My 2018 started with this — reacting to Trump’s “nuclear button” tweet. The news kept coming and coming. Here are the “Reliable Sources” segments that stood out to me in 2018 — A-list bookings, surprising stories, discussions that I’m glad we had, etc. This is a very incomplete list!
Interviews with the editors of America’s biggest newspapers: Dean Baquet of the NYT, Marty Baron of WaPo, Matt Murray of the WSJ, Nicole Carroll of USA Today, Norm Pearlstine of the LAT… And the wire services too! Sally Buzbee of the AP, Stephen Adler of Reuters… Plus Ed Felsenthal of TIME, Ben Smith of BuzzFeed, and more…
We tried to make sense of the news cycle with Carl Bernstein, David Gergen, Maggie Haberman, Van Jones, Olivia Nuzzi, David Remnick, Katie Rogers, Olivier Knox, Josh Dawsey, Eliana Johnson, Frank Sesno, Karen Tumulty, Sabrina Siddiqui, David Leonhardt, Dave Cullen, Amanda Carpenter, Steven Brill, April Ryan, Tony Schwartz…
Plus David Zurawik, Carlos Lozada, Hadas Gold, Oliver Darcy, Patrick Healy, Jessica Valenti, John Avlon, Sarah Ellison, Doug Heye, Matt Lewis, Jill Abramson, Will Bunch, Susan Glasser, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and many more…
Headliners: Karen Attiah on Jamal Khashoggi, Ben Shapiro on media bias, Indira Lakshmanan on “news fatigue,” Jim Acosta on lessons learned, Alicia Menendez on “Groundhog Day,” Eric Bolling on the power of Fox, Cenk Uygur on the power of progressive media, Steven Brill on NewsGuard, Jessica Bennett on “overlooked” women in history; Jordan Klepper on gun reform, Jennifer Palmieri on James Comey, Alan Dershowitz on what he’s telling Trump, and Jon Meacham on Trump as McCarthy…
Plus Nick Kristof on covering “invisible America,” Mary Katharine Ham on “two Americas,” Julia Ioffe on the real Russia story, Donie O’Sullivan on misinfo, Trevor Noah on the “5:30 curse,” Dara Lind on immigration coverage, Brendan Nyhan on conspiracy theories, Jelani Cobb on liberal fear and anger, and Noor Tagouri on what it’s like to be a victim of misinformation.
I flew to SF to interview Jack Dorsey about Twitter’s troubles. Other big interviews: A.G. Sulzberger on the NYT’s future, George Takei on Trump’s “big lie,” Katie Couric on Kavanaugh and more, Bill de Blasio on the Murdoch media empire, Eric Swalwell on the “Fox News” effect, Radhika Jones on the power of the cover…
Questions: Asking the “wag the dog” question after air strikes in Syria… asking if the media failed Puerto Rico after Maria… asking why the voices of immigrants were missing from DACA coverage… asking about the value of Trump supporter focus groups and Trump aide interviews… asking if this is a “crisis” moment for democracy…
More questions: Is it ever ethical for a journalist to fake their own death? How much faith can people put in the polls? Should the press report on racists without stoking the fire? Have journalists learned anything since 2016? And we returned on several occasions to this question: Are ad boycotts the best answer?
Plus: Rethinking how mass shootings should be covered… Discussing best practices for covering suicides… Explaining why readers should trust anonymous sources… Showing how newsrooms can improve climate change coverage…
It was an odd year. Glenn Beck called for “calm conversations…” Later in the year, he walked off…
Usually the best segments had nothing to do with me. For instance: Jason Rezaian on how Anthony Bourdain changed his life, Jill Dougherty on Russian propaganda, Ezra Klein on Trump’s rallies, Nina Totenberg on all things SCOTUS, FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Sinclair, Anthony Atamanuik on Trump’s truthiness, and the moment went David Hogg met Dan Rather on set…
The fact-checkers: I introduced the idea of a “truth sandwich…” Glenn Kessler said Trump’s deceptions are “pretty astonishing…” Daniel Dale said it should be treated as a “central feature of his presidency,” not just a sideshow… And Dan Rather equated the White House’s spreading of falsehoods to a “fertilizer spreader in a wind storm…”
The Trumpworld insiders: I spoke with Kellyanne Conway, Anthony Scaramucci, Michael Caputo, Matt Schlapp, and Chris Ruddy. I asked Conway one of my key Q’s of this era: Where does Trump get his faulty info?
