Emily Maitlis on Epstein, Prince Andrew, and why American journalists can’t do interviews

0:07Welcome to Big Signals from Semaphore Media, where we are talking to the most important and interesting people in our new media age. I'm Max Tani, media editor here at Semaphore, and with me as always is our editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. How's it going, Ben?

0:23Ben Smith:It's good, Max. I feel like you're also one of the most interesting people, so, you know, just to close the circle. Thank you very much. Well, that's why I'm on the show every week and all of our guests are on the show just once. But this week we have somebody who's just a little bit more interesting than me. It's Emily Maitlis, the beloved UK journalist, longtime presenter at the BBC and co-host of the News Agents podcast. We'll talk to her about her role in the newly emergent British podcast space, her famous interview with Prince Andrew about Jeffrey Epstein and what that means in today's crazy Epstein news cycle, and why American TV interviewers are so disappointing today.

1:04Ben Smith:The British are such snobs about this, I gotta say. Well, we'll decide if it's snobbery or if it's justified when we talk to Emily Maitlis right after the break.

1:30So, Ben, two weeks ago, you wrote something for our media newsletter about Jeffrey Epstein and how to think about the Epstein conspiracies and whether the media was kind of too obsessed with these conspiracy theories. Some people had some opinions on what you had to say. What did you write about Epstein? How are you thinking about this new wave of coverage and all of the political turmoil, chaos, and intrigue that's come along with it in Washington? You know, I guess I have two thoughts.

2:06Ben Smith:And one is that it's obviously incredibly fun to watch people who peddled a bunch of nonsense conspiracy theories to get hoisted on their own petards. Like, that's just eternally entertaining. And I think for that reason, and because Democrats see a political opportunity, there's a kind of universal consent that everyone should just dive in with the most credulous possible view of the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was running like a global blackmail scheme on behalf of the Mossad. I may have lost track of where it is today, but that's the general idea. And to me, it's QAnon for people with college degrees.

2:43Ben Smith:You know, it's a theory that if you look at the details briefly, it seems like, oh, this all must, you know, fit together on the whiteboard. But there's a reality that, you know, investigative agencies in every country and every investigative journalist in the world have gone after this for like 10 years, 15 years, depending on who. You know, Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in jail, presumably because she couldn't hand over evidence about whichever, you know, global oligarch is involved at the heart of this scandal because she didn't have any. And there are so many sort of specific reasons that different groups that ought to know better are peddling the most extreme versions of this conspiracy theory.

3:21Ben Smith:But I do think people who want to live in reality need to be a little careful about it and to really try to confine yourself to what is known, which, by the way, is pretty appalling, pretty interesting. So then how should we think about our guest on the show this week, Emily Maitlis? She is obviously a very famous British journalist, former anchor for the BBC's Evening News. but also she's probably most famous to people here in the U.S. and around the world for her interview with Prince Andrew about Epstein. And I mean, you know, I'm not a tinfoil hat guy. I'm kind of an anti-conspiracy theorist.

4:02I tend to think that people are generally too dumb or have too big of mouths to keep a really good secret. As a journalist, that's my belief given the fact that, you know, people tell me secrets and things that they shouldn't be saying all day. Nothing as big as this, of course. But, you know, I came away from that interview thinking, oh, my God, this guy, Prince Andrew, he is guilty of something for sure. I mean, he came away seeming guilty. So why should we think then that people's obsession with Epstein is ridiculous if this was a huge media moment in which a large swath of the public thought that Prince Andrew had done something wrong?

4:40And indeed, then after this interview that Emily did with Prince Andrew, he had to step back from his royal duties, whatever that means.

4:48Ben Smith:We're not going to ever figure out what that is from the side of the Atlantic. I mean, Emily got one of the huge scoops of the Epstein universe. And one of the few people who, among other things, was photographed with this arm around an underage girl, Prince Andrew. And if you may not know Emily Maidless because you're not a British news consumer, she's a central figure in British media, star host on the BBC, who then kind of shocked the world in 2022 by leaving to start a podcast called The News Agents, which is one of a few podcasts that have really come to dominate British media in a way that while podcasts in the U.S., you know, they're interesting, they're everywhere, they're kind of the main alternative source of news.

5:30Ben Smith:I think in the U.K., The News Agents is like a central, central daily factual news program in a somewhat different way. Emily is portrayed in actually two recent fictionalized versions of her life, one called Scoop, one called A Very Royal Scandal, both focusing on her 2019 interview with Prince Andrew in which she basically persuaded him it was an opportunity to talk about his charitable ventures, perhaps clear the air a bit about the Epstein stuff. and, you know, really pressed him very hard, very directly about what was going on and kind of ended his career to the degree that you can do that.

