Margaret Sullivan grew up in the Watergate years fascinated by the power of the press. And that’s how she ended up as an intern at her city’s newspaper, The Buffalo News, one of those proud local newspapers that used to be pillars of democracy in the United States and that now live as under siege as democracy itself.
This interview was conducted – first by telephone – weeks ago and was completed by email after learning that the newspaper The Washington Post (and others) would not support any candidate – in practice, they would not support Democrat Kamala Harris. It was a decision by its owner, Jeff Bezos, against the editorial board’s discretion. Sullivan reacted immediately to the ad with an article in The Guardian, newspaper in which he has a weekly column, in which he defined the decision of the Post (and of Los Angeles Times) as “a shocking example of cowardice and abandonment of public duties.” [de esos periódicos]”.
In this conversation he also reflects on how the profession has passed the test of covering a presidential election for the third time with Donald Trump as a candidate.
Ask. In his memoirs, he wrote that the United States needed the best minds in journalism to start thinking about what to do if Trump became the candidate again with the same determination that they face other challenges such as designing their digital strategy or what is the best way to increase the audience. It seems like they didn’t pay much attention to him…
Answer. I don’t blame them. Nobody – or perhaps, almost nobody – thought then that he could be a candidate again… The media does not decide who the candidates are, but once it is known who they are, their task is to give them a voice in a fair and balanced way and also investigate them properly.
P. How would you define the way Trump’s first campaign in 2016 was covered?
R. Terrible: we gave him a huge megaphone. The image of an empty lectern live for a cable television broadcast remained for history. It was like saying, “Come and entertain us.”
P. Eight years later, did the media learn that lesson?
R. We have repeated some of those mistakes. The media has tended to establish false equivalences between Harris and Trump, when they are not the same: he is a potential autocrat. There has also been a tendency to treat the Republican’s erratic statements as if they made sense. The word was coined sanewashing [que se puede traducir por algo así como blanqueamiento de cordura] for that trend. In recent weeks things have improved. They have learned to use direct language, to speak bluntly about their “lies” and “racism,” for example, and to predict what will happen during a second Trump term.
P. Did it take Harris too long to dare to examine a journalistic interview, compared to the simulacrum of a friendly conversation with influencers?
R. He has behaved in a way that I would say is quite canonical in his relationship with the media. In reality, he only waited a couple of weeks to start giving interviews and, from then on, he has given many, both to traditional media such as CNN and to other smaller or specialized ones. I would appreciate if you could make a strong statement about the importance of press freedom, because I haven’t seen you make one. Overall, I think he has managed the relationship in an acceptable way.
P. The slogan of The Washington Post He says that “democracy dies in darkness.” Have you also died a little these days as a result of the decision of the Postand other means, such as Los Angeles Times, USA Today o Tampa Bay Times, of breaking the tradition of supporting one of the candidates?
R. We are witnessing a very regrettable abdication of the responsibility of these newspapers towards public opinion, especially taking into account the history of both[el[elPost y el LA Times]and the fact that both Harris endorsements were planned and ready to go public until the owners suddenly decided to do otherwise.
P. In his book he prefers to define traditional media as “press based on reality.” Was it the responsibility of that press to work so that Trump is not elected?
R. It is not our role to say who should be president and who should not, but rather to give voters the information they need to make an informed decision. It is about putting emphasis on the facts, and not treating the candidates with equal distance. They are not equal. Trump is convicted of 34 felonies, and has three other trials pending.
P. It is not easy to work from the facts when more or less half of the population doubts them…
R. That’s true. And it is due, at least in part, to the right-wing media machine, which serves Trump and company so well. Fox News and their substitutes function as a propaganda machine.
P. Isn’t the liberal press also, in a certain way, of democratic ideas?
R. This press does not sleep with the left, which it also criticizes and investigates. That millions of people, let’s say a third of the country, despise the conventional press is a big problem, to which is added the disappearance of local newspapers and press…
P. Are they related issues?
R. Yes, because that has eliminated a certain common basis of reality that we need to function as citizens. If the new right-wing media have triumphed, it is because the traditional press has lost sight of how those who live far from large urban centers think and what worries them. After the 2016 elections, there were adjustments, such as the creation of an Americas Roundtable in the Postan effort to report beyond Washington, New York and Silicon Valley. It is also true that when these big city media appear and do their stories, they do not always respond to people’s concerns.
