Brian Stelter on the Trump Media Shakedown Era

For a lot of Americans Credit card debt feels like a fact of life. I think it's just important for people to understand how credit Can work for you or against you. Why that little piece of plastic has so much power. That's this week on Explain ItTe. Find new episodes. Wherever you get your podcasts. From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Connelly. And today we are talking about power, specifically Donald Trump's power to affect the way big media companies operate.

This is a topic I cover a lot on this podcast, obviously, and over at Business Insider where I'm chief correspondent. But sometimes I want to put it all in one place, in one discussion, because it's a huge story that also has a lot of nuance. Yes, Donald Trump is trying to use the power of the presidency in unprecedented ways to affect media companies, among others.

A lot of the time he's been very successful. But there are other examples where it hasn't worked, and then there's a lot of murkiness, where it's very hard to figure out whether a media company is doing something to please Trump, to avoid being punished by Trump, Or whether it's something they wanted to do anyway. We have the perfect guest for this conversation. That's CNN's Brian Stelter, who has been chronicling the relationship between Donald Trump and the media world for years.

This one hits pretty close to home since the future of CNN is very unclear and something Donald Trump seems to care a lot about. So we discussed that too. This is a good chat. Let's get right to it. Here's me talking to Brian Stelter. Brian Seltzer. Welcome back to the show. You are chief media analyst for CNN, which means you're on CNN a lot talking about media. You write the indispensable reliable sources newsletter.

You're an excellent chronicler of media power. And more recently, I say more recently, but really for the last several years, chronicling Donald Trump.

efforts to exercise his power over the media industry. That's what we're gonna talk about today. We have a lot to talk about today. Let's start with the news of the morning. All right. Which is about your parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery. Two efforts to buy it, as everyone who listens to this podcast knows. Netflix wants it, Paramount wants it. Um, last night, Monday night, Paramount put in a new bid. This morning, Warner Brothers said, yes, we have the bid.

And that's the only news we have. Um, so we don't expect to hear whether Warner Brothers says, Okay, that's a bid we want to work with, whether Netflix is gonna come back and and put in a new bid. Yeah. Um But give me your spidey sense. Where do you think this goes in the next few days? Well, I think the information void is the news right now. Yeah, these companies have been sparring very publicly by corporate, you know, America standards.

Very, very aggressively. Like, you know, Netflix's language up against Paramount has been very harsh lately. Um, for example, Paramount has been uh quite aggressive as well. So now it seems uh everybody's gone quiet and It's time for Netflix to match, right? Whether Netflix matches or not is now the big question. We will definitely know the answer later this week.

And uh I think we can say for sure this is not gonna end anytime soon since the shareholder meeting is not scheduled until March 20th. So we know at the very least this is gonna go on for another month. Right. There there is there's a possibility that Warner says, actually the paramount offer still isn't good enough where we Netflix doesn't even need to come back over the top. But kind of assuming they'll say, All right, that's a real offer. You've you've now willing to pay us more.

Uh and by the way, if your border brothers are in the interest of WBD, aren't they trying to figure out exactly how many billions the company is worth? And every billion is obviously worth a lot. Right. And so if you're if you're Warner Brothers Discovery, uh you would want to encourage Paramount to bid more and then you would want Netflix to bid more. And then the wild card here is is one of the reasons I want to talk to you is Donald Trump.

um who in a normal presidential administration would say, Oh, these two companies should figure out the best the best path forward or Warner Brothers should figure out the best path forward. And then if there's an antitrust issue, our Department of Justice will look at it. It seems quite clear that Donald Trump believes this deal runs through him in the White House. Sometimes he says one thing, sometimes he says the other.

Um, he said in the past, um, this deal is gonna go through me. Then he said I I'm not gonna be involved in the deal. This weekend he was threatening Netflix with grave consequences if they didn't fire Susan Rice from their board. So it seems like he's back into it. You've been reporting on this a lot. You've been reporting on David Ellison's most recent visit to the White House to try to persuade uh Trump

How do how should we think about the president weighing in on this, not weighing in on this? It's again, not something he's should by any sort of standard process be involved in at all. We should just say that's a private deal. Rather than saying I think we should take him at his word, because there have been so many words, I think we should take him at his first words. His first words about this were the true words.

But when it when he said he's gonna be involved, that is the truth. That is the reality based on everything we know about Donald Trump, based on how he's acted with past deals, based on his uh opinions about the companies involved, we know that he is involved. And and he loves to be involved. It's like a reality. Exactly, which is why his comments to NBC's Tom Yamis uh around the time of the Super Bowl were so strange.

Trump all of a sudden, when directly asked by Yamas, said he was not gonna be involved. He was gonna leave it at the DOJ. And that comment came just after a meeting that Trump had with David Ellison. You mentioned my reporting about that. So, you know, one has to wonder if Trump chose in that moment to claim he wouldn't be involved because he was trying to help one of the companies involved. We don't know, we don't know that, but look, all of his behavior indicates that.

