Transcript
Mark Halperin (0:00)
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Megyn Kelly (1:08)
I'm Mark Halpern. Thank you for joining to learn what's next up here. I'm the editor in chief of two Way and the host of this program on the Megyn Kelly Network. We are off to a fast start. Very grateful to all of you for watching on YouTube, listening wherever your finer podcasts are available and all the folks at MK Media for supporting us. And in celebration of the new MK Media Network, Megan Kelly will be here. We'll have a robust talk about the news, her big interview with the authors of that Biden book, and also I got some probing questions for Megan about stuff like her favorite movie and where she'd like to visit. She's never been so looking forward to talking to Megan. And then Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton will be here. I think some of you probably think of him as a super serious guy and we'll talk about some serious stuff. That shooting in Washington on on Wednesday night, that's tragic and, and has a lot of meaning behind it, but also some lighter stuff. And Senator Cotton is an incredible student of woke woke culture has has had firsthand experience dealing with that and also as you'll see, was pretty early on in seeing the reality of Joe Biden, Biden's cognitive decline. So we'll get to all that. But first I want to go back to a topic that we've discussed here before, which is the media and the media's lack of credibility. We've talked about the Democrats also having a lack of credibility for a variety of reasons related to issues, but also to the, the failure to acknowledge what was playing the eyes of the American people and people in conservative media and some independent journalists, which is Joe Biden's cognitive decline. The press is in a crisis of confidence and credibility over that as well. And what I have said, you've heard me say it, is that there needs to be a full acknowledgement, not a, oh, we shouldn't have missed the story, which is now kind of the line that's going around. But why you missed the story and the reason that the story was missed, I can tell you from having worked in liberal newsrooms for a lot of my career, is because they didn't want to help Donald Trump win. And so they, just as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop story, just as they did with the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story by the big social media platforms on this story, they could all see what was happening, but they pretended it wasn't. So I've said it's important to have a full acknowledgement of the errors. I think every newsroom, if they ask me what they should do, they should have a full investigation. What was the internal communication like with their reporters and their editors and their correspondents and their executive producers? What kind of communication did they have to say, should we investigate this story? Go look at the, the, the rundowns and the, and the, and the internal communications on big days when things happened where Joe Biden demonstrated cognitive decline. The day he talked to a dead congresswoman at an event in part to honor her. What was the chatter like inside? And then interview all your editors and your reporters and your managers and say, what did you do? How did you see it? How did you miss it? So I think that's super important because that's in the news right now. But there's the larger issue of credibility and the larger issue which has become put in sharper relief since Donald Trump went down the escalator of the lack of credibility. And I say to my liberal friends, including my liberal friends, who work in the media and deny they're liberal sometimes, even if you don't think the media is liberal and biased against Republicans and particularly biased against Donald Trump, not all the time, but often know that half the country thinks it. Now, Michael Jordan said he didn't endorse Democrats even though he was a Democrat because Republicans buy sneakers, too. I don't understand in an industry that's struggling for financial relevance and survival, how you could say you didn't want to sell your product to half the country. But that's, that's what's happened. And I'll just remind people in the media today some of the things that's true about the media and give my advice about what needs to be done to restore credibility beyond a full accounting of what they did on the Biden Acuity story. First is recognize that almost everybody in the country thinks the media is biased. Okay? The critics certainly do, people in conservative media do, Republicans do. But the public at large can see it. I've done so many focus groups, had so many discussions, even liberals. Now, if you've streamed Trump derangement syndrome, you might say, well, the media's biased because they're not hard enough on Donald Trump. And that's sometimes true. Being hard on Donald Trump is difficult. I said he's very difficult to cover for a variety of reasons. But I talked to plenty of liberals. I remember when I was covering the Obama campaign in 2008, publicly they'd never say it, but privately they'd all say, of course the media is biased towards us. They're biased towards us over Hillary Clinton, but they're also biased towards us against John McCain. So I think a fulsome apology from the heads of news