From Colbert to Trump’s WSJ lawsuit, Axios’ Sara Fischer on media turmoil

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1:22Hey, everyone. Bob Safian here. Today we present a special episode focused on one of the most consequential weeks ever in the media business, from Stephen Colbert's cancellation by CBS to Donald Trump's lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal to the clawing back of a billion dollars from PBS and NPR. My guest is Axios reporter Sarah Fisher, who cuts through the conspiracy theories to unpack what's really going on. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

2:00I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Sarah Fisher, media correspondent at Axios and analyst for CNN. Sarah, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. So I gotta say that the headlines in media have been kind of mind-boggling over the past week. I mean, we have CBS canceling Stephen Colbert's show, Trump suing the Wall Street Journal, Congress clawing back funding for PBS and NPR. Like, it makes your head spin, plus Substack raising money at a billion-dollar valuation and Superman killing it at the box office and Emmy nominations and Netflix earnings. The news cycle's so intense. For someone who's covering all this, like, how are you doing?

2:40How is it juggling all this? Yeah, it's not too bad. This is my job. This is what I'm paid to do. You know, this would be like saying to a surgeon, oh my gosh, you had to do, you know, three heart transplants, then you had to do a total blood transfusion, and then you had to see patients for checkups. They'd tell you, like, that's what I signed up for. So that's how I feel about it too. And it's actually better to be very busy and to have a lively news cycle than to be sort of like twiddling your thumbs and looking for something to cover. All right. Well, so I'd say let's start with the most important or consequential, but it's hard for me to even pick what that is.

3:18So let's start with the most recent bombshell, which is President Trump suing the Wall Street Journal for$10 billion over an article that said that back in 2003, Trump sent a birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein. Body is the term I think used to describe it, right? With an illustration of a naked woman. We haven't seen this note. The Wall Street Journal didn't publish the actual thing, but it comes as MAGA World is screaming for the release of anything related to Epstein. Trump's suit also targets Rupert Murdoch personally, the media mogul behind the Wall Street Journal and News Corp. This suit, is there any merit to it?

3:58Like, does it matter if there's merit? So legal experts say that it's sort of a flimsy case, but to your point, you don't have to have a strong case to do damage. Anytime you sue a media company, you cost them lots of time, energy, resources, reputational drama. And so the lawsuits that Donald Trump has waged against media companies have been pretty effective. The one thing that's interesting about this particular case is that I don't think Donald Trump would sue if he was very concerned about what would come up in discovery if this went to trial. And so that changes the dynamic of this lawsuit.

4:40It makes it different from his lawsuits with CBS and ABC. He settled both of those for$16 and$15 million, respectively. He has something to lose here. if something comes up in discovery. And he still chose to sue anyway. And so even though legal experts think he has a weak case, that piques my interest because I don't think Donald Trump is wading into lawsuits where more could come up around his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, if that's something he's been so aggressively trying to bury, according to Democrats and now some folks in the MAGA community. Yeah, I mean, there are these conspiracy theories on all sides in some ways when it comes to Epstein.

5:24But what you're saying is, because in some ways, because Trump is a public figure, right? Like the legal burden he has to surpass to be able to prove damages is high, even if the report from the journal isn't the actual thing. Yeah, and you have to also prove not just the damages, but that they published this with malintent, with actual malice is the legal term. And that's also a difficult thing to prove in court. So I think that Donald Trump is facing a tough legal argument, but I also think he wouldn't have waged a lawsuit if he felt like he really had something to hide. And so that's what makes this one particularly complicated.

6:11I will say in terms of the Wall Street Journal, this is a newspaper that is very, very serious about its journalism, and that's not just on the newsroom side. It's lately published a lot of editorials that have been critical of the Trump administration, including the Trump administration's targeting of the media industry. And so I take it seriously if Emma Tucker, their editor-in-chief and the journal decided to publish this story and move it forward, they would not have done that if they didn't think that they had ample reason to. So this is going to be a very, very, very interesting case to watch.

6:46But again, very different sort of precedents that are being set, very different approach than what we've seen in the past. Remember, Donald Trump, this is the first media company that he's actually sued as president. He's in a counter lawsuit currently with the Associated Press around blocking its reporters. And he sued those other two media companies before he was elected. He's done plenty of media and defamation lawsuits and has been involved in those lawsuits in the past. But this is the first one as a sitting president. I mean, and of course, the beyond the legal implications, right, Trump has been very aggressive about, you know, charging that certain outlets are fake news.

