Why Are the Media So Afraid of Trump?

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: The David Frum Show

Episode: Why Are the Media So Afraid of Trump?

Date: June 4, 2025. Host: David Frum. Guest: Marty Baron (former Executive Editor, The Washington Post)

---

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode features a deep dive into the crisis facing American media under the renewed pressure of Trump’s second presidential term. Host David Frum, alongside distinguished guest Marty Baron, explores how Trump’s administration—and similar political actors—have evolved their tactics to influence, intimidate, and extract concessions from major media companies. They examine why the press seems more vulnerable now than in past decades, discuss how internal and external pressures have changed American journalism, and share practical advice on how citizens can be responsible consumers of news in an era of weaponized information.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Escalating Threats to Press Freedom and Responsibility

[01:11–09:42] David Frum – Monologue

• Trump’s Shift in Tactics: During his first term, Trump’s attacks on the press (“enemies of the people”) were loud but largely ineffective; investigative journalism mostly persisted despite harassment.
• Second Term: Coordinated Corporate Pressure: Trump now systematically targets the corporate parents (like Amazon, Disney), leveraging federal power to coerce favorable media coverage or punish negative reporting.
  • “He does it by squeezing the corporate parents of media institutions, making it clear that mergers won’t happen... unless those institutions change the way that the reporting arms behave themselves.” (05:23)
  • Examples: Amazon paying for a Melania Trump documentary; networks like ABC and CBS making questionable payments or settlements.
• Broader Trends: This tactic isn’t limited to Trump—others like Ron DeSantis similarly punished corporate free speech.
• Media Vulnerability: Traditional media institutions are less powerful and financially weaker than before, making them susceptible to pressure.
• Rise of New Media: Platforms like TikTok and Facebook now dominate the information ecosystem, especially among younger, less politically-engaged Americans.
  • “TikTok has to be regarded as the most important media company in America today… these are shaping the minds... especially Americans under 40.” (06:45)
• Knowledge under Siege: Trump’s actions and the new media landscape risk creating a society without shared reliable facts.
  • “Instead of knowledge informing our politics, our politics will inform our knowledge.” (07:56)
• Call to Action: Each individual must become better, wiser, more skeptical consumers of news to resist growing distortions.

2. Interview with Marty Baron: How Has the Media Changed?

[09:42–34:36] David Frum & Marty Baron

Ownership & Political Pressure

• Bezos Era/Washington Post: Baron notes that when he was editor, Bezos “consistently and courageously resisted” Trump’s pressure, even at significant cost:
  • “Amazon lost a $10 billion contract with the federal government because of Trump’s unhappiness with the Washington Post coverage.” (11:38)
• Why Owners Are Afraid: Owners fear retaliation against their broader business interests (federal contracts, merger approvals—see Disney, CBS/Paramount).
  • “In the case of Bezos, he’s afraid of the impact that Trump can have on Amazon… with the federal government.” (12:28)

Then vs. Now: Nixon/Watergate vs. Trump Era

• Trump’s Retaliation is More Systematic: Unlike Nixon’s backfired threats, today’s threats often succeed due to consolidated executive power and a compliant Congress.
  • “Now you have a president who has control of both houses of Congress, and you have a Congress… that is completely servile.” (16:31)
• Media's Evolving Weakness: Newsrooms have grown dependent on wealthy owners with diversified, government-sensitive interests, making them more vulnerable than in the past.

Internal Media Dynamics

• Staff Mutinies & Ideological Rigidity: Frum suggests internal turmoil (e.g., op-ed controversies) weakened institutional solidarity and courage. Baron agrees this has hurt credibility and public trust.
  • “There has been a certain ideological rigidity... a tendency on the part of particularly younger generation… to divide the world into victims and victimizers…” (18:56, Baron)
• Diversity Paradox: While staff have become demographically diverse, Frum and Baron discuss how elite educational backgrounds and ideological homogeneity may increase distance from average readers.
  • “...the staff become more diverse in a series of biographical attributes, they become more monolithic in the way they think.” (19:56, Frum)
  • “I think we should get to work doing that… get more people from working class backgrounds as well.” (21:03, Baron)
• Lost Blue Collar Connection: Frum and Baron nostalgically recall when newsrooms were physically and demographically entwined with their cities.
  • “It was a giant manufacturing enterprise and most of the staff were blue collar people who had nothing to do with the content of the paper...” (22:02, Frum)
  • Baron acknowledges prior failure “to understand people's struggles, their expectations, their aspirations.” (23:25)

Coverage Priorities and Blind Spots

• Coverage Gaps Example: Frum notes the disparity between coverage of the opioid crisis vs. transgender issues in 2016 as symptomatic of missing large trends that matter to communities Trump was able to reach.
  • “He would campaign in these places and just say the word opioid… he had no plan… but at least he knew it was there…” (24:10, Frum)

