Is Social Media This Generation's Cigarettes? With Chris Cillizza

0:28Welcome back, everybody. show under David Ellison at Paramount and the controversies there. So if you're interested in a little bit of sort of inside baseball about the media, both mainstream media and independent media, here's that conversation with Chris Saliza now. This country was stone cold dead. Okay, before we get to my conversation with Chris, a quick reminder, if you're watching us on YouTube, please hit that like button, please hit subscribe. It really does help. And if you're listening on the podcast platforms, you can do the same thing. Rate us five stars, give us a like and a subscribe.

1:00Once again, all the engagement, all the help really does matter if you want to keep hearing these sorts of conversations. So you were talking about the incentives and how the incentive structure within media now is so out of whack. You know, the more sky is falling, you can do the better, the more cultural stuff you can do, the better. Nobody wants to read about, you know, the ins and outs of the tax bill or whatever, you know, anything like that. But that's sort of always been the case. You know, even when I was working in TV back in the day, like, yeah, yes, that's the, you know, people want sexy stories.

1:29Like, that's how the news works. But obviously, the, you know, digitization of the media has really changed that, just like the algorithms that now, you know, control basically all of our lives. You had a really interesting – I'm trying to make a segue here. I don't really know what's going to work. But you had a really interesting conversation with Mallory McMorrow, who is the Democrat state senator in Michigan. She's running for the open Senate seat there. Smart woman. We've talked to her here in Newsweek. She's interesting. She's interesting. Yeah. So the headline on this interview that you did with her is your phone is the new cigarette and it's worse, which I would completely agree with.

2:07I want to give you an opportunity to talk about what you spoke with McMorrow about. But so you have two teenage boys, right? I do. Is that accurate? That's correct. So I don't, first of all, God bless you. It's a whole thing. Every day's an adventure. Well, I feel that. I mean, I have, I have a four-year-old girl and the social media stuff, it scares the hell out of me. I mean, I, I, I just sort of pray that, that, you know, there's going to be some sort of like reckoning by the time she comes old enough to ask for a phone. You, you, you're a little older than me, so you didn't get that. You're in it with your boys, I assume.

2:42Yes. And it feels like when you and I assume that this is the same for you. But when you talk to younger parents, newer parents, at least in my sort of cohort, this is the thing they talk about. Absolutely. This this this this belief. Everybody feels it that, you know, these companies are coming for your kids. They have created products that are meant to be addictive and are. And the federal government does not care at all. Whether whoever's in, I mean, certainly not Trump because he's in bed with the tech companies, but, you know, Biden didn't care. Nobody really, nobody in the federal government has your back as a parent.

3:15And I think that this was sort of the point that, that Ms. McMorrow was, was kind of making with you. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that I'm always intrigued that and depressed that we we wind up talking about at the national level. And I include like Senate races in that that level to like the same issues that nothing ever changes. I'm like, oh, we're going to repeal Obamacare. I mean, this is not going to happen. Right. Like taxes, immigration. Like I'm not saying those aren't important issues, but it seems to me there's like a lot of running room on things that aren't nearly as part of the issue.

3:50is in. Like, I don't think I don't think when you talk to your kids, cohort parents or I talk to my I'm never like, are you a Republican? Like, no, they they're like these phones, man. I just I don't know what to do. Right. It's not a Republican or Democratic issue. That's why I'm intrigued by it. I will say Mallory McMorrow released a plan this week on sort of how to curtail social media use among kids 14 and under Rahm Emanuel, who I think is running for president. Yeah, he's a long shot, but running for president talked about. He also talks about education, He was in Mississippi talking about what Mississippi is.

4:22Mississippi, very conservative Republican state, Republican governor, what they've done right to turn around their state public education system. I just think there's a lot of issues that are out there that we don't talk about. You know, it's like it feels like we focus all of our energy on these little set of issues when there's all these other issues out there. AI being, you know, AI and tech being a massive one that we don't spend any time on. And they're not even particularly polarizing or partisan. Like I think whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you're probably worried. Like, am I going to have, if, if, if you're worried, am I going to have a job in five or 10 years with AI?

