0:00-1:06
Jack Ford: Tonight as we continue our conversation with ABC chief legal affairs anchor Dan Abrams, we’re going to take a deep dive into what has become some of the most significant questions of our time. In an age in which we are bombarded with information on a nearly constant basis, on television, on our phones, on social media, how do we determine who to trust and how to separate fact from fiction? It’s something that we’ve seen play out daily at the highest levels of public life. On Twitter, for instance, the President routinely dismisses any information he doesn’t like as “fake news.” Meanwhile, some members of the media have recently started accusing President Trump of deliberately engaging in a misinformation campaign to confuse the public. Few would argue that any of this makes for a healthy situation, so how did we get here? What does it mean for our democracy and how do we find our way out? Some of the important questions for my good friend Dan Abrams who is joining us now. Also I should mention the author of the new book Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case that Propelled him to the Presidency. And as I said in our previous conversation, it is a marvelous, marvelous book.
1:06-1:07
Dan Abrams: Thank you, Jack, great to be with you.
1:07-1:30
Jack: So let’s talk about some of these questions and let’s start with a big picture if we can. You and I were joking about this outside. The notion of where the profession of journalism and the media stands in the minds of the public. And you were telling me—tell me the story how you would often describe yourself.
1:30-1:46
Dan: Yeah, I would often say that I’m a member of two of the most despised professions in America being a lawyer and being a journalist, but these days it’s not even close. Being a lawyer, eh, that’s fine. It’s the media part that has really changed.
1:46-1:47
Jack: Why do you think that is?
1:47-2:11
Dan: Well look, part of it has been President Trump, right? I mean, President Trump has attacked all of the mainstream media as basically fake news, basically saying you can’t trust any of the mainstream media. I think some of it, some of it is self-imposed. I think it’s fair to say that over time the mainstream media has leaned to the left.
2:11-2:16
Jack: I agree with you. You and I have been involved with this for a lot of years now, and I think that’s a fair statement.
2:16-3:32
Dan: But, they don’t lean as far to the left as many conservatives claim, and certainly not as much as Donald Trump has been suggesting now. And so, the first thing the media has to do, in my view, is own that and admit that, and say, you know what, it’s true. You know, for whatever reason, the people who wanted to go into journalism for the last 30 or 40 years have tended to be more left-leaning than right-leaning, and as a result, if you’re going to look at the macro picture, that’s been reflected in the media coverage. But I will also say that the mainstream media goes to great lengths to try to be fair. Doesn’t mean they always succeed, but I will tell you behind the scenes every day there are discussion and efforts to try to be as balanced as they possibly can be. And so I think that the starting point for the media now is saying that they’ve had a fair gripe on certain things, but not as far as some are claiming.
3:34-3:47
Jack: Let me come back for a second. We’re talking about the notion of fake news, and I talked about the president’s view of fake news, and many have said that it’s news that he doesn’t agree with. But the reality is that there is fake news out there.
3:48-4:54
Dan: But look, you have to accept that when the president uses the term fake news, it’s a colloquialism. He’s not actually saying everything is made up. He’s using it as a slogan basically to say, don’t believe them. And that’s what he’s been doing. There’s not actually that much “fake news” out there, meaning news that is literally untrue, invented. Now, we’ve seen on Facebook and on social media—there was a scourge of it leading up to 2016. Literally people inventing things that did not happen and then showing up on Google search for example. That’s something that Facebook is trying to address, Google is trying to address to figure out how to minimize the significance of truly fake, unreal news. A separate question is about bias, right? That’s not fake—the president can call it fake news, but I’m not going to call it fake news. I’m going to call it biased news.
4:55-5:08
Jack: Okay, last question here for you. Are we at a point where it’s too late? Is it too late for us now? Is journalism always going to hover on the bottom of the list of respected professions as opposed to a time when it was at the top of the list?
5:08-6:14
Dan: I don’t think it will necessarily always be there, but I think it’s going to be a while. I think that, for example, the New York Times hires a conservative columnist or CNN hires a few Trump-supporting analysts, it doesn’t change anyone’s impression of what the New York Times is or what CNN is. Or Fox News hires a former Obama administration official. Whatever the case may be, that’s not going to change the game here. It’s going to take time, and look, honestly it’s not going to happen during this presidency because this president has decided that the media is his enemy. And when you’re working within that environment, there’s going to be very little hope, I think, of convincing people that you’re not on—if your position is I’m just reporting the facts and President Trump is saying, no, you’re my enemy. It’s forcing people to kind of pick sides. And it puts the public in a very difficult position and it puts the media in an impossible position.
6:15-6:28
Jack: Dan, again, we could always talk for hours here. I want to mention one more time Lincoln’s Last Trial. It’s a marvelous book, and folks should get out there and read it, and we’ll get you back soon and talk somemore.
6:28-6:30
Dan: Thanks Jack
Jack: You be well.