Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media Reporters Are Too Soft

19:25Sure.

19:26Peter Kafka:I mean, he also cares about it. He cares about all kinds of stuff. And just because Donald Trump's interested in it doesn't mean you should be. So why is it of interest to you? I would push back a little bit. I think the president of the United States and what he does, whether corrupt or not, is important. I think it's important. I just think that he cares about a lot of stuff and on any given day he might care about something else. And I think it's possible to argue that the Ellisons have overestimated how much Donald Trump cares about them and their property. Yeah, I think – well, look, this entire deal has hinged on – and it's a pretty big deal that's going to reshape the entire media landscape.

19:58Gabe. So I don't think we should diminish the importance of the Paramount Warner Brothers discovery deal. But this entire deal has hinged on a couple of things, CBS News and CNN, because Donald Trump, and I've said this before, he does not surf Paramount Plus. He does not watch Landman. He does not care about the new Tom Cruise movie coming out. That's not him.

20:15Peter Kafka:Probably is unaware that South Park is on. Probably doesn't know about Comedy Central. I don't know if that's on his cable. He flicks through those on cable. He cares about CBS News, particularly 60 Minutes, and he cares about CNN. And he's made that very clear throughout this entire deal process, which is like if you want this deal to go through, CNN needs to be part of the deal. They need to have an ownership change. And he sued over 60 minutes. But this is more than just Donald Trump caring about something, right? Because you're probably not covering the Gannett suit that he's still pushing through, right?

20:46Peter Kafka:Day to day. Sure. Most people aren't. There's lots of things that he cares about where he's abusing power and trying to influence media. I think there's more to it than that from your end. I think Barry Weiss is an avatar of something. You tell me is part of the appeal for covering the story for some people, that it's not just Donald Trump doing something. There's a cast of characters. Barry Weiss is kind of a fun pinata. She makes herself a pinata. Or, again, like there's another world where no one would be able to tell you who the old executive in charge of 60 Minutes was and who the current one is, right?

21:23Peter Kafka:Those would just be anonymous people. Now they are public figures. So there's something about this story beyond just Trump's interest that I think is appealing. I think – well, I think these are – the prestige of 60 Minutes and the CBS News properties means a lot to a lot of people. I mean 10 million some people are watching 60 Minutes every Sunday and they have for decades. Often with their family members. Like my wife started watching 60 Minutes with her parents. And so we continue watching 60 Minutes now today. That's a relationship they have with this program that's really unparalleled in news.

21:56And I think when you have someone below that show up for no reason, there's a lot of audience interest in that. There's a lot of people who care about that. And so we're going to cover that. And I also think it's, you know, look, it's the most prestigious television news broadcast in existence. So I think it's an important story regardless of whether Barry Weiss is the one blowing it up or someone else. Like Jeff Bezos, you know, frankly, you know, strangely, actually, the YouTube algorithm does not like him very much. But we still cover Jeff Bezos and what he's doing at The Washington Post because it's important.

22:24Adam O 'Neill, the opinion editor, we've covered or just exited, we covered him quite a bit too. And he's not a really major household name. So I think – I don't know. I think that it's an important story. I think that we cover it because it is meaningful to a very large media transaction that I don't think anyone questions is going to completely reshape the media landscape. And when it comes down to it, it comes down to these tiny corners and we're the ones that happen to be covering it. I actually think, frankly, more of our peers that cover media from like this supposed business perspective should be covering some of these editorial changes because they are interlinked with the business.

23:04Tease that one out for me. I think that there's a lot of people who cover media that pride themselves on not touching the politics or the editorial. Like I cover the business of Paramount or I cover the business of Warner Brothers Discovery. The business is completely interlinked with what Barry Weiss is doing, right? Like they don't exist in a vacuum by themselves. And I think that, frankly, a lot of publications do a disservice to their audiences when they are not offering adequate coverage of this sort of thing in a clear-eyed manner.

23:39Peter Kafka:What about the pitch, which you and I know that some of our colleagues are very amenable to, and I'm at least curious about, which is, yeah, she doesn't have TV experience, but she's built a media company. But more than that, we've spent years explaining why the current trajectory for CBS, for Paramount, for most mainstream media is down. It's because they are using old playbooks that work with old audiences. Those things don't exist anymore. you may as well get someone with a fresh perspective to try to blow things up. What's the worst that could happen? You could fail, but that just means you're failing a couple of years before you would have failed anyway.

