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about the show as of late. The ratings

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help OTM and your feedback means a

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lot to us. Alright, onto

1:49

the podcast. Over

1:53

the past few months, The Washington

1:55

Post has weathered a slate of unfavorable

1:57

news. Fisher

2:00

and CEO Will Lewis revealed the post

2:02

lost $77 million last year. He

2:07

then announced a bunch of restructuring,

2:09

and as reported by Semaphore's Max

2:11

Tani, that part

2:13

of the post's new business

2:15

plan would feature, quote, AI

2:17

everywhere in our newsroom. Whatever

2:20

that means. But then drama

2:22

came for the top brass. Sally

2:24

Busby, who had served as the executive

2:27

editor for the post over the last

2:29

three years, resigned. And

2:31

in the wake of her departure

2:33

came many more headlines, most about

2:35

CEO Will Lewis and his chosen

2:38

replacement for Busby, Robert Wynette. The

2:41

pair stand accused of some pretty

2:43

unethical behavior, stretching back to their

2:45

years working in the British press.

2:48

Some British public figures, including Prince Harry

2:50

and actor Hugh Grant, have filed a

2:52

lawsuit against Murdoch's newspapers. It's over the

2:54

company's alleged phone hackings between the late

2:56

1990s and 2016. Prince

2:59

Harry was allowed to alter his

3:02

case to include allegations that the

3:04

papers had bugged his landline phones

3:06

and to make accusations against further

3:09

journalists and private investigators. To

3:12

make sense of the allegations and what

3:14

they mean for the future of this

3:16

beloved institution, we turned to

3:18

a journalist who began reporting on all

3:20

the drama months ago, and then became

3:23

part of the story himself. I

3:25

was doing a piece, actually, about

3:28

a new front in

3:30

the legal challenges facing Rupert

3:32

Murdoch's British newspaper arm

3:35

in court in Britain. David

3:37

Fochenflick is NPR's media correspondent.

3:40

And for the first time explicitly, you saw

3:43

people, in this case, several

3:45

former British cabinet ministers alleging

3:47

that Murdoch's newspapers had not

3:50

just hacked into people's

3:53

voicemails, emails, or obtained

3:56

personal and private records through

3:58

deceit to... get

4:00

headlines, to get big tabloid scoops, right? But

4:03

that in this case, they did it as

4:05

a kind of corporate espionage and

4:07

as a way of sidelining government

4:09

ministers, that is very senior government

4:12

officials, who were hostile to the

4:14

Murdoch corporate agenda, which is that

4:16

they wanted to acquire full control

4:19

of this enormous satellite company in

4:21

a deal worth about $15 billion. You're

4:24

talking about Sky TV. Sky, Sky

4:26

TV, all of it. And it's

4:29

a very strong accusation to make their

4:31

lawyers involved who are also representing other

4:33

clients. The thing that really

4:35

surprised me was that Will Lewis's name popped up.

4:38

And Lewis had been, you know, head

4:40

of the Daily Telegraph, a former editor for

4:43

Murdoch Sunday Times, which is one of the more

4:45

prestigious papers over there in the UK. But

4:48

Lewis had come back into the fold for

4:50

Murdoch as scandal was starting to bubble up

4:52

in 2010 and 2011. He

4:55

was assigned a role to essentially, as at

4:57

least in public, he was kind of the

4:59

cleanup man for the Murdochs as it was

5:02

presented to the public. That is make

5:04

sure that police and investigators in parliament

5:07

get the information they need and to

5:10

keep faith with the British public as these troubling

5:12

concerns came up of mass-scale

5:14

criminality at their tabloids.

