It's been 10 years since Donald Trump came down that golden escalator and launched his campaign for president.

For Washington media, the age of Trump has proved to be challenging, unnerving, and rewarding.

Trump and the MAGA movement have made the traditional media their targets, even as we confront radical changes in the way Americans get their news, if they get news at all.

The future is here, and tonight we'll give you a tour.

Next, this is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

Corporate funding provided by Consumer Cellular.

Additional funding is provided by Coup and Patricia Euan through the Euan Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

Sandra and Carl Delay Magneson, Rose Hershel and Andy Shreves, Robert and Susan Rosenbomb, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station, from viewers like you.

Thank you once again from the David M. Rubenstein studio at Weta in Washington, editor-inchief of The Atlantic, and moderator Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good evening and welcome to a special edition of Washington Week.

Our subject tonight is the future of the media, Washington media, corporate media, all media.

And my guest is one of the great analysts and interpreters of our communications future, Carara Swisser.

She is the host of the podcast on with Carara Swisser and the co-host of Pivot.

And she's great and I'm glad you're here.

Thank you.

Yeah.

The future of media.

The future.

You are all right.

You are the future of media.

I'm kind of old.

You know what the future of media is?

What?

Washington Week with the Atlantic.

Oh, okay.

That's Yeah.

I just You heard it here.

First and possibly last.

TV numbers are No, we're good.

We're good.

Everybody at home, we're good.

We're We're great.

All right, Cara.

First things first, let's talk about Donald Trump and his relationship to the media.

I want you to watch something actually before we go into this.

This is Trump uh just the other day.

These networks and these uh cable networks are real losers.

You're gutless losers.

I say that to CNN because I watch it.

I have no choice.

I got to watch that garbage.

It's all garbage.

It's all fake news.

So the large question is 10 years.

What have you learned about Washington media in particular by watching Washington media cover Trump?

But you know the specific question on that is what is he doing there?

What's this performance about?

Well, this is a lot of his old performances.

He does a lot of oldies and he's very good at them.

You know, he's um I think here it's interesting.

He's talking about cable and calling them losers and yet he can't stop talking about them which mean which says more about Donald Trump than about cable.

He's right in fact that cable's gone down precipitously and that viewers are going elsewhere and everything else but he has a fixation on it and I would say that was would be a weakness of his.

Um but in the case of of of people covering him is they're covering they don't understand what a phenomena he is from a media point of view.

Um, you don't love to give Donald Trump a compliment some of the time, but he's really good at media or the new media almost by accident, but also intuitively, right?

So, so when he's going after CNN, does he is he really angry at CNN or is that a professional wrestling performance?

Well, you've been in that situation, right?

He What's the first thing he said to you?

I'm going to get your ratings up.

Everything is about ratings for Donald Trump and about performance and performative behavior.

Like, we obliterated them.

like they didn't obliterate them but he felt he had to say it and so he sets the tone and he does understand again in a lizard brain that he has here because I wouldn't say he's modern in terms of he's somewhat of a lite when it comes to technology but he does understand how it moves through the system and he has always done that whether it was back way back in the day um when he did the apprentice or to now he is the one who really has everyone thought Obama was the was the digital president but this is the guy who is That's interesting.

You think Trump is better at digital than than Barack Obama?

Yes.

Yeah.

He he understands the nature of it, the virality, the uh posting, the the ability to get things going and then move on to the next, the domination of the cycle, the domination or or just the spectacle of it.

He does understand it and he understands the speed of it.

This and the word they use is snackable moments.

That's what he does really well.

And then they you move on and then the media, the older media is caught here like looking at what he said, but he's gone on to the next thing.

You know what's so interesting about this is we talked about this when I was on your podcast uh in the Signal controversy, right?

What what I asked him what did you learn from that or why did you think that I was quote successful?

That's what he posted in the signal and he said because you got a lot of attention, right?

It wasn't that we we plugged a gap in the national security communications apparatus.

It was like good job on that.

It was like it it it was it was that the the news cycle didn't belong to him for several hours and whoever can take the news cycle away from him gets his kind of attention.

It was a good on you.

It was like you you created a moment and a viral moment and so he understands virality better than almost any politicians.

Well, talk about the Washington press corps and and take us from the escalator moment when we're dealing with this because remember the escalator moment was also the Mexican rapist it was moment.

Um that was when Oh, we're going there.

