Something is changing in our country, and most
people feel it before they can explain it. Good
morning. My name is Margaret Hennock. I'm a member
of the steady state. I retired from the Central
Intelligence Agency after 25 years as an operations
officer, and I'm now working with the steady
state for the protection of democracy and the
Constitution. And my guest this morning is Bob
Drogan, who's a reporter, well, I guess a retired
reporter from the L .A. Times, whom I've known
for a fair number of years because he wrote a
book about something that I was part of. Anyway,
Bob, over to you. Introduce yourself. I'm Bob
Drogan. I spent 38 years at the Los Angeles Times
as a national correspondent, a foreign correspondent,
and ultimately a Washington correspondent. And
when I covered intelligence and national security,
my last job there was just a White House editor
during the first Trump administration. And when
he lost, I left because I thought my work is
done. We're never going to see this place again.
I guess I'd like to start with how you got into
journalism and how you got into national security
and just sort of give us a couple of words on
how that happened. And I was having a conversation
once with the dean of students and for reasons
I cannot remember he told me that the CIA were
coming to recruit on campus. Apparently they
had decided that hiring all those white guys
from Yale was cutting it in the third world.
And they were coming to recruit at what was then
called Acro House. So I wrote that up for the
local paper, and it led to protests, and the
CIA, we were told, pulled out, and the Associated
Press picked it up, and the next thing I knew
it appeared in the New York Times, and I thought,
This isn't very hard. Anybody can do this. What
kind of national security stuff did you do? I
then went on and wound up working after graduate
school, wound up working at the Charlotte Observer
in North Carolina, then the Philadelphia Inquirer
in Philadelphia, and then the Los Angeles Times.
So I worked for the Los Angeles Times for 38
years as a national correspondent, a foreign
correspondent, and then a Washington correspondent.
And when I came to Washington in 1999, I wrote
a memo for the editors that I called nukes, kooks,
and spooks, and proposed that that would be my
beat, being... nuclear proliferation and terrorism
and intelligence agencies, which had us all sort
of fallen by the wayside after the end of the
Cold War. And so I was in position and already
started doing that beat when 9 -11 happened.
And then I just spent the next 10 years doing
that or 12 years or so and then became an editor,
became the national security editor for the Los
Angeles Times. enough experience to answer this
one. How does Trump's assault on the press come
across to someone who is a member of the press
as opposed to how it comes across to the rest
of us? You know, he came into office promising
to be a dictator on day one, and he has absolutely
fulfilled that as regards his efforts to against
any media that he considers not slavish enough
in parroting his lies on a regular basis. From
my perspective, he is conducting an unprecedented,
full -out war against freedom of expression,
against journalism, and against the First Amendment.
It is difficult in the churn of daily... uh craziness
that we all put up with in this administration
to keep track of it but last night i tried to
make a list of the things he has done and i will
go through some of it with you uh because it's
longer than it's amazing when you think of it
so his administration has cut funding for npr
and pbs it's threatened to revoke broadcast licenses
for every network except fox It's filed punitive
lawsuits against the New York Times, Washington
Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Des Moines Register,
CNN, and even the board that issues Pulitzer
Prizes. They have ended or limited processing
of FOIA requests. They've demanded the firing
of Jimmy Kimmel twice now. They've barred the
AP, the Associated Press, from the White House
briefing room because it won't use his preferred
title for the Gulf of Mexico. They've taken over
the White House pool. reporters from the Pentagon
unless they agree to print only government handouts.
Bob, when you say taken over the pool, what does
that mean? The White House pool, not like the
outside. So, yeah. Oh, right. So it's not a swimming
pool. It is. There has been since the days of,
I believe, FDR, a dedicated. reporters assigned
full -time to be with the president every time
he travels or does anything in public. And it's
a protective pool, as it's called, so that you're
always there. if anything should happen, and
whatever he says about it. And it has always
been run by the reporters themselves. It's an
independent operation run by, in the last some
years, the White House Correspondents Association.