MA is in the words of one media executive to me recently, all MA runs through the Oval Office right now. And, you know, it is it is wise to to cover this accordingly. You know, with that said, I think you have to figure we have to figure out ways to separate the regulatory discussion and the Trump of it all from the actual businesses at stake and what the outcome of of this deal will be. You mean

Yes, the F C C and the DOJ have been weaponized by President Trump. True. The evidence is overwhelming. All of that is happening and has to be Covered aggressively. But then at the same time, we can have a separate, hopefully separate conversation about what is the best outcome for WBD? What's going to happen to movie theaters across America and around the world? Uh, what's going to happen to CNN and other news assets?

And and those are separate, even though they're they're very hard to untangle. I think we have to try, because you can look at this and be really disturbed by the idea of Trump picking winners and losers in big deal MA. And also you have a you know different opinions about what the outcome should be. Do you know what I'm saying? Do you guys see what I'm getting at?

Yeah, in a in a normal time there'd be a real spirited debate among people like us saying, Oh, this is bad for movie theaters or movie theaters are done anyway and we shouldn't be trying to prop them up or We should be concerned about who ends who owns CNN or we should say, Well, what whoever wants to buy CNN should buy CNN. That's how the the free market works.

We're not exactly in that we live in a world instead where Trump thinks X and thus I think Y. You know, that's the attitude you get from some progressives or many progressives. You also get from the MAGA media world, Trump says why. So I believe why, even if I reject all evidence to the contrary. Like there's this.

kind of um one of the downsides of Trump being such an overwhelming force and being omnipresent and uh being involved in every storyline is that, you know, we risk viewing everything only through the Trump prism. And and I'm just saying we have to view that prism, but we should also be able to use this as a business story separately about what the best outcome is.

But let's keep the focus on Donald Trump as he would like right now for the moment. So Last fall the conventional wisdom and the wisdom you heard from Paramount itself was Paramount will get this deal through because Larry Ellison is a big Trump supporter. Um, has been one since the twenty sixteen campaign, is doing a lot of deals with Trump. Obviously Trump will will want this company to go to an ally full stop.

Um and then we found out that actually Netflix has been has been trying to butter up Trump as well, like you would do if you knew this was the world you were entering in. So Paramount has been has been lobbying Trump, but so has Netflix. Um again, you've been doing a lot of good reporting on this. If you had to bet right now, where do you think? Trump will land if he does land on one receiver. candid comments. I think it was back in December when he said it's imperative that CNN be sold.

I think that's the closest thing we have to a real sense of Trump's priority in this conversation or in this discussion. uh the president and his personal animus towards CNN is clearly a big factor. Uh you you know that based on his body language and his comments that that come from time to time during uh photo ops and other uh events of his. When it comes to this deal, he said it's imperative that CNN be sold. And then he called the current owners a disgrace.

Well, in the current plan as it stands today, with Netflix buying Warner Brothers and HBO CNN and the rest of the the channel uh uh assets, they go off to the new company called Discovery Global, but essentially controlled by the same people. So this idea that uh he thinks it's imperative the CNN be sold.

I think that tells us a lot about what's going on and about what he wants to have. So you you connect the dots and and it's I think it's also important to recall the Wall Street Journal's reporting from the wintertime describing how uh Larry Ellison had made commitments or uh suggestions at least to White House officials about changes at CNN in the event of a paramount uh win.

So those kinds of suggestions or insinuations, which have not been confirmed by the Ellisons, you know, those I think are important to this. And it's important not to lose sight of those. Um and so and when when he was was praising Ted Cerandos late last year after Netflix uh seemed to have won this deal, um

Do you take that as sincere? I I believe that I did that was sincere as well, right? I take that as sincere, but in a a separate universe. You know, like it as a as a totally different matter.

He likes This guy came and flattered me, I like him. Right. He likes Ted personally because Ted says he likes him. Yeah, it's it's it's one of those situations. And I was struck by something that Sarandos recently said about how, you know, Trump doesn't watch Netflix shows. He's never seen K-pop demon hunters. He only watches news. So it's not as if Trump has some

Automatically negative idea about Netflix. He doesn't have an opinion about the programming. Yes, many MAGA media influencers are telling him that it's woke. There's this I I find really um unhinged claim that Netflix is trying to turn kids trans and trying to indoctrinate them with liberal programming. As someone with a six year old and an eight year old. uh who has Netflix on in the house all day.

