“What is written, what is perceived, what is covered on the air is not always reflective of what’s going on in society.“
Brian Stelter is the anchor of “Reliable Sources,” which examines the week’s top media stories every Sunday at 11:00am ET on CNN. He’s also the network’s Chief Media Correspondent. His new book, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, tells the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News.
“Fox News is now the beating heart of the pro-Trump media world.” Leadership at Fox initially didn’t align with Trump: Rupert Murdoch was deeply critical of the President, and Roger Ailes was backing Jeb Bush. The network’s transition was largely fueled by a vacuum of leadership post-Ailes and the commercial incentives of being the President’s network of choice.
The internet changed how we interacted with the news. “It made us all our own publishers.” There’s an obvious benefit to a diverse ecosystem of thought, and bad-faith actors playing to extremes take advantage of it. Trump and his media outlets are then able to go out and tell a powerful, compelling story about the “deep state” and white victimhood, but in the end, “it doesn’t add up.”
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Brian Stelter
Anchor, Reliable Sources
CNN
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Joe Eletto: (00:07)
Hello everyone, welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is Joe Eletto and I am the production manager of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform encompassing finance, technology, and geopolitics. SALT Talks is a series of digital interviews with the world's foremost investors, creators, and thinkers. Just as we do at our global SALT events, we aim to empower big, important ideas as well as provide our audience a window into the minds of subject matter experts.
Joe Eletto: (00:35)
We are really excited today to welcome Brian Stelter, to SALT Talks. Brian is the anchor of Reliable Sources, which examines the week's top media stories every Sunday at 11:00AM Eastern on CNN, as well as the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide. Prior to joining CNN in November of 2013, Stelter was a media reporter at the New York Times where he covered television and digital media for the business day and art section of the newspaper. He was also a lead contributor to the Media Decoder blog. Stelter published the New York Times best selling book, Top of the Morning, inside the cutthroat world of morning TV, about the competitive world of morning news shows. He is a consultant on Apple's drama, The Morning Show, which is inspired by this book. He was featured in the 2011 documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times, directed by Andrew Rossi. He was also named the Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30: Media, for three consecutive years.
Joe Eletto: (01:31)
If you have any questions for Brian during today's talk, please enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen. And now I'll turn it over to Anthony Scaramucci, who's the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, as well as the chairman of SALT, to conduct today's interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (01:46)
So Brian, that's one of the things I didn't know about your resume, the 30 Under 30. I had been submitting an application for 30 Under 30 for the last 30 years to no avail. So we can talk about that at another time, but I have to tell you, because I've lived a portion of this book and obviously I was in and out of the Trump administration, spent nine months on the campaign. Full disclosure, was a paid presenter on the Fox News channel where I was the host of [crosstalk 00:02:14] week.
Brian Stelter: (02:13)
It's in the book. That's right.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:16)
And I've got to tell you, I loved reading the book. It was very clarifying to me. We're going to get into the book in a second. But for those of us that are getting to know Brian Stelter away from the television, away from Reliable Sources, and your reporting on CNN, tell us something about yourself that we couldn't find on a Wikipedia page. How did you grow up? Why did you get into this? Why did you take this arc in terms of a career?
Brian Stelter: (02:46)
Well I've always been a news junkie, and that's probably on Wikipedia. So I'm thinking of something that's not on Wikipedia. I'm also a big weather junkie, a big weather nerd. I was just talking about this with my wife Jamie the other day, because when Hurricane Sally was coming ashore, there was a part of me that wants to go out and be that correspondent that's getting blown around in the wind and the rain. And I did do it once before. I was on the weather channel once doing this and I was re-watching the video recently and showing it to my daughter and saying, "Daddy wants to go do that someday." which just speaks to my obsession with news and my love for news. I want to be wherever that story is.
Brian Stelter: (03:24)
And when it comes to Fox News, they've got great hurricane correspondents. They've got great people who go out and stand in the storm and tell you what's going on, just like CNN does. But one of the problems, one of the differences with Fox, is that they don't value and respect the news division the way that CNN does. So that's one of the many reasons I think that I was interested in writing about Fox is how the place has changed. But look, whether it's Fox or CNN or another channel, I think it'd be fun to go out and do that some day. I guess that's something people don't know about me. I'm a big weather junkie, big weather nerd, and in general, just obsessed with how the news works and doesn't work. I mean you probably know better than I that what is written, what is perceived, what is covered on air, it's not always reflective of what's really going on and that's a challenge for us in the media to try and get it right, be more careful, more right, and get to the truth every day.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:20)
So I mean I'm going to hold the book up for everybody. The book is called Hoax, it's a international bestseller, and it is a riveting account of what is going on at Fox, but also an account of what's going on in the age of mass information. So I want to ask you something intellectually first, then we're going to talk a little about the book. I would have thought with the proliferation of blogging, social media, the proliferation of media itself, we would have had more accuracy in the facts. Man, did I get that wrong. We have way more distortion of the facts, way more real fake videos, way more, I don't like calling it fake news but you get the point, that there's a distortion happening. There's almost a prism that depending on where you're coming from and what segment of the population you're coming from, you're seeing the news through that distorted prism. Can you explain sociologically or from a commercial perspective why you think that evolved in this era?