24:16I just think disruption for disruption's sake doesn't make much sense. I mean, I think if you're going to put someone in there, make sure that it's a visionary who can actually map out a blueprint that makes sense, that's a competent manager. There's got to be some qualification here. I'm not really sure if you go down the list, like what Barry's qualification is.

24:34Peter Kafka:Well, but again, let's say her only qualification is that she watches television. Well, she didn't even watch television, apparently. Or has watched television in the past, right? Isn't there a world where you say, this person has great credentials and they are going to blow up CBS in 60 Minutes because they've decided that this is a sinking boat and they'd rather just get it over with? Blowing up your most valuable business asset? For no reason other than just to experiment? It doesn't seem like a very smart business strategy to me. Has it blown up? Well, she fired three of the show's correspondents.

25:06Have the audiences left 60 minutes. We don't know because it hasn't come back yet. But my suspicion would be that firing three of the top correspondents, Scott Pelley, Sharon Alfonso, and Cecilia Vega, forcing Anderson Cooper basically out, and then firing the executive producer and the executive editor, and then hiring someone that has no television experience or television news experience to run the most prestigious television news program on television, I can't imagine that will have no consequence. But maybe she'll surprise us all. Maybe these are brilliant moves that's going to really increase the audience.

25:41The only thing -

25:42Peter Kafka:Or maybe in a couple years it settles down and most people forget that Scott Pelley's not on TV and they look at Sebastian Junger and Ross Douthat or whoever is on television and they go, fine. Maybe. It's the thing that's on after the NFL and that's mostly why I watch it anyway. But the question too is like why, if it's not going to improve the audience numbers, why do it? Like if holding flat isn't a success, you could have just done that without, you know, taking a sledgehammer to at least the trust score of 60 Minutes in CBS News. So that's why, like for instance, CBS News had a really poor performing evening newscast with John Dickerson Anna-Marie Stubois.

26:23And it made sense if you want to change that, right? Like, let's improve the ratings. Let's put someone else in there. They put Tony DeCoppo in there and he has not improved the ratings. And so it's like, well, what was the point of that? We'll be right back with Oliver Darcy. But first, a word from our sponsors.

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28:40And we're back.

28:41Peter Kafka:If you ask the Ellisons, if you ask David Ellison or anyone in that org, I don't do that much Q &A anymore, but when we were able to talk to them and you say, hey, why are you rebooting 60 Minutes? Why are you rebooting the CBS News? And they have this line about we're trying to reach the 75 % of the country that's in the middle and doesn't trust media. Do you think they believe that line? That they are moving to the middle and they're making a thing that's available for a broad swath of the audience and that's really what they're doing? I think they are big fans of Barry Weiss, so they might believe it.

29:14I think that it's a little silly to assume that like – or to – I mean this whole – that assumes that CBS was left before and moving to the – now it's moving to be more fair in the middle. Right.

29:26Peter Kafka:The argument is it was MSNBC and now we're bringing it over to the middle. Which is so absurd because like CBS News, if anything, it's just like boring down the middle to begin with for a long time. You could argue they needed more pizzazz in their programming, if anything. So like maybe they believe it. I don't know. I mean, I don't think that anything David Ellison has said has really held water. He has said, you know, the main thing we were both at that press conference last summer that he said is, I don't want to politicize this company. Yep. And everything that he has personally done has certainly politicized the company.

29:56I mean, the man literally held a dinner honoring Donald Trump. So that seems like a politicization of the company to me.

30:03Peter Kafka:Well, let's play devil's advocate there too. So I was going to move on to the WBD purchase that Paramount's trying to pull off and what that means for CNN. And this is partly some stuff I've thought about, partly feedback I've gotten from folks in these companies. And they say, well, what is it that David Ellison did that is so bad trying to win over Paramount and win over Warner Brothers? Is he trying to get regulators to like him? Yes. Is that different than any other person running a company? was Ted Sarandos. He was visiting the White House when he was trying to get that deal done by Warner Brothers.

30:36Peter Kafka:What has David Ellison actually done that is actively bad as opposed to things Donald Trump has said David Ellison's doing, which isn't necessarily true, and then reporting that we sort of heard around the edges about some things David Ellison has actually done. Can we point to his management of Paramount or anything else that he's done where we can say he's actively moving the company in a way to appease Donald Trump? Well, I think if you look at some of the decisions that have happened at CBS, I mean, I think that it certainly seems like that organization's becoming more MAGA friendly. And outside that - The entire broadcast operation or just the news?