I don't see that happening. Uh I don't think that's a good thing. There's a report put out by uh uh an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation that is sort of the basis for all these stats everyone cites. Yes, yes. It's weird that it has not gotten more attention because it's When you see Ted Cruz uh uh grilling t h Ted Sarandos, that's where all that theoretical data about half the programming is pro trans, et cetera. That's where all that comes from. It's a great example of this.

uh, you know, uh right wing media machine pushing talking points that all the GOP senators and others have repeated. Trump has not actually climbed on to that bandwagon, uh though he must be aware of it. You know, what he has recently done is is jumped onto Laura Loomer's claim about Susan Rice. And that was interesting last weekend, you know, because Here's Laura Loomer taking Susan Rice's comments, which were a kind of standard issue democratic argument saying

to the companies that have bent the knee to Trump, y you better look out what happens in the Democratic administration, uh, because they're not gonna forget what what you did during the Trump years. Yep. Those comments, amplified by Laura Loomer, immediately seized upon by President Trump, uh, for him to denounce Netflix in that way. It was it was the first really vivid example of Trump uh opposing Netflix, uh despite Ted Sarandos' attempts to visit and talk talk to Trump in the White House.

And as we'll discuss, Trump flip flops on a lot of this stuff too. He called for a Microsoft executive to get fired last year. She's still there. I never know how much we should how much attention we should devote to any of these You know, episodes. Look, la last um last September after Jimmy Kimmelgate, Trump threatened to sue ABC and suggested he was gonna go after the network and and never did.

He is suing Rupert Murdoch and has Rupert Murdoch in the White House, which I want to talk about in a minute. But but this idea of the stuff there's the stuff Trump says out loud that his administration does that we can see in public. where we can see him having a direct effect on institutions, in this case media companies, um, when, you know,

Paramount agrees to hire an ombuds who's got no experience in media but has a conservative politics bona fides to to see if there's uh uh misdeeds at CBS News. That's a direct connection to Donald Trump telling uh a company w you need to do this if you want to get approval. There's stuff we imagine is happening, like the Stephen Colbert cancellation where

Lots of people believe that Paramount canceled Colbert as a way to please uh Trump, although there's not a lot of evidence for that. And and by the way, Colbert's still on the air, so it doesn't seem like he's being silenced. Then there's the third category I'm very curious to talk to you about where There's

I think, and you've got a pretty good sense of this, that it's happening at media companies or not happening at media companies because of fear of Trump. Trump doesn't need to say anything at this point, and but people are sort of checking themselves. So that's the sense I get.

You work at CNN, I don't think your reporting has changed. But do you see that either in your newsroom or in or do you hear about that in other newsrooms and other media companies? People saying this is not something we're gonna do in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six because we don't wanna poke the bear.

You say bear, I say ghost. Like how do you how do you show, how do you prove the ghost? Um I'm not saying the ghost doesn't exist, but it's just so hard to be able to to point to an example and say, here, here's here's an instance when a news outlet Pull the punch. decided not to publish that story, decided not to go big on that topic. You know, it's it's the

It's the unknowable. It's it's the unknowable about what's what's not being uh done. And so I I always say I all I can go on is based on my personal experience, uh, that I have not changed and I don't think my colleagues have changed what they're doing. But I understand the fear that there is self-censorship going on or there is a um a softening of news coverage to avoid becoming Trump's next target. I get the fear. I just think it's almost impossible to prove it's actually happening.

Yeah, I think about it. I I I can imagine scenarios where in edge cases where this is a pretty good story, but We're not a hundred percent confident or is this the thing we want to go to the mat over? If if if it's a different kind of story, maybe we push because it's important. for us as a as a newspaper or or T V network to push through with this. But if it's more marginal, maybe we drop that one and we wouldn't have done that four years ago. Mm-hmm. Does that sound plausible?

I agree with you, it's plausible, but I think it's just very hard to document and and we have what we have not seen are examples of journalists and newsrooms coming coming forward, whistleblowing, saying, This is what's happening. I'm being suppressed. Like if you if you want to look for what's not present in the last year, that's not present. We haven't really seen episodes of that. Now, when we did see something a little bit like it at sixty minutes.

Sharon Alphonse's memo decrying corporate censorship. There was widespread coverage of that episode, uh embarrassment inside CBS, regret on the part of Barry Weiss. You might say the system worked, meaning more attention was paid to the topic as a result of perceived attempts to suppress it.

And yeah, and and that and that is one of the examples in that second category I was talking about, where a lot of people say, Oh, sixty minutes pulled this story on on Sal El Salvador and gulags. That's because of Barry Weiss trying to suck up to Donald Trump.

We don't actually know that's the case, and there's an entirely plausible other explanation that says Actually Barry Weiss just kind of screwed up and didn't really think this through and And not that there aren't a lot of politics involved in Barry Weiss being appointed to run CBS News, but this is not necessarily a case of CBS pulling a punch.

because of that relationship. And I increasingly am of the view uh that what you just described is the is the accurate assessment. Uh I think Barry Weiss has arrived at CBS News trying to do too many people's jobs at the same time. She is trying to be her title, editor-in-chief, overseeing content, but also trying to totally re-reorient the business. trying to overhaul the entire staffing structure, trying to create lots of new products.