6:07Ben Smith:To a royal, I am, yeah, I'm really, I am very interested in what she thinks watching this play out here now six years later. And, you know, to what degree she buys or does not buy my skepticism about the kind of biggest picture theories. Yeah, well, we'll have to figure out whether she agrees with you or she's ready to, you know, be like me and put on her tinfoil hat. We talked a few weeks ago to Ari Aster, the director of Eddington, who said that we are all a nation of Jim Garrisons now, Jim Garrison being the lead investigator, a real guy, but made most famous by the movie JFK. And, you know, I found myself actually moving in the opposite direction from you.

6:49I kind of felt, you know, previously like this is not a big deal. But now after watching Emily's interview with Prince Andrew, I'm full Jim Garrison. But you know what? We've got Emily waiting for us. So why don't we call her up and see what she thinks right now?

7:06Ben Smith:Well, Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely great to be here. And as I introduce you, I realize you are like incredibly famous in Great Britain. And so for some of our audience, this is like very exciting. And in the way of broadcast, many people in the U.S. have no idea who you are. By way of introduction, you were a huge presenter on the BBC who totally shocked the world in 2022 by going off to do a podcast. and I guess that is a very familiar arc and it's sort of something that a lot of the people we talk to are kind of wrestling with and I wonder if you could just talk us a little through that decision to leave the mothership Well the first thing I'd say is if you're ever going to quit your job in a dramatic way do it with a really good friend because it was a decision that three of us made at pretty much the same time and so it had something of the kind of Thelma and Louise you know, driving off the edge of the cliff into the canyon feeling to it because we were metaphorically holding hands as we took the biggest plunge of our, you know, professional lives at that point.

8:11And yes, I think a lot of people raised eyebrows. I had a very good job. I had a very central job. I was the lead presenter of BBC Two's Newsnight, which is our kind of flagship current affairs show at the BBC. And I think there was something that we felt was going on away from the world of television and sort of linear news. And partly it was, you know, chats with the director general in the kind of year up to, and he was like, what are we going to do about numbers? What are we going to do about youth? What are we going to do about people watching? What are we going to do about our audiences?

8:49And I remember saying to him like weird sort of presence of mind. I was like, I will bring you the interviews and I will get the stories done and I will do you phenomenal, you know, bits of television. But I cannot control the time that we're on or the platform that we're on or the channel that we're on. I cannot do that. You know, that is all part of something much bigger than me. And actually, as it turned out, yeah, we found a whole new audience when we left. And it was a sort of audience that remarkably hadn't been like diehard into politics, hadn't been sort of obsessive about Westminster, wasn't, you know, even a sort of daily news listener.

9:33We found lots of young people. We found moms on the school run. We found people who were kind of coming to news in a different way. And it's been sort of really reassuring. Do I mean sort of invigorating, actually, to find whole different audiences in places that we didn't know we could reach. Has that been kind of the biggest change moving from the evening news to podcasts? is what are the ways in which not only has your job changed, but has your journalism changed, making the kind of platform shift? I would say, first of all, my life has changed because I never used to go to bed before 1am. You know, we did late night news shows and then you come off, you know, absolutely buzzing and you're kind of reading Twitter and you're reading comments and you're talking to your colleagues.

10:20And I sort of used to end the day kind of with a vodka and a panic attack normally, you know, and very little sleep. And so the first thing that changed was like, oh my God, this is extraordinary. I can literally go to bed whenever I want. This is unbelievable. So it was a sort of life change first. And the audience thing has been really interesting because I think we've discovered three different audiences instead of one. You know, I would say that linear television gave us the people who watch Newsnight. And occasionally it It gave us, you know, more than our normal people if we were doing something kind of niche or specific or whatever.

10:59But it generally gave us the people who watch Newsnight. And now we have a YouTube audience, which is very different to our podcast audience, which is very different to our clips, TikTok, Insta audience. And so we've kind of reached people in different ways. But I think the more profound question you're asking is what do we do differently? and I think that the tone for an interview now is different. So we used to be very squeezed. You know, when you're doing live television, you always sound urgent and sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it just sounds rushed, to be honest. You know, you're always trying to squeeze people.

11:38You end up sort of cutting into them, cutting over them. Sorry, but, you know, we've got to go. Can I just rush it? Yes, we're there. And often people exploit that. You know, if you're doing a senior member of the government and they've worked out that you've got sort of six minutes max, then boy, do they kind of filibuster their way through the first answer and generally the last answer. And they will, you know, they will give you a potted history of everything that they've, you know, ever legislated on when you're trying to get to the nub of things. And so I guess the fact that people come in here and it's a really comfortable studio, our chairs are comfy, we give people hot beverages or iced coffee when they walk in, there is no rush, we don't sit there going, we've got to get the weather, you know, can I hurry you please, we've got to go.