31:17A lot of the, I mean, look, I'm not the one saying it. Scott Pelley is the one saying that they're inserting political bias in the stories. Sharon Alfonso is saying it. Cecilia Vega is saying it. Top producers that have quit have said it. So the people inside the house are sounding the alarm saying, hey, this is not the way it was before. And they are trying to insert political bias into the newscast.

31:39Peter Kafka:Going to keep going the devil's advocate. Sure. Isn't it possible that some of the people who are unhappy about new management are unhappy about new management as opposed to unhappy about new management and new management's politics? I mean, sure, it's possible. I mean, you can just dismiss all concerns as these are disgruntled employees. No, not all. But couldn't it be that some are? Sure. And or that some are – this is language I've heard. They're coddled or they don't understand that the world has moved and the jobs they have at 60 Minutes kind of don't fit with any other job in media and they don't really understand that, et cetera, et cetera.

32:11I think like Scott Pelley has been a company man for a long, long time. He was basically the face of CBS. So, you know, like when you have the face of CBS saying and making these accusations, I think it's a really – I mean, can you imagine like for instance like at CNN if Anderson Cooper quit and accused new management of trying to insert bias into stories? And then like a few more top personalities, let's just say Christiane Amanpour and Dana Bash also quit and said they tried inserting political bias into her stories. And then the executive producer of another show quit and said like – people would be like, what is going on at CNN?

32:43That's what's happening at CBS News. I actually think, again, like if this were happening at CNN, it would be almost a bigger fire because like people pay more attention to those names. But, you know, these are really serious journalists who have a lot of credibility. We're on television's most prestigious broadcast making serious accusations of ethical wrongdoing. And I don't, I just, you know, if it's one person, maybe two people, maybe three people. I mean, it's now quite a few people who have made these accusations. But on your question on David Ellison, let's just remove CBS News from it.

33:18They canceled Colbert. That seemed kind of suspicious. I know he would say he didn't. But at that press conference afterward, I went over to him and asked him if he supported the decision. And he notably did not comment on it. He just said he wasn't going to second guess the decision that happened made a week ago by George Eeks. He obviously could have reversed it if he wanted to. He could have said, oh, I don't know why they canceled the number one late night show. I actually like this thing. And he could have saved Colbert. I think it's pretty clear what happened there. but just to stop there again

33:45Peter Kafka:because again lots of people believe that Colbert was sacrificed slash fired to make Trump happy and Colbert seems to believe Colbert seems to believe as well many many people do employs John Stewart big microphone every Monday tearing down Donald Trump on cable that Donald Trump doesn't watch sure but let's be clear Donald Trump was actually not watching the late night Colbert show he's getting clips right maybe I don't know it seems like he might be watching Jimmy Kimmel The point is that someone could certainly tell Donald Trump, hey, there's a cartoon of you and it's you fucking Satan or whatever the South Park guys did.

34:22Peter Kafka:That would get to him at some point. It clearly had decided not to care about it. It doesn't register. I think he cares about the things. The point is if you wanted to run a media company to appease Donald Trump, you would not have South Park and Jon Stewart working there. I think if South Park and Jon Stewart were on CBS broadcast, I think it would be a different story to be honest. But, I mean, look, Donald Trump, for whatever reason, cares about the traditional late night dynamic. Yeah, because his brain stuck in 1983. Yeah. And so he had called for Colbert's firing. And I think sacrificing Colbert, you know, that's one thing.

34:54The UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, that which is obviously a thing catering to Donald Trump. Hosting a dinner, honoring himself on the First Amendment grounds, which is totally ridiculous. That's another thing. I mean, you can add these sort of these. I mean, it just honestly feels like every few weeks there's a new thing that David Ellison's done that's catering to Donald Trump. And Donald Trump obviously likes the Ellisons for a reason. He's obviously hearing things behind the scenes that prompts him to speak very highly of the Ellisons and say that they are going to fix CNN and all this other stuff.

35:29Peter Kafka:When Ted Sarandon swears up and down that Donald Trump was not interested in this, in who was going to win the Warner Brothers, whether it was going to be Netflix or Paramount, and that it was not a politics story. Do you take – and he says this up and down. He says it in private. He says it publicly. Do you believe that that is true or that's a thing you say if you're Ted Sarandon is because maybe one day you do have another deal lined up and you do want to work with the Trump administration? Donald Trump said in public and before all the cameras that any deal with Warner Brothers Discovery needed to result in a change of ownership at CNN.