Trying to figure out subscription revenue sources, right? Hosting a town hall, trying to figure out a strategy that's gonna keep the place s uh sustainable in ten or fifteen years. All of that is important and it can't all be done by one person. And I think some of her early missteps were a result of trying trying to do everyone's job, so to speak. rather than um in the case sixty minutes

trust the team that's been doing it for a long time. Yeah. That's a that's a that's a generous way to put it. Another way be another way maybe she d isn't prepared to take on a management role this big. Doesn't mean she can't learn it.

one day, but she's not there yet. But that's the concern I hear inside CBS. And I also hear outside CBS when it comes to questions about Paramount trying to take over CNN, whether that would increase her portfolio someday in the future. There's no no indication right now that that would happen. But it does create this question about uh whether she's able to manage this large organization at CBS News.

Last week's news about Anderson Cooper deciding not to renew at sixty minutes is also an interesting data point to that end. Um, Barry Weiss wanted to keep Anderson Cooper. And for all the folks, you know, the Daily Beast has this headline now for everything about CBS News, the MAGA-coded CBS News, the MAGA coded Barry Weiss. There are some interesting data points that contradict.

the phrase MAGA coded, right? For for every for every episode that has been actually embarrassing. For example, on January 6th, the CBS CMU News both sized January sixth in a way that was shameful. Um but for every episode like that, There's also an example like Barry Weiss trying to renew Anderson Cooper's contract, you know? That's not exactly an attempt to turn 60 Minutes into Breitbart. It's an attempt to keep the news quality at 60 minutes.

It goes bigger than CBS News, right? That you see that same dichotomy with Paramount canceling Colbert but keeping South Park. Which is treats Trump viciously. And the Daily Show with John Stewart, renewing John Stewart's contract. It's confusing, and I I feel for people who are confused by it. I'm confused by it sometimes too. David Ellison was a Biden donor. He donated a million dollars to Joe Biden.

Some folks at memory hold that for convenient reasons, but it's a really interesting data point because it suggests to me at least that The David Ellison's trying to be very savvy in the political maneuvers he's making. We'll be right back with Brian Stelter, but first a word from a sponsor.

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And we're back. Speaking of Paramount, uh want to talk to you about uh last week in the in the uh Colbert show and not putting the James Talarico interview on. Yeah. And that story is muddled as well because in some versions of it is

Brendan Carr from the FCC, i.e., the Trump administration told him not to do that. That doesn't seem to be the case. What does seem to be the case is Brendan Carr, Trump's appointee to run the FCC, has basically telling late night talk shows and daytime talk shows essentially that they can't have political candidates. on their shows. Am I interpreting that correctly? I think that's correct. And I think that's the intention. I think there's a broader intention also.

to signal, hey, uh we are the cops on the beat and we are watching and we are we are we are paying close attention. And if you don't use your a right turn signal, we're gonna pull you over and we're gonna give you the the the the the most expensive ticket we can. You know, because the reality is the FCC cops have very little real enforcement power.

But they do have visibility, right? I I to me, Brennan Carr's his his his biggest power is his microphone, you know, when he has a press conference and he and he gives all of his talking points, uh that that's where his power derives from. There's not much he can actually do to these stations. For people who are wondering about licensing, these station licenses only come up for renewal every eight years.

These key licenses will not come up for renewal until the end of Trump's second term. And if the FCC actually did try to revoke a license, Um, it would go through a lengthy court battle, it would be it would be a legal fight. Like the only recent time the FCC has revoked a license was because the owner was found guilty of bribery at some tiny little station no one's heard of. So

That's not realistic, right? What carr can do though is use his bully pulpit. And he's done that really well. And I could tell because my phone lit up when he called me last week for the first time in months. He saw an opportunity with this story. to send a message and he did. I was wondering if he was gonna sort of quiet down after Kimmel because He did, he did, yeah. He d it seemed like he did and it seemed like he kind of lost that one.

And we can talk about Next Ar and Tegna in a second as well,'cause that's involved. But um any idea why he's popping off again? And and I guess the another question for you, uh, is what happened to Brendan Carr? He was prior to this administration a pretty normal conservative when it came to uh the FCC. He he was the author of the Project Twenty Twenty Five chapter on the F C C and you can go through that still today.

It's a standard sort of Republican. We should, you know, we should have more consolidation. We should allow more ownership. Uh, we should have less regulation essentially. There's nothing about uh monitoring Jimmy Kimmel's comments or anything like that. Um Well, what happened to him? To quote the free press, Barry Weiss is the free press, Brendan Carr once defended free speech, now he is Trump's chief censor. Uh by the way, when is CBS News gonna start to cover the news that way?

