← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
Fact-Checking the Fact Checker: Debating Media Bias About Trump and Biden with Glenn Kessler
01:11:55
Today, Mark Halperin sits down for an unmissable conversation with Glenn Kessler, former Editor and Chief Writer of The Washington Post’s influential “The Fact Checker.” They revisit some of Kessler’s most famous – and infamous – Pinocchio ratings, unpack his recent admission about the paper’s addiction to its liberal readers, and debate the paper’s failure to engage a broader audience. The discussion dives into the media’s mishandling of coverage of Joe Biden’s decline and how it fueled the ongoing media reckoning. Plus, Kessler offers a stunning justification for his controversial Biden “deepfake” report and completely denies that the Post’s newsroom is biased against Donald Trump. But first, Mark’s reported monologue examining the case of a high-profile media veteran finally admitting what he wouldn’t say while inside his legacy newsroom: that liberal media bias and ignorance of Trump’s America are real. Birch Gold: Text NEXT to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Ameri...
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- [00:03]
Mark Halperin
Welcome in. This is NextUp. Greetings to all you Nexters supporters of the program. Very grateful to you for being here. Whether you're watching on YouTube or listening as a podcast. I am your host, Mark Halperin, editor in chief of the live interactive video platform 2way, and your guide to everything that Nexters need to know about what's next up in every realm. We talk about here, talk a lot about politics. I don't really like to talk a lot about the media. I have to tell you, I don't want to do a show about the media. I. I'm not as interested in it as I am in some other stuff. And I'll admit, you know, talking about my colleagues in the media, sometimes it creates more heartburn than it's worth. But it's happened before. It's happening again today. My reported monologue will be about the media because there's another great window into this massive problem that I talk about all the time. The media. What I call the dominant media. Some people don't like that phrase, is, is liberally biased. And we've seen it over the years and we've seen over the last 10 years the rise of Donald Trump. The great irony that the dominant media's bias against the Republicans generally, and Donald Trump in particular, has helped Donald Trump as much as anything else politically. So today we're going to talk about the latest developments in this extraordinary story where smart, educated people commit malpractice in their jobs every day of a kind. If a doctor did it, they'd be disbarred or lose their medical license. If a lawyer did it, they'd be disbarred. If a baseball player did it, they'd be sent down to single a ball. Just a level of professional dereliction of duty that I can't comprehend. We've got some great examples and we'll talk about that and how it fits in the current context later on. Glenn Kessler, he's the former editor and chief writer of a feature at the Washington Post called the Fact Checker. He just left the Post. And you probably know the Fact checker because Glenn and his colleagues bestowed their famous Pinocchios. Four Pinocchios meant you were just liar, liar, pants on fire. And Glenn wrote one of the substacks that I'm going to be talking about in my monologue in just a minute because he is talking about the history that led to his departure from the Post. He took a buyout, but he's also talked about the Washington Post business model and that will be a key part here of my reported monologue. So if you're someone who pays attention to the media, particularly as it relates to political coverage, and you have eyes and ears and a brain, you know quite clearly that there's liberal bias in the media and particularly strong bias against Donald Trump. Now, there was bias against Donald, Ronald Reagan against George Bush, but the bias against Trump is pretty, pretty incredible. And it's one of the most notable things that's happened. Trump derangement syndrome has hit the American dominant media harder than, I think, almost any other institution. And after the President won in 2016, there was about 20 minutes of soul searching saying, how did we miss this? Are we out of touch with America? And after a very brief period, the press has gone by for almost uninterrupted, for the last nine years in great hostility towards Donald Trump. Now, I'll say again, as I always do when I talk about liberal media bias, all presidents should be scrutinized and covered very strenuously by a media who keeps the public interest front and center. And they should be fair, but they should be very tough. What they shouldn't be is biased. And what I've said to liberals in newsrooms in which I've worked and liberals around the country who complain, oh, Barack Obama got such coverage, or, oh, Donald Trump's such a liar and such a horrible person, he deserves all the tough coverage. What I say is, and I've said this since the beginning of my career, if you don't believe that the media is liberally biased, believe this. This is an incontrovertible fact. Now, so is the first part. But I say to them, if you don't believe that the media is liberally biased, believe this. Half the country believes that it is, and they believe that it's insidious, and they believe that it plays a massive role in the outcome of our elections. So you don't want to believe that it's biased. Believe that. Half the country does. It's kind of incredible to think your job is to cover American politics and government and elections and that you cover it with an absolute bias in favor of one side. Now, there are counterexamples. They don't confuse me, but they're often used in some cases to say, well, there's not a bias. I believe it's hard to do this quantitatively, but I believe qualitatively that we've seen presidential elections in which the Republican got more favorable coverage. I think Donald Trump got more favorable coverage in 2016 than Hillary Clinton. I Think George Bush got most more favorable coverage than both Al Gore and John Kerry when he ran for president. But those are exceptions, which I can explain. I won't today, but I can explain them. The norm is to cover Republicans much harder. And that's not just at the presidential level. It's at all levels. Okay? And even now, you hear prominent members of the media say, there is no liberal bias. Incredible to me. I mean, incredible. And what's so distinctive about what I'm gonna talk about today is we have two guys who worked at dominant media organizations. In the first tier, Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post joined just before 2000. So there for about 27 years. Terry Moran, my former ABC News colleague at ABC News for the same duration of time. And these guys have both left their news organizations. Glenn Kessler took the buyout. We'll talk to him about that. Where the paper's slimming down, so offering a buyout to people who've been at the paper for a while to save money. And Terry Moran famously was forced out of ABC News. His contract was up but not renewed because he wrote some really negative things about Stephen Miller and the President on social media. Okay, Those two guys have broken the code a little bit. You know the expression someone says the quiet part out loud. These guys have said the silent part out loud. And what they've said in both cases is not remarkable in the sense that it is true, but it is remarkable in the sense you don't normally hear people who've worked in the dominant media, the liberal media, you don't normally hear them admitted. So I want to look at a couple things that they said in their substacks and talk about it, because I was gobsmacked by both. I couldn't believe that they were writing the truth. And this is a little complicated, but they don't seem embarrassed about the truth. And again, I'm going to ask Glenn Kessler about it. We asked Terry Moran to be on as well. He wasn't available. They don't seem to be embarrassed. They state it, but they don't say, well, this is, of course, a disaster. This is, of course, a nightmare. This is, of course, inappropriate for this to be the state of American media. They simply state it. And the other thing is, I've tweeted about these two substacks, and it's caused a little bit of an uproar.
- [06:56]
Glenn Kessler
But.
