In short
The episode discusses (1) Donald Trump’s congressionally approved plan to rescind about $500 million per year in federal funding for NPR and PBS via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, effective in the fall (around Sept. 30/Oct. 1), and (2) Trump suing Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for libel over a report about Trump’s alleged “body poem” comment to Jeffrey Epstein.
Guest backgrounds
David Folkenflik is an NPR media reporter who has covered media for over 20 years, including public broadcasting and Murdoch-related stories.
Key claims
NPR/PBS funding cuts will likely cause consolidation and some stations to shut down within 6–18 months; average NPR stations get about 8–10% of revenue from federal sources, but some rely far more. Folkenflik argues public broadcasting’s value includes war coverage and long-form, contextual reporting that markets don’t replicate well.
Notable examples
Sesame Street as seed funding; Nixon-era concerns about federal media; a southwest Indiana NPR station losing ~50% of revenue after state subsidy cuts; Trump’s libel suit tied to the Epstein “body poem” story; Murdoch’s past settlements (e.g., Dominion/Smartmatic) and likelihood of settling before trial.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOImpact of Funding Cuts on NPR and PBS
0:30 to 1:33
Discussion on the implications of federal funding cuts to public broadcasting.
“15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.”
Impact of Funding Cuts on NPR and PBS
2:49 to 6:05
Discussion on the implications of federal funding cuts to public broadcasting.
“You are covering a story about yourself.”
Historical Context of Public Broadcasting
6:05 to 7:48
Exploration of the origins and historical significance of NPR and PBS.
“So I've seen headlines about dozens of stations having to close across the country, 80.”
Political Landscape and Public Broadcasting
7:48 to 13:29
Analysis of the changing political attitudes towards public media.
“So these are effects we'll see over the next year or so.”
Political Landscape and Public Broadcasting
14:00 to 14:35
Analysis of the changing political attitudes towards public media.
“called a swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.”
Political Landscape and Public Broadcasting
14:44 to 15:11
Analysis of the changing political attitudes towards public media.
“The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview.”
Debating NPR and PBS Funding
15:45 to 24:53
Discussion on the arguments for and against federal funding for NPR and PBS.
“So the arguments that I hear against funding NPR and PBS, federal funding for NPR and PBS, generally, it seems like three different buckets.”
Debating NPR and PBS Funding
26:14 to 27:15
Discussion on the arguments for and against federal funding for NPR and PBS.
“For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story.”
Navigating the Challenges of Reporting on NPR
28:00 to 29:54
Learn about the complexities of covering NPR and the relationships affected by reporting.
“These are people – Because you're seeing people you write about in the halls.”
Edith Chapin's Departure from NPR
29:54 to 31:22
Explore the implications of Edith Chapin's unexpected resignation from NPR.
“She says it's not tied to the rescissions, but it also seems to be extraordinary timing.”
Show all 12 chapters
Trump's Lawsuit Against Rupert Murdoch
31:22 to 37:03
Examine the ramifications of Trump's lawsuit against Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal.
“And she's already helped to oversee, you know, real significant cuts at times of real budget issues, particularly post-COVID.”
Conclusion and Thanks
37:03 to 37:44
Wrap-up of the episode with acknowledgments and thanks to guest David Falkenflick.
“If it didn't happen to have the word lawsuit around it, somebody might pay something or send an email to somebody else to resolve this.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:26Peter Kafka:We'll see you next time. Millions of items delivered fast. Same day delivery. It's on Prime. Available in select areas. Terms apply. Chronic migraine. 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms.
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1:32Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.
1:43Peter Kafka:From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider. And oh boy, is there a lot of media news right now. We're going to hit some of it, but not all of it today. If you want my thoughts on the Paramount Trump-Colbert-John Stewart story, let me suggest heading to Insider.com. Today on this podcast, we are talking about Donald Trump's congressionally approved plan to pull a billion dollars out of public TV and radio. And we're also talking about the extraordinary fight between Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch, which has led to Trump suing Murdoch for libel.