Brian Stelter: (05:25)
Well certainly the internet changed everything. The internet enabled all of us to be our own publishers, it allowed me to create a blog, and then get hired by the New York Times, and then get hired by CNN. So there's these incredible benefits from having this healthier, more diverse media ecosystem. However, the algorithms and the other tools that we use to navigate and get through this internet universe, are primed to encourage sensational, crazy, outrageous content. And we see more and more bad faith actors playing to those extremes, especially on the right, especially in this narrative that Trump is always right and everything else is fake, all the news is fake, or it could be a hoax. So I say it's partly gained by algorithms, but it's partly about human desires to hear a simple, consistent narrative or story.
Brian Stelter: (06:20)
I think what Trump and his media allies do is they tell a pretty powerful story over and over again, although it has a lot of holes in it and doesn't really add up. It's a story about the deep state, it's a story about White victim-hood, about grievance politics, about the world all against Trump. And this is a story that Fox tells every day, and it's a really compelling story although it doesn't really add up. And by telling that story they are excusing so many of the President's errors and mistakes and misrepresentations, and they are defending the indefensible when the President re-tweets someone saying that Joe Biden is a pedophile. That should be called out by all good people, and it's not because we're in these alternative universes and so tribal. And I do think the internet has a lot to do with that increased polarization.
Anthony Scaramucci: (07:08)
So the subtitle of your book is The Dangerous Distortion of the Truth. And you write in the book, and I don't want to give the book away, the book is such a powerful read and I don't need to demonstrate to you that I've read the book, we can have that conversation after SALT Talk.
Brian Stelter: (07:24)
You already did, actually.
Anthony Scaramucci: (07:25)
But I just have to tell you that it's a phenomenal book, and I don't want to give it away because I want people to read it. But we both know that the Fox News organization, President Trump himself was a fan of it, he was showing up frequently on the morning show Fox & Friends. But it's not necessary that the suits, the executives of Fox were fans of Donald Trump in the beginning. So tell us a little bit about that part of the story.
Brian Stelter: (07:53)
Yeah, I do think you have to go back five years. And in order to understand what Fox is today and what the pro Trump media universe is today, you have to understand five years ago. Fox is now the beating heart of the pro-Trump media world. Fox is it pumps out blood that goes all throughout the body and influences the Breitbarts and the Daily Callers, and it influences the president. It's the beating heart. But it was not always that way. In 2015, Rupert Murdoch was deeply critical of Donald Trump. He said, "When is he going to stop embarrassing his friends and the entire world?" Roger Ailes was skeptical of Trump. He saw Trump as a great television performer but Ales kind of wanted Jeb Bush. He was a Bush guy in the beginning.
Brian Stelter: (08:33)
So there was this dissent or this skepticism about Trump, but there was also this sense early on that the Fox audience was pulling for Trump, that the Fox base was Trump's base, that there was this alliance of sorts or this overlap of sorts. And there was this fear of taking off the Trump Fox base and having those viewers start to go elsewhere. So there has been this kind of Trump takeover of Fox that didn't happen overnight, didn't happen right away, didn't happen all in one fell swoop, but it happened. And it happened because it's what the audience wanted, it's because there was a lack of clear leadership after Ailes was force out, it's because that's what the commercial incentives were, the commercial imperatives were. It's incredibly profitable to be the nation's pro-Trump network. It is also incredibly misleading sometimes. And it was dangerous when the pandemic started when the channel was downplaying the virus. So I think those commercial incentives are really critical to the story about why the network gradually came under Trump's spell.
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:36)
Well [crosstalk 00:09:37]
Brian Stelter: (09:36)
But you were there at the time. Am I getting that right? I mean you were there in 2016.