- [06:56]
Mark Halperin
But in a just and sensible world, these two guys and what they've said would be the topic of extraordinary debate in our political media culture. People would be talking about it now again on, On X. People are a bit. But what they've said is extraordinary. They've admitted something but then said explicitly or at least implicitly, this isn't a problem. Let me tell you. Let me show you what I mean. So here's Glenn Kessler again, just started a substack and he wrote the substack. It's primarily about his leaving the paper. And he said before he left the Washington Post, before he took the buyout, he wanted the paper to reinstall the position of ombudsman. It's a position they had but was eliminated for cost purposes. Ombudsman, I think, is a good thing. It's a person who works for the paper but has absolute independence to whatever they want. And they primarily write, maybe I'd say exclusively write about the journalism done by that organization to say when they get complaints from readers or sources or subjects of stories, have they done it fairly? Now, if you're in that job, like in any job in journalism, you shouldn't be biased. And I read the ombudsman for Washington Post used to have one, the New York Times, very few papers have them anymore. Sometimes they were not biased. So the pieces are largely about his interactions with the editor of the paper, arguing that there shouldn't be an ombudsman and then arguing that as he takes the buyout, the Post should keep the fact checker on. Now, the fact checker, conservatives would tell you, and this is what I observed, he would fact check Republicans a lot more than Democrats. And we would fact check Democrats less hard when he fact checked them than Republicans, not without exception. And we'll talk to him about that. But Republicans would tell you, just like the CNN fact checker, occasionally we'll fact check a Democrat just to keep their hand in and to suggest a level of bias. But this is largely about fact checking Republicans. And famously, for instance, he fact checked the question of whether the video showing Joe Biden's obvious cognitive mental decline, whether those were so called deep fakes or cheap fakes. And he basically said that they were and that Republicans were, that news organizations were taking Republican video and using it to create a misleading impression. Again, I could give you other examples, but I think that one tells you what you need to know about how conservatives viewed him. And as I said, he famously gave out Pinocchios. So if you lied a little bit, you got one Pinocchio, you lied a lot, you got two, three for, you know, a pretty big lie. And then four was kind of the ultimate end. This person's lying. And, and I have to say, I give him credit, he was pretty rigorous about, about trying to make it meaningful, but in my experience, again, slanted. All right, in that sub stack that he wrote, he also wrote about the Post and the question of bias. And he said when he met with the editor, the editor said to him, he alleges, what could we do at the paper to appeal to Fox News viewers? You know, when Michael Jordan was playing basketball and he was a Democrat, but he wouldn't endorse Democrats. And people asked him, why, if you're a Democrat, why wouldn't you vote endorse Democrats running for office? He would say, because Republicans buy sneakers too. And that was the attitude that my mentor at ABC News, Peter Jennings had, which is, we shouldn't just be trying to win liberal viewers, we should be trying to win the whole country. Why would you take basically half the market and say, we're not interested in your business? So here's what Glenn Kessler said in thinking about the business. Now, I will say this. I'm a journalist who thinks about business. I've always, I always have. I've always thought of what's our business model, how are we going to make money? And you've seen the failure even of people in management side of these news organizations over the years to think about the realities of a changing marketplace has led to the precarious position a lot of these organizations find themselves in. But journalists themselves almost never think about business. But Glenn Kessler, in the context of this substack, writes about the Post business model. Here's what he says. B1 conservatives were an untapped market for growth, especially for a news organization where traffic was falling. And I'll say parenthetically, the Post is in a world of hurt because of declining revenue and audience. He continues, but there's a conundrum. If most of your readers are liberal, how do you attract conservatives without losing your existing base? So he has various ways, he says in the column, to know that his audience, the Post readership, is liberal. So again he raises the question, if you, if the current readership is liberal, how are you supposed to get conservatives? He, he goes on, this is B2, the Washington Post readers who cared about politics in the federal government. Most of them are liberal and probably never watch Fox News. Finally, Glenn Kessler, B3 here. While it would be great to get a more balanced mix of liberal and conservative readers, I didn't understand how one could attract conservative readers who have their choice of many right wing news sites besides Fox without alienating existing readers. So again, he's absolutely right. The Post readership is liberal. And the Post business model is dependent on keeping those liberal readers. And if the Washington Post wants to be a text version of msnbc, they can be. That'd be the choice of the ownerships. Although the current owner, Jeff Bezos doesn't. Bezos doesn't seem to want to be that. He seems to want to change it famously dropped the practice of endorsing. So they weren't going to endorse. Kamala Harris for president has suggested the editorial page will be less hospitable to liberal voices. A bunch of liberal journalists have left the Washington Post. Columnists and reporters. Some have left the Washington Post not necessarily because they're liberal, but because the paper is a mess. But why is the paper a mess? The paper's a mess because it pretends to be an organization that covers everybody fairly, everybody equally, regardless of ideology. And what has it been, even back to the fabled days of Ben Bradley and Woodward and Bernstein, it's been a paper whose journalists and editors are largely liberal. So again, inputs and outputs. If you're editors and your journalists are largely liberal, what do you think your readers are going to be? And they reflect that bias in their stories. What do you think your readership's going to be like? It's going to be liberals. So Glenn Kessler breaks down the reality and says, yeah, our business model is we're addicted to liberals and so how could we possibly risk appealing to conservatives? Well, the answer to me is, and we'll talk to Glenn Kessler about it, don't be a liberal paper. Don't be a conservative paper. Be a world class paper with great reporting and scoops and writing and news you can use. And if you want to throw in cooking and wordle type games, sure. But for him to acknowledge that the paper's readers are all liberal and therefore the only way the paper can survive is to feed them liberal stuff. I find that to be insane. And again, he just, he just basically throws up his hand and says, that's the reality. Now I give him credit because if you ask most people at the Washington Post, who I talk to, reporters there and editors, are you addicted to a liberal audience? They'd say, oh no, we're not. We're fair minded. We only write fair stories. And our audience, you know, is, is varied. They have some conservative readers, of course, but what a remarkable concession. We can't be fair. He's saying, in effect, we can't be fair because if we were fair, we'd go out of business because our existing audience wouldn't like us being fair. It's not about going from being a liberal paper to being a conservative paper. It's about being fair. But again, I'll say his conclusion is not the paper should change. We shouldn't be a paper who's attracting only liberals. We need to reconsider why we're doing that and build a better, bigger, more journalistically sound organization by appealing to everyone instead of saying that. He says, I don't really understand how the Post can solve this because they've got their audience. All right. Now, Terry Moran Again, Terry writes in a substack. It's primarily, or the purpose of it is about CBS and the merger between the buyers of CBS and Paramount and how they're at war with the head of the FCC who is an unabashed conservative. That's the focus of the column. But in the column Terry writes about bias at ABC Now. Terry was fired. ABC now is afraid of the Trump administration and Disney. And so although their coverage is still laughably biased, they're looking to avoid situations where the Trump administration could be critical of them or go after them with their federal licenses for doing things that are just over the top biased and open. That's why they settled on the George Stephanopoulos case. So in this case, Terry goes on Twitter late at night and writes really personally negative things about Stephen Miller and the President and ABC decides to dump him. So Terry in his column says something that's true, which is rhetorically at abc. And I know this because I work there with him and he's very active on the email lists, listservs, and on the conference calls. Terry, although he himself, by every measure I can see, is part of the liberal media establishment. Terry himself would say we need to listen to conservative voices there, that there is another point of view on this. Despite that, or maybe because of that, here's what Terry wrote in his substack about ABC News. This is a B4. Please quote, were we biased? Yes. Almost inadvertently I'd say. Now I'll come back to that. Inadvertently find that to be a kind of a wise word to use here. ABC News is the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America. A lack of viewpoint diversity. Now that's right. Except for inadvertently, I wouldn't say the bias is inadvertent. My big the first time I confronted a liberal bias in kind of a head on way in the context of politics was when in 1992, Pat Buchanan was running against George H.W. bush in the primary. And Pat, who's a wonderful guy, you may disagree with some of his views or a lot of his he's a wonderful guy Pat agenda, if you go back and look at it, was basically the American first agenda. Trump's agenda on trade and immigration and, and corporate power and anti Washington bureaucrat. My colleagues at ABC News mocked Pat. They had no interest in understanding his supporters or his agenda or why a guy with no money and, and no real history at that level as a principal, he was a staffer. Why was that guy giving an incumbent president of the United States a run for his money? Why? Because of his ideas. And they had no interest in that. They would mock him. They didn't want to cover him. All right, so Terry says inadvertently biased. I wouldn't say it's inadvertent. I'd say it would be cultural. Here is next and more from Terry's substack. B5. Terry Moran says it's no secret there are hardly any people who supported Donald Trump at ABC News or the other corporate legacy mainstream news networks. And this is bound to impact coverage. Duh. Of course it's going to coverage. The only thing I would take exception with here, two things. One, it's no secret. Well, it's denied by people in the media. So they certainly. It's kind of like saying Biden's mental acuity decline was a secret. Well, it