Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Ben Smith:

I do think that he’s gone, obviously, over the long arc of it, from being seen as a joke and an entertaining sideshow figure running for president, to obviously being the most consequential political figure of our lifetimes and this enormously important historical figure, whether you like it or not.

Preet Bharara:

Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara. My guest this week is Ben Smith. He’s a longtime journalist, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, and the co-founder of news platform Semafor. He joins me to discuss today’s media industry, covering the news and his latest venture. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. Where does the media stand today on questions of objectivity, AI news-gathering, and global versus local reporting? Ben Smith, welcome to the show.

Ben Smith:

Thanks for having me on, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

What has taken so long for you to come on this podcast?

Ben Smith:

I was just awaiting your invitation patiently.

Preet Bharara:

As I have been at the great Semafor conferences, but we’ll come back to that later. You and I used to speak in the old days, so I’ve missed you. I think you’re a smart and independent thinking person, and we don’t have a lot of that.

We’re going to try to cover a bunch of different things, but first, I think we must, because we’re recording this on Monday, April 27th, you were at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, and you told me before we hit the record button that you haven’t written about it yet. So I’m going to ask you a very easy open-ended question to begin.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

What was that like?

Ben Smith:

I think different people process these things differently. I definitely wound up thinking I’m going to get eaten by wolves at some point because I didn’t react as fast as other people. If you’ve ever been, it’s a huge ballroom in the basement with bad cell reception in a hotel that is widely referred to still in Washington as the Hinckley Hilton after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in ’81, which took place there. So a sort of strange space, like a modernist space. And you’re very trapped in there. It’s hard to move between the tables and things. There’s 3,000 people in this giant room.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a huge fire hazard, I think, separate from the shooting issue.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. You sort of do find yourself thinking in any year, “How is this allowed?” Yeah. So there’s a few muffled pops, the little sound a little too close and strange. Everyone thought, “I wonder if that’s gunshots,” and looked up nervously. And then you hear trays clattering to the ground as waiters jump for cover. And then that’s more alarming. And some people then dive under the tables, the smart ones. And then I was sort of like, “Oh, I wonder what’s going on.”

I was starting to grab my phone to film whatever was happening. And then a bunch of Secret Service agents with their guns out, burst through the doors and started running through and over the tables to grab protectees. On the dais is Trump and Melania who’ve just arrived and Weijia Jiang, the president of the Correspondents’ Association’ and the rest of the Correspondents’ Association and a mentalist named Oz Pearlman, who was supposed to be the entertainment. And then the other thing that happens is big guys come out from behind the stage with their guns generally pointed toward the audience, obviously toward the back of the room. Suddenly you’re like, “Okay, this is bad.”

Preet Bharara:

Not to make light, but it does occur to me that the Mentalist in no way predicted that this was going to happen?

Ben Smith:

No. And in fact, there was some objections to the notion that there would be a mentalist because the idea of having a comedian there was that comedians sort of speak the truth in jokes. And ultimately, these guys are just liars, these magicians. So it seems a little inappropriate for a journalism event.

Preet Bharara:

I think mentalists, if that’s the right term, can be extraordinary. My wife procured a mentalist at my 50th birthday party and I was blown away. So I don’t give them any short shrift. Did you get to observe the demeanor of the folks on the dais, including the president and the first lady, or were you too far away?

Ben Smith:

No. Well, I’ve watched it since on Twitter. Basically, there’s five minutes of important people getting removed from the room. And it was also a little bit of a test for corporate security teams. One tech company, I will not name, I think, did a really superb job of rapturing all its executives out. And then other people are left behind. Trump’s campaign manager, Chris LaCivita doesn’t have a detail, obviously. Brandan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, suddenly goes from the lowest-ranking official in the room to the highest-ranking official in the room because nobody bothered pulling him out.

Preet Bharara:

And you’re documenting this and noting all this or are these things that you figured out after the fact?

Ben Smith:

Yeah, everybody’s kind of filming each other and interviewing each other, but it’s often true in these big news stories that the people in the middle of it really have no idea what’s going on. We’re also all checking Twitter and trying to understand what’s happening. And there’s lots of false rumors immediately circulating, specifically that the gunman was shot.

Preet Bharara:

How did you know when you were safe?

Ben Smith:

There was no real announcement or process. Eventually, somebody gets back up on the dais and says that they’re going to resume food service, which they did not do.

Preet Bharara:

At what point in the dinner, food service-wise, did the shooting happen?

Ben Smith:

There were salads on the table and people had started to chat and eat their salads.

Preet Bharara:

Did you ever get to eat dinner?

Ben Smith:

I ate my salad, then I grabbed some bread rolls. Some people just left with bottles of wine, which I sort of admired.

Preet Bharara:

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when I used to go some years ago, was famous for the after parties. Now the dinner was canceled. Did the after parties go on?

Ben Smith:

They did. I think MS NOW, the old MSNBC, I think was concerned that their party would be seen as celebratory or something or be taken as inappropriate. So they turned the light levels up and put on more introspective music than planned, I’m told by someone who was involved. But yeah, and then these parties were sort of half empty, but I think it’s not crazy to want to go drink after something like this, and people did.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and then we’ll segue into the media and some other things, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a good idea? Do you share the objections? I think The New York Times stopped going, is that correct, your former employer?

Ben Smith:

Yeah, The Times doesn’t send people. There’s a couple of different things. One is, should the press have solidarity with each other or is that kind of a conspiracy? Aren’t we competitors? That’s one objection that there’s this sort of cabal. To me, the two settings in which journalists just appear the worst are the White House press room and the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. So there are great opportunities for the president to make fun of the press.

In the press room, it’s a bunch of people sitting like kindergartners raising their hands while some young staffer spins them. That’s not why you wanted to get into journalism. And then the Correspondents’ Dinner, it’s all these asshole executives in tuxedos. And I think a lot of what journalists do is really worthy hard work, and you really don’t see it in either of those settings. And I think that’s why Trump, but also other presidents, love to highlight us in those moments because it really is kind of embarrassing.

