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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lair show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Good morning, everyone. Coming up on today's show, my colleague Stephen Nessen will join us to talk about a legal battle over a bike lane in Brooklyn. Yes, people are still fighting over bike lanes apparently. Plus, later in the show, we'll ask whether remote work is hurting women in the workplace. A remote or hybrid schedule can be a boon to work-life balance, but some economists say it might also be harder for women to snag a promotion without FaceTime, and we'll wrap today's show by hearing about efforts to revive the independent movie theater in Maplewood, New Jersey. We'll talk more broadly with my guests about how moviegoing habits have changed and how small-town theaters are suffering. First, on Monday show, we like to start things off with a Monday morning politics segment. Today, there's still going to be plenty of politics, but instead it's a Monday morning media segment.

There has been a flood of major media stories in recent days, some of them things you could have considered unthinkable at another time. Of course, there was that precision package that seeks to claw back $1.1 billion in already approved federal funding from public media institutions like this one. We also saw a major blow to late night television attributed to financial pressures with a looming merger in the background. Then there were these seemingly endless stories about the late disgraced former financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Fights are breaking out among some of President Trump's one-time supporters saying he's failing to deliver on his promise to release more details about the case. Then there's President Trump's own lawsuit against billionaire Rupert Murdoch in The Wall Street Journal over their report on new information connecting him and Epstein some two decades ago over a bawdy birthday note Trump allegedly sent him.

I could keep going, but thankfully we have a reliable source joining me who can explain what's happening across all these storylines and more. Brian Stelter is chief media analyst for CNN Worldwide and the lead author of the Reliable Sources newsletter. He's also the author several books, including his latest which came out last year, Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for America. Brian, thank you so much for joining me. Great to see you again.

Brian Stelter: Hey, so good to be here. Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: Brian, as a point of personal privilege, I want to start things off with that body blow delivered to public media last week.

Brian Stelter: Yes.

Brigid Bergin: This is something you have covered closely for those maybe they were on vacation, maybe they just were tuning out last week's news. Remind listeners exactly what happened in Congress last week.

Brian Stelter: It was the end of the publicly funded media era. This was a goal of President Trump and some congressional Republicans to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Frankly, I've been covering this hearing about this for years. It always seemed like a conservative activist pipe dream. It never seemed, until this year, like this was actually likely to happen, because historically, for the many decades that NPR and PBS stations have been supported by taxpayers, there have always been local lawmakers, senators in states, GOP senators and House members who have wanted to keep those stations alive.

Yes, there have always been complaints about alleged liberal bias, complaints about programming, but there have always been congressional appropriators willing to spend the money, willing to give what is essentially a very, very, very small amount of the federal budget toward these local stations, 1,500 of them all across the country. The big change this year, of course, is President Trump, in his second term, wielding his power in new ways, forcing essentially vulnerable senators and lawmakers to fall in line, threatening them with primaries if they didn't vote for this. As a result, something that seemed like a faraway threat has become a very urgent reality now.

Brigid Bergin: I want to get listeners into this conversation early. It's been just a dizzying week on the media beat, as you know, as most. We'll talk about your Saturday edition of your column soon. Listeners, are you wondering about the future of public media, or do you have another question about another major media story? Any late-night television fans wondering if the end of Stephen Colbert show spells the end of a genre? What about the Epstein news?

Do you have a question about the controversy over the so-called Epstein files or maybe the president's $20-billion lawsuit against The Journal? Any other media question for my guest, CNN's chief media analyst Brian Stelter, call us 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text that number. Brian, the New York Times ran these amazing maps on the front page on Saturday. I'm sure you saw that our houses are probably among those that still get the print editions.

Brian Stelter: Yes.

Brigid Bergin: Those maps showed where the cuts to public radio and television stations will be felt the hardest. What jumped out about what you saw on those maps?

Brian Stelter: We are talking about rural areas, hard-to-reach areas, frankly, a lot of Trump-voting Republican strongholds that will suffer more than big city markets. I want to say before I go any further along, that every station that received federal funding is at risk as a result, including this one. New York Public Radio has already been making really smart moves to figure out how to address the funding shortfall, making changes behind the scenes, thinking about new sources of funding, and, of course, urging listeners to give even more and to support even more strongly. That said, big city markets in metro areas tend to rely less heavily on federal funding.