4:59And you're definitely, if you have kids, I mean, I don't know what to tell my kids like to study. What are you supposed to study? Who the hell knows? And I think government fails a lot of state government is better, a little bit more manageable. The federal government really fails, I think, to do what it is that they are supposed to do, which is represent us in our hopes, concerns, worries, fears and work on solutions. They just don't do it. You know, look, Mallory McMorrow is a is a left of center Democrat. Right. Like, you know, I mean, it's not like she's not she's she's taken plenty of positions that are on the left.

5:38I'm not suggesting she's above politics, but I do think it is smart that she is addressing this kind of stuff, because I do think in a state like Michigan where you can't just win Democratic votes. Right. You got to win Democrats and some independents, some Republicans. It is an issue that crosses party lines. It is. It's the thing I worry about by far the most. I literally this week bought a brick. Have you seen these things? It's like a little. I've heard of this. Physical device. You put it in. And basically what it does. I have it on right now. What it does is you can block certain apps. So for me, I blocked the social media.

6:13So I'm not I'm not just mindlessly scrolling TikTok and and Instagram reels and Twitter. and the only way you can unblock it there's no override there's no like physical over the only way is you go up to the actual little thing that's like you know this big that's in your house can you show it you have it right there it's i don't have it i have i'll show it look it looks like this it just says like brick device and you just hold it and you do that and you can pick whatever apps you want and it works across multiple phones and by the way because people are so cynical no they don't sponsor me yes i paid for my own thing but if for me i've had it three days you have to physically go and touch it against the brick thing to unblock these apps and you know so if you leave you know if you go like yesterday my 13 year old had a basketball game eighth grade basketball game i was gone for three hours there is no way that in between time I am able to go on Twitter and scroll because I can't.

7:14There's no override feature. I think we're going to have to. I just I think it's so funny that we talk about cigarettes. I do think I'm going to write something on this eventually, but I do think that social media and our phone more broadly, social media more specifically, will in 20 years be the cigarettes of 20 years ago. So for sure, I always tell people when I was a kid, my PD and I'm 49 when I was a kid, my pediatrician, who was an old guy, Dr. Fleisch, bless his heart. He smoked in the in the room when he analyzed. OK, I mean, now you could that time feels like it's 500 years ago. I do think at some point there's going to be just like it happened with cigarettes.

7:55There's going to be studies or a whistleblower that comes out and says, yes, they knew how addictive it was. They knew how bad it was. They targeted kids just like we had with smoking, right? Like RJR or whoever, all these tobacco companies knew that this was bad for you. They targeted kids. They did all these things. I think we may well, you know, when my boys are in their mid thirties, we may well look at kind of social media and phone usage the same way that we look at the way that you and I think now look at cigarettes where it's like, I don't know anyone who smokes. Maybe you're in New York.

8:26Maybe you know a few people, but like my dad, my dad and all his friends smoke. My dad smoked his entire life. And I think it will become I would like my kids are like horrified when someone smokes. And that's not that long between my dad and my kids. And I wonder if social media is going to be on a similar path. Well, I think it is. And I think it's coming sooner than that. I think I mean, everything happens sooner now. Right. Right. And you've already had whistleblowers are coming out saying, look, you know, here are documents that show Facebook and Instagram, you know, knew that they were, you know, promoting content that made young girls anorexic and didn't do anything about it.

9:05And Mallory McMorrow talked about that in our interview. Yeah. Yeah. They have, you know, AI bots that are talking to that are trained so that they can talk to children in sexualized manners. The whole thing is disgusting. But it's to me, it's like it seems like what you were saying is so true, that there's such an open lane, probably for the Democrats, but for anyone to just come in and run on this populist message of being you can you don't have to be a Luddite, but being anti-big tech and you don't even have to frame it as anti-tech, but you can frame it as what McMorrow said, you can frame it as being pro-child, right?

9:37That is something that cuts across all politics. I mean, I think you could say, I think you could run on a big tech does not have our best interests at heart. They just don't. They are solving to make money and accrue power. Those are not things that necessarily are looking out for my 16-year-old and my 13-year-old or your four-year-old well-being 20 years from now. Of course, it's the opposite. It's not that they're not looking after. They are actively making products that addict these children. I mean, that's the other part of this. It's like, it's not the kid's fault, right? I mean, these kids are up against a trillions and trillions of dollar industry that is predicated on keeping them glued to their screens.

