Brooke and Brian Lehrer Interview Each Other

Summary

On the Media - Episode Summary: "Brooke and Brian Lehrer Interview Each Other"

Release Date: December 1, 2022
Hosts: Brooke Gladstone & Brian Lehrer
Produced by: WNYC Studios

In this engaging episode of the award-winning "On the Media" podcast, host Brooke Gladstone sits down with her esteemed colleague Brian Lehrer for a reciprocal interview originally featured in Interview Magazine. This conversation delves into their professional journeys, reflections on media evolution, the impact of technology on journalism, and the dynamics of building community through media platforms.

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1. Professional Beginnings and Career Trajectories

Brooke Gladstone's Journey: Brooke Gladstone begins by recounting her early career at NPR, where she served as the first-ever full-time media correspondent. Prior to this role, she spent significant time as an editor and later as NPR’s Moscow correspondent during the mid-1990s.

"Prior to that I had been an editor for most of my time at NPR and then for three years the Moscow correspondent." [02:06]

Her tenure coincided with a pivotal period in media history characterized by the proliferation of cable services and the rise of online and digital media. Brooke highlights the emergence of platforms like Matt Drudge’s website, which began altering the landscape of information dissemination.

"We also had the rise of online media, digital media. Matt Drudge was a huge thing." [02:30]

Brian Lehrer's Path: Brian Lehrer shares his background rooted in Queens, New York, where a rich exposure to radio shaped his career aspirations. After college, he landed his dream job hosting an FM rock show in Albany. Unexpectedly, he expanded his role to include a weekend call-in show, which revealed the profound impact of radio as a community-building tool.

"I felt like I was a bystander, but it was probably more formative than I ever thought about at the time." [06:16]

This experience, particularly a critical moment when he assisted in saving a listener's life, underscored the relational and communal potential of radio.

"It also may have been how you found out what the power of radio can be. Potentially you were instrumental in saving a life." [06:04]

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2. Evolution of Media and the Internet's Role

Both hosts reflect on the transformative impact of the internet on media. Brooke emphasizes how media criticism was minimal before the web era due to limited platforms for widespread observation and discourse.

"There wasn't a lot of journalism criticism. I don't think they felt compelled to because there weren't so many people outside with eyes on them." [03:10]

Brian draws parallels between the early utopian expectations of the internet and the current polarized digital landscape. He reminisces about believing in the internet's potential to democratize information and build inclusive communities, only to witness its role in deepening societal divisions.

"I thought it was going to bring people together, it was going to build community... Now we know how polarizing the contemporary digital world has actually been." [10:13]

Brooke concurs, discussing the dual nature of vast media availability. While it ranges from exemplary to dismal, the algorithms behind social media platforms often exploit human emotions like fear and anger to drive engagement, inadvertently fostering divisiveness.

"It is profitable for these companies... to create engagement. And anger is a great tool to create engagement." [12:14]

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3. The Trouble with Reality: Exploring Moral Panic

Brooke delves into her book, "The Trouble with Reality," which examines the phenomenon of moral panic in contemporary society. She explains that following President Trump's election, she was commissioned to explore why such political shifts create widespread dissonance and how individuals construct and maintain their personal realities amidst such upheavals.

"It's an exploration of how we each construct our individual realities and how hard we work to maintain their integrity." [08:08]

Brian connects this exploration to broader media interactions, pondering how powerful algorithms and media manipulations challenge our perception of reality and personal truths.

"If we're being so manipulated by these ultra powerful algorithms, what do we do with that knowledge?" [13:47]

Brooke responds by advocating for journalistic integrity grounded in fairness and accuracy, rather than the elusive concept of objectivity, which she argues is unattainable due to inherent human biases.

"Fairness and accuracy is within all of our grasps. And we can do that as producers of news, and we can also do that as consumers of news." [14:03]

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4. Objectivity vs. Fairness in Journalism

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the distinction between objectivity and fairness. Brian defends the journalistic ideal of objectivity as a striving for a comprehensive and unbiased portrayal of reality.

