← Solutions with Henry Blodget
Solutions with Henry Blodget
What Broke Trust in Journalism & How to Fix It, According to Ken Auletta
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Henry Blodget
Once again, the media industry is under assault. The wave of growth and innovation that drove the rise of digital has crested. Political polarization has undermined credibility. The First Amendment is being attack hacked and AI is threatening to replace human journalists. What are the solutions to the industry's problems? This week we turn to one of the world's most experienced and trusted media observers. Han Aul Letta has written about media and technology for the New Yorker for almost 50 years. He's studied the rise of cable TV, the Internet and today's tech giants. And he's profiled the people behind them. Ken has always sought not to advance an ideology or speak truth to power, but to understand and explain. So there's no one better to make sense of what's happening and where we're headed. Ken, great to have you. It's such a privilege. The media world is once again in the middle of a cyclone of change. Lots of people are wringing their hands wondering if there is going to be a media world after AI takes over. What's the future of.
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Ken Auletta
Oh, it unclear. I mean I, I wake up and, and intellectually I'm a pessimist about the future media. Emotionally I'm an optimist. I mean, I can't live as a pessimist, but I see things like artificial intelligence, but more potently. The thing I worry about is the lack of universal facts. I mean the digital world has introduced, and not just the digital world, but Fox News as part of that has introduced the whole notion that you can create your own facts or believe your own facts. And the idea that Walter Cronkite watch Walter Cronkite and you get universal facts. Cbs, New York Times, whatever. No longer true. Just look at the headline. Look at a headline in the New York Times versus a headline, say in the New York Post, they're very different about the same facts. Did Trump win the 2024 election, for instance? And majority Republicans believe he won that election, even though factually he lost that election. So if you don't operate from universal facts, inevitably the whole idea of conciliation and compromise that's central to a democracy is out the window.
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Henry Blodget
And so take us back because Walter Cronkite is often invoked in exactly this way that he was just such an incredibly widely trust figure and whatever he said was taken as the gospel. Is that really true? Was there no distrust in the media that just wasn't being written about every day in those days?
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Ken Auletta
Well, you didn't have the level of mistrust. I mean the majority of people don't trust the media according to polls today. And, and back in Walter Cronkite's day, a majority did trust the media. I mean, to go back and think about what Lyndon Johnson said when Walter Cronkite went on the air after the tet offensive in 1968 and basically said it looks like America is going to lose the Vietnam War. And Johnson was quoted as saying, we just lost. When we lose Walter Cronkite, we lose. And so the assumption was that he spoke universally, he spoke to the populace, and that's no longer true. Now the bad news about that is that you had too few sources of information back at Walter Cronkite's day. I mean, people didn't have the advantage we have today of a democracy of information that floods us. And that's both good and bad. The good is that we got many more sources of news. The bad is we have too many sources of news and we have an ability through social media to basically pump at people what they want to hear and what they want to believe.
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Henry Blodget
And if we go back even farther, there is a time before the three broadcast networks and Walter Cronkite. And when I read about that era in newspapers, it sounds like in every city there was a free for all of many dailies, all competing very you described as yellow news, not trustworthy. They were all effectively trying to compete to survive. And it was extremely difficult. Was society also less cohesive then?
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Ken Auletta
Well, I think it was more normal than today, which is more abnormal. But, but if you go back to the McCarthy period in the 50s, I mean you had a sizable chunk of the population that was rabid that believed that communists were taking over the State Department and our government. And so the America was, was driven by polarization then of a kind, the way we're driven by polarization today. I think the polarization today is worse than it was back in the 50s, but nevertheless, it's not unique to our time and place.
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Henry Blodget
And I remember asking this question of Kevin McCarthy in some event, basically being very frustrated 15 years ago about why Congress never to be doing something. And I said, has there ever been a time in America history where we were more polarized and people were so unwilling to bend a little bit to compromise? And he said, dude, you know, civil war like this country has been fighting forever. And just hearing you say that about McCarthyism in the 50s, this was the Walter Cronkite era. This was the era with the disciple of truth, and yet incredibly polarized. So I guess my main question coming back to today is the media often gets blamed for the polarization and social media gets blamed for it. Is it to blame? And I mean, you've written, you started, I think, when you got into journalism. And I want to talk a little bit about your background in a minute, but I think you started at the New York Post. You've written for the New Yorker. So you've seen sort of different political sides of how media is conducted. Was there a universal commitment to fact that you feel like has changed in the last couple of decades?
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Ken Auletta
I think that, yes, I believe that there is more of a emphasis on the facts that I believe in. And if you read, for instance, the New York Post and compare it to what you read in the New York Times, oftentimes the same facts are judged in a very different way or presented a very different way. And Fox News is more egregious in this regard in the sense of, you know, if you look at Iran, if you read the New York Times, the Times does report on the fact that America is doing less. Well, for instance, there's a report yesterday that 30 of the 33 missile launching sites in Iran are still operable. Yet if you listen to Fox News, they quote Trump as saying, we've obliterated Iran's military. Well, obviously we haven't. So what's the fact? Is the Times fact correct? Which Trump, by the way, wants to sue the New York Times now for what they call traitorous reporting, claiming that Iran is stronger than they are and that we have not obliterated them.