The stations that are at the most need are the ones that are off the grid, so to speak, that don't have as many sources of news, that are not as easily reached by other media outlets. We're talking about states like Alaska and Kentucky, states like Maine and Hawaii. When you look at these maps about the most vulnerable areas, those are the ones that stand out, and those are the station owners and managers that I've interviewed who have said, "We may have to go off the air," and not today or tomorrow, but in the months and years to come, because, frankly, the exact impacts of this federal funding deficit, they're hard to predict. This is going to affect stations in unpredictable and uncertain ways. There are dominoes that will start to fall over a period of months and years, and that is why the bigger station groups are taking steps now to prepare.

Brigid Bergin: In your Saturday column, which I mentioned, Reliable Sources is a newsletter that Brian puts out Monday through Friday normally, but there was such an avalanche of news this week that there just had to be that Saturday edition, and you link to that column from NPR's David Folkenflik that looked at the origins of public broadcasting and some of what led to this moment. One of the things that really struck me was how inflamed the passions were really against NPR, and yet how local member stations remain so close to their communities.

You mentioned that station in Indiana that has a show dedicated to food and farming because it's a very agricultural community. I'm wondering so far, and I know that you're on the media beat, not the politics beat, but are there local representatives that you think are likely to feel blowback from this vote in communities like you mentioned, the ones that have been hardest hit?

Brian Stelter: My initial reaction to that question is that all of our politics has been so nationally polarized. Some people used to say all politics is local, and now it's all national, that everything comes down to pro-Trump or anti-Trump, and if Trump wants it, then that's what happens. That's essentially what happened with this public media funding fight. I have to be honest, in April, I didn't necessarily see this coming. I didn't realize how nationally polarized this was going to be.

President Trump coming back into office has tried in a half dozen different ways to take actions against PBS and NPR by trying to fire members of the Corporation Republic board, by having the FCC start investigations into sponsorship practices, all these different efforts in order to slice away at public media and really take the public out of public broadcasting. Will some lawmakers like Senator Susan Collins or Senator Lisa Murkowski, who ultimately voted against the rescission, will they feel blowback? I think it's very hard to say. What I've learned from this experience covering this in the last few months is that Republicans and Democrats were totally talking past each other, talking about two different topics.

Republicans were focusing on national programming with allegations of bias at PBS and NPR. Democrats were talking about local impacts, local suffering as a result, local harms, and frankly, local programming, and it's almost as if these two sides, as they do in so many other topics, they're just talking past each other. Republicans don't want to engage on the local harms that are going to come as a result of this. They don't want to talk about the local shows that will be canceled, and in some cases, Democrats don't want to deal with the fact that there's a big chunk of the country that doesn't feel represented by public media programming.

Brigid Bergin: We know that this bill is something that is anticipated to kick in in October, but is this the sense that there's going to be just a switch that's flipped, or is it going to be a more gradual draining of resources? How are listeners and audiences going to feel this?

Brian Stelter: I think of it as a more gradual drain of resources. I think that's the perfect way to picture this. It's not as if, for example, Big Bird goes away from Sesame Street, but the foundation of the House, the structure that allowed Big Bird to thrive for decades, is what is at risk here. What we may see or what the ultimate impact is, it's hard to measure because we won't know what we're missing. We won't know what we don't know. It's a little bit like losing local news resources in smaller cities and towns across the country. You don't know what you don't learn or you don't see investigated as a result.

What we will see in the short term are some layoffs, some cutbacks, some attempts by stations to get ahead of this, and we will see more aggressive efforts to fundraise in other directions from other venues. I think there's going to be more pressure at the state level for state legislatures and budgets to be more supportive of public media, and we've actually seen that in the state of New York this year. We've seen other states in Indiana and in New Jersey actually make cutbacks to public media budgets. Now that this federal funding fight is over for now, we're going to see state-level fights. There is one other interesting element to this.

There is still a normal congressional appropriations process. Democrats and Republicans do have to get together in Washington this year and come up with the next budget, and there is a world in which maybe some funding will be restored for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through some compromise between the two sides, but frankly, you're not hearing a lot of talk about compromise in Washington these days. I mentioned that as a possibility just to consider that at any time Congress could try to budget these funds again, but for now, we can see that there is an environment in Washington where President Trump and his disdain for the idea of public media seems to be dominating.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you're just joining us, it's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian Lehrer today. My guest is CNN's chief media analyst Brian Stelter, and we're talking about the just avalanche of media news over the past week. Let's go to Howard in Great Neck. Howard, you're on WNYC.