2:23Peter Kafka:And to do all that, we've got just one guest who is more than up to the task. It is the excellent David Fulkenflick, who covers media for NPR. You have likely heard David on the show maybe more than once. He's often here talking about what is happening in Murdoch land. Having him come on to talk about his employer and what it's like to report on his employer is a new one for us. So let's get to it. David is super smart. He's great. You're going to love him. Here's me talking to David Fulkenflick. David Fulkenflick from NPR. You cover media. You are covering a story about yourself. Thank you for taking time to join us.
3:00Peter Kafka:Pleasure. As people who listen to this podcast knows, Congress is pulling back about a half billion dollars a year in financing for NPR and PBS. You work for NPR, so you're covering the story. You're affected by the story. We're recording this Tuesday morning. Your top editor has just resigned. But besides that, just so we're clear on state of play, this hasn't actually happened yet, right? The president hasn't signed the rescission order and the funding. When that happens, the funding will disappear later this fall. Is that correct? That's basically right. The president has been sent the approved so-called rescission bill from both sides of Congress, led by partisans on purely only Republicans voted for this, which is something the president asked for.
3:47Involves what's confusing, I think, in some ways to folks. It's two years of advanced funding for what's called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the privately incorporated company through which federal money flows. And money goes to mostly local television and radio stations. A little bit of money, about 1 % to 2 % comes to NPR of our revenues, comes from federal sources, about 15 % of PBSs. So that will take effect essentially on, call it September 30th, October 1st, when the federal fiscal year starts anew. Although I should say a fair amount of money has been stripped away already. So there's some money that comes to PBS and its stations from the Ready to Learn grant money.
4:26And so that's a significant amount of money that funds educational programming. And some of that was stopped cold in its tracks.
4:31Peter Kafka:So Corporation Public Broadcasting, essentially sort of a holding company that then distributes that money out to local stations. So when those cuts go into effect in this fall, we're assuming the president is going to sign this rescission order he asked for. Maybe he's preoccupied. What are the immediate effects? Well, the real answer is it's a little hard to predict. But what we know is this, the average NPR station, member station, we don't own any of it. But the average station, these are community-owned stations. Some of them are owned by universities or school boards or libraries. You know, they sprung up over time.
5:03A lot of them before NPR even existed. They get on average, call it 8 % to 10 % of their revenues of your federal budget. That's a big hit. But it's not uniform. Some stations have 6%. Some stations have 50%, 60%, 70%. They tend to be much smaller, serving more rural stations, serving often tribal audiences or other audiences where you don't have a major concentration of corporations that can serve as underwriters or philanthropies or citizens that are in the practice of sharing money voluntarily to support these stations. So they really do rely significantly on these funds. I think you are likely to see a significant amount of consolidation and some stations even shutting down.
5:43I do think it's likely, as the network's critics in Congress have said, that some stations will step up and find that they have a greater degree of support from their listeners in terms of contributions. But in the stations that I've talked to, they believe this will be for the next, call it six to 18 months, and that it's unlikely to get them over the hump in the long term of what they have to achieve.
6:05Peter Kafka:So I've seen headlines about dozens of stations having to close across the country, 80. I think Catherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, has talked about 100. I mean, again, we're predicting the future. Do we think they're going to go dark? These stations that are going to go dark will go dark immediately? We'll just say we cannot continue? Or is this something where they try to survive for a year and then pull the plug? I think it is unlikely to be immediate. But, you know, different stations are going to be different circumstances. I talked at some length with the president and CEO, the leader of a station that serves southwest Indiana.
6:43It's based in Evansville, sort of an urban center of a little over 100 ,000 folks. But it serves an audience as soon as you get out of city limits that is very rural very quickly and also serves parts of Kentucky and a sliver of Illinois. And he's just gone through this thing where the state legislature there in a surprise move at the very end in reaching their budget to hit some what they called unexpected revenue losses for the state, zeroed out all of the state subsidies for public broadcasting, which were significant to their bottom line. This station basically will see a loss of about 50 percent of its annual revenues between state and federal as a result of this vote.
