Kurt Eichenwald: The Relentless Reporter

34:11And so I was like, oh, really? She said, yeah. I was like, all right. You better be good then because I always have another book.

34:21Okay. One more question about epilepsy. Okay. Okay. And you stated that if you could go back in time and not have epilepsy, you would not do that. No, I said something even stronger. If I could change the experiences I had. And why is that? Because those experiences were the most formative things of my life. They made me the person that I am. and I like the person that I am. I like the life I live. I would not have gone down the path of journalism. It was too hard, but I did because that experience taught me that we only have one life and I was supposed to be dead. I wasn't. I'd survived. And so I was forced, when I was at my sickest, I was forced to really think, what am I fighting so hard for?

35:34Because it's really easy to give up. And I envisioned a life. It was in Northwestern Hospital that I was having this experience of like Paul on the road to Damascus experience. And I envisioned everything I wanted in my life. And I went from thinking I was going to be a lawyer to being a journalist. That was the night. and the kind of woman I wanted to marry and the kind of life I wanted to live and what I wanted to value. I really charted everything out. And that wasn't the last time that happened. I had one more big one, which dealt with my kids that didn't exist. In fact, I didn't even have a girlfriend at the time, but it was looking into a future involving my children.

36:31And it was interesting because that was taking place at a Irish bar. I wasn't drinking. I was having a hamburger in Washington on Capitol Hill. And I vowed to myself that if I survived, And at that point, I was pretty sure I was going to survive. But that I had this mental image of sitting across from my oldest son. And yes, it was a son. I just happened to be. And telling him, I was proud of him. And I committed to myself that someday I would come back. And this is what this experience would happen. and my kids all knew about this and my oldest son would be like when are we going not for a while you have to be older you have to be the age you were in my not vision but in what i saw in my mind's eye and eventually we all went to washington and i sent the middle boy and the youngest boy or son they were adults sent them away i said i'm sorry the mental image was of one not three so i have to do this the way i promised me i would do it and we sat down the restaurant arranged the table our table the way it had been on that day because it needed to be the same it's It's a very strange experience.

38:07And I told my son that I was proud of him. And he told me the same thing. And I burst into tears because I had reached that point. It was the ultimate representation that not only had I survived, but I had accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. Wow. I feel like we should end right now. I mean, how are we going to top that story? Shit. Oh my God. But like Elizabeth Warren, nevertheless, I'm going to persist because now you've had some amazing investigative reporting. And I just want to know how you do a story like Enron. Like, how do you take on a story about Enron? Because I read in your book about that.

39:00That is an amazing thing. How do you do a story that big? What goes into it? Step one, writing nothing. One of the big failings of journalism is that a lot of journalists don't know what they don't know. A lot of politicians do, but I digress. Yeah, exactly. And they'll jump into it and start dividing up the world into, okay, here are the bad guys. Here are the good guys. Who tells me what? You told me this. You're my source. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Enron collapsed into bankruptcy and everybody was chasing the story and I was doing something else. I don't remember what. I was at the New York Times and we were getting beaten fairly roundly by the Wall Street Journal.

39:53And then there was an announcement that a bunch of document that the accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, which existed then and was a big accounting firm, had destroyed documents related to Enron. And it was at that point that we had been beaten so many different ways that my specialty was corporate fraud. It was, gee, why hasn't he been doing this? And so I was asked by the executive editor. No, I was told by the executive editor to start covering Enron. And I sort of freaked everybody out because my response was, OK, give me two weeks. And they're like, no, we need you on it right now. I will write some stories, but I'm not going to jump into it full force because I don't know what I'm talking about.

40:51This is about a pipeline company that became a trader of gas contracts, but it's actually more complicated than that. I don't quite understand what they do. And then this involved something called structured finance and an accounting rule that pertained to 3 % outside equity. And I don't know what any of this means. I had over the years built up what I called the gray heads who were experts in law, securities law, criminal law, accounting, finance. And I always said I had the greatest business education of anybody I know because it's been constant. And all of my professors are the world or national experts.