5:17

Subsequently, it became alleged that Lewis

5:19

actually, and particularly in these

5:21

court documents the allegations came forth, that

5:24

Lewis was involved not in helping keep

5:26

faith, but to allegedly cover up both

5:29

some of the criminality and the

5:31

extent to which senior executives close

5:33

to the Murdochs had known about

5:35

it. I came across

5:37

evidence that was used to strongly

5:39

accuse Lewis of greenlighting

5:41

the deletion of tens of millions of

5:43

emails and to hide

5:46

the computer materials of the

5:48

chief executive of Murdoch's British

5:50

newspaper arm, a woman

5:52

named Rebecca Brooks, from police investigators at

5:54

a time when they had warned the

5:56

company, you got to save your material.

5:58

That's a very important. destruction to obey,

6:01

not doing it is looked on very

6:03

darkly by law enforcement officials there. So

6:06

the fact that Lewis was in the middle and

6:08

in the mix in a very prominent way in

6:10

these allegations said, well, I'm going to do this

6:12

story about these allegations from the

6:14

cabinet ministers that Murdoch's people were

6:17

going after and doing hacking and

6:19

other inappropriate actions to further a

6:21

corporate agenda. But Will

6:23

Lewis has just been named to take over the Washington Post,

6:26

one of the most important pillars

6:28

of journalism in America and the world.

6:30

Like I need to look at Will Lewis himself. And

6:33

so that's what I set out to do in call

6:35

it mid-December. So you called

6:37

him up. You said

6:39

I have evidence of an

6:42

alleged coverup. What did he say?

6:44

How did the conversation go? I would guess

6:46

the way I framed it was that, you

6:48

know, there are these allegations playing

6:50

out in court from lawyers representing

6:52

cabinet ministers, Prince Harry, Hugh Grant,

6:54

and scores of others that

6:57

are putting you at the heart of what

6:59

is allegedly coverup. And

7:02

what do you make of this? And I

7:04

got to say, it wasn't as though I just pinged him

7:06

and he called back. It took a number of days to

7:08

reach him through a number of messages. You

7:10

know, it took me a little while and I

7:13

reached him and I gave him some extra

7:15

time, a few extra days to respond to

7:17

this. And in, you

7:19

know, sort of the first conversation, we

7:23

agreed, as he has acknowledged publicly, that we

7:25

would talk off the record about this matter.

7:28

And to this day, you know, I've not said

7:30

anything about what he said about this matter. But

7:33

I can say he was fiery

7:35

about the idea that I should not

7:37

do any coverage about this at all.

7:41

And indeed, in that conversation and

7:43

in other exchanges told me that

7:45

I should instead sit down

7:47

with him for an exclusive interview about

7:49

the future and business plans he had

7:52

for the financially troubled Washington Post, as

7:55

long as I drop this story. So

7:57

multiple times he offered to

8:00

make this deal with you. Drop the story

8:02

and I'll give you a juicy exclusive interview

8:04

about my plans for

8:06

the Washington Post." He said that multiple times?

8:09

We talked again and he

8:11

made it clear. Then there

8:13

were follow-ups with him and with his

8:17

press aide based in London who has worked for

8:19

him previously at a startup and before that at

8:21

Dow Jones, the parent company, The Wall Street Journal.

8:24

And she said, are you pressing ahead? And I

8:26

said, yes. And another point she said, are you

8:28

still interested in that story where you sit down

8:30

with Will and talk to him in New Year?

