2016 ‘Reliable Sources’ guest list

January 3

Art Roderick, CNN law enforcement analyst
Dan Abrams, founder of Mediaite
Ian Kullgren, reporter for The Oregonian

McKay Coppins, senior writer at BuzzFeed, who said “my New Year’s resolution for myself would be to take Trump more seriously… I don’t think we can laugh him off anymore…”

Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, who said support for Trump and Bernie Sanders is “a real thing and I don’t think we should mock it or treat it dismissively…”

Deborah Davies, reporter, Al Jazeera

Bob Kravitz, sports reporter, WTHR
David Folkenflik, media correspondent from NPR

Alex Gibney, filmmaker

Barry Diller, chairman, IAC

January 10

Nick Valencia, CNN correspondent
Ravi Somaiya, media reporter at The New York Times
Jeffrey Toobin, CNN senior legal analyst


Erik Wemple, media columnist for The Washington Post
Lois Beckett, reporter, ProPublica
S.E. Cupp, CNN political commentator

Kenneth Feinberg, attorney, raising the Q of whether the nation’s gun debate needs a “mediator…”

Michael Harrison, publisher, Talkers magazine
Ben Ferguson, CNN commentator and radio host


Moira Demos, filmmaker, “Making a Murderer”
Laura Ricciardi, filmmaker, “Making a Murderer”

Nancy Grace, host, HLN

January 17

Michael Oreskes, head of news, NPR
Joel Simon, executive director, Committee to Protect Journalists
, reacting to the news of Jason Rezaian’s release from Iran…

David Rohde, correspondent, Reuters
Roxana Saberi, journalist
Maziar Bahari, editor, IranWire.com


Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC chairwoman

Kelly McBride, vice president, Poynter Institute
Larry Hackett, former EIC, People magazine


—

January 24

Miguel Marquez, CNN correspondent
Boris Sanchez, CNN correspondent
Chad Meyers, CNN meteorologist


Katrina Pierson, national spokesperson, Trump campaign



Jim Rutenberg, on the week he was named media columnist, NYT

Dan Pfeiffer, CNN political commentator, former senior adviser to President Obama

Marty Baron, executive editor, The Washington Post

Scottie Nell Hughes, Donald Trump surrogate
Ana Kasparian, co-host of “The Young Turks,” who connected corrupt politicians with “corrupt mainstream media…”

January 31

“The GOP’s front runner versus the GOP’s favorite media outlet. In all my years covering TV news, I never thought I would see this. But then, again, isn’t that what reporters have been saying for seven months about the Trump campaign? We never thought we’d see this?”


Dan Abrams
Jeff Greenfield, political analyst

Marisa Guthrie, media reporter, The Hollywood Reporter

David Zurawik, media critic, The Baltimore Sun
Dylan Byers, CNN senior reporter for media and politics

Steve Malzberg, host of “The Steve Malzberg Show”

Bob Beckel, former co-host of “The Five”
Laurie Dhue, former Fox News anchor

February 7

“We’re talking about television’s power to influence the presidential election…”

Dylan Byers
Chris Moody, CNN Politics senior digital correspondent
Doug Heye, former RNC communications director
Larry Sabato, director of the UVA Center for Politics

Matt Lewis, CNN commentator
Ana Marie Cox, senior political correspondent, MTV News
Rick Wilson, Republican strategist and president of Intrepid Media

Ann Selzer, Iowa pollster

Rebecca Traister, writer at large for New York magazine, who described the “media, social, cultural difficulty we have with sort of throwing our arms around women’s progress with any sort of enthusiasm…”
Harry Jaffe, Washingtonian editor at large

Les Moonves, CEO, CBS

Adam Schefter, reporter, ESPN

February 14

Jeffrey Toobin
Floyd Abrams, constitutional law expert

Steven Brill, journalist and lawyer
Nina Totenberg, NPR legal correspondent

Bob Schieffer, CBS

James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic, who called this a “uniquely truth-immune phase of politics…”
Douglas Brinkley, CNN presidential historian

