Alex: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. 
Naomi: I'm Nomi Fry.
Vinson: I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. How you guys doing? 
Alex: Good. I'm feeling some anxiety just generalized about everything. Yeah.But I'm okay. I'm okay. 
Vinson: Yeah. As we like to say, it's a real moment. 
Alex: I was too honest right now, but that's okay. That's okay. That's okay. It's honesty. 
Naomi: Honesty is is good. 
Vinson: This episode of our show is about the truth. Mm-hmm. 
Naomi: It's true. It's about facts. Honesty again. Here I go again. Sorry. Here we 
Vinson: go. Do you guys have favorite tropes of journalists in, I don't know.
Film, tv, other media. 
Alex: Oh yeah. Um, the huddle. Everyone's getting together and the bullpen. Yeah. It's a, it's a little bit of a bullpen huddle situation. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: Something needs to be decided. What are we gonna run on the front page? Are we gonna pursue this story? Are we ready to press publish? There's a little bit of an anxious huddle.
I love a door knock. Of course. Yes. A door knock is a standard of the profession, and it's also quite cinematic because you have one person knocking and one person opening. Yes. So you got that. You got it back and forth knocking on a door, 
Naomi: and then you have have the door slamming, and then you have it like opening back a hair, and then you have like maybe a foot in the door.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. I was gonna say the montage of like slam, slam, slam, slam. Then all of a sudden, oh, the montage. Yeah. Somebody's like. Well come on in, you know, then you're like sitting in the ladies' kitchen 
Alex: montage is good. Uh, ringing phones, of course, a classic of a slightly earlier era, but going all the way back to like, you're holding the receiver in one hand and you're holding. the phone body in one hand and the receiver in the other. Oh, the, 
Naomi: the actual, and you're just 
Alex: going, you're going, you're going and you're giving a report. The guy next to you is giving a report.
You're all giving your reports. It's all getting muddled. It's getting mixed up, but you gotta get the word out. 
Naomi: Clacking of typewriters, clacking, smoking, lots of smoking, lots of drinking. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. Also like the headline moment. Finally the story comes out, and then there's the montage of all the people receiving the news.
You know, people that we've seen, the people have who have done the malfeasance, people who have not cooperated, people who didn't believe in the story. All of a sudden looking in awe at the headline. The way that most of these movies also try to show you. The initial like reception of the news.
Naomi: Yes. 
Vinson: That's big. 
Naomi: And also just the thing of like how everything is always down to the wire. You know, there's always like the, the crazed reporter with a scoop like running to, to kick some PMO out of a phone booth in order to call up the newsroom and give his like breaking news.
Before the paper closes,
Vinson: This is exactly what we're gonna get into in this episode. The facts, how we get 'em and how the rest of us see this magical process happen. Newsrooms right full of reporters chasing down stories. You know, hard hitting tales of the street have been fruitful settings for movies and television shows for many, many decades.That's so true. And you know, media's changing. So too are our stories about journalism and now there are two new shows trying to depict this. Search for Truth. The paper on Peacock, A Mockumentary Workplace Comedy set at a failing local newspaper and the FX show the lowdown, which will be streaming on Hulu starting next week.
That show is a hard boiled crime noir that follows a more Gonzo truth story as 
Naomi: he calls himself. 
Vinson: Played by Ethan Hawk as he hunts down a story. Both are out this month. And we're gonna talk about them later in this show and what they have to say about where journalism is today. But first, we're gonna spend some time diving into these tropes, right?
Our favorite depictions of the news. We'll talk about how filmmakers and writers fictionalize the media ecosystem around them, and what these two new shows have to show us about our, let's face it, our very own industry. The question I have for us is. How do we depict the news today? 
Naomi: Who, what, when, where, and why.
Vinson: That's right. The five Ws. You can only get 'em here today on critics at large, the fourth estate.
________________


Vinson: So let's just put some gesso on the canvas, 
Naomi: put some meat on those bones, you know, just 
Vinson: set this thing up. Do you guys have favorite texts about what I call the sweet science 
Naomi: Ooh. Of journals? Is that, is that what you actually call it? Exactly what you call it? Some 
Vinson: people use that for boxing. 
Naomi: Yeah. 
Vinson: I use it for collecting facts and publishing.
Alex: It's the sweet science, beautiful 
Vinson: sweet science of journals. 
