← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
David Remnick and Ben Smith Discuss How the Media Should Cover the President
00:22:55
BuzzFeed published an unverified dossier an unverified dossier full of damning information about Donald Trump and Russia. Did it damage the media’s credibility at a precarious moment?
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On today's Politics and More podcast, David.
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Remnick talks to Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed. Smith's decision to publish an unverified intelligence.
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Report on Trump's ties to Russia has.
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Raised questions about how the media should cover the president. Donald Trump campaigned to bring change to the way things are done in Washington, and he's brought it unquestionably and with his team dealing in alternative facts or falsehoods or lies. Call it what you will, our job of telling you the truth, the job of journalists, as best we can figure out, is harder than it's ever been. Recently, there was more news about the infamous Russian dossier, the unverified documents alleging salacious and very damning activities by the man who's now president. And nearly all of what we know about the dossier came from its publication online in BuzzFeed. Now, BuzzFeed, if you're not familiar with it, is a website that mixes a lot of things quizzes, videos, listicles, all kinds of clickbait alongside some very serious and very thorough reporting. Ben Smith is the editor in chief and he made the controversial decision to publish the entire dossier on buzzfeed with a disclaimer telling you, the reader, to make up your own mind whether to believe it or not. Ben, I thought what we would do is before we get into a back and forth about whether it was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do to publish this dossier, I want to know the narrative of what happened. We hear here and there that this dossier was floating around in Washington and elsewhere long before the election.
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C
So I mean, as you say, this dossier had been in various versions and if you look at it, it's dated. There are monthly updates to it. We learned after we published it, lots of people popped up and said, oh, I had a copy. I had a copy too. It was in fairly wide circulation and had been pitched both to journalists and to the FBI over the late summer.
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B
By whom?
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C
So we don't have original reporting on this. It's been reported that it was commissioned by a sort of unique, very high powered. Opposition research is sometimes the term for it shopped from a retired British spy.
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B
Because there was, it's Christopher Steele.
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C
I mean, it's been reported that it was right, that it was a former MI6 agent. Actually, I think the guy who ran the Russia desk at MI6, so not, not a random person at all, meaning one of the best informed Western intelligence figures on Russia period.
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B
And opposition research, meaning the political parties involved, the Democratic Party having its opposition research, Republicans having its at some remove sometimes.
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Actually, I don't think it's been reported who paid for it.
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B
So go on.
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C
Nobody shopped it to me. But you started to see it. You look back and you see, oh, this is what they were talking about at various points, most notably, Harry Reid sent a letter, an open letter to the director of the FBI in October saying, I know that you have explosive damaging allegations against Donald Trump in your possession. Please tell me more. And it was obviously shadowboxing around this document. And I think, you know, it's pretty remarkable that during a summer when the FBI was talking publicly about its investigation, Hillary Clinton, it was also keeping secret a parallel investigation into Donald Trump. But I think a lot of journalists, including us, when we got it, saw it as a really interesting tip. You get a lot of interesting tips. There are a lot of very specific.
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Reporting lines that the dossier itself was merely a tip.
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C
Yeah, and it's certainly not merely. But one of the things it was, was certainly a tip. You get all Sorts of tips, True and false.
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Well, I don't understand. In other words, it's a 35 page dossier which describes all kinds of, as is very famous now, hijinks in a hotel room at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, but also financial information and a lot of Kremlinology as well. Who told what to whom inside the Kremlin.
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C
Kremlinology is so good that you're like, wait, does anybody have that information?
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B
I gotta say, maybe too good, but we'll get to that in a second. So when you first read it, and this is before the election, when you first read the 35 page dossier in all its grimy detail, what did you make of it? Did you believe it?
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C
I mean, I think I saw it as like, I think a lot of us saw it as, huh. This is really. These are interesting claims and some of them seem gettable. You know, these are claims about things that either happened or did not happen. They're not philosophical claims, they're not claims about people's mental states.
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B
So you're working on this story the way you would with any, as you call it, a tip.
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C
Yeah, we had four really great reporters chasing different elements of it in Washington, in Europe, Prague and other parts of Europe full time. Yeah, I mean, yes, they were very focused on it.
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B
And did they make any progress?
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You know, the thing with progress is you want to confirm, I mean, either you've confirmed something, you've knocked it down and you don't really have progress until that. And so obviously we didn't have anything that we felt was, had nailed it down. I would go back to saying, when we first got the dossier, our world editor, Miriam Elder had spent years in Moscow, most recently for the Guardian.
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A terrific reporter who I know well.
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Terrific reporter, you know, both said, there's a lot in here that is like, that basically was obviously written by somebody who knew what they were talking about. But there were also little inaccuracies in.