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Henry Blodget
And was that not something that you would get out of the media sphere 50 years ago, that you wouldn't get
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Ken Auletta
it in the same sense? I mean, for instance, when I was growing up in Coney island, we had nine newspapers in New York, and, and the Herald Tribune, which is a Republican newspaper. The facts that you, you, you would. They reported on what was going on in the world. Very similar, even though Republican owned very similar to the New York Times, which had a more liberal bent. And you had, obviously, tabloids may sensationalize certain facts and they had points of view that reflected. But it seems to me it wasn't as sharp a distinction as we have today between, say, Fox News and cnn. Now, admittedly, if you go back to the Hearst era, at the turn of the last century, Hearst was promoting wars and basically claiming victories in Cuba and South America, which was just colonization on America's part. But he was pushing warfare. That was a very rabid sense that you had then that is very similar to what you have today.
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Henry Blodget
And is that what you know the Murdochs very well, Rupert Murdoch, and profiled him and many others. Is that your sense of his driving mission is to use media to bring about change that he wants in the world?
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Ken Auletta
He said to me, when I profiled Rupert Murdoch in 95 for the new Yorker, I said, in your vast empire, which is television and Internet, then MySpace and, and newspapers, et cetera, I said, what's the thing that gives you most pleasure? He says, being in a newsroom, the newspapers. I said, why? He said, I love the influence it gives me. Now, saying that there's no question he has the cell phone number of Donald Trump. He has great access to the President of the United States and he has great power. And if you look at all the media moguls in history, they were people, Hearst, Beaverbrook, who had power in one country and usually in one industry, newspapers. Murdoch is on multiple continents in multiple media. So we've never had a media mogul with that kind of power. He has. But then to give it some balance, he owns the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal is not a propaganda arm. It's a great newspaper. And his editorials are often critical of Donald Trump, even though Fox News is not, which he owns, is not critical of Donald Trump. So things are always complicated. And when you scratch, you're always going to find multiple truths.
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Henry Blodget
And why is that? That it's different. And part of the reason I ask is there's often a discussion between the media owner and the media property about whether the media property is independent or whether the media owner is dictating what the media property is going to publish. And it sounds like from what you're saying, Rupert Murdoch sort of left the Wall Street Journal alone to an extent, whereas Fox seems to have been created in his image. Is that what's Going on or is it just happens to be a particular staff that was assembled at Fox that sees the world that way versus the staff at the Journal?
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Ken Auletta
I think at Fox, Murdoch has created kind of Frankenstein monster that he doesn't quite control. Go back to the 2024 election. Fox basically said that Donald reported that Donald Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. And Murdoch allowed for Fox News to say to call Arizona for Biden in 2024. Trump went crazy. He thought Fox was an alien force, was anti me and he attacked it regularly. And then Dominion Machine Company did 20% of the elections in 2024. They were telling Murdoch and Fox, you're putting Giuliani on. And these people who are claiming the election was stolen, it's wrong, you shouldn't be doing that. But they persisted in doing it. And so Dominion sued Fox and Murdoch when they brought Murdoch on oath for deposition and they asked Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch, do you believe that Joe Biden won the 2024 election? And he said yes. So why Mr. Murdoch, did you. I'm paraphrasing. Why, Mr. Murdoch, did you allow Fox to print falsehoods that in fact Trump won the election? And he said, look, we lost a third of our audience. We had to get them back. It was a business decision. So here's a guy who believed that in fact Biden won the election, but allowed an entity he owned, Fox, to portray that Trump actually won the election, Biden lost the election. And why? Because it was a business decision. And that is not what he believed personally. But business wise, he felt he was compelled to do that.
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Henry Blodget
And do you feel like that's the explanation for a lot of what's happened? Is that preaching to the choir, telling people what they want to hear, what they're already predisposed to think is just a better business model? Certainly the New York Times is accused of that. Preaching to its choir. Msnbc, now msnow, has its choir. Is it just that that's a better business model?
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Ken Auletta
It's certainly a factor. I wouldn't say it's the sole factor, but clearly New York Times reporters worry that. They used to worry about the power of advertisers. They now worry about the power of readers, particularly, particularly digital readers who tend to be reading the New York Times tend to be more liberal. And they worried, are we giving them what they want or are we beholden to them in a way that Murdoch and Fox News were beholden to its readers? There's some worry about that. There's no evidence comparable to the evidence that Fox News is doing that regarding the New York Times, but clearly it is a worry. And we have the ability now to measure what an audience wants digitally, which we didn't have 20, 25 years ago. And the worry is, hey, they like Kim Kardashian. We need more Kardashian stuff. And so there is that worry that we have in journalism, and I think it's legitimate worry that by being able to measure what our readers want, we too often give them what they want, and we're afraid to give them too much spinach.
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Henry Blodget
And is that fundamentally different than what a great editor in chief would have done 50 years ago, where the editor in chief, the judgment about, hey, is this a story that's going to be compelling to our audience? Is that fundamentally different now just because you know so much more about which articles are really stirring the pot and which aren't and which people read and which they share and so forth?
