In Drinks for Five, the second episode of Question Everything, host Brian Reed collected four fellow journalists — Ira Glass and Zoe Chace, both of This American Life, Astead Herndon, politics reporter at the New York Times, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Eig — in a wine store in Brooklyn to discuss the nature of their work and the state of journalism today. Their conversation ranged widely, from how to get people to talk to you to regaining the trust of audiences and the role of journalists as more than documentarians of the world. You can watch the whole episode on YouTube or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts; the excerpts below have been lightly edited.
Ira Glass: When I think about where journalism is and where it fails, which I’m only thinking about because I know you have a podcast to make about this kind of thing…
Brian Reed: But wait, you really never think about it?
Glass: No, I do think about it…I feel like, oh, everybody thinks about that more than I do. But when I think about where things are failing, I feel like there’s no…There’s nobody attempting to give fact-based information to the people who are watching Fox News, to the people like — you know, like I have relatives who are like Fox News watchers — the people you meet in a MAGA crowd. And the people who I met at the Glenn Beck rally years ago, people who are just believing stuff that’s not true.
I feel like nobody in mainstream media is trying to create a product that will pierce through to the people who don’t believe mainstream media. And I think it’s a really interesting project and when you think about who could do it, it’s like you would want a Daily Show that’s hosted by a kind of right wing-ish comedian like a Bill Burr or like, you know, [someone from the] whole world of right wing guys.
Zoe Chace: Like Joe Rogan.
Glass: If Joe Rogan were a little more close to the facts. Right? Like, you know what I mean? What you want is somebody who’s sort of funny, who you kind of feel like is talking straight in some way.
Reed: You think it’s a personality-first question?
Glass: I mean as a producer, when I think about it, I think that would be the easiest way to cut through. Because you need somebody who defies categories so people don’t see, you know what I mean? Like if you had a regular NPR person, a regular Times person — you can just smell it on them. You know what I mean? Like, you need somebody who chemically feels right. And then you might have a chance.
I feel like what’s happening is in the war of facts versus non-facts, facts are losing — or they’re not winning. They’re losing ground. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people died because they didn’t believe factual information about the COVID vaccine. I feel like, why aren’t we always talking about that? There’s like a death count on this. I’m just going on. I’m feeling corny now.
Reed: Doesn’t that mean journalism’s failing?
Glass: Yeah.
Chace: What do you think about Ira’s characterizing of the problem? Like, in terms of people not having access to facts.
Astead Herndon: In my experience, the massive step back from fact-based conversation, some of that’s been intentional. Like, I think the people around me who aren’t in media, you know, they actually don’t care if it’s true or not anymore. Or less.
Glass: Who doesn’t care?
Herndon: I’m saying if I think about, like, my group chat.
Chace: Right, right.
Herndon: There was a point four years ago where, I could be like, oh, that’s from a fake site and that response will be heard because there was a desire for information. Now they’re like, who cares? Stop bringing down the vibes. I just think there’s a bigger step back from even the desire for fact and truth. Even making the case of this being “misinformation” is now, I think, something that doesn’t have the same weight against it. And partially because the institutions that were supposed to be the guardians of trust — in media or whatever — I think a lot of people feel they’ve blown that.
Reed: That’s interesting. You think there’s not, you know, one of my favorite lines of writing ever is in one of your stories, Zoe, uh, about Minnesota, where you’re talking about like the roadshow. Um, the Anti-Muslim Immigrant Roadshow.
Chace: The Anti-Muslim Immigrant Roadshow that was going around the U.S….
Herndon: That came to St. Cloud…
Reed: I think you say in there something to the effect…these people have a desire for information and this feels like information. Even though it’s actually propaganda. I’ve always kind of held on to that, that that is an underlying truth about people. That people do want to feel informed. There is a desire for information. But you’re saying maybe that’s changed?
Herndon: I think it’s an institutional trust deficit. Trump supporters are the clearest example. And to be honest, the left wing part is overrated too.
