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GRADUATE. Thank you very

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much for your support. This

1:21

is Words Matter with Norm

1:23

Ornstein. We've got the

1:25

votes and screw the rest of you. And

1:28

Dr. Kavita Patel. These

1:30

might be some of the smaller moments, you

1:32

know, with all the bombshells. Didn't catch people's eyes. Welcome

1:48

to Words Matter from the DSR Network. Each

1:50

week Norm Ornstein and I will talk about the issues

1:52

facing our country as we head

1:54

into what Norm looks like to be not

1:57

just the most volatile election cycle, I was

1:59

just driving. British

8:01

tabloid experience, including

8:03

from the Rupert Murdoch world,

8:07

and things began to just fall apart in

8:09

the post. We

8:11

have both a publisher, Will Lewis,

8:14

a new editor

8:16

coming in, another editor

8:19

as they're completely changing the way they

8:22

deal with news. Their

8:24

editor, the editor

8:27

for the entire paper, Sally

8:30

Busby, who had been the head of AP before

8:32

that, quit because

8:34

she was being in effect demoted. We

8:38

have three of

8:40

these Fleet Street,

8:42

British tabloid, Murdoch

8:44

newspapers now taking

8:47

over the Washington Post, but what we're finding

8:49

is a complete shit

8:51

show because all of

8:53

these Brits, including the publisher, appear

8:55

to have been involved with

8:57

a set of scandals, with

9:01

reporting stories that

9:03

where the information had come

9:05

through theft, and

9:08

the Post and the Times

9:10

now, and NPR, where Lewis

9:14

had basically tried to get

9:18

their really good

9:20

media reporter, David Fulkenflicht,

9:22

not to report on

9:24

his involvement in scandals,

9:28

in Britain wiretapping prominent political

9:30

figures and royals, promising

9:33

him an exclusive on what he was going to do

9:35

with the Post if he didn't run with the other

9:37

story, which is a complete no-no

9:39

in journalism. And now

9:42

you're getting all kinds of people in on

9:44

a feeding frenzy. It's hard for me to

9:46

imagine that these new people,

9:49

publishers and editors, can

9:52

survive this because there's going to

9:54

be more coming out. You know,

9:56

it's once you smell the water.

10:00

think will happen? What's the

10:02

future here for the post? So

10:05

we know that after

10:08

Fred Ryan, the last publisher

10:11

left, Bezos brought

10:13

in Patty Stonecipher. So

10:17

Bezos and Stonecipher had

10:19

to know, because

10:21

it was public knowledge,

10:24

that there had been this huge

10:26

scandal in Britain. He,

10:29

I am sure, well, Lewis gave them

10:32

assurances that he had nothing to

10:34

do with it. But

10:36

now it's blowing up in their faces

10:38

and they can try to hold on

10:40

and hope that this sort of goes

10:42

away, but it's not going away. And

10:44

the other thing that's happened is that

10:47

Lewis basically now has lost

10:50

complete confidence of all

10:53

of those in the newsroom. They're

10:55

star reporters and editors. This

10:58

can't stay. And you

11:00

would hope that they would cut their

11:02

losses sort of cauterize now instead of

11:05

letting it go on through a steady

11:08

drip drip that could end up

11:10

in something worse. But

11:12

it's also a reflection, I think, of, you

11:15

know, the state of American journalism.

11:18

Most local newspapers are

11:20

gone. The

11:22

ones that remain have, for

11:24

the most part, been purchased

11:26

by hedge funds like Apollo

11:28

Capital that,

11:32

you know, don't care about news and

11:35

are driving them into the ground. We

11:39

have a couple of other

11:41

stories that are not

11:44

very favorable either. And one that I

11:46

think is important for us to mention

11:48

as well is that one of the

11:50

largest owners of

11:53

television stations, local television stations

11:55

around the country, also

11:57

the owner now of the Baltimore Sun.