12:23we have as much time for them as they have for us. And that changes, I think, the whole spirit of discourse. And what it generally means is that people leave happy. And that doesn't mean that we don't get to interrogate, you know, a philosophy or a policy or a change or whatever. But it means that they have their chance to talk about, you know, all the good things that they think it's doing or that it's done before we then kind of go, right, you know, let's have some accountability. Let's go back and check on this. And so you tend to get something that is a bit more rounded. You know, it feels less harried.

13:04It feels less taken out of context. I mean, isn't that the thing you always hear from, you know, politicians? Oh, my God, they took this out of context. I can't believe that you qured me out of context. And we don't. You know, they have they have as long as they want to make their case. Yes, if it's kind of boring, you know, we'll squeeze it down a bit. But generally, we get the best out of people by saying, yeah, no, you tell us your side, and then we'll ask you the questions about, you know, why 300 ,000 people have just signed a petition about your legislation overnight, or whatever it is.

13:36Ben Smith:Do you feel, I mean, I feel that too, like my impulse in interviews often is just to like hit people over the head immediately, and podcasts don't lend themselves to that. In fact, I feel a certain amount of pressure. And I wonder if you do too, like to be a little nicer here than I really probably am in my journalistic profession usually. And I mean, you've done some very tough interviews on television in your life, some very direct, very aggressive ones. And it feels to me like this medium, I don't know, favors being a little nicer. And I wonder, is that good for journalism? I think there are two things going on.

14:08One, quite often, you know, I might have booked to that guest myself, right? So you've put your, you know, your sense of self on the line a bit. You've said, oh, yeah, we'd love to talk to you about this. It'd be really interesting to hear about this. And so if you've done the booking, then you're kind of invested. Second, they come in, they're chatting, you know, there is the sort of preamble beforehand, which doesn't lend itself so easily to you then turning around and going, you know, why did you screw this up or whatever. But I think, I mean, I think you've, I can feel like in my solar plexus, I'm starting to kind of feel defensive because you've touched on something that's really raw, which is nobody wants to turn to a podcast and feel that their journalism is suffering or that they're not doing hard enough interviews or that they're not doing the same job that they would have done on sort of linear television.

15:01And so I do keep reminding myself of that, you know, and I mean, it's interesting. Like we did the Chancellor on the day that her budget came out last October and I was really conscious. We had to go to, you know, 11 Downing Street and we were sort of setting up and we had a camera problem and we kept her waiting. And there was this awful moment where because she'd been kept waiting, we were very apologetic. And I thought, oh, God, this is going to kill the whole vibe. Like, how do you turn around to somebody and say, you know, have you seen what your the implications of your policy is going to be on young workers coming to the workforce, blah, blah, blah, blah.

15:38And so we actually kind of took a moment out and we were like, we can apologize for being late, but we cannot let the journalism suffer, you know, as a result of this. And it was a really hard hit interview. And rightfully so. I mean, about a policy that was kind of pretty catastrophic across the range. and sometimes you just need to kind of, I think, step out and have that little word with yourself. A podcaster doesn't mean that you let all your journalism standards go out the window or that you don't do the tough interviews or that you sort of, you know, you end up being so friendly with the guests because you put them yourself.

16:13It cannot mean that. Otherwise, you know, we all sink. Yeah. As we were thinking about doing this interview with you, I went back and I watched, obviously, the most famous interview you did, the one with Prince Andrew in 2019. As I was watching that, I was struck by the feeling that these are the types of marquee television interviews that you used to see, not all the time, but with some regularity. If somebody had a big story to tell or they wanted to clear the air in some sort of way, they would say, okay, I'm going to go on the biggest news program or the most serious news program, and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to explain it.

16:50And it creates these really, really incredible and memorable moments. And I do think that that's not, there's memorable podcast interviews, but they don't have the flavor of that big marquee interview style. Can you still kind of get big interviews on the show? And have we lost that type of big marquee television interview? And what's going to replace it? Well, the first thing we decided when we started the podcast was that we were going to visualize everything. So that was a big step for us. I mean, now it feels very obvious, but this was kind of three years ago. And we said we cannot just be slightly crappy audio in somebody's garage.

17:27You know, it has to feel like a studio. So our studio is pretty much set up for television. And it's a better lit studio than any of the TV ones I used to work in. And so I think, I don't know if it gives you marquee, but I think it means that we take the visual side of things pretty seriously. And that if I'm asking a question, you should be able to see a cutaway of the interviewee's, you know, face as I'm talking, because I think that's really, really key. That sort of all adds to what you're describing, which is the drama. When we first started, I remember an interviewer saying, do you ever think you'll do an Andrew interview?