wasn't a secret because everybody who wanted to see it could see it. But it was a, quote, unquote, secret in the sense that Terry Moran's admissions here are not something you hear from George Stephanopoulos or Chuck Todd or other people who've run political coverage at these networks and then put it back up. The other thing I take issue with here is when he says hardly any people who supported Donald Trump. Well, there are in fact a few closeted people like in Hollywood at these news organizations who do support Donald Trump. But it's more than they didn't support Donald Trump. They were openly hostile to Donald Trump and that they used their power and their, their platforms to try to keep him from winning and to try to keep him from succeeding as president. So I think it understates the case. One, one more excerpt here. TERRY MORAN, B6 the old news divisions don't hear many of the voices of the country because those voices aren't in the newsroom. He goes on and he says this. News teams go out with a microphone and a camera and accost people at Trump Rallies. Interesting use of the word accost people at Trump rallies. But to me, that often comes across as weirdly anthropological and inaccurate, kind of like trying to understand nature by visiting a zoo. You don't really see a tiger at the zoo, just a version of a tiger. So one reason I knew Donald Trump was at a good chance to win in 2016 is because I covered Trump rallies and I talked to Trump supporters in 30 states, and I didn't talk to them like they were anthropological creatures. Terry's right. This is the attitude. Those voices aren't in the newsroom. Well, if you're a reporter and you're hired into a liberal newsroom, okay, your obligation is to not be ignorant and say, well, I'm going to get my sense of America and my sense of Donald Trump and of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. I'm not going to get it from my colleagues in the newsroom because they're all liberally biased or almost all. And I'm not going to get it by going to Trump events and talking to voters like they're animals. And I'm not going to get it by my friends and my relatives. Most of them are also liberal, or the people live in my neighborhood and New York or Washington, also mostly liberal. I'm going to get it by understanding America. So, again, what Terry says is true. The news divisions are not diverse ideologically, that even as there's been less, as he writes in his substack, less control of news organizations by white men, there's still no ideological diversity that's meaningful. The decisions, the editorial coverage, the tone, the posture is set by a bunch of liberals. And again, Terry says his colleagues go out and don't really report in the right way to try to understand Donald Trump's America. That's also true. But I say about Terry what I said about Glenn Kessler to simply say the truth of what exists. Glenn Kessler says we're addicted to our liberal audience. Terry Moran says our journalists don't have any ideological diversity and they don't really understand Donald Trump's America. You got to take the next step as far as I'm concerned and say, that's not right. How could Terry have worked for decades in a newsroom knowing as he did the lack of diversity, and not say either here's what I did about it or here's what we should do about it, or how awful that we're alienating potential customers and not doing what we're supposed to do as journalists by failing to stand up and say, whoa, whoa, Whoa, whoa, whoa. As I have done throughout my career, patting myself on the back here, I have always said to the people I work with, how could we do this? How, how could we choose to alienate half the audience, potential audience, and how could we fail to figure out how to change it? Again, looking forward to talking to Glenn Kessler about this. And maybe Terry can come on another time. Terry says yes, from my perspective, the old news networks are biased. They are. So here you have a situation with two guys. They're out now in the, in the independent journalism world. And, and are they writing these truths, which, again, if you took them to people at the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News, I think you get mostly denials, even in private, but certainly in public. Why are they writing these truths? Well, maybe it's because they didn't feel comfortable and safe saying them when they were employed by people who they were going to accuse of dereliction of professional duty. Maybe. Although Terry very outspoken, typically, the guy writing the Pinocchios presumably might want to call out his own organization for some Pinocchios when they deny liberal bias, but also they're trying to sell their substacks now. Right. And maybe they think this will get attention. Certainly gotten my attention. Maybe they feel not just unshackled, but looking to be truth tellers, belatedly. But I'll say again, it's not enough to say our audience is liberal. It's not enough to say our newsroom is liberal. You got to talk about the implications of that. And as I've said, the implications are threefold in my view, primarily, although there's a lot of other implications. One implication is you're not doing your job. You're fundamentally failing at your job. And organizations that fundamentally fail over the long term, they don't survive. That's just basic about society. Number two, you're helping Donald Trump. And again, this is the great irony. You're helping Donald Trump by. I can't tell you the number of people who've come on two way, and I've talked to over the years who said, I don't much like Trump. You know, I have a lot of problems with him personally. I don't like all his policies. But the liberal media bias is so overwhelming because it sets the terrain for everything else. For the prosecutions of Trump, for the attempted assassinations of Trump, for policy disputes. They said, I got to vote for Trump because I got to send a message to the liberal media. They can't get away with it. And the last thing is it Erodes trust in an organization, in an institution, in a profession that. That has to be part of our democracy. The founders saw that there's lots of other media now. There's, there's programs like this. There's Fox News, there's Newsmax. There's all. There's all sorts of other opportunities for people on social media and new media to get. To get access to reach people. But these dominant media organizations still play an enormous role. They have big audiences, they influence each other, and they are respected institutions that reach a lot of America. Unfortunately, too much of it they're reaching is blue America. But they are respected. And in the case of places like the Wall Street Journal, whose news division, not the editorial side, is actually less biased than it used to be, but still shows some bias. Washington Post, New York Times, these are institutions that, that don't have analogs on the right. Places that can file Freedom of Information act requests, places that can do international coverage, that can hold all powerful interests accountable to the public interest. And they do. And they do it to Democrats sometimes, too, as I said before. But these institutions, same with the broadcast network news divisions and the cable news divisions, they have enormous power still. That's why I call them dominant still. Their influence is lower than it was, but they still have some dominance. And certainly they do in blue America. And as I've said before, not only does it help Donald Trump, it hurts Democrats, because every game for them is a home game. Every game for them, they're going to get the benefit of the doubt from places like ABC News and the Washington Post. That makes Democrats lazy. It makes them assume implicitly, well, we'll get a lot of positive coverage for what we do, and Trump will get a lot of negative coverage for what he does. And so we don't have to be fair, we don't have to fight hard. We don't have to create our own kinds of media like people have done on the right. We don't need our Joe Rogan now. They say they do, but the incentives for them to do it are just lower. Why did Rush Limbaugh rise up? Why is there all this conservative talk radio? Why are shows like this not my show, my show is not conservative. It's just for the truth. But why have people like Megyn Kelly and Tucker and Charlie Kirk, why have they been successful? Because they see an audience that they can fight for through the bias. There's a real market there. There's an alternative. Why have conservative politicians supported those places? Because they now have a place to go. So I will say, finally, I'm so concerned about this. I'm so grateful for these two guys for exposing the truth. But I want three things. I want a national debate about it. I want these organizations specifically that they've written about to soul search and and ask questions whether these guys are telling the truth. Because they are. And then finally, I want everyone in my profession who's liberally biased to say, can I change? Can I be fair to everyone? And if not, what's the new job? I can get to clear space in the newsroom for someone who will do it correctly. Tell me what you think about today's report. My reported monologue is always subject to your ombudsmanship. Send me an email@nextup halperinmail.com you can always find this program on all the big social platforms, x, Instagram and TikTok. My handle is @nextup halperin. And of course, if you'd like to watch the show to see what shirt I've chosen for the day, check it out on YouTube@YouTube.com NextUp helper in a moment, one of the reporters, newly unbound and truth telling. Glenn Kessler, formerly of the Washington Post, now of Substack. He's next up. Here's the question that's on everybody's mind. Is the continued divide between Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve putting all of us behind the curve economically yet again? Can the Fed take the right action at the right time, or are we going to be looking at a potential economic slowdown? What does all this mean for your savings? Well, consider today diversifying with gold through Birch Gold Group. For decades, gold has been viewed as a safe haven in times of economic stagnation, global uncertainty, and when there is high inflation. And Birch Gold makes it incredibly easy for you to diversify some of your savings into gold. So if you've got an IRA or an old 401k, you can convert that into a tax sheltered Iraq in physical gold. Or you can just buy some gold and keep it in your safe at home. But first, you want to get educated. So take advantage of this. Birch Gold will send you a free info kit about gold. Just text the word next to the number 989-898. Again, this rhymes here. Text next to 989-898. Consider diversifying a portion of your savings into gold. That way even if the Fed doesn't get its act together, you can still say ahead of the curve for yourself. Do it today. Next up for more on this question of America's most influential newsrooms and their posture towards their audience and their journalism. Joined by Glenn Kessler, one of the most accomplished managers of a feature in American journalism over the last two decades. I would say is fact checker feature. And his bestowing of up to 4 Pinocchios got tons of attention, great traffic for the paper, and often discussed. And of course, politicians of both sides would wield his reporting whenever he agreed with them and denounced it whenever they didn't. Then that's, that's something all journalists would like is to be in the conversation. So, Glenn Kessler, welcome and thank you for making time.