8:32

I said, I'd love to do that because of

8:35

course I would love to do that. There was

8:37

great interest into whether I was pressing ahead and

8:39

there was also this concurrent questioning of

8:41

did I want to sit down with him? Finally, I

8:43

called her back because I'd been

8:45

talking with my editor about this the entire time. It's

8:48

a little mind bending. It went from

8:50

clear cut to

8:52

explicit to blatant. And

8:55

so I called her back and I said, listen, I

8:57

just want to understand. I want to be very clear. I

9:00

said, I can do this sit

9:02

down interview with Will about the future of the

9:04

Washington Post as long as I drop this story

9:06

about the court, what's happening in court. And

9:08

she said, yes, you have it exactly right. I

9:11

said, thank you very much. So why is that on the

9:13

record? Why isn't that on the

9:15

record? I don't start from a position

9:17

of not being on the record, Micah. My position

9:19

is not I'm looking to hobnob

9:24

with these folks. I'm trying to serve my audience,

9:26

the truth, fairness, and the facts. I

9:29

agreed to talk about something that was very sensitive

9:32

to Will, to give him a chance to unpack

9:34

it a bit and to give

9:36

myself a chance to talk to him about

9:38

it on the record. He's

9:41

talking about something completely different. He's talking about whether

9:43

or not the Post, the

9:45

business plans, the Post, and if he and I can sit down

9:47

for that. That is not the conversation

9:49

I entered off the record. And to

9:51

me, being offered something outside the purview

9:54

of what I agreed to

9:56

to be off the record that was

9:58

itself unethical. was

10:00

noteworthy to me. And I would also

10:02

note, I didn't put that on the air in

10:05

print at the time. Why is

10:07

that? Why did you wait six

10:09

months to report on

10:13

this element of the story? Because

10:15

I wasn't looking to do something gratuitous

10:19

that might reflect badly on Lewis. I was

10:21

writing a story that was pretty

10:23

much, I think the first certainly in the

10:25

American press, and I think may have been

10:28

the first even in Britain to develop new

10:30

information that had been fully released and

10:33

leveraged in court about him,

10:36

right? And so that story I thought was important

10:38

to just focus on that. Now you could look

10:40

in retrospect and say, you know, David would have

10:42

been even stronger if you use that as an

10:44

indication of how sensitive that was to Lewis. And

10:47

perhaps I should have, but it seemed

10:49

to me that it was not a

10:51

close call once it became

10:53

clear that he had pressured

10:56

Sally Busby, his then executive editor, not to

10:58

cover subsequent developments in court. He essentially said,

11:00

that would be a lapse of judgment. That's

11:03

a terrible mistake. You shouldn't be covering it.

11:05

He didn't prevent her from doing it, but

11:07

he made very clear and she left very

11:09

shaken. In recent days, I

11:11

was able to confirm and have reported

11:13

that back when my story initially ran

11:15

in mid-December, she mentioned

11:18

it to Lewis, who at that time

11:20

had not yet taken over as publisher of the

11:22

post. And he told her

11:24

then too, it's not a story. You shouldn't

11:26

be covering it. So three times the

11:29

publisher of the post had pressured her. He

11:32

denies having done that. I felt that my

11:34

incident was audacious on his

11:36

part, but also publicly noteworthy given what he

11:38

had done to his own editor. I

11:41

see. So it was as details

11:43

emerged about the pressure

11:45

that he was allegedly

11:47

putting on Sally Busby,

11:49

the former executive editor

11:51

for the Washington Post, about a

11:53

story that implicated him as CEO

11:56

of the paper that

11:58

made you say this is part a

12:00

pattern of behavior and this

12:03

old anecdote that I never reported on is

12:06

freshly newsworthy. I

12:08

think that's exactly right. After

12:11

you reported on the quid

12:13

pro quo discussions with Will

12:15

Lewis, he responded to reporters

12:18

at his own paper who

12:20

were writing about this brewing

12:23

scandal that you

12:26

were an activist, not a

12:28

journalist. I don't know

12:30

what he thinks he means, but what I can tell you

12:33

is twofold. The

12:36

first thing is that not only

12:38

did NPR find my reporting newsworthy,

12:40

the New York Times found my

12:42

reporting newsworthy, and the Washington Post,

12:44

his own paper, did as well.