organizations to say, we get it. You think we're biased, and you think we're biased against Donald Trump because of our conduct. We're sorry, we apologize. We have to do better. I think that'd be helpful. But it's more than that. It's, it's to come clean and to give other examples, not to acknowledge in a, in a, in a halting way or in as limited way as possible to try to get through the crisis, but come clean. Examine the, the, the, the, the many incidences of bias. Acknowledge the flaws. You don't have to say we're horrible people or American journalism isn't great. American journalism is, is, and has been the best in the world. But you got to acknowledge that there have been mistakes that have caused many people in America to see the bias. And again, the Biden cognitive decline story is only the latest. What else needs to be done? Choose words carefully before you publish them. Look at every word and every paragraph and say, how. How fair is that? Are we writing about Donald Trump exactly the same way we would write about a Democratic president who did the same thing and vice versa? Are we writing about the Democrats the way we would write about a Republican? The whole point of my business is to be fair regardless of party, to treat everybody equally or as equal as possible. Okay, then. And this is going to be a hard one. Get the avowed liberals out of the newsroom. Okay. Now there are a lot of reporters who, in, in conversation, and I saw this when I worked, everywhere I worked in establishment media, people will say in private meetings, but in front of a lot of people, crazy liberal things, things that reflect obvious bias against, against conservatives, and particularly against Donald Trump, fire those people. Maybe give them a second chance. But if they're an avowed liberal, not just someone who leans left, fire them. And if people say things, if you're in a leadership role in your newsroom and somebody says something that reflects systemic hostility towards the President of the United States who won the popular vote, call them on it. Don't just laugh or sit in silence about it. Okay, Tom Cotton will be here later. As I said, Tom Cotton wrote an op ed piece for the New York Times espousing the, the use of the military to restore order during the unrest following the, the death of George Floyd. And that op ed piece caused a revolt in the New York Times newsroom because the liberal said he shouldn't say that. It makes them, it makes them feel unsafe. And it was a position, by the way, that was held according to polls by big majority of the American people. That case study should be looked at by every news manager in the country. You cannot let the woke liberal reporters or anchors or correspondents or producers or graphic design artists in your newsroom dictate what you do. And that's what's happened. The leaders, I think, are less biased, although some of them are just as biased. But on balance, I think the leaders are less biased than the rank and file teams of, again, reporters, et cetera. You cannot let them run your newsroom. Everyone study what the New York Times did. They fired the head of the op ed page, my friend James Bennett. They fired him because they were letting the liberals in the newsroom intimidate the managers. You cannot do that. You cannot do that. Then you've got to develop an economic model that will allow your organization to thrive by being fair. Right now, too many organizations, including ones who claim to not be biased, like Politico, like the New York Times, too much of their revenue is tied to catering to liberals. If that's what you want to be, if you want to be the Rachel Mad show, then go all in on that. But if you're going to say to the public that you are reporting equally on Republicans and Democrats and that you're not biased against Donald Trump, you need to have a business model that will allow you to survive. So don't get addicted to the liberal audience unless that's your business model, and you're. And you're proud doing that. If you don't want to be addicted to the liberal audience, you got to come up with something else. It's vital. After Donald Trump won, why did I, why, why was I one of the reporters who said in 2016 Trump could win? Because I traveled with Donald Trump to more than 30 states and I talked to voters all over the why are you inclined to support Donald Trump? After that, the New York Times said, we need to do better. We need to get out in the country. We need to talk to more people. And other news organizations said, let's open bureaus other places. Let's be out in the country. To the extent that happened, it didn't take because the coverage of the Trump administration, of the 2020 campaign and the 2024 campaign was biased. And I've said this many times that bias did not hurt Donald Trump. It helped him. It helped him because of the backlash. So go out in the country and talk to people. Donald Trump in 2016 and to this day talks about the families of people who were killed or attacked or harmed by people who are in this country illegally. I can't imagine a more compelling human interest story and an important story that is resonant for tens of millions of people, many of whom are Trump supporters, but some of whom are not. And I keep saying to people in the media, the dominant media, cover those stories. It's one