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:43)
No, well I think you're getting it right, but I'm going to make an admission now which doesn't reflect well on me. I think what happens is you're in that echo chamber and you're in the ecosystem and you're not fully picking up the reality distortion until you leave the echo chamber and the ecosystem. And that's why I said to you and I'm going to give it away now, of all the sentences in this book, page 121, the sentence which is quintessential and it really resonated with me Brian, it says here on the bottom of the page, it says, "Call Cameron. Just couldn't take it anymore." And I think that that is a resonance of what's going on as it relates to President Trump and what's going on, as it relates to Fox News and what's going on in the society right now. It's not clear to me that the society wants to be this divided. And since you talk about it, I'll address is here.
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:38)
Roger Ailes had this unstinting message. He grew up in Warren, Ohio. He has this hey-geography of America. This is the Happy Days America of Arthur Fonzarelli and Richie Cunningham. And it's a mid-Western America. And he wanted to sort of reclaim that for America. And there's a tribal perspective in that because the great irony is you're shooting the light through that prism and you're shooting it on the wall, and you're presenting an America frankly that never existed that Richie Cunningham, Arthur Fonzarelli America. You were just getting African Americans on the sports field in the 1950s. Jackie Robinson was 1947. And you still had people separated in school systems and being discriminated in lunch counters. So America is always a nation in progress with tremendous flaws, but there's Roger Ailes in an effort white-washing if you will, I think that's a appropriate term, pun intended, white-washing the society. And so let's go back to the Iraq war. Fox News had a big role in the Iraq war, did it not Brian?
Brian Stelter: (11:47)
Yes. I think it did. I think post 9/11 Fox became the number one cable news channel. Ailes was secretly sending advice to the Bush White House, and provided cover from the right flank, especially the post invasion as the occupation came into obviously serious trouble. The cheerleaders like Sean Hannity were critical to maintaining some support for the Bush presidency and for explaining away the lies and misinformation about the Iraq war. But compared to today, that version of Fox is so much more moderate. I think every turn Fox takes is a right winged turn over the years, over the 24 years it has been on the air. And I try to document that in the book.
Brian Stelter: (12:36)
Take it for example during the Obama years, Roger Ailes was a birther. He believed Obama was born in Africa. But he didn't let his talent go off and go full birther. He did let Trump call in and say those things. But he didn't want Bill O'Reilly out there pushing the birther smear. He wanted his talent to be seen as fair and balanced, to at least be seen as someone moderate and not be compared to QAnon or Alex Jones. And so I think that's what's missing now. The channel is more extreme now in terms of the content than it was in the Ailes years for a variety of reasons. But that's one of the reasons, because Ailes was trying to keep some level or some measure of control. And I think that's important in the context of Trump because Trump was able to kind of take power, not literally of Fox, but metaphorically of Fox.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:34)
But here we are today, President Trump is now starting to turn a little bit on Fox. He refuses to bend to its polling data. Every time they throw up a polling data that he doesn't like the narrative of, he goes bazonkazoid on Twitter. And so my question to you is, is he turning on Fox? Is it just a few pundits now? Has Fox turned on President Trump? Some of the punditry there?
Brian Stelter: (14:02)
I think it's a tug of war between news and propaganda. And the propaganda side usually wins. There's more of an audience for the talk shows. There's more electricity around the shows. But occasionally Trump will see the newscasts, he'll see the news anchors, and he'll get ticked off. And he lashes out about the news coverage because he doesn't want news on Fox. He only wants propaganda. So I think when we see him tweeting anti-Fox things, he's working the refs, same way he did in 2016, trying to have less news, more propaganda, and trying to downplay the Fox polling unit which is really well respected, and promote the talk shows instead. I think it's that tactic that is kind of tired, but it still kind of registers with some of his fans. Then the news anchors get hate mail.
Anthony Scaramucci: (14:50)
Has it co-opted the editorial content of Fox, his tirades? Has Trump's Twitter tirades...
Brian Stelter: (14:57)
I think people are very aware of it at Fox. I mean the real reason I wrote Hoax is because I was hearing from so many sources at Fox who were frustrated by the network and what has happened and how Trump feels like he's in charge, or how he has hijacked the network in some ways. And what a lot of those staff first said was the incentive structures are all wrong. So if you're a news anchor or a correspondent at Fox and you just want to report the news and oftentimes the news is about Trump's chaos and scandals and controversies, you feel you can't do that. You feel pressure. You feel powerless is really the word. You feel powerless to do that. The news feels suffocated at Fox and the propaganda feels promoted.