Glass: What do you mean?
Herndon: Like the [idea that] non-conservatives are all in this agreement on what facts are — it’s not true either. I think we focus on Trump supporters, but you know, the thing that taught me about trust was not Trump supporters. It was crime reporting in Boston neighborhoods where they’d actually never shown up before that murder, before that fire, like all of those things. I feel like the lack of trust in those communities has been really real. And it’s part of this too. And my New York Times skepticism does not only come from conservatives. Increasingly now.
Reed: Ira, how do you feel about the change, how things have changed since you started?
Glass: I mean, in journalism? In what?
Reed: Yeah, you started at NPR at an idealistic time. Where it was this new thing trying to do something new. You then started something new in a very idealistic sense, and you know…
Glass: I don’t know if my answer to this is so interesting. I came into journalism feeling like, oh, if you sort of lay out a case, with information that’s true, that you could persuade people, and that would change something.
I feel like what I’ve seen is, that’s not true. I just want to believe that people can understand each other. I think that if you make stories for a living…part of the reason why you do it is because it’s really interesting to go out in the world and talk to people, and it just makes everything seem bigger, to discover stuff that you didn’t know and connect to people in that way.
Reed: Or smaller. Either way.
Glass: Or smaller. Exactly, depending on how you see it. They mean the same thing.
Reed: But wait, do you think there’s something to Ira’s idea or not?
Herndon: I think it runs up against the same barriers. I don’t think the problem is that we’re not making it. Oh, maybe some people feel like that.
Reed: I think you’re talking about the delivery. Right, Ira? And the connection?
Glass: No, no, no. I feel like every day there’s incredible reporting giving fact-based accounts of how to see the world. The problem isn’t that that doesn’t exist. The problem is that, like, half the population has no interest in that at all, maybe more.
We live in this country that’s so divided, and what can you possibly do? That’s why I think about: what could the product be? That’s the way I think about a problem, it’s like, how would I do it as a radio producer? I feel like that’s the one tiny opening that I see. You just need somebody with enough charisma that they would carry people over the line. And it wouldn’t be a traditional journalist.
Chace: To me, this is smaller. I have trouble…Like, what you do, Ira, where you think about what can we do? Because there’s a problem. How can we fix it? I’m so focused on thinking about the ways that we’ve screwed up [and] the reasons that people don’t trust, rather than [thinking about] is there a way back from it?
Glass: Which means what to you? What would…?
Chace: One example would be COVID. I get really stuck on how completely just fucked the response was. You know, that schools were closed and kids were taken out of schools…And people felt not listened to and there wasn’t the right evidence to do that. There was such a break because people kept their kids out of school and now they’re so mad and I get caught up in the frustration with that. Where I’m like the trust was already so thin, and then we had this COVID experience, and there was no kind of like massive — I don’t know what it would be — but reckoning…
Jonathan Eig: But let’s take an issue that’s not political, like cellphones. This new book, Anxiety Nation, I think it’s called. [Ed: I believe he’s referring to The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.] I think people have really been discussing that, and I think it’s been really informing people. Change the world? I don’t know.
Julie Jargon at the Wall Street Journal had a story about a teacher who quit his job at the age of 35 because he couldn’t get his kids to put down their cell phones. And it just drove him to the point where he couldn’t, he lost his passion for his work anymore. It was a thousand-word article. This is the best kind of daily newspaper that I love because she probably wrote this story in two days. This is a teacher who really tried, you know? He took his kids on hikes and he offered them incentives on their grades if they put down their phones and he taught them about meditation and he gave it his best shot. And he lost to the cell phone and he said it was like they were addicted to the bottle. They just couldn’t, if he tried to take it out of their hands, they wouldn’t let go of it. And that kind of story, I think, you know, gives me, you know, is the kind of thing that…
Reed: That gives you hope.
Eig: I’m sure Jargon wrote that story because she thought it’s one little blow that she can strike — just like this book is — striking a bigger blow against something I think we all agree is a problem, our phone addictions, right?