example, but to me, it's an incredibly symbolically important one. Cover those stories, explain the grief of those families, explain the injustice that they feel to have lost a loved one or seen a loved one hurt by someone in the country illegally because the border wasn't secure. Cover the stories, talk to people, listen for different points of view. I have seen since Donald Trump won the second time, and I'll say, I'll give him credit, the New York Times has probably been the best year. I've seen some examples of stories that recognize their diverse opinions in this country, but not, not nearly enough. Every American is equal. Every point of view has a right to be heard. People can have their opinions, okay? But journalism is about truth, and it's about fairness. It's not about having an agenda. There are lots of jobs you can have in this country, lots of jobs where you can choose to be amongst people who think just like you, talk to people who are just like you. You can push a specific agenda. There are lots of things you can do. If that's your point of view, that's not what you're supposed to do if you're in a newsroom. So you shouldn't go into a newsroom as a manager, as a reporter, as anything else and say, I'm in the news business and my job is to stop Donald Trump from being successful. Go do something else if that's what you want to do. Be fair, judicious, hard working, think through how to win back the trust. And that, as much as anything else, should be the guiding principle of people in newsrooms today. I'm so frustrated by what's happening now. And if you've heard me in the last week, you've heard it in my voice because this new book about Biden acuity comes out and all these people, including the authors, one of the authors of the book, Jake Tapper, says, well, we missed the story. We missed it. I'm, we're sorry. I'm sorry. I missed is not a credible example, just as it's not credible for Democrats like the governor of Michigan to say, well, I'm at in Michigan. We're half a, half a half a country away from Washington. Tom Cotton saw Joe Biden's acuity decline in 2020. As I said last episode, I saw it in 2017. The answer is not I didn't have inside sources or when I was with the president privately, he didn't display any acuity decline. That's not the answer. The answer is I didn't report it because, and again, my suspicion for most reporters is I didn't report it because I didn't want to help Trump win. And I didn't report it because Joe Biden's a nice guy. And I didn't report it because if I tried to report it, the Biden people said they'd cut off my access. Okay, I think those are the reasons. I think for different reporters and different news organizations, the mix of motivation is different. But those, all those reasons fall far short of what a journalist should be about, what a journalist should do. So I'm frustrated because to me, if the press is ever going to win back credibility with the half the country who thinks they are simply out to get Republicans in general and Donald Trump specifically, this is the opportunity. You take the biggest media scandal in American history and you use it as an opportunity not just to try to finesse your way through the inexplicable, but to come clean. And I've given some ideas here about how to come clean. This would be hard to do. When I talked about this list with people, they'll say, well, you can't expect them to do that. It's a heavy lift, but it must be done. I love my profession. I'm such a zealous defender of the prerogatives of the media to serve the public interests. And I'm a big believer in the need, as the founding fathers were, the need to have a strong press corps that can hold all powerful interests accountable to the public interest. It's so out of whack. And I continue to hear people who have risen to very senior positions in some of these news organizations say, well, press isn't that biased. There's other biases. There's establishment bias or controversy bias. There are other biases and I'm against those too. And I urge newsrooms to try to deal with those. But the one they must deal with right now, right now is to have hostility to the sitting president. Cover him tough. Cover the fact that he's selling the office of the presidency. Cover the fact that, that he's doing things that seem to violate, in some cases do violate civil liberties. Cover the fact that he's cutting programs that may hurt some people and the country's not having a full debate. There's lots to cover and needs to be covered. But the only way, the only way to cover it with credibility is to fundamentally redo the newsroom, have a full public accounting and have accountability going forward. If you sit in a newsroom full of liberals who hate Donald Trump, guess what? It's going to affect the coverage. I'm not saying cover him soft. I'm saying cover him with credibility and toughness. But don't think you can cover him in a way that will give you access to half the country as your consumers if you just keep doing the same old thing the same way. All right, I'll keep monitoring it. Maybe some someone will call me and ask me to come be be a consultant to them to help them figure this out. I'm open for business. All right, next up, Megyn Kelly. And then a little bit later, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is next up.