Yeah. Uh that just sidebar. I'm really interested in the answer to that question. Uh the free press states it very plainly, very accurately. I wonder if CBS News is going to move more in that direction, but I digress. I think the answer is that uh car has a once in a lifetime chance.

to wield this government power to advance political and cultural goals. And he knows he's doing that for an audience of one. You could see him on Laura Ingram's show last week speaking directly to the president very, very vividly. Um All of this ultimately is about advancing co I I guess cultural power is the right phrase. It's it's about power, but specifically when it comes to the FCC.

comes from this deeply held conservative view that uh these progressive institutions in Hollywood and New York are pumping up programming that is uh not you know that is against their worldview, right? That is that is hurting America just to dig to take it to a fox type extreme. If you have these tools at your disposal and you're branding carr, of course you're going to try to pressure ABC and MBC and CBS.

I mean I guess the difference is uh his predecessor under Trump one oh, Adjut Pye didn't do any of that and he played it down the middle, m more or less. He he was pro deregulation. He was against uh uh, you know, broadband net neutrality stuff. But again, pretty standard Republican stuff. Yes, but politics today feels much more existential. You know, you think about the narratives that you see in MAGA media about this being being the final chance, the last opportunity.

you know, w look what Democrats are gonna do if they if they w when they come back in office or if they come back in office. You know, th th all of the all of the rhetoric is so much um more Extreme than it was even in Trump 1.0. I think CARS FCC is a reflection of that new political reality. And you know, so. He he he ha he's able to play it both ways, right? It's kind of a clever game. He can say, I didn't do anything. I just reminded everybody that we have these rules on the book.

And it just so happens these rules Yeah, the the I I'm not involved. You guys got it all wrong. See uh no stuff no longer seems clever to me. Of course there's tape. with him saying we should do something about K. But that's the game people need to see, right? That's the game people need to see for what it is. And they're gonna keep playing it. What did he do a few days after the this Colbert controversy? He encouraged local stations to air pro-America content for the America 250 anniversary. Um

He has no, you know, legal ability to require anybody to do anything. And he acknowledged that. He just said, hey, here's what you should do. And I'm sure some of the uh more Trump-friendly station owners will do it.

So related to this is this Next Artegna merger, which was part of the Kimmel controversy. Um, this is a merger between two giant owners of broadcast TV stations. This is something Donald Trump said he was against last fall. Now he is for it. I'm curious about why you think that uh he has changed his mind. But but more broadly, why does why is a merger of two broadcast T V stations

Why should we care about that in twenty twenty six? I can't tell you the last time I watched broadcast TV full stop. Sure. During the recent blizzard though, local stations played an invaluable role, uh helping to inform the community and frankly. uh to show people uh why you shouldn't go outside and to show people what it's like out in the elements. You know, I I do think severe weather is a great demonstration of why uh local TV and radio matter a lot.

and why they're powerful. And you know, look at l let me let me ate Brendan Carr's argument about this. His argument for why he should be more aggressive enforcing the equal time rule boils down to this. He says, Yes, we live in a world of infinite options, YouTube and streaming and all the rest. In that world of infinite options, broadcast is even more special because it's the only thing that uses the public airwaves. It's the only uh medium.

Uh that uses the public airwaves. Thus, we should protect it and we should ensure that it's meeting its obligations. So that is his argument. If you apply that to Techna and Nextstar, you would say. It should concern everyone when um these stations are being gobbled up, when consolidation is happening at the localization level.

Because only a couple of people will ultimately be in charge of what is being seen at all these local stations. And, you know, I know that there are journalists in these local stations who are worried about. A more cookie cutter approach. About less local coverage and more national generic repeat type stuff, you know? What we what what what we've seen in local media in lots of mediums, right? Local radio is most likely programmed by someone who doesn't live in the city you're listening to it.

Your newspaper, if you have a newspaper, is likely owned by a national chain and a lot of the content you get is not coming from local reporters. And there are reasons to believe that'll continue and it'd be exacerbated by the Techno Next Star deal. The deal requires the FCC to change the rules in order to allow it to go through. Uh it does seem going back to the theme of MA running through the Oval Office.

that Trump flip flopped or at least uh really changed his his view on this based on lobbying, especially by uh Nextar, by uh by the CEO of Nextstar, who said, We're the anti fake news company. You know, gosh, like somebody's gonna write a a great chapter of a book someday about all of the ways that different media companies try to speak Trump's language, sometimes literally. And

None of us know how that's gonna age in ten years, but I can't wait to find out. But pr prior to him coming out and saying this is a good deal, he's saying this was a bad deal and somehow if this deal goes through It's a boon to to left it. Um, who was who was pitching Trump on that line? Or aren't you referring to Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy? Uh you know, I think that's that's one of the examples of a Trump friend, a Mar a Lago friend.

uh urging him not to allow the still to go forward. There's a fear from Newsmax and One America News that Nextar is a big rival, or at least a rival, uh, because of Nextstar's cable channel called News Nation. And it is curious how News Nation has made some moves to appeal to the right, even though the channel was founded uh with the idea of being uh nonpartisan, no nonsense, from the middle, straightforward news, just the facts, yada yada yada.