Defining ‘Media’ in 2025

• What Counts as Media? TikTok, podcasts, and influencers wield more influence than legacy outlets. Some “anti-media” brands build trust by attacking traditional journalism, even as they themselves are unregulated media.
  • “TikTok shapes more minds than the New York Times, and Joe Rogan has a bigger audience than 60 Minutes.” (25:30, Frum)
  • Baron: “The definition of media has expanded tremendously... a lot of the new media is communicating with a level of authenticity, or at least perceived authenticity, that institutional media has been unable to deliver.” (26:35)
• ‘Authenticity’ vs. Authority: Baron warns that “authentic” doesn’t always mean “reliable,” and that bad actors thrive in the fragmented market of the Internet.
  • “People are forming their opinions of what's happening... based on a 15 second TikTok. They think they know everything based on the 15 seconds.” (30:27, Baron)
  • “...there are an enormous number of bad actors... but traditional media is not irrelevant, as is often claimed…” (28:48, Baron)

3. Advice for News Consumers

[31:05–33:47] Baron & Frum

• Baron’s Advice:
  • Look for the speaker’s education, expertise, and evidence.
  • Ask: Who is the source? What proof do they offer? Check their track record.
  • “All of the things that we've used in the past, education, experience, expertise and actual evidence, have all been... denied and dismissed and denigrated. I think that consumers should be looking at that.” (31:34, Baron)
• Frum: Greater opportunity for information, but the risk of self-deception is equally high.
  • “We all have many more opportunities, but we're all going to have to work a lot harder to make sure that we are accurately and truthfully informed.” (32:58, Frum)
• Baron: Transparency Needed
  • “...those of us who are delivering information have to work harder to show people our work...” (33:47, Baron)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Corporate Squeeze:
  • David Frum: “President Trump has been much more systematic, much more deliberate, much more sustained, and much more effective in putting pressure on America's free media... He does it by squeezing the corporate parents of media institutions...” (05:23)
• On Newsroom Disconnects:
  • Marty Baron: “There are a lot of people in the newsroom who don't understand the struggles and lives of ordinary people in the middle of the country. And we need to work harder at that.” (21:03)
• On Authenticity vs. Authority:
  • Baron: “We are not communicating the same level of authenticity that a lot of the new media are... People who do communicate... are being given credit for authority that frequently they don't deserve.” (26:35)
• On Media Vulnerability:
  • Baron: “The unwillingness to sort of recognize nuances has hurt our credibility with the general public. That's where I think it's done real damage...” (18:56)
• Why Trump Still Obsessess Over Media:
  • Baron: “There is a reason why Trump is completely obsessed with traditional media. He would not be obsessed with traditional media if it were irrelevant.” (29:35)
• Advice to Consumers:
  • Baron: “Consumers of information need to look for that education, expertise, experience. And what is the evidence that they are providing? Are you just relying on your beliefs or are you confusing your beliefs with actual facts?” (31:34)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:11 – Start of Frum’s monologue on Trump’s press tactics
• 05:23 – How Trump squeezes media via corporate leverage
• 09:42 – Interview with Marty Baron begins
• 12:28 – Why media owners are afraid of Trump’s retaliation
• 15:54 – Are media weaker now than in Nixon era? Why?
• 18:56 – Media’s ideological rigidity and credibility
• 19:56 – Diversity, hiring, and disconnection from audience
• 24:10 – Missed priorities: opioids vs. transgender coverage
• 25:30 – Rethinking ‘media’—what counts?
• 26:35 – New media, authenticity, and bad actors
• 31:05 – How to be a better news consumer: Baron’s blueprint
• 33:47 – Need for transparency from journalists
• 35:29 – Frum on the Biden age/infirmity ‘scandal’ and media response

---

Tone & Language

True to the style of The Atlantic, the tone is analytical, thoughtful, occasionally wry, but never flippant. Frum and Baron are candid about large, uncomfortable realities facing the press but without resorting to alarmism or defeatism. There’s a persistent call for civic engagement, a belief in the ability to improve institutions, and a realism about the difficulties posed by both political and technological transformation.

---

Takeaways for Listeners

• Traditional media faces new, dangerous forms of political intimidation, compounded by financial vulnerability and industry-wide shifts.
• Internal newsroom divisions and lack of genuine diversity (socioeconomic/experiential, not just demographic) have contributed to a weakening press.
• The explosion of new media—often unfiltered, sometimes unprincipled—has fragmented the public’s information diet and made fact consensus elusive.
• Both journalists and everyday citizens must work harder and smarter: journalists by showing their work transparently, and citizens by questioning sources and seeking credible evidence.
• Despite the odds, both Frum and Baron hold that traditional media, though battered, remains indispensable to democracy and is worthy of defense and support.

---

Transcript

[David Frum]

They say to only bring what you can carry. So with the all new 2025 Ford.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Expedition Tremor, bring a lot like three.

[David Frum]

Dirt bikes, a few tents, an entire crew ready to make memories, a panoramic 24 inch display, and the confidence to push your limits.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

The all new 2025 Ford Expedition Tremor.

[David Frum]

Always consult the owner's manual before off road driving.

[Marty Baron]

Know your terrain and trail difficulty and use appropriate safety gear. Max payload varies based on accessories and vehicle configuration, sea label and door jam.

[David Frum]

For carrying capacity of a specific vehicle.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Always properly secure cargo this episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected, but many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.