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Glenn Kessler
Glad to be with you.
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Mark Halperin
I want to show you some of the excerpts from your sub stack that I talked about in the first part of the program and just walk, and just walk through it with you and ask you some questions. B1 please. Conservatives were an untapped market for growth, especially for a news organization where traffic was failing. But there's a conundrum. If most of your readers are liberal, how did you attract conservatives without losing your existing base? So let's go backwards from that. How did the Washington Post end up with a readership that was mostly liberal?
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Glenn Kessler
Well, I think to begin with, it was originally a Washington based newspaper. The District of Columbia is automatic 3 electoral votes for the Democrats in any presidential election. And you could argue that the federal government, the federal workforce in general, is relatively left leaning. And you have the Virginia suburbs and the Maryland suburbs, Northern Virginia, which is where I live. I'm speaking to you from McLean. When I moved to Washington about 30 years ago, Virginia was a red state and it recently became a purple and then more or less a blue state, in part because of the influx of people who moved to Northern Virginia, which gave the overall state more of a liberal hue. So I think it starts with the readership base that was originally reading the Washington Post.
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Mark Halperin
Okay, I don't. I grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, so I'm familiar with the liberal leanings of, of, of parts of the region. But I'd say a couple things. First, as the paper has become a national and international paper digitally, do you think that that part of the Post audience is less liberal? Significantly less liberal?
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Glenn Kessler
You know, I, as I write in the substack, I only have anecdotal evidence. Yeah, the response. Exc. The response to my fact checks. Paulo Marco Rubio here, sip away.
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Mark Halperin
He's sipping. For those of you watching on or listening on podcast, Glenn, let the record show Glenn has taken a sip of water.
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Glenn Kessler
So.
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Mark Halperin
You don't have the data. So you, you don't know.
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Glenn Kessler
Yeah. But I was saying anecdotally, it went. Wrote fact checks.
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Mark Halperin
Yeah.
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Glenn Kessler
If I gave four Pinocchios to Bernie Sanders or to a leading Democrat, I got lots of outraged email. Yeah, I gave four Pinocchios to a Republican. I didn't.
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Mark Halperin
And some of those, some of those outrage emails did not come from Northern Virginia, Maryland or D.C. correct.
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Glenn Kessler
Right. Right.
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Mark Halperin
So, so my, my, my theory would be, from knowing a lot of Washington Post reporters and particularly talking now about political coverage, is that you attract a lot of liberal readers because your reporters are hostile to Republicans more than Democrats. Do you reject that premise entirely?
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Glenn Kessler
Yes, I completely reject it. I think that, I mean, how to phrase this. I believe that generally, in the main, the reporting of the Washington Post is tough on anyone who is in power. Barack Obama got very irritated by Washington Post coverage. Bill Clinton got irritated by Washington Post coverage. The ethos of the newspaper is to be critical and scrutinize and hold account whoever is in power. And what you have is a situation right now where the president of the United States routinely says the media is the enemy of the people. I don't recall Bill Clinton or, you know, Barack Obama using those terms. And I think it has colored the way people look at the reporting of the Washington Post.
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Mark Halperin
But you would say that there's no liberal bias in the Washington Post coverage of politics and government? None.
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Glenn Kessler
Well, you know, let me ask it.
- [34:54]
Mark Halperin
Let me ask it a different way while you ponder. Yeah, I know a lot of your colleagues, your former colleagues. Would you say that the people covering presidential campaigns and government for the Washington Post during the last 10 years have been absolutely indifferent to whether Trump won or Clinton won or Trump won or Biden won? Absolutely indifferent.
- [35:13]
Glenn Kessler
You know, you may not find this hard to believe, but I never had a conversation with any of my colleagues about their political leanings or how they viewed the presidential election. I'm not registered with any political party. I refuse to vote. I refuse to vote in any primaries. And I'm just like when I covered different. I was writing the Fact Checker, but before then, I covered diplomacy and I covered economic policy. So when I covered economic policy, the one of the issues then was Social Security private accounts, which was something the Republicans wanted. And when I left the beat, a source who was heavily involved in that subject called me up and said, now that you're leaving the beat, can you tell me what you personally think about Social Security private accounts? Because I could never figure that out from. I always played it straight. I think my colleagues do.
- [36:19]
Mark Halperin
Most of Your colleagues, you've never read a political story or governmental story in the Washington Post and said, boy, I could see why conservatives would be pissed off by that. I've, you know, I shouldn't say never. Let me, let me, let me phrase, let me phrase, let me phrase it a different way. Let me phrase it a different way. Okay. As I said, as I say often, half the country thinks the Washington Post is extremely biased against Republicans and extremely, extremely biased against Donald Trump, and that it impacts Donald Trump his chance of winning elections and governing. Do you reject that premise completely?
- [36:54]
Glenn Kessler
Yes, I do reject that premise. And I, having been in that newsroom. Yeah, I don't, I believe, you know, I am not excusing times when we messed up, but I often say, and I believe you, we, you know, times, if we, I often say that it's not incompetence. I'm sorry, it's not conspiracy, it's incompetence. You know, that's when, when newspapers, you know, make a mistake.
- [37:25]
Mark Halperin
Right. So, Glenn, how do you, how do you explain every conservative I know who's ever worked for a Republican presidential candidate or president? Everyone says the Washington Post, like ABC News and others are liberally biased. And no Democrat I know says that now that it's conservatively biased. They do say, as you suggest, boy, Barack Obama someday has got tough coverage, and boy, Bill Clinton some days got coverage. But how do you explain every smart conservative I know thinks that? How do they all think that? And no Democrat does.
- [37:59]
Glenn Kessler
Well, I believe people are believing their own myths. Seriously. And I definitely encountered situations when I wrote negative fact checks when Democrats would be like, God, why are you writing this? Because you're at a Washington Post and I'm saying, you know, I'm playing it straight. You know, I see four Pinocchios.