Yes.

Um and so take us take us through this and give me your analysis.

How well is the Washington media at large doing the mainstream traditional media?

Badly if they're if following him.

Yes.

I think some of it no some of the people that are doing the investigative stuff they're doing their job great this they uncovering it the question is how much do people actually care and that's a very different discussion to be having but one of the things that they when they when he came down that escalator I I I tell this story a lot but I was at a Washington party it was a barbecue and everyone was making fun of him like oh how silly this is so silly I had watched all the apprentices I liked the apprentice I thought it was a good show I knew it was wrestling I got it was not really business he and he isn't a very good business person, but it didn't.

It hardly mattered.

It was a good story.

And I said, "Oh, I don't know.

I think he's kind of appealing."

And they were like, "Oh, it's ridiculous.

He's a clown."

I'm like, "Yeah, but I like him and I'm a lesbian from San Francisco."

Like, what does that say?

And I have liberal leanings.

And it was it was interesting that they didn't take the seriousness of what he he was aspirational.

He looked like a business person.

He was people's version of a rich person.

And he played the part really well.

And I think they they tried to pretend that didn't matter.

So much so that if you remember the Huffington Post put him in the entertainment section.

And I got in an argument with her.

I'm like, "No, he has he has sense of humor.

He's got speed.

He does understand digital really well.

Um intuitively at the at the very least maybe he he is, you know, Kofe, whatever.

Um but he does understand he's not great at spelling or typing, which is, by the way, weirdly part of the charm.

Right.

Exactly.

But it doesn't matter.

he's into it and he does understand the speed and virality and that's when that's when everything started to change with Twitter which was it used to be about context speed for sure the internet um and getting the right thing Google so if you were the zar of all mainstream media which you're not but if you were and you were in charge of telling the mainstream newspapers the networks CNN the Atlantic the New Yorker etc the wire services this is the way you should cover Donald Trump, this would be the the way to do it.

What would that way be?

I think you have to look there's there's a part for investigative reporting which is very different, right?

It is like you have to do look at the accountability journalism is critical and reporting is the best way to handle it.

Like this he says this, this is what happened.

He says this.

But one of the things they were doing is they sort of lived in this I remember being in the biggest argument with the Washington Post editor um about the word lie.

They wouldn't use the word lie.

they were living in a different era than this guy was.

And so I was like, "He's lying."

And they're like, "Yeah, we can't say lie because we don't know his intent."

I'm like, "Well, then you've already lost the thing."

He is.

And one of the the difficulties was is sort of saying what was happening.

They wanted they were assuming everything was the same.

The same rules applied.

And it didn't with this guy because he he was able to go around them.

They hardly mattered, especially with the people that voted for him.

Right.

Let me ask you this.

Is trust in the mainstream media low because of Trump's attacks or because we're bad at our jobs or both or something else entirely?

I don't pay a lot of attention to that because trust in the media has always been bad going back to revolutionary times.

I mean like sorry they they jailed journalists then.

They didn't like journalists was an ick profession.

There was only a period of time when we were heroes which was during Watergate.

And so media love has not been a great big thing for a long long time.

I I do think one of the things is we're not making thing.

We don't look at media as a little bit like product.

We're not making things people want to consume.

And there are ways to look at at the Atlantic.

You're you're growing like crazy.

Why is that?

It's not cuz you're doing like viral videos.

I don't see Jeff Goldberg like like Mr.

Beast burying himself in six feet of earth and seeing what happens.

Like you although that's not a bad idea.

I think it's a great idea.

you're making products people want to buy like and I think that's got got lost among the media not understanding the the financial dynamics for sure which was that Facebook and Google were sucking up all the oxygen in advertising and not shifting fast enough in that regard and still making the same it was like butter churns I kept going when I was at the Washington Post I was like we're making butter churns like nobody wants a butter turn like you know and you felt that at the Washington Post I did I I did and then at the Wall Street Journal when we were which is why I kept creating all these entrepreneurial digital forward things first.

Um at one point when I was writing I remember at the journal I was writing up earnings and I was like why am I doing this?

Why am I spending this many minutes of my life writing something a computer could do like and a computer will do it and they were like well we have to write the earnings.

I'm like yes but I'm not adding there was nothing additive to what I was doing.

It was just matching things that 10 other people were doing.