For the record, that is not rated well. The audience is not there for um what News Nation is doing. They've added these conservative talk shows, uh for example, Katie Pavlich's show is the best example, yeah, which only You can't help but wonder if the channel, if the owner is trying to appeal to Trump that way.

Uh I mentioned Rupert Murdoch earlier. He is someone you've covered a lot over your years. I've had I've had you on the show to talk about Murdoch and Murdoch criminology a lot. Um, explain this to me. Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp and the Wall Street Journal for publishing stories about the Epstein files and Trump's involvement in that last summer. Um

He continues to watch Fox News. We know that based on his tweets and true social posts. And it seems like Murdoch still has access. to Trump. I c what's the status of their relationship? I always got the sense that Murdoch really and I think you've seen this now in text, Murdoch really doesn't respect Trump. Right. Um, doesn't think much of him, but he's also the president of the United States and he has to do business with him.

Um, where where how are these guys getting along? How are they in the same room while Trump is suing him? I look back at that Wall Street Journal lawsuit, which was unprecedented at the time. Just, you know, let's let's not lose sight of how crazy some of this is. a sitting president suing a news outlet that's never happened before, as far as I can tell in American history.

There might have been some involvement with like there must some some Thomas Jefferson case. CNN, the Wall Street and the Times, et cetera, but that's when he's been out of office. Out of office, exactly. And and CNN did uh beat uh that suit and then was found once again on appeal. uh to have prevailed in in that suit of against CNN. Suing the Wall Street Journal as a sitting president was unprecedented, but I think now looking back, it's like kind of obvious what happened.

Trump wanted to be able to publicly deny that the uh birthday letter was legit. The way to publicly deny it was to sue. And the fact that he can then hang out with Rupert Murdoch afterward and have him over to the White House for dinner and be hunky dory in that way, it just it just proves how baseless the lawsuit is. It proves that the lawsuit was a PR stunt.

And I find myself as a reporter wanting to make sure that I I keep that really front of center so that if it happens again, uh I can be really clear about what's happening. Pretty extraordinary to say a sitting president suing a major news organization is a PR stunt. But there's no evidence that it's anything other than that, right? All the all the indications are it was just a stunt, just a way to distract, just a way to to make people It was a way to sew doubt in people's minds, right?

Without any other real reason. And I mean the the Rupert Murdoch can handle a lawsuit from the President of the United States. Um, but it's important to keep in mind some of these other suits, whether from the pr the sitting president or or Trump what he filed when he wasn't president, but now he's president. You have to defend those. Uh the one I keep coming back to, he's still suing uh Gannett And the pollster for the Iowa Des Moines Register who said uh project projected a Trump loss.

in the twenty twenty four election. Those that lawsuit is still going on. It goes back and forth between different courts. That's a real burden. Gannet is is a big company but not a huge one. Um the pollster whose name escapes me right now. JN Sellzer, yeah. And she's being represented by Fire. Defending it. But that's it's a real obligation with

if you have to deal with one of those suits. I mean it definitely has a potential chilling effect. And that's why we wonder about ghosts, you know, uh the the the ones that we can't see, but are people more hesitant as a result of those lawsuits. It's one of the unknowables of this era. But I I would just say and underscore what we know is that when uh people, in this case when media outlets push back, they usually prevail. Um assuming they can push back.

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Let's talk about CNN. Yeah, I've talked to you for years. As a CNN employee, you were asked to leave the company in twenty twenty two. Lots of lots of coverage around that. I you know, it's never clear whether you were fired or or left. Uh I'd say encouraged to leave is a is a neutral statement. I think I was fired. Okay. You were fired in twenty twenty two. You came back two years ago. Because I was hosting a Sunday morning show and it was cancelled.

Uh it was pretty clear what was happening. Um worked out well for everyone involved, I'd say. So s you you were gone for two years. During that period, that's when we started to see lots of your f former colleagues at CNN and just big media companies in general. leave their broadcast job, leave their T V job, whether they wanted to or not, and set up shop as a substacker or a YouTuber or TikToker or all of the above.

When you were and you didn't take a job during those two years you were out, did you consider going indie being Brianstalter dot com? I did consider it and I had what I thought was a half decent business idea, you know, a media company idea. I might have even registered the domain name. I might have even mocked up the website. I might have even demoed it to a few people. No investors or anything. It was not that serious.

What's the domain name? I I can't tell'cause, you know, you you gotta have a side hustle. Yeah, or or not a side hustle, you gotta gotta have a backup plan. But th the the re there's a couple of reasons why I didn't move forward. One was that I had just been pushed off the treadmill after being out for twenty years straight. You know, my kids were little and are little. I was having a truly uh you know, wonderful time taking care of them and freelancing.