"We're trying to paint a full, complex picture of reality for our audiences. So we're trying to the best of our ability to be objective." [15:29]

Brooke counters by redefining her stance, emphasizing that true objectivity—approaching every story without preconceived judgments—is impossible for humans. Instead, she champions "fairness," where journalists acknowledge their biases but commit to unbiased reporting through accuracy and fairness.

"Objectivity means that you go to everything with the blank mind... We all make mistakes occasionally. You make very few and usually correct them immediately." [16:00]

Brian concurs, endorsing Brooke's perspective while reiterating the importance of humility and the continuous effort to present unbiased information.

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5. Building and Sustaining Community Through Media

Transitioning to a discussion about community-building, Brooke highlights the unique role of the Brian Lehrer Show in fostering an informed and engaged community, especially during election cycles. She praises Brian for steering conversations towards substantive issues beyond sensationalist narratives.

"You don't just give them a voice, you give them important things to talk about." [17:05]

Brian elaborates on their initiative "30 Issues in 30 Days," which was designed to focus on a different issue each day leading up to elections, thereby providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of various important topics rather than succumbing to the hype of "red wave" narratives.

"30 issues in 30 days was born during the 2004 presidential election cycle." [18:06]

Brooke reflects on the pitfalls of media-driven polling and prognostication, which often distort the public's perception of political landscapes.

"It is the polls and the prognostication that fuels every election cycle and, of course, proved to be disastrous this time around." [19:31]

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6. Media, Fear, and Catharsis Through Storytelling

The conversation shifts to how media and storytelling tap into human emotions, particularly fear. Brooke discusses an episode of "On the Media" that examined Fox News' intensified coverage of crime, linking it to electoral strategies that exploit public fear to influence political outcomes.

"They were doing this as an election strategy to help the Republicans win, because ginning up fear of crime was proving an effective strategy in some cases." [20:03]

Drawing a parallel to horror movies, Brooke explains her personal affinity for the genre as a means of safely experiencing and processing fear.

"I really crave the catharsis you can get by being scared in a safe place like a movie seat or on your living room couch." [21:03]

Brian humorously likens horror films to controlled doses of fear, akin to vaccines, providing a safe environment to confront and release fear.

"It's almost like a COVID vaccine, or almost any kind of vaccine for. For the potential illness in question." [21:39]

Brooke adds depth by referencing a segment on black horror films, where a filmmaker utilized horror tropes to help process traumatic historical experiences, demonstrating the genre’s potential for communal healing.

"It's so much easier to process when we see it this way than when it's a continuous pressure, a formless fear invading your life and your unconscious." [21:53]

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7. Mutual Appreciation and Final Thoughts

As the interview concludes, both Brooke and Brian express mutual admiration for each other's work and contributions to media and community building. Brooke commends Brian for nurturing a smart and informed listener base, while Brian praises Brooke for her deep investigative work and the tangible impacts it has had, such as influencing testimonies in significant legal cases.

"Keep pulling back the curtain on our media and ourselves and we are so lucky to have you as host and Managing editor of OTM and not me." [23:01]

Brooke reciprocates by highlighting the resilience and growth of the Brian Lehrer Show community, emphasizing its role in fostering unity despite external challenges.

"Please keep building community and mending the community that is New York and all the listeners beyond New York." [23:39]

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Conclusion

This episode serves as a profound exploration of the intertwined paths of two influential media figures, emphasizing the evolving challenges and responsibilities of journalism in the digital age. Brooke Gladstone and Brian Lehrer provide valuable insights into maintaining journalistic integrity, leveraging media for community building, and navigating the complex emotional landscapes shaped by contemporary media narratives. Their conversation underscores the essential role of thoughtful, fair, and accurate journalism in fostering informed and resilient communities.