And Trump has basically said, no, I'm going to
pick who covers me. I mean, it's the classic,
I don't like the way you're covering it, and
by the way, you're Miss Piggy, and I'm going
to insult and demean and be horrific to all of
you and go after anyone I don't like as fake
news and enemy. of the people. So that's what
the pool is. He's taking over the pool. I could
go on. I will go on. His administration put up
something they call the Wall of Shame. It's a
website targeting various media outlets, and
it's run by the White House, and people can complain
about specific journalists. His administration
is targeted. Whereas censored government data,
they've taken down websites on everything from
vaccine to climate change. They've dismantled
the Voice of America and every other foreign,
you know, every other government -backed broadcast
outlet that works overseas, U .S. broadcast outlet.
They've installed cronies to lead the FCC. You
know, I could go on. They've arrested Don Lemon.
They've, you know, invaded a reporter's house
and stolen her notes. They've, you know, they've
detained journalists at ICE things. They've deported
journalists. You know, it's just it's one horror
show after another. And at the same time, you
have corporate owners at CBS, The Washington
Post, The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere that
are either pulling critical. or they're changing
their management or they are paying millions
of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to settle
utterly frivolous lawsuits. At this point, YouTube
has paid him $25 million because he didn't like
their coverage. The Washington Post, CBS paid
him $16 million. ABC News has paid him, ABC Paramount
has paid him $16 million. All of this has tremendous
implications for freedom of the press and for
democracy because he's following the playbook
of Viktor Orban in Hungary or Vladimir Putin
or Mussolini, I mean, for that matter. So it
is just horrific. I'm just going to ask you this.
I think I probably know the answer, but just
to make sure that I'm not wrong for once. Tell
me what that does to when you start suppressing
the press. Give me the list of, I realize it's
an ABC, of how that damages democracy, how that
damages freedom, how that damages the country.
And do people realize that before it's too late?
That I realize is a joke. Yeah, I don't know
how to judge that. But I think part of what we're
seeing, this comes at a time when trust in media
is at an all -time low. I mean, we're barely
ranked, I think, 22 % trust or something. So
I think trust in Congress and used car salesmen
may be lower, but not much. And meanwhile, there
is just the economic pressures of journalism,
which has been a... has been collapsing since
the mid -2000s through social media and eBay
and just changing reader and viewer interests
and so on. So you have this shrinking of the
traditional media at a time when he's cutting
off access to government. And the whole role
of the whole point of the First Amendment is
to provide accountability, independent accountability
of what the government does. you know, we're
supposed to be watchdogs. I mean, that is our
role, not lap dogs and not attack dogs, but,
you know, watchdogs for the government. And we
have no, there's less and less access to the
kind of information that I think people need
to make educated choices. in a day when AI is
making stuff up, when God knows what's appearing
on social media, to be able to go to a trusted
voice and find out. And, you know, the Iran war
is a perfect example. You tell me what's going
on over there. I mean, nobody knows between the
Iranians and Trump. It's a blackout. So, yeah.
How does it feel to be in that? How does it feel
to be, to have been a respected voice against
government and now to just be a pariah? In so
many ways. And that's just personal. If it's
too personal, you don't have to answer. No, no,
no. Well, you know, I'm retired, so I'm a civilian
these days. But I think, you know, what's happening
is a part of, I think it's overlooked by an awful
lot of people. One, because they're not sympathetic
to the press and because there's so many other
things happening. It's, you know, Trump is everywhere,
everything all at once, you know, between the
ice rays and the war in Iran and, you know, blowing
boats out of the water in the Caribbean and God
knows. So it's very hard to keep track of it.
And the list that I read you is not a full list,
but it's sort of, you know, it's incremental
and you add it up and you suddenly think, oh
my God, he's trying to destroy the, I mean, how
does it feel? It's outrageous. I mean, it's just,
I think the country. Thomas Jefferson famously
said, I'd rather have a media without a government
than a government without a media. Because look
at Trump, he's out of control. Is there anything
that you can do as a former press person that
you are willing to talk about? That's legal.
Mostly. You know, I think, yeah, I think. I support
various causes. I go out. I do protests. I write
what I can. I'm not leading the opposition by
any means here. I'm just trying to point out
to your – this organization and whatever that
the issues that you focus on should include the
First Amendment because so much of what we know
about national security depends on – The access
to information that the government has total
control of now. Look who the government is. Tell
me about the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
So I have an iconoclastic view of this thing.