We also didn't one of the things we did I think pioneer at our different sites that we did all things D and Recode was we were telling you what was happening and you you all do that very well at the Atlantic.

I I was in I did a story about web van and I did the reporting and I wrote this is going to is a disaster right?

This is a disaster and an editor came to me and said well you need to have someone else say that.

I'm like yeah but I did the reporting and it's a I can do math.

It's a disaster.

we should just say it and and then the reader trusts us more because they're taking our we've done the work you reported analysis is valuable to people and they're like well you need to get someone else to say it and also you need to say some people say it's not it's going to go well and I was like nobody intelligent says that why should we do that and I think readers really trust people who one tell them after doing reporting what they think happened and then secondly being right later and I think that's one of the things but being write later depends on the reporting you do at the top of it.

Right.

Let me ask you since we both started our professional careers more or less at the at the Washington Post which was a juggernaut and I think we both have very fond feelings and memories of the Washington Post.

Jeff Bezos who bought it a number of years ago um did fine as an owner through the first Trump sort of I don't that but well okay then well we can pick apart that in a second.

Um, but he had Marty Baron as editorant and they they held the Trump team to account just like you would hold any administration to account.

And then something changed.

You are the anthropologist of the billionaire tech bro elite.

Uh, what happened at the Washington Post over the last three or four years?

I don't think he prepared for post Trump.

I don't I think he wasn't involved and he should have been involved actually a little more involved.

And I think what they did is they sort of rode on the the Trump entertainment train and then they did and and then you saw the New York Times add Wordle when they did Wordle everyone sort of laughed at I'm like oh good idea that's a great idea like daily use was something you want people to do in some fashion along with the other stuff but you could see news at the New York Times was sort of doing this it wasn't doing this you had to start to bring in other things and the post was really used to be really good at that this they introduced Ben Bradley introduced the style section the food section They were so innovative in terms of their product and Bezos never innovated.

That that was my feeling by not being around because he could care less.

There's another side of this which is that now he seems to be giving into demands of the Trump administration.

How do you explain that?

He wants things because during the first one, remember it was the Washington Post, Bezos, remember they kept affiliated, he started not getting contracts of things that he actually cared about, which was space travel, uh the things to do with his other companies, Blue Origin, possibilities of of attacks on Amazon.

Those are things he actually cares about.

I don't think he could care less about the media, honestly.

But you really don't think, going back to your your descent before, you don't think that he did a good job in his early years as owner of the Washington Post?

I I think he didn't I think he he staying away is always a good thing but staying away is a bad thing.

He never innovated and he has innovative ideas and he never did innovative things during that period of time that the New York Times did.

So I look at the New York Times and I look at them.

They had every opportunity to do the same thing and a better owner by the way who did understand where things were going digitally.

They I I it's fine but they didn't do anything to take advantage of the next thing or or whatever.

you surprised at all by the behavior of some of the network giants?

You know where I'm going with this question.

Why aren't you surprised?

Because their their interests have always been for shareholders.

And now when they're in distress because of tech companies, which has taken away their businesses and hollowed out like, you know, ABC is a is a shadow of itself.

So is CBS.

It's, you know, it's lovely that someone like David Ellison wants to own it, but it's only because he has a rich dad, right?

It's not a business.

that's growing and maybe he could make it one but at this point it's not and so they are under enormous pressure from a business point of view from everything being taken away like by by the tech giants and now they have to protect what they have with shareholders and so no I'm I there's no plus for them as a CEO especially if you're paid for the stock price or cutting costs to get in a fight with the Trump administration what about your everlasting soul well yes there's that I I mean, no, and I'm not sorry.

I I'm not joking.

You know, it's like at the end of your life, don't you want to absolutely stand?

Don't you want to be remembered as a K Graham and not as I don't know, someone who just gave into power?

Maybe if you were in an industry that was growing, maybe you would.

But when you're in an industry that's diminishing and that you could it could mess up your other businesses, everything is about shareholder value.

Including with the tech guys.

Why do you think they were sitting in the front row?

Do you think they love Trump?

Little bit.

Not very much.

He's useful to them and they're definitely useful to him.

Let's talk about delivery systems because you spend a lot of time thinking about this and we're doing this on linear TV although you can see us on YouTube and everywhere else.

Um are the journalism values of PBS, the New York Times, The Atlantic, uh CBS, etc., etc., AP Reuters.