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Notable Quotes:

• "It's impossible to achieve [objectivity]; fairness and accuracy is within all of our grasps." – Brooke Gladstone [14:03]

• "You don't just give them a voice, you give them important things to talk about." – Brooke Gladstone [17:05]

• "Anger is a great tool to create engagement." – Brooke Gladstone [12:14]

• "It's almost like a COVID vaccine, or almost any kind of vaccine for. For the potential illness in question." – Brian Lehrer [21:39]

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For a deeper dive into this conversation, you can read the full interview titled "Brian Lehrer Points the mic at Brooke Gladstone" on Interview Magazine's website.

Transcript

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[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on the Media's Midweek podcast and this week for your delectation, I hope, a conversation with my longtime WNYC colleague Brian Lehrer for Interview magazine. For those outside the New York area, as countless listeners elsewhere too, Brian hosts one of the best live news and call in shows ever. The Brian Lehrer show has held a huge and diverse community together and kept it talking. After 9, 11, the big blackout, Superstorm Sandy, the death of Eric Garner, the Trump presidency, you name it. Every day he offers two hours of principled and contextualized conversation about news, both local and global, with the people who make it and the listeners who have to live with the consequences. Brian is a local hero. It so happens he was also the previous host of on the Media. In this chat, we share how we came to do what we do. This conversation appears in full on Interview magazine's website with the headline Brian Lehrer Points the mic at Brooke Gladstone.

Who starts. Brian.

[Brian Lehrer]

Who starts. When you have two interviewers in the same interview, both of our impulses would be to start, right? To serve rather than receive. So would, would you like the honor?

[Brooke Gladstone]

No, you go ahead. You're better alive.

[Brian Lehrer]

All right, so I'll reach back into a little bit of Brook history. You were working for NPR as their first ever full time media correspondent. That much I know.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Prior to that I had been an editor for most of my time at NPR and then for three years the Moscow correspondent.

[Brian Lehrer]

That was the mid-90s. Right. And for some reason at that point, or maybe I should say only at that point, did NPR decide to establish a position of a full time media correspondent. What was going on at that time that triggered that?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, I was in Moscow, so I don't remember much, but there was suddenly a proliferation of cable services. I mean, that wasn't brand new, but suddenly everything was moving to that space. We also had the rise of online media, digital media. Matt Drudge was a huge thing. All sorts of people were beginning to migrate to the web, if not as a primary source of information. Back then, a prominent one, 1995, is.

[Brian Lehrer]

Sometimes mentioned as the year that the World Wide Web as we know it was really launched. So obviously that was a pivotal moment.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Actually, media criticism was a pretty tiny group before the web. I mean, the voice Had a media critic, newspapers, a lot of them didn't. They may have talked about cool shows coming up, but there wasn't a lot of journalism criticism. I don't think they felt compelled to because there weren't so many people outside with eyes on them and with a platform to share their observations. Now, how about you? Prior to the Brian Lehrer show? I know that you're a native client Queens Ian, and that your interests ranged from music to public health. And tell me how you wound up at wnyc.

[Brian Lehrer]

I grew up in Queens listening to a lot of radio, both music and news. My parents were politically aware and musical. And in college I kind of majored in the campus radio station and minored in my courses. After college I was able to get what I thought was my dream job, which was an FM rock show on an Albany radio station. And they told me that besides my five day a week music show, I had to do something on the weekends. And I said, well, can I just come in late Sunday night and open the phones? And to my shock, they said yes. And the reason was that in those days, even music radio stations needed some kind of public affairs credit with the FCC to maintain their licenses. And after a little while, I discovered that I was putting more energy into my once a week, middle of the night calling show than my five day a week, five hour a day music show. So I decided to go back to school for a master's in journalism and really focus on broadcast news. And from there I gradually wound up at wnyc.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Wow, that is interesting. And a lot of stuff I didn't know. Surely you're familiar with Donald Fagan's song Lester the Night Fly. It's about a late night DJ who opens the phones and some of the saddest and strangest voices come through.