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Ken Auletta
Well, now you have evidence, not instinct or gut. And 50 years ago, you may have done the same thing. You may have sought to placate your readers or viewers, and certainly they did oftentimes. But you didn't have the ability to measure and know with certitude what the reader or viewer wanted. And so when you go, if you're a reporter at, say, CBS News, and you say, hey, our people are, you know, we ought to tell them more about what's going on in Africa. And the person says, but wait a second, our African stories get no viewership. I'm not going to do that. And 50 years ago, if you went in and said, we should do more stories about Africa, the editor or the publisher might say, I don't think that works. But he couldn't throw back evidence at them that didn't work. So you had a better chance of persuading them, I think, than you may have today. And I think one of the challenges always for good journalism is are you willing to upset your readers or viewers? Are you willing to do stories that because you, in your professional judgment, you believe it's important for the reader or viewer to have that information, even if it does not attract a mass audience, the same way that a Kim Kardashian story does or a story about Donald Trump bombing Iran does? And I think that's part of our obligation as professionals, not just to salute the reader and not just to give them what measurement tells you they won, but to make a judgment about what you think is news. I mean, we make decisions every day. What's the lead story, what's on the Front page. That's a professional judgment we're making about what we think is important or what we think the reader or viewer needs to know. And I think that's good. On the other hand, if you watch today's show or Good Morning America or evening news, you won't find much international news on it. And even cnn, which, which has a next to the BBC, the largest international news organization in the world, do they employ that news organization to present international news on cnn? Not in America. Not enough, in my judgment. And I think that they then fall down. They're not doing what professional journalists should do, which is. This is what I think is important for you to know, even though it may not get the same rating points as these episodes.
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Henry Blodget
And I can, I can certainly sympathize with the editors in that case, because that particular example, you as an editor, having been an editor there is just much less interest, even if it's a very important story and you do want to be relevant. Like everyone, we have choices in media. You want to speak to people. You do not want to just sit there and lecture them about things they don't care about, even if it's important. And I think in this society, we. There's so few people now that we sort of grant the status of Oracle to whatever this person thinks. That's what I should think because they're so smart and they see the world
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Ken Auletta
I the way I think I think that's healthy. I also, in fairness, I must confess, if you put someone like me in charge of cnn, I'd be fired after three days. And I know that.
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Henry Blodget
Okay, so just to get to it again, and I know that some of our friends in the media will probably think this is an incredibly naive question, but. So do you think the staff at Fox and the staff at the New York Times have a fundamental or MSN Ms. Now have a fundamentally different sense of what their mission is?
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Ken Auletta
I think that Ms. Now has a liberal mission. And if you watch it, you're basically getting hit over the head too often as you do it at Fox Now, I think Fox is more egregious and more extreme. The Fox filter for me is. I know they're trying to hit me over the head with pro Trump, anti woke, et cetera. When I watch former MSNBC Ms. Ms. Now, I know they're hitting me over the head with, you know, believe in liberalism, anti Trump stuff. And so I don't attribute to them the same sense of fairness that I attribute, say, to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. News side.
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Henry Blodget
And so what about a guy like Joe Rogan, who's always been very fascinating to me because he engenders strong feelings on both sides. He positions himself as, hey, just a curious guy. He's extreme, extremely smart, and unlike a lot of journalists, I think, I'm not saying he's a journalist. We don't have to wade into that. But unlike a lot of journalists, certainly in the New York media community, unafraid to ask questions that some folks might consider dumb or what have you, he'll just say. He'll just ask whatever question it is. And then he gets criticized for letting people use his platform to explain their views, to which he says, the whole point is to understand their views and draw them out. I think he's very good at that. And I think one of the reasons he's been so successful is he's actually in the center. And so he appeals to both sides. And so first, just question about, like Joe Rogan, do you, do you like that he is now a fixture in the media firmament?
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Ken Auletta
It doesn't bother me. I mean, I think what, what I look for is unpredictability. If I turn, if I see certain columnists and a headline, I don't have to read that column. I know what they're going to say. They're going to hit me over the head with a point of view that I've read every time I read them. And. And Joe Rogan can surprise you. I like the fact that he can surprise you. Now do I like the fact that he has as much influence as he has. I worry about anyone having that kind of influence in any media. Put out some more people. I mean, there are a lot of people out there who are doing podcasts that are quite good and quite different than Joe Rogan's. What I worry about is people who become married to one voice, one point of view, and seek social media that will reinforce that point of view. And they don't hear anything. I mean, when I go and do an interview. You mentioned going do interviews. I mean, when I, be it Murdoch or Ted Turner, anyone. I profile, I always say up front, look, my task is to understand you, Murdoch. I quit a job rather than work for Murdoch when he took over New York magazine, the Village Voice. I was employed by both. I thought he would ruin both publications. He didn't, by the way, but I thought he would. So me and 40 some odd other people quit their jobs rather than work. Murdoch knew that I was a critic of his journalism, but I had to convince him that I was going to listen to him and try and understand him, but he had to give me more than one interview. I had to have access over a period of time. And that's my job, to try and understand him. And I. And what I learned and came to a better understanding of, not of his journalism, which I remain critical of in the profile I wrote to him. But as a businessman, he's a fascinating character. He boldly takes risks. He is leaning forward and trying to try new things and best the company on beliefs he has, sometimes wrongly. He buys MySpace, which at one point was positioned ahead of Facebook, and yet under his rule, it died. But nevertheless, he tried. He wanted to get. He knew he should be in the digital world and the Internet world, and he tried it. And so I think he's a fascinating businessman and not a typical bureaucrat or suit, as we called him.