41:47And so I called up these folks and said, teach me. I need to understand this. I need to understand that. And that is really the key to reporting that people miss is I don't care what somebody tells me. I care if what they tell me makes logical sense and fits within the reality of what we're talking about. If somebody tells me that, oh, this fraud was they did it this way. A big one is, oh, Enron lied. And they had all these off the books partnerships, which is the heart of this off the books partnerships. They didn't disclose. You go, wait a minute. I've read the SEC filings. They did disclose them.

42:38And, oh, there was a partnership that was financing Enron operations that was being run by one of its executives, and they never disclosed it. Yes, they did. Just because someone told you that doesn't mean it's true. You can look it up. It's a public document. There it is disclosed. And so the questions became much more complicated. It's what did they do that wasn't disclosed? And how did those things make a difference? And why didn't people know what was in the disclosures? And at the end of the day, it was a much more complex story without, oh, here are the absolute good guys and here are the absolute bad guys.

43:24People always wanted to be good guys and bad guys. And it's always more complicated. And at the end of the day, that was how I did it. Once I understood this stuff at a fairly strong level, and it just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper every day I worked, I was able to really do stories. There was always something, I always said my best source is logic. And if you understand what the complexities of the field, then logic will take you to where, what questions there are to be asked. And logic can prove to be wrong. But the other thing is that if you know what you're talking about, you can stand out among the sources.

44:16If you're not sitting there going, somebody told me such and such, how do you respond? I never do that. Ever. It's always, I'm working, I want to hear what you have to say. This is what I hear. Is that lining up within? Ultimately, it doesn't become like on the one hand, on the other hand. It becomes I'm able to figure out who's right and who's wrong because I have bothered to wait. to wait and to learn the complexities before jumping into it, but with both feet. Up next on Remarkable People. It's really, really hard. Doing it right takes an enormous amount of time, an enormous amount of self-doubt.

45:03The people who doubted themselves in my career, the people who have consistently thought they were getting it wrong, were the greatest reporters.

45:17become a little more remarkable with each episode of remarkable people it's found on apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows welcome back to remarkable people with guy kawasaki from the outside looking in when you read about pteranos do you say to yourself this was well done? It was well analyzed? Or did the Wall Street Journal just jump in on that and said, Elizabeth lied, Sonny lied, they're going to go to jail? I think that they did a very good job. I think that was also a complicated story. And they really delved into those complications very well and got it very clearly.

46:07The conclusion of responsibility took a little time, but eventually it did start to sneak in on responsibility. But they didn't jump into it full force from the beginning, which is what happened with Enron. It's like, oh, it's all Liam Skilling, the heads of the company. It's like, well, how do we know that? We don't know anything. We don't know what happened. and now there have been some horrible stories that have run in the journal there that have run in the time of over the last couple of years in terms of on the business side of things and i stand back scratching my head going that's not a good story and wait wait i can look at it and say, okay, this is going to blow up in their faces.

46:59And it does. But, but okay, from the outside looking in, just I'm a reader of the Times or the Post or the, or the journal. How do I know that? What, what's the tells on this is a lousy story? Well, you have to pay attention to bylines. First of all, as an example, there was a journalist, a financial journalist at the Times, Floyd Norris. If he wrote it, I know it was true. foreign correspondent, Steve Erlein. If he writes it, I know it's true. Or it says truth is a complex concept. It's accurate and fair. People say, I write the truth. Well, if you write the truth, then you can't possibly be wrong.

47:40So people write what is accurate and fair. And there are people like that throughout all publications. But then there are also people who you read and go, that's a great example. There was a story, I won't say in which publication, where it had, I think, four reporters and three editors, and it was about this investment firm and how it was a sweatshop and really difficult and combative environment and interviews with 12 current and former. I'm like, 12? How many people work there? 3 ,000, wow. And so you sit there going, okay, that story strikes me as far-fetched. We have something these days which are called employee reviews online.

48:37Let me look it up. Let's see what happens. Oh, four and a half stars from 2 ,000 employees. What do they have to say? This place is a hothouse. but if you're able to work hard and work through this it's enormously rewarding this is not the kind of place to come to and it was all like how is it phrased yeah some people would go oh my god it's so terrible but then when you read the reviews it was people going wow this is challenging and it's not for everybody so it's like okay well this story is going to blow up in their faces and it did this sounds like goldman sachs there was a story pertaining to bonanciere michael milkin i can't remember which publication it was in but just in reading it it was this doesn't make any sense i remember it was something to do with getting an enterprise zone designation over certain property and it was a big it was a big property.