David Zurawik

February 21

Frank Sesno, director the School of Media and Public Affairs at GWU
Juana Summers, politics editor for Mashable
Jeff Greenfield

Roger Stone, former political advisor to Trump, who said “But Trump understands that politics is about being entertaining” and that “everything he says tracks back to one of four major themes…”



David Gregory, former moderator, “Meet the Press”

Amy Goodman, host, “Democracy Now,” who proposed “a month without polls…”

Erik Wemple

February 28

Kathleen Parker, syndicated columnist, The Washington Post
Jim Warren, chief media writer, Poynter
Mollie Hemingway


Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Ed Schultz
David Brock

Three local editors in Super Tuesday states:
Susan Ellerbach, executive editor of the Tulsa World
Kevin Riley, editor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mike Wilson, editor, The Dallas Morning News

Josh Singer, co-writer, “Spotlight”
Tom McCarthy, director, “Spotlight”

Essay about the end of Melissa Harris-Perry’s show on MSNBC

March 6

Live from the library in Flint, Michigan before the CNN/TV One debate

Don Lemon, CNN anchor
Mark Preston, executive editor, CNN Politics
David Gregory

Rebecca Berg, national reporter, RCP
Alex Marlow, editor in chief, Breitbart News, with one of the memorable quotes of the year: Trump “can’t talk about his penis size if he wants to be the next president of the United States.”

Curt Guyette, investigative reporter for the ACLU of Michigan
Ronald Fonger, The Flint Journal and MLive

Kelly McBride
Paul Farhi, The Washington Post

March 13

“Donald Trump’s rallies have become stages. They’re attracting all kinds of players, supporters, opponents and some people who just want to see the spectacle…”



Carl Bernstein, who said Trump is a “neo-fascist” and said it’s time to start talking that way on TV…
Douglas Brinkley, who said we’re seeing “hard right authoritarian beliefs” from Trump but also “spectacle…”
Mollie Hemingway
Steven Brill

Adam Smith, political editor, The Tampa Bay Times
Henry Gomez, chief political reporter for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer

Ruth Sherlock, The Daily Telegraph
Laura Haim, Canal Plus
Kim Ghattas, the BBC


Heba Said, Muslim American journalist

Essay about the Gawker trial getting underway

March 20

Kayleigh McEnany, CNN political commentator
Jeff Greenfield
David Zurawik

Amy Goodman, who talked about how “the media manufactures consent” and said “this exposure for Trump is very frightening…”
Jeff Greenfield, who said the media failed to “listen carefully enough…”

Nina Totenberg

Jorge Ramos, anchor, Univision

Sam Barnett, CEO, SBB Research Group, for “this is your brain on presidential debates…”

March 27

Special report: Donald Trump and the disconnect. “We’re going to hold up a mirror and ask hard questions about why so many individual journalists and their news outlets discounted Trump for so long. What did the press get wrong and why?”

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation
Scottie Nell Hughes
Will Bunch, senior writer for the Philly Daily News
Molly Ball, political writer with The Atlantic

Nancy Gibbs, editor, Time mag, who said the early coverage came across like a “continuous obit…”

John Avlon, EIC, The Daily Beast


April 3

Errol Louis, CNN and NY1
Matthew Dowd, ABC political analyst

Maury Povich
Connie Chung

Arianna Huffington, who said “Trump has the potential of destroying this country. That is really what is at stake here. And the media need to wake up and start covering him like that…”

Larry Hackett, who likened Trump to a “tabloid operating system…”

April 10

Fred Dicker, NYPost columnist and radio host
Brian Lehrer, host of “The Brian Lehrer Show”
Bob Hardt, political director, Time Warner Cable News NY1

Jim Rutenberg

Sally Kohn, CNN political commentator, who said Bernie Sanders — not Trump — should be the biggest story of the year…

