a bit of political interference and White House involvement. We know that there were efforts by President Trump to affect the deal, influence the deal. There was talk of Rupert Murdoch trying to swoop in and buy cnn. There was talk of trying to force out then CNN President Jeff Zucker. We know that there was quite a bit of backstage maneuvering. We also know, and this has been reported by the New York Times and other outlets, that Zucker effectively was a heat shield ensuring CNN's independence. We know that Time Warner boss Jeff Bukus did the same. We know that the AT&T leadership in Dallas at times made sure to protect CNN's independence. And that's all journalists want at these places. They just want to be, I don't want to say left alone, right? But they want to have their independence upheld and insured. And other than that, I think a lot of people are able to then tune out some of the daily corporate drama or figure out what new person is the memo coming from, or what new way do you pay for lunch in the cafeteria. All of that is relevant, but for the most part, people just want to know they can keep doing their jobs free of that kind of interference. I think it's number one important to recognize there have been those attempts, there have been those efforts to interfere in the past. Maybe there will be again in the future. And what you need is a heat shield. I've been really impressed in the Mark Thompson era of CNN that the ship is really steady. Staffers seem really, can I use the word happy, or does it seem like, are journalists ever happy, Peter?

Peter Kafka (45:43)

Yes, sometimes they are.

Brian Stelter (45:44)

I mean, I'm a pretty happy guy, as you know. But to the extent that anybody can ever be happy, I think it is a very steady, happy place. And I think that's what people won about. That's what people worry about, right? Will it, will it remain steady? Will the management remain, you know, at times when there is a need for a heat shield, will there be that heat shield?

Peter Kafka (46:08)

And there has been, I asked Mark Thompson, a version of that question last fall and said, well, would you know, there's a possibility you guys might be owned by the Ellisons. And in theory that would mean you'd be working for Barry Weiss. What do you think about that? And he went, I thought, out of his way to say Bari Weiss is really a real talent. And there's a caricature of her out there. It's not really true. She's very impressive. Went on for a little bit. What'd you make of that?

Brian Stelter (46:30)

You know, at the risk of sounding like I agree with the boss, I agree with the boss. I basically had the same. And I think you and I texted about this privately and you knew that was true at the time. I remain really curious what the Bari Weiss battle plan is, because if you go and read her all hands meeting transcript, that 10 page transcript is a tour de force. I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything. Not that it matters what I think, but I think many people all throughout the TV industry and the media industry would read that transcript and say, yes, my organization needs to change. Yes, my organization needs to move in this direction as well. So again, to go back to what I said in the beginning, to the extent that we can untangle the political questions or the political machinations from what's going on at Paramount or CBS News, I'm really interested to see if she can execute on that battle plan and if she can adjust from some of these early missteps, which have been sizable. Why launch the CBS ev? Why relaunch the CBS EV News only two or three months into the job?

Peter Kafka (47:42)

Maybe one day she'll come talk to us about all this stuff.

Brian Stelter (47:45)

I have asked for an interview just like you have.

Peter Kafka (47:47)

Yes, yes, we have.

Brian Stelter (47:49)

And in the meantime, I have suggested to someone close to her, I said, at least go on her own podcast and talk about it. If she's not going to come on channels, which she should then go back on.

Peter Kafka (48:00)

Honestly, I feel like there's a little bit of us against the world feeling up there. But I'll save the psychologist apologizing for the conversation if we ever have it. Brian Stelter, thank you. You're awesome. Thank you for coming on the show. You guys all know where to see and read. Brian, thank you. Thanks again to Brian Stelter. Thanks to Charlotte Silber, who produces and edits this show. Thanks to our advertisers who bring it to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening. See you soon.

Brian Stelter (48:37)

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