Howard: Good morning to both of you. I have a question for Mr. Stelter. I'm thinking about Trump's new lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times v. Sullivan standard for what is defamation with respect to a public figure. Given this Supreme Court's deference to Donald Trump and willingness to tamper with what we've come to call settled law, is there a chance that the Supreme Court may decide to make it easier for public figures to sue for defamation?

Brian Stelter: Yes, there is a chance. Some of the same conservative activists who were agitating against PBS and NPR for years have also been maneuvering for the Supreme Court to revisit the very high bar that was set in the 1960s when it comes to defamation cases. That very high bar has served this country quite well, I would argue, because it intentionally makes it difficult for presidents or radio hosts to sue for libel and win. Yes, they can file the suit, but it's hard to win.

There has been this effort from the grassroots and, frankly, from well funded conservative groups to try to get that standard revisited, but it could also very well end up blowing back in the face of right-wing media because it is right-wing media outlets that are often promoting stories that are thinly sourced or totally flat out bogus and false, so it's a very unpredictable set of circumstances. So far, we have not seen the Supreme Court take up a case that directly challenges the libel law standards, but we know President Trump has pushed for that. He would like to see that happen.

As for this Wall Street Journal lawsuit, a bombshell lawsuit on Friday, demanding billions of dollars from Rupert Murdoch, of all people, over this Wall Street Journal story about an old letter that Trump may have written to Epstein, it all kind of hinges on whether the letter is authentic. Truth is the best defense. The Wall Street Journal clearly believes the letter is authentic. It published the story even after Trump threatened to sue. It published the story even after he leaned on the owner of The Journal, Rupert Murdoch himself. Truth is the best defense, and it's hard to evaluate the merits of this lawsuit until we know more about the authenticity of the letter.

Brigid Bergin: It is interesting how strongly, and certainly I'm sure that's why the story ran, that The Wall Street Journal's own lawyers don't seem to be very concerned or feel very strongly that their story stands up to scrutiny. We have a bunch of callers that want to weigh in on the issues related to funding for public broadcasting. Let's start with Kylie in North Virginia. Kylie, thanks for your call.

Kylie: Hi, good morning.

Brian Stelter: Good morning.

Kylie: I sent a text earlier just basically saying it seems like mainstream media and just America, we're not able to cover Trump well and respond to Trump well and respond to these movements well and really use opportunities to teach the American people in ways that's substantive. I was content with the text, but then the guest, God bless you, then you said, in April, you couldn't have seen this coming, and then my head exploded, because I think that's my problem. It's 2025, and we've been watching this man for 10 years, and I just don't understand why we're always so surprised when things happen.

I listen to NPR, so I know they've been doing all these stories, and NPR has been very clear, like, "You actually are not going to hurt us by cutting this funding. You're going to hurt these local stations," but most people don't do that. They don't listen to NPR. They don't really learn. Even the previous caller who just said there's a standard of protecting these-- if you're going to say something violent about a public official. I guess my question, and sorry about the rant, is-

Brian Stelter: You're right.

Kylie: -why can't the media grasp a moment, pick a story, stay on the story, not get distracted, find a learning moment and teach, and then partner with independent media, independent outlets that are able to get through to their particular audience? I'm essentially saying, why can't media do like what the Republicans do with the media, and like why can't we do it and do it well?

Brigid Bergin: Kylie, thanks for your question. Brian.

Brian Stelter: I have to object to the word we. Journalists do not subscribe to being on any of those teams, but I strongly agree, and I appreciate your points, especially about the importance of being able to look ahead and see what's coming and to be able to expect the unexpected. Here's where I fell down in April. I subscribed to this idea that held true for decades, that even if Republican lawmakers complained about alleged bias nationally, they would still take care of their stations locally. I was buying into this old school idea that they would still want their local stations to thrive, and of course, I underestimated the Trump effect.

Look, we've seen this from many commentators and many writers all winter and spring long, now into the summer, talking about how Trump 2.0 is different from Trump 1.0. Many times with Trump's first term, he would engage with words, he would make threats, he would be so blustery, he would complain about the media, but he wouldn't always take actions. In his second term, he's replacing his words with actions, and we see that with example the Trump lawsuit against The Journal as well. He didn't just threaten to sue, he actually filed.