[David Frum]

Hello and welcome to episode nine of the David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic. Today I'll be joined by Marty Baron, formerly executive editor of the Washington Post during the first Trump term and during the transition of ownership at the Washington Post from the Graham family that had led it for so many years to new ownership under Jeff Bezos. Marty Barron is one of the most important media leaders of our time and has spoken forcefully, both in person and in his memoir, Collision of Power, about the threats to free press and the responsibilities of that press. I'll finish the episode with some thoughts about the way the media have covered the old age and infirmity of of former President Joe Biden. But let me begin by addressing this larger topic of press freedom and press responsibility in this second Trump term. President Trump began his campaign and has spent much of his first term attacking the media, calling the media free media, enemies of the people, enemies of the state, and huffing and puffing and gen and complaining and generally persecuting and often inciting dangerous threats against individual members of the press. If you covered the Trump presidency in that first term, especially if you were a woman, you suddenly found yourself being attacked both digitally and often in person, in ways unlike anything ever seen before. Death threats, harassment, abuse, anti Semitic and misogynistic, racist. The worst kind of garbage. I even got a little splash of it myself. I had an FBI man come to the house to warn my wife that there had been some threats against me. The Atlantic is Kind of high toned. And I think a lot of the people who make the worst threats don't read the Atlantic. And so we get spared to some degree. But it was nasty, but it was also mostly ineffective. The press worked. During the first Trump term, institutions like the Atlantic, like the New York Times, like the Washington Post, like cnn, kept bringing to light important stories about what the Trump presidency was doing, about corruption, about ties to Russia, about many things that people needed to know. And while their lives were much more difficult, they had been in the past, and while the pressures on them were real, it did not in the end detract from getting the job done. For the most part in the first Trump term, in the second Trump term, things have been different. President Trump has been much more systematic, much more deliberate, much more sustained, and much more effective in putting pressure on America's free media. He does it by squeezing the corporate parents of media institutions, making it clear that mergers won't happen unless the mergers of the upstream parent will not be allowed or, or will be harassed or even illegally prevented in some way, unless those institutions change the way that the reporting arms behave themselves. And we have seen media people end up paying what look very much like inducements, material inducements to Trump. Amazon, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, paid millions of dollars for the rights to make a Melania documentary. Money it has to know it will never see back for documentary that will probably never be produced. ABC paid millions of dollars directly to President Trump's so called library, but really to himself because of pressure put upon the Disney Corporation, ABC's corporate parent, CBS, offered a settlement to Trump for an even more vexatious and absurd lawsuit. Trump complained that he didn't like the way they edited an interview with Kamala Harris, which you said, so what? You don't like our editing, that you have no claim on that, that gives you no right of due action. I mean, send us a letter if you don't like the editing. Other people don't like the editing of the interview we did with you. That's not lawsuit, Ma. The Atlantic, too. After our Signal story, a story that reported that our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been added to what should have been a more sensitive discussion of a military operation in Yemen. In addition to the concerns for accuracy that of course we had, we knew that there was a chance that the federal government under President Trump would pursue some sort of baseless legal retaliatory action against us. And we had to fear that in a way that probably in another time we would not have had to fear. So there are real things to worry about and they're not just specific to Trump. We've seen other people in American politics do the same. When Ron DeSantis was governor of Florida, or he is governor of Florida, when he was running for president, he made one of his signature issues, threatening the Disney corporation for exercising its free speech rights to comment on some of his social legislation by stripping them of various business privileges that they had long had and punishing the corporate parent for exercises of corporate free speech because Disney was unhappy that DeSantis administration was penalizing what they saw as the free expression rights of gay and lesbian people in the state of Florida. So DeSantis took the Trump path. In the end, it didn't do him any good. But Disney still took the blow. We have seen this kind of acceleration of new kinds of threats and they're working because media institutions of the traditional kind are more vulnerable than they ever used to be before. Look, the companies that were powerful in 1972 are a lot less powerful in 2025, but they remain the main sources of dispassionate, fact checked, accurate information about the events of the day. New media does not see that as its mission, but the old media do. But they're because they've been losing audience share because they're less wealth than they used to be. They are subject to various kinds of pressure and those pressures are being imposed on them with real world consequences for all of us. Meanwhile, the whole way the whole mental landscape is being altered by the rise of different kinds of media institutions. TikTok has to be regarded as the most important media company in America today. Alongside Facebook and other social media platforms, these are shaping the minds and mentalities of Americans, especially Americans under 40, especially those Americans who are not closely involved with the political process and so whose votes are maybe more up for grabs and are therefore some of the most valuable voters to politicians. We have a new kind of landscape and it's one that we all have to navigate with great care and one in which our responsibilities as citizens are as much at stake as our rights as citizens. The information landscape is being reshaped and Trump is abusing the powers of state in this new landscape. To hasten the reshaping in ways favorable to him, Congress passed a law putting TikTok out of business. The Supreme Court approved that law. Trump has postponed enforcing the law long past all the deadlines that were supposed to be there because he likes the way TikTok covers him. Remember, one of the rules of authoritarianism is the protection for the culpable, is as much a resource for the authoritarian as harassment of the innocent. The goal and end state of all of these evolutions, of these pressures, of these changes in the media landscape is to create a world or create an America in which nobody will know anything that can be relied upon and shared with neighbors. Instead of knowledge informing our politics, our politics will inform our knowledge. Now, there's no ready answer to this, but each of us as an individual has a power to do something about it, to be a better consumer of news, to be a wiser user, to read more carefully, to question more of what we see, to fortify our immunities against the coming wage of AI fed distortion that is surely on its way. It's going to be a different kind of country, different kind of way of processing information. But the task of democracy and the challenge of democracy remains eternal, even as the challenges and threats change. And we're all going to have to step up and be the best kind of citizens, the best informed citizens that we know how to be, even as it becomes more difficult in the face of authoritarian pressure and new technology. And now my dialogue with Marty Baron, formerly editor of the Washington Post. But first, a quick break. An official message from Medicare.

