Good morning. Andrew here. Last week, seven major media figures gathered at the DealBook Summit for a lively debate about trust and journalism. Moderated by The Times’ Michael Barbaro, the co-host of “The Daily,” the panel included everyone from legacy journalists to new media creators: Amna Nawaz, a co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour; Charlamagne tha God, a co-host of “The Breakfast Club” and a co-founder of The Black Effect; Ben Shapiro, a co-founder of The Daily Wire and the host of “The Ben Shapiro Show”; Jon Favreau, a co-founder of Crooked Media and a host of “Pod Save America”; Andrew Schulz, a host of “The Flagrant Podcast” with Akaash Singh and “The Brilliant Idiots” podcast; Stephanie Ruhle, the host of MS NOW’s “The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhle”; and David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and host of “The New Yorker Radio Hour.” You can read highlights from their enlightening conversation below. Over the coming days, we’ll be sending you emails with excerpts and takeaways from all of the interviews and task force panels at this year’s DealBook Summit. You can also watch all of them on YouTube or listen to them as podcasts. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
A task force on the media grapples with trust and biasesA deficit of trust in the media is happening at a time when the industry is more fragmented than ever: Podcasters, streamers and influencers compete for attention with legacy media companies and traditional journalists, as well as social media platforms. So, whom should people trust? And what is “the media?” A high-profile seven-person panel convened at the DealBook Summit tackled the ways the media industry is being interrupted and disrupted, including by President Trump’s hostile approach to reporters and the rise of journalists as brands and personalities. Even the opening question by the moderator, The New York Times’s Michael Barbaro, showed a split among the panelists on how trustworthy the media of today is, with those at legacy media institutions saying there is good reason to believe journalists at credible outlets, while those in the so-called New Media were broadly more skeptical.
And there were some differing views of Trump’s threats against the media. The New Yorker’s longtime editor, David Remnick, said Trump’s lawsuits, rhetoric and regulatory pressure echoed what he witnessed as a correspondent in Russia. “If you’re not taking what Donald Trump is doing seriously and you don’t see how this at least rhymes with the re-establishment of authoritarian pressure on the free world, then you’re not watching and you’re not listening,” he said. Amna Nawaz, the co-anchor and comanaging editor of PBS NewsHour, who previously worked as a foreign correspondent for NBC News, agreed. “For anyone like David, like me, who has lived in a country where you don’t have a free and fair press, where it’s normal for military or intelligence officials to show up at your home in the middle of the night, or to demand to see your files, or to threaten you with consequences for your work, the parallels here are terrifying,” she said.
But Ben Shapiro, the host of the daily podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show,” argued that trust in the media had vastly declined before President Trump took office and he should not bear the brunt of the blame, noting that there had been a long-running critique on the right that mainstream news organizations had a left-leaning bias. “They see him standing over the body of journalism and they assume that he is the killer and not the coroner,” he said. Jon Favreau, co-founder of the Crooked Media company, pointed to the dangers in the weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission, whose chairman has pressured TV networks and threatened to pull broadcast licenses. “Now every time there’s going to be a media merger or a company that wants to merge with someone else, they have to make sure that they are in the good graces of Donald Trump and the administration and the government, which is something that you would not want in a free democracy,” he said. WATCH: Journalism, Interrupted LISTEN: Should People Still Trust the Media in 2025? READ: DealBook: a Special Section The podcaster Andrew Schulz, who hosts “The Flagrant Podcast” and “The Brilliant Idiots,” said it was exactly those corporate interests of media companies that made people distrust them, while Shapiro pointed to the news media’s coverage of the Russia investigation and the coronavirus pandemic as eroding trust with the public. “I think we have to admit that these collectives, these organizations, are made up of human beings,” Remnick replied. “And that what we are talking about, the press, is the first rough draft of history.” Nawaz and the MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle said there was now a lot of good information available across many different media outlets. “This is an extraordinary time for smart, credible, trustworthy journalism,” Ruhle said, pointing out that in decades past, audiences could only turn to three national newspapers and three national TV networks. Charlamagne tha God, the co-host of the syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club,” disagreed, saying people felt that newsrooms have agendas. “They have a set of programming that they want to push to a group of people,” he said. “And when they see all of these different things happening on social media or on podcasts, they’re realizing, ‘oh, man, the people aren’t buying into our programming.’”
Schulz also pointed out that algorithmically driven social media platforms had splintered audiences into “a thousand different realities,” with often only the most inflammatory rhetoric on either side of the political system rising above the noise. “What I assume will happen in the next two to five years is we’ll start realizing that the internet also needs nutrition facts,” he said, with Favreau replying: “Now we’re bringing the gatekeepers back, and we got rid of them.” Part of the issue when discussing trust in the industry is that “the media” is far too broad a term for a collection of roles and outlets that are serving different purposes. Shapiro said that while audiences had to be discerning, journalists and podcasters also had to acknowledge their biases. “I think the reason people pick on legacy media is that legacy media tries to be all things to all people by claiming that they do not have a viewpoint, that they stand somehow, objectively, outside the world and never bring their own viewpoints to bear,” he said. Nawaz disagreed: “What we’re doing is fundamentally different.” She added,“We have a duty to remove whatever our personal biases are.”
Moderator, “Journalism, Interrupted”: Michael Barbaro, The New York Times Participants: Amna Nawaz, co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour; Charlamagne tha God, co-host of “The Breakfast Club” and co-founder of The Black Effect; Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show”; Jon Favreau, co-founder of Crooked Media and host of “Pod Save America”; Andrew Schulz, host of “The Flagrant Podcast” with Akaash Singh and “The Brilliant Idiots” podcast; Stephanie Ruhle, host of MS NOW’s “The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhle”; David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and host of “The New Yorker Radio Hour.” Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
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