Preet Bharara:

Let’s talk about a more fundamental issue with the press that is crystallized in some ways by the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and that is this idea that journalism is supposed to be independent. You agree with that at all the places you’re at, and I think you’re an independent journalist.

Ben Smith:

Of course.

Preet Bharara:

But to do journalism, you have to have some sources. You have to be connected to the people that you are covering, otherwise, it’s more like commentary from afar. And to have connectivity with people whom you’re covering or who have knowledge of the things you’re covering, you have to have something that is pejoratively called access. And there’s the phrase access journalism.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. There’s an old saying that access is a curse, which is true.

Preet Bharara:

But no access is also a curse, is it not?

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve been doing this for a while at a lot of different places. How do you think philosophically and pragmatically and on the ground about the tension between having access to people you cover and covering them objectively?

Ben Smith:

That is a really hardcore tension in a lot of particularly political journalism, but all sorts of beat reporting, essentially, anything that requires expertise. To me, the problem is that journalists, and journalists are a big part of this problem, like to talk about ourselves like we do this heroic, noble, pure profession, which I, in some level-

Preet Bharara:

There’s a lot of that.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around. And obviously, the core job, which is getting to the true facts and publishing them is incredibly important to a democratic society. But the way you get those facts, A, there’s a lot of different paths there. There are people who talk to no one, read documents, and write great commentary. There are people who are incredibly charming and get individuals who you might, in other settings, find loathsome to feel that they are their best friends and tell them everything.

And if you were at that bar with those two people, you might just be like, “What is going on here? I don’t feel comfortable in this situation.” Or you might not because you probably have some of these skills yourself. But it’s not a profession that leaves you… I don’t know. People sometimes will be like, “Well, thank you for what you do.” And it’s like, “I don’t know. You probably don’t totally know exactly how it works. And if you saw it, you might think it was kind of strange.” Because it is these transactional relationships with sources.

Preet Bharara:

It is. But it’s refreshing to hear you say that because nobody says that. What you just said is heresy.

Ben Smith:

No. I just think that when journalists act like we’re some kind of warrior priesthood, that we’re setting ourselves up for a fall. It’s an incredibly important social function. Well, A, different people do it totally differently, and you have to be honest. Ultimately, the goal is to publish true facts and publish stories that people don’t want published, and there’s a lot of different ways to get there. And then I also think that the function of asking hard questions of public officials is really important. And there is some relationship of mutual respect required for them to show up.

Preet Bharara:

It’s super interesting. When I was beginning to be a public figure, when I was in office, we had a lot of big cases and we recovered a lot and I was not quiet, I went to the podium a lot.

Ben Smith:

You were a friend of the working press. That’s how I recall it.

Preet Bharara:

But I think, hopefully, in an appropriate way, and I never leaked anything or said anything that I shouldn’t have said. But early on, a very, very influential figure in the media, who you would know, but I’m not going to say on the show, but I’ll tell you after, gave me a piece of advice. We met for coffee, and he said something that is so obvious that had not occurred to me.

And I wonder if it’s true, and it may not be true with everyone, and it may not be true with you. And he said, “You should get to know the people who cover you because people are people and if they like you, they’re not going to cover up for you or they’re not going to fail to report something bad about you or your office, but they’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt because they like and trust you.”

So if you can impress upon them that you’re a good person and you get to know them, it’s just a little harder to be a jerk to you in print and on TV if they know and like you. And that seemed very obvious to me, but it had not occurred to me before. So I think I’ll reveal my thinking in an above board way. That’s how you and I got to know each other. People had questions about the office. I would talk about priorities, never talked about anything that was not public on a case.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. But remember, you had dinner with me at that Indian place on 24th Street, Junoon, and I was very pleased that the US Attorney was having dinner with me.

Preet Bharara:

Well, look, but the other thing that was going on with relationship with the press, and I’ve written about this many times, sometimes you folks have leads and thoughts about what is deserving of criminal authority’s attention. A number of big cases we started began with columns. There was one that I’ve spoken about many times in the Daily News, a big fraud perpetrated on the city of New York that the FBI didn’t learn about first, our investigators didn’t learn about first.

A columnist at the Daily News blew it open. We ended up resting a lot of people and getting a half-a-billion-dollar fine that was paid back to the city of New York. So there is, I think, an appropriate complimentary relationship. But is it true, Ben, that it’s harder to write objectively or negatively about someone who has courted you and you like, or do you just not like it? Are you misanthropic enough that it doesn’t affect your reporting?

Ben Smith:

I think good reporters, on one hand, shouldn’t be personally nasty to people. I do think there’s a level of being-

Preet Bharara:

Ever.

Ben Smith:

… nasty to people who you don’t know and that you’ve developed some caricature of in your head or on social media. It’s just stupid. It doesn’t add anything. It’s not based on knowledge. So I don’t really see the point of doing that. I think it is a strange relationship where you have a genuinely warm relationship with someone and also a transactional one where they’re trying to use you for something and you are trying to get information from them. And then also sometimes they have to understand that your job is to write something that’s really going to be a huge problem for them. And I think there’s a way to do that that is straightforward and fair, which among other things involves calling them before the story is published and telling them exactly what is going to be in the story so that they can contest every detail so they’re not surprised when it’s published.

Maggie Haberman years and years ago said to me, because young reporters have an impulse to avoid conflict, it’s a very difficult conversation and just sort of sneak the story into the paper and then duck, and I remember her saying once, “This isn’t going to be published in a secret New York Times. You’re going to see it.” And I think it’s a relationship of respect where they understand that you have a job and that you’re doing it, and I think that is okay. And I think you can write really tough stories about people that are fair. And I think successful public officials mostly, although not all, really understand that that’s the function of a press and it’s a long relationship and this stuff comes and goes. Actually, it’s funny you mentioned that story because very early in my career, and I think everybody’s dead now, so I could probably tell the story.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, please.