Brian Stelter: (15:35)
And there's some really specific examples of that. Carl Cameron who's on the record in the book talking about how the news cast didn't really want packages, they didn't really want reports. They'd rather just have conversations with panels. And by the way, I mean Fox is not the only network where that's true sometimes, but it's very true at Fox according to Cameron. I have other correspondents in the book who said they all had their, "I can take it anymore." moments where they don't want to be on there defending child separations, they don't want to be on there defending Trump's comments about Charlottesville. So these different people at Fox had these breaking points, and the ones who stayed, either they agree with everything that's happening or they fear they can't find a job elsewhere, or they want to make the place better from the inside. So there's all these incentives for staying as well.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:23)
So have you ever thought about working at Fox in your illustrious career? Has that ever come up?
Brian Stelter: (16:29)
I don't think they would be interested in me. But let me put it this way. I think anybody at Fox who if you could have an hour that's devoted to fact checking and debunking a lot of the nonsense that's in prime time... I turn on Fox & Friends and most mornings, the narrative is like this. "The cities, there's violence in the cities." And of course that's true. Crime is up in some areas including in New York City. But the way it's presented it makes it sound like New York City is a hell hole. It makes it sound like all of Portland is on fire. It makes it sound like all of Seattle is a disaster area. And that narrative, that's damaging. That hurts New York City, it hurts Portland, it hurts the people in these cities. And if I had an hour where I could push back on all that, it would be hard to turn that down. But I don't think they're calling offering that. I don't think there's interest in that. Shep Smith was trying to do it and Shep left.
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:27)
Yeah. No, no. And I got that. Shep is over at CNBC, and I think it's a good home for him. But I guess the reason I'm asking you that is because... Again, this is just my opinion. I think there's a civil war going on inside of Fox. You definitely talk about it in the... there's a civil war between the facts, the fact checkers, responsible journalism, and full on political punditry that literally they're mental gymnastics at night trying to explain what President Trump is doing. I've told people, "I'm watching them 8:00 to 11:00 at night. They're telling me that Trump is playing four dimensional chess, he's sitting at the table eating the chess pieces. So I don't understand how they can get away with that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:12)
And since you mentioned Sean Hannity, I want to bring him up, and full disclosure, I'm friends with Sean, I've known Sean a long time, although we haven't talked recently because I'm one side of the ideas objectively in my opinion about Donald Trump, and he's on another side of the ideas in his mind objectively about Donald Trump. So we chose to agree to keep our friendship and not get into political jousting. But you have a fascinating relationship with Sean Hannity. Nd you talk about it in the book which I find fascinating. So describe your relationship for our SALT Talk listeners.
Brian Stelter: (18:48)
Yeah, yeah. I felt like I needed to disclose it a little bit.
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:49)
Yeah. So describe it to people.
Brian Stelter: (18:49)
I felt like I needed to explain in the book that I had been covering Fox for 16 years, and I know these players. Hannity was really friendly to me as I was growing up in this business, when I was at the New York Times. He gave me great advice when I joined CNN. I would say that was a friendly relationship until the Trump presidency, until 2017. As I'm sure everybody on this Zoom session has an example of a friendship or a relationship that has been strained or ruined by the Trump presidency. And that's true for me with folks at Fox. Tucker Carlson is another example. He was a big supporter of my blog, he put me on TV when he had a show on MSNBC, we had a relationship over the years. Now he's on TV calling me a eunuch. And it's, "What happened Tucker? I don't think I've changed. I think you changed. I think you changed based on your audiences demands. You're trying to feed this increasingly radicalized audience."
Brian Stelter: (19:48)
And that's the uncomfortable part about a lot of this. I'm not saying every Fox viewer is radical. They clearly are not. Fox has a big audience and has lots of different kinds of people that watch. But there's a base that doesn't want to hear the reality of what's happening in the Trump Whit House. And these hosts feel pressure to serve that base, and I think maybe it's not possible to still have a friendly relationship with these guys when they feel those pressures.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:12)
Well I mean one of the problems is, and I'm going to editorialize, get myself into trouble with probably half of our SALT Talk participants. But if you're into full blown demagoguery you've got to go 13 for 10 for the demagogue. If you go seven for eight for the demagogue you're called an unstable nut job on Twitter. I mean you've been called some tough names. I got called an unstable nut job by the President of the United States. I mean I wear it like a badge of honor, but I'm just saying my point being is that they're literally being watching by him. They're playing to an audience of one. Bill Barr is playing to an audience of one, he's comparing slavery to the closures and lockdowns during a pandemic. I don't know. I don't think that's appropriate but I'm sure the president liked it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:55)
And so that's the cycle, that's the dilemma that we're in. You do a great job of describing that as well.
Brian Stelter: (21:02)
Thanks.