- [38:23]
Mark Halperin
Okay, but. Sorry to interrupt, but, Glenn, that's another group that has the posture. The Washington Post is our home team. The Democrats say, glenn, how can you be fact checking a Democrat? You're the home team for us. So they seem.
- [38:37]
Glenn Kessler
So they, they think I say that's BS to them. And I, I, I think if you talk to a number of Republican operatives that I have dealt with over the years, they would say, I always played it straight.
- [38:49]
Mark Halperin
I, I'm not talking, I'm not, Glenn, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the paper for which you worked for decades. So they may say you played it straight. Although, as you know, you have Republican critics who, who are, and I have many Democratic critics. But the, but the Democratic critics typically are. You're the home team. Why are you doing this? Not, you're liberally, you're conservatively biased, but I want to leave your coverage out of it. I say again, how could it be so many people think this. Here's what Terry Moran says. Okay. And this is about ABC News. You got friends who've worked at ABC News, probably.
- [39:20]
Glenn Kessler
Right, right, right.
- [39:21]
Mark Halperin
Okay, here's what Terry Moran says. Let's do number B5, please. It's no secret there are hardly any people who supported Donald Trump at ABC News or the other corporate legacy mainstream news networks. And this is bound to impact coverage. B6. The old news divisions don't hear many of the voices of the country because those voices aren't in the newsroom. Now, I don't know if Terry exempts the Washington Post from this point of view, but I doubt he would. So do you think that there are every bit as many or close enough conservative voices at the Washington Post? Not in the op ed section, the columnist. But do you think that there's just as many. Let me do it this way. Are there just as many reporters at the Washington Post covering politics and government who are, are pro life is pro choice?
- [40:06]
Glenn Kessler
Yeah. Again, I have never had that conversation with anyone in my office. I, and there are a number of reporters I know who, you know, grew up in gun owning households, grew up in conservative households, grew up in pro life households, kind of came up anecdotally or whatever ever, you know, I, I so, and part of it is, you know, you're a reporter, you can, you can report, you can learn about information. So I have personally never handled a gun.
- [40:43]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [40:44]
Glenn Kessler
But whenever I wrote about gun, I would make sure I, I sought out one of my colleagues who was a gun owner to review what I wrote, to make sure that I treated gun owners with respect and that I properly described the, you know, you know, what it was.
- [41:00]
Mark Halperin
Glenn, I guess I know how smart you are. I've read probably 90% of the work you've done since you got to the Post. So I'm very familiar with your oeuvre, your intelligence, your. The pieces you did required so much more reporting than goes into a normal newspaper piece these days. And you were serious and industrious, so I, I couldn't have more respect for your belief in the craft of journalism and how well you executed it over decades. And I wouldn't say that about that many people in journalism. I truly believe that. But it's confounding to me to hear you say the reason our readers are liberal is because the D.C. area is liberal and that you have no indication of why it would be that conservatives would say the Washington Post, like ABC News and the New York Times is liberally biased. It just, it's, I'll say respectfully, it's so frustrating to me and I'm sure many people listening to our conversation to have you say what so many people at the network say and so many people at the Post say, which is, oh, we're not liberally biased. We don't talk about our political views every day. I could go through the paper and show you examples that infuriate Republicans and infuriate me. The Washington Post is my hometown paper. I want the Post to be considered a. I want to be a thriving success. But what you said in your substack is we can't figure out a way to reach conservatives because liberals are paying the bills. And you don't say, that's an intolerable situation. You seem to be saying, as I read your substack, I kind of throw out my hands because that's the way we're making our money now. So how can you not be outraged by having a paper that you consider to be liberal. I'm not liberal. Have be financed to an addictive point of view by liberals? How could you not be? When you worked at the paper, how could you not have said, we have to find a way to appeal to conservatives rather than mocking your boss for saying, how could we appeal to Fox News? Shouldn't you want people who watch Fox News to read the Washington Post? That's a lot of questions in one, but it's all the same thing. How can you and I see this so differently? How can that be?
- [43:09]
Glenn Kessler
Well, I think, with respect, Mark, I think you're slightly mischaracterizing or somewhat mischaracterizing what I said there. I first of all, I did not mock my publisher and I said his question was a good one. How do we appeal more to Fox News viewers? I was a little.
- [43:25]
Mark Halperin
Well, you mocked him for spending an hour with you and not addressing the topic of the meeting.
- [43:31]
Glenn Kessler
Well, let's note, the topic of the meeting was the more accountability to the Washington Post.
- [43:39]
Mark Halperin
Although the Washington Post most recent ombudsman, I believe, believe that she was the most recent, is one of the most hostile reporters to Donald Trump in the world. So that job was filled by a woman who has gone on even while she was at the paper. But it's gone on since then to become one of the leading anti Trump voices in the country. So filling the ombudsman's job with someone so hostile to the. To one particular politician, I don't think is worthy of reviving the job. But. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go back, go back.
- [44:05]
Glenn Kessler
I know who you're talking about, but I don't. He was not an ombudgment for the Post. She was Margaret for the New York Times.
- [44:10]
Mark Halperin
Margaret Sullivan, didn't she? Oh, she was a columnist for the Post.
- [44:13]
Glenn Kessler
Columnist, yes.
- [44:14]
Mark Halperin
Ombudsman at the time. So my criticism there is for the Times. In any event, just go back to trying to explain. I forget my characterization of your meeting. I just want you to focus. How could you and I see this so differently? I've been a journalist for a long time. You've been a journalist a long time. I read the Washington Post every day. You read the Washington Post today. I talk to Republicans about how they feel about the Post. You do, too. How could it be that I see the Post as fundamentally anti Trump in every day, in every crevice of every story, practically. And you say we are down the middle, by the book, and the fact that our readers are liberal is because we're in Washington, D.C. how could that be?
- [44:50]
Glenn Kessler
Well, okay, first of all, it's because you're wrong and I'm right. Mark. You know, and, you know, I am in the news. You know, I was in the newsroom and I watched how the stories were put together and what the editorial discussions were. So now that I am away from the newsroom and I'm going to read it as an ordinary reader, I will have a, you know, based on the comments you've made to me, I will have an open mind to see what. What I see. But I do know when, you know, it's not like people in the newsroom are saying, we've got to get Donald Trump, we've got to write this story, we're going to slant it in a way that is negative to Donald.
- [45:35]
Mark Halperin
More. It's more. I agree with you. It's more insidious. It's more insidious than that. It'd be. Some ways, it'd be more comforting to me if they said we're not trying to be objective. We think Donald Trump's bad for the country, he's against abortion rights, he's corrupt, he's a liar. Look at all the four Pinocchios he gets. We need to protect Joe Biden and destroy it. That'd be better. Instead. And again, I just go back to Glenn. I just go back to two facts. Your audience, by your own acknowledgment and by every indication is super liberal. We saw that when you did, the owner did things that were pro Trump, perceived as pro Trump, and you lost a huge percentage, as you cite in your substack, a huge percentage of your readers. So your audience is liberal and you're addicted to their revenue. And conservatives think you are the Nation magazine. So just those two facts. How could you, how could you work, how could you work at a place for decades and say we're addicted to liberal revenue and not be screaming at the top of your lungs? Boy, half the country might have a point that we're liberally biased. Let's examine that. Let's go to my colleagues because, again, I know all your colleagues, your former colleagues.
- [46:46]
Glenn Kessler
Yeah, but I really think you are mixing a few things, apples and oranges. My point about the, you know, the liberal. A lot of that had to do with the editorial pages in the op ed.
- [47:02]
Mark Halperin
No, no, it's the news. Leave editorial out of its news. Well, okay, but just talking about news here because, because the editorial page, when.