7:24He said, look, for the first year, I can go into our reserves. We can sell our downtown headquarters. We have a terrific thing. He's like, I'm looking over the river into Kentucky from my office, and this is probably appreciable. But then I've got to figure out where we go because we still have to be able to broadcast. We still have to have studios. And he's like, I don't know if we are going to survive more than a year or two that way.
7:48Peter Kafka:So these are effects we'll see over the next year or so. I want to pull back a little bit. Just talk about how we got here. I grew up in a public media house a long, long time ago. We watched a ton of PBS. We listened to radio as NPR. I took it for granted. I had some understanding that these stations were somehow from the government and they were better than what you could see or hear from commercial stations. As an adult, I'm sort of like, how did we end up at that place? How long ago were NPR and PBS created? Why do we think and why did the federal government end up having a role in funding these stations?
8:23I think it's a great question. So I've gone back into the archives a bit over the years. In anticipation of this vote, I did it again. You know, Lyndon Johnson at the tail end of the Great Society as president signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act. And radio was actually something of an afterthought. A couple of legislative aides kind of like wrote in and radio every time they were talking about funding public television. But the idea was twofold. In a narrow sense, you know, stations had wanted to figure out something that could be more reliable, knit them together. They wanted more content.
8:57And there were community not-for-profit stations around the country. Johnson said, look, we need to help sustain a citizenry that is enriched culturally, educationally, and yes, journalistically, that this was a public good. You talked about it as something that would always be on, right, when you were listening as a kid. A lot of people think of public media as kind of utility. It's like flipping a switch. The light is on. Flip a switch. You know you're going to hear Ira Glass on Friday nights or Saturdays, right? But in reality, it takes money to do that. And federal money both ensured that there was just more money generally and maybe more stations be in business.
9:35But it actually ended up being seed money for a lot of things. Seed money for things like Sesame Street. It's ended up helping fund, for example, when we have to cover wars at NPR. They're extraordinarily expensive propositions. They're just ways in which they try to fulfill different needs of the American citizenry, not in a physical sense, but in nurturing them as citizens. And that's what Johnson was seeking to do. And PR and PBS followed shooting after.
10:01Peter Kafka:And for basically all my adult life, people on the right, conservatives, have been trying to roll that back. Was there a debate about this when it first went through or did public media become unpopular on the right sometime in the 70s or 80s? The law is passed under Johnson, 1967, 68. He decides not to run for reelection. 69, Richard Nixon cruises to office. So from the very earliest days, you know, NPR, PBS are created late 60s, early 70s. Nixon is very concerned about them. He's fearful that the federal government will be funding something. There'll be yet another media power source against him.
10:40He looked at CBS in particular in The New York Times, The Washington Post as essentially enemies. As we know, he had enemies lists. Right. And he was very fearful of that. So NPR and PBS were not created as networks, top-down, top-down control. These were sort of very baroquely and constructed systems over which the networks didn't really have control. They could have agreements and arrangements and do programming that's ultimately centralized in a certain way, but not – the stations couldn't be dictated to. Part of the rules of corporate public broadcasting, they would provide this funding for programming for stations, but the stations couldn't be told what they could or couldn't buy.
11:16They could make arrangements with NPR or not make arrangements with NPR. So Nixon was opposed to this, which is just – I give you that background to say that there was baked into this some resistance, reservations, concern about that. The idea was, look, we have these three huge corporate networks out there and we have these radio stations driven by corporate interests. But that's not serving all of America. And the bottom line is not always for a financial ledger is not always a bottom line for a citizen what he or she needs to be educated, to be encouraged, inspired, to be informed and then to do whatever they want with that kind of information.
11:57In the Reagan years, it was controversial at times. George W. Bush years, you know, you saw a chairman of the CPB pressure PBS to put more things on. Tucker Carlson had his own show on PBS in part as a result of things like that. You know, this is a recurring theme. But I got to say, having covered Congress in the 90s, it seemed to me that this was something that by and large, while there were resentments about it, particularly from the right, but not only from the right, that, you know, this was something that most of the time professional Republicans wanted as an issue more than as a win.