Here's a shot. And I think what happened that
– yeah, here's a shot. So I think what happened
that night, not to be too crude about it, a couple
of good things happened that night. Okay. First
is obviously no one was hurt. Thank God. And
if anyone were going to get hurt, it almost certainly
would have been journalists because this putz
was smart enough to take a train across country
so that I assume so he didn't have to check his
weapons in an airport. And he somehow got a room
in a hotel that's booked up weeks or months in
advance for that weekend. But apparently never
went down and looked at the ballroom because,
you know, to get in there, you have to go through
the mags, and then there's another set, and then
you go down a long flight of stairs, and then
there's another level, and then you go to something
else. And then you get into the back of a room,
and there are 250 tables. There are 2 ,500 people,
plus waiters and whatever. I mean, it's impossible
to move when you're in there. You'd need a helicopter
to pick you up to just, you know, go to the restroom
or something. There's no way he was going to
get close to the president, but he could have
certainly killed somebody. So thank God for that.
Secondly, thank God Trump didn't get to give
his speech because, as he said, it was going
to be the most inappropriate speech of all time.
You know he was going to get up there and insult
everyone in that room, every journalist there
for an hour and just be demeaning and heap abuses
and be as crude as he possibly could. And I think
we were all spared that. And thirdly, from my
point of view, and I'm a total hypocrite on this
because I've attended this dinner, I think. We
were trying to count it somewhere between 15
and 17 times. I'm not sure. But it's an abomination.
It should be canceled. It should be shrunk back
down to what its original purpose was, which
is to raise money for scholarships for journalism
students, to give some awards to people who cover
the White House and get rid of all of this, you
know, celebrity suck up stuff that goes. I should
tell you that I was at the dinner in 2011, the
famous dinner where Trump, where Obama insulted
Trump. And Trump has always denied that that
is the reason that that's the night he decided
to run for president. But, you know, who knows?
Because he lies about everything. So it was actually
very funny at the night, but it was not at all
a big deal that night. The bigger news, at least
at the table I sat on, is that Scarlett Johansson
sat on Sean Penn's lap at the next table. And
that was the first time their romance came out.
My wife was very excited about that. I spent
the night trying to chase down a rumor. This
was the year of the Arab Spring, to chase down
a rumor that the U .S. had just taken out Gaddafi
in a missile strike, which turned out to be not
true. And none of us realized that the really
big news that night was Obama had just signed
off on the bin Laden raid. That afternoon, it
was postponed that night because of weather,
but it actually took place the next day, so that's
what we did the rest of the weekend. So Trump
was not the big news that night, but in any case.
I digress. Interesting. And I would like to know,
you offered to give a little bit of perspective
about the golden age of newspapers, how short
it was and the sort of fallout from that. Yeah.
So I think there is a misconception about how
news organizations have always been trustworthy
and steadfast and true and so on. And the fact
is that the image that we like to think of or
that I grew up thinking of as the standard was
a relatively new and relatively brief thing.
If you go back 100 years, the landscape, in this
country was it was a very atomized news or news.
You know, every town had multiple newspapers.
Big cities had 10, 20 newspapers. You had big
press lords like Joseph Pulitzer, who's sainted
now because of the Pulitzer Prizes, but back
then was known as the father of yellow journalism.
And you had William Randolph Hearst, who famously
pushed the U .S. into the Spanish -American War
and was also known for this, you know, what they
called. gutter journalism, but they were the
press lords and they controlled vast things.
And sort of, and then you had smaller groups
like the Chandlers in Los Angeles, absolute right
-wing family that created Richard Nixon and Helen,
you know, took the Helen Gahagan, Doug is, and
the Annenbergs in Philadelphia, you know, another
right -wing paper at the time. And suddenly that,
this begins to shift, right? Radio opens it up
after World War II and then the television networks
in the 1960s and then Watergate happens and it,
Watergate, right, suddenly this idea that that's
the start of the golden age for me of journalism.
And it goes until, depending on your point of
view, until either eBay came along, which, you
know, ate all of our money, or social media came
along, which ate all of our brains in the 2007s.
And so where we are now, ironically, is I think
there's some similarities. Again, we are in this
very atomized landscape. We're no longer relying
on three networks and two or three newspapers.
We're relying on this endless stuff out there.