Ben Smith:

Jack Newfield, who was a great New York City columnist of the 20th century and early 21st century, a crusading columnist, had a very close relationship with the Brooklyn District Attorney, Joe Hynes. I think both are now deceased. And there was an investigation of the Brooklyn Democratic Party that Jack drove and the DA was essentially working for the columnist and they were working so closely together and Jack got a free exclusive, but also was sort of saying, “Here’s who you should investigate and indict and where you should send the subpoena.”

And I think often prosecutors’ relationships with the media, if anything, is too close and that those can be really intertwined. Obviously, Bob Morgenthau had this very, very deep relationship with the press. I think that it’s easy for journalists to get seduced by the power of prosecutors who can leak them information that’s under seal and give them great stories all the time, and the media winds up cheerleading prosecutors.

Preet Bharara:

Are you saying that the late Bob Morgenthau leaked under seal information?

Ben Smith:

The late Bob Morgenthau was an even better friend of the working press than you, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Well, look, I will say flatly, even though I’m not under oath, but I would say this under oath, I never gave anyone information that was not public.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, you were very accessible, but not that helpful.

Preet Bharara:

Yes, right, which is how I am generally in life, even post-prosecutor. You’ve captured the essence of me perfectly, Ben, more than any other guest. Last question in this vein. There are a lot of people who don’t feel comfortable with the use of anonymous sources. The president loves to talk about how nothing that has an anonymous source should be trusted. Can you explain to a doubting public why that is necessary? And if it is necessary, does everyone follow the same rules? Is it the same at Vanity Fair as it is at The Economist, as it is at The New York Times, as it is when BuzzFeed News was a thing?

Ben Smith:

I would say publications, to answer the second question first, follow wildly different rules. The British press pays people for stories and will write that it is understood that something happened, meaning that they have some kind of sourcing, they’re just not going to tell you anything about where it came from.

Preet Bharara:

People are saying.

Ben Smith:

Whereas there are publications that will never use an anonymous source. I guess in my view, good stories are stories that somebody didn’t want you to publish, period, or no, there are others, but that is a large share of good stories. And often, one of the people who knows about this is somebody who’s quite junior and quite scared and will lose their job if it comes out that they told you that something that happened in their workplace was inappropriate. The obligation of the journalist is to get the facts right, but often people, particularly people in public life, lie all the time and the on-the-record statements are often false or misleading and off-the-record statements are often the true ones.

Preet Bharara:

Why did you start Semafor?

Ben Smith:

I’d been at The Times as a media columnist for a couple of years before that, had kind of a front-row seat to everybody else’s problems and really come out with my partner, Justin Smith, no relation, with the view that Americans, and broadly everybody’s complaints about media, of which there are many, were pretty well justified and that you should take them literally and try to respond to them. And people felt both totally overwhelmed by the amount of incoming noise and information, and then at the same time, really, for a variety of reasons, felt they didn’t know what to trust and didn’t know how to figure out what to trust.

And we just sort of thought, “Let’s try to start something that really runs straight at those problems.” Part of what we do that’s different is that we do read across the global press and try to give you, in the morning, the 10 or so most important stories from a bunch of different perspectives, not particularly just our own, but just try to filter through this massive amount of information that’s out there. And then also try to very transparently deliver news and separate, “Here’s the news part of the story, here’s what I think this means, and then here’s a dissenting view because maybe my analysis is off.”

And I think that was sort of the core thing. And we found, in a weird way, the people who ought to have the best access to this kind of information, CEOs and prominent government officials, were the ones who felt most frustrated about this media environment and about, particularly, I guess, in the US, just how wildly polarized it is and how much of news is intended to just get into your brainstem by telling you what you want to hear rather than trying to tell you what’s going on.

Preet Bharara:

I’ve seen that you have written, and this seems to be obvious to me and should be an applicable principle to every news organization, that the talent matters, right? The talent of the journalists matter. At the same time, we are obliged to always talk about AI, at least for a minute, in every podcast we do, sometimes much more than that.

At the same time, we have a trend towards some news-gathering very openly and notoriously being done by AI, amalgamating and curating news and writing articles. Those are two ends of a spectrum. Where do you think we’re going ultimately? Are we trending in the other direction or in your direction, Ben?

Ben Smith:

I think that’s such an astute way to frame it because I think basically there are two huge trends in media. One are, as you say, the automization of everything, AI, incredibly capable. And what AI is particularly capable of doing is giving you a personalized newsfeed where it knows that you’re interested in this actor and this sport and this local politics and this national politics and getting that all together into a personalized report on what happened overnight that will be 80% accurate. But you’re probably fine with that.

Most people seem to be lamentably fine with operating with kind of a 80% to 90% degree of resolution on whether something is true. And it will give you this very, very personalized, but you’re not quite sure where it’s coming from or how it’s slanted or just what its components are, but it can give you this very, very personalized automated thing which no human can match. And then the other big trend is toward creators, individuals, podcasts. We have three podcasts, one called Mixed Signals that I host, Liz Hoffman’s Compound Interest, and a show called CEO Signal. Sorry, that’s just a brief sponsored plug-

Preet Bharara:

No, good.

Ben Smith:

… from us here at Semafor-

Preet Bharara:

You should always do that.

Ben Smith:

… for Preet listeners. Essentially, journalists whose names you know, whose points of view you’re familiar with, who have real expertise, and who you’re interested in what they think, whether it’s in this video clip or a podcast or a written article or a newsletter or something, [inaudible 00:21:25] on stage, but the very direct relationship with a human being. And the thing is AI also makes it easier for a single individual to get a lot more done by just lowering the barriers to production, particularly video and podcast production actually.

Preet Bharara:

And research too or not?

Ben Smith:

Yes, totally. And research too across languages. Those are the two trends. They’re a little bit intertwined, but they are also pretty separate, at least point in different directions.