Anthony Scaramucci: (21:02)
You say something interesting about the president. I want you to react to this. You say that he's not going to be confused as a great orator but his simplified style of communication is resonating. So what do you think makes him effective as a communicator and a politician? Describe for our listeners the essence of how he became this successful.
Brian Stelter: (21:25)
Well I think we have to appreciate what does work and learn from it. And I'm surprised that more candidates haven't learned from some of Trump's techniques. His ability to tell stories. Usually it's a version of the same story at every rally but it's a storytelling mechanism. It's an attempt to bring people to his side by involving them in his stories. It's obviously the repetition of certain simple slogans over and over again. We all know that with, "Build a Wall." That's obvious.
Brian Stelter: (22:01)
Where I sometime think I've fallen down on the job is not try to meet people where they are and say, "I see what's appealing. I see some of the reasons why either Trump is appealing or a democratic candidate is appealing. I see it. Let me meet you half way and then talk about it." Same with Fox. I see what's appealing about Fox and the way it's produced and the topic selection, the choice of narrative. As a viewer I get it, I watch a lot of it. I understand why it's appealing. Let me met you half way and then let's talk about why it's discouraging that they misinform Trump and then he misinforms the country, and why that's a bad thing. But then I can see the appeal of the show.
Brian Stelter: (22:39)
It's almost Trump leads a hate movement against the media. And I'm not saying we need a love movement but we might. We might need something like that that gets us a little more connected to our common humanity. That's way to fantastical, isn't it Anthony?
Anthony Scaramucci: (22:55)
Unless something crazy happens to the institutions of our democracy, the Trump era is going to end in 100 days, or it's going to end in four years plus 100 days. And so what happens to the Trump acolytes and what happens to the future of Fox News in a post-Trump world?
Brian Stelter: (23:16)
It's a big question and it's being debated inside Fox. Will he launch his own network? Will he try to rival Fox? I think the answer is no. I think that's a lot harder to do than people appreciate. But I wonder if he'll be on the radio. I wonder if he'll want a radio show if he loses the election. I wonder if he'll want a show on Fox. I wonder how much audience there would be for someone who is branded a loser after having a winning brand for decades. I think Fox will be just fine in any of those scenarios because the channel is more anti-democrat than it is pro-Trump. It's more anti-Biden than it is pro-Trump. But I saw Leon in the Q&A said, "Is Fox afraid if he loses he'll start aa competing network?" I don't know if people are afraid but there's definitely some concern about it, people talk about it as a possibility, they wonder if it would happen, and certainly folks close to the Murdochs have talked about this and gamed our those scenarios too.
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:17)
So why don't we do that? Let's go to some of the Q&A Joe. I mean we've got a lot of questions populating. Some of these are quite interesting.
Joe Eletto: (24:25)
Absolutely do. This is a very active Q&A which is what we had expected. So this is great.
Brian Stelter: (24:31)
I was just peeking over there. That's why I brought it up. [crosstalk 00:24:33]
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:33)
Yeah. No, I love it. That keeps bringing them back Brian, okay? The fact that we answer all their questions when they come on.
Joe Eletto: (24:42)
Something to start with, I want to go back to social media is fake news, alternative facts, and what that social media is now checking some of Trump's tweets, his branding things as distorted media. What role in propagating fake news and stories such like Joe Biden playing Despacito but them putting on a different song, and people not really checking. What role does that have in creating and forwarding this narrative that let's say, a regular viewer of Fox News or maybe OAN has about the president and what he's doing?
Brian Stelter: (25:18)
Yeah. OAN makes Fox look like ABC. OAN is much further to the right, but also much, much, much lower rated. Fox has an incredible monopoly on the right wing audience. Newsmax, OAN, they try but they just can't come close. I think Twitter and Facebook are taking these baby steps, and maybe it looks like they're taking big, gigantic steps, but they're really just baby steps in terms of how much misinformation and bull is out there. But by taking these baby steps they can be held accountable because we can point to their actions and say, "You did this for X, why haven't you don't that for Y?" So it's useful I think when we see these companies taking action because it gives us a baseline to compare it with and to judge in the future.
Brian Stelter: (26:00)
I personally think these labels they're putting on Trump's tweets are kind of a joke. Trump will tweet, "Mail in ballot is a fraud. Don't believe it. Blah, blah, blah." And then the label will say something like, "Get the facts about mail in ballots." And you can't fight fire with that kind of ice. I don't think that works. But again, they are taking steps. That's a lot more than they were doing in 2016. I remember saying fake news on TV for the first time in October, 2016 because there were these actually fake stories. That's the term before Trump used, it was a term for actually fake stories that were all over Facebook making up smears about Clinton. And, God, I kind of wish I hadn't said the term because by December of that year, Trump hijacked it.