12:31Peter Kafka:Because it would come up all the time and there'd be periodic efforts to defund public broadcasting and it never went anywhere, oftentimes because some Republicans would say, actually, this does serve on community. I don't want to defund it. And it wouldn't go anywhere. Yeah, they had constituents who valued it. They themselves valued it. I remember talking to a congressman who's a conservative Republican, but not sort of a MAGA, Trump-aligned Republican, no longer in office, who said to me, look, you know, I said, well, did you like talking to this conservative kind of outfit? Do you like talking to this more liberally identified newspaper?
13:07Bernie said, well, you know, I really preferred to talk to the NPR affiliate because even if I felt the host might have a slightly more progressive outlook than I do, the questions were always fair. I was always able to speak in my own voice and I could speak at some length. It seemed like, you know, I was able to have a fair give and take and make my case to the people in my state. That was the approach I heard from a lot of Republicans over a lot of decades. It got different over the past 10 years. We'll be right back with David Falkenflick, but first a word
13:35Peter Kafka:from a sponsor.
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14:34Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.
14:41Peter Kafka:This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at$50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more.
15:23Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, The Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. Shop Labor Day savings at The Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving.
15:43Peter Kafka:And we're back. So the arguments that I hear against funding NPR and PBS, federal funding for NPR and PBS, generally, it seems like three different buckets. One is just straight. The federal government should just not be in the business of funding media. Full stop. We don't do that. We don't have state-run media. Another is we don't like the programming or what we perceive to be the bias. It's too gay or whatever it is, whatever the criticism is. And the third is those conditions you laid out in the 60s where we had three stations and that was how you got information. We don't live in that world anymore.
16:19Peter Kafka:We have a lot of alternatives. We have the internet. Anyone who wants news can get it. They can pick and choose it. The market itself is much bigger, so you have lots and lots of options. It's not 1967 anymore. We can move on. All of those seem relatively decent arguments for me. I definitely would not want my tax money going to a MAGA-inflected Trump-approved public media. Do you want to try tackling those one at a time? Sure. There's a question. Should the government be doing this at all? I think this is a legitimate philosophical argument that the American people and lawmakers get to decide.
16:55In fact, lawmakers have currently decided it. And, you know, one caveat is NPR CEO. And when I'm speaking to you, I'm talking to you as a reporter deeply steeped in it. I believe in NPR. I've had my paycheck for many years, but I'm not speaking for NPR as an institution. And they don't always love the way in which I cover everything, which is fine. Our CEO has said publicly on, I believe it was Morning Edition last week, that she doesn't necessarily see this as the final word. They're hopeful that over time they can get some money restored. But they don't appear to be fully counting on that as a strategy.
17:25I think they're hopeful. And you've heard some lawmakers, including a Republican from Nevada, say something similar. Lisa Murkowski, the senator from Alaska, something similar. You never know. I think it's a legitimate philosophical argument about the role of government. The common defense is basically attested to in our constitution as something the government needs to do. Right. But the way in which it's done is something that for public debate, there may be people who like certain armed conflicts or not. They are paying for it with their tax dollars. Is this something we should be? I think it's a matter of public, legitimate public debate.
17:57The question of bias is one that comes up periodically. And let me just say, as somebody who's been at NPR for over 20 years, you know, I certainly have seen bias from the left as well about how we covered the Iraq war, about the restraint that NPR showed, you know, from the left about, you know, whether we call President Trump a liar or, you know, our relative comparative restraint on covering certain the accusations surrounding his ties and his campaign in 2016 ties to Russia. That said, there's been, I think, a greater part on the right. And let me say this. We have gone through as a nation in the last 10 years the arrival of Trump, which was whatever you think a shock to the system.