12:47

The second thing I can tell you is that

12:49

although I've been talking to people all over the

12:51

post for my reporting, people

12:53

came to me unprompted, some

12:55

of whom I don't know or may

12:58

know only by reputation, to

13:00

say, not are you

13:02

okay, but how angry they were that

13:05

their own chief executive, their own

13:07

publisher of their own newspaper would

13:09

describe somebody who is reporting as

13:12

well as somebody who has a record of reporting

13:14

and whose reporting holds up and

13:16

try to dismiss him

13:18

and his reporting as activism and as

13:21

an activist, that it was an injury

13:23

to what they do and their sense

13:25

of how well they're valued

13:27

by their own chief executive. Basically,

13:29

that kind of flame throwing might

13:31

fit in at a Rupert Murdoch

13:33

tablet, but it has no place

13:36

at the Washington Post. It's

13:38

a very Murdoch-ian instinct. It fits in

13:40

also to what Roger Hills used to

13:42

do over at Fox News, of course,

13:44

another Murdoch creation. It's the

13:46

idea that it's a brawl. It's the

13:48

idea that your colleagues

13:50

and peers are your competitors and

13:53

in some ways your adversaries are

13:55

enemies. It's a mindset I

13:57

don't share. But Lewis, Lewis

14:00

has this funny duality to his record.

14:03

He was the publisher of the

14:06

Wall Street Journal and chief

14:08

executive of its

14:11

parent unit called Dow Jones, all of which

14:13

is part of Rupert Murdoch's

14:15

empire as well. It's the

14:17

most respected, it's the crown jewel to

14:19

be honest, of his holdings journalistically, and

14:22

it's the most respected element. Those

14:24

years there are basically without scandal.

14:27

That we know of yet. Under

14:30

his leadership, the journal started being on

14:32

a better path financially and the digital

14:34

subscriptions improved and it's now actually clipping

14:37

along at a nice pace. It's doing well

14:39

financially. It seemed like he

14:41

was a good public face of

14:43

it. He led the Daily Telegraph, which

14:46

is while very right wing in its

14:49

commentaries and seen as a partisan outlet,

14:51

is a broadsheet which is to say

14:53

a more prestigious newspaper than the tabloids

14:55

there. Yet there is

14:58

this instinct in a moment of crisis,

15:01

none of which does a lot to allay

15:03

the concerns that in an earlier crisis, in

15:05

fact the one whose resurrection is prompting

15:08

this new crisis that

15:11

Lewis necessarily behaved in what American journalists would

15:13

see as the straight and narrow. What

15:16

has happened at the post since

15:19

Busby stepped down? He

15:23

abruptly on a Sunday night, apparently

15:25

to preempt the New York Times

15:27

for publishing his plans, announced that

15:29

Busby was leaving. If she had

15:31

stayed, she would have been in a much diminished role and

15:33

he announced two folks coming in. One

15:37

is Matt Murray from the Wall Street Journal. Back

15:39

when Lewis was publisher of the Wall Street

15:41

Journal for Rupert Murdoch, he had actually elevated

15:43

Matt Murray to be editor-in-chief there. So Murray's

15:45

a familiar face and a friendly force. He

15:48

also named Rob Wynette, a

15:51

figure essentially unknown on these shores,

15:53

unknown by American journalists or the

15:55

public. He's deputy editor of the

15:57

Telegraph Media Group in London. And

16:00

the thing that seems to chiefly recommend

16:03

him is that Louis and Wannett

16:05

worked closely together on

16:07

a bunch of scoops and exclusives and things

16:09

that won them great accolades. They

16:11

worked together at the Sunday Times, and then after

16:14

Louis was named editor of the rival Telegraph

16:17

in London, he hired Wannett there.

16:19

You say they earned accolades for their

16:22

collabs. It's also seeming like

16:24

they may have some skeletons in their closet.

16:27

Well, there's kind of a parade of

16:29

horrors that have ensued from Wannett's appointment.

16:32

And the New York Times and

16:34

we at NPR and the Washington

16:36

Post itself ultimately have offered this

16:39

buffet of journalistic

16:41

practices, the pursuits of

16:44

scoops that... I'm

16:47

not just saying that they would be problematic here.