Joe Eletto: (26:41)
Absolutely. So going off of that, I mean do you think once Trump leaves office, whether it's in 100 days or four years and 100 days as Anthony said, how do you restore the standard of truth in American society, or at least the news media? Or is the horse out of the barn, and we're just in a place where people are going to accept multiple different routes of getting to the same fact?
Brian Stelter: (27:03)
Yeah. Look, I think a diverse media ecosystem is a good thing. So having lots of sites and lots of sources and lots of options is good. It's when some of those sites are total rubbish, they are garbage, they are disinformation trying to hurt the American people, that's where we have a problem. And QAnon gets thrown around as an example of this. But there are lower level examples of this as well where there's just a lot of low quality information out there, and on your Facebook feed it looks like it's the same quality as CNN or the New York Times. And that's a fundamental problem. I wish Fox would strengthen its news operation so there was more high quality information coming from a trusted right wing source, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards right now.
Brian Stelter: (27:46)
I think to answer the question more directly, most Americans see through the fog. Most Americans see through the distortions. There is though this minority of the country that's so distrusting of institutions, and distrusting of news outlets and all that. They seem to only put their trust in Trump and Trump's allied media outlets, and that doesn't go away when Trump leaves office in January or in January of 2025. That doesn't go away. And I don't have great answers for what that audience looks to next, or what that audience does or what they gravitate toward.
Brian Stelter: (28:17)
But I think all of us individually have a little bit of a role to play. The people in our lives who think Joe Biden is a pedophile or feel good saying that on their social media pages, the people in our lives who align with crazy concepts like that, and not really crazy, hateful. It's really about hate. Saying that about Joe Biden is really about hate. It's about fear and hate of the other side. I think we have to figure out how to talk to those individuals in our lives who feel that way and figure out how to pull them toward higher quality sources. It's not about pulling them toward left wing sources. It's about pulling them toward higher quality sources of news that come from the right or the left or anywhere else.
Joe Eletto: (29:03)
Absolutely. So another question about sort of in the anchor's role or the reporter's role, how are you able, a book you're able to be subjective, you're able to put in your own thoughts about the current occupant of the White House. But when you get onto CNN you need to be impartial. You need to be presenting facts. And there can be somewhat of an editorial nature. But it's mostly, "Here are the facts. You do with them what you will." How do you balance that? I mean I guess we were talking about other anchors that we don't need to refer to again, but how do you balance that desire to show people what you see as the truth, and presenting facts and wondering what people are going to do with those facts after they turn off the television?
Brian Stelter: (29:43)
Yeah. I think what I do on CNN, there's different labels for it. What I would say is trying to tell the truth sometimes with a point of view, and that point of view is, "What's reliable? What's believable? What's factual? And how can we cut through all the noise and get to the news?" And that sometimes comes in the form of these monologues that lots of CNN anchors are doing where you try to say, "Hey, here's what the president said, here's the reality, here's the contradiction, here's the clip." and string it along in the form of an essay or a monologue.
Brian Stelter: (30:17)
We're doing a lot of those on TV and sometimes I hear from viewers who say, "It's opinion." And I say, "It's not opinion. It's not based on feelings. And we're not pushing to endorse a policy. This isn't about the earned income tax credit or about abortion rights. We're not lobbying for policy positions. We're just talking about decency and truth. And democracy." And that I think is privily fair for news outlets to speak about and push for. Push for truth and honesty in politics. That's not partisan. So I think that's what we should be doing and we will keep doing is pushing for that.
Joe Eletto: (30:55)
Absolutely. So we actually had a question come in from someone who was a previous SALT Talk guest. Piggybacking off of this, so if you launched your own Brian Stelter news organization, whatever we're going to call it, how would you combat the current dangers of information, lies, propaganda? Would you have a segment like that where you start off with a monologue? Or what would that look like for you?
Brian Stelter: (31:16)
Right. It depends on the medium I suppose if it's online or on TV or elsewhere. I think we should root this in what the audience wants. The question you'd ask is, "What does the audience want and need?" I don't know about you all, but most of the people in my life don't know what the heck to believe. They see all sorts of smears and crazy things on the internet, and they want to be guided toward reliable sources, aha, of information. So I think in that scenario, calling it like it is, is essential. When the president has a great victory we should call that what it is. But when he lies about Joe Biden, we should call that what it is. Maybe Call It What It Is, is a good brand name for a news outlet. I don't know.