On many fronts, we are seeing this change, and you're right to demand and expect journalists to keep up and to see around those corners and to try to educate the public. Now, where I would disagree is to say we're not here to educate the public in order to have a certain outcome, but by all means, yes, we do have to be educating the public about what exactly he's doing and why it's so different, why it's so aberrant from what we've seen before, and I'll give you a quick example about that from Friday.

When Trump filed that lawsuit against The Journal, the question I wanted to answer was has any sitting president ever filed a defamation lawsuit about a news story he didn't like? Because I thought that was really important context throughout our history in this country. The answer so far is no, I have not found any example of any past president doing anything like what Trump has done. I think we need to embed that historical context and perspective into the stories that we're covering every day. We have to keep being able to explain to the audiences at home that this is not normal.

Brigid Bergin: Brian, just to rewind a little bit on Friday in the lawsuit that the president filed, let's just talk about this Epstein news cycle. First, we've got the so-called Epstein files, as I mentioned, how has this turned into such a controversial storyline, particularly within media on the right that traditionally support President Trump, and who are some of the most vocal critics about the actions being taken or not taken by the administration?

Brian Stelter: The most vocal critics are coming from inside the proverbial house. It's within MAGA media that I sense this profound feeling of betrayal, and even though there are headlines today about Trump to some degree starting to disarm the critics, starting to temper some of the complaints, certainly suing The Journal has caused some people to rally to his side within his base. There's nothing that rallies MAGA supporters more than a battle with the media, the so-called mainstream media. Trump maybe has diverted some attention briefly in that way, but I still sense a real feeling of betrayal among some of his most ardent supporters.

MAGA media influencers, kind of people who have made a living out of supporting President Trump through podcasts and TikToks and YouTube videos and all the rest. Those are the characters who have been the loudest in calling for answers about Jeffrey Epstein. When they call for answers, they are not just talking about the very real crimes committed by Epstein and the very real cases of victims dating back decades at this point. They are also subscribing to wild conspiracy theories about elites engaging in pedophilia, engaging in sex trafficking. These arguments essentially boil down to all the people you hate, all the Democrats you dislike. They're all child predators.

That is the conspiracy theory that's been promoted by QAnon adjacent MAGA media influencers for years. Those folks believe it, or at least they've promised it for so long that they want to hear it's true, and they're not backing down. They're not getting silent about this, even though Trump keeps telling them to shut up, and even though Trump himself said over the weekend, some people are never going to be happy with what's released by the government.

Brigid Bergin: Then we see The Wall Street Journal story, which is comes out sort of in the midst of all of this, the president sues, and not just The Journal, but Rupert Murdoch personally, the reporters personally. Doesn't that all in some way just prolong this news cycle that it seems like the president would like to see go away?

Brian Stelter: [chuckles] I think it does. On the one hand, the lawsuit helps. In Trump's head, he's now on the offensive instead of the defensive. He's now battling Rupert Murdoch and the evil mainstream media, so he has a narrative advantage in some ways by actually filing the suit, but on the other hand, yes, it does keep this in the news and intensify the pressure on The Journal and other outlets to keep digging, keep finding information, to keep finding evidence, to explore in more detail that old friendship between Trump and Epstein.

We saw that on the front page of the New York Times on Sunday, a detailed story about the friendship with a lot of new details I had never read, information that may have been in the public domain but hadn't been brought together all in one place before. From the pro-Trump point of view, the most important fact is that Trump and Epstein broke up a long time ago, that Trump broke it off and kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago, but from another point of view, the length of the relationship, that depth of the friendship in the 1990s is important to probe.

The notion that a president can now sue a news outlet is deeply troubling. The head of fire, the foundation for-- I'm going to blank the name, it's a pro free speech group, he said over the weekend, US presidents suing newspapers for reporting is not something we should just get used to. It's a grave threat to public freedom, to press freedom, and everyone's free speech, and I think it's helpful to reframe this lawsuit as a free speech fight, because Trump is trying to send a message to other news outlets. He's trying to say, "Don't report on this, don't keep digging, or I'll try to ruin you like I'm trying to destroy The Wall Street Journal."

Brigid Bergin: You mentioned how at this moment, you've got some Republican folks who are close to the president, very up in arms, but the Democrats seem to be jumping into this Epstein moment as well and seeing if there's an opportunity to maybe weaken some people, maybe the president himself. How do you see the way the Democrats are trying to seize this moment?