Margaret Sullivan, outgoing public editor of the NYT

Hilde Kate Lysiak, nine-year-old editor of Orange Street News

April 17 — special live show from the Newseum in DC

Frank Sesno
Michael Oreskes
Jane Hall, associate professor of communications at American University

Michelle Fields, former reporter, Breitbart

Jim Lehrer, former host, the “NewsHour”

Ross Barkan, former national political reporter, NY Observer

Josh Ginsberg, CEO, Signal Labs
Jason Finch, co-founder, Pivit

April 24

Mollie Hemingway
Ana Marie Cox
Carl Bernstein, who said Trump is “making monkeys of the media…”

Brian Carovillano, VP of U.S. news at The AP, who said “Clinton is already acting like she’s president,” in a way that makes trouble for reporters…

Salena Zito, reporter, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
David Zurawik

Janice Min, chief creative officer, The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard Media Group


May 1 — live show from DC after the WHCA dinner

Betsy Fischer Martin, former executive producer of NBC’s “Meet the Press”
Tammy Haddad, president of Haddad Media
Ron Fournier, senior political columnist, National Journal

David Litt, head writer, Funny or Die DC

Bob Garfield, co-host, WNYC’s “On the Media”

Julia Ioffe, contributor, GQ, talking about online harassment by Trump trolls…

Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube

May 8

“Examining what Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP means for the media… None of us have seen a story like this before…”

Matt Lewis
Ben Howe, contributing editor to RedState.com
Kayleigh McEnany
Joseph Borelli, co-chair of Trump’s New York campaign

Norm Ornstein, AEI, who made his argument about asymmetrical polarization and said “I think this is a real gut check time for American media…”
Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, who said media types “are guilty of this sort of false equivalency…”

Nancy Gibbs

Essay about Trump’s conspiracy theories/tendency to tell exaggerated stories and share bogus info. “He is categorically different from all the rest…”

May 15 — live show from the L.A. bureau

“Are members of the news media helping to produce the Trump show? And is it warping our democratic process?”

Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight founder, who said “We were skeptical of Trump’s chances early on because he went against history…”

Jeff Greenfield
Dylan Byers
Brian Lowry, CNN’s senior writer for media

Mollie Hemingway
Kelly McBride

Larry King

Janice Min

May 22

“At a time when this country feels so divided, so conflicted, so polarized, how much blame should be laid at the feet of the media?”

John Avlon
Jane Hall
Carl Bernstein

Marty Baron

Ari Fleischer, former George W. Bush press secretary

Jim Warren
Mary McNamara, the L.A. Times

May 29

“I’d like to let you in on a conversation that’s happening in a lot of newsrooms. Reporters and editors and bosses are talking about what to do when candidates invoke, discredited rumors and innuendo and frankly, downright crazy conspiracy theories…”

Julie Pace, White House correspondent for The Associated Press
Jonathan Martin, national political correspondent for The New York Times
Michael Oreskes

Dan Pfeiffer

Tim Wise, anti-racism educator
W. Kamau Bell

Ethan Epstein, associate editor, The Weekly Standard

Essay about Peter Thiel’s involvement in Gawker suit

June 5

“Truth is, Trump loves the media. Yes, I said loves. Trump craves media attention. He courts it doggedly. He consumes coverage of himself voraciously. He pays super close attention to ratings. If I had to sum it up in one line, I’d say the media is his lifeline. Trump acts like his own publicist and behaves like a TV producer…”

Michael Wolff, columnist, THR, who said “think of it as the media is his party”

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, who said Trump “doesn’t understand the fundamental role of free media in a democracy…”
David Zurawik
Elizabeth Harrington, staff writer, Washington Free Beacon

Brian Fallon, press secretary, Hillary for America. I pressed for more press conferences. Also: told him “I was at this fancy conference this week” (Code Conference) with “all these rich people, some Democratic bundlers, some Clinton finance committee people. What they say privately is that they’re worried that the Clinton campaign doesn’t understand what they’re up against, doesn’t understand Trump’s manipulation of the media…”

Cenk Uygur, co-host, The Young Turks, who had a memorable fight…

June 12 — Preempted on the day of the attack in Orlando

——

June 19

I shared highlights from my phone interview with Trump…

John Avlon
Michael Oreskes

Irshad Manji, founder, Moral Courage Project at USC, who said ” Muslims typically are in the media only when there are tragic circumstances…”
Carl Bernstein

Dana Milbank, who talked about Trump blacklisting the Post and asked, “what’s the rest of the industry going to do about this now?”