Brian Stelter: (31:59)
But I think that kind of personal connection where you can call it out what it is, I think that's appealing, I think that's what the audience wants. And then the only thing I would say is provide primary source material. Provide the evidence so people can see it for themselves so that they're not believing me or believing anybody else, they're believing their own eyes. One of the worst things Trump has done is he has tried to get people not to believe their own eyes. He has told people that everything could be a hoax. And that has done damage it's going to take time to repair, but we can repair it by bringing people to the own original data, and see the proof for themselves.
Joe Eletto: (32:34)
Yeah. I remember. That was very 1984 when that quote came out.
Brian Stelter: (32:38)
Right.
Joe Eletto: (32:39)
So concerning to COVID quickly, I know we're bumping up against time. But, so Fox followed largely the president's script in downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19 I guess until the Woodward tapes came out. But pre-Woodward, were pretty much in lockstep with the president and what he was saying about the pandemic. What are other examples of situations where the inability of the American people to trust the president and the most watched news outlet in the country could lead to major problems? So there are past examples of this or things that you see potentially in the future?
Brian Stelter: (33:14)
Yeah. The pandemic is the strongest and in some cases the worst example because it's the most painful example. It's a life and death example. There's a lot of blame to go around for what went wrong in February and March, and I say that very clearly in the beginning of Hoax. A lot of blame to go around with [inaudible 00:33:27] Now there are media outlets even. But Fox had the biggest cable platform and Trump had the biggest presidential platform. And so by downplaying the pandemic, by making it seem political, not medical, that did real damage. I think there are other examples in the book from earlier in the Trump presidency of times when he gets misled by Fox, and then he misleads the country and that hurts everybody.
Brian Stelter: (33:48)
One example is when we end up having a government shutdown driven largely by right wing media demanding Trump take a firmer stance on the border wall. There's even, if you look back in 2017, the seeds of the Ukraine scandal which led Trump to be impeached, are sown on Fox. They are kind of laid out on Fox, and then farmed years later. So there has been a bunch of these example of times when Fox is trying to help Trump, but they're actually hurting Trump. Or by following his script, and downplaying the pandemic, hurting their own viewers. And by the way, that's not coming from me. That's coming from staff inside Fox who said things like, "What we did was hazardous to our viewers. What we did was dangerous. These were kind of whistle blowers inside who were saying, "This went really wrong." And that's why the book is called Hoax. We were going to call this Wingmen because Trump has lots of wingmen at Fox, and but when Trump and Hannity use the word Hoax by decrying the democrats' politicization of the virus, we named the book Hoax for that reason.
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:46)
You were dying to call it Wingnuts but your editor told you you couldn't call it a wing nut [crosstalk 00:34:50]
Brian Stelter: (34:50)
Actually John Avlon wrote a book called Wingnuts, and I couldn't do wingnuts. Wingmen is what I think he has-
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:57)
I remember John's book.
Brian Stelter: (34:59)
And by the way, if those wingmen were giving him the highest quality information, challenging him with new perspectives, challenging his priors, there wouldn't be a book to write. But because what happens is Fox & Friends puts up a banner that's full of crap, and the president reads it and then tweets it, and then spreads it across the country, that's really the heart of the problem I think.
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:23)
So some of the questions that have come in, I'm trying to distill them because we are running out of time, but there's a few questions about CNN and obviously the right is critical of CNN and the president of CNN. What do you say to the critics of CNN?
Brian Stelter: (35:42)
I say that CNN has its flaws, and I like being called out for them, and I like when people email me. I'm at bstelter@gmail.com because I think it's good to hear from viewers and hear their feedback, and hear what we can do better. But I just think there's something fundamentally different between what Fox does and what all other networks do. And the differences include childish name calling, deflections and distortions from the biggest story of the day, those sorts of tactics that I think, what about-ism on a grand scale. Those sorts of tactics that they weren't always in play at Fox. They've become more obvious these days and they distract from what's really important.
Brian Stelter: (36:22)
I'll give you an example. I think CNN has done a great job of putting up on screen the COVID data, making sure COVID is front and center in the news. Fox covers the story a lot less. And you have to wonder if that's for political reasons or not. But we certainly have our flaws, and I like when we're held accountable for it. Somebody said, "Isn't there a sense of the same is true in reverse for the left on CNN?" That CNN and Fox are equal. They're mirrors of each other. That's what I just think doesn't hold up to scrutiny because when you look at what Chris Cuomo is doing in prime time, it is clearly not the same that Hannity is doing in terms of how reality based it is. That's the way I see it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:04)
Yeah. And listen, I'm going to defend Chris a little bit because I do his show. He has a ton of Trump acolytes on the show defending the president and offering up the case for the president including people from the Trump campaign. So if you haven't noticed Brian, not that you would notice this, I can very rarely get an invite on Fox News now. Those guys don't want to have me one there. I got on with Steve Hilton.