Alex: Love it. And they, and they share some things in common. Mm-hmm. Um, yes, I have many favorites. The more I thought about this topic, the more I realized how much I love. Depictions of journalism, Um. Guys, I did something this weekend. I rewatched all the president's men. Oh my god. I did a full rewatch. Wow, that's so good. 1976. And let me just tell you, I'm gonna be bold here and I'm just gonna speak directly to the listeners for one moment. If you have not yet seen all the President's men. Go home tonight.
Wow. It's riveting. It's a spectacle. It's a story about the triumph, of course. I mean, it's the high watermark. Mm-hmm. Of American journalism. So it's galvanizing in that way. It's exciting in that way. It's so 
Naomi: glamorous and it's, and it's sort of like not glamorous. Exactly. 
Alex: Environment 
Naomi: and Right. You know, work that it depicts 
Alex: Exactly. The story is of course about Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post, who at the time are two schmos pretty much. Mm-hmm. Bernstein at the start of the movie is seen, he's played by Dustin Hoffman is seen, quote unquote, polishing a story that he just clearly can't, you know, get up the momentum to finish and Woodward.
Played by Robert Redford is new to the Post. No one really trusts either of these guys. They're not big time players, but there's a break in at the Watergate Hotel and they start, as the famous saying, from the film goes following the money. Mm-hmm. To connect it to a wider and wider circle of people higher and higher up in the government until it comes to seem that everything way up to the president, everything and everyone is.
Tainted by this break-in, and what makes this movie so great, Nome? It's exactly what you say. First of all, the newsroom at the Washington Post. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: It's a wonderfully unglamorous place. There are a bunch of desks, hideous lighting. People are smoking, people are typing. But what makes this movie so great is.
That they show you in this condensed form, but they show you the process. And the process of journalism is very simple. It's going from not knowing to knowing. Mm-hmm. And trying to figure it out. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: And these guys don't really know what they're doing at first, but they really feel that they could be onto something and even the paper is against them at the start.
CLIP - ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN
And it kind of has everything. It just has that. Because they get the goods and the goods are there to be gotten. That's of course, very satisfying. Mm-hmm. I mean, you could also, I'm sure, make a case for all the president's men completely warping people's minds towards conspiracy thinking.
I mean, because there was a huge conspiracy to uncover. 
Vinson: Yeah. Yeah. So this 
Alex: pattern of journalists going after the big story that goes all the way to the top, that conspiracy of it all, perhaps, Became too dominating of a trope later on. But this is the classic. This is the original. This is, takes you right back there.
Yeah. Um, and I should 
Naomi: say that Robert Redford, who plays Woodward of course, and, and, uh, and Dustin Hoffman, who played and, uh, Carl Bernstein, um, are great and also just like they look so good. but it makes it look attractive.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. It 
Naomi: makes it look sexy. It makes the work of journalism look like something that should be prized and pursued by young people everywhere. 
Vinson: Yeah. 
Naomi: Um, and that is something that is, yeah. Pretty particular to the seventies. There's another movie. That I really liked the China syndrome from 1979 starring, Jane Fonda.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi:  and Michael Douglas as her kind of like semi unhinged, um, cameraman. Yeah. Who follows her? She is a newscaster in a channel. Out of LA and nobody takes her seriously. and she goes to report a story about this nuclear power plant, and she kind of stumbles on this conspiracy that they are hiding, that there's a malfunction And, uh, she finds a source who's Jack Lemon, like, uh, within the plant. And again, nobody believes her. maybe I'll, I'll show you a clip where you're gonna show us 
Alex: evidence. You say, 
Naomi: I'm gonna show evidence. So he’s talking about the Jack Lemmon character and they're saying he was shot dead because he was out of control. And she knows this is not the case.
She knows that in fact, um, he was trying to reveal this coverup and so she marches up. 
        CHINA SYNDROME CLIP
This moment of truth arrives late in the movie. Mm-hmm. And I think interestingly too, and this is similar to all the President's men as well. What these movies engage with is the plot, kind of the coverup and the attempt to reveal the coverup and the reveal to the public only comes at the end.
We trust that once something is revealed to the public, it'll end up being for the good in the sense of like. In the China syndrome, we don't need to see exactly what happens because just the fact of like the airing of the facts via the news mm-hmm. Via this, uh, character of the journalist 
Vinson: mm-hmm. 
Naomi: Makes us feel like it's gonna be okay.