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Henry Blodget
And do you think that Rupert Murdoch was driven by the urge to influence the world and as I said before, change it in. In his image or what he thought was better, or was it just business? Like, he loved the media business and he found a good way to succeed in the media business, which is effectively preaching to a very, very specific group
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Ken Auletta
of people, both and more. I think if you look for a single rosebud to explain Rupert Murdoch, you're going to lose. You're not going. He, he, he has an interest in advancing his, his belief system that he has. He's a conservative, but he also has business interests that he wants to. He has an interest in keeping some member of his family in control after he's gone. So I think he's just. It's complicated. And when you delve into people who you promote, as I'm trying to understand you, as you come to understand them, you come to understand it's really complicated. For instance, I did a profile in 1994 of John Malone, who at the time was a most powerful person in cable. He owned a quarter of all cable boxes in the United States. And he sold his company for $34 billion to Bell Atlantic, which later became AT&T. And so everyone assumed that's why he sold the company in order to get that kind of rich return. So I asked him just. I was spending time as a fly on the wall in his office. I was interviewing his people. And one day, in one of multiple interviews I did with John Malone, I said, Mr. Malone, why did you sell Bell Atlantic? And I just assumed he would say $34 billion, a pretty good price. And he said, well, it was a good price. Said something that really surprised me. He said, my wife said if I didn't sell the company to spend more time with her, she would leave me. My eyes widened and I said, oh my God, you know, so here's a guy who basically was saying he made a human decision, not just a business decision. And it just, just a reminder and I've had it many times writing profiles of people of how complicated people's motivations can be.
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Henry Blodget
And while you're on that. So John Malone, Ted Turner died recently. You wrote an amazing profile of him. You profiled Barry Diller, this whole generation of media moguls that we grew up on. First tell us about Ted. That as people said, what a one of a kind. I mean what he, his personality and his willingness to have a personality in a world where it seems increa increasingly dangerous often to have a really personality. We're not offend, not afraid to ruffle feathers and that kind of thing. Tell us about him and then tell us about what all these guys had in common as compared to the media moguls of today who are all from Silicon Valley and all seem to regard the media piece of what we do is just a little piece of content that gets distributed and is often annoying because it makes people mad and so forth. Like what did these guys, what did the media guys have in common?
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Ken Auletta
Well, not all of them, but certainly the Ted Turner, Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch, John Malone, they're buccaneers. They're people who are willing to bet the company on a belief. Ted Turner bet the company on his belief that he can create 24 hour news CNN. And people said this is crazy, it won't work. He's a guy who took a little television station in the south and said with satellite technology I can create a network from this little TV station and give it to cable because cable needs programming. It's a great technology, cable, but they have no programming. Between my TV station and buying the Atlanta Braves and sports teams and cnn, I can give them enough content to keep them alive and thriving, but also make my company thrive. So he bet his company on bold decisions he made. Barry Diller helps create the Fox network TV network for Rupert Murdoch working for him. He then goes to Murdoch and he says, I want to be your partner. I want to be an owner like you. I don't want to be an employee. And Murdoch says, there's only one owner, me. So Barry Dill leaves Fox and then he has to make a decision, what do I do? So the Internet is just coming alive. Then in the mid to late 90s and really late 90s. And he decides, oh my God, the Internet, I could do it. And he goes and he does something that everyone's kind of laughed at. He takes over something called the Home Shopping Network because he watched what's going on and he watched the people online bought in one hour, bought 36,000 Don von Furstenberg dresses. He wasn't then involved with Von von Furstenberg, but he said, oh my God, this interactive world, I can make a real go of it. So he bets people are laughing at him. And he bet on the Internet and interactivity. And in fact, he blossomed. And now he has a firm called iac, which is worth billions of dollars and amazing. And if you look, by the way, you ask the question about what connects the new guys in Silicon Valley, when I look, I did a book on Google and I spent time with Larry Page and Sergey Grin, the founders. And they had this. I believe they had the same in their belly gut to change the world and make bold decisions the way Murdoch and Turner and Barry Diller had. And that's unusual. Now, if you look at other media companies today, they don't have that. They tend to be employees, managers. They're not owners and they don't have. And they're worried about their shareholders and they're worried about their stock price and they're worried about their board of directors. Murdoch, Diller, Malone. They didn't worry about Turner, they didn't worry about their board of directors.