7:29Right. It's not just lawsuits. And and this sort of puts the Wall Street Journal firmly in that camp, I guess. Donald Trump does not care who you are or who owns you. If it's politically convenient for him to call you fake news, he will do so. And if it's politically convenient for him to rely on your authority to prove a point, he will do so. The best example being while he was engaged in a lawsuit about CBS, on Truth Social, he was promoting positive polls conducted by CBS about him. And if there's a story by the AP that suits his position on something, he will promote it too. Same thing here.

8:08If the Wall Street Journal were to report something that was bad about Democrats, he'd blast that out on Truth Social. Donald Trump is an equal opportunist when it comes to how he targets the media. And so it doesn't really matter who you are. If it benefits him to bash you or benefits him to support you, he will do that. And I'm curious, for someone like you who's covering this stuff, does this impact at all how you think about or approach your own work? Or do you worry that people aren't going to trust your reporting or the president's going to go after you? You're just like, I'm just going to do my thing because I don't know what or how he's going to react to different things.

8:48Well, I go into this knowing that trust in institutions, including the media, has declined dramatically over the past few years. And so it's not a Sarah Fisher trust problem. It is a media trust problem. And that forces me to be more diligent, more transparent about showing my work. It's not just according to a source. It's according to a source that works at this company that's in this level of a position that had knowledge of this situation because they were in the room. You have to explain yourself more in an era where there is less trust. And then in terms of being concerned about lawsuits, I was always and I have always been concerned about lawsuits because anytime you get something wrong, you are susceptible to a lawsuit.

9:26I do think that this administration is more apt to sue. And so a lot of news companies are taking extra precautions and extra measures, hiring more lawyers, making sure their journalists are going through more legal trainings. But in terms of does it force me to think about my journalism in a different way? Nope. I do the same thing for the most part. I just try to be more transparent about my work and a little bit more careful about running things through legal. Yeah, I had a mentor early on in my journalism career who said to me, you know, the legal standard for what you can be sued for is sort of here, right?

9:58The truth is a higher standard. And as long as what you're running and you're printing and you're talking about is true, you know, you're protected, right? And that is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get to the truth. Yes, and as long as it's going back to the actual malice, I think a big thing here is, yes, you always need to be getting to the truth or the closest variation to the truth that you can get to in the time and resources that you have. But you also need to be putting in a good faith effort to do right by everybody that you're citing and that you're quoting and that you're writing about, going to them for comment.

10:33You know, one thing I had a lot of empathy for in the White House is that Caroline Leavitt, their press secretary, said some days, and by the way, it's not just her. It's every White House press secretary. It's every press secretary and communications official. She says some days people come to me after they publish the story for Kaya or they come to me five minutes before. You know, as journalists, sometimes we have a lot of restrictions that we're working through. But that I heard that and that made me really think like, how can I do a better job to be doing a more thoughtful job to be getting to that closest approximation of the truth?

11:04How can I go to people and give them more time to explain themselves, maybe explain their side of the story? I think more consciously about that now. So you mentioned earlier the the Trump's claims against 60 Minutes and CBS, which were settled with CBS parent Paramount agreeing to pay out 16 million dollars. That leads us to the second piece of big news in the last week, which is CBS announcing that they're canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump's. You and I are recording this Monday afternoon. Who knows what Colbert will do on the show tonight?

11:38CBS claimed financial reasons for the cancellation. But there are a lot of other theories zooming around. Can you break this down for our audience? What is your reporting show about what's really going on? If I had to guess, I think that this show was losing money because most late night shows lose money. And CBS is facing a ton of financial pressure, as are most traditional television networks in the streaming era. And eventually they would have had to either reduce the number of nights, reduce the number of staff, claw the show back or shutter the show altogether. together. But what you have right now is this perfect storm where you have the opportunity to shutter the show, but make it look as though you did it to appease the Trump administration politically.

12:24And I think that's sort of what happened here. Now, I think it would have been - So they want it to look that way? They want it to look that way to the administration? I don't know, but I think they would be wise to frame it that way, right? Because you know that you're not going to get your deal approved by the FCC unless you not only settle with Donald Trump, but make an effort to show them that you're doing what's best for public service programming. The new CEO of the company that's buying CBS, so the CEO of the company that's buying CBS, David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance Media, met with the chair of the FCC on July 15th, so two days before they canceled the Colbert show, Paramount did, and that was basically what their lawyers said in a filing.