Yeah. Like the truth is out. Yeah. Um, whereas I'm not completely sure. We treat Newsmaking the same way nowadays. Absolutely not. Possibly. Yeah. 
Alex: Yeah. it's just a great American genre. I mean, of course, citizen Kane is a movie about many things, but one of them is about the news business and a billionaire who, or maybe at the time a millionaire, but you know, same difference.
Who owns a newspaper there's a great scene where Charles Foster Kane, of course, played by Orson Wells, is confronted by the man who effectively raised him and turned him into a millionaire and is told that he's losing a million dollars a year. And he says, yeah, 
CLIP - CITIZEN KANE
which of course makes me think of someone like. Elon Musk owning Twitter, you know, yeah.
You can pour all the money in, doesn't necessarily need to, um, give you returns right away. What do you actually wanna get out of it? And in Charles Foster Kane's position, what he wants to get out of it is. Dialing up the Spanish American War. Mm-hmm. Let's get it cranking. which is of course such an American attitude about newsmaking. Yeah. 
Vinson: Yeah. I think this attitude is definitely like built on, and we've talked about it a lot, the, these twin poles of sort of grit and glamor.
Naomi: Ah, yes. 
Vinson: And how the figure of the journalism is not, not unlike in my mind, the sort of the figure of the, the novelist in the 20th century, which is someone who is right on peering over the edge of the bourgeoisie, like is a part of society as we know. It is sort of a play acting at regularity so that they can gain entree into spaces, but also sort of almost constitutionally kind of like.
Avant garde outside someone who is like inside enough to get the goods outside, enough to break it all down. Mm-hmm. 
It's such a role in society. Mm-hmm. It's such a classically, you know, all the presidents men, it's also like actually such a suit to wear. Yeah. That it's, you know, you, you wear, you know, I'm thinking about the, the macho. This person with like sort of chest poked out, wearing a tailored suit, you know, can sit down at the seat at the table with the CEO, but also be like, I'm onto you, Buster.
You know this, 
Naomi: there's a certain swagger involved. Yeah, for sure. 
Vinson: Yeah. Speaking of the costume, both sort of spiritual and actual, I do wanna talk about something that I remain obsessed with in the moment, which is the Gilded Age.
Naomi: Ah, yes. 
Vinson: One of my favorite characters in this is this character named. Peggy Scott. 
Naomi: Mm-hmm. 
Vinson: She is, uh, a young by, by the 
Naomi: beautiful, the name Benton. 
Vinson: She's amazing. 
Naomi: Mm-hmm. 
Vinson: And she is a writer and journalist. I think she styled a little bit after, uh, the Iconic.
Black journalist Ida B. Wells, who famously chronicled lynchings all across the south in making this practice more known to a, a wider audience. But there's an episode, a great episode in season two of the Gilded Age where Peggy goes with, um, Mr. Fortune, her boss, They go down to visit the Tuskegee Institute in its building the school founded by the sort of iconic figure. Uh, Booker t Washington, and of course in black New York, at least this project of the South, which is, I guess you could call it conservative, it's like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Yeah. It's 
Naomi: like, 
Vinson: you know, we don't, we're not irre 
Naomi: respectable. We Yeah, that's right. We're not worried 
Vinson: about political independence. Leave all that to the white man. We're gonna work up, learn a trade, and we're gonna build ourself up as an economic base. And the two characters, uh, fortune and Peggy are kind of arguing even in, in New York and on their way down to the south about.
The implications of this project, and it continues at the dinner table of Booker t Washington as they have sort of. Accepted his hospitality on the night before they go and see the school. I mentioned this only to say that another role for the journalist to play, it seems to me at least at some point in our history is yes, there's the fact finder, whatever, but there's also the person who is involved in shaping and further, maybe further deepening the the great issues of the day.
The crusader journalist who, you know, wants to weigh in on those fights that like sort of helps. The national conversation roll on. And, and similarly at the dinner table, this great tense moment Fortune is arguing with Booker t Washington. I'm not gonna sit and, you know, achieve some Deante with these white people who I've seen lnch people that I know, da da, and Peggy's like, no, I, I love what you're doing Mr. Washington. 
        CLIP - THE GILDED AGE
We've seen a little bit of her sympathy. Away from Washington, but she's also buttering this guy up. She's like, I love what you're doing here. This is so interesting. 
Naomi: Yeah. 