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Henry Blodget
I think you're exactly right. And I think that is something they totally share is just this willingness to make excuses. Extremely bold bets. And there are more of them. Elon Musk is the classic. He is willing to take extraordinary risks. Same with Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. And Zuckerberg absolutely drops out of Harvard
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Ken Auletta
and Netscape and Mark Andreessen. Yes, absolutely.
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Henry Blodget
So. So they have that and the business building and the willingness to do things that everybody think is crazy and. And so forth. What about the view of media? Because that's the other thing I've been. When I started at Business Insider, I was in the media business writing about the technology business. Every time I flew coast to coast, I really felt like it's oil and water, and it's particularly oil and water in terms of the view of what media is supposed to do. And Silicon Valley folks are constantly driven crazy by the idea that media does anything but talk about their amazing vision of the world and how think great things are going to be and help people. Then you get a critical article and that spawns this period of everybody in Silicon Valley wants to start their own media company to correct the media and so forth. So. So what's your view on that? Like, the difference between the view of media, between the media industry in New York and the tech industry in Silicon Valley?
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Ken Auletta
I mean, I think Silicon Valley, you know, it. When I was doing my Google book, which was in 2009, it came out, one of the things that struck me, and I wrote this in the book, they and much of Silicon Valley did not appreciate government and government's role. I mean, I covered the Microsoft trial in 2000, and Microsoft rejected the notion that the government should weigh in. But the government weighed in, and the courts ruled that Microsoft was a monopoly, and it set Microsoft back for a period of time. But Google did not pay much attention, nor did Amazon. A lot of people in Silicon Valley to the government. They didn't contribute to campaigns. They didn't lobby the government. They basically were not fearful of government. That has changed, and they became fearful, and now they're part of government. They're very close to Donald Trump. And so they're trying basically, by giving contributions, by hiring lobbyists, by being involved with the government now embracing the government, they have clout that they didn't have back, you know, 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And so they've made a change. But on the other hand, they're less popular because of it, but they are convinced, as is Donald Trump. You find a lot of hostility in the Valley to the press, your question, and it's noticeable. But by the way, in the business community in New York, you find a lot of hostility, press. So the sense that the press is less trustworthy is something to be feared and something to be criticized, because it is not fair, it is not balanced, it has an agenda, is very widespread. And that's a worry for us as journalists, because how do we regain that trust?
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Henry Blodget
Well, so on that trust question, because I think it's a great one, and again, it's always Walter Cronkite that people invoke saying more trusted than God or what have you at that point. But you've already said there were too few media outlets in those days, and so the few had to really tread carefully and speak to the middle. Every time I hear that trust in the media has plunged. What I think about is that trust in Fox News of the people who watch Fox News appears to be very high. And there is this range of media, and it's all media. And when people say trust in media has dropped, I assume they're talking about the three broadcast networks or some sort of central media that we now have lost trust in. Is that your perception too? Because I don't know how trust in media can plunge when we're all consuming media every day and we have our own oracles and we live on exactly what they're saying all the time. We seem to trust them. It's the other media that we seem to not trust.
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Ken Auletta
I think if you walk up to someone and say, hi, I'm a journalist, they back off. I mean, I think they don't trust instinctively. We're not Woodward and Bernstein, we're in that era, Nixon. We lionize those reporters for doing a great job and helping bring down a corrupt presidency. And then an interesting question is, what blame do we bear as journalists for that lack of trust? And clearly, I think we lack humility. Our job is to listen. Because if you listen to people, you assume you don't know the answer, which is why you're asking the question. And to convey that with some humility, I think is important. But if you watch television, for instance, it's all about opinion. It's less costly to have people sit around in a studio and talk and express opinion than it is to have reporters in Africa or Vietnam or some other place, far flung place, you know, reporting. And so there's too much of that. And what is it we see? We see bloviators, we see people giving opinions. I mean, if you ask a reporter on the air who's going to win the election, they're going to give you an opinion. How the hell do they know who's going to win the election? Where's the humility that says, I don't know, we'll see what happens?
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Henry Blodget
And I think, to a point you made earlier about Murdoch surprising you in, in some ways, I think that that may be a key to creating more trust going forward. Is where you is going to assume that somebody has the same, this particular perspective. They work for one of these organizations to have people say, you know, I thought that, and then I started to look into it and here's what I found.
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Ken Auletta
I mean, for instance, when, when you know, if you ask a journalist what is your mission in life, and, and, and he or she comes back with a very standard reply from journalists. My job is to keep power accountable, is to keep the people in power or the wealthy accountable. Well, why is that our mission? Isn't it, you know, to report on what's happening, to get a version of the truth, imperfect truth, a draft of the of history. But nevertheless, our job is to try and understand what is actually happening, to convey that to the reader. My job is not to punish the powerful. My job is to understand the powerful and if they deserve being exposed for punishment, do it. And that's great, we should do that. But don't say I have a singular purpose and that's to expose the powerful. What.
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Henry Blodget
AI Security Program on spreadsheets, New regulations
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Ken Auletta
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Henry Blodget
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Ken Auletta
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- [42:14]
Henry Blodget
when you do these profiles and you go in, do you, do you ultimately after you listen, do you come up with a storyline like a conclusion? Because you're not just, you are not doing a bare bones, hey, here are some facts that I found. You're telling a story. It's one reason your work is so compelling. So are you just trusting yourself to tell the right story with those facts? Are you trying to convey what was interesting to you? What do you do when you actually sit down?