I was able to actually start to to make a living as a freelancer. And it was really wonderful for me as a journalist who had only ever been in institutions at the New York Times and CNN. to know what it's like to have an editor, you know, work with you and shape a story and make it better in a freelance life, or to have someone be behind on a payment, you know, that kind of experience as a freelancer was really valuable.

And I I take it I I I I take it for what it for what it is now and I try to remember what that environment is like now that I'm back at a big institution. Um so number one, I was truly, really enjoying that and enjoying the break from all of it, um, from from from the kind of the daily treadmill. Um I guess I wasn't. So confident in my idea. I I I didn't have, you know, and then Oliver Darcy went off and launched status, and I have so much admiration for it.

Um you know, because he he had the courage of his convictions. You know, he had more confidence in his plan than I had in mine. Let's let's put it that way. And I I I so deeply appreciate that. Um But you know, the reason that CNN called me back, right? Oliver uh headed out uh to launch his uh startup, CNN called me back to be chief media media analyst, it was a win-win because I I really like being part of an institution. I I you know, I just

It's in my bones. I I love this big CNN machine. I'm the kind of guy who when the blizzard happened over the weekend, I pointed a camera outside my house and, you know, wanted to provide live coverage. And that's just a good idea. No, the people who l the people who don't need these big media companies, they're they're afraid. They're afraid that if if they have to stand on their own work without the backing of the big company that

They're actually not gonna matter. I did David Carr. Uh he would talk about this years before there was the idea of a substack that if he left the New York Times he might just be David Carr. Yeah, I think he would have been fine. Yes. But um What is it and and it's uh you are you are you are a hard working person. Uh, you generate a ton of content. Um, so you're not it's not that you don't have a motor. What what do you think is it about

having a big institution behind you, a big institution employee that that resonates for you. For me, it's mostly about feeling like you're part of something bigger. Um, you're a small, hopefully somewhat important, but a small part of a much bigger operation that's operating on a much bigger stage. And I'll give an example from just an hour ago. It's unfortunately a really heartbreaking example. It's you know, the latest about Nancy Guthrie.

Savannah released, you know, I think her sixth video on Instagram. CNN immediately went into rolling live coverage, showing the video, yes, but also providing a lot of analysis and context. And uh, you know, before I was about to tape with you, I I ran downstairs, turned on my camera, went live on CNN. I was a small part of that big coverage plan, right? And that is a feeling that I don't think I can replicate on Substack.

Maybe someday, maybe in some other way. But uh in those moments of breaking news, and and there are a lot of moments that are, you know, actually, you know, truly historical that CNN's a part of. Um, that that's that is something that's still really special and still really valuable, which by the way, you know, not to bring it back to Paramount and all the talk. It is why you see in the financials released by WBD that CNN is a very strong, healthy business.

Uh yes, the the digital subscription plans are really important. We've got to grow in streaming, but it's a healthy business because There are so many people who do want to know what is going on in the world, good or bad, at any given time. Despite despite all the noise and all the drama, like that, it is still at its core a really important, vital enterprise. It is a big...

Giant news operation, one of the biggest in the world of the city. And I get to be compliant. And I get to be incited at a time when during Trump two point oh there are all these threats against the media and all these attacks against the media. And and covering that, you know, getting on the air, for example, when Don Lemon was arrested.

Thought that was an important warning to cover that story thoroughly, to take it seriously. Even though the charges will probably get thrown out, he'll probably prevail in court if it gets to a trial, it's still an important marker and and we covered it aggressively. And and that also includes covering our own house.

I will break a little news with you if you want about CNN. Good,'cause I have a CNN question. Did you see the story about Barry Diller uh being interested in trying to buy CNN? Uh this was I did see remember the Wall Street Journal reported on that.

And uh so I I wrote a story about that at night. You know, I am very blessed, uh, although this is the way it should be, but I'm blessed that I work in an institution where you can cover that news straight, even though it's happening at your own house. So I emailed Barry Dillo for comment, of course. uh CNN calling for comment about CNN. He didn't respond. Um, but I I'd emailed him again over the weekend because he went to breakfast with David Zaslov. Uh did you hear about this breakfast?

Nope. So uh Zaslob posted about on Instagram. He posted a picture of uh Diller and Zaslob and a couple other friends. I think they might have been at Barney Greengrass. I'm not sure. Anyway, I asked uh Diller if he wanted a comment now. And I just got the comment while we're on the podcast here. So this is uh break news for your show. I said, I'm re upping this email in light of your breakfast meeting with with Zaslov, Diller says breakfast was overeating, period.