18:05You know, would Prince Andrew ever come to a podcast? And I remember thinking, oh, you know, you've set me that test. That is going to be the test, isn't it? Would Prince Andrew ever do a podcast interview? And I think increasingly, actually, the answer would now be yes. The first interview with the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, we did on the show, was when he was in opposition. And the clips are still played, like a lot of the clips are still played and actually still resonate now with the answers that he gave on that day. And so, I mean, I don't think there's going to be much in my life that will compare to the Prince Andrew interview in the sense of that kind of scale, an hour-long interview, you know, in the middle of a palace.

18:53I mean, it's kind of not your average Thursday. But I would say that the stuff that we are doing now should still have that longevity in terms of people remembering comments that were said and people remembering soundbites. And as I said, the Rachel Reeves chancer interview still gets played, you know, in clips now. The stuff with Keir Starmer from 2022 still gets played. 23 maybe it was. But, you know, so I sort of think we have to believe in our own medium a bit. You know, we have to believe that if that is the future, that we're going to still do the interviews as if they were going to be lasting testimonies of the journalism of the day.

19:41And obviously, what we're competing with now is like Joe Rogan three hours, right? And that whole debate about whether Kamala Harris was going to do Rogan and was it too much out of her busy schedule? And what happens if somebody's kind of spouting conspiracy at you? And do you sit there kind of being a jock and being kind of fun? Or do you say, no, you're talking absolute shite? You know, I think that is a whole sort of different question now. I mean, personally, I would say never do an interview that is three hours long because it's only ever going to end in tears. But I think I still feel like a journalist in this studio.

20:18I don't feel like somebody who just sits and chats.

20:21Ben Smith:Do you think, I mean, there's a sense, and I think advertisers love this, podcasters, I think, are ambivalent about it, that it's really all becoming television. that it's all becoming indistinguishable, that, you know, your show is going to wind up licensed to Channel 4 and playing at 6 p.m. or something, and that for viewers, and really for producers increasingly, this is all merging again. Do you buy that, and do you like the idea? I don't dislike the idea, but I don't agree with it. Actually, I think it's much more fragmented. I mean, look, we have discovered recently, and we just had our biggest week last week on on YouTube, right?

20:57And I think I feel confident saying that the people who watch us on YouTube are not the same people that listen to us when they get out of work at five o 'clock. You know, our podcast comes live at 5pm every day. So we get a lot of people kind of in the lift, leaving work, you know, going home on the tube, on the bus kind of thing, taking us as their afternoon commute. Then we get another kind of lot of, you know, the morning dog walkers, the runners, etc. But I think the YouTube watchers have now got us on their TV screens, right? And it's a totally different, it tends to skew male, it tends to skew older, sort of 50 to 65.

21:39And they are now our sort of fastest growing, as it were, TV YouTube audience, which is totally different to the kind of the students or the young people that we talk to in their ears.

21:50Ben Smith:Well, speaking of males 50 to 65, we got to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein story. How was that transition? And you obviously, you played a big role in it, in blowing up the Prince Andrew part that had been sort of lurking around the edges of it. I mean, I think in some sense, he's the only really major figure who has been really directly tied to Epstein and faced big consequences. And people who want to know more about your role in this should watch a very royal scandal on Prime, which is quite amazing, which you worked on. But I wonder, looking right now as Washington is totally consumed by this scandal that's really been rolling in various ways since the early 2000s, what does this Washington moment look like from where you sit?

22:36People here are absolutely transfixed. I mean, we've seen that in our numbers over the last week. And I think it's probably because it kind of has everything. So if you're a political geek, you're just fascinated by the Trump-MAGA divide. You know, if anyone had ever thought that Trump would be divided from his base, I don't think they would have thought it would be over a conspiracy theory that he unleashed that he couldn't follow through. So you've got all the kind of, you know, people who feel it's worth their time politically to look at this because of what it's telling you about that kind of sort of the damage limitation exercise that Trump is failing so badly right now in Washington.

23:22And then I think you've got people who started off thinking that it was all a conspiracy and then kind of going, hang on, actually, I don't think I know enough about this. I've now remembered a name. I've now remembered the 2008 Florida suit. I've now remembered the role that Tina Brown played in this with, you know, was it the Daily Beast and how that all begun. I've now remembered that I don't know how Epstein got his money. And so there's the whole kind of, I suppose, there's the whole like, what was the story in the 90s that I completely missed, right? What was the story with the models? What was the story with the contracts?

23:59What was the story with Trump and the party and all that stuff that people genuinely want to kind of fill in the gaps for? And I think there's also, when we first started talking about the Epstein case, it was pre-Me Too, right? And I think there's now a moment where your jaw drops and you just go, what the actual fuck, right? Like, how many hundreds of victims were going through his hands? And why do we only know so few? And why do we only know him? And why are there so few names publicly? publicly. And I think, I mean, certainly I think for the younger generation who might have missed some of the early stuff, they're kind of going, I don't understand why this is okay, right?