10:18And if you had a presidential candidate who came out and made that a big part of their platform, I am telling you, they would win everywhere. That's why I wanted to talk to her. That's why I think Rahm is interesting. Look, I'm 49 years old. I had to buy a thing that physically blocks me from accessing social media. Right. What does that say about us? 15 and 16 year olds or 12 or 13, you know, whenever you get a phone, how the hell are we expecting them to manage it? No way. I mean, it's ridiculous. Well, it's also we're just we, you know, so you're 49. I'm 41. So you're sort of Gen X. I'm sort of elder millennial.

10:54But in that same, we're kind of like the only generation or age cohort that sort of like, first of all, that understands the Internet, but also that remembers what it remembers the before times. Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. I think that's important. I remember distinctly. And that's that's nothing. I remember distinctly my freshman year in college. You had to go up. It was the we were we lived on the third floor of my dorm. You had to go up to the fourth floor where they had a computer that dialed into the Internet. That was 1990, the fall of 1994. Um, my kids have no, we'll never your daughter, they will never have any sense of non-connectivity available at, at literally at your fingertips.

11:37And I, I don't, have you ever read, I think of this book all the time. Have you ever read super sad, true love story by Gary Steingart? He's a great, he's a Russian, Russian novelist. He wrote actually a really great book about COVID, a fiction about COVID during COVID too. But Super Sad True Love Story is probably his most famous book, and it's a dystopian future. It was written more than a decade ago. But it talks – it basically envisions a future where we are constantly online through, like, goggles. And it's terrifying. And, you know, I think he probably wrote it thinking, like, well, I mean, I'm going to exaggerate for the sake of fiction to make a point.

12:15But it's not that exaggerated. And that's what worries me. it. Okay, before I let you go, Chris, I want to talk about the media. Obviously, a lot of people look at two old media goats talking about the media and say, the way things used to be. But there's a lot going on in the industry that you and I work in and have dedicated our lives to, starting with the Washington Post, which we mentioned before. So obviously, so this is a newsroom that is going through a crushing amount of layoffs. I mean, I heard something like they've cut a third of the newsroom, possibly more. I actually think the real number is going when you talk about non guilds and non union protected, you talk about IT people, you talk about it's going to be half ish of the entire staff, which is stunning to do in one day.

13:06And remember, this is The Washington Post, right? This is the paper of Woodward and Bernstein, Watergate. This is the one of the few papers of record that we have left. That's right. So there's this there's a sort of like naval gazey debate on Twitter right now among, you know, other media people, which is basically all Twitter is. But talking, you know, and the debate is basically like the Washington Post failed because, A, it was the management ran into the ground or B, the journalists did. I think I probably know where you stand on that. But as somebody who worked for the Washington Post for so long, what happened?

13:42This is a great paper. It was it was. And you know what? I'll stand for even cutting half the staff. There's still a lot of great reporters there. They didn't get rid of all that many politics reporters. No, and I shouldn't say it failed. It is still a paper. Right. But I think it's too facile to do the like Jeff Bezos did this. Yeah. I mean, I think he certainly bears blame. And I think the same thing is true of Will Lewis, the publisher. I think he bears blame, too. But I will say I got there in 2006. They hired me to write a politics blog, which at the time, like no major media outlet had done.

14:25Again, it feels like to your point about how quickly things happen. It feels so long ago. But I will say you were one of the original bloggers. I was. Me, Ben Smith, Ezra Klein, John Martin. Even then. It was two things were clear. One, the print newspaper was in a probably an unsavable decline over time. And we didn't know what the time horizon was, but that was true. And yet, even as that was true, the focus, certainly when I got there and even when I left at the end of 2016, the focus was still on the legacy print product. And that's not just the editors. That's the reporters, too, talking about, I made A1, you know, the print front page.

15:12So while I think Bezos, Will Lewis, you know, I think they deserve blame. I also think like there were a lot of things before Bezos owned the company before, certainly before Will Lewis, only there two years that there was a mentality of, well, I mean, people say the industry is bad, but we're the Washington Post. I mean, what's going to happen? Like there was a whistling past the graveyard. I mean, look, a lot of the things the New York Times did to diversify the Washington Post could have done. there's no reason the Washington Post couldn't have been in the bidding for Wirecutter or The Athletic there's no reason that Punchbowl needed to start uh the Washington Post could have done that there's absolutely no reason Politico needed to start Jim VandeHei and John Harris and Mike Allen who started it worked at the Washington Post yeah they went to them and said do you want to us to do this here and the Post was like they weren't willing to you know actions have consequences choices matter and I think they made a series of bad choices over the last 20-ish years.