[Medicare Advertiser]

I'm saving money on my Medicare prescriptions. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's extra help program, my premium is 0 and my out of pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $24,000 a year or married couples who make less than $32,000. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays.

[David Frum]

To find out, go to ssa.gov extrahelp paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month.

[Marty Baron]

Two.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Seriously, it's $15 a month.

[David Frum]

Three.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

No big contracts.

[David Frum]

Four.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

I use it. Five, my mom uses it. Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for.

[David Frum]

Three month plan $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com Marty Baron is a newspaper editor whose real life story inspired an Academy Award winning movie. After reporting for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, he was appointed Executive editor of the Miami Herald. From Miami, he moved to Boston where he led the Boston Globe's coverage of sex abuse cover ups in the Catholic Church. That coverage won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and inspired the 2015 movie Spotlight. In 2013, Marty Baron moved to the Washington Post. He led the paper through its purchase by Jeff Bezos and through the first Trump term, winning more accolades and prizes for himself and his reporters along the way. He retired in 2021 and published his memoir, Collision of Power, in 2023. Marty, thank you so much for joining the program today.

[Marty Baron]

Thanks for inviting me, David.

[David Frum]

All right, so we've got some things to cover, and we've talked about what those might be. But let me start off with a straightforward question. If you were editing the Washington Post today, do you think you'd keep your job?

[Marty Baron]

I think I would, actually, because I think I did a good job while I was there and I think that was appreciated and I was supported by the owner and the publisher at the time. Obviously, some things have changed, but I think it would be very risky for them to fire me. And the news department continues to maintain its independence from the owner. The owner has not interfered in the news coverage as far as I know. And I think we wouldn't, all of us would know because there would be an explosive reaction within the newsroom if he had interfered. So, yes, I think I would keep my job.

[David Frum]

It's a major theme of your memoir, Collision of Power. That first term, Trump tried to pressure the Washington Post new owner Jeff Bezos into submission, and that Bezos consistently and courageously resisted. Bezos paid a price for this. Amazon lost a $10 billion contract with the federal government because of Trump's unhappiness with the Washington Post coverage. Amazon and the Post don't have a relationship, but Bezos is the owner of both or the largest shareholder in Amazon and the sole owner of the Post. Second term, Trump seems much more deliberate, methodical, purposeful, and effective in his pressures on the Post and other media institutions. And this time he also seems more successful, and not just with the Post, but with many others. I described in my opening monologue some of the other cases, cbs, abc. What are media owners so afraid of?

[Marty Baron]

Well, I think what they're afraid of is they're afraid of being made a target by Trump, that he's going to do severe damage to their other commercial interests. I think in the case of Bezos, he's afraid of the impact that Trump can have on Amazon, which has enormous contracts, particularly in the area of cloud computing services, with the federal government. And he has a private commercial space venture called Blue Origin, which had fallen well behind SpaceX, the Elon Musk company, but was at the point of launching a rocket into orbit and then being able to start to compete really with SpaceX. It has now launched that rocket successfully into orbit. But it's highly dependent on contracts with the federal government. And I think that's true of the other companies as well, the parent companies of CBS and abc. So in the case of abc, Disney depends on the federal government for approval of mergers and things like that, does not want to be in conflict with the President of the United States. And of course, Paramount, which owns cbs, wants to execute a merger with Skydance, and that requires approval by the fcc.

[David Frum]

You know, you've had a long and storied career through many, many different institutions. And I'm sure along the way you have observed close up and directly how angry mayors, governors and presidents and members of Congress can get at media coverage. And there's always a lot of huffing and puffing and bluster and anger. This, what is happening since the election 2024 seems qualitatively different from anything that I've observed. Is that your observation?

[Marty Baron]

Well, absolutely. Look, I mean, Trump, during his campaign, promised to seek retribution on his perceived political enemies. That's what he's doing right now. You can see that, of course, in his attacks on law firms, law firms that have represented individuals and institutions that were opposed to him, seeking to bar them from access to federal government buildings, seeking to deny them any contracts with the federal government, basically punish them in every conceivable way. And really, he's seeking to destroy those law firms. The same applies to universities, first with Columbia University and then now with Harvard. Of course, you can, you can see that he's applying all of the, not just threats, but actually use of force and denying billions of dollars in grants to Harvard in an effort to force them to submit to his wishes. So that's what's happening. It's qualitatively different from what we've seen before. And of course, the federal government has enormous power, and Trump is exercising that power. Actually, not just exercising it, he's abusing it.