36:00So I don't know what Tanner Sarandos is saying in private, but it certainly seems pretty evident to me that Donald Trump cares about that as part – that's like the core thing for him in that transaction.

36:13Peter Kafka:What do you think the Ellisons do want to do if they buy Warner Brothers with CNN? There was reporting this weekend from the Journal that they still haven't decided. Maybe they'll run them separately. Maybe they'll combine them. They're not sure. What do you think the lie detector version of David Ellison is right now? What is his actual plan for CNN? According to the Wall Street Journal, they made some promises to CNN or vowed to get rid of some people. So I assume you would see some sort of shakeup there. You know, this is an interesting question because the initial plan had been for Barry Weiss to oversee editorial at CNN and they had very much wanted to execute on that.

36:48And I wonder if that's still the case after the 60 Minutes disaster or if that's blown over in their minds and that's still the case. No one really knows. You know, senior leaders at CNN and CBS News don't know. One thing to keep in mind is we haven't talked about him. Larry Ellison is seemingly a big MAGA Trump fan, right? He participated in that call to overturn the 2020 election, which is a big deal, I'd say.

37:10Peter Kafka:He's a longtime conservative. He has been a Trump backer. He's occasionally backed other Trump competitors in the past and then gets on board with Trump. Won't say whether he believes the 2020 election was stolen. We've asked him Oracle follow-ups on that. Like, hey, is Larry Ellison – can you clarify this very simple issue? He is ideological, but he's also about power, right? I don't know. I mean, 2020 election denial claims, that's a pretty big deal. Even some Trump allies have said the election wasn't stolen or whatever. He won't say it. So I think that's noteworthy. My only point is that he would own CNN as well as the Saudis and the Qataris and Emiratis.

37:47And I think it would be naive to believe that there will be no editorial changes given that ownership.

37:53Peter Kafka:You believe the Qataris and Saudis will actually want to have some say in how CNN has managed? They're not shelling out billions of dollars just to be passive. So their answer of, hey, we don't have a controlling stake in the company. We actually don't have a vote. Come on. This is all part of our plan to just widen our bets around the world. Even if they don't direct anything explicitly, like when you have them investing that much money, I think there are going to be conversations about how they are covered and portrayed on those news networks. I mean, it just seems implausible that they would be totally invisible.

38:32I mean, the reason they want to invest this money is to have that soft power. Why is CNN important? I mean, they run one of the most highly trafficked news websites on earth. So just from a reach standpoint, CNN - Their website. Yeah, CNN reaches a lot of people on digital platforms. So it does shape how people view current events. So that's important. It also, those three letters are recognizable basically in any corner of the world, right? Like if you see these scenes, it's like Coca-Cola. And that means, I think, to a lot of people, reliable news.

39:13Peter Kafka:Even if most people are not consuming CNN on television at any given moment. And even though it's getting eclipsed by not only Fox News, but often MSNBC. People seem to want ideological news. They just want ideology when they turn on their TV. They're not interested in whatever the CNN version of Down the Middle is. I think that those three letters mean a lot. And I think there's a reason Donald Trump has specifically tried to destroy two news institutions, one of them being CNN, the other being The New York Times. Because he knows that when they report something, people take it very seriously.

39:45They view it immediately as credible. And that's a problem to him.

39:50Peter Kafka:I think it's also part of our 1983 discussion, right? Those are brands and things that he knows about and cares about from that era. Sure. Maybe I'm crazy, but I just think that when you see those three letters, it just means something. It means a certain level of quality, and there's a record of – decades-long record of delivering reliable information in real time. So why does that matter? I mean, it matters because, you know, if you wanted to get rid of a check on power or, you know, you would target CNN. But also if you care about how, you know, our news environment, CNN plays an integral role in that.

40:25We'll be right back with Oliver Darcy. But first this. Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you.

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42:05Peter Kafka:And we're back. We started talking about MAGA media at the beginning. I want to go back to it. Again, I used to have you on the show to explain how MAGA media was working. You came out of MAGA media yourself. You started off at The Blaze, I think was your first or second job. It wasn't MAGA then, to be clear. It was kooky right-wing media. It was conservative media, Peter. Yeah, it was definitely not MAGA, and I think that was actually - Well, MAGA didn't exist, but it was Glenn Beck's program. Sure. You were working with him. You came out of that. So you got particular insight into how that world works.