And we have press lords out there or billionaire,
I mean, odious billionaire owners, the Jeff Bezos
at The Washington Post and Patrick Sung Chung
at The Los Angeles Times, who have pulled editorials
they don't like or change management. And it
is their right. They are the owners. But it is
suddenly it's not something that we're used to.
And we're about to see. They've already made
changes at CBS with Barry Weiss, who's considered
certainly far more political than the previous
president of CBS News. And Ellison is about to
take over CNN. And that's going to, we assume,
become another Trump mouthpiece because that's
what the politics are. So in a way, we're going
back to the future. We're going back to the past
and what it looked like 100 years ago. But the
good old days were not as long as we'd like to
think. It was maybe 30 years. You were trying
to figure out where to look for an informed source
of information. What would you do? How would
you advise people to go find fewer places to
consume their news from which to get the actual
news or from which to get information? You know,
I think it is a... No, you know, it's just a
supermarket out there now. I mean, everybody,
for better or worse, we all get to pick our own,
you know, topics that we like to follow. You
know, thanks to you, I'm reading Steady State
every day. And I'm learning a great deal. As
I should be. And I read Foreign Policy and I
read The Atlantic and I read The New York Times
and I read The Wall Street Journal and I read
The Washington Post and I just wrote a piece
for Spy Talk, which I think is interesting. I
have a number of Substack writers who I follow.
I spend far too much time staring at screens
these days. I just signed up for a course on
Hamlet. I'm sorry. You go ahead. They do. I was
just about to say I just signed up for an online
course in Hamlet and King Lear Shakespearean
class because I have to tell you I just need
to get my head out of Trump land for a little
bit. Do they still teach journalism? Yes, they
do. I was at my reunion two weeks ago for the
Columbia Journalism School at Columbia University.
I mean, we need talented, qualified, smart journalists,
honest more than ever. The medium is changing,
right? So one of the professors I was chatting
with last week was telling me it's no longer
teaching students how to just write paragraphs,
you know, when I was a tape writer, but paragraphs
on a page because people are reading their news,
most people on a phone. So now it is write a
paragraph. Add a photo. Write a paragraph. Add
a video. Write a paragraph. Add a graph. Write
a paragraph. Link to something else. That basically
people are getting their information in this,
you know, small screen, bite -sized chunks, and
they're used to having it come in in different,
you know, through different formats. And I think
that's exciting. You know, it's a change. You
know, AI is going to come kill us all. I think
AI is already having a huge impact in newsrooms
and in the information industry overall, as it
is in advertising. And my son is in film. And
it's changing the world around us faster than
we can recognize. And I can't possibly predict
how it's going to be because I don't think anybody
knows. But it's having an impact. In some ways,
it's a very useful tool for journalists, right?
It allows you to analyze, you know. analyze material
very quickly especially when it comes to spreadsheets
and vast data sets and so on um you know it's
other utterly untrustworthy in terms of um you
know trying to find material but if you give
it you know sports scores and you need it to
you know write something up it'll do it i mean
there there are ways that can be utilized that
free up hopefully I mean, what we've seen so
far at a lot of these places, it's led to a lot
of people being fired. But I'd like to think
what it does is it frees up people to do other
more valuable work and lets AI do the scut work.
That would be my hope. For somebody who's not
in the business that you were in, how would you...
I'm sort of trying to ask the same question I
did a minute ago. How would you tell people to
find... How would you advise if you were advising
younger people, which is just about anybody in
the world but me, how would you advise them to
select the people they read in whatever media
they choose? I mean, because when I came through,
as you know, it was The Post and The Times, New
York. I think L .A. Times wasn't quite there
when I was a kid. But you sort of that's how
you knew a trusted news source. And you also
had. Walter Cronkite. And there was nobody more
trusted than Walter Cronkite. And I'm just wondering
what you say to people who are new to the world
or new to figuring out, I guess, maybe how you
figure out what's a trusted source. Is that an
unfair question? No, I just I'm amused. No, no
young person has ever asked me for any advice
ever. That's not the least of all. So at one
point. At one point I told my kid, he's 34, she's
31 now. A couple of years ago, I think when they
were finally college or something, I told them,
you know, be careful what you put on the internet.