- [47:10]
Glenn Kessler
I wrote about making that transition, you know, it, you know, trying to attract more conservative readers and without losing the liberal readers. Part of that had to do with getting rid of all the liberal columnists, which is what, you know, that's Jeff Bezos's prerogative. That's what he wants to do. But that one reason there's, there's no doubt all those readers left is you didn't have that.
- [47:33]
Mark Halperin
There's no doubt. There's no doubt that that's why some of them left. But there's also no doubt that until Jeff bought the paper, it was, they, everybody thought it was fine to have an editorial board made up entirely of, almost entirely or is often entirely of liberals. But I'm talking, I'm talking about news. I'm talking about news, not interrupt.
- [47:49]
Glenn Kessler
Actually, the Washington Post editorial board under Fred Hyatt was, it was more moderate.
- [47:55]
Mark Halperin
It was. But, but it was still, but it was still hostile to Donald Trump. It still didn't look for, to find good things to say about Donald Trump, ever.
- [48:02]
Glenn Kessler
I noted Fred tried very. One problem that the Post faced was that we had conservative columnists. We had a number of conservative columnists like Charles Kartheimer, George.
- [48:13]
Mark Halperin
George Will.
- [48:14]
Glenn Kessler
And they all, they, they all turned against Trump.
- [48:19]
Mark Halperin
Yes.
- [48:19]
Glenn Kessler
Fred then went on a mission. He wanted to find a.
- [48:23]
Mark Halperin
You're right, you're right.
- [48:24]
Glenn Kessler
And he did.
- [48:26]
Mark Halperin
Glenn, you're right. But I want to keep this on News, not on the, not on the op ed page. Keep it on news.
- [48:30]
Glenn Kessler
But I feel like the editorial page often gets colored with the news and some of your criticism of the. Because I, I maintain as a longtime Washington Post reporter that the news coverage is straight.
- [48:43]
Mark Halperin
Okay, let me, let me ask you.
- [48:44]
Glenn Kessler
Disagree with me. But, but it's not.
- [48:46]
Mark Halperin
But Glenn, it's not just me, it's half the country. I'm not alone. I'm not. I've got some iconic iconoclast.
- [48:51]
Glenn Kessler
The country is affected by Donald Trump saying we're an enemy of the people.
- [48:55]
Mark Halperin
Well, George, George Bush thought it was true too. Ronald Reagan thought it was true too. This is not some new thing. It's only because of Trump derangement syndrome that the paper's news section has become even more aggressive of saying we must defeat Republicans. Now, let me ask you about one of your very.
- [49:10]
Glenn Kessler
I reject completely.
- [49:12]
Mark Halperin
I know you do. I know. Let me ask. I know you do. I know you do. I know you do. We're trying to, we're trying to game out how two people. Now, granted, you're more familiar with the paper than I am, of course, but two people who read the Washington Post news section, including political coverage and government coverage pretty much every day. Because I read it even when I'm on vacation every day for decades. Both of us understand journalism. Both of us talk to people in both parties. How could we have such different views? My view is supported by every Republican. I know. My view is supported by many Democrats. I know. I, I don't. Your view is supported by people like Chuck Todd and, and others who've run political coverage. George Stephanopoulos, who. I, I don't see, I don't see how they have this position. Now let me ask you about something. You wrote that it's gotten a lot of attention from conservatives about the so called deepfake videos regarding Joe Biden. When you looked at the question of whether the videos being played in largely in conservative media that showed apparent cognitive decline of the president, what conclusion did you reach in fact checker about those videos?
- [50:24]
Glenn Kessler
Well, the, you're talking about when he supposedly meandered off to talk to the parachuters.
- [50:31]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [50:32]
Glenn Kessler
So that fact check was looking specifically at how that video was being portrayed.
- [50:41]
Mark Halperin
Correct.
- [50:42]
Glenn Kessler
News sites?
- [50:43]
Mark Halperin
Yes, sir.
- [50:43]
Glenn Kessler
And what we did was we went and got the full video and the full context because it looked like the way it was cut in, particularly distributed by the rnc. It looked like Joe Biden was wandering off and he didn't, it didn't show him talking to parachuters. What we showed was that he was, he was talking to parachuters.
- [51:02]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [51:02]
Glenn Kessler
You know, and I have said this before, the fact checks are complement to the news coverage. Not, not a supplement.
- [51:11]
Mark Halperin
Yes, sir.
- [51:11]
Glenn Kessler
Overall context of the Washington Post coverage. We, there was, we had coverage about, you know, was he too old? We had columnists saying he shouldn't be, he shouldn't be running again. And that fact check was specifically that video distributed by the rnc.
- [51:29]
Mark Halperin
And understand, but, but understand but the power of the Pinocchio's and the power of the fact check, when you write that people say that and say the Washington Post is saying that that video is, is not reflective of Joe Biden's cognitive decline. That's what people take from that. They do. They do, Glenn. They do, you know, you know, the power that you had in that job. So do you think the Washington Post. How would you rate the job the Washington Post did in covering Joe Biden's not his age, not whether David Ignatius thought he should run again, but how good a job would you say the Post did in covering the reality of Joe Biden's cognitive decline?
- [52:07]
Glenn Kessler
I would say so. There was a lot of effort to produce a story that would look very carefully at what seemed to be a cognitive decline. It never came together because we couldn't get enough people on the record.
- [52:28]
Mark Halperin
Glenn, Glenn, do you know that, do you know the moment where Joe Biden spoke to a dead congresswoman at a public event? Are you familiar with that moment?
- [52:36]
Glenn Kessler
Yes. Yes. Yes.
- [52:37]
Mark Halperin
Okay. What kind of sourcing did you need to say Joe Biden was suffering cognitive decline? Did you see him trailing off regularly? What kind of sourcing was needed?
- [52:49]
Glenn Kessler
I can't get too deep in the weeds of what happened at my former news reporter.
- [52:54]
Mark Halperin
You weren't in all the meetings, but you read the coverage. You read the coverage.
- [52:59]
Glenn Kessler
I'm telling you there was a lot of effort to produce the story, you.
- [53:04]
Mark Halperin
Know.
- [53:06]
Glenn Kessler
That you are asking for and it didn't come together. That is my understanding. I was not in the understood. And yes, in retrospect, one could say, God, that was a real missed opportunity. It's also difficult when you're taking on the President of the United States and saying, and you want to say, okay, we think there's a cognitive decline and we want to get people on the record as actually saying this because it's a very serious accusation. And you know that on the left there's all this chatter about Trump's cognitive issues. Now, you know, but Clint.
- [53:44]
Mark Halperin
But Glenn, when you write a column that says the RNC is producing misleading video because Joe Biden wandered off and talked to paratroopers papers. That is taking the, the credibility and. And power of you, the Fact checker column and the Washington Post and saying, in effect, not this one little thing is wrong, but, oh, let's remind you that he talked to a dead congresswoman. You are saying in that column, to any normal reader, the Washington Post is saying the, the, the. The chatter of that cognitive decline is made up. That's what it's saying.
- [54:23]
Glenn Kessler
No.
- [54:23]
Mark Halperin
So I'll ask. It is. It is.
- [54:26]
Glenn Kessler
If you go. Mark, if you go back and look at that fact check, read it 20 times. The very first paragraph talks about how polling shows that most Americans feel that Biden is too old to run for president. It then goes on that, you know, that narratives stick when they deal with a larger truth. We were looking specifically at that video and letting any of you. And we showed the full context of the video he was talking to. And I recently reviewed that column because I got subject of a nasty editorial in the New York Post. I feel you may think I'm crazy and your viewers may think I'm crazy, but I think in the context in which I wrote that that column still stands up even though we now know that Joe Biden had issues.