The investigators: Ronan Farrow on “catch and kill,” Michael Rothfeld on the Stormy Daniels scandal, Susanne Craig on the NYT’s Trump tax probe…
Plus: Rob Reiner bashing Trump and “state-run media,” Michelle Goldberg decrying Trump’s hiring of Bill Shine, former Fox analyst Col. Ralph Peters speaking out about Fox’s “propaganda,” Sam Donaldson anticipating how the Trump era will end…
My analysis: The show’s essays/monologues tended to be “A block” intros about the president’s actions and inactions. Some examples: Trump is leading a hate movement against the media. He has a hall of mirrors. He is the denier-in-chief. His own lies and contradictions “confirm that he cannot be trusted.” But many people still do trust him, and the “fake news” plague is going to get worse before it gets better. It’s important to recognize the power of Trump’s “storytelling” skills. BTW, what would he do without his echo chamber?
More monologues: Enough is enough with the lies. “Refuse to be confused” by Trumpworld’s conspiracy theories. Recognize how Trump uses and abuses polls. He is “Mr. Misinformation.” But not all of his lies are equally egregious.
Plus: The week Hannity won while the rest of America lost. How the right-wing smear machine targeted Christine Blasey Ford. Why POTUS spelling mistakes matter (because they reflect sloppiness and carelessness). And here’s what I learned at a Trump rally…
Mash-ups: Using video mash-ups and montages, we showed how messages flow from Fox hosts’ lips to the president’s ears… Showed the Fox-Trump-GOP feedback loop and the “TV to White House pipeline” in action… And observed the difference between “constructive” and “destructive” media criticism…
–> I challenged Michael Avenatti about his “Trumpian tactics…” Questioned WHCA president Margaret Talev on the morning after the dinner… Debated what to do about Infowars… Pushed Brian Karem to defend his briefing room outburst… Interviewed Penelope Abernathy about the “news deserts” problem… And asked Tim Dixon about his group’s study of the “exhausted majority…”
But there was lots to cover beyond politics. I spoke with Kyle Godfrey-Ryan on her accusation against Charlie Rose… Christiane Amanpour on taking over for Rose… Ronan Farrow on his first CBS expose, plus a phone interview with him six weeks later when his second expose came out during the hour “Reliable” was on… And later in the year, Moonves accuser Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb and her attorney Gloria Allred…
Direct to the source: Rebecca Schneid, an editor of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s student paper, talked about covering the March for Our Lives… And said “journalism is a form of activism,” sparking debate… Lulu Ramadan, a 23-year-old reporter who has already covered three mass shootings, responded to the NRA’s inflammatory claim that the media “loves mass shootings…” I also spoke with one of the men suing Alex Jones and the head of the Open Society Foundations, who said Fox was refusing to have him on…
We decided to air a C-SPAN clip of a caller threatening to kill me and Don Lemon… One small part of a much bigger conversation about threats against journalists…
In the days following the Capital Gazette shooting, I spoke with Rachael Pacella, who was injured while trying to flee; Phil Davis, who was near her in the newsroom; and Joshua McKerrow, who rushed to the scene when it happened…
We highlighted threats to press freedom around the world, from Myanmar, where two Reuters reporters were imprisoned, to Afghanistan, where ten journalists were killed on a single day. Mujib Mashal, the NYT’s senior correspondent in Afghanistan, described his “personal heartbreak.”
And toward the end of the year, I sat down with Maria Ressa of the Manila-based Rappler as she faced an arrest warrant. (A TIME photographer was with her at CNN that day. I later realized that it was for her Person of the Year cover.)
Segment titles that sum up the year:
Local news ups and downs: We talked about it with Margaret Sullivan, Dean Baquet, Denver mayor Michael Hancock, S.E. Cupp, and reporters in local markets… After the Camp Fire, for example, Chico Enterprise-Record editor David Little shared his firsthand account.
Relying on reliable local sources: “Where are the kids?” was a roundtable segment with three immigration reporters who were living and breathing the detention center story. That’s what I want to keep doing more of…