Brian Stelter: The Democrats can just keep saying out loud over and over again, "What are you hiding? What are you hiding, Mr. Trump? What are you hiding? Is there a cover up?" They are playing right into a very widespread American belief that the government is hiding something. If you look at new CBS polling from over the weekend, the vast majority of Americans believe the government has something in the FBI files about Epstein that it doesn't want to have come out.

We've heard Julie K. Brown, the pioneering reporter who helped break open this Epstein case, say on CNN last week that some of the victims are worried because the more they sense a cover up, the more they fear for their own safety, the more they wonder who's named in these so-called files. It's almost as if the political arguments here are detached from the reality of the crimes and the investigation into the crimes because we heard the FBI and the DOJ say two weeks ago that there are no so-called client lists. There's not one tidy piece of paper, there's not one old phone book sitting around somewhere that contains all the answers to this mystery. No, that's way too convenient. That's way too simplistic.

The reality is more complex and more interesting, that the government investigated this man for years, eventually prosecuted him for an underage sex trafficking operation, but did not follow the money, did not follow all of the connections to Epstein that existed in elite banking and political circles. That's true. That happened now more than a decade ago. This goes way back, but because it's an unsolved mystery, it is the kind of conspiracy theory that will never die. It will linger for as long as Trump and other figures are around. That's the reality of conspiracy theories. They fester forever.

Brigid Bergin: We have a lot more to talk about, but we need to take a short break. More with our guest, Brian Stelter, CNN's chief media analyst, in just a moment. Stick around.

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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian today. My guest is Brian Stelter, CNN's chief media analyst. We are talking all things media this Monday morning, and right now I want to bring in one of our callers. Let's go to Millie on the West Side. Hey Millie, you're on WNYC.

Millie: Hi, how are you? I'm just calling because the first, because of what you're speaking about and Brian, and you touched on this a little bit before the first thing I read this morning while I was still in bed was the front page of the Times how Trump deflected, past tense, [unintelligible 00:25:35] his wrath over Epstein, at least for now. I don't think it's been deflected. I don't know why they have that on the front page. It's not over. It's still happening, but that's again, there's the [unintelligible 00:25:46] right there. In two days, it's full story. It's about over.

Brigid Bergin: Millie, thanks for that call.

Brian Stelter: I'll give you a couple data points that back you up. I looked into this yesterday about Julie K. Brown's book, I mentioned the reporter who helped break open this story, her book has been selling so well that it's gone out of print. It's sold out everywhere. The publisher, HarperCollins, is now having a rush to print more copies because her four-year-old book about Epstein is suddenly newly relevant again.

Another example is over on Netflix. There's a five-year-old docuseries about Epstein called Filthy Rich, and streams of that series have been jumped more than 250% so far in July because there's so much more interest all of a sudden in understanding this case. I do think Trump has quelled some of the anger briefly from some MAGA media influencers, but because conspiracy theories never die, this story is never going away, and as a result, I think he's only able to quell it temporarily.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Jim in Morristown. Jim, thanks for calling.

Jim: Hey, thanks a lot for taking my call. I wanted to ask why it's so hard for the media to pin Trump down on one single story and have it last for more than a few weeks. I know that that's kind of the point for Trump is just a barrage of news, and also he's turned the government into a reality show, meaning it always has to be something new, but we seem to cover one of his horrible atrocities and then move on. Remember 15 years ago when the Defense Secretary texted war plans to a reporter? We can't continue a story and meanwhile that's what all the right does is just hammers home a story and tells their supporters what to be angry about. I'm wondering how we could just hone in on one story and make him be held accountable for it. Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: Jim, thanks for that call. It does feel like 15 years ago we were talking about Signalgate, but to that point, the media landscape moves really, really fast now.

Brian Stelter: That's something that's bigger than just Trump. Although Trump benefits enormously from it. It also has to do with the way that algorithms influence so much of what we consume. It also has to do with media companies and PR experts and politicians learning how to game the news cycle and take advantage of our fleeting attention cycle. A lot of this is wrapped up in how cell phones now influence and control so much of what we see and how we're interacting with media. All these factors are bigger than Trump, but Trump does uniquely exploit them.

I was struck by the headline in Politico Playbook this morning, that DC insider tip sheet. It said Democrats are starting to learn from Trump about how to win the attention war, about how to fight for people's attention. You might say, "Okay, they're 10 years too late, whatever," but that is an interesting insight about how other politicians are trying to learn from Trump's maneuvers, try to one up him, and as for the media, again, I think it's not our role to try to be advocating for a party. It is important to cover the fight and how it's being fought and try to get accurate information to people who are otherwise sometimes deluged by misinformation.