So he says he says he ate too much. And uh maybe maybe no CNN talk. So that's on the record. I believe that is the right from the horse. I believe that is the first on the record comment from Barry Diller about uh the speculation of his interest in CNN. Even though it Brian, you're a diligent reporter and also an excellent producer because you segued me back to where I wanted to end up, which is the vibe at CNN. Um, you are you are back as an employee there.

They are gonna be owned by somebody else. Very likely in the next year, either the Ellisons are gonna own them or they're gonna be spun out into this global network sort of the thing that that that Warner Brothers Discovery doesn't want. And from that point they might get bought by someone, another buyer could come and get them. Who knows? Um, so you're working at a place where the only thing that's really certain is you're probably gonna have a new owner.

in the next year or so. How do you how do you work through that? How are your fellow employees handling that uncertainty? I'm not trying to avoid it, but I don't want to speak for my fellow employees. I don't I don't talk to enough people to claim to have the pulse on on the on the entire employee base.

Um, I think in general, look, uh, because I was there during Trump 1.0, because I covered the ATT transaction, I always go back to what happened when the Trump DOJ sued to block the ATT Time Warner deal. What we now know that we didn't fully know at the time, was that there was quite a bit of political interference and White House involvement.

We know that there were efforts by President Trump to affect the deal, to influence the deal. There was talk of Rupert Murdoch trying to swoop in and buy CNN. There was talk of trying to force out then CNN president Jeff Zucker. We know that there was quite a bit of backstage maneuvering. We also know, and this has been reported by the New York Times and other outlets, that Zucker effectively was a heat shield, uh, ensuring CNN's independence.

We know that uh Time Warner boss uh uh Jeff Buchis uh did the same. We know that the ATT leadership in Dallas uh uh you know uh at times uh made sure to it protect CNN's independence. And that's that's all journalists want at these places. They just wanna be, I don't want to say left alone, right? But they they wanna they wanna have their independence upheld and insured. And uh other than that.

I think a lot of people are able to then tune out some of the the daily corporate drama or, you know, figure out what where what what new person's is the memo coming from or or or what new uh what new way do you pay for for lunch in the cafeteria. All of that is is relevant, but for the most part, people just want to know they can keep doing their jobs free of that kind of interference.

And I think it's number one important to recognize there have been those attempts, there have been those efforts to to interfere in the past. Uh maybe there will be again in the future. And what you need is a heat shield. I've been I've been really impressed in the Mark Thompson era of CNN that uh the ship is really steady. Um, pe you know, staffers seem really uh I can can I use the word happy or does it seem like are journalists ever happy, Peter?

Yes, sometimes they are. I mean, I'm a pretty happy guy as you c as you know, but I know to the extent that anyone can ever be happy, I I think it it is a it is a very steady, happy place. And uh I think that's that's what people wonder about. That's what people worry about, right? Uh will it will it remain steady? Will the management remain um uh you know, um

And there has been I asked Mark Thompson a a version of that question last fall and said well which you know, there's a possibility you guys might be owned by the Ellisons and in theory that would mean you'd be working for Barry Weiss. What do you think about that? And he went, I thought, out of his way to say Barry Weiss is really a real talent, and there's a caricature of her out there. It's not really true. She's very impressive. Went on for a little bit. What do you what'd you make of that?

you know, at the risk of sounding like I agree with the boss, I agree with the boss. Uh I I basically had the say and I think you and I uh texted about this privately and you know you knew that was true at the time. Um I am I remain really curious. what the Barry Weiss battle plan is. Because if you go and read her all hands meeting transcript, that that 10-page transcript is a tour de force.

I I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything. Not not that it matters what I think, but I think many people all throughout the TV industry, the media industry, Would read that transcript and say, yes, my organization needs to change. Yes, my organization needs to move in this direction as well. So again, to go back to what I said in the beginning, to the extent that we can untangle the political questions or the political machinations from what's going on at Paramount or CBS News.

Um, I'm really interested to see if she can execute on that battle plan and if she can adjust from some of these early missteps, which, you know, have have been have been sizable. Um, you know, why why launch the CBS EV? Why why relaunch the C B SEV News only two or three months into the job? Maybe one day she'll come talk to us about all this stuff.

I have asked for an interview just like you have. Yes, we have. And in the meantime, I have suggested to someone close to her, I said, at least go on her own podcast and talk about it. If she's not gonna if she's not gonna come if she's not gonna come on channels, which she should. Then go go back on honestly. I feel like there's a little bit of a uh us against the world uh feeling up there, but I'll I'll save the psychologizing for the conversation if we ever have it.

Awesome. Thank you for coming on the show. You guys all know where to see and Thank you. Thanks again to Brian Stelter, thanks to Charlotte Silver who produces and edits this show, thanks to our advertisers who bring it to you for free. to you guys for listening. See you soon. Du som lyssnar på True Crime. Nu samlas poddar, författare och kriminalexperter på en och samma plats.

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