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It that gave her pause.
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That gave her pause and gave us pause. Yes. And in fact, when we. Yes.
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So January 10th, I'm in my office and I've got CNN going and late afternoon, early evening, on comes this report, Jake Tapper, Carl Bernstein, saying that there has been this dossier. A summary of the dossier was given to both the President of the United States and the then President elect, Donald Trump. And they were read in on this. So you see this on cnn. You, you've held off on publishing for weeks, as you say, so quickly you made a decision to then Publish. And I want to get your thinking on that. And how were you able to decide so quickly? Because it was really only a matter of minutes later where people were saying, oh my God, buzzfeed is now posted, or an hour or whatever it was. Tell me about that evening at the offices of BuzzFeed. Right.
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C
I think it had been sort of a hard call if, at what point, if ever, do you publish? And right then we're thinking, well, you know, there's no particular urgency and we're chasing it. But I think we had always, or at least I had always thought at some point this is a story, this thing is a story. Once both the allegations have been briefed to the president of the president elect and effectively summarized to the country that I think I felt immediately that instinctively the right thing to do is then to share the underlying document.
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B
And knowing that other places that you have some respect, whether it's the Washington Post, New York Times, obviously cnn, did that not give you pause in making your decision?
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I mean, I think there are certain kinds of decisions that I've certainly made through my career and that I think a lot of places that grew up in this new ecosystem have, where the fact that older institutions have a reflex that's rooted in their history and their traditions, in this notion that they are the sort of vestigial notion that they probably wouldn't really even say aloud, but that is in their culture, that their job is to keep the gate and to keep information from their audience. At certain times, not only wouldn't they.
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Say it aloud, they would scream and yell at you and maybe justifiably, because these are places that have published Watergate, Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib, whatever it is, these are not places.
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C
These are great journalistic institutions and 98% of the time we agree with them. Like we also do deep, extensive investigations where we take months or years to show wrongdoing about it. I think, you know, the notion it was an unusual situation, an unverified document kicking around with that kind of political battle over it, like it's follow up briefing, there aren't tons of precedents for that.
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B
But had CNN not put up its report that night, would you have posted that night?
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We would not have posted that night.
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So it was a competitive decision or a moral decision or a journalistic decision or a little of all three?
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C
I think a little of all three. I mean, I think we. But I would say that already that we were thinking and talking about at what point is it appropriate to publish?
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B
Yeah, you did a very interesting thing you posted the document, but it also came with almost a warning label, and it included this phrase, Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US Government. Explain that to me.
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C
So we wanted to be clear because obviously the. The notion of putting particularly really vivid allegations into play, because the thing is, the core allegations, those are very damning allegations, incredibly damning allegations that frankly, we had not been able to stand up or knock down. So once those allegations had been made to the president and the President elect and in public by cnn, to me that becomes a much easier call. I think once the allegation, that there is an allegation from a source reported as credible that the President of the United States has been compromised, almost any detail is preferable to that. Like the notion of I hold in my hand a list of communists. The notion of a secret, mysterious document that has allegations so dark and explicit.
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What you're saying is, then you might as well print the names of the alleged.
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I think that once you get halfway out on that allegation, it becomes an easy call to come out of the way.
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Let's acknowledge one dynamic of this conversation. You are the editor of book buzzfeed, which has a young audience and a very young staff, and it grew up on the Internet. It is a child of the Internet itself. I'm the editor of the New Yorker, which has been in existence for 90 plus years, and that's called the legacy media in your terms. You and I saw each other the day after this decision. We had dinner, a long standing invitation from you, and we discussed this somewhat, and you put it in terms of generation, that. In other words, that my reflexes as the editor of a certain age for a legacy media are different than your reflexes, that it's a generational thing. And to some extent, somebody in my chair, not necessarily me individually, but in my chair or at the Washington Post or the New York Times, wherever it is, they don't quite get it. Explain that.
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I wouldn't say that you don't get it. And I also think that reflexes aren't necessarily the most important thing. And I don't want to overstate the difference. I mean, I think there's a difference between reflexes and judgment, reflexes and values. That said, I do think that BuzzFeed and I came up doing a kind of journalism that was often really fundamentally about saying to the audience, here is the thing under the thing that you're reading about in these very kind of formalistic ways, in the great American newspapers. And I think, you know, some of that particularly was around the Iraq war. The sort of blogging culture around the Iraq war, which was very much about saying, you know, you're reading about these intelligence reports that have been digested six times through various layers of the administration, then pre chewed and fed to a reporter at a major newspaper, and we as educated random citizens can actually dig in and under and analyze this ourselves and, and come to different conclusions and distrust. I'd also. But you're not saying that you just.