49:44It was like many, many thousands of acres. And there was like one little line in there milking among a number of other investors. It's like, well, wait a minute. How many? Who? Are they related to him? What are we talking about? And then this billionaire is going to walk around going to the secretary of the treasury and saying, I want an enterprise zone designation for this piece of land? I was like, this doesn't make any sense. And it ended up that Milken, that an entity that may or may not have been controlled by Milken, nobody ever established that it was, but it was, owned, I think it was something like 2 % of this land.

50:31And the 98 % was owned by the other investors who had no connection to Milken other than they held adjacent properties. And you look at that, I could read the story from the get-go and just say, does this make logical sense that a billionaire would go to the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of the treasury would take action to make this particular property have a designated, it's like it, the world doesn't work that way. You don't just, the secretary doesn't just wave a magic wand and poof, it has that, you know, the government is much more complex and why would Milken go to the trouble and why, you know, you just, it didn't make any sense and it ended up, It didn't make any sense because it wasn't correct.

51:30You know, there was going way back in time. There was, what was his name? The guy from the New York Times who was making stories up at a whole cloth. So it was a big scandal. And how can I not remember his name? Anyway, this was around 2005. And I read a story he wrote. It was about the DC sniper. And I read a story he wrote, and the second paragraph – I forget what it was that it had. It was the lead of the paper. And the second paragraph said, according to three federal law enforcement officials and two state officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

52:19And I finished it. I said, well, that was made up because the source, I've used anonymous sourcing and it's complicated. and to have five anonymous sources, three on the federal level, two on the state level, who are all giving you the same piece of information and are all explaining precisely why they are speaking to you on background and all of them have the same reason. It's an editor's wet dream. This is the kind of thing they tell us to do and it's not doable. It's not that we don't do it because we're being difficult. We don't do it because it's not doable. Well, this guy did it. And what I figured was that Jason Blair, that was the thing.

53:07What I figured was he made up the sourcing. I never imagined he made up the whole story. And that's what ended up being true, is that Jason Blair was making up stories and getting really good play in the New York Times. because he had blockbuster stories with huge sourcing that met all of the desired standards that editors demanded but never got. And they're the reason they never got. Okay. I got to ask you this because you're one of the few people I can trust with an answer for this question. All right. So it seems like in this political environment, the conservatives say, quote unquote, mainstream media is suppressing our speech.

53:57And then the liberals say mainstream media, they don't condemn Trump enough as a threat to democracy. So liberals have their issues, conservatives have their issues with mainstream media. And by that, I think they're referring to the Post and the Times. So what do we believe? What is the role of mainstream media? Anytime anybody says, oh, the New York Times is a liberal publication, I go, which article led you to think that? And they always cite the editorial page. And it's like, that's an editorial. Editorial isn't meant to be opinion. And I'm like, yes, but that bleeds into the news. Like, never did with me.

54:41Now, what is wrong with all areas of news? Reporting is hard. It's really, really hard. Doing it right takes an enormous amount of time, an enormous amount of self-doubt. The people who doubt themselves in my career, the people who have consistently thought they were getting it wrong, were the greatest reporters. Because if you're not consistently thinking you're getting it wrong, you're probably getting it wrong. You know, you're always playing defense if you think you're getting it wrong, which means you're busy making things. Is there bias in people's personal beliefs that bleeds into the news?

55:33I used to say, of course, people have biases, but good journalists do not allow. There is a thing of objectivity and you are able to objectively know a fact from a belief and you can have a value system. But once you get out of social areas, reporters tend to be people who have more experience with the LGBTQ community. They tend to be people who are widely read. They tend to be people who have more of a social experience that gives them one perspective. Now, the problem is that it blinds them to other perspectives. There was a great book I read called White Working Class, which is really about the white working class and not in a look down your nose way, but actually in a let's examine the values here, the real values, where they stem from, and why big news organizations don't get it.