16:10And so I, again, do those, do the, the big baddies of Jeff Bezos, do they deserve blame? Sure. Sure. At the same time, I'm not sure that we are making our strongest argument as reporters. When we say that just because Jeff Bezos is really rich, he should have to lose a hundred million dollars on a business he owns. Like I don't like, like I get, he's rich. I know that point is a$500 million yacht, blah, blah, blah. But like, he, it's a business. Like if, if I was losing a bunch of money and I had five employees and I was losing tons of money, I would feel like, okay, well I own this business and I need to make some decisions to make it right.

16:52People might not agree, but like it is your business. I just, it's too easy to blame one person for this. I think this was a series of people, a series of bad decisions and a mentality and mindset, including among many of the people who worked there when I was there that they were immune from the industry changes even though it was structural changes that are even it was clear they weren't the thing about Bezos that I don't understand specific to this is like if these guys that have a few money and don't use it to say a few is always something that's interesting to me because it's like why why cozy up to to Trump I mean I get why he's doing it because he's got a rocket company that needs the defense contracts Of course.

17:32Amazon has a million interests. Right. Of course. But why then why not sell the post if you if you don't want it, if you're not? Here's here's an example. Right. So so my wife works at Bloomberg. I worked at Bloomberg a long time ago. She talks about how Mike Bloomberg, who's like in his 80s now, shows up to that office every day and he sits at his desk with everybody else. And that's a you know, Bloomberg is an amazing company. Right. They are extremely profitable. They are a great media organization. They have one of the biggest newsrooms, employ some of the most journalists in the world. Have not cut anywhere near any of the other major legacy outlets.

18:09And so there's a way to do it. There's a way to do it when you have a billionaire owner. I mean, I guess it's different. Like that has his name. He started it. It's his name on the door. My experience was very rich people or even moderately rich people because I have more experience with that than I do with like the Bezos, Elon level of wealth. Sure. It's like, how much how much money do you need? And the answer always is just a little bit more than I have. You know what I mean? And that's that's what I think you get caught up in. It's like, yes, of course, Jeff Bezos is grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren.

18:45children times 10 will have enough money you you can't spend 400 billion dollars i mean it's virtually impossible but i think for jeff bezos it's a like well i mean i i got this rich by being a hard-ass businessman making tough calls and i'm not just because this is like a a teeny little asset in my giant world i'm not going to abandon that um right i think that it's interesting you bling up Bloomberg. I actually think Mike Bloomberg is probably the closest thing we have to like a Don Graham like figure left in media. Obviously, Don sold the Washington Post to Bezos. I was there for seven years, I think, when Don owned their Graham Holdings, whatever his company owned it.

19:31I think those I'm not sure there's another Mike Bloomberg media mogul, Don Graham like media mogul coming down the pipe. And I think some of that is just because the business no longer allows it. It's just really hard. You know, if Mike Bloomberg hadn't come up with the terminal idea, you know, and those things just are a money machine. That's yeah, that's what makes it's just it's really hard if you don't have that one widget that you can only get at this place. Basically, for business, you can charge them an unlimited amount because they need it. Man, it's hard. And not even the Times, you know, the Times is journalism is, I think, some of the best in the world.

20:09But the reason that the Times has been profitable is Wordle, the crossword, Recipe, Wirecutter, and not even really the Athletic. But those are Wirecutter's journalism. They became a lifestyle. But it's not like, I love Peter Baker. I think Peter Baker, who covers the White House, is one of the best reporters that I've ever had a chance. He used to work in the Post. But I don't think Peter Baker is the reason that the Times is adding subscribers. I wish it was the case, but they're adding subscribers for the same reason that I have the New York Times games app because I want to do the crossword puzzle every day.

20:46Right. Well, one other sort of like thing that's happening in the media right now is what's happening over at CBS News where Barry Weiss is now running the show. She's the editor-in-chief under, I'm blanking on his name, David Ellison. Yeah. David Ellison, the Paramount scion. So you've been one of the few voices, and again, we're getting a little niche here if anybody's even still watching. But I'm still curious to hear your take on this, because you've been one of the few sort of like mainstream-ish media voices out there, not on the right, who is basically saying, like, give Barry Weiss a chance to make some changes, you know, to CBS.