16:49

I'm saying that they would be red flags and

16:51

banned by ethics codes, certainly at NPR and at

16:53

the Washington Post as well. Let me give you

16:55

a couple examples. One of the

16:57

episodes that they got great kudos for in the

16:59

UK involved obtaining all these

17:01

records showing that members of parliament

17:03

of all three major parties had

17:06

been charging things to taxpayers that

17:08

were wildly inappropriate and it led

17:10

to resignations and reforms. They

17:12

paid six figures for that, 110,000

17:15

pounds for what was allegedly

17:17

a stolen database. That

17:20

would just be a full stop no, a hard

17:22

no here. Yeah, like

17:24

about $170,000 and

17:26

American journalists are

17:28

not supposed to pay anything for

17:30

any information. It's

17:33

deeply problematic. It also was not

17:35

revealed to the public at the time of

17:38

publication, although it was by an assistant editor

17:40

subsequently on the BBC. So it

17:42

fails even the test of transparency for an act

17:44

that in and of itself wouldn't be acceptable. Let

17:47

me give you a couple other examples, Micah. In

17:50

one case, there was a junior reporter

17:52

for the Sunday Times that Wannett helped

17:54

to handle according to an investigative book

17:56

about the press that was not denied.

17:59

She was placed in a, you know,

18:01

what used to be called a stenopool,

18:03

a secretarial temp agency that fed

18:06

senior government offices to help, you

18:09

know, them run, to take secretaries, whatever. Well,

18:11

she was placed in an office that serves

18:14

the prime minister's office. And

18:17

she was able, over the course of 15

18:19

months, to obtain secret, even classified documents

18:21

and fed them to the Sunday Times,

18:24

which published them a string of coups. Prime

18:26

Minister Tony Blair was, you know,

18:29

publicly outraged, demanded an investigation.

18:31

The reporter was essentially exposed to

18:33

possible prosecution and imprisonment, although that

18:36

didn't happen. She was arrested and

18:38

questioned. This is something that you just

18:40

wouldn't do with the U.S. Tell me

18:42

about John Ford, the self-described

18:45

thief who was helping

18:48

feed more

18:50

scoops to incoming Washington Post

18:52

editor Robert Winnett. Sure,

18:55

John Ford was a private investigator

18:57

who in 2018 came

19:00

out and acknowledged that he had

19:02

used subterfuge to secure people's confidential

19:04

records and documents. This is

19:06

blagging. It's different than hacking. Blagging, it's

19:08

like a British term and it means

19:11

like, hey, Mike is my brother

19:13

in law. I'd like you to give me

19:15

his hospital records. He's just conked his head

19:17

and I need to get somebody to him

19:19

at Urgent Care. Can you help me? Here's

19:22

his date of birth. Yes, yes. That's how

19:24

that works. Gordon Brown, for example, found his

19:26

son had hospital records that were leaked to

19:29

the Murdoch tabloids. It is believed, although not

19:31

100 percent proven, that somebody who worked in

19:33

the NHS was able to secure it

19:35

for them. That doesn't necessarily

19:37

mean they use subterfuge themselves to

19:39

get the person to do that.

19:41

But subterfuge was a huge part of

19:44

how the British press operated.