- [42:47]
Ken Auletta
I go through a very laborious process of what I call indexing my notes and my taped interviews. And so if I spent five months, say as I do in the Murdoch profile, in 95, I will wind up with like 50 single spaced pages of my index. Murdoch's childhood, Murdoch's Father. What Murdoch did in Australia, what he did in England, then moving to the United States. And you have all these various things, Murdoch's children and all that is index in that. And I stare at that index for days before I start to write. And I look at it and I say, what narrative can I create out of this? A flow line to tell the reader a story that goes from beginning, middle and end, you know, Or I also look at it and saying, I'm really a judge here. My job is to try and sort through the evidence to come to a conclusion of what I think is the truth. And so when I profiled Murdoch, I came to the conclusion that the truth was he's a fantastically interesting businessman who's made these very bold decisions. One truth. Another truth is most of his newspapers really do. This is before Fox News, which started two years after that profile. Most of his newspapers, particularly tabloid newspapers, are just. They're not trustworthy, they're weaponized in order to advance Murdoch's business interests or his political interests. And so I came down hard on that. But essentially, I'm sifting the evidence from my index of all the interviews I've done and all the reading I've done to try and come to a synthesis of what I think is the rough truth.
- [44:49]
Henry Blodget
And presumably, in any of the profiles, I'm sure you get plenty of notes saying, wow, this is amazing. But I'm sure you also get blasted if that's not what you've written, is not adhering to whatever the general party line is about the person.
- [45:05]
Ken Auletta
I mean, for instance, if you go back to the Murdoch profile in 95, he was very unhappy. He welcomed me. I lived for 10 days in his office as a fly on the wall. He and I had maybe four dinner interviews, just the two of us, at his home in la. I went to a summit meeting he had with John Malone in Denver. He totally cooperated. And in the end, the piece, which was called the Pirate, which was my headline, by the way, he hated. And so he's never returned my phone calls, even though he had talked to me. And the truth is, you've got to be tough enough as a journalist to say, screw it, he's not my friend, he's not my audience. I'm writing for the reader, and hopefully I'm conveying to them what I think is the truth. I'm not writing to please the subject of my profile. And you got to have a strong enough side to you to say, you know, he's unhappy. Sorry, but, you know, I don't need him. I don't need to have dinner with him again.
- [46:13]
Henry Blodget
Yes. And I think you also have to be willing to have a lot of, as you said before, readers who are mad at you because you're not saying exactly what they think already and not providing information. And I can say you were kind enough to write about me once. And I remember before publication I said, oh, what's it going to be? Scared?
- [46:32]
Ken Auletta
And you said, look, but you still talk to me.
- [46:34]
Henry Blodget
Absolutely. Of course I was going to. I had tremendous respect for you, I hope. I was hoping you wouldn't crucify me. But I remember saying, okay, am I, should I read it? Because I usually can't stand to read.
- [46:46]
Ken Auletta
The truth is, I came out with respect to you.
- [46:48]
Henry Blodget
Thank you, that's very kind. But you said, you said, look, if I'm doing my job, there are going to be some ouches. And I read it and there were certainly some ouches. And so I understand that, but you, so it's definitely that. So what do you, how do you teach young journalists, people who want to learn to do what you do, to weather the criticism? Because it is tough. You get, you do get blasted in the media for going against the media, party line, whatever it happens to be. And that's hard, especially when you're young. You feel like I must have screwed up. I should have said the thing that everybody wanted to hear.
- [47:22]
Ken Auletta
When I was youngster, before I entered journalism, I had a graduate degree in political science and I, I was very interested in government and I worked for Bobby Kennedy in, in 68 campaign, a very low level job. But I was, I was involved in politics and then became at one point a campaign manager for Howard Samuels who was running for governor as a, as a Democrat. And, and then I went to journalism. I had done some journalism during the political, after Bobby Kennedy's death, et cetera. But one of the things I learned, Henry, is that, or came to believe is that you got to be tougher, make tougher decision oftentimes in journalism than you do in politics. Politics is a sense of loyalty. Someone who supported you, you tend to support and you certainly don't attack them in journalism, you're attacking people or you're making people unhappy and readers unhappy at various times. And they'll come at you and you've got to be tough enough to withstand that. And the truth is journalists are not tough enough. I mean, one of the, one of the most delightful pieces I've ever done for the New Yorker, I didn't like in 93, and it was called Fee Fee Speech. And I went out and interviewed journalists who went on paid speaking engagements, prominent journalists, including journalists who got paid speaking engagements before organizations they wrote about. And so I called up Sam Donaldson and George Will and Tim Russet and 25, 30 prominent journalists to ask them how much money they were paid for speeches, why they gave a speech to an organization they had reported on at some point in time, and did I think it compromised them the way when they write about politicians being compromised, were they comparable to those politicians who were compromised? And I never heard so many, ow, you can't do that. And it just was a reminder of how sensitive journalists are to criticism. And that goes back to the point I tried to make about humility. Don't be on a high horse assuming that any criticism of you is unfair. You shouldn't be speaking to organizations you write about. You should be willing to disclose how much we were paid for a speech, just as you insist the politicians should expose. And then they came back, and me, Sam Donaldson, came back and me said, I'm not a politician. I don't have to disclose. I don't vote on legislation. And then I had David Obie, who was the Democratic leader at the time, he said, he has more power. Sam Donaldson has more power than I have. What's he talking about?