Vinson: Playing this role of like really jumping into the water of ideas to understand better, help others understand better in a minute.
Two new shows about the state of journalism today. The paper and the lowdown. This is Critics at Large from the New Yorker. We'll be right back.
:: MIDROLL 1 :: 
I NEED A CRITIC CALL-OUT
Vinson: So we've been talking about depictions 
of journalism in the past and like it should be said that the industry these days is in. A very, you can't overstate this a very different place. People don't trust the media the way that they once did. Circulation is way, way down. And, uh, the paper, this new show on Peacock, takes that dire situation as its starting point. Does somebody wanna synopsize that for us? 
Naomi: Okay. so the same documentary crew that for nine years, nine seasons, uh, covered the happenings in the office at Dunder Mifflin On the office is now. Following the doings of a small newspaper in Toledo, Ohio that belongs to the paper goods company that replaced Dunder Mifflin. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So x
Naomi: it's a paper goods company that like makes like softies toilet paper and so on. This paper goods company is owned by a larger corporation, which also owns this small failing local newspaper. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi: And as we open. There's a new editor in chief who comes in and decides to turn this absolute failing rag that is just full of like bullshit and like click Beatty stuff that they pick up off wires and no actual original reporting.
Mm-hmm. And so on to turn this organ into like a living, you know, working. Local newspaper, The problem is of course, that there's no budget for this. Yes. The corporation that owns this newspaper refuses to provide funds for this new, uh, reporting.
And so this young, you know, energetic editor in chief asks everyone who works at the office. Bookkeepers, we have like the, the person who does layout, we have like even a, a sales on the, like the toilet paper side. If they wanna do volunteer reporting, then join him in this new endeavor. And so basically the 10 episodes of this first season of the paper, which has been already renewed for a second season, documents these.
Comedic and yet earnest efforts to be real journalists. Yes. To bring real journalism back to the Toledo Truth Teller newspaper. The TTT Toledo Truth Teller. 
Alex: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 
Vinson: What did you think of the paper? 
Alex: Well, I'll just say this before I tell you what I thought. Yes. Which is let's just establish some basic facts here that are obvious.
But I wanna just, because I wanna do my journalist job, I wanna put 'em out. Right there upfront. Just 
Vinson: the facts, ma, just the 
Alex: facts. The paper is the story of a culture in severe decline. Yes. And that culture is American journalism. The entire premise of the paper is that no one would subscribe to a newspaper.
You'd have to be absolutely crazy to get one of these things. In fact, in the credit sequence, which I found to be rather amusing, but the credit sequence shows a variety of ways. That one can use a newspaper aside from reading it, you know, perhaps you might wrap a food item in it.
Mm-hmm. Perhaps you might wipe dog shit off your shoe, you know, whatever. There's a kind of a little visual gag reel mm-hmm. Of what the news has come to. And these tropes that we have been talking about from depictions of the American news are very much also alive in the minds of the characters of the paper.
For instance, Ned Sampson. The new editor in chief of the gtt, Ned Sampson, played by Domnhall Gleason, he talks about. The influence that these depictions have had on him. Yes. You know, he says that he dreams of developing sources over whiskey in a smoky bar. I mean, that idea lives on, even if it's pseudo KU that's keeping the paper alive and they talk at the start about like, what's our wordle gonna be? You know, even the, even the New York Times would be failing without its wordle. So the assumption, which I would say is not.
Incorrect is that the American news landscape is bleak from certainly an economic standpoint. So what did I think of this show? I liked it. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. I 
Alex: kind of liked it, but, but here's how I'll say it. I liked it. 
Vinson: You gotta go into your falsetto to talk about 
Alex: it. I liked it. I watch it. It's, it's fine. I don't feel very strongly about it.
Vinson: One interesting aspect of it, especially in the pilot, is that it is kind of about this like delta. Between what was and what is. So there has been, and we kind of see it first kind of just as a cut and then as playing on Ned's laptop that is a documentary based ta-da in the seventies, 1971 at the sort of height of the Toledo truth teller and the, uh, the editor.
Of it back then in its glory days, was played by 
Alex: Tracy Lz, the 
Vinson: great Tracy Lz. Love it. Um, he's like swaggering around the newsroom in a beautiful suit. He's wearing goggles down in the production room where the machines are turning out papers. He said, I worship at the altar of this machine. You know, so there is in its structure from that point on, an inkling of this sort of decline.