Olivia Nuzzi, The Daily Beast

John Cutter, managing editor, The Orlando Sentinel

June 26

Rep. Scott Peters, Democrat of California, who Periscoped the House sit-in

Fareed Zakaria

Some pollsters would say it was a very tight race, though, at the end and maybe people had wishful thinking going on. This was maybe a failure of imagination. 

Jeffrey Lord, CNN political commentator
David Zurawik
Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor, Reason magazine

Dan Rather, who said “I do think there’s been some media complicity in the rise of Trump…”

Angie Drobnic Holan, editor, PolitiFact

Mark Thompson, CEO, NYT

July 3

“Interviewing Donald Trump. Do journalists need to change not just what questions they ask, but how they ask?”

Carolyn Ryan, NYT senior editor for politics, who said Clinton is harder to cover than Trump “because she is so sealed off”
Steven Brill, who agreed with Ryan that Trump is “graded on a curve”

Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate

Jamie Weinstein, The Daily Caller, who had one of the quotes of the year, calling Clinton/Trump “a choice between political malaria and political Ebola…”
Elizabeth Plank, Vox
Jacob Horowitz, Mic

Interviews from Cannes:

Mark Thompson
Joanna Coles, editor, Cosmopolitan
Bob Pittman, CEO, iHeartRadio
Ryan Seacrest
Tim Armstrong, CEO, AOL

Essay on journalist deaths around the world

July 10 — the week Roger Ailes was sued

Gabriel Sherman
Danny Cevallos, CNN legal analyst
Jamia Wilson, executive director, Women, Action and Media

David Zurawik
David Folkenflik, who said “it’s conceivable” that Ailes could lose his job (at the time, I didn’t believe it)

Tomi Lahren, host of “Tomi” on The Blaze

Jelani Cobb, staff writer, The New Yorker
Elon James White, publisher of This Week in Blackness
Mike Wilson

July 17 — anchored breaking news coverage of Baton Rouge police ambush

July 24 — live from the floor of the DNC convention. “End of the Ailes era.”

Jane Hall, who said “I think you would not have Donald Trump without Roger Ailes…”
Jeffrey Lord
Jeff Greenfield, who said “Ailes did to the media what Trump did to the political process…”

Bill Carter, CNN media analyst
Dylan Byers, who said “it’s quite a huge and historic thing to get rid of Roger Ailes…”
Gabriel Sherman, who said “this is really about a culture that Ailes enabled that was incredibly hostile to women…”

Chris Ruddy, CEO, Newsmax

Carl Bernstein

July 31

“There are exactly 100 days until Election Day and political pros cannot believe what they are seeing…”

Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications advisor, in his first Sunday morning interview since joining the campaign

Margaret Sullivan
David Zurawik, who called Trump “one of the most complicated media confections, media creations that we’ve ever had… He has embedded himself in the media consciousness, in the media ecosystem as not just an agent of change, but an agent of transformation…” And compared him to an ad for a “magic pill…”
Kim Ghattas

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder… I asked “Why publish Social Security numbers? Why publish voice-mails from children?…”

Dan Rather, who said “Clinton is still an underdog, a slight underdog to win…”


August 7

“The United States of anxiety: Does all this election coverage scare you?” Polls show “there’s anxiety, there’s fear on all sides…”

Panel of Trump supporters:
Kristin Tate, political columnist
Amy Kremer, co-chair of Women Vote Trump 2016
Scottie Nell Hughes
John Phillips, radio talk show host

Michael Wolff

Dan Rather, who said “bravo” to CNN and MSNBC for on-screen fact-checking

Essay about Trump’s claims of a “rigged election.” Trump is “trying to delegitimize our democratic process without proof. It’s unpatriotic for any interviewer or any journalist to help him.”