Preet Bharara:

It’s so interesting. You said across languages. You’re a reporter now, let’s say you’re writing an article about a cancer treatment and most of the literature is in English, but there’s this German article that people have quoted from and you want to see the article. You can literally put the article into one of the chatbots and have it translate probably fairly accurately and then rely on that. That was not possible a short while ago.

Ben Smith:

No, the Tower of Babel was this important story in the Bible and we’ve just reversed it. I feel people are not excited enough about this.

Preet Bharara:

We have reversed the Tower of Babel.

Ben Smith:

It’s crazy. I don’t know. Did we put it back up, I guess? They destroyed the Tower of Babel? I can’t remember exactly how the story went. I think it was an offense to God.

Preet Bharara:

The only person I know more about the Bible then is Donald Trump.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, I think the Tower was an offense to God actually, and we’ve now rebuilt the Tower of Babel is what we’ve done, so everybody duck.

Preet Bharara:

The other tension I see in journalism, very different, is one relating to length. There’s this trend, the Axios trend, it’s super interesting to me that people are busy, the kind of audiences you have, CEOs, and they want to have a crisp summary of the things that are going on. What are the three takeaways of the shooting from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? A debate happens, what are the four takeaways?

And then I think economically also very successful are the models of The Atlantic and The New Yorker and long form where I once joked… I think the biggest laugh I’ve ever gotten at a live podcast show was the observation that no one has ever finished a New Yorker article. And once The New Yorker wrote a profile of me and my father who reads every bit of my press, this was too long. It was too long. So explain that trend towards Haiku-like coverage of important events or lists of the main takeaways versus incredibly dense, rich, long form.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, I would say that’s true in other media too, like short TikToks, but then also 100-part multi-season dramas and three-hour podcasts.

Preet Bharara:

Is it because we contain multitudes?

Ben Smith:

Yeah, basically. I think that daily news journalism had been built for newspapers and that the insight that Jim and Mike, that those guys at Axios had of just like, “This shit is too long,” was a very real, true, great thing. And by really smashing up the form of a newspaper article, it delivered something people wanted, which is just shorter. We’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this and talking to our audience about it.

I think there’s a way to do stuff that is tight, but is kind of calorie dense and rich and gives you not just a factual summary, but a sense of how different people are understanding the world. I think there are different ways to get at it. We really do try to be dense, not just short, but I think that’s just a response. Who doesn’t think that newspaper articles are mostly too long? That’s obviously true.

Preet Bharara:

You get paid by the word, right? You’re not Dickens.

Ben Smith:

Well, you used to just be filling space. I remember once I had an editor be like, “Can you blow a little air into that? We just lost an ad.”

Preet Bharara:

We just lost an ad. Now you don’t have that. You ever thought, since you used to do local reporting, it’s incredibly important? I’ve always thought that the biggest loss in journalism and the economics of journalism is the loss of local reporting, in particular, given my prior job, the lack of transparency reporting and the lack of ability of multiple outlets to get at the corruption at city, by city hall, I don’t mean New York City Hall, but every city hall, every legislature. There was a study once, I don’t think it was ultimately born out, but the thesis was that the level of corruption in this state was directly proportional to how far the capital of the state was from the media center. It’s a wonderful-

Ben Smith:

Makes sense to me.

Preet Bharara:

… thesis, right? We spent a lot of time prosecuting people in Albany, which has a less robust press than it used to have and less coverage. Suppose the capital of New York and the legislature of the state of New York had to reside and conduct their business in New York City. Do you think your profession would uncover a lot more corruption?

Ben Smith:

Yeah. I do think.

Preet Bharara:

You do?

Ben Smith:

It would be different, but yes. And it would be harder for them to operate in the shadows, which is how state legislators and legislatures mostly like to operate in a way where the individual legislators just do whatever their leaders say and have no autonomy, but also pay no political price. I think local news is a catastrophe.

And when people say journalism is falling apart or the journalism business is bad, in the United States, they’re just talking about local news. Every other part of journalism is probably doing better, and broadcast, but they’re talking about local print newspapers particularly, and then certain kinds of broadcast television. But actually, if you look at all sorts of other journalism, I’m sure there are more legal trades and outlets covering elements of the legal profession than there ever were.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, and by the way, if podcasts are considered journalism, then there’s a proliferation of those.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, there’s this incredible proliferation. There’s publications that cover the sanitation industry really, really well.

Preet Bharara:

And subsections probably of the sanitation industry, right?

Ben Smith:

Totally. But most American journalists, and this is really a specifically American thing, were employed by these huge newspaper monopolies or quasi-monopolies in cities all over the country. And the collapse of that space is obviously kind of a civic catastrophe. And even the addition of all these other jobs in other areas hasn’t compensated for it.

Preet Bharara:

This is a podcast where every question I ask is about a spectrum or a dichotomy. Here’s another one. You mentioned the demise of local news. Is there also a concern at the other end of the spectrum with respect to foreign affairs and international news?

I don’t think that’s profitable for any American outlet. The New York Times, I presume that the model is, among other things, that the recipes and the fashion reporting and the movie reporting and the puzzles and everything else in part subsidize coverage of Africa and Asia and maybe a little bit of Europe too. What happens to that stuff?

Ben Smith:

It’s another one where actually if you do want to know what’s going on in Sweden, you can now read Sweden’s greatest journalists in translation, right?

Preet Bharara:

It’s not so convenient.

Ben Smith:

Again, there’s in fact more information, more access than there ever was. And yet also, I do think there’s a specific issue that makes it a little unclear what the function of a newspaper foreign bureau is. This is definitely our view at Semafor is why would the best way to get information out of Mali be to take some kid who just graduated from Harvard and send them to Mali with a pith helmet? There’s lots of Malians who you can work with. And that’s not, by the way, uniformly true. And there are great correspondence.