42:34Peter Kafka:How has that shifted? How has mega media shifted, if at all, in Trump 2.0? A lot of discussion about podcasters and what they're saying. I can't imagine that Donald Trump is listening to what podcasters are saying for the same reason we've talked about. What's the dynamic between people in mega media and Donald Trump and how do they communicate with him and vice versa? Is that unchanged or something evolved? Well, I think the one way it's evolved is there's no resistance to Donald Trump in Trump 2.0 and MAGA Media. I mean, there was some early resistance in Trump 1.0, if you remember. Glenn Beck, for instance, was very anti-Trump.

43:13Peter Kafka:There was a moment, yeah. And others were very critical of Trump at points. Mark Levin was critical. The National Review did that whole never Trump thing. Ben Shapiro said, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, like I forget how many evers he put in there. but he wrote that he would never support Donald Trump. And in Trump 2.0, Ben Shapiro hosted a campaign fundraiser for Donald Trump. So I think it's changed significantly. There's no resistance to him. What about when I read about a MAGA media crack up over Israel and Iran and Tucker Carlson is split? Should we be taking that at face value or are these people still sort of in the same orbit they've always been?

43:52It's actually interesting. You say that there's no resistance to him and there's also growing resistance to him at the same time, it feels like. Or it's not even to him as much as it's to, like they almost portray him as innocent, like Tucker Carlson.

44:06Peter Kafka:When Tucker Carlson criticized Trump, he doesn't criticize Trump. He says, these bad people around Donald Trump are misleading him. Exactly. It's just super interesting. I believe that you have special insight into this world because you spent time in it as an employee slash believer. Yeah. And you said, well, it wasn't MAGA, it was right wing. Do you think that you have special insight into how this ecosystem works because you were a part of it? I don't know if it's as much because I was a part of it. I think it's because I grew up conservative listening to these people. I think that's actually what gives me more insight than anything is I listened to, before I was a reporter, before any of this stuff, hundreds, thousands of hours on the radio.

44:45Like I used to listen to Glenn Beck's three-hour program and then I would listen to Rush Limbaugh's and then I listened to Sean Hannity's. And you weren't doing it at a distance.

44:53Peter Kafka:You were consuming it. I was consuming it, yeah. And so I feel like I know a lot of history behind these folks and what they proclaim to believe, their relationships between the two, that Mark Levin and Sean Hannity on the same team. And Glenn Beck has never really been accepted by that crew, but briefly was. You know a lot of these – you know all the dust-ups and all of that. You know the lore. Yeah. Yeah. And I also think outside that, I think, you know, because I worked in conservative media, a lot of people, especially early on, saw me as a fair reporter who understood that like Alex Jones is not the same person as Ben Shapiro or whatever.

45:32And they would trust me to tell the story accurately. I think that gave me, I guess, a little bit of access into that world that would probably be difficult for like a New York Times reporter, you know, to immediately get.

45:47Peter Kafka:And do you think as an owner operator and someone who has a viewpoint on the world, sort of that you had that viewpoint for a while and now have presumably changed into something else? And I think the last time we talked, you were a little canny with me about, I don't want to talk to you about my specific politics. But do you think that having come from that world as a believer and now you're not a non-believer, that that influences how you view this? I don't, I think, you know. Like someone who was in a cult and is outside of the cult thing? I do think that the people who are intimately aware of conservative media who came out of conservative media are a lot more critical and clear-eyed about these people than the people who have never consumed it.

46:25And that manifests itself in different ways. I think the bulwark is a good example of it. Or someone like Nicole Wallace who was literally the communications director for George W. Bush. Now on MSNBC. And now on MSNOW and hosts a program very critical of the administration and the MAGA movement. I do think that there's like a through line there to some extent. Tim Alberta, for instance, he used to work at the National Review, now he's at the Atlantic, has been very clear-eyed about these people and has written some very, I think, brutal pieces. I don't know if what we do is really opinion still.

46:58I don't view it as that. I view it as just being candid and blunt and covering a lot of the U.S. politics like we'd cover a foreign country if it were happening.

47:08Peter Kafka:I think you do fact-based reporting, reality-based reporting, but it has a point of view. You have a perspective, right? I guess. It's not the view from – I'm sorry, whoever created the view from nowhere, I hate it. But it's fair, right? Like it's not – you're not approaching it as, well, this side said this moon is made of cheese. The other side said the moon is actually a moon. I don't think that's a fair way to do news. But I think like objectively speaking, when, you know, the CBS Morning Show posts the worst ratings on record and we say it's disastrous and underscore that point, I'm not sure that's our opinion as much as us just being very blunt and direct about how bad those ratings are.