56:49And it was a really, really fascinating book. And it's true. There are things that they don't get. I'm really circling around your question. for that answer? I would say that what has started to happen is that more and more opinion and personal values, it used to be the problem was just laziness, but now it is more and more opinion and personal values are getting into the news. And that is from every perspective, Conservative, liberal, whatever. And one of the greatest editors of modern times is a fellow named Marty Barron, who was the editor-in-chief at the Boston Globe and at the Washington Post.

57:42And he was the senior editor at the New York Times. Just a brilliant guy. And he gave a speech or wrote something. I read it. I think it was a transcript of a speech where he was talking about how expressing the value of objectivity and objectivity is important. And I was like, why are we even discussing this? Of course, it's true. This is like saying it's important to wash your hands before performing surgery. I'm like, yeah. And I had no idea this was a topic of debate. And it ends up that it is. I would encourage everyone. I don't know if this will come up with it, but search Martin Barron and objectivity and see if you can find this speech or whatever it is.

58:33because it was horrifying to me to realize that this was a discussion and that Marty was saying in the course of his speech, or what he wrote, was making it clear that he was getting progressively in the minority. Talk about arrogance it takes for a reporter to think that their non-objective beliefs have any value at all? In my books, one of the things I get cited for more than anything else is, well, you know, Kurt never said his opinion on what people should conclude. And my answer to that is, once I finish the book, you know everything I do. I mean, not every single thing, but you know everything that's important enough to make your own conclusions.

59:28And I am at that point no more qualified to make a conclusion than you are. And so I will give you the facts. I will not tell you what to think. My opinion has no value. Should there be a statement that in a recent speech, Donald Trump channeled or emulated or was similar to Adolf Hitler, and therefore he is a threat to democracy. That's an opinion. That's not a fact, right? It does not belong in there. But you can state very clearly that when Trump talks about vermin, you can then say this statement set off outrage and upset because it is the language that critics say is the language of Adolf Hitler.

1:00:22And you can quote what Hitler said, where he used these exact words and then quote people talking about it. So yeah, but should you stand up and down and say, oh my God, he's a Nazi? No, that's not a reporter's job. Now, if I was on the op-ed page, would I say that? That would be in the headline. or he's a fascist. Yes, that would be in the headline. And a lot of people are now starting to say he is a fascist. And all you have to do is go off and read about fascists and recognize that that's what we're dealing with. And Joe Scarborough the other morning said, okay, we need to finally start using that word.

1:01:06He's like, yeah, you do. But in terms of reporting, if you are telling that, the Republican Party doesn't do any great shakes here either because you go to them and say, Trump said this. What do you think? They know exactly what he said. They heard it. They got an aide coming in going, oh, my God, Trump just said this. And they'll go, oh, I haven't seen it. I can't say it. OK. This is the dissentist effect. No, it's been going on for years. This has been going on since Trump got into office. The, oh, I have a lunch. And I've always wanted to see if somebody had the guts to walk up and say, Senator, are you going to lunch?

1:01:48And because I have a question about Donald Trump. Or to walk over with, I mean, DeSantis the other day when he was asked about something that Elon Musk had done. Yeah, I haven't seen it. his agreeing with the anti-Semitic tweet. He said, well, I haven't seen it. It's okay. Here it is. This is what he said. This is what was said. This is what he said. Oh, I don't know the context. It's a tweet. There is no context. That's it. We're not talking about Moby Dick. We're talking about a total of 50 words. And that's the kind of dodgeball that the failure to do follow-ups is one of the biggest failures of our profession.

1:02:35Now, if you don't start doing follow-ups, if you allow someone to say something absolutely ridiculous, and then you move on to the next topic, you're no good. You shouldn't be out there. And there's one, oh, how can I not remember his? I'm doing so badly on names today. And this is someone I know personally, an msnbc reporter or anchor who had something on the peacock network and he's the best interviewer out there and i cannot for the life of me oh medi hassan yeah maybe oh medi hassan has been here he's been on we've interviewed him and he's amazing he is what every journalist should try to be and not enough of them do because he does not let people get away with anything he And if you watch Meet the Press these days, you go, what do you think of Trump on such a time?