—

August 14

“Donald Trump’s favorite show. No, it’s not ‘The Apprentice,’ it’s ‘Beat the Press.’ That’s what he’s doing right now, running an anti-media campaign. And journalists and editors are honestly struggling over how best to cover a candidate that has a tenuous relationship with the truth and a fondness for conspiracy theories.”

Jason Miller

John Huey, former EIC, Time Inc., who said Trump is a “full bore demagogue who’s very skilled at manipulating televised media and social media…”

Jennifer Pozner, executive director, Women In Media and News
Steve Malzberg, host of “The Steve Malzberg Show”

Jill Colvin, the Associated Press

Essay about Sean Hannity spreading conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health

Sarah Ellison

August 21

“Can you trust the polls you hear about on every single newscast?” And: “Press shy Hillary Clinton? We’re going to go on the campaign trail to find out why she hasn’t held a full-blown press conference since last year.” Plus: “Trumpbart.”

Kurt Bardella, former spokesperson for Breitbart
Ken Stern, former CEO of NPR, who called Breitbart a “political movement that is largely aimed at taking over the Republican Party…”

Nate Silver

Tamara Keith, White House correspondent, NPR

Eric Holthaus, meteorologist, discussing under-coverage of the flood in Louisiana

Essay about guests who spin and anchors who point it out. “We need to be the advocate for you.”

—

August 28

“Are journalists tiptoeing around the uncomfortable reality — that attitudes about race and gender are really shaping this election?”

Jamil Smith, senior national correspondent, MTV News, who called the alt-right a “rebranding of white supremacy…”
J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture and Crisis”
Scottie Nell Hughes

“Hillary Clinton, guilty or not guilty? Clinton supporters feel like Clinton’s been on trial for this entire campaign season…”

Kathleen Carroll, who admitted to problems with the AP’s social media presence…

Jorge Ramos, who said Trump is in panic mode now with Latinos…

Stuart Stevens, former chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign

September 4

“When Trump is covered, is he graded on a curve? Or do these cries of unfairness ring hollow?”

Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine
Jacob Weisberg, EIC, Slate Group, who compared Trump to rancid meat. “I think what the press is struggling with is, how do you not normalize him, but at the same time be fair and do your job as a journalist…”
Soledad O’Brien, former NBC and CNN anchor, who said “journalists are failing in the contortions to try to make it seem fair…”

Glenn Beck, who said “it’s good for people to see the other view and not bash the other point of view…”

Mindy Marques Gonzalez, executive editor, The Miami Herald
Peter Bhatia, editor, The Cincinnati Enquirer

Essay about the debate moderators

September 11 — 15th anniversary of 9/11

“In some ways, 9/11 is the day that never ended…”

Aaron Brown, former CNN anchor, who recalled the coverage of 9/11

Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Tara Setmayer, CNN political commentator
David Zurawik

Breaking news about Clinton’s fall at the 9/11 commemoration ceremony

Jeff Zeleny

Sarah Ellison

September 18 — morning after the Chelsea explosion

“Trump is playing a game — a game reporters are getting tired of playing. Honestly, they’re getting tired of being played… Trump is showing its contempt for the press. When we say he’s a threat to press freedom, this is what we’re talking about…”



S.E. Cupp
David Fahrenthold, political reporter for The Washington Post
Jeremy Diamond, CNN political reporter, who described how Trump does not have a “normal campaign…”
Lynn Sweet, columnist and Washington bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times, who said Clinton commits campaign “misdemeanors” compared to Trump’s “felonies…”

Gary Johnson, Libertarian party nominee

Carl Bernstein, who said “there is realization that Trump is a con man…”