21:22And you've actually got – I've seen some of your Twitter replies. You've gotten a lot of crap from others. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I know. A lot of people out there saying, like, look, this woman is just a stooge for Trump. um so here's my question about barry weiss isn't she risking doing to cbs what bezos and will lewis did to the washington post what i mean by that is you know there's they're always everyone's always searching for this sort of like this right-wing audience this this even just yeah center right audience in the main in the mainstream media i don't know if that audience exists anymore Or maybe it does.

22:02Well, I don't. My sense of doing what I do is the middle doesn't really exist all that much in terms of people who are willing to pay for content. Consuming content is one thing. Paying for content, which is what we're all talking about, right, is another. Yes, she absolutely. To answer your question. Yes, of course she runs that risk. the thing that I struggle with and this is true of the post too is the the the working dynamic business model of the Washington Post was not working before Will Lewis got there okay it was losing subscribers you know that the the first Trump term and Trump bump had worn off.

22:43They were that page views were down, et cetera, et cetera. CBS news. It's always been third, right? It's always been behind NBC and ABC. It is not really working as how we would define a functional business. I'd say the same thing with CNN. Like I like Mark Thompson. I don't know him. I wasn't there when he was there. I, they laid me off before Mark Thompson took over. I was in the Chris Licht era, but like that business needs to change. So that change is going to be very uncomfortable. Now, I think there are ways you can do it smartly, but it's never going to be something that everybody in the media likes.

23:25My point with Barry Weiss is only, and I always say this because I think it's really important. I literally have never met her one time in my life. I am not taking a job at CBS. Like the only thing I would say is, man, we've tried the David Zaslavs of the world running these things for a long time. Zaslav is the head of Warner Brothers Discovery. Yeah. Right. Tell me what he did well in the time that he was at Warner Brothers Discovery. And other than make himself even richer. Make himself a lot more money. Which he did do a good job of. Nothing. Not one thing. So do we want like another David Zaslav in there to run it?

24:04Or are we willing to say big change requires big change? Let's put someone in the job. I'm not sure Barry Weiss is qualified to run a network, candidly, given her background. I wouldn't be qualified, but I take the job because I'd say, I'm going to try and do things differently. I'm going to try and shake it up. Now, does the kind of like the perception that it's kowtowing to Trump? I think that's a little overblown, but it's there's some there's some truth there. The Ellisons are obviously friendly with with Trump. Right. But I need to buy they want they're trying to buy Warner Brothers. They're trying to buy Warner Brothers.

24:39And so I I just think like I feel like she's this she's been prejudged before she's done almost anything. It's like she's holding this. She's holding this thing about this this prison in in El Salvador. OK, like I don't I'm not sure that she did it the right way. But the assumption that she's doing it because she's covering for Trump. Well, it ran like I did. I don't. And it was like, oh, well, it ran opposite opposite. No one watched it. It's like, well, OK. And like I just I just know that was that was the opposite. That was a Streisand effect thing where that story actually ended up getting more attention because it was badly handled.

25:20She made a rookie mistake there. She made a mistake, I think, not understanding that the TV, the way that TV timing works is not, you can't just like add a line in to TV. You need the person on the camera. Like it's a whole logistical mess that if you worked in TV, you understand. And she hadn't. So, yes, is she a rookie and a little bit of a newbie? Sure. But the people who are veterans, what the hell have they gotten us? layoffs right layoffs yeah hundreds of people being laid off at nbc cnn abc uh the washington post i mean it's like everywhere the atlanta journal constitution like pick a place so my view is okay the business model is broken we gotta try some stuff to fix it let's bring in somebody who's gonna try who has some ideas that yeah we might think like i don't know if that'll work Well, we know what doesn't work.

26:10The thing we've been doing. That's my only that's my only it's not even I don't even mean it to be a defense of her. It's just like I don't understand the rush to paint her as some toady of Donald Trump. Let's see what she does. She's had the job for three months. No, I agree with you on that. I don't quite. Well, I mean, I do get it. I mean, I get it. I just don't think it's entirely fair. And I don't. It's not as though the media industry was thriving and Barry Weiss is somehow trying to upend it. It's a terrible industry. Ask the thousands of people who no longer have jobs in journalism. So like, I know I'm hanging on here for dear life.