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Dump out all your notes and say, you know, have at it.
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I think that you should, when you can share as much as you can. I think that, you know, I mean, I get crazy unverified tips to my email inbox. Why not publish them all into my public Twitter constantly? If you're interested in random unverified tips, feel free to search my replies.
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Right.
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I don't think they're doing anybody any harm out there, by the way. I think people are. People understand that you should not take what an egg avatar says, you know, and add any particular truth value to it. I think that there's certainly a really. There's a legitimate and real debate over whether the media of the 1970s and 80s that could really fully exercise that gay peer function was better if that was a better world than the world we live in now. I just think it's indisputable that that is not this world. That the idea that you can keep things behind the gate and that the audience should just trust you is, you know, honestly is something that there are a few institutions, yours among them. I hope the New Yorker audience says, you know what? I trust David Remnick to show me some things, not show me others. I don't think that's a kind of trust that most of us should take for granted.
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B
I certainly don't take it for granted. That's something you work for every day, isn't it? I mean, but what you're getting in the criticism from legacy media editors, journalistic pointy heads, people at Poynter, various public editors, can be summarized in this, that your job is not just to receive a dossier, it's to be verified, contextualized. And your argument, I think, Ben, is that by putting this out and by fixing, in all fairness, putting your warning label that's not verified and so on, that you're not speeding up the process of getting to the truth, but slowing it down. So Kelly McBride at Poynter says that. That by throwing this out onto the web, despite the Warnings. This is her argument that in fact, it gave Donald Trump the opportunity to say, see, it's all sleaze, it's junk. And then the next time the story is advanced maybe in a different direction that is verified, he's going to be able to say the same thing. How do you approach that argument?
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I mean, I think that's a deeply specious argument and for a few reasons. One is just that, that, you know, this is, these are the rules of engagement under which the media spent the last couple of years just getting steamrolled by Donald Trump.
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Right.
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But the idea that there is, there was a stream of journalism saying, you know, we had just figured out how to report on Donald Trump and have him, you know, be forced to engage and react to us, and you guys blew it. I just think that's. That seems unlikely to me that this was the moment when the media was finally going to figure out how to cover Donald Trump. But that's a matter of, I guess, political prognostication. And her guess is in some ways as good as mine on that. Usually there's no reason to publish an unverified tip because it's not being briefed to the President of the United States. It's not affecting policy. It's just a claim in the air that you have no reason to act on. And then on the other hand, we did chase it very hard. We did. And we and many, many others, which is frustrating.
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But again, the argument is, okay, you didn't get it, but try harder, keep going.
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Right. And I think the question of, like, I do think the question is how long do you sit on this thing that is being briefed to the president.
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Till you get it? That's the argument.
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And so you keep secret that the, like you say, you know, Harry Reid saw this, he wrote a letter. But we are going to keep secret from you what that letter is about because, you know, Harry Reid may believe it, but we're not going to tell you. I think the notion that you should keep secret objects that are motivating people's decisions in power just.
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I take your point. Now, we are now a whole week into this new administration. On day one, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, walks into the briefing room and really explodes about to the press corps that somehow they are lying about crowd sizes and that you have this back and forth. And he described this as the most watched inauguration in history. We are off to the races here. As the editor of buzzfeed, what do you expect? What do you think this is going to bring us in terms of a relationship between the new president and the press and how should the press behave?
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I mean I think Sean's first statement really boils down to who you going to believe, me or your lion eyes? Like that was it. And that's a old Groucho Marx. And I think that's a real test. Like there will be outlets and I think they are trying to. There's an effort now to create and build a new alternate world of media outlets for whom they will believe Donald Trump, not their lying eyes. And they will attack them.
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B
And that includes being in addition to Breitbart. What else?
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InfoWars. I read recently that Gateway pundit is going to have a seat in the White House briefing room.
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It is interesting to see not only in BuzzFeed headlines in the New York Times saying telling another lie, comma, Trump says da da, da. Using the word lie in headlines and leads and all the rest. We've gone somewhere new.
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Yeah, I mean I think, you know, it's an incredi. Think there ought to be a very high priority using the word lie. Cuz you're speculating about somebody's mental state.
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Intention.
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Yeah, about their intention, which is a hard thing to know. You have to have really clear evidence that they, you know, that they knew, that they knew what the reality was and then they said the opposite. I mean, I think Trump does occasionally clear that bar. Other times I think it's, he says things that are false and his motives and what's going on in his mind are a mystery.
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B
So how are you going to go cover the White House in Washington now? Is it any different than covering the Obama administration?