47:44Whereas other outlets might kind of skate around that issue a little bit and not be as direct. And I think our being very, very, very blunt in our writing leads people to say that we have a perspective on things. Our perspective is guided by what often data shows or like objectively speaking, you know, when Scott – that whole Scott Pelley thing was a disaster from a managerial standpoint, right? And so we will say that.

48:15Peter Kafka:Is this your critique of your peers, whether media reporters or just the media in general, that they are not candid and clear-eyed enough in their presentation? They're so soft often, so, so soft. And I feel like it's kind of like this thing with the media where in Trump 1.0, especially early on, people would say, why is the media not being more direct? Why are they calling lies out as lies and all this stuff? And I think, frankly, the press has recalibrated and done a lot better with covering Donald Trump. You read the New York Times. It's like, wow, that's a New York Times lead. That's pretty tough.

48:51Peter Kafka:They still usually have heard lies. They say, which is not true or is an untruth. It's still a – like the leads that you're reading from like Jonathan Swan or Maggie Haberman or whoever is covering the White House, they're pretty muscular. And then you read a lot of the stuff about the media and it's just like it lacks that backbone. And I don't understand entirely why that is, but that's what we're adding. We're reporting with some backbone. Way too early for this question, but how do you imagine status might change in a post-Trump landscape? Do you think there are stories and ideas and themes that are just less interesting to your readers if Trump's not in office?

49:35Maybe. I mean, I think that one, I think the MAGA movement is not going anywhere. And so even if you're in a post-Donald Trump era, which I don't know if you can be if you're still in the MAGA era, I still think there's going to be a lot of that political overtone or undertone in the coverage. And I also think our readers are also interested in a lot of other things. Like it doesn't – I think that there's going to be very good media stories whether Donald Trump's in office or out of office.

50:06Peter Kafka:Is there a story you love but your data says your readers don't care about and you wish you could get them to change your mind? I would be picky with a YouTube algorithm. But, you know, like not really. I mean I think if I like the story, typically the readers are – I'm in sync with the readers and they like it as well. I mean, they're subscribing to our newsletter that's curated by, you know, me in particular. So that suggests to me that we're pretty aligned on like our tastes. The flip side of that is the audience capture question, right? Where you are consciously or unconsciously giving them things that you think they want.

50:42Peter Kafka:Right. And then that maybe limits other stories that might have come across your horizon. I'm just trying to think of like a story that we would be covering. Like I am biased toward a good story. So like if there's a good story that either we can expose some corruption or just give new information to readers or like that is what – I am biased towards scoops and maybe some high drama or something at stake. Like that's what we're biased toward and I think that's what our readers want. They just – they want new information. They want maybe a little like juicy nugget in there and it's not really any different than any other kind of reporting.

51:18Peter Kafka:Oliver Darcy, I'm a proud and loyal subscriber. Thank you, Peter. Thank you for servicing me for two years. Will you come to our summit? We're hosting a very fun summit. Tell us about the summit. In September. This is our first live event. So we're bringing together, we're trying to convene the biggest media figures in the industry. We have everyone from chief executives of the New York Times and the Atlantic to television hosts like Nicole Wallace and Caitlin Collins, to people who have left television like Don Lemon and Mehdi Hassan, and everyone in between, we're going to do a one day of very candid status-like conversations.

51:53What are we going to learn?

51:54Peter Kafka:What's the big takeaway going to be? You don't know because it doesn't happen yet. What do you hope the big takeaway will be? I hope the big takeaway is going to be that these conversations are not the kind of conversations that happen all too often at these conferences where the person sounds very different backstage than they do on stage. And my goal is going to be to bring that on stage to ask very candid questions and extract candid answers from that. Are you getting people drugs or alcohol before they go on stage? Maybe we should be considering that. No, no, I think platform, they can't just give a can talking points.

52:31The worst thing in our business

52:32Peter Kafka:is the conversation ends and the person goes, what I would have said is this, but I couldn't say that when I was on mic or on the record. And we're asking people to participate. that I have confidence in are not going to be dodgy and not engage in a fruitful conversation. I will go to your event in September in New York. I will evaluate how much you know. Peter Coffey's going to be there. What more endorsement do we need? That's what you get. Thanks, Oliver. Thank you. Thanks again to Oliver Darcy. Love it when he comes by. Thanks to Charlotte Silver, who produces and edits this show. Thanks to our sponsors who bring this show to you for free.

53:08Peter Kafka:Thanks to you guys for listening. See you next week.

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