What's happened, I think, in the pro-Trump partisan media universe, it's a little bit like an information silo, where if you exist in that Fox News bubble, you are only hearing positive and reinforcing information about Trump. The reality is so much more complex, and it's up to media outlets to try to get that information out, but also, frankly, to those political actors to play a part as well.

Brigid Bergin: Brian, a listener just texted a question. I'm not sure if you know the answer, but they ask, are the costs for Trump's lawsuits paid for by the government or out of his own pockets?

Brian Stelter: In these cases, when he's suing a media company, a news outlet, it should be out of his own pockets, and in that recent Paramount settlement where Trump was suing CBS news over a 60 Minutes' story, that Paramount settlement was of course motivated not because Trump had a strong legal case, it seemed motivated because Paramount wants to get its merger through the Trump administration. That $16 million, that's going to go to Trump's presidential library from Paramount, it will go to the library minus legal fees. In a case like that, the lawyers will get paid first and the rest will go to the library. Of course, that might be a motivation for Trump to settle these cases, because then that way his lawyers get paid.

Brigid Bergin: I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about late night host Stephen Colbert.

Brian Stelter: Normally, I would say that's the happier, more relaxed topic, but in this case, no.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, and this is why, let's listen to a little bit of what Stephen Colbert told his audience last week.

Stephen Colbert: Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May.

Crowd: No. [booing]

Stephen Colbert: Yes, I share your feelings. It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of The Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away.

Brigid Bergin: Brian, how much of this is really about the cost of producing late night versus what some have argued is a concession to remove someone who has really not hesitated to mock the President or anyone in power, frankly?

Brian Stelter: Oh, [laughs] I wish I had a one-word answer to this topic because I think multiple things are true at the same time. When CBS says it's a financial decision, there's a lot of merit to that. I've covered late night TV for years. I have watched these shows, A, cut costs, and then B, start to go off the air as a result of the financial pressures. Basically, it works like this, if the audience is shrinking and the audience is going in 1,000 different directions and at 11:30 at night, I'll be honest, like I might be watching Netflix or Max and not a late-night show live, that's part of the problem. In that environment where there's 1,000 options at all times, the advertising revenue for these shows craters. These shows thus are too expensive to produce, they become unprofitable, and they start to go away. Do you remember James Corden had a late-night show?

Brigid Bergin: Yes, there was one.

Brian Stelter: A few years ago, and it ended, I don't want to say canceled, but it ended in part because the show became unprofitable. I wrote about that in 2023, and at the time I was told, yes, Colbert is still getting by, the late show's okay, but now, more recently, the Colbert show did become unprofitable. That is true, and that gave CBS a reason to cut it, but you can't help but wonder, if President Trump was not in power, and Paramount was not trying to get a merger approved, and Colbert was not an outspoken Trump critic, would CBS have tried harder to make the math work? Would CBS have tried harder to keep the show on the air? Would there have been more incentive to figure out a way to make it profitable, to cut costs, et cetera? That's an unknowable question. We don't know the answers to that. My sense from CBS insiders is that they do believe the financial rationale, but I can't wait to hear what Colbert says tonight because tonight's his first episode since being canceled-

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Brian Stelter: -and he might have something to say about this.

Brigid Bergin: Maybe more clips tomorrow potentially.

Brian Stelter: Yes.

Brigid Bergin: You mentioned the merger that is pending between Paramount, the parent company of CBS, and Skydance. Just how do you see that fitting into all this, and what kind of media company are they trying to become?

Brian Stelter: A source close to Colbert said to me on Friday the show was a casualty of the merger, but that can mean different things. One way to interpret that is that during every media merger, any merger in any industry, companies try to cut costs, both before and after the merger, you try to trim down, you try to look as good as you can, kind of like getting ready or fit for the summer. These companies are used to cutting costs during a merger, and The Late Show has a giant cost center. That could be one interpretation.

Another interpretation is that the people in charge of these companies, both the old company, the old version of Paramount, and the new one, know that President Trump wants his cut. He wants his piece. He wants to be shown acquiescence, and so canceling an outspoken critic, even though it won't take effect for 10 months, has the effect of maybe appeasing the president and getting him to bless this merger. Again, it's an unknowable, but we would be naive to think that companies are not thinking about these factors, because they are. Media executives are having to navigate these factors with a president who is so much more overtly transactional than any we've seen before.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Chuck in Hoboken, New Jersey. Chuck, thanks for calling WNYC.