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C
I think that the notion that you primarily cover the administration by getting and printing the words of the spokesman is pretty far gone. I mean, I think that was, I don't know when that started deteriorating, but by the time, you know, I was covering campaigns like fifteen years ago, the idea that, the idea that the White House, that the most fun job in Washington was to be in the White House, you know, do you care where.
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The White House press room is? If they move it to the old Executive Office Building, does it matter?
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You know, it seems to me that there's that the administration wants to pick a series of fights with the press and wants to pick ones that are. Will make the press look petty and fighting over your seats maybe seems like it looks petty. But I do think that you've got to think about, okay, what's the next one and the next one after that and the next one after that. And given that they seem not to have accepted this very basic convention that when asked a direct question, you give a truthful answer, I don't really think the press ought to be giving ground on any of the other conventions.
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B
Ben, you're a terrific user of Twitter and you're very good at it. And I want to know.
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C
So what about you?
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I just lurk.
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C
But you do lurk?
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Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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C
Is there a David Remnick account where I can go see who you follow?
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No, there is.
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Do you have a secret account?
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No.
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Or you just sort of look at Twitter? How do you do that?
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I look around at who interests me, and that leads to one thing or another. I've never wanted to do it because I knew in my heart that it would just take up too much time and that time. What else you got? But I completely confess to, not that I need to confess to it, that I look all the time. I see your stuff and I, you know, I see when a big news story is going. I go on Twitter like half the world.
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And you search the term. I'm sort of interested in your, like the kind of. The very. There's chaos. I feel like there's some very.
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I'm describing chaos is the difficulty.
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But there's some very high powered Twitter lurkers out there.
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How should we cover and think about Donald Trump tweeting? Because God knows I look at that every day.
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As you said. I think. I don't want to pretend that I really know. I think there are these sort of opposite impulses that are both obviously wrong, one of which is you gotta devote all your energy to just echoing and saying what he just tweeted and that this kind of fast, twitch newswire way.
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B
And.
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And I don't think. And ultimately that you ignore statements from the President United States because of the medium they're made on, which doesn't make sense. Presidents have always sought to make statements in ways that they cannot be engaged or rebutted directly. Whether it is a written statement, a speech and a video from the Oval Office, an address. I mean, it's not like, you know, I hope he will give press conferences and answer questions. But also, it's not new that the president would just say stuff.
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B
And no, there's a kind of myth that if you somehow ask the question keenly enough, ferociously enough, that suddenly the president or whatever official will just go to pieces and all the truth will come pouring out, that somehow that's real journalism.
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C
Seems to me the Brits can do that. I've never Seen an American journalist do that once in a while you'll see some interview on the BBC where the interviewer asks the same question 17 times.
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B
But part of it is exactly that because it goes on long enough.
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C
Yeah.
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Press conference is an orchestrated thing where you don't have to.
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And if you look at the good Trump interviews, I feel like Jake Tapper figured this out better than anybody else. The good Trump interviews ask the same question. You keep banging away four times in a row. And when he can skip from topic to topic in a press conference, it's a show that he loves and enjoys and can't ever really be pinned down.
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B
Do you think the Kellyanne Conway method of deflection, changing the subject, pretending non reality is reality and vice versa. Is that a. Now, by the way, of course, her predecessors have all done it at one time or another, but she seems to violate the privilege. And do you think this can go on for an unlimited amount of time?
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C
I mean, I think that we're obviously really in uncharted waters and it's possible. And if you read about authoritarian regimes that just lie all the time with no consequences, that is obviously a possible world.
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B
Are you fearful of that?
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C
I mean, it's obviously a pretty scary moment. I think, you know, the tradition of American presidencies is that they. Not with. Not to this degree and in this extreme way, but always come in with a bunch of stories about how they are A, popular, which Trump is not, but B, have learned some new trick to go around the media. With Bush, it was speaking to local news. Going over the filter was the term he used. With Obama, it was social media, it was the web. It was talking to favorite elders.
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B
Clinton did it as well.
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Clinton did it and it works until reality intervenes, until. And suddenly there is, you know, gasoline spurting out of a pipe in the Gulf of Mexico and all the cameras are pointed at that pipe. And you can say, that's not really important. It's not that much gasoline. It doesn't exist. Please turn your. Please point your cameras back toward me. But you can't. But, you know, but it doesn't work. And that there's an illusion in the White House that you can control the story. And then for each president, there's a moment when that illusion totally shatters. I mean, I think the VA is another good example. I think the Bush administration, you know, inherited, made this horrible crisis@the VA and I think felt, you know, not totally unreasonably, my God, can we focus on something else? And the answer was no. We can't. You're president.
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That was Ben Smith talking with David Remnant.
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America is changing, and so is the world.
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But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
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I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
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Tristan Redman in London. And this is the Global Story.
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Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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From.
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PRX.