18:33You saw the Me Too movement. You saw the social justice movement occasioned by the killing of George Floyd. And then you saw the shock to the system again of COVID. And I think it is fair to say that in a lot of society and corporate boardrooms and in American newsrooms, including NPR, you saw a push for a shift in how news was defined and what was newsworthy, what voices need to be heard, who needed to be represented. that, you know, women in Me Too were like, look, we've been saying things for years and not only have Americans not listened to us, newsleaders haven't listened to us. And so NPR's leadership made the decision to put a greater priority on bringing in people more reflective of the polyglot nature of American society.
19:19And I think you can make the argument as Uri Berliner, my former colleague, did in the free press, that that resulted in news judgments that may have sounded off to a lot of people. He argued. The pendulum swung too far to the left and now we're seeing pushback in this era of Trump. And I would say as a media critic listening to NPR, I would argue in the last year plus, you know, as NPR has thought hard about that and been confronted with that, sometimes, you know, resistance, sometimes embracing that challenge. I think NPR has dialed that back. I think you can hear it. So, you know, are we impervious to these pressures and also to our own to these own pendulum swings in society.
20:00I think it's, I don't think that any newsroom is, I don't think NPR is as well.
20:04Peter Kafka:Yeah, I mean, my perception of just, and leaving aside NPR's news, just the general sort of tone and vibe of NPR and PBS in my history has been, you know, it's kind of center, center left. And if you are on the right side of the political spectrum, you think it's very left. And also you could argue that the country's pushing farther to the right than it has been in a while. So stuff that used to be center is now center left. Yeah. And there's been an effort to delegitimize a thing that is uncomfortable coverage or coverage that reflects critically on someone as unfair definitionally. And therefore, it's these are not perfectly, you know, you can't put this into a test tube or a centrifuge and distill a perfectly scientific answer on it.
20:48There you had one third element that you want to say, well, look, there's a welter, the panoply of options available.
20:53Peter Kafka:And I think there's Peter Kafka's podcast. And I hope everybody does. But that said, you know, we also live in a world, for example, this case was made about PBS. It's starting to be some years ago before podcasts came out there. So PBS, why do we need PBS? But the fascinating thing is you have all these cable channels. But if you look at most of them, you know, the A &E channel was the arts and entertainment channel. You had the history channel. You had the learning channel, TLC. You had Discovery, which was about science. You had Bravo, which was about, you know, classical music and the performing arts.
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21:22Almost all of these have gotten way away from the kinds of programming that was said to be a corporate alternative to PBS. They have gone to the kinds of things that are sort of in competition with one another. There's a lot of reality shows. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of programming that America, what can I say, that PBS is unlikely to be mimicking. Or if it does it, it's doing a twist in a different way. So, you know, PBS is still doing documentaries about things that might or may not be told by somebody trying to make a profit on it. PBS is doing all kinds of things that commercial cable outlets are not.
21:57And they promised to do – they held the promise of doing so early on. And they've all gotten away from it. They said, what's the best bottom line for Discovery? What's the best bottom line for Hearst? What's the best bottom line for corporate owners here? They're not doing the things that it seemed as though they would replace PBS in doing.
22:13Peter Kafka:And you can argue, and I would, that there was been a boom in documentary making about 10 years, this started about 10 years ago, really because of Netflix kicked off the streaming wars. And Netflix, I think in part because they thought documentaries were cool, but really because they thought they were cheap, effective programming to distinguish themselves from other people, poured a lot of money into that. All of a sudden, everyone who was a documentary filmmaker could suddenly get a deal for their movie. That window is closed. But the point is, the market moves back and forth based on what people think people want.
22:43Peter Kafka:It doesn't always get it right. And isn't that a better solution than having X number of people at PBS and NPR decide what they think an alternative should be? Two things. One of which, a lot of those documentaries focus on true crime. And while I think some of those are interesting. Oh, yeah. By the way, that documentary boom is over. Right. But even when it was going. And now it's only true crime. Right. Even when it was going, it heavily oversubscribed to that category. Right. And public broadcasting can do that, too. but public broadcasting at its best shouldn't be doing that only. I would say that very few podcasts have their own 15, 16 foreign bureaus, right?