Are these transferable to the platforms that you're very comfortable with?

Absolutely.

We're growing like crazy.

Like I don't I think we pro I do hourlong interviews.

I just did one on Iran this morning.

Like we do substantive things.

It's the the issue is understanding the product you're making.

Like journalists don't like to think of it like that, but it's the news business, right?

You have to make money at it.

And so you have to figure out should you make money through advertising?

Should you do subscription?

Should you make do merchandise?

Should you do events?

So one of the things I did when I started is I had an event business.

I had advertising.

I had like we were looking for lots of different revenue streams.

It just you have to figure out what the right one is.

The other thing is the idea that young people only want tiny little silly things is not true.

They watch substantively, but it just depends on where they're watching.

And like PBS is a really good example.

My son, I was doing an a thing for uh one of the PBS the big PBS shows.

And my son called me during it and I'm like, "Oh, I'm doing this taping."

And he said, "Oh, I love that show.

I watch it all the time."

And I was like, "Oh, oh, you watch PBS?"

and he goes, "No, I watch YouTube."

What's the difference?

It's there's not a difference.

YouTube is television now, and if you aren't hurdling towards it at this point, and someday it won't be, but if if if if you aren't hurdling towards YouTube right now, you're making an enormous mistake as a media company.

Right.

So, for you, quality, attention span, all these issues are platform agnostic when it comes to these.

Correct.

Do you I mean that's the most hopeful thing I've heard in a while.

The idea that young people actually have attention spans, which I think is what you're suggesting.

They just have attention spans for good things.

They're very discerning media media people.

It's just let's make things that they like.

They do pay attention.

They do like longer things.

I think it's just the question of what we spent a lot of time on the distribution system.

And when when I was at the Washington Post, I'm like when I started covering AOL, which I was the first reporter to do that, I thought everything that can be digitized will be digitized.

So why are we doing this thing with the paper?

I never understood it.

And when I went to the Wall Street Journal, we were in one of those meetings, and you've been in a hundred of these, like how do we get young people to read the the newspaper?

And it's all old people in the room, which is my favorite part.

And I happen to have been a young person at the time.

And I put up my hand, and they they seldom invited me to meetings with this.

And I go, "Well, tape a joint between every page."

I don't know.

Something like that.

And they're like, "That's not funny."

I'm like, "No, it is actually that's a good good idea because they're not reading the print paper.

So, give it to them.

If they want to if you if they want to eat it, put it on salami and give it to them.

Like, what do you care?"

And I think that's what what has happened.

I would just I wouldn't put a joint in every page because that could run up your that could run up your costs a lot.

the um how do we let's talk about AI because it's another area that you're thinking about uh all the time.

How do we keep AI we're heading to an election obviously 28.

Uh how do we keep AI fakery from just totally tsunamiing our understanding of reality?

I have to say I am I pay a lot of attention to AI now.

Look what the damage the internet has done.

Look at the damage.

And this is the internet on steroids.

Well wait stop just go back to this.

What is the just define the damage that the internet has done to politics or the ability for malevolent players to screw with people like all the time like the the the the information flood before we used to have an information desert with a lot of people we did people didn't have a lot of choices maybe a local station now they have a flood and so that's just as bad as a desert like either way it's not a good thing and so with with AI you can really do things and on the good part you could solve cancer maybe on the bad part.

On an interesting part, you like the West Wing, we're going to make you 10 more ep 10 more episodes, 10 more seasons.

We don't even need to find the actors anymore.

That's kind of cool.

Like, explain how that would work.

Oh, they would they feed the show.

The show has seven, eight seasons, whatever it is.

You feed it in and you make it again, right?

And you tell you you you you tell the AI just go make a new make and I and I would like there to be more this I would like this to happen.

There's all kinds of things, but it could also create all kinds of confusion, especially around video.

That's if you initially everyone was like, "Oh, it's got six fingers or three."

Well, today it does, but go back and look at early internet websites, right?

You know, the the biggest most popular website at the beginning of the internet was um was a camera pointed at a a coffee pot that was making coffee, right?

We're way beyond that.

And you couldn't have what you have to do is anticipate what you can't anticipate.