13:07They said, look, we tried to explain to the FCC that we want to get the approval of the transfer of broadcast licenses approved very, very quickly, and that in turn, we can promise we'll do good public service. And so I think that this is a way that they can sort of prove to them that they're serious about that effort and do it in a way that's not so aggressive in what they have to pull because they likely were already mulling changes to their late shows anyway. If you think about the past two years, Trevor Noah left, James Gordon left, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has been pulled. NBC has reportedly pondered moving Seth Meyers, although his contract's been renewed through 2028.

13:49I mean, the era of late night is tough. So I think that CBS is probably thinking about doing something anyway, and it was a politically convenient time to announce. Now, the challenge with that is it comes at a massive reputational hit for the network. This is what the CBS 60 Minutes settlement did. It hurt the network's reputation, and that's what this is doing for the network as well. But I think that the new owners and the current owners, they don't care because what other choice do they have? If this deal doesn't go through, no other deal would get approved in the Trump administration. And by the time Donald Trump is out of office, you're looking at this company losing significant market value to the point where they might even have to gut CBS News anyway.

14:35So I can see why they thought that this was the lesser of all evils, unfortunately. And the choice, I mean, they've said the Colbert show is still going to run until May of next year. Like, why not just shut it down now if it's losing money? Because they probably already sold a lot of ads in the upfront. They have commitments. They have commercial commitments. They have people who's under year-long contracts. They have vendors that they're already paying out. So there's a lot of reasons you don't just shut it immediately. But I think this also speaks to the fact that it's a message that's being sent.

15:11You know, the fact that they announced this being shuttered two days after that meeting, even though they don't plan to cancel the show for a while, it's because they want to make sure that the announcement comes so that they can get a deal approved. I mean, there's just, I don't think anyone would deny that that's what the optics are here, even if CBS says, you know, this is a financial decision, like they have enough plausible deniability to be able to say it's a financial decision, even though there's, in my opinion, probably more to it. Yeah, I mean, I had someone speculating to me that part of the financial decision was that Colbert has been outspoken enough about the president that advertisers maybe are becoming more cautious about advertising their brands next to Colbert's content, as if Trump might hold that against them.

15:59That's a little bit of a flimsier argument because then you would say that about all news and all comedy. It's all the same problem, this brand safety issue. And yes, advertisers are pulling back, but they're pulling back across the board. I don't think Colbert is uniquely being targeted by that problem. But the pullback that you're mentioning, I mean, there is a pullback in ad spending for Q2 across the board. Is some of that because advertisers are more uneasy about being associated with anything that might be viewed as problematic by the Trump administration? Or is it broader? Yeah, it's way broader.

16:34I mean, the tariffs have really killed the ad market because anytime there's uncertainty, you can't market your products. You know, if you don't, if you're an auto company and you don't know what your production is going to look like, how many cars are going to be on your lots, you can't spend marketing around the cars on the lots. So the ad slowdown is much broader than what's happening in the news space. But I do think over the past few years, the conversation around brand safety, around news content, around comedy, it's shifted. There are advertisers that used to love to advertise around news because it had a high ROI, return on investment.

17:07You have some of the most engaged, affluent people who consume news content. So the ads are very effective. But yes, advertisers have yanked a lot of their ads from news content because of the controversy. And it's not just mainstream outlets. It's also, you've seen mainstream outlets that are considered more established. You've seen this with Fox News, which is also established, but it's more conservative. There have been a lot of boycotts around its content because advertisers have felt that it's not brand safe. It's not just like the CBS's and the NBC's of the world. Everyone's dealing with this problem.

17:42Ironically, Fox, when they had those big boycotts a few years ago around Tucker Carlson show, I was like, man, this is tough for Fox. They're going to have to really lean into their pay TV subscription revenues. Now, because Donald Trump consumes the content, their ad revenues are sky high. So it's kind of funny how things bounce around. Sarah's assessment of the weakening business of late night shows like Colbert's is undeniable. YouTube clips alone aren't enough to support a network TV show. Yet her why now explanation, downright disturbing. A cynical signal to the Trump administration to help gain FTC approval for a deal.

18:19So what else is lurking beneath the surface in the latest media convulsions, from defunding PBS and NPR to this year's Emmy nominations? We'll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

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19:29And here's the best part. Join AWS Activate today and you could score up to$100 ,000 in AWS credits tailored to your stage and network. Go to aws.amazon.com slash activate and start building. Expanding your business in the U.S. can feel like a maze. Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth. That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one.