Chuck: Thank you for taking my call. I would like to say to Brian, although I'm a fan, he keeps saying that it is not the job of the media to advocate for a party. However, there's only one party that has abdicated their power. Doesn't the media, the fourth estate, have a responsibility to advocate for democracy itself? I think they're doing an abysmal job of that, and quite frankly, chasing all of these Trump stories allows him to put up smoke that gives him cover as he dismantles our government, leads us towards authoritarianism, and cements himself as a wannabe dictator. The Supreme Court, the Republican Party, the fact that they have majorities in the House and the Senate have put him in a position where it's very possible that we could be losing our democracy, and the press kind of seems like, "Well, what are you going to do?"

Brigid Bergin: Chuck, thank you for that. Is it the role of the press to advocate for democracy, Brian?

Brian Stelter: I don't think it's partisan for the press to advocate for democracy or for decency, by the way. I don't think those are partisan traits. They're not partisan values, and, frankly, the American fourth estate won't exist in a country that is an autocracy. We depend on a democracy to be able to do our jobs as journalists. It is incredibly difficult to do our jobs in a different political system, so, no, I don't think it's partisan for journalists to advocate for democracy, but because Trump was democratically elected and because he says he has a mandate to take certain actions, I think we also have to try to remain as neutral and fair minded as we can while being tough and by being clear about the facts.

Look, when Trump is misleading the public, when he is assaulting the government based on lies and innuendo, yes, the press should and does call that out. I think individually we're seeing so much strong journalism in this Trump 2.0 era. Where we're seeing challenges and pressure and sometimes failings is institutionally. On the individual level, the work is being done, and frankly, as a news consumer, I feel really well informed about what is happening to the federal government, but I understand that institutionally, the pressures on these companies, the sense that Paramount or Disney or Meta has capitulated, that is an incredible stress on the system, and I think viewers and listeners are right to be concerned and they're right to pressure media companies to stand up. What we're seeing is this dynamic between fighting or folding.

Do you fight, or do you fold? This is what Harvard is going through. It's what big law firms are going through. It's what media companies are going through, and whenever one folds, others stand up and fight. That's where I take a sense of positivity about our diverse media ecosystem. Yes, we've seen some media companies seem to fold to President Trump, but we've seen startups launch with new voices and new outlets. We're seeing new energy from new forms of media. At the same time, we're seeing maybe failures from others.

Brigid Bergin: Brian, before I let you go and to just really capture the fullness of the media landscape-

Brian Stelter: Oh.

Brigid Bergin: -of recent days, I need to ask you as a media analyst about a story that went viral last week in a way that really seemed to unite people in a sort of collective schadenfreude.

Brian Stelter: Oh, I know what you're talking about.

Brigid Bergin: Of course, that endlessly memed video, the kiss cam at the Coldplay concert capturing his CEO and his HR manager having an affair. As a media analyst, why did that story capture our collective attention in such a powerful way?

Brian Stelter: We don't all watch the same things anymore. We're not all staying up late to watch The Late Show. At best, we might see a clip or two on our phones as we're scrolling endlessly. We spend all of our time doom scrolling and seeing bad news on our devices, thanks to those algorithms I mentioned, but every once in a while, there is a story like this that pops, that goes viral, that transcends, and in some ways, it's a new form of our culture. It's a new form of a communal event, something that we all share.

I was joking in my Reliable Sources newsletter this morning that we need a new name for the kiss cam, because now instead of the kiss cam, it's like the duck and cover cam. People show up on camera at a ballpark or at a concert, and instead of kissing, they duck. They're trying to recreate that viral video moment. That does speak to how even though everything's fragmented, even though we're all watching and listening to a million different things, even though we can't agree on anything at the national level, there are still these random viral video moments that bring us together, and I guess that's better than nothing.

Brigid Bergin: Better than nothing. We're going to leave it there for today. My guest has been Brian Stelter. He's the chief media analyst for CNN Worldwide, and he's the lead author of the Reliable Sources newsletter. You should subscribe. It's a great read. He's also the author of several books, including his latest, which came out last year, Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for America. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Brian Stelter: Thank you. An honor.

 

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