[David Frum]

Why is it so much more effective? Now? One of the semi remembered details of the Watergate scandal was that President Richard Nixon tried to put pressure on the Washington Post at that time because the Post was then seeking permission, or the Graham family was seeking permission to acquire some radio stations which required FCC approval. And there's a famous crude quote about it. We're going to put Katie Graham's tits through the ringer. And what that was referring to was that her family wanted to buy these radio stations or maybe sell them, as I think about it, at camp for. I can't remember which. But either way, they needed an FCC permission. And Nixon said, aha, I have the brainwave. We'll use that as a pressure on the Post. And it spectacularly backfired. It didn't work for Nixon at all. Now, a half century later, similar kinds of threats do seem to be working, at least for now. What's the difference? Why? Why was the press so much more robust in the 1970s than the prestige press seems to be in the 2000s?

[Marty Baron]

Well, I don't know if it was more robust. Certainly in the case of the Washington Post, they resisted, and I wish that Jeff Bezos would do the same. As I said, I think the news department continues to operate independently, and it's doing a great job, admirable job of investigating what's happening in this administration. And yet he has sought to repair his relationship with Trump by doing all sorts of things. The first one being killing an endorsement of Kamala Harris. And then, of course, donating to the inauguration. Appearing at the inauguration, Amazon agreeing to a contract to buy the rights to a Melania Trump documentary about her own life for an extraordinary sum of money. And then Amazon agreeing to buy the rights to the Apprentice. I think what's different now is, well, you don't have a Congress that's doing its job. I mean, at the time of Watergate, you actually had some confidence that the other pillars of government would stand up, would hold up. And in the case of Watergate, you had a Congress that conducted an investigation, that obtained internal tapes, and that made all the difference in the world. And now you have a president who has control of both houses of Congress, and you have a Congress, a Republican Party, that is completely servile.

[David Frum]

Is there something different about the media institutions themselves? Have they changed in some way as compared to what they were half a century ago?

[Marty Baron]

Good question. Look, in the past, I mean, I think sometimes we romanticize what the media was like. Keep in mind, I mean, we used to have incredibly wealthy owners of media, people like Hearst who often collaborated with government and abused their power. I mean, the Chandler family in Los Angeles remade Los Angeles, brought water from the Owens Valley in the north down to LA to essentially enrich themselves. So I think we romanticize what media ownership was in the past. I think that now a lot of media, big institutional media, is owned by, first of all, very wealthy people who have other very substantial commercial interests. And you have also these parent companies which have other substantial commercial interests. And they're highly dependent on the federal government. And the federal government has probably more power today than it had back in the previous years, previous decades.

[David Frum]

One reason it seems to me that media institutions are weaker in the 2000s was because they went through a self imposed spasm of self cannibalization in the late 2010s culminating in the events of 2020. The most famous example of this is the forced resignation of James Bennett from the New York Times op ed page for the sin of running an op ed that some of the staffers thought was too interesting. They claimed that the op, the op ed would lead to violence, which was on its face and certainly by the result of false claim. But Bennett was forced out and other institutions saw these kind of little staff mutinies. You experienced many at the Washington Post and it left in the hypothesis is was there some kind of weakening of the sinew, some kind of weakening of the courage, some kind of weakening of the solidarity between staff and leadership at the institution that happened between 2015 culminating in 2020, and is that in any way responsible for the weakness of institutions today?

[Marty Baron]

Well, I don't disagree with you that there has been a certain ideological rigidity within newsrooms and unwillingness to recognize nuance, a tendency on the part of particularly younger generation, I think, to divide the world into victims and victimizers, oppressors and the oppressed, and basically see the world without a nuance, see it through sort of a binary separation. I think that what that has done, I don't that it has weakened. Certainly there have been rebellions within newsrooms. I did experience that due to my efforts to try to enforce social media guidelines, for example, and then also in reaction to the George Floyd killing, the demand for greater diversity in the newsroom and in leadership. But I think that the unwillingness to sort of recognize nuances has hurt our credibility with the general public. That's where I think it's done real damage, is that it has contributed to the decline, decline and confidence in major news institutions. And that's a perilous place to be.

[David Frum]

Diversity is a complex concept with many different meanings. And I think what it can sometimes mean and has sometimes meant for many institutions is that while the staff become more diverse in a series of biographical attributes, they become more monolithic in the way they think and more different from the people to whom they want to deliver their product. So if you've got a newsroom that is all full of, from Every background, every, every climb, but all graduates of certain four year institutions with certain common outlooks. And the readership doesn't meet those qualifications. I mean, they may, you know, have different biographies, but they have similar outlooks. And it's one that puts them increasingly at odds with who their consumers are in a way that just wasn't the case when you went to a newspaper from high school, not from college.