Again, as, as you said, Ned. Has seen the movies that we're talking about and is always doing things that he thinks this kind of person is supposed to be he's jumping up on people's desks to give speeches.
At one point he says, I'm about to say something very noble. You know, he has this idea of what the person's supposed to be, and it's almost like the culture doesn't anymore produce. The kind of person who can even play these roles. Everybody sort seems to be sort of play acting at the thing. Maybe the story of the season is people find like a kind of almost like virtue ethics philosophy where like fake it until you make it toward the end of the season.
No spoilers. There's an actual issue that forces them to look straight into the abyss of like, okay, wait, we work for this corporate concern. Can we do our jobs honestly? Or whatever. And all of a sudden this like actual nobility. Sits alongside this sort of playact nobility, which I think is interesting because one way I would characterize our current American moment is this feeling of, oh, I'm, I missed the high moment of like, morality, heroism.
There are lots of problems, but fewer people that I, I feel that like I would look to, to help solve them. Like the moment of sort of. Earnest and innocent, like engagement, like struggle is kind of over. Um, this is sad, but I, I, no, I think it's, and so it's like we make lots of references to the past.
Partially because of this lacuna that we feel in the present. 
Naomi: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a show about reduced expectations in some way. It's the landscape, as you say, Vincent. Mm-hmm. Has completely changed, has radically changed. This has been a big discussion over the last like decade of like, you know, 
Are we gonna pay? Interns, like what's, how, how can people enter the profession of journalism, for instance? Mm-hmm. And, and here it all depends on the kind of goodwill mm-hmm. Of these random participants, you know, these random employees in the company.
Who somehow though, within the context of these reduced expectations are trying to make, do, are trying to do their best with what they have. Mm-hmm. And so like everything has shrunk, and yet it's not a nihilistic show. this show is about kind of like, okay, we might be kind of idiots, we might have no experience, we might have zero money.
Yeah. Yeah. And yet there is a sense that we want to try, and whether that's enough for one or not is a question, you know, or whether that's more depressing than comedic is another question. Yeah. I kind of liked it. I mean, it, it was like. In Guang, one of the New Yorkers TV critics wrote about the show and she was likening it to not another journalism show so much as, uh, parks and Rec, the Amy Poer 
Vinson: right 
Naomi: sitcom about like a small town in Indiana City Hall.
And how again, this is like the stakes are. Small, the expectations are also pretty small. Uh, the achievements mm-hmm. Will not be off the charts in any direction, and yet the hopes are there. 
Vinson: Right. 
Naomi: and I kind of like that. Yeah. You know, it, it did give me a bit of a warm, fuzzy feeling. Mm-hmm. Like even with my kind of like, you know, dark black heart, you know, I, I, I, I kind of was like, oh, this is kind of cute.
Yeah. You know? 
Vinson: Yeah. 
Alex: Alright. I thought more, I, Alex you have been 
Vinson: like, visibly thinking. I thought more, I want to hear, 
Alex: I'm prepared to make a clearer statement than I was before. Something is wrong with this show, and here's what it is.
We made Alex, something is wrong with America. Well, something is on a hundred percent wrong with America, but here's what, it's, something is wrong with the paper. Know me. I agree with everything you just said. It is a cute show. It's about being cute. It's about people being kind of just regular schmos and shooting it up together at the workplace.
Yes. And some of them sell toilet paper and some of them are trying to get a news story out. And how cute is that? And here's the thing, guys. It isn't cute. What the hell is going on here? Now I'm really starting to wake up. 'cause the thing is, wake up, I'm waking up America. You may enjoy the experience of watching it.
I had dinner in front of the paper. I had a nice dinner and I had a nice time watching the paper. It's very, that. I chuckled. It's a very chuckle. I chuckled, chuckled and I smiled. I understand it's a charming show that's meant to entertain people and keep us like all happy enough for now, and it's scamming with a comedic wow. With the comedic edge. And I say this to someone who loves, I 
Vinson: understand that it is bread and circuses. 
Alex: Well, I loved Parks and Rec and I think that's what's so great about Parks and Rec is in part, it uses the workplace comedy and all the tropes of the workplace comedy, your coworkers, the overenthusiastic.
Boss, the one who's totally opting out, the idiot, the grump, to actually say something. Very Obama era and hopeful about civic engagement in the United States and the people who care and the people who wanna make it work. Look 
Naomi: for the helpers,
Alex: right? 