- [55:18]
Mark Halperin
But you say we now know you didn't know issues when you watched public videos of him for four years as president. The fact that he didn't have press conferences, he didn't do a single interview with the Washington Post news section that didn't make you think he was having cognitive decline.
- [55:34]
Glenn Kessler
I don't believe Donald Trump has done a single interview with the Washington Post news section. I think Barack Obama maybe did one over eight years.
- [55:40]
Mark Halperin
Okay. But, but Glenn, but Glenn, don't seize on that. Did you not see indications, did you not see indications of cognitive decline for Joe Biden before the debate?
- [55:50]
Glenn Kessler
Well, you know, I'm going to put it this way. Yeah, I covered Joe Biden for many years when I covered diplomacy.
- [55:55]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [55:56]
Glenn Kessler
It's definitely a difference between the Joe Biden I knew when I was covering diplomacy and the Joe Biden that I saw but never interviewed or met.
- [56:05]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [56:05]
Glenn Kessler
As president. At the same time, I covered Donald Trump as a businessman in the 1980s. And, and there's a big difference between the way Donald Trump spoke then and the way Donald Trump speaks now. Eighteen is a part of the process everyone goes through.
- [56:21]
Mark Halperin
And you know, Glenn, I want my, I want my listeners and viewers to love and respect you. Okay? But I know what they're thinking as they listened up until now. They're saying this, this is representative of the mindset of the dominant media that there's so many reasons to think the Post coverage is biased. They're there every day, and you're saying there's literally no anti Trump bias. So let me ask you this just to be, Just to be clear. Are you saying that the absence of regular coverage of Joe Biden's cognitive decline during his presidency in the Washington Post has nothing to do with pro Democrat, anti Trump bias amongst the reporters and editors of the paper? Nothing.
- [57:02]
Glenn Kessler
Because I know, I know for a fact that that story, we tried to write it, we wanted to write it, and reporters were working on it. We got it in a different ways. It didn't come together in a way, Glenn.
- [57:14]
Mark Halperin
How. How could it not. How could it not come together?
- [57:17]
Glenn Kessler
Mark? I'm sorry. I wasn't. I was not an editor.
- [57:21]
Mark Halperin
Okay, but you're. But as a reader, okay, as a reader of the paper, as a reader of the paper and as someone in the newsroom, you're saying the reason the Post never wrote a serious piece about this topic was because they couldn't get people on the record explaining their direct impressions of Joe Biden's cognitive decline. Nothing to do with not wanting to help Donald Trump win? Nothing.
- [57:42]
Glenn Kessler
Yes, absolutely. I guarantee you that there was.
- [57:45]
Mark Halperin
Okay.
- [57:45]
Glenn Kessler
There was not any effort to say, we got to make sure Donald Trump loses and Democrats.
- [57:52]
Mark Halperin
So on my.
- [57:53]
Glenn Kessler
Not the way that reporter spoke at.
- [57:56]
Mark Halperin
The Post and you.
- [57:58]
Glenn Kessler
Of that.
- [57:58]
Mark Halperin
Okay. And I know you're not as familiar with other newsrooms because you were at the paper for a long time, but to the extent you have an impression, would you say the same thing about ABC News, the New York Times, NBC News?
- [58:08]
Glenn Kessler
You know, I have to admit, I don't really watch television news.
- [58:11]
Mark Halperin
Okay, so what about, what about the Times? Would you say the Times also is not liberally biased against Donald Trump as.
- [58:19]
Glenn Kessler
A reader, As a reader? I mean, I, I'm just trying to get a sense.
- [58:24]
Mark Halperin
If you're saying the Post is.
- [58:26]
Glenn Kessler
I make, I make a, I make a strong distinction between the editorial page and the news.
- [58:30]
Mark Halperin
No, just talking news. We're just talking news. Are you saying as a reader of the New York Times. I'm trying to see if you are saying the Post is, in fact, an exception, should be considered an exception to Republican criticism. And my criticism of the Post. You're saying. I'm asking you, as a reader of the New York Times, do you find them to be more anti Trump than the Washington Post or equally balanced.
- [58:55]
Glenn Kessler
I would say equally balanced, though I know you will disagree with.
- [58:58]
Mark Halperin
Well, Glenn, it's not just me, though. My Twitter feed is going to be filled with people saying so.
- [59:02]
Glenn Kessler
But, but I, I just, I just really reject the premise of your question. I hear.
- [59:07]
Mark Halperin
I'm not, I'm not asking you to change your view. I'm not asking you to change your view. I'm asking you to be reflective on saying this is not Steve Bannon or Donald Trump trying to make a buck or a political point of, of saying the Washington Post is fake news. These are thoughtful moderates, centrists, some Democrats who, who, who couldn't disagree more with your characterization, and they don't think it's subtle. So I'm just asking you to be, in our closing time here, just be reflective of how could they be so wrong and you be right. How could it be that they're so wrong? Like, what are they? What, what, what is it? I know some of them are motivated by wanting to make the Post a boogeyman, but they're very thoughtful people who think this. What are they missing or what are you missing?
- [59:55]
Glenn Kessler
Well, I like, you know, we all have our own, you know, perspective on these things. And I can simply go back to my perspective of being in the newsroom and hearing the newsroom discussions, and there is not any let's get Trump effort in the newsroom. Now, obviously, in any, you know, you know, you know, obviously newsrooms make judgments about what stories they will cover or what they won't cover. You've now, you know, berated the Post for not writing about, you know, whether or not Biden had cognitive decline. I, as I explained, we tried to write that story in a way that was, you know, something that could be printed, and it didn't. Never got up to the standards where the editors could be printed. Now, you know, other news organizations could have made a different choice, but I'm trying to assure your readers there's not a conspiracy. If we messed up, it's incompetence.
- [60:55]
Mark Halperin
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- [63:06]
Glenn Kessler
Well, I frankly think we're already doing this, but maybe I'm wrong. You know, you have to take conservatives seriously. You have to take conservative ideas seriously. You know, the Post was the first major newspaper to take Donald Trump seriously and say he was a serious presidential candidate, unlike other newspapers which initially treated them as a joke and even put them in the, in the, you know, the humor column or whatever their news stories about them. So the Post, I believe, takes conservative ideas seriously and reports on conservatives seriously.
- [63:40]
Mark Halperin
Well, but it's not working. So what would you do differently?
- [63:43]
Glenn Kessler
Well, this is the, this is the problem. And you know, thank God I'm not like the publisher of a newspaper because.
- [63:49]
Mark Halperin
I don't know what I got. I just got you, I got you a $50,000 a month consultancy with the paper to solve this problem. What would you tell them to do? They say we want to minimize losses of our liberal base and we want moderate centrist independents and Republicans to pay for Washington Post political coverage, what would you advise them that they do?
- [64:09]
Glenn Kessler
And I would say you are facing a really impossible problem because the news landscape has become so fragmented that your readers, you know, the readers that really, you know, they could read, they could subscribe to the Washington Free Beacon or they could subscribe to a whole bunch of different substacks. They could watch your show. And do they really need the Washington Post for the news? I don't know. And the issue is, you know, making that transition is literally like changing aircraft engines in mid flight. And.
- [64:38]
Mark Halperin
But why, but why do all the liberals who pay for the paper feel they need it but conservatives don't? And how could you change it? Are you saying it's impossible to change it?