[Marty Baron]

I think that's true. I think that, you know, we do not have a certain level of diversity that we should have. It's people from a lot of different backgrounds, people who didn't go to all the same sorts of schools. I certainly didn't, by the way. I did not go to an Ivy League school and I grew up in Florida and not in the Washington area. And I just ended up there because I was approached about taking on the editorship of the Washington Post, which was a surprise to me. So I've always seen Washington as a bit of a bubble, and I think it is. And I think, look, we did work, when I was at the Post, we did work to increase the diversity in respects other than demographic. And that was. We tried to hire more military veterans. We thought that was important. The country had been at war for so many years and yet we had very few military veterans in our newsroom. We needed more. We hired people who came from evangelical Christian colleges. I thought that was really important given the importance of religion in this country and particularly evangelicalism in this country, and to try to get more people from working class backgrounds as well. We need to do more of that. There's no question, I think there are a lot of people in the newsroom who don't understand the struggles and lives of ordinary people in the middle of the country. And we need to work harder at that. There's no question about that.

[David Frum]

One thing I think that gets lost sight of, and I'm old enough to remember it, and maybe you are too, was that in the middle 1970s, most of the people who worked in a news for a newspaper were engaged in a form of manufacturing the paper. Yes, it was written, but it was after it was written, it was then composed. It was composed by people who worked for the newspaper and it was then physically printed and then just physically distributed. It was a giant manufacturing enterprise and most of the staff were blue collar people who had nothing to do with the content of the paper and everything to do with the physical existence of the paper. And this was brought home when my wife's stepfather, father, created a newspaper in Toronto where, which was Created in the early 1970s, the Toronto sun, which was like this, and you saw it when you went to the athletic events or the picnics, the softball games, that the reporters might have had a slightly more educated background, but most people who were there were blue collar people when they played softball together, when they did picnics together, when they socialized together. That the newspaper affirmed its identity as part of the culture of the city and it was a manufacturing enterprise. Well, just technology's changed that. Newspapers don't manufacture anymore. They deliver a non physical product. The people who produce the product are highly educated. The production staff are probably even more technically skilled than the content staff. And all of them are more and more unlike the rest of the people of the city or country in which they serve.

[Marty Baron]

Well, I agree with you on that. I think, look, this was evident prior to Trump being elected. People have asked me what our failures were prior to Trump being elected, and I always say it wasn't the coverage of the campaign, it was what occurred prior to that, years prior to that, is that we didn't understand the country well enough. We just did not understand people's struggles, their expectations, their aspirations. And we needed to do that better. And there's no question that, look, everybody, people talk about their life experiences these days, but everybody's life experiences by definition, narrow. It's just them. Our job as journalists is to get outside of our life experience and understand the life, the experiences of other people. And we need more people in our newsrooms who come from a variety of different backgrounds. And I think we should get to work doing that.

[David Frum]

A point I made in my first Trump book about this as a way of driving it home. So the great opioid toll begins in 2014. By 2016, it's killing more Americans than Vietnam. I went to the New York Times search engine and typed in for the year from January 1st of 2016 to the end of 2016, the two words opioid and transgender. And I don't want to, I don't want to derogate from the importance of any issue, but if I remember right, there were like 80 or 100 times more stories about transgender issues in the New York Times in 2016 than there were about the op. Opioid epidemic. Now, that would change the following year, but it just marked that something could be happening in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in 2014, 2015 and 2016. And it was invisible to the people, produced the country's most elite newspapers. And one of Trump's secret weapons in the campaign of 2016 was he would campaign in these places and just say the word opioid. He had no plan, he had no concept. And indeed the problem would continue to get dramatically worse under his presidency. But at least he knew it was there, which other people seem not to know.

[Marty Baron]

That's a very interesting data point, that research that you did. And I think it does highlight just how sorely disconnected we are from so much of what is happening in the country. And I think that's something that definitely needs to be corrected and corrected quickly. It's caused for a lot of self reflection on the part of all of us in the media, and we need to make sure that that doesn't continue.

[David Frum]

Well, as we talk about media, of course, people of a certain generation have an idea of what media is, and we often have a way of using that phrase to mean institutions that were important in 1972. The Washington Post, the New York Times, CBS News. And it's a little hard to absorb that everybody who has one of these devices, which everybody has, can communicate instantly any image or any language to anybody on the planet on a scale that would have staggered the editors of the Washington Post in 1972 or even the CBS Evening News. And I suppose one of the questions we have to think more philosophically about is what is media in the 2000s? I mean, TikTok shapes more minds than the New York Times, and Joe Rogan has a bigger audience in 60 minutes. And we have a kind of anti media that creates relationships with its consumers by presenting itself as non media, by attacking the institutions that were important in 1972, but that are themselves also forms of media, obviously, and that are different from the traditional institutions, only they seem to have no code of conduct, no code of ethics whatsoever.

[Marty Baron]

Well, clearly the definition of media has expanded tremendously. We've seen a radical change in the kind of media there is, and a radical change in the way that media is consumed. And a lot of the new media is communicating with a level of authenticity, or at least perceived authenticity, that institutional media has been unable to deliver. We in traditional media have always focused on our authority, the reporting that we do, the verification process, all of which of course, is essential and core to who we are and what we ought to be doing, what our mission is. At the same time, we are not communicating the same level of authenticity that a lot of the new media are. And because we don't do that, because we don't communicate authenticity, we're not getting credit for the authority that we have. And people who do communicate authentically or perceived authentically a lot of the new media, they're being given credit for authority that frequently they don't deserve. Not always. There are people who are quite capable who are doing that, but a lot of them don't deserve the authority. And look, this is a huge challenge. I mean, it's an opportunity, of course, to reach more people, but it's a huge challenge to traditional news institutions. And that's one that we clearly have to confront and we have to change.