20:12So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free. Before the break, Axios reporter Sarah Fisher explained what's at stake in Donald Trump's lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and why CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's late night show. Now we talk about cutting funding for PBS and NPR, why media platforms like Substack and Reddit are booming, and what this year's Emmy nominations say about HBO, Netflix and Peacock. Let's jump back in.

20:53Let's talk about public media. The vote in Congress to claw back over a billion dollars in funds. We we've had the CEOs of both NPR and PBS on the show, and they said the pain would mostly hit local stations. You've reported on the stakes. Is that right? That like the big shows and big stations won't be as hampered. Ken Burns documentaries are still going to be funded and made, but it's local news and programming that's going to be thinned out. Yes. So if you take a look at NPR National, only about 1 % of its funding comes from federal government funding. In PBS, it's about 15%. Because the vast majority of budget, that$1.1 billion over two years that's being cut, it goes to these hyper-local stations.

21:40And a lot of it is in rural areas where these stations have very little access to reader donations because the household incomes in those areas are much lower. So those are the stations that are going to be impacted. Some of those rural stations, by the way, they rely on government funding for like up to 50 % of their budget. So it's expected that we're going to see a lot of those rural stations close. And what's sad about this is the whole point of this reputationally was to hit NPR and PBS. NPR and PBS nationally are not the ones that are going to be impacted. It's your mom and small public media station that is, you know, airing your board meetings and your municipal board meetings and your school lunch hearings and all that kind of stuff.

22:23Those are the ones that are going to be impacted. And a lot of those rural stations are in Republican districts. So it's going to be funny the way that this has played out because it's not going to have the impact, the intended impact that these cuts were sort of broadcast to have. Hmm. But but politically, I guess it works with the base. No, it really doesn't. Like, that's the thing. Polling suggests that people value their public media and that people don't want this funding cut. I think what is a very real thing, though, is people do not like the national programming all the time. You know, there's one complaint that you hear from syndicators of NPR programming, which is like, why are we so focused on LGBTQ storylines?

23:06It doesn't impact me in rural Iowa as much. So I do think there's a lot of people who think that the programming needs to be changed, But the vast majority of people don't necessarily want these public media outlets to be completely gutted. I do think it helps Donald Trump with this broader political narrative of like, I'm going after the progressive mainstream media. But people don't necessarily view their local hometown radio station as that. They just view it as KQER, whatever the acronym is. They don't view it as NPR. I mean, it's interesting that, you know, these smaller stations, people may have a more emotional connection to and may trust them more.

23:51I guess it brings me back to this idea about sort of the ways that both trust and the media business are kind of fracturing and becoming more atomized. I'm thinking of the reporting you did on Substack, raising a$100 million investment, now a unicorn valued at over a billion dollars. Does Substack's rise indicate that there's a kind of content that consumers are hungry for that's changing, that's either more narrow or from a particular kind of source? Or is Substack more about the changing business model of media overall? the money is actually moving much faster than the consumer behavior. And that's unusual.

24:39Typically, the consumer behavior moves much faster than the investment. In this case, if you take a look very consistently, Pew, Gallup, those polls will show you the number one most trusted media is always local. It's always, especially local broadcasts is huge. And by the way, the number one media in terms of weekly penetration in the United States that has more reach into any other Americans is terrestrial radio. So that is where right now the bulk of trust and reach is. But what I think you're seeing happening is investors are eyeing a trend, which is that more people are moving trust from institutions to individuals that they have a relationship with or that they can relate to.

25:19And so investors want to put their money behind those individuals. Increasingly, Substack has become the platform for a ton of those individuals. But that's very much at the national level. I mean, Substack has a ton of writers, podcasters, cartoonists, even video people on its platform, but it's not been the lucrative place for local journalists to go. It's a great place for former cable stars to go. And so unfortunately, I don't think this investment in Substack can be addressing this fallout of local news. And that's where all the trust is. where I do think you're going to see more and more people turn to trust in local is on tech platforms where they can join groups and develop community.

26:01That's where a lot of misinformation is shared, but that's where it's going. So if you think about Facebook groups or a next door, these are apps where people are going, they're developing relationships with people in their community. There's a lot of trust there. And so the news that those people share is something that people are starting to trust more than even like local broadcasts. Unfortunately, you know this, everyday people share misinformation all the time. So it creates a situation where I'm not very hopeful for local, sadly. Yeah, no, and, you know, Reddit is like the example of sort of a, your local community is virtual.