23:22Very few of them are covering wars. Very few of them are doing investigative reports. There's a lot of in-depth consideration and talk. Some are, but there's a lot of in-depth conversation and talking. The question is, do you have institutions that you can go to that you can say, this is giving me information that is factual, is verified. It is fairly contextual. I can evaluate it and take issue with it. But also these guys have a record that I can go back day after day, you know, week after week, year after year and feel confident that I want to get it for is information I can turn to. And, you know, the three hour podcast conversations, which, you know, it's fascinating to me because people are like, oh, we live in a time where our attention span has been destroyed.
24:05And it's like, well, maybe. But if you're listening to Theo Vaughn for two and a half hours. You're still willing to pay attention to something. And they've captured something there. That is useful. When you say, isn't it better than having NPR and PBS decide for us? I think it's good that there are more alternatives. I don't think NPR and PBS should exist to the exclusion of others. I just think that I would argue that its journalists and its programmers provide value at their best that you don't see replicated in a lot of other places. My sense, you're not gonna hear this from a lot of places, from people who have spoken in Congress on the right of late.
24:39But my sense is NPR has proven himself in recent years to be one of a handful of indispensable major news outlets that is capable of taking on fairly big things in all of its flaws and all of its imperfections. And the question is, should it be better? And the question of funding is, as I said, I think a legitimate one.
24:56Peter Kafka:David, don't tell anyone, but I agree with you about the value of NPR and PBS. It's our secret. In a minute, David and I are going to talk about Donald Trump suing Rupert Murdoch and how that's going to play out. First, a word from a sponsor. Chronic migraine. 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor.
25:31Peter Kafka:Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
26:05Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.
26:12Peter Kafka:This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview, the first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old, the tomato No soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at$50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more.
26:54Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, The Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. Shop Labor Day savings at The Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving.
27:15Peter Kafka:And we're back. You mentioned at the top and midway through this conversation, you work at NPR. You are not here speaking on NPR's behalf. How does it work when the media reporter has to cover – I have to do this periodically, not very often. You do it all the time. You end up covering your own employer a lot. How do you handle that in general, and how is it working this time around? Well, you sort of have two choices. You can either decide to throw a toaster oven at the wall at the fact that you've got to do this again, or you can say, this is the life we've chosen, so let's go and do it. And the way I try to approach it is by saying this is the same as if I were reporting on The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times or ABC News.
27:57You know, you want to be full, first, factual, and fair. And yet, it's a little complicated. These are people –
28:05Peter Kafka:Because you're seeing people you write about in the halls. Yeah. Although, you know, to be honest, in recent years, I've worked primarily from home. I work in New York. It makes it at once harder and easier. But, you know, I try to be plugged in. I try to be on the phone and in contact with people all the time. The answer is we've developed over the years. I've actually had to report on public broadcasting and NPR for almost all 20 of my years, right? And it got white hot at times. If you think in 2010 when Juan Williams' contract was severed prematurely for comments he had made over the Fox News channel that I think actually were somewhat unfairly understood.
28:42It can be a hot button thing. And to cover people, you know, have I had friendships affected or lost as a result of my coverage? I have. It's tough. From a human level, these are people that you work with. You see them and how much they care about what they're doing, and it's tough. But, you know, I also think it's really important that we – our listeners are likely to be more interested in NPR than the average person on the street, not less. So I want us to be full and fair and contextualized. I also think it's really important for us to demonstrate that in moments of crisis or controversy that NPR lives its values.
29:15And so I feel as though, look, this is a pain in the ass, but it's an important thing to do. And so that's kind of how I approach it.
29:21Peter Kafka:And your work, instead of listening to it, you'll see a disclaimer at the bottom of your story saying, here's who edited the stories. And also none of the officials who run NPR have looked at this. No corporate officials or news executives have reviewed anything that we broadcast or that we post about our coverage of NPR before it's done publicly. They see it at the same time as members of the public. And that is our effort to insulate ourselves from any kind of untoward pressure. And as a result, people are by and large very respectful of that. They get that it exists and therefore it's a norm that's kind of respected.