[Brian Lehrer]

That particular calling show is a midnight to three show. And the thing that landed me in the Albany papers one time was not anything incisive that I said about politics or the world. It was when I had a suicide call from a listener and another alert listener called the cops who came to the studio and asked me to keep the guy on the line and try to find out his address, which I managed to do. And the cops got there and they saved his life.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It also may have been how you found out what the power of radio can be. Potentially you were instrumental in saving a life.

[Brian Lehrer]

It was, yeah, I feel like I was a bystander, but it was probably more formative than I ever thought about at the time in terms of approaching the talk show that I have at WNYC as not just something that's public affairs in an intellectual sense, but that's relational community building exercise and a tiny little relationship with each caller, what they.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Call nowadays a parasocial relationship. I mean, there's more intimacy on the side of the listener than on the side of the speaker, necessarily because we reveal so much more of ourselves than they are able to reveal of themselves. But nevertheless, there is a relationship and it's one of trust and curiosity and not to get too sticky of service.

[Brian Lehrer]

As it is in your case. I mean, you go deeper than people even think you're going to go when they're listening to on the media.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I mean, I'm grateful for on the media for forcing me to think deeply. Otherwise I'd probably spend a lot more time skating across the surface of things. But I have a very low threshold when it comes to boredom and I don't want to tell anybody anything that they already know.

[Brian Lehrer]

Yeah, well, I think it's a privilege and a benefit of the jobs that we both have that it kind of prompts us toward curiosity. So one example in your case is that you wrote a book called the Trouble with Reality. Is it a rumination or ruminations on the.

[Brooke Gladstone]

A rumination on moral panic in our time, which was consciously high falutin.

[Brian Lehrer]

What led you to that and what did you mean by moral panic?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, Workman, the publisher came to me, we were working on another project and it was right after President Trump was elected. And those of us who live on the coasts and in large cities were conscious of a high pitched scream, a wail as it were coming from households and everywhere across the country, this sort of what the fuck just happened? This wasn't supposed to happen here. And they said, we want you to write something about that. And I said, look, I know how the publishing business works. I write something, it takes two years to come out. The world has already changed three times. I will write this monograph. It's not a book, more like a large pamphlet in two weeks and you have to bring it out in two months. And they did. And I was basically just answering the question, what happened? We've all had presidents elected that we weren't crazy about. And I'm not a spring chicken. I've seen, seen decades of presidential cycles and I've had my fair share of profound disappointments, but this, this was something else. And then what it came down to was an exploration of how we each construct our individual realities and how hard we work to maintain their integrity, how how we're wired neurochemically to lie to ourselves if it keeps that worldview intact. And this was a great shattering.

[Brian Lehrer]

Something that maybe relates to both of us is, you know, we mentioned 1995 as a kind of turning point. You were NPR's first full time media correspondent. People reading this may not know that I hosted on the media for the three years before you.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Do you remember we had lunch and I said, are you sure you don't want this job? And you said, I assure you I don't want this job.

[Brian Lehrer]