- [50:19]
Henry Blodget
And so, I mean, I remember this myself as a journalist and as an analyst. I wrote a profile of Mark Zuckerberg before Facebook went public for New York Magazine. And I was doing the same thing you did. Not in the depth that you do it, but basically the narrative that I came out with was everybody wants to. To dismiss him as this clueless kid, college dropout, right place, right time, doesn't know anything. How could he possibly run a company like this? And where I came out was, you know, actually, he's a good CEO. He knows how to hire the right people. He is willing to fire them when they stop being the right people. Like, he has that distance that Steve and other people had. He is making good decisions. He's seeing the future. He's willing to make these bets like Instagram, which everybody thought was insane at the time. How could he pay that much? He's a good CEO. And I knew as I was writing it, okay, the feedback is going to be, oh, you got snowed by his PR people and all the venture capital at Silicon Valley. Anyway, fine. That was something that I really knew something about. I had been following technology for 20 years. I was an analyst, seen a lot of CEOs and companies I felt very confident in that you and many other journalists, you're coming in often to something where it's relatively cold and new. And so I guess what I'm asking is, how do you have the confidence that you got it right? And then secondly, do you learn from the feedback after your profiles?
- [51:46]
Ken Auletta
You know this, yes, the answer, of course. And, you know, humility is again, a key word here. And you know, one of the things you mentioned, the, the Zuckerberg and the same experience when I looked at Google and its history or when I looked at Amazon and Jeff Bezos, who you knew more about, having spent time with him and watching his rise, there was a guy by the name of Bill Campbell who they called the coach. And I spent time with him. And he was a lead director for Apple under Jobs and arguably Jobs best friend. He was an advisor to Google at the same time Google and Apple were combined. John Doerr, his good friend, brought him into Amazon in 98, 99 when there was a feeling that Jeff Bezos could not run the company. He didn't have experience as a manager. We had to bring in a manager. And Campbell was of the view, which he. I was going to do a book on Campbell before he. He decided he couldn't cooperate because he acted like a lawyer and he couldn't divulge conversations with these people. But he said, I believe that the founders should be in charge of these companies. Now, sometimes they need to bring in a manager like Eric Schmidt at Google or Tim Cook at Apple to help them better manager or Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook to help them better manage the company. But the drive and the dreams and the passion that the founders have and the boldness that they have is not something you can substitute. And that was Campbell's view, was John Doar's view, who was an investor in Amazon and Google. And I think it's the right view that these people really, you were right that Mark Zuckerberg was the right CEO to build that company. Now maybe the wrong CEO today because of the difficulties they're running into. But. But nevertheless, certainly founders are important.
- [53:55]
Henry Blodget
And. And interestingly, that became the Silicon Valley orthodoxy starting about five years later. I think it was Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz who said, no, it's the founder. And they made the distinction between a growing innovative company and say, like a paint company, where the managerial skills are the key. And I'll just give you one anecdote, it's interesting about J, who invested in Business Insider, which great to have him. He gave me Some time I went out, I was asking him a lot of questions and so forth, and I said, you know, one of the things I'm thinking about this was about six years, seven years into business. Insiders, like, I love to write, I love to host, but company needs a CEO, and. And it's tough to do both sometimes. Like, should I hire a CEO? And he. He just said, I'm not going to ask you a lot as an investor, but I'm going to beg you one thing, and that is I beg you to stay CEO. And I said, why? And he said, because you can learn to do that. You cannot learn to do what you're doing, which is to figure out this new media landscape. He said, you are making a dozen decisions a day that you're not even aware of because you have the experience, and you bring in somebody else, you're going to want to give them room. They're going to have their own views, they're going to make a decision that you wouldn't make tomorrow. It'll be a different one. And three months from now, the company's gonna be way off track. So whatever you do, stay CEO. And I was surprised by that. And that really helped, I think. And ultimately, I think was the right decision, even though it was something I definitely did have to learn. So, anyway, let's finish up with AI we have this new meteor smashing into the journalism and media industry. I will say that I am astonished by what the models can do. What do you think it means for journalists going forward?