29:53Peter Kafka:Speaking of executives, Edith Chapin, who was the editor of NPR and also the content officer, just announced she's leaving. She says it's not tied to the rescissions, but it also seems to be extraordinary timing. What do you make of it and what are you reporting on that? So I spoke to her a little bit earlier this morning for the story that we posted as she made her announcement. It was a surprise to me when I learned of it. She told me that she surprised our CEO, Catherine Marr, with this basically 10 days, two weeks ago, and that Marr was stunned by this. And yet that this was something that was long in the making.
30:29Chapin has been both our chief news executive for several years, but also our acting chief content officer, which means she's over our reporting, our shows, our podcasts, our music, like our entertainment world. Like all of that is under her. And she said that she had declined the offer from our former chief executive some years ago to be that job permanently because she said she thought somebody who had a different skill set. You know, she came up through CNN where she was a veteran news editor. She said somebody with different strategic skill set probably needed to have that job. She has held both of those jobs, which are very top jobs at NPR, for two years.
31:07And she said, you know, at a certain point she was spent. And I think there's some truth to that. I also think that, you know, I do think that timing tends to tell you a lot. It is hard to evaluate this in the absence of thinking about the clawback of the money. She has two hard jobs that are going to be much harder. They are. And she's already helped to oversee, you know, real significant cuts at times of real budget issues, particularly post-COVID. She knows what it is to go through these painful things. And she says she may be saying that she's not up for it. But, you know, what she said is this was just really a question of just my the burden I bore on behalf of the company.
31:41I just need to step away.
31:42Peter Kafka:So before I let you go, I want you to take off your NPR reporter hat, put on your Murdoch reporter hat. Again, people who listen to this podcast know the journal came out with this, I'm going to say blockbuster, but at least fascinating story about a body poem is the term of art we're using that Donald Trump allegedly gave to Epstein. I mean, Trump said to Murdoch and the journal, please don't, not please don't, don't publish this story. They did. He has now sued them. As far as I can tell, it's the first time a sitting president has sued a media organization for libel in America. That's extraordinary.
32:20Peter Kafka:It's also extraordinary that Donald Trump is going to war with Rupert Murdoch, who owns and runs Fox News, which is incredibly important to Donald Trump. What do you think happens with this suit? Do you think there's any chance it actually goes to trial? Do you think they settle? Do you think Trump expects a settlement? Do you think Trump expects this to go to trial? Look, Trump, his ostensible future presidential library, has received a lot of money in recent months from settlements from ABC, CBS, which had a truly flimsy case presented against it, essentially legally non -existent. Plus meta, plus Twitter.
32:57Plus meta, plus Twitter X. But a lot of Trump's previous lawsuits have been dismissed. Yep. It wouldn't totally surprise me if it were dismissed here, if Trump would be ultimately OK with that because he's gotten the huge headline out of trying to discredit the Wall Street Journal's, you know, excellent reporting teams. It puts Rupert on notice and Lachlan, his son, who's really supposedly running the companies on notice, but also other elements of the conservative ecosystem on notice that, hey, they don't get a pass just because they're notionally seen as on his side. I mean, nobody has done more than Rupert Murdoch to help Trump over the past decade.
33:32You know, you can hardly – in the media anyway. You know, Murdoch is his own power source. These are two titans.
33:38Peter Kafka:Two titans who don't necessarily like each other. They're transactional and they both see the value in getting something from the other one. Rupert Murdoch settles stuff all the time. Probably one of the last couple times we talked was talking about the$780 million – was it Smartmatic or Dominion? That was Dominion. Dominion suit that he settled just before it was supposed to go to trial. Just before he was supposed to testify, right, at the opening of the trial. If the current price for settling a Donald Trump lawsuit is a$16 million donation to his library, in quotes, that's a nothing burger for Murdoch.