1:03:36Well, Trump is 700 feet tall and weighs eight pounds. OK, and following up. And what about Biden? It's wait a minute. Follow up, for God's sake. Challenge what they're saying. Don't just move on to the next topic. because then, and this bothers me a lot, is I believe that all TV news on one level or the other have become propaganda machines. They bring on the same people to say the same thing over and over and over again. They rarely challenge what's being said. They rarely follow up. It's all about getting people worked up one way or the other. and Mehdi Hassan does that. He gets people worked up, but he gets them worked up because he's plowing in and getting information, forcing people to give answers.

1:04:35I would pay to watch Mehdi Hassan be the moderator of a presidential debate. Yeah, me too, but it would never work because he would never do it, and nor should he do it. Presidential debates aren't debates. So the thing about Mehdi Hassan is he has no qualms about asking the same question over and over and over again. And a good interviewer, if somebody's dodging and dodging and dodging, you just say, it certainly seems like you're not willing to answer this question, but I'm going to ask it again until you finally do. This is the question. Why won't you answer the question? Let's make it into a yes or no question.

1:05:16And the thing is that journalists these days on TV are not asking hard questions. And so when you end up, there's a great old line that I love and applies to so much that if you have a barrel full of garbage and add a teaspoon full of wine, you get garbage. and if you have a barrel full of wine and add a teaspoon full of garbage you get garbage something that's supposed to be good you only need to add a little bit of bad and it's bad and if something's bad you can add a little bit of good and it's still bad and the news business some of it is a barrel full of garbage some of it is a barrel full of wine but very little of it is garbage free and as a result we have a lot of oh my god that is a brilliant metaphor we gotta end this episode my head is exploding i mean i i think you have clearly proved if nothing else in this interview that you do not have to have a grand mal seizure to be insightful anymore.

1:06:39You've moved beyond that. I figured out how to have some of the benefits without all of the downside. So that's Kurt Eichenwald. For the last 20 or so years, I've had Meniere's disease. and one of the symptoms of Meniere's disease is sporadic attacks of vertigo. So at any given moment, the world could start spinning and I would be on the ground, sometimes throwing up, in my opinion, not nearly as traumatic as an epileptic seizure. But I could tell you what an effect the threat of vertigo had on me. so I can only imagine the effect of epilepsy on Kurt. He has become such an accomplished investigative reporter.

1:07:33It is truly remarkable. And the story of how his family coped with it, or in one case, didn't cope with it, is pretty amazing. I hope if you have members of your family who have something like this, You appreciate what they're going through and do everything you can to help them control or overcome or cope with their affliction. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. My thanks to two people at The Conversation, Beth Daly and Priyanka Sharma Sinthar. The two of them made this episode possible. And if you want really first-rate journalism, check out The Conversation. I guarantee you that you will find very few news sources more informative than The Conversation.

1:08:32Let me also thank the Remarkable People team. That would be Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez. They are remarkable sound engineers. Then we have the Nismer sisters. That's Madison, who is the producer of this podcast and co-author of our book, Think Remarkable. Tessa Nismer, recent graduate, provides the background research that preps me for these interviews and makes the transcripts perfect. Finally, we have Luis Magana, Fallon Yates, and Alexis Nishimura. This is the Remarkable People team, and we are dedicated to helping you become remarkable in 2024. One plug for our book. Mattis and I have a book that is releasing on March 6.

1:09:28It's called Think Remarkable. Nine paths to transform your life and make a difference. This book reflects the wisdom of the 200 or so remarkable people we've interviewed, as well as our experiences in business and life. The blurbs are from, believe it or not, Carol Dweck, the mother of the growth mindset Bob Cialdini, the godfather of influence Julia Cameron, the mother of creativity and blurb the likes of which has never been seen Amy Handy, she was the copy editor of the book and her email comments to me were so positive and so flattering I decided to turn them into a blurb. Oh, and by the way, last but not least, the Ford is by Jane Goodall.

1:10:27Yes, the Jane Goodall. How can you resist that book? Oh my God. End of promotion. Think remarkable. Available March 6th all over the world. With that, let me say mahalo and aloha.

1:10:48This is Remarkable People.