Herndon: Maybe this is a consequence of political reporting only in post-Trump. But I think that for me, changing minds has never been a big priority.
For me, it’s been, like: I want an honest accounting of this time. I remember the night of the 2016 election as a local reporter covering crime at the [Boston] Globe. I felt like an ingester of that election; I was not prepared to understand the country in that way. I remember that being the thing that most upset me about media. My anger wasn’t to a specific side or whatever. I’m saying as a journalist, I felt like the people following that election or writing about that election were tasked with helping me understand the state of America via that election. That in the Democratic primary, the Republican primary, and the general election, did not prepare me to do that. I feel like that feeling has bottled up in me. I try to make sense of it for other people so that they don’t feel like that. But it’s not as if that means…
Reed: Just actually reflect reality.
Herndon: Yeah. Just actually let people know what is around them. And what this is about and why. I think that requires some accountability or whatever, but that’s not mind changing. I don’t feel like I’m failing if I don’t change minds.
Glass: But, I’m surprised, were you that surprised in 2016?
Herndon: It wasn’t my job, to be honest. I only knew via what I was reading in political journalism. But if I was reading the things in front of me, and trusting the people who I had trusted to talk through elections, they had let me down for a year and a half. That feeling was really clear to me. And so I remember, the Globe didn’t have a plan — a lot of people didn’t — for Trump to win. I ended up getting moved that next morning — as the young 22-, 23-year-old who had no life and kids — it was like, oh do you want to go to D.C. and help us out for a while?
And I was like, I don’t know. I feel really weird about journalism right now. I said this really millennial answer about, like, I don’t know if I wanna be [that]. I remember the Globe editor saying you have complained too much about how people do this to not try to do it. I really held on to that. It’s like, okay, maybe that’s my goal for the next time…Not to like change minds or impact in a traditional journalism way, but just stop more people from having the same feeling I felt, which is like, what, wait, how was I not prepared for this?
Reed: Yeah, I know. I feel you talking about journalism’s role being to reflect reality or kind of document — that’s the best we can do. I believed that for a long time and I’ve been in this zone of feeling like it doesn’t feel like enough. And that’s kind of the spirit of this.
Glass: I don’t know, though.
Reed: There’s something, like, that felt like enough for so long. That was our role and our purpose and there’s something about it that I just hit a point where like it feels insufficient.
Glass: But honestly, it’s so hard to just do that. Like even…
Chace: That’s what I was just thinking.
Glass: Even doing that well is just so hard. When you said that, the thing that it made me think of is, years ago, I had this conversation with this guy named John Matisonn, who was the lead political reporter at the Rand Daily Mail when Nelson Mandela was still in prison and Steve Biko and the whole apartheid movement when it seemed hopeless. The Rand Daily Mail was one free newspaper — the one uncensored newspaper in South Africa — and even they would get, like, fucked with by the government now and then. He said that it was a little bit like working in a bunker where you’re under siege, right? They felt like, we’re gonna go out there, we’re gonna just document what’s really happening. That was the mentality in the newsroom and the thing that they said to each other was we might get shut down. This may go nowhere. But someday when people look back on this moment, we want to have captured it accurately so nobody can say this didn’t happen.
Herndon: Yeah, a hundred percent. That’s how I feel.
Glass: It’s funny because when John said, I felt like it’s such a defensive position. It’s sort of like all is lost. We’re barely holding on by our fingernails. And so the one thing that’s left is let’s just like, please just write this down.
Reed: Make a record of it.
Glass: Make a record of it. I just want the truth to exist. It’s simultaneously so purely idealistic but it’s also like a bunch of monks in the last monastery who know how to write being surrounded by people who are about to destroy them or something. I don’t know. There’s something about this.
Herndon: No, I feel you. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s defeatist or idealistic. I think it’s a little bit of both. But I also believe in journalism enough. I didn’t go work for a political organization or a candidate or whatever like that. And so I definitely think it’s not fully defeatist.