Could you have anticipated when the app store started Uber maybe nobody you know somebody did and then they got rich you at the beginning you didn't like you didn't know and so I can you could see all kinds of really interesting media applications for AI you could also see easily dangerous ones what would you do to stop the the wave the coming wave of unreality that could affect look on the American domestic level it can affect our politics and maybe violence at the margins, but we just saw uh Mountain Head, I think that's what Mountain Head, uh, you know, Jesse, who was success, he he he also Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, which is great.

And it wasn't as crazy and satirical.

It kind of felt like, oh, this this these are things that could happen.

You could ferment large-scale violence by the introduction of fake video.

How does it stop?

How does it not One of the great lines in that was like, well, you got something funny like Snoopy with a giant penis.

There was remember that or you have this.

And what was what was interesting about that movie is there was a guy in it who was the the good AI guy.

Right.

Right.

But was he so good?

Because what he said is what would you what you would feel like if you if information cancer was there and you had the cure?

He was more interested in the money he could make doing it.

And so the question is, should we put um um there's ways to to follow this video to make sure it's real.

Should we legislate that?

Should we That's the kind of stuff our legislators should be and are not thinking about whatsoever.

But they did no they did no legislation against tech companies.

They let them run rampant across our media.

They let them run rampant across our politics.

And you know, these are these are digital arms dealers in a very very clear way.

And we never did anything about it.

And we're not going to under this administration.

You know these people better than almost any reporter.

Any sense that they know that they're riding a a very wild horse and that they have to get this under control before an election goes sideways?

They don't care.

I wish you you would understand that.

Everyone's like, "How could they?"

I'm like, "They don't care.

They're interested in shareholder value."

And you must I know you're you're down with the soul thing.

They don't care.

And they don't think they're to blame, by the way.

They think people are to blame.

They think cable is to blame.

The media is to blame.

They are they are the biggest blamethrowers in history.

They're just making stuff.

And however people use it, it's it's sort of the guns don't kill people.

People kill people.

Well, it's like a it's it's the the drug dealer analogy is if they want I mean I can't control if somebody wants drugs.

Of course you can.

Of course you can.

And one of the things is they've never been subject to any regulation.

And the regulation they've been subject to is is helpful to them.

Section 230.

They can do whatever they want.

And let me tell you, sometimes that leads to great things.

Sometimes it leads to precisely you know this amazing Eio Wilson line the you know the the primat the the evolutionary biologist uh he says that the central challenge of our age is we have paleolithic emotions medieval institutions and godlike technology right and so it's it's that's that's what we're we're heading into but they're also rich that is the part you're not figuring in these people are I'm waiting for fun your technology right it's it's they have now power to they were not interested in Washington I had Bill Gates to the Washington Post once and he's like, "Gh, Washington."

Like, he used to be like that.

I don't have a lobbyist here.

He was in front of Mrs. Graham the rest and those lunches they used to have upstairs.

I don't care about Washington.

They care about Washington, which is why they're here buying, you know, the coin operated president, right?

The um there's so much to talk about.

We have time for one more question.

It's a little bit of a impossible one, but try anyway.

10 years from now, how do you think we're going to be getting our information?

Obviously Washington Week and the Atlantic and your podcasts, but put those aside.

No, I'll be dead.

Probably put You're not going to be dead.

You're very healthy.

I'll be old and uh we're all going to be older, right?

How are we getting information?

You know, I do think there's a real business for good information and really good reporting.

I don't think that ever changes.

I really don't.

That's the interesting thing about Substack, by the way.

There's not a lot of reporting on it.

No, there's not.

But there's there's interesting insight in into part, but that doesn't mean you can't still make a business.

You know, to me, you run toward where people have a need and they have a need for great good information.

And I think that doesn't change.

What what they you do have to understand is the delivery.

You're going to get everything in your eyes.

There's going to be you're going to be wearing things.

Um they're not going to look like what they they're a little heavy right now, but everything will be if you s if you see one movie, watch Minority Report.

That was wr that was done.

They had they had consultants that I think were brilliant in terms of where things were going.

everything will be will be monitored, surveiled.

They'll know when you walk in.

They'll know what you want.

And that's that that to me.

And so make good products rather than bad ones.

They'll sell just as well.

Um but the bad products will also, just like Twinkies do, be very popular.

We're going to have to leave it there for now.

Your assignment at home is to watch Minority Report.

Um I want to thank you all for watching.

I want to thank Cara for joining us.

And you could watch Washington Week with The Atlantic anytime on YouTube or online at pbs.org/w washingtonweek.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.

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