- [64:47]
Glenn Kessler
I'm going to say, I'm saying it is very difficult to change this because people's perceptions, I think the perceptions are wrong. I think the Washington Post coverage is pretty damn straight. But, you know, there is that perception. It's difficult to change those perceptions. And I don't know where you begin.
- [65:03]
Mark Halperin
Okay, I'll just, I'll just, I'll just.
- [65:05]
Glenn Kessler
Reporter.
- [65:06]
Mark Halperin
I understand. I'll, I'll ask one more time.
- [65:08]
Glenn Kessler
Okay.
- [65:09]
Mark Halperin
How did ha. Because, because originally, originally you said that you thought a fair amount of the liberal skew of the audience was because the government is. Government employees are liberal. But somehow other people around the world who could subscribe to the digital version of the paper have reached what you consider to be a mistaken impression that the paper skews against Donald Trump. So what gave them that impression?
- [65:39]
Glenn Kessler
I think it's largely the editorial page, not the.
- [65:42]
Mark Halperin
No, no.
- [65:43]
Glenn Kessler
You don't believe me. That's what I'm saying.
- [65:45]
Mark Halperin
You have no, you have no, you have no basis to say that. I say with respect, and I can tell you, many conservatives I know, okay, I hear you say it's the new section. So let's just, let's assume I'm right to the extent.
- [65:57]
Glenn Kessler
I'm not going to assume you're right.
- [65:58]
Mark Halperin
No, no. On this one point, the extent that some conservatives, some conservatives have formed this view of the paper based in part on the news product, not the editorial op ed product, to the extent they've reached that conclusion, what would have caused them to reach that conclusion?
- [66:14]
Glenn Kessler
Well, you know, as I wrote in my sub stack, the current executive editor is trying to, you know, stamp out any kind of opinionated or new edgy, you know, slant in the news stories. Now if I don't think it's necessarily there, but there were, you know, there were, he basically got Rid of columnists that were part of the new section and moved him over to the opinion section. You know, if you want to have a greater split between, you know, the news and the, in the, and the opinion section, maybe that would work. I, I really don't know what the answer is, Mark.
- [66:51]
Mark Halperin
But, but I mean again, I could have brought a thousand examples with me. I probably should have brought 100, probably should have brought 10. But you're saying again, to put a button on it, there's, there's nothing in the coverage of presidential campaigns, say, or the coverage of Donald Trump's administration. There's nothing in there from the Post news side that you think could give a conservative the impression that the Post is hostile to Trump. Nothing.
- [67:20]
Glenn Kessler
You can find some examples and like.
- [67:22]
Mark Halperin
Okay, all right. Sorry, I should, I phrased it wrong. I, sorry. I phrased it wrong. Wrong. I'm sorry, let me stop. I phrased it wrong. Nothing. But, there's no but, but, but, no, I know that, I want, I want, I want the answer that you believe there's no pattern, there's no pattern in practice. And so it's a mystery to you why they would feel that way about the news coverage.
- [67:41]
Glenn Kessler
I believe people come to the news coverage with, with a pre existing bias that they are going to be against Republicans and for Democrats. But I would argue that is not the case.
- [67:53]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [67:53]
Glenn Kessler
And that's despite, and people will look at things through their preexisting bias.
- [67:58]
Mark Halperin
Okay. And that's despite Kraut Heimer and George Will and other conservatives and, and, and, and, and as you pointed out, Fred Hyatt's relatively moderate centrist editorial page, despite that the liberal, like the Eugene Robinson's of the world caused them to think of the Post as a liberal place. And that's the reason.
- [68:17]
Glenn Kessler
Yes, that's, that's what I mean.
- [68:18]
Mark Halperin
Okay. How often are you writing the substack?
- [68:21]
Glenn Kessler
You know, I'm just starting. Well, we will see. I, I, I'm also writing a novel. I'm writing a non fiction book.
- [68:32]
Mark Halperin
What's that about?
- [68:33]
Glenn Kessler
I'm still discussing with my agent.
- [68:35]
Mark Halperin
Okay. Have you done it? Have you? Pardon me for not knowing. Have you done a novel before?
- [68:40]
Glenn Kessler
No, I haven't. So I wrote it, wrote it last year and I, I'm now fine tuning it.
- [68:45]
Mark Halperin
But can you say what it's about?
- [68:47]
Glenn Kessler
Yes. It takes place in the Dutch East Indies 100 years ago.
- [68:51]
Mark Halperin
Amazing.
- [68:52]
Glenn Kessler
Present day Indonesia. I obtained State Department cables in the National Archives and have used the information I found there to craft a narrative About a post pandemic world and rising American power.
- [69:07]
Mark Halperin
I look forward to the book party. How long have you been. How long were you working in a newsroom? How many years?
- [69:13]
Glenn Kessler
It's was about four decades.
- [69:14]
Mark Halperin
Four decades. And you left how long ago?
- [69:17]
Glenn Kessler
About three days ago.
- [69:18]
Mark Halperin
Okay. How are your biorhythms so far?
- [69:21]
Glenn Kessler
I missed the newsroom.
- [69:22]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [69:23]
Glenn Kessler
I miss having the inside scoop.
- [69:25]
Mark Halperin
Yeah.
- [69:26]
Glenn Kessler
And I hate working from home, so there we go.
- [69:29]
Mark Halperin
Get you a wework. For people who've never worked in a newsroom, there ain't nothing like it. Right. It's just a pulsating beating heart of humanity and curiosity. We're gonna have to find you a place to work because you'll go crazy working at home. After 40 years in a newsroom.
- [69:45]
Glenn Kessler
I. I was the first person back in the Post newsroom after Covid. I was literally there on the very first day.
- [69:51]
Mark Halperin
They open it up, just pounding on the door, let me back.
- [69:54]
Glenn Kessler
Yes, exactly.
- [69:55]
Mark Halperin
Well, again, congratulations on an extraordinary career. And again, as I said at the top, like your branding of Pinocchio's, I. There are very few analogs of that in journalism, so that alone is an achievement. And as I said, your columns, your articles represented an extraordinary amount of work that most journalists don't put in today. And I think it's great that the Post let you do it, because they were. They required a lot of research, a lot of reporting, very thorough. And just to be clear, I'm not painting you with the brush that I'm painting the entire paper with. I'm talking about what I call the dominant media in general. You're great sport for coming on and jousting with me, and I apologize for asking the same question 42 different ways. But I'm telling you, half the country is going to listen to this and say, what is wrong with that man? How could he. How could he not see what we can see clearly? And it continues to be a mystery to me, despite our great conversation.
- [70:50]
Glenn Kessler
Well, you know, like I said, I'm now out of the newsroom. I will be reading the Washington Post with a neutral eye, and I will keep my eye out.
- [70:58]
Mark Halperin
All right, well, if you spot anything that seems hostile, unduly hostile to Donald Trump, give us a call. We'll have you back.
- [71:04]
Glenn Kessler
Okay.
- [71:05]
Mark Halperin
Glenn Kessler, legendary journalist and new substack writer. What's the name of your substack by Glenn Kessler? By Glenn Kessler. I can't believe that name wasn't taken. It's available now. You can read the column we talked about and more coming and a novel and a nonfiction book also coming. Again, so grateful to you for making time. Really enjoyed the conversation.
- [71:26]
Glenn Kessler
Thanks for having me.
- [71:27]
Mark Halperin
Thank you. That was sort of exhausting. That is it for today's show. We'll be back Tuesday with another brand new episode. Make sure you subscribe and download. Next up, wherever you get your podcast, watch us on YouTube and tell all your friends, neighbors, associates, employees, bosses and people you meet in the subway or at the farm. Watch us, listen to us so you always know what's coming. Next up.