P. In his book, he relates the closing of Buffalo’s second newspaper to that of a steel company. The second is usually related to the disenchantment that overwhelmed Trump the first time. It is as if he considered that both things are related to that promotion.
R. Everything is intertwined. It is a reality that many working-class Americans feel marginalized. The Democratic Party has not made them feel like they are not a priority. Trump’s rise did not come out of nowhere. Nor that of the right-wing media such as Fox News. The decline of local newspapers is one of the factors that has led us to where we are today.
P. He also proposes to stop talking about political journalists and start calling them “government journalists in Washington.”
R. It would be a great help. That way people wouldn’t be fooled. It would also be good to stop covering politics as if it were a horse race and focus on holding power to account and scrutinizing the government accurately, fairly and assertively.
P. Would you say that the press in Washington is too complicit with power?
R. Definitely. In Washington, what we call “access journalism” is widely practiced. There is a lot of flirting between the press and the Government, too much friction. The moment in which it manifests itself most, as a truly shameful act, is at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an evening in which everyone shares a large room, drinks together and pats each other on the back. And then we’re supposed to believe that these journalists are going to hold these policymakers accountable? I have always refused to go to that dinner.
P. Which army is winning in the so-called wars of objectivity being fought in American journalism?
R. It’s hard to know. I think that if you talk to ordinary people, they prefer an objective press, that gives more importance to facts than opinions, and that then they will form their own opinions. But what is objectivity? Is it a paternalistic, white male idea of how the world should be? Or should it be more diverse? Efforts to include new voices in newsrooms are really important for that reason, because they bring their experiences, backgrounds and points of view. At the same time, when they go out to report a story, they have to do it with an open mind and gather evidence and even report against their own biases. I think that’s really important. So I don’t know who is winning that war. Personally, I prefer to use words like “fairness,” “accuracy,” or “good information” rather than “objectivity.”
P. It seems that now is the worst time for a reader advocate in The New York Times than when you held office.
R. It’s a position that doesn’t even exist anymore, I was sad when they announced they were letting it go. And at the same time, I understand why the bosses don’t like it. It means giving someone a lot of power and influence. Someone whose point of view you don’t know well until the work begins. And once it starts, you can’t turn back…
P. I was referring rather to how much some ideological battles have intensified, and what it would mean to mediate on issues such as coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza or the rights of trans people in a newsroom in which the generational clash seems evident…
R. Well, what happens is that the Times It is a place with a lot of drama. It always seems that he is experiencing his most agitated and controversial moments. It’s something that comes with the position.
P. In his memoirs he proposes a four-point rescue plan for the “reality-based press”: reorient itself towards the defense of democracy (and not the search for clicks), neutralize those who spread lies and conspiracy theories, protect local journalism… I am interested in the one that talks about the education of public opinion. He talks about “information literacy.”
R. I think it would be good if schools taught us to distinguish facts from lies, a fake website from a real journalistic organization, and artificial intelligence from a story that someone has made. reported. If we don’t try all that, we can’t give up and say, “The world is very misinformed and that leads us to an autocracy.” We will have no excuse.
P. Do you believe in the usefulness of artificial intelligence for journalism?
R. It may have its uses, but I do not believe in using it without moderation or human supervision.
P. Has the profession improved since those years when you fell in love with your idea, with the Watergate scandal?
R. I’m sorry to offer such a weak answer, but I think it’s better in some ways and worse in others. It has improved in that it is much more diverse and reaches more people, thanks to the internet. The dark side of that is, of course, misinformation, and propaganda that takes the form of news. On the other hand, we have already commented: the crisis of local journalism is also a crisis of citizen information. So there are great improvements, but also very tragic losses.