34:16Peter Kafka:Isn't that a check he can cut immediately? So this is something I've been thinking about and talking about with some of Murdoch's, people who are working for Murdoch. we've spoken in recent days. And this is, you know, if you need a gut analysis, I can't predict the future. But Murdoch seems to me like the kind of guy who fights things like this until he doesn't, until it's more useful for him not to. Like when he has to go on the stand or go into depositions at the age of 94 and prepare for those things himself, he's probably like, forget it,$16 million, I could care less. That said, you know, he likes a good story.
34:51This is inconvenient for him, but he didn't kill the Theranos story, which was an exposite by one of his reporters about essentially a blood diagnosis company built on lies in which he was the largest private equity investor. And that's to his great credit that he didn't do that. So I would guess that the excellent legal team of the Journal and Dow Jones fights this right until the point at which it's going to be inconvenient. Both sides have a pressure point, right? Trump doesn't want to go to discovery and have to talk at great length in front of lawyers for Murdoch and a media company about his actual relationship with Epstein.
35:32That's a pressure point. Trump may be OK if this thing gets dismissed. On the other hand, if Murdoch has anything that he may think in the future is going to be in front of federal officials or regulators, just like CBS, just like CBS and Paramount, which has its sale about to go through, and the payments help clear the decks for that, the Colbert departure, whether or not based on his finances, help clear the deck for that, just like the Walt Disney Company, which perennially does, then Murdoch may say$16 million is cheap. Let's not forget that these alliances work in both directions. Fox News has run interference for Trump pretty much since 2015, right?
36:07On its news side, often on its opinion side, overwhelmingly. Murdoch won benefits for that, right? The Justice Department under Trump tried to basically block the acquisition of AT &T, Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, because Murdoch had kind of wanted to take over Time Warner.
36:25Peter Kafka:And meanwhile said, oh, you want to buy – do you want to sell to Disney? Go right ahead. Wave it through. It's a great thing for America is what they – And Trump's only question that morning when he learned about the Disney acquisition of most of Fox's Hollywood assets was he calls Murdoch and says, are you going to hold on to Fox News? Murdoch says, yes. Trump says, congratulations. Best of luck with this thing. So that was – and that was a much more odd consolidation of the same kinds of properties. So not going to make you bet on this, but if you were to bet, you would bet this settles before a trial.
36:56I think actually, although there's a part of me that believes Murdoch's going to fight it because he'll say, screw them. Guys are totally transactional. If it didn't happen to have the word lawsuit around it, somebody might pay something or send an email to somebody else to resolve this. These are two billionaires going like this, you know, colliding a little bit here. But their alliance is probably more useful to them than their fighting unless Trump, for some reason, thinks that he needs this to feed the increasingly radicalized parts of his base that somehow has to be distracted from the idea that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein, which he obviously did.
37:34Peter Kafka:David Falkenflick, once again, I agree with you. Once again, I thank you for coming on the show. You can catch David everywhere, online, in your ears. Go get him, David. Thank you. Thanks, buddy. Thanks again to David for coming on during a very busy news cycle. Thanks to my old pal, Zach Mack, who is editing and producing today's show. Thanks to our excellent advertisers. We love advertisers. And thanks to you guys for listening. See you soon.
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From the publisher
Reporting on the place you work is not fun. But it is an occupational hazard for media reporters — particularly for NPR’s David Folkenflik.
That’s because National Public Radio — along with Public Broadcasting Service, its TV counterpart — is quite frequently the target of attacks from critics on the right, who would like the federal government to stop funding it. Now it looks like they’ve gotten their way, and the two networks are going to lose a combined $500 million a year.
So what happens now? And how did we get here? And should the federal government be funding media organizations at all? We discuss.
And, since Folkenflik is also one of my go-to Rupert Murdoch experts, I asked him to stick around and opine about Donald Trump’s libel suit against Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal. Who has more to lose, and who is likely to blink first?
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