You know, you don't want anything that appears,
you know, could work up on the front page. And
my son very innocently turns to me and says,
what's a front page? They are not used to getting
the material. You know, they – frankly, I still
rely on some of the same sources that you did
and I did growing up, and that's what I would
advise. Not that every story in The New York
Times is the best or correct or 100 percent,
but overall they are trying and nobody is deliberately
– you know putting their fingers on the on the
there's something on the on the scale and nobody
certainly deliberately putting false information
in there at least not supposed to so well it's
interesting that you talk about some words and
then a graph and some words and then a picture
and some words and then a clip of something because
when we're doing writing which i do for steady
state a fair amount and then i read things and
they're a paragraph and then some of those things
it just throws me so off balance i can't concentrate
through that stuff at all And I have this ongoing
discussion with a couple of you. Are you reading
it on your phone or on your computer screen?
On this thing. I can't read on my phone. My eyes
aren't good enough. And I'm too old. Yeah. Well,
they're not writing it for you, I guess. I don't
know. No, I'm with you. No, it's just interesting
to see because it's so different and it's so
jarring. The young people that we work with always
tell us that makes it better to read. So I guess
I have officially become a dinosaur. Don't agree
with that. You know, as we go through this, there
are a couple of things happening that are encouraging,
I would say. One is that – no, I'm serious. So
one is that when I was a foreign correspondent,
which I did 15 years or so. And I loved it. Went
to 90 countries. I mean, just loved every bit
of it. I used to think, I used to wake up and
think, I can't believe they're paying me to do
this. Then I came to Washington and I thought,
they're not paying me enough to do this. But,
you know, I was the eyewitness. My job was to
go to places and be the eyes and ears of our
viewers on the ground, of our readers, right?
To bear witness to whatever. Good or bad, I was
seeing wars and revolutions. Now, you know, everybody
has a cell phone. Everybody's taking pictures.
Everybody's getting video. There's so much more
information out there. The problem is now because
of AI and the rest of it and deep fakes, you
don't know exactly what's real and what isn't.
But in theory, there's a much greater flood.
world of information out there from which you
can draw your opinions or your beliefs or whatever.
So I find that very exciting. I also find just
on a short -term basis here, Trump isn't succeeding.
I mean, for all that long list I gave him, there's
been enough pushback now that the courts have
thrown out. They threw out his $10 billion lawsuit
against The Wall Street Journal. They threw out
a lawsuit against The Post and The New York Times
and various others. There is starting to be pushback.
And if the midterms go the way polls suggest,
and I'm not suggesting they will, then there
might be more pushback. So I covered three presidential
campaigns. And the one thing I can tell you is,
or the one thing that I learned is, and by covering
it, I was a proverbial boy on the bus, which
meant that you follow the candidate. you know,
in the bubble with the candidate. You're on the
bus or in the plane or whatever. And you've got
to help me. I did that for 15 months with Michael
Dukakis. I also covered Walter Mondale and John
McCain. Do you see a pattern there? They all
lost. I was the kiss of death, right? One thing
that I learned is you take polls. Especially
now, we're six months out with a large grain
of salt. If you don't believe me, ask President
Hillary Clinton or President Kamala Harris about
polling. And the problem is, even if you drill
down into these polls that show Trump's numbers
really cratering, they don't show Democrats.
jumping up because these are always binary choices.
Trump is down, you know, whatever it is, 21 %
from his high, but Democrats are up 2 % from
their low. It's really quite something. And the
best line, the best explanation I got for this
was I met a guy last year from Atlanta, and I
asked if the anti -Trump movement was going to
turn Georgia, you know, into a... a blue state,
a purple state. And he said, you know, just because
I don't like my rabbi doesn't mean I'm going
to become a Catholic. And I think that's sort
of where they are. Leave it at that. Nice, depressing
place to leave it. It appears to me that we may
be out of time. It has been a pleasure to talk
to you again after a long drought and to see
you. And I will see you soon, I expect. Thank
you for agreeing to do this. Keep reading Steady
State. Try to give us some hope next time I talk
to you. And we'll go from there. So thank you
very much, Bob. I was honored to do this, Margaret.
Thank you for inviting me. Take care. Thank you
for listening to this week's episode. If you
like what you heard, please consider subscribing
and leaving us a review. Your comments are really
helpful. And we also welcome suggestions. This
is Margaret Hennock for the SteadyState Sentinel
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