Essay about Trump’s lack of media access/lack of interviews

Errol Louis

September 25 — live show from inside the debate hall at Hofstra University

Jim Lehrer
Ann Compton, retired White House correspondent for ABC News

Janet Brown, executive director of the debate commission

Brian Fallon, Clinton campaign press secretary, who urged fact-checking of the candidates

Eleanor Clift, political writer, The Daily Beast
Frank Sesno
Dylan Byers

Seth Meyers

October 2

“This hour, Team Trump versus — well, the entire media. His latest week of whoppers has some Trump beat reporters saying his lying is getting worse…”

Susanne Craig, NYT reporter who received pages from Trump’s tax return

John Avlon
Tim Graham, executive editor, Newsbusters

Kristen Soltis Anderson, “The Pollsters” co-host
Margie Omero, “The Pollsters” co-host

Margaret Sullivan, who said “mainstream media has begun to call out lies and to actually use the word lie…”
David Zurawik, who said Hannity “is kind of an arm of the Trump campaign…”

Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor, The Washington Post

Essay about what the media can do to heal some of the election wounds, encouraging empathy

—-

October 9 — live from the lawn of Washington University before the second debate, complete with a pep band

“Trump and the GOP are in a state of crisis” after the “Access” tape…

Matt Lewis
Kayleigh McEnany
Hillary Rosen, Democratic strategist
Angela Rye, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus



Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the debate commission
Mike McCurry, co-chair of the debate commission

Garance Burke, AP reporter who encouraged people to send her “Apprentice” tapes and read her email address on air

Carole Simpson
Douglas Brinkley
Jeff Greenfield

—-

October 16

“Donald Trump is making up a massive media conspiracy, falsely claiming that we are ‘rigging’ the election…”

”Donald Trump taking his media bashing to a new extreme this weekend…”

Michael D’Antonio, author of “Never Enough: Trump and the Pursuit of Success”
Tim O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation,” who said “it’s a very dangerous moment in American politics…”
Brad Thomas, author of “The Trump Factor: Unlocking the Secrets Behind the Trump Empire”

David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic, who dropped an Austin Powers reference and said Trump is looking for “suckers…”

Margaret Sullivan

Glenn Greenwald, co-founding editor of The Intercept, who said “the political and media elite of the United States are virtually united behind Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump…”



Essay about “Trump’s biggest lie is about the election itself, the integrity of the election.”


October 23

“Are journalists writing Trump’s campaign obituary way too prematurely?”



Sean Spicer, communications director and chief strategist for the RNC, who said “we’re trailing behind, but I think we got the wind in our back heading into the final two weeks. The momentum is with Trump, the enthusiasm is with Trump, and I think that’s what’s going to propel us to victory in November…”

Dan Rather, who said Clinton folks are making the mistake of “dancing in the end zone before the game is over…”
Jane Hall
Mollie Hemingway, who discussed the literally/seriously divide and said “the media should calm down rather than act like everything he says is so crazy…”

Matthew Dowd, who said “I have watched this race since June, and the race basically has traded between a two-point Hillary lead and seven-point Hillary lead the entire time… That’s actually a significant lead in a country that’s very polarized…”

Focus group of Nevada residents

Dr. Gail Saltz, psychiatrist and host of the podcast “The Power of Different”

Essay about preserving CNN’s independence as AT&T buys Time Warner

October 30

“The race for the White House is taking place in parallel universes. So, will November 8th bring us back to reality?”