Preet Bharara:

Do you feel the same way about the coverage of a war?

Ben Smith:

There are a lot of great Arab journalists writing who you can rely on.

Preet Bharara:

You don’t have to be on the ground? You don’t have to be there?

Ben Smith:

No, there are journalists on the ground who aren’t Americans is what I mean.

Preet Bharara:

I see. And you figure out a way for them to be appropriately able to publish in your thing.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, it’s just much, much easier to do. It used to be everything was filtered through the correspondent. There are still great journalists who travel around and are an expert in any given place, understand global affairs, and do great work. At Semafor, one of the things that we felt was missing from American journalism has become so parochial. So we have a big international operation. We launched in Sub-Saharan Africa and now in the Gulf and are starting to do some stuff in Asia. And our model has been find a community of people in the region who are interested in really great high standard global journalism and publish primarily for them.

And then also for the subset of people in the US who are interested in the Gulf, which right now is a very large subset, but at some point probably will go back to being a smaller subset. But the notion that the way you should do journalism is have a hub in New York and London and have all information be filtered through that hub just doesn’t match the way the world works in the 21st century. And really, the ideal situation is to have a network of different nodes that talk to each other. We actually just hired a kid in Washington whose job is to cover Washington for the Gulf and for the Africa editions and ask the questions that people in Ghana want answered from Washington, for instance.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Ben Smith after this. You said something interesting a few minutes ago and I’m still processing. You didn’t say it like this, but I’m going to reinterpret it because I don’t remember the exact words you used, but you kind of suggested that there is a certain self-importance that journalists have.

Ben Smith:

What?

Preet Bharara:

Fair?

Ben Smith:

Who could ever think such a thing? My pride is insulted. Yeah, of course, you see it all the time.

Preet Bharara:

Right. I want to tread delicately here because I have a lot of journalism friends, so we’re going to break it down in a second. It is true, the inspiring line that you hear journalists talk about all the time. First of all, they’re the Fourth Estate, so they’re practically a branch of government. Famously, John Kennedy and many, many others have said over the last 250 years, or some odd years, the only business cited in the Constitution of the United States of America is the press. Freedom of the press is right there in which amendment? The first one. The First Amendment.

Ben Smith:

Right there in the first one.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t necessarily have that view, but there are things that journalism, by definition, it’s like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, if you are observing it, you’re changing what you’re observing.

Ben Smith:

For sure.

Preet Bharara:

And journalism can’t cover journalism well. I’ll give you a particular example that used to come up. There have been lots of debates about whether or not journalists should have a privilege against providing information relating to confidential sources, even if a confidential source might have information about a terrorist attack or some other very, very serious criminal activity. And most people respect it and most, if not all, states have a law. When I worked in the Senate, there was a lot of discussion and debate about passing a federal press shield law. That has never gone anywhere because it’s very difficult to define journalism. Maybe that’s-

Ben Smith:

Harder and harder.

Preet Bharara:

… harder and harder. Some people want to protect the traditional press. Some people want to protect everything. What does that mean? If my uncle is in a basement putting out a newsletter, should that be protected? And all of that. But when a subpoena is issued to a press outlet, there is not neutral coverage of that by the press because it’s the press itself that has a stake in that. Is that a problem or not? And I don’t know how you solve that problem.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. I think often journalists don’t like to cover each other. I covered the media for a couple of years for The Times. You make enemies among your colleagues. If you were writing a newsletter that was like-

Preet Bharara:

But you don’t mind that.

Ben Smith:

I got a little tired of it. Imagine if you just started writing a newsletter that just wrote investigations of medium-sized misdeeds by white-shoe lawyers in Manhattan, you’d lose all your friends. So it’s a tiny profession.

Preet Bharara:

No, that’s why Above the Law was kind of scandalous, our friend David Lat.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, totally. So it’s a tiny profession and there is pressure to, I think I mostly resist it, but to not… I do think there is the self-importance thing. I think you can separate the fact that it is this unbelievably important social function of democracy, and everyone who does it is, by definition, a hero. The provision of water is very vital to all of our lives, and I have tons of respect for people who work for the water company. But I’m sure there’s a range of people that you don’t come in saying-

Preet Bharara:

Well, there’s corruption in water. Isn’t that what Chinatown is based on?

Ben Smith:

Right, exactly. What about those guys? [inaudible 00:34:35].

Preet Bharara:

What about the bad water people? No. I think you have a very refreshing, self-reflective, self-aware view.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. I know too many journalists.

Preet Bharara:

Journalists who are listening, send your letters to Ben Smith.

Ben Smith:

bsmith@semafor.com.

Preet Bharara:

So that leads me to a development.

Ben Smith:

Can I just elaborate on this? The kinds of people who do great journalism are often eccentric people and difficult people because it does require resisting just the normal social impulse to be like.

Preet Bharara:

Can you name anyone?

Ben Smith:

Nope. There’s something odd about having this conversation with somebody and then writing something they don’t like that’s going to make them unhappy. The people aren’t always the easiest people in the world and often the best ones are really difficult human beings. And I do think journalism to some degree sets itself up for a fall when everybody wants to be Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men.

Preet Bharara:

The analogy that I think of with that is when I went and worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a nominee who was going to be opposed by my boss, at that time, Senator Schumer, and I was a new guy and I wrote a very excoriating speech in the style I thought that the Senator wanted to use. But the venue for which I had written the remarks was with the nominee there in the hearing room. It was for the hearing, not for the Senate floor. And I had not appreciated that different time and place, even if it was also in the Senate. And I showed it to the chief of staff and he’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “This is what the Democrats are saying about this nominee. It would be terrible for justice.” He’s like, “Yeah, but he’s going to be right there. His family is going to be there.”