Well, when they move from a part time host to a full time host and you became the full time host, people don't remember that I hosted it because it was much less memorable when I hosted it. But you were a frequent guest when I was hosting on the media. And looking back, I wonder if in those early days of the Internet you had the same feeling that I did and have changed in a similar way. Because I was definitely one of those people who fell for the utopian narrative of what the Internet could be. You know, even though I was a professional journalist, I thought it was great that journalism, the collection and dissemination of information was going to be democratized where anybody could do it. And I thought it was going to bring people together, it was going to build community and have people move out of their cable news echo chambers and other media echo chambers into having to interact with people not like them because you could respond and interaction would take place. So now we know how polarizing the contemporary digital world has actually been. And I wonder if you went through a sort of similar revolution.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I absolutely did. There and back again and back yet again and then there and back again. You know, once I was on some PBS show and they said, rate the media, you know, give it a letter grade. And I said, I guess I give it an A, B, C, D and F. There's just so damn much of it out there. And it ranges from the greatest that ever was to the worst that could ever be. The dark side of that is the Nazi who sits at the end of the bar in Topeka, say, can cry into his beer about how horrible the country is, but he isn't going to find at that bar, you know, 50,000 people who agree with him. And he can find that online. So that strengthens those voices. One thing I think that we thought, Brian, you and I and so many of the former utopians was that human nature is something other than it is. It's very plastic. I used to think, well, we just get the media we deserve. And we suck, and therefore we get sucky media or we are drawn to sucky media. Now, I realize with a greater understanding of how these algorithms work, that our natures are plastic. And it is profitable for these companies that rely on clicks and engagement to find eyeballs for the ads which support those services to create engagement. And anger is a great tool to create engagement. Fear is a great tool. And so that we are manipulated not to be our best selves, but our worst selves. And that, I believe, is baked in to the way that these social media platforms are frequently sustained. And that is something I came to much later.

[Brian Lehrer]

The trouble with reality. Wow. If we're being so manipulated by these ultra powerful algorithms, what do we do with that knowledge? The relative few people who will stop to conceptualize it that way.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, you can protect yourself. I think, just like we need to be fair and accurate, leaving objectivity, which has been, I think, pretty much killed as a word to describe what the best journalist is, because it's impossible to achieve, I would say fairness and accuracy is within all of our grasps. And we can do that. I think we should do that as producers of news, and we can also do that as consumers of news.

[Brian Lehrer]

Well, what's the difference between accuracy, which you embrace, and objectivity, which it sounds like you just through overboard sometimes? Even though I realize we are all a product of our backgrounds, I bristle at people's denunciation of journalistic objectivity as a goal, because I think that's what we're striving for if we have any humility. As journalists, we're trying to paint a full, complex picture of reality for our audiences. And so we're trying to the best of our ability to be objective, not just indulge in our subjectivity. So what's the difference between accuracy and objectivity that would discredit what I just said?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, first of all, I don't think that it's a choice between objectivity and indulging in subjectivity. I mean, but I think that a lot of this is actually a semantic discussion. Objectivity means that you go to everything with the blank mind. You haven't made any decisions, you haven't made any judgments. Well, people aren't like that. That's why I say it's impossible. We go through life, we have experience, we form judgments, we form values. That informs our work, it certainly informs yours, but it never makes you unfair, and it never makes you knowingly inaccurate. We all make mistakes occasionally. You make very few and usually correct them immediately. And that means that you are willing to listen, that you are willing to interrogate, that you're conscious of your opinions, but you also have values. I'm saying that as a word, as I understand, can't exist in a thinking person because a thinking person makes choices. That's why I say fairness as opposed to. I mean, leaving accuracy aside. That's why actually fairness is what I substitute for objectivity, not accuracy, which I think any journalist who knowingly lies is not a journalist.

[Brian Lehrer]

I accept that and endorse this message. Can I ask you sort of.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Wait a minute. This is about me. I'm asking you something.

[Brian Lehrer]

Okay, go ahead.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I want to talk about what makes your program unique in a maligned medium. Actually, we're all maligned. Right. Shakespeare wrote in a play, first let's shoot all the lawyers. I've met enough people who feel that they should, you know, metaphorically shoot all the journalists. But talk radio has a bad name, mostly because of am, when it's the most important community building mechanism we can have. And the Brian Lehrer community is one of the smartest, best informed ones there is. And it's partly because you rise above what might be expected in so many ways. You don't just give them a voice, you give them important things to talk about. And especially around election times like now, you give them this innovation, which I'm so proud of. I talk about it all the time, even though it's not mine, which is 30 issues in 30 days.