19:46

And let me just say it wasn't

19:48

only the Murdoch publications that engaged in

19:50

such things and hacking and lagging and

19:52

other things, but they were

19:54

seen as most rife. They're estimated to have

19:56

paid well over one point five billion dollars

19:58

in damages. in the 12, 13

20:01

years since this scandal really broke

20:03

into the open. The investigator John

20:05

Ford we're talking about was later

20:07

arrested and questioned. He later wrote

20:09

that Rob Wannett in consultation

20:11

with Will Lewis had been coaching him

20:14

and keeping him updated about the legal

20:16

strategies being used to keep him out

20:18

of jail, that Lewis was instrumental

20:20

for that, although it was never fleshed out

20:22

exactly how. And Ford later

20:24

wrote that he later realized that he

20:26

was being used to protect senior leaders

20:29

at the Sunday Times, that it wasn't

20:31

being done really for him at all,

20:33

that it was being done to ensure

20:35

presumably that he didn't turn on his

20:37

former employers. The Washington

20:39

Post wrote Ford delivered confidential

20:41

details about Britain's rich and

20:43

powerful by using dishonest means,

20:45

including changing their bank passwords

20:47

and adopting false personas in

20:50

calls to government agencies. A

20:53

Sunday Times editor later acknowledged some of

20:55

these practices but said they were deployed

20:57

to serve the public interest. And the

20:59

public interest is, it's a key phrase

21:01

because you can often sidestep

21:03

certain kinds of prosecution or legal

21:05

consequences by saying, well, look, I

21:07

did something rascally here, but folks,

21:09

it's in the public interest. Rupert

21:12

Murdoch famously, I think it was in 1989, defined

21:16

reporting as in the public interest if the public

21:18

is interested in it. And

21:21

this kind of list of

21:24

shady, at least by

21:26

American standards, deeply unethical behavior is kind

21:28

of growing by the minute.

21:30

I mean, on Wednesday, the day

21:32

we're speaking, the Guardian reported that Will Lewis

21:35

advised then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

21:37

and officials close to him to

21:40

clean up their phones following

21:43

partygate, the political scandal in which

21:45

Johnson and other conservative party members

21:47

were defying the government's own lockdown

21:50

restrictions. Johnson and Lewis

21:52

deny the allegations, but why

21:54

is he advising a prime

21:56

minister on how to protect himself from

21:58

a... investigation?

22:02

Great question. He was

22:04

serving as an advisor to Boris Johnson

22:06

at that time. It was, you know,

22:09

a year after he had left the employ of the

22:12

Wall Street Journal and he was

22:14

no longer a senior executive for Murdoch

22:16

back in the States, returned to

22:18

his homeland in London,

22:21

and advising the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

22:23

during lockdowns about one of his own scandals.

22:26

So again, there's a twin question

22:28

here. The first is, look, Johnson

22:31

had been a columnist at the Telegraph where

22:34

Lewis had been editor and, you know,

22:36

papers are kind of defined there by

22:38

partisan rooting interests, to be honest. It's

22:40

a different climate. It's a

22:43

different tradition than our own. But

22:45

that level of journalist

22:47

advising someone is, it still

22:50

grabs your attention, particularly somebody perhaps

22:52

interested in getting back into journalism. He had

22:54

a journalism startup at the time. What are

22:57

you doing advising the Prime Minister on damage

22:59

control? Again, Lewis said he

23:01

didn't advise Johnson to wipe clean

23:03

or his aides to wipe clean

23:05

their devices. But that's what the

23:07

Guardian is currently reporting. If

23:09

true, you know, the problem for him,

23:11

of course, is it has these echoes of 2010, 2011. It

23:16

has these echoes of the accusations back in

23:18

court in London that are happening

23:20

now about what he did back in the day. And

23:23

according to them, you know, he was part

23:25

of the orchestration of the destruction of evidence that

23:27

could have been even more damning to

23:29

Murdoch's executives and to his newspapers. Do

23:32

we have any indication from

23:34

Will Lewis or his incoming

23:37

top editor, Rob Winnett,

23:40

that they see their past

23:42

behavior as being a

23:44

problem or not for the Post?