And I wonder if this is a good thing or maybe not a good thing. He’s like, “We don’t talk like that when the nominee is sitting there.” And he didn’t say it this way, but we talk about the nominee like that on the Senate floor when he and his family are not there looking back at us and think about the things that people say about nominees for cabinet positions and otherwise, but there’s something difficult and that is still a norm, although that has been breaking down in both directions, both on the part of witnesses who testify who may be in the cabinet and senators, so maybe everything I’m saying is outdated. But let me transition to my question about a new foray into journalism or a subject matter area of journalism by an outlet that usually is not in this subject matter area.

And it’s TMZ, who people may know covers, I want to be fair to them, but fairly robustly covers the entertainment industry and celebrities often catches them in scandal, but that’s not all they do. They actually have some very good reporting in a lot of different places. I want you to address that, but they have said they’re going to start covering members of Congress to discuss.

Ben Smith:

Well, I think this is one of these ones where obviously having a robust free press is an important function for democracy and also it’s going to give this kind of celebrity coverage of people’s personal lives to an institution whose problems I don’t think are that we don’t know who’s cheating on whom enough. For all the problems that Congress has, I’m not sure the absence of celebrity style gossip is among them. TMZ also, at least in some context, pays for information. I think probably it will probably erode a bit of what’s left of the trust inside these institutions. So I don’t know.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re against.

Ben Smith:

I’m not really for or against. They’re certainly allowed to do it, but I’m not sure. It just seems like a feature of a Washington in which everything’s for sale and everything’s transactionalized and lots of people think of themselves as C-list celebrities aspiring to be B-list celebrities.

Preet Bharara:

Does personal scandal matter anywhere near the degree it used to before, given Donald Trump?

Ben Smith:

I think it’s one of those ones where it’s like Trump is sort of a special situation because it certainly matters to people’s families and the people around them. So it’s one thing to brazen it out in public, but I think not everybody wants to put their family through that. And I think you saw with Swalwell, certainly inside the Democratic Party, those allegations pushed him out of the Senate race.

Preet Bharara:

Immediately.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

There was no hemming and hawing. That’s a good thing, you think?

Ben Smith:

No hemming and hawing and no adjudication. I don’t know. That’s the nature of political campaigns.

Preet Bharara:

Does there need to be adjudication for a political death sentence or politics just doesn’t work that way?

Ben Smith:

I think when there’s an election in two weeks, that is what it is, right? And voters are going to make up their minds based on partial information. I think it’s useful to go back to these stories that blow up during campaigns and report them out and figure out what really happened. I’ve done that a few times. And sometimes what really happened was something the person should have been pushed out of public life for, and sometimes it really wasn’t.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about the evolution in the way that Donald Trump has gotten reported on? From the time of the escalator, that was 2015, I think, and that 10th anniversary is going to be 11 years. And at the beginning, even though that man lies, people didn’t say lie, people didn’t say liar. And there’s a particular distinction when you argue to a jury for the practitioners out there about something being a lie versus someone being a liar. But neither of those were really countenanced by the press. There were other euphemisms used.

There was also a sense that you had to be respectful, not just of the office, but that also meant being respectful of the occupant of the office no matter what kind of behavior he engaged in. And there was a person who had a show at CNN, and listener warning, I’m going to say a mild curse word, and he said, and I think this was in the first year, he referred to Donald Trump as a piece of shit and his show was canceled and he was fired from CNN, if I recall correctly. Reza Aslan, I think it was. Today, if you did that, you would be considered mild and maybe get a mild raise.

Ben Smith:

I think you’d get fired from CNN today for that. There may have been an interim when you wouldn’t.

Preet Bharara:

He wasn’t an anchor.

Ben Smith:

Oh, right. He was a contributor.

Preet Bharara:

He was a contributor. And I think lots of people who have huge audiences use that language and have that opinion. If I said that right now, I don’t use expletives to talk about generally those things, but I’ve said the equivalent or worse. What’s worse, being described to someone who has threatened genocide against an entire civilization of people or you’re a piece of shit? Some of these things are silly, I think, but going back to the original question, notwithstanding my digression, how has coverage of Trump evolved given how out of the norm he is?

Ben Smith:

I don’t feel like it’s something that we’ve cracked. I do think that he’s gone, obviously, over the long arc of it, from being seen as a joke and an entertaining sideshow figure running for president, to obviously being the most consequential political figure of our lifetimes and this enormously important historical figure, whether you like it or not. And I think that’s a head-spinning evolution. When I look back, I think that the post-2016 coverage, it just seemed to a lot of people in the media and a lot of Democrats that there was no way this guy could have won fair and square. It was too anomalous, too far outside American history, so it must have been some kind of trick. And the two potential culprits were, one, Facebook or, two, the Russians.

I think in retrospect, obviously, social media played a role in his victory and obviously WikiLeaks was this incredibly meaningful intelligence operation, but also, turned out the guy had some staying power and a lot of people liked him. And in fact, he got elected a second time, as you may recall. And I do think that it was a huge error, I think, in the media and just really coming at him with this assumption that his election was illegitimate. And I think that shaped a lot of what followed. I don’t think he would’ve been exactly who he is and treated the media exactly the way he did his whole career, which is this combination of punching bag and figure of obsession and official enemy and all that stuff. I’m not trying to make excuses for that, but I think you look back at the coverage and see 2017, 2018 does not hold up particularly well.

Preet Bharara:

How do you think coverage this year will hold up in a few years?

Ben Smith:

I think now people are just doing their best to document what the government is doing and what he’s doing rather than so much focused on what he says. For instance, you said that thing about, do you call him a liar, which I think journalists have been reluctant to do because it presumes that you are inside someone’s head and have knowledge of their mental state, which you can because maybe they have every reason to know the thing they said is false. But also, remember there’s this big debate in media about whether you could use the words liar and racist to describe him. And it was this big hand-ringing thing and the New York Times at some point puts one of those words in a headline and they’re popping champagne corks at the Poynter Institute or something. Who cares? Did that matter at all?

Preet Bharara:

Ben Smith, once again, going back to the self-importance theme.