[David Frum]

Well, you're very polite about it when you talk about, call it authenticity. I think one of the lessons, I think from a media business point of view, the media of the 1970s ignored large parts of demand. It turns out there's a much bigger demand for virulent antisemitism in America than anyone in 1975 thought there was. There's much more demand for crackpot medical advice than people used to think. And in 1975, if you'd said to the New York Times or the Washington Post or cbs, you know, you could make more money by serving the anti Semitic market or the medical crackpot market, they would say, you know what? We're making enough money. Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need to tell people the polio vaccine is no good. But people have. Entrepreneurs have discovered there is a big market for antisemitism. There is a big market for the polio vaccine is no good. And you can get very rich, or at least selected individuals can, meeting that demand, which is not infinite, but large. And we are in a world that is, you know, the price of the Internet may be the return of infectious diseases that had been banished in 1998.

[Marty Baron]

Yeah, look, there are an enormous number of bad actors. I mean, I, by using the word authenticity, I don't suggest to say that many of them aren't bad actors. There are good actors, too. There are people who are doing really good work. I think there's a reason you have a podcast, that you developed a podcast because you saw it as a better way of communicating with people, or at least potentially a more effective way of communicating with people. And there are a lot of other people who are doing that as well. So I don't want to discredit everybody who's in new media because they don't deserve to be discredited, because many of them are quite good. But there are a lot of bad actors and spreading crazy conspiracy theories and a lot of hate. And that is the nature of the Internet these days, is that it allows for that because it's a highly fragmented market and People are going to exploit that fragmented market for their own personal, professional, political or commercial gain. And that's exactly what's happening. I would say, however, that traditional media is not irrelevant, as is often claimed by people in that new media field by a lot of our politicians today, including, you know, Trump and Musk and what, you know, whoever. And the reality is that we remain irrelevant. There is a reason why Trump is completely obsessed with traditional media. He would not be obsessed with traditional media if it were irrelevant. That would be insane. And by the way, when Elon Musk stepped out of his just recently stepped away from the White House, who did he give interviews to? Amazingly traditional media. The very media that he had denigrated all along.

[David Frum]

How should we think about what is and what isn't media? A person offering makeup advice on TikTok to a million viewers, is that media? I don't know anymore.

[Marty Baron]

Yeah, it's media. I mean, I think it is media. Media writ large. Absolutely. People who are on TikTok are having an enormous impact. I mean, people are forming their opinions of what's happening, let's say in the Middle east, based on a 15 second TikTok. They think they know everything based on the 15 seconds that they saw on TikTok. Now, that is appalling. Of course, anytime you're dealing with a complex subject like the Middle east, which has centuries of history behind it, you don't want to think that you've absorbed everything you need to know based on something you saw in 15 seconds on TikTok. But there's no question that's media. That is how people are receiving their information, like it or not.

[David Frum]

Let me offer you a last question, some advice for the viewers. How does one become a better consumer of media content in this day and age? Are there any guidelines or advice you can offer to the viewer who is not selling makeup tips to a million people, but who has a phone, uses it, looks at it? How do we use this incredible new device, this incredible new power, responsibly and effectively to live better and more informed lives of citizens and individuals?

[Marty Baron]

Well, look, I mean, one of the biggest challenges today, a huge challenge and problem for us, is that we can't agree on a common set of facts. We can't even agree on how to determine what a fact is. All of the things that we've used in the past, education, experience, expertise and actual evidence, have all been discredited and not discredited, but denied and dismissed and denigrated. I think that consumers should be looking at that. They ought to be looking. Does this person actually have an education in the field? Does this person have an experience, have experience in the field? Does this person have expertise? Is there actual evidence? Can I see the evidence? Who is behind this? Use your critical faculties to judge the quality of information and the quality of the people who are disseminating that information and determine whether in the past you've relied on them. I mean, one of the interesting things about traditional media is that when there's a natural disaster, guess where people turn. If they turn to traditional media, they don't turn to some of these fringe outfits to tell them where the hurricane's going to hit and what they ought to be doing, or where the tornado is, tornado is, or anything like that, or the flooding is going to be. They turn typically to traditional media because, look, there's a reserve of confidence in them because they know that they're going to get accurate information. And so I think consumers of information need to look for that education, expertise, experience. And what is the evidence that they are providing? Are you just relying on your beliefs or are you confusing your beliefs with actual facts?

[David Frum]

Maybe the good news or the bad news are the same, which is, we all have many more opportunities, but we're all going to have to work a lot harder to make sure that we are accurately and truthfully informed. And while it's never been easier, if you have some medical symptom, never been easier to find out for yourself what that probably is, it's also never been easier to be deceived by people who, for reasons of gain or sociopathy, want to make you sicker or want to deny you the medicine you really need. And so we have seen this. The decline in vaccination is still more than 90% of American children are properly vaccinated. So nine out of 10 people are doing the right thing, but five or eight out of 100 are doing the wrong thing. And they pose risks not only to their own children, but to everybody's children.