[Brian Lehrer]

You say innovation. In a way, it's just old fashioned public affairs.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Not like that. Not the way you do it in a run up to an election. So people understand what they need to consider when they become the informed electorate that they're supposed to be.

[Brian Lehrer]

30 issues and 30 days was born during the 2004 presidential election cycle. This year I was proud that we did that because let's say in New York, for example, where we both are, the race had become so much about crime one way or the other. And then the media ran with that. But again, what about health care? What about housing? What about democracy? What about so many other things? Abortion was the other issue that was being discussed, and of course we wanted to discuss that too. But what we avoided, I think, was the temptation to indulge in red wave stories which turned out to be false because we, as a matter of policy, did not do explicit polling segments as opposed to following the structure that we set up for ourselves where we were going to do an issue a day for 30 minutes.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It is the polls and the prognostication that Fuels every election cycle and, of course, proved to be disastrous this time around.

[Brian Lehrer]

It makes me think again of the ways that you go deeper than people think you're going to go as hosts of a media show. And I want to take this in a different direction, but I think it relates back to the trouble with reality and how we interact with the media. On your show, you did a show that was hooked around the emotion of fear. And the obvious newsy angle was that Fox News had recently amped up their coverage of crime, even though crime rates had not suddenly increased. And your takeaway from that, if I heard it right, was that they were doing this as an election strategy to help the Republicans win, because ginning up fear of crime was proving an effective strategy in some cases. But then you went from there to later in the show, a segment about horror movies. It was Halloween week also.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Exactly.

[Brian Lehrer]

And I know you like horror movies. We once had this conversation in the office, and I'm like, no, I just want to look away. Give me a. Or something, you know. Why do you like horror films again?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, I think that I'm more naturally a fearful person than you are, Brian. I think a lot of what I do is motivated by fear, whether I'm conscious of it all the time or not. I think, therefore, I really crave the catharsis you can get by being scared in a safe place like a movie seat or on your living room couch. And so there's certainly that. There's a sort of predictability to it, as the person we interviewed discussed, that sense that you're going to be scared in formulaic ways, which makes it even easier to take.

[Brian Lehrer]

It's almost like a COVID vaccine, or almost any kind of vaccine for. For the potential illness in question. A controlled dose of fear or horror, possibly.

[Brooke Gladstone]

After the piece I did, Becca Clark Callender, one of our producers, did a piece on black horror in particular, and there was a maker of a horror film who talked to women who had horrible experiences during Jim Crow. And he'd used some of those tropes in these films. And he said, too much. Not good. Do you hate it? And they said, no, we love it. It's so much easier to process when we see it this way than when it's a continuous pressure, a formless fear invading your life and your unconscious.

[Brian Lehrer]

I think we've used our available time and we should probably lift the curtain.

[Brooke Gladstone]

We don't have an ark. Can I offer a tribute to you? I love your program. I love what you do for New York City. I love your Queen's accent and I know that all of New York loves it too. I hope you never ever try and get rid of it at this point. It would be way too late in any case.

[Brian Lehrer]

And I love your show and the many spurs that it has created, including even one of your producers winding up testifying at the Oath Keepers trial because the reporting that he did in the context of on the media revealed so much. So keep pulling back the curtain on our media and ourselves and we are so lucky to have you as host and Managing editor of OTM and not me.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And Brian, you are so lucky not to have me host of the Brian Lehrer Show. Please keep building community and mending the community that is New York and all the listeners beyond New York, even as events conspire to tear it apart. You've built something really durable and growing.

[Brian Lehrer]

And I think they love your New York accent too. Even in Arizona and Nevada.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, Syosset, you know, known for its accent. You take care Brian.

[Brian Lehrer]

And you.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Thanks for listening to the Midweek podcast. You can read the print version of my conversation with Brian on interviewmagazine.com on this week's big show out on Friday, tune in to hear about what it takes to uncover the real identity of a sleeper spy.

[WNYC]

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