Ben Smith:

Yes, that’s my theme. I think in retrospect that was not consequential, that didn’t have measurable results anywhere and maybe made it a bit harder for journalists to present themselves as able to be fair.

Preet Bharara:

Look, at the beginning, it was kind of novel and there were a lot of jokes made about, I’ll use a more fancy word, his prevarication. And I saw on an endless loop, there’s a famous moment from Seinfeld. I think it’s George Costanza saying to Jerry something like, “Always remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it. ”

Ben Smith:

Yeah, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Right? Which captures this whole point, crystallizes it perfectly in one sentence.

Ben Smith:

And but by the way, I would say also just to that, different publications have different roles in the ecosystem and what TMZ does and what the New York Times does may be different and maybe TMZ can use the word liar and the Times doesn’t or vice versa, and that’s fine.

Preet Bharara:

So just more substantively, where do you think Trump is in his political arc? Because there’s almost three years left. Is he going to be a lame duck like many? And are there some signs of that? Because I’ll tell you my view in a moment, but how do you think this is going and how do you think it will go?

Ben Smith:

I think he’s basically already a lame duck and can’t compel Congress to do anything and will increasingly feel his back at the wall against the midterms. But on the other hand, never cared about Congress at all. I heard Steve Bannon the other day referring to it as the Duma and will continue to exercise executive power super, super aggressively, I think.

Preet Bharara:

And you think that will not be materially different or will it be accelerated if the Democrats win back the House and the Senate?

Ben Smith:

I think it’ll be less different than people expect, that’s my prediction.

Preet Bharara:

Really? Well, how so?

Ben Smith:

Because he’s already operating basically in the absence of Congress and will continue to.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a view on the political consequence or lack of consequence if the Democrats decide on one basis or another to impeach President Trump in the second half of the second term?

Ben Smith:

Or immediately, right?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

It obviously didn’t work out so well last time. I think it might-

Preet Bharara:

Last times.

Ben Smith:

Last times. I do think that politics is so unpredictable and it’s so easy to say, “Well, it didn’t work last time, so don’t do it again.” But that actually isn’t particularly a rule in politics. Sometimes it’s just the moment.

Preet Bharara:

History does still rhyme, does it not?

Ben Smith:

Does it? I don’t know, man. And I have genuinely no normative view on impeachment, but I do think the Washington corruption story is really big. And it’s when we had this big Semafor World Economy last week, one of the things that was really notable was that no one would talk about that in public, but when you get CEOs in Chatham House Rules forums, there’s a lot of talk about corruption. Some of this depends on how popular or unpopular Trump is going in, but I do think that whether it’s impeachment, and maybe probably not, but I think the power to investigate Washington corruption, I can’t imagine you’re not going to see a lot of that.

Preet Bharara:

Did your event happen after Orbán lost or before?

Ben Smith:

Just after.

Preet Bharara:

And how much was that on people’s lips and minds?

Ben Smith:

A fair amount. He was in power for 16 years, but ultimately… Fraser Nelson wrote this column in The Times of London that stuck with me that that kind of government just tends toward corruption and decay. We all saw it through an ideological lens, but ultimately, he was replaced by somebody with basically identical politics, but who ran on the issue of corruption.

Preet Bharara:

What’s interesting to me in this debate that I’ve had with many guests, and it goes on in America in partisan democratic politics, is the question of whether in campaigning to maintain power and have more power, do you talk about democracy and autocracy and all that, high-minded stuff, which is basically the social contract without which there is nothing else, including prosperity, or do you talk about prosperity and you talk about inflation, you’re talking about kitchen table issues, and that is a very difficult subject. It’s disheartening for me, given what I know about and care about, but also may be a function of the fact that I don’t have to worry about putting food on the table because I’m a privileged person in society.

But the relevance in Hungary to me is, for all his autocratic leanings, as I understand it, I’m no expert, the thing that caused Orbán’s demise was not the autocracy per se, but two offshoots of it, which was the inevitable corruption that comes from that kind of leadership, and to the extent it was caused by autocracy and bad governing the economy. So corruption in the economy, after 16 years of iron fist-like rule in many respects, that’s what caused his loss. I don’t know what question I have, but do you have a reaction to that?

Ben Smith:

Yeah. I think the Hungarians, a lot of them were looking at Poland, a country, which by the way, has its own political issues, but is really-

Preet Bharara:

Has done really remarkably well.

Ben Smith:

… stayed the course on a… It is interesting because right now in Washington, you have a real bipartisan crisis of confidence in capitalism and in the free market. But in a way, one of the things that happened in Hungary was people looking at Poland and the Baltic States and other post-communist countries that had liberalized and held the line on it and not had the state muck its way back into the economy and tried to take it over and just see how much more prosperous they were, which is in a way related to autocracy, right? Because once you politicize these decisions about business, suddenly the government owns Spirit Airlines. Literally, nobody wants to own Spirit Airlines.

Preet Bharara:

But the analog to what you were saying, and the reason I mentioned it, is because of what you were saying, and that is that Democrats and adversaries of the current president in the US, it’s politically fruitful ground to say you are corrupt and you’re lining your pockets and you took that jet and crypto is making your family rich, it’s outsized, it’s arrogant, and all those kinds of things, and yet it’s not a straight attack on autocracy and on exertion of power. And the mirror for me when you and I got to know each other was the way in which I observed people react to our political corruption prosecutions. There is nothing that pisses people off more than a public official, appointed or elected, but particularly elected, who’s lining his pockets.

Ben Smith:

It’s also true that many people assume that all politicians are corrupt, but they really don’t like corruption. I love the idea that you could basically just be like, “Rule of law.” That’s the lead-a-populist campaign with the slogan was rule of law. And I’ve only seen that happen once in Switzerland.

Preet Bharara:

In Switzerland?