Matt Lewis
Hilary Rosen, who said there was “hyperbole” in the Comey letter coverage…

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
Rich Noyes, research director, Media Research Center, whose study said that 91% of media coverage on the nightly news of Trump was hostile
Matt Lewis

Peter Daou, CEO, Shareblue, who said his frustrations with Clinton v. Trump coverage were about “proportionality…”
David Brock, who similarly said there’s been a “double standard…”

Daniel Dale, reporter, the Toronto Star, who said Trump “lies strategically and pointlessly, lies about things big and small, and most of all lies frequently…”

Essay about “fake news” nonsense and the importance of triple-checking

November 6 — special pre-election show from DC

“We’re live from our nation’s capital, where we’re about to find out if Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be moving into the house right behind me, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…”

Michael Oreskes
Lynn Sweet, DC bureau chief, Chicago Sun Times
Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for The Washington Post
Jeffrey Goldberg, EIC, The Atlantic 


Jon Favreau, co-host, “Keepin’ It 1600,” who said the race has “been pretty stable all along…”
Dan Pfeiffer, who said that on election night, “I’m going to look very quickly at the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, because the only way in which Donald Trump can get to 270 is to win one of those states. I don’t think he has any more than an infinitesimal chance to win those states…”

Marty Baron, who said Trump’s blacklists were a “repudiation of the role of an independent press and a free society…”

Ari Berman, writer, The Nation

David Zurawik
Dylan Byers

Essay about Trump’s extreme anti-media attacks, calling it “the ugly new normal, something journalists have to reckon with. Because while this election will be over soon, the public’s relationship with the press will never be the same…”


November 13


Special introduction to the show, saying that election night “was the culmination of one of the biggest media failures in many years” and “now it’s time for some serious soul searching…”

Dodai Stewart, EIC, Fusion.net
Mollie Hemingway
Dan Rather
Jeff Greenfield


Nate Silver

Floyd Abrams, First Amendment lawyer

“There is palpable fear among many journalists that a Trump presidency will be restrictive, litigious, and downright dangerous for the fourth estate…”

Essay about trust, media and “anti-media”

John Avlon
John Phillips, who said “the media picked a side” in the election…
Liz Plank, who said “Trump is not our assignment editor…”

November 20

“Will President-elect Donald Trump respect First Amendment rights?”

Charles Blow, NYT columnist and CNN political commentator
Salena Zito,
Ben Shapiro, EIC of DailyWire.com, who said, “if you’re going to turn it up to 11 on a Hamilton tweet, yes, this is going to be a long president for all of you.”

Ann Compton

Ken Kurson, editor in chief, NY Observer, who said he was “shocked that there haven’t been resignations and firings” after wrongheaded election coverage…


Sarah Ellison
Marisa Guthrie

Essay about fake news and about how “people in power benefit from confusion”

November 27

Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, who said “there is a role for somebody you can really trust, who’s trying to get it right, in the days where you don’t know where things are coming from on the Internet…”
Ezra Klein, founder of Vox.com
Charles Cooke, editor of National Review Online


Tim O’Brien
Michael D’Antonio

Sally Buzbee, incoming executive editor of The AP

Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Richard Tofel, president, ProPublica

December 4

“What are the consequences of a never-ending anti-media, anti-news-media campaign?”


Salena Zito
Frank Sesno, who said “I’m not prepared to brand him authoritarian yet, but he certainly is sounding that way…”
John Huey, who said “the media poses a real threat to him…”

Van Jones

Amy Goodman

David Zurawik

Essay about how Trump lies differently than other politicians

December 11

David Sanger, NYT
Julia Ioffe
Liz Wahl, former anchor, RT

Carl Bernstein, who said “no president, including Richard Nixon, has been so ignorant of fact and disdains fact in the way this president-elect does. And it has something to do with the growing sense of authoritarianism that he and his presidency are projecting…”
Kelly McBride, who said Trump “has the press cycle figured out…”

Jeffrey Lord, who said “what I see is basically a late 20th century media trying to struggle with a 21st century president…”

Jill Abramson, who called Trump “fake news…”

Sean Spicer

December 18

“D.C.’s new political odd couple, President Trump and the press…”

Josh Earnest, outgoing White House press secretary

Jeff Mason, president, W.H. Correspondents Association

Angie Drobnic Holan
Jane Hall
Jeffrey Toobin

Richard Stengel, former State Department official

Chris Ruddy, CEO, Newsmax

Essay about press freedom