[Marty Baron]

Yeah. And I think the consumers of information have to work harder, but also those of us who are delivering information have to work harder to show people our work, to show people why they should believe us. Not just to tell them what things, what's, what's happening, but to show them the work that we've done, the evidence that we're relying upon, be as transparent as possible, communicate more effectively, and make sure that we're covering the entirety of our communities and our society and our country, and do a better job of that.

[David Frum]

Marty, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your candid memoir. It's going to be an important resource for anyone who wants to understand the Trump era and also the transformation of media under new kinds of ownership. And above all, your extraordinarily important institution, the Washington Post, which you led to such heights and which we hope is able to retain at least most of the glory that you delivered for it.

[Marty Baron]

Thank you, David. Appreciate it.

[David Frum]

Thank you. Bye bye. Gatorade is the number one proven electrolyte blend designed to hydrate better than water so you can lose more sweat and raise your gain. Gatorade is it in you?

[Medicare Advertiser]

Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get [e-mail] thanks so much to Marty.

[David Frum]

Barron for joining me today. If you appreciate this dialogue and the others like it, I hope you will subscribe to this podcast on whatever platform you use. I hope you'll also consider subscribing to the Atlantic in print or in text form. That is how we under support all the work of this podcast of myself and of all my Atlantic colleagues. As we wrap up this all media day today, I want to delve into one final topic and that is the way the scandal, this outrage, this outcry that has been whomped up about the age of former President Joe Biden. Everyone saw the debate that President Biden had obviously become infirm and now there is a lot of accusation that this was somehow covered up or neglected and that not only were the people around President Biden culpable, but somehow the press was implicated too in its failure to address the question sufficiently and in time. This strikes me as something with a kernel of truth to it, but more distraction and misleading than truth. And let me explain what I mean now. I'm proud to say that the Atlantic was early and direct on the Biden age story. We ran a piece in June of 2022 by my Atlantic colleague Mark Levovich saying Biden was too old and should not run again. Had Leibovich's advice been followed, history would have taken a very different course and I think you will find many other examples in many other places. Olivia Newsey at New York magazine of people who brought attention to the President Biden's gathering infirmity. Obviously there were people around him who tried to put the best face on the President's health. That's always true. President Kennedy was much sicker than anybody knew at the time. When he was President, in the early 60s, when he seemed to be a model of physical fitness, President Eisenhower, the severity of his heart attacks, again, that was not known to people at the time. The full seriousness of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, his recovery, it was much more touch and go than people were allowed to think at the time. People are invited to think of the President as healthier than the President often is. It is a body killing job and nobody comes out of it in the same shape that they went into it. And surely the people around President Biden tried to represent him as healthier than perhaps he was, especially toward the end. And it is an important news story to cover the capability of the President. Kudos to those who dig into that topic, who separate what is true from what is rumored, and who alert people when the President isn't as capable as the President should be or as those around him want to be. And that's a job that continues even after the presidency. As I said with these previous presidents, the full degree of their infirmity was often not known until sometime afterwards. Woodrow Wilson was struck down by a stroke in October of 1919. Now, people understood that he was ill and was invalided, but how radically invalided he was, that was something. And he was invalided from October of 1919 until he left the presidency in March of 2019, 21, almost a year and a half that was covered up by his wife and his doctor. And the full truth was not known for a long time. And that really did change the course of history. Many of the worst acts of the Wilson presidency happened after the stroke of October 1919. And it's not clear whether Wilson approved of them, authorized them, or even was aware of them. The Palmer Raids, for example, that where the immigrants were rounded up and deported without much of a hearing, if any. Those started in November of 1919 and were at their peak in January of 1920. Not clear that Wilson even ever knew about it. So bringing the truth retrospectively also an important task. And I understand that journalists, when they follow these stories, can sometimes lose perspective. You know, if the school superintendent is stealing pencils from the supply cabinet, that's probably not the most important story in the world. But the only way you're ever going to find out about it is if one person in the local paper decides that for him or for her, that story will be the most important story in the world for however long it takes to get to the bottom of it. And only a person who acts as if the superintendent stealing the pencils is the most important story in the world will bring the story to light at all and give it whatever attention it deserves. Tunnel vision is kind of a bona fide job qualification for being a reporter. But when you consume and read and react to news, that's where the perspective comes in and you need to say, okay, maybe the people around Biden did try to hush up how sick he was. And maybe not every journalist worked as hard as Mark Leibovich to get in to get the truth. Not every journalist worked as hard as Olivia Nussey to get the truth. Not every journalist was willing to brave the blowback that Mark Leibovich and Olivia Nuzzy got for their reporting of the truth. But how important was this story really? And today, when there is an effort to make it seem like this is the biggest scandal in American history, or at least the biggest scandal going today at a time when the present president is pillaging billions of dollars, the story now that is the overwhelming story here in Washington is corruption on a post Soviet, post colonial Africa scale. Billions of dollars going and affecting everything. Every decision that this administration makes, from pardons to foreign policy. That's the story. Everything else also interesting. But don't oversell it and don't over buy it. Thanks very much. I hope to see you next week here on the David Frum Show. This episode of the David Frum show was produced by Nathaniel Fromm and edited by Andrea Valdes. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards. Claudine Abayad is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm David Frum. Thank you for listening.