Ben Smith:

Of course, in Switzerland. There was a nationalist party, this is in 2019, they were trying to create a second-tier status for immigrants where they could get deported if they committed crimes. And this being Switzerland, by immigrants, they meant French people and Germans and Italians. Just a very different political landscape. And because it’s Switzerland, there was this youth movement led by this AOC-like character named Flavia Kleiner, but their slogan was like, “We must institute the rule of law.” It was a center right populist movement, but I think that can only happen in Switzerland.

Preet Bharara:

Thanks so much, and good luck with Semafor.

Ben Smith:

Thank you for having me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Our conversation continues for members of the Insider community. In the exclusive bonus content, Smith discusses the decline of thoughtfulness.

Ben Smith:

Part of it is that there was this kind of elite gatekeepers of politics and of journalism and other things who, at their best, felt a level of responsibility to be really thoughtful, and often, at their worst, did not or failed, and that that has been swept aside. The thing that I’ve been thinking lately is to what degree is that just the reversion to the norm?

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. After the break, I’ll answer your questions about preemptive pardons, paternity leave for the vice president, and my favorite kind of potatoes.

Heads up, folks, Stay Tuned is going live. I’ll be speaking with my friend and colleague, former US Attorney Barb McQuade, at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Sunday, May 31st about her new book, The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government. To get in-person or virtual tickets, head to cafe.com/barb. That’s cafe.com/barb. Don’t miss it. I hope to see you there.

Now, let’s get to your questions. This question comes from Marianne via email.

“Hi there. Quick question on presidential pardons. Can Trump pardon people in advance of them being charged with anything before he leaves office? Is that what he means by giving everyone within 200 feet of the Oval Office a pardon? Is that just a get-out-of-jail-free card? How long does it last for? Are there certain parameters? Thank you for your show. I always learn a lot, Marianne.”

Marianne, you’re one of a number of people who in recent times, and actually even going back quite a ways, asks very thoughtful, important questions about the pardon power. So I thank you for your question. The short answer to it is yes. Trump can pardon people in advance of their being investigated or charged for any crime. Probably the most famous example of this, President Richard Nixon. After he resigned, following the Watergate scandal, his successor, President Gerald Ford, granted him a full, free, and absolute pardon. The pardon covered, and this is a quote, “All offenses against the United States, which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.” So quite broad.

The pardon, of course, came before Nixon was charged with any crime, but importantly, after the conduct had taken place. Now more recently, President Biden pardoned members and staff of the Select Committee on January 6th. So this happens from time to time. It’s not as unusual as people might think. The legal basis for such preemptive pardons comes from an 1866 Supreme Court case, Ex parte Garland. In that case, the court ruled that the presidential power, quote, “may be exercised at any time after the offense’s commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment,” end quote. And obviously, after conviction and judgment is where we usually see the pardon power exercised. That power, as you can see, is quite broad, but it still doesn’t amount to really a get-out-of-jail-free card because there are certain parameters.

Number one, the offense in question must implicate federal crimes. A president can’t issue pardons for state crimes or any civil offenses. So if you try to pardon someone preemptively for a drug crime, for example, that will not preclude the state in which the drug crime occurred from charging that individual.

Number two, a pardon can be issued only for conduct, as I alluded to, that has already taken place. It can’t cover any future wrongdoing. That would certainly be carte blanche and a get-out-of-jail-free card, not permitted.

And number three, it doesn’t apply to impeachment proceedings. However, going to your other question, it is permanent.

Now, Trump’s recent comment that he would pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval raises an interesting question. Does a pardon need to identify specific conduct in order to be valid? Well, you saw what happened in the Nixon case that I just mentioned, quite broad, conduct not really specified. But there’s no Supreme Court case that has answered that specific question because no one who’s been issued such a sweeping pardon has caused it to be tested in court. There are legitimate arguments that pardons need to be tied to identifiable conduct, even if the conduct in question stretches over a broad timeframe so that it functions as a valid legal instrument. But there is, of course, no mention of this in the Constitution itself, so we may have to wait and see if any Trump pardons actually force courts to answer this legal question. As always, stay tuned.

This question comes from Carmen on X.

“Do vice presidents get paternity/maternity leave? If so, would Mike Johnson become temporary VP?”

Carmen, thanks for your question. As some of you may know, Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, announced in January they’re expecting their fourth child together. Congratulations to them. So the question is, will the Vice President be entitled to any time off upon the birth of his baby? Well, as you may know, the current federal paid parental leave program was established in 2019 by a statute called the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, and that provides eligible federal workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave, and that, of course, includes paternity leave. But who are the eligible workers under that law? The FEPLA applies only to federal employees covered by Title 5 of the US Code, the federal civil service system.

So, that means that constitutional officers elected through the Electoral College, like the president and vice president, are not in that system. So there’s no formal leave entitlement for the President or the Vice President, and probably, it wouldn’t be particularly practical for there to be such an entitlement. The Vice President, for example, is one heartbeat away from the presidency, the most powerful office in the world. So for all presidents and vice presidents and probably certain other folks, whether they leave Washington, DC and purport to go on a vacation or not, they’re kind of always working. In any case, we wish the Vice President and the Second Lady well during this very exciting time for their family.

This question comes from Serfita Speedball the eighth. And with a name like that, obviously there’s a very weighty, important, generationally significant question that Serfita Speedball the eighth has for me, which is this, “What’s your favorite kind of potatoes?” I know you’ve all been waiting to hear what’s Preet’s favorite kind of potatoes. You need to wait no longer, the answer is nigh. And I will have to say it’s a three-way tie between and among the French fry, but not curly, the potato chip, but not barbecue, and the aloo samosa, preferably without peas. Are you happy now, Serfita Speedball the eighth? You have your answer.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Ben Smith. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or Bluesky @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes, and more. That’s staytuned.substack.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The lead editorial producer is Jennifer Indig. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. The audio and video producer is Nat Weiner. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy. And the marketing manager is Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. Special thanks to Torrey Paquette and Adam Harris. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.