23:47

It's as though the Post and

23:49

Will at times are not clashing,

23:51

but are operating slightly

23:53

apart. Sometimes it's as

23:55

though the Post and Lewis are

23:58

speaking from different venues. as though

24:00

he's not the chief executive supposedly embodying the

24:02

Post himself. The Post

24:04

has issued statements saying that the

24:07

Post both follows and embodies the

24:09

highest principles in American journalism

24:12

and will always do so. Jeff

24:14

Bezos, who owns the

24:16

Post, who is the one vote on

24:18

whether Lewis will continue on in this

24:20

job, something that a significant number of

24:23

Post alums say should not happen, that

24:26

he should go. Bezos issued

24:28

a statement in recent days alluding

24:30

to Will Lewis, but essentially

24:33

trying to reassure leadership and

24:35

staff that the Post will

24:37

continue always to embody the

24:39

best principles of American journalism

24:41

and follow the highest levels

24:43

of professional ethics. To

24:45

give Bezos credit from everyone I've talked to

24:47

there, he's never interfered in coverage of his

24:50

professional, corporate, or

24:52

personal life, that he's never shown an

24:54

interest in getting involved in it in any way. But

24:57

that's not the case for his chief executive. Yes,

25:00

so this kind of language, the journalistic

25:02

standards and ethics at the Post will

25:04

not change. That's a nice thing

25:06

to hear from the publisher of the Washington Post.

25:08

It also sounds a whole lot like, I

25:10

don't plan to fire anybody. Do you

25:13

think Will Lewis and his team

25:15

will last this moment? Will they

25:17

last the summer even? I

25:19

don't think Rob Wannett will ever step foot in

25:22

Washington as editor of the Post. He

25:25

is slated to do so after the November

25:27

elections. He's deputy editor of The Telegraph, and

25:29

they, of course, have their own prime ministerial

25:31

elections playing out July 4th, right? It's an

25:33

exciting time for British politics, and I think

25:35

he's going to end up staying there because

25:37

there is zero constituency for him at the

25:39

Post. Will Lewis himself, I think, is

25:41

on a nice edge as well in terms of his

25:43

career here. It's all in

25:46

the hands of Jeff Bezos. The fact that

25:48

Bezos issued the statement is in and of

25:50

itself an acknowledgement that things are serious enough

25:52

that he had to get involved. So

25:54

I think, you know, if Will Lewis is to

25:56

succeed, it's likely to be a chastened Will Lewis.

28:00

will lewis robert winnet

28:03

ands there shady

28:05

pasts you have

28:07

a lot of experience doing this covering

28:09

your own news organization as a reporter

28:11

for the outside world you reported on

28:14

layoffs at npr the sexual harassment

28:16

allegations against michael a rescue set

28:19

former news leader at npr and

28:21

most recently allegations of liberal bias

28:24

at npr what's it

28:26

like doing that work and how

28:28

do you think the posts media

28:30

reporters covering their own news organization

28:32

have done so far i

28:35

think what the posts reporters did on

28:38

the allegations servicing in london against

28:40

their own publisher and chief executive

28:42

was terrific it was in-depth it

28:44

was tough-minded it was advancing not

28:47

simply recapping what happened what

28:50

i found over the years is that you have to

28:52

have a kind of protocol in

28:54

a way of thinking about such things before

28:56

it happens you know so you

28:58

can break glass in case of emergency rain

29:01

and so what we have an npr is

29:03

a protocol you know i covered almost

29:05

always in every now and then somebody else does

29:07

it we bring in my editor and

29:10

we bring in a senior editor who's of

29:12

a stature that here she might deal with

29:14

standards but has nothing to do with the

29:16

story in question and then it's as though

29:18

were floated off in space in a capsule

29:21

and we don't show it to you senior news

29:23

executives we don't even tell them necessarily what we're

29:25

doing we have a protocol so

29:28

that will sometimes hire outside lawyers instead of

29:30

having our own lawyers review things if in

29:32

some ways it's something that might reflect negatively

29:35

on the company as a company right so

29:37

there's a secondary kind of protocol to make

29:39

sure that the legal advice we're getting is

29:41

untainted by other agenda other than you know

29:44

being fair and you know being within the law

29:46

right so to me

29:49

the important thing is to have muscle

29:51

knowledge of how to cover your own

29:53

news organization built in so when

29:55

it happens you do it and

29:58

they're having to not that they haven't covered