Brian Stelter: (37:29)
They don't want to engage.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:30)
Yeah, I got on there with Steve Hilton a few weeks back, we had a sparring match, the president didn't like it, he's tweeting about me, and that's the Michael Cohen axiom. What's that axiom? If you're saying something crystal clear, clarity in truth and you're breaking down the president's reality distortion field, he's going to viciously ad hominem attack you on Twitter. That's one of the postulates of the Trump era if you will.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:58)
But let's talk about, before we let you go, let's talk about you being the new czar. Okay? So now we've appointed you to a new position. It's a supra governmental position, it's a supra media position. You are the new czar, and you're trying to make the news more, let's use a Fox News term, fair and balanced. Really fair and balanced. What would you do? And I'm going to take you back to Ronald Reagan. You remember when he signed that legislation to offer some equality on the radio air wave which led to the advent of conservative talk radio. What would you do if you were the new czar and you wanted to figure out a way to strain out some of the inaccuracies, the misinformation, and stuff that's hurting the country right now.
Brian Stelter: (38:48)
First we would invest enormously in the local news, and we would rebuild local newspapers and rebuild local sources of news because they are more trusted, they are more important in the lives of everyday Americans than anything else. Rebuild local news because that rebuilds people's trust with media. And when you know your local reporter like I did growing up in Damascus, I knew Susan, she was the towns reporter. It makes you more trustworthy in media in general because you see how the person works and you see how they care about the community. And when they make mistakes they clean up their act.
Brian Stelter: (39:23)
I would say number two, you want the healthiest, most diverse media ecosystem possible, but tethered to reality. Info Wars for example not tethered to reality. Alex Jones is on there in the past saying I drink children and I run the banks. That kind of insanity just confuses people and hurts people. And the tech companies did take action against info Wars. That was the beginning of what we've seen now, these tech platforms trying to take action in really extreme cases of disinformation. But I think a new czar would try to figure out a more cohesive way to have the media world be as diverse as humanly possible, make is as diverse as possible, but healthy, meaning tethered to reality in some way so that if I were on CNN and I said something that was wholly inaccurate, you almost want a red light to fire off or you want a bell to chime. You want to figure out ways to signal to the audience-
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:24)
Or a laugh track maybe.
Brian Stelter: (40:27)
Or a laugh track. Yeah, there has got to be some way to have that kind of checking. I don't know how you would do it, but if I'm the new czar, maybe I had magical powers. So maybe I can make it happen. And that would be a form of accountability. What I got frustrated by reporting in my book about Fox is [inaudible 00:40:45] a lot of the accountability of Fox where mistakes are made. I know that there is at CNN. Maybe [inaudible 00:40:50] is not enough but I had a screw up over the summer in my newsletter, and I had a call from my boss, and we had one of those awkward but really important conversations where I talked about how I had this screw up, and I talked about why and how I'm going to avoid it in the future. And that makes me a better journalist. And if I was the new czar, I would try to make sure there were lots of those conversations happening all the time so that people are held accountable.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:16)
Well listen you were very generous with your time. You wrote an amazing book. I also want to recommend Top of the Morning and The Morning Show because I thought those were intriguing about that high paced competition in morning television. Before we let you go let you go, what is your next project Brian? Are you able to talk about it? Or you don't have a project yet?
Brian Stelter: (41:38)
I'm brainstorming what to do because I don't know how to top this book about Trump and Fox. If Biden wins, and he makes America boring again, there's not going to be any books to write. Think about there's all this interest in Trump, the pro-Trump [crosstalk 00:41:52] anti-Trump [crosstalk 00:41:53] everything in the middle.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:53)
And now you sound like President Trump. He says, "When I go, you guys are going to miss me." Right? I'm not going to miss him. I'm going to be honest with you. But...
Brian Stelter: (41:59)
I think the book publishing business is going to miss him. I'll say that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:03)
But I wish you great success. You-
Brian Stelter: (42:05)
In terms of my next project, I just want to make my Sunday show better. That's always my top priority, is, "How do I make my show [crosstalk 00:42:10]
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:10)
All right. So make the Sunday show better, I'm certain that that's going to happen. I watch it every Sunday. It's on my DVR. That's Reliable Sources at 11:00AM on CNN, and CNN International. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Stelter. But Brian, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll have this up on our website and so forth, and I really enjoyed your book. Fantastic work.
Brian Stelter: (42:36)
Awesome.