- [55:39]
Ken Auletta
I think it's both opportunity and danger. I mean, for instance, do I want to rely on Claude or some other artificial intelligence to write my news reports? How do I check that they've got the facts right? How do I know? I mean, it's certainly cheaper for my publisher if I do it that way. But does it serve the reader or viewer? On the other hand, I mean, as local news shrinks and shrivels around the country, I mean, I've seen evidence of artificial intelligence that can actually report on what planning boards are saying, local planning boards, and share that information. That's incredible information and valuable information that we don't have the resource in journalism to provide today. And that's wonderful. So I think they're plus and minuses. I mean, are you worried at some point that there are artificial. I'm reading Sebastian Malaby's new book on artificial intelligence, and it's very dense, but it's also very powerful and beautifully written and gathered of great information. But the dangers of an artificial Intelligence basically taking over in military terms or other. There are some reasons to be frightened of that and to say, I want government involved and governments talking to each other, China and the US Particularly, to assure that we're protected. In many ways, my attitude is be open to it. Celebrate the things that are wonderful and be wary of the things that are not so wonderful.
- [57:26]
Henry Blodget
And let's close on what I think is very good news, which is media industry seems to have been under assault forever. You mentioned local newspapers. There's been a lot of carnage there. I would suggest that a lot of the information they provide is now being provided very effectively by many other sources. And there just is this one hole that we need to fill, which, as you mentioned, if AI can cover town meetings and draw some conclusions and spread the word, that's great. But if you look at media more broadly, there are still enormous, incredibly successful media organizations. And what I'm struck by is that so many of them are the same ones that we had in the 1990s that they made it through the Internet, period. The New York Times has never been stronger. Wall Street Journal has never been stronger. Bloomberg, all the, you know, a lot of TV networks still remarkably doing well given, given the assault that they're under. And one publications that you have worked for for almost half a century, congratulations publication that anybody would be proud to ever have anything published in. You have been one of their key writers for a long time, the New Yorker. Everyone said that kind of journalism be dead. The New Yorker is bigger and better than ever. And why is that?
- [58:39]
Ken Auletta
Well, most of the publications you've mentioned, I would disagree about the networks. I think the networks are faltering and don't have the same audience they want. I mean, CBS News, for instance, has half the audience that ABC News has. It's under 4 million people a night watching CBS News. And that's collapsing. And by the way, it's true of NBC and abc, though not collapsing as fast. But if you look at the publications you cited, a reason for their success is that they are less reliant on advertising and more reliant on affluent readers whose price per prescription can be raised. So the New Yorker and the New York Times and the Financial Times and the Economist and the Wall Street Journal are increasingly less reliant on advertising and more reliant on affluent readers who pay a huge amount of money to to subscribe to their publications. Bloomberg, obviously the desktop and a billionaire owner subsidizes their good journalism, but that's not true of most of the ap and much of the print press. And so newspapers have been shrinking and of course they're reliant on advertising and the advertising dollars are going to Googles and Amazons and netfl of this world. So all the press, even the establishment presses that we've thought of for years as the establishment is, is under turmoil and threat.
- [60:25]
Henry Blodget
Yes. And I to, to your point, on broadcast networks. Absolutely. The audiences are shrinking. I would just flip it around to say I think it is astonishing that CBS News still has 4 million people tune in every night to watch the CBS Evening News broadcast, which for a lot of us ceased to be relevant 35 years ago. And I mean, it's extraordinary. And these companies still make so much money and have so many people employed. And yes, they're under pressure, but wow, it's amazing how they're clinging to that and how media habits don't change. And yes, the audience is older and it's not going to last forever, but boy, it's lasting a long time, I got to say. And, and for the, the other disruption, I guess what I would say is the Internet came along, smashed into the industry, created a lot of opportunity. Some companies were able to grab a foothold in that clearing in the forest and grow and stay Politico, Business Insider still doing well, and many others were able to. Lots of startups got wiped out, lots of traditional companies couldn't adapt, but. But some of them did adapt. And one thing Jeff Bezos likes to say is everyone's focusing on what's changing all the time. And if you're actually running a business or in this case trying to carve out a career in journalism, actually what you want to do is focus on what does not and will not change. And one of the things when I look at the industry that I feel pretty good about is as long as there are human beings, we are going to want to be informed, entertained and inspired by smart, charismatic people. I don't see how AI is going to replace the research work that you do, drawing people out over time. Multiple interviews maybe can help with the drafting of the story, maybe, but maybe not. And maybe that's in fact how you really learn to sharpen your view. So I see that core demand for help me understand the world, what's happening, what does it mean? I don't see that going away. And I think there will always be home for people who are curious and like to produce that kind of work and tell those stories that are compelling and have that judgment. So I am still optimistic.
- [62:47]
Ken Auletta
Well, the idea of tell me a story which is something that a journalist can spend time and concoct a story based on the reporting that he or she has done is something that allows us to eclipse artificial intelligence storytelling or should allow us to eclipse it.
- [63:08]
Henry Blodget
I'm glad to hear it. Ken. You are one of the best at that in the world. Deservedly so. You have the accolades that you have. And I can say as a reader and just watching you, I'm so grateful to you for your work that you've done and so grateful that you've joined us this morning. And thank you.
- [63:24]
Ken Auletta
Thanks, Henry.
- [63:25]
Henry Blodget
Pleasure. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Solutions is going to take a break this summer, so this will be our last episode for a few months. We'll let you know what's next soon. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy your summer.
- [63:43]
Fin AI Representative
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- [63:57]
Odoo Representative
AI support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, and more. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's o d o o dot com.