Vinson: You god damn right. 
Alex: And here's the thing about the paper. So let's look at, let's step away from the show itself for a second. There's a crisis in local news. Newspapers are vanishing. Mm-hmm. From local news markets. Mm-hmm. The kind of papers that can employ reporters to really report on what is going on in a given community.
The number of papers that can do that are shrinking. I mean, here's a stat. The United States has lost almost 1800 papers since 2004, including more than 60 dailies and 1700 weeklies. We are living in a really impoverished news environment, and in my mind that's really tied to 2008. Mm-hmm. Because of course, the model for journalism has always been advertising.
That is the standard model. So since 2008, when the advertising dollars just dried up in the financial crisis and didn't come back. There's been an absolute crisis with news deserts in this country, and this is all what? The paper is gently satirizing while trying to put this kind of, we can do spin on it, but what I don't like about the paper, and I haven't finished this season, so maybe this changes.
What I don't like about the paper is they can't seem to find stuff to report on. what I don't like about the show is the idea that there kind of isn't that much going on in a small town or a city, toledo's a city. There's not that much going on here. We don't really know how to get information. What, what could we possibly look at, feel like 
Vinson: calling the morgue, being like, anything weird going on there?
Yeah. 
Alex: This is all very yuck. Yuck. Small town America stuff. But we are in an absolute crisis where big stories about what's going on in local communities are not getting reported 'cause there aren't the funds to do it, and the people who are reporting them are getting demonized by those who have the most to lose from the truth Being told we are in a bad and a vicious cycle.
I think this is why the three of us are so drawn to seventies comparisons.  Because the political situation in the seventies is, I would say at this point, not equally bleak, but still really, really bleak. Maybe equally bleak. but there was still a robust power to investigate it, 
Naomi: the fourth estate, 
Alex: and there also was a belief among the people who were reading the news among the citizenry that there was a value to the news.
Vinson: It does seem. And this goes to the other, uh, show that we watched. I would love to ping it right back to you, Alex, to, to provide a. Uh, a kind of summary of the lowdown, the new, uh, Ethan Hawk vehicle. But it does seem to me that in that show we're facing another, a different kind of news desert. It's set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it's this noir almost.
kind of a western. Mm-hmm. And finding the news presents itself as a kind of frontier. Something that has to be done alone with sort of. No cooperation from the various stakeholders. And so all of the unction, all of the will, has to come from the Renegade reporter.
Naomi: He's a cowboy. 
Vinson: Tell us a little bit more about the lowdown. Alex, please. Yeah, tell 
Alex: us. Tell us, Alex, here's the lowdown on the lowdown. 
Naomi: Nice. 
Alex: Um, okay. So the lowdown is created by Sterling Harrow, who is also the creator of reservation dogs, but at the center we have. Lee Raybon. Mm-hmm. Played by a resplendent, Ethan Hawk re resplendent.
Guys, I'm into the lowdown and I will tell you why. So. Lee Ray Bon is what some might call a citizen journalist. He is what he himself would call a truth historian. Mm-hmm. Which makes him sound totally wackadoo, which is good 'cause he is totally wackadoo. 
        THE LOWDOWN CLIP
He's this guy who owns a rare bookstore in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he's absolutely obsessed with getting the dirt on pol high up political figures who may or may not be up to no good.
Mm-hmm. Of course, he thinks they're up to no good. He sees. Fast conspiracy. He wants to know what's going on, but usefully, helpfully, he wants to actually prove it. This is good. So as the show starts, there's been a death. This guy Dale Washburg, has died in what is an apparent suicide. His brother is the aspiring governor of Oklahoma, played by.
Our favorite Kyle McLaughlin. 
Vinson: He's great. 
Alex: So great. The resplendent, Kyle Ach resplendent, Kyle McLaughlin, and something stinks to high heaven. So Lee RayBan is, you know, he is a kind of combo of some favorite American tropes that we have. Like, as you guys say, he's the cowboy figure. He's a. Rustling around in his creepy white van.
Another character on the show calls him Petto, which I actually found very funny. Mm-hmm. Because he drives this horrifying white fan. Mm-hmm. He's a lot of masculine bravado, but has a daughter. Loves. The daughter, The last thing I'll say is that. As the show is beginning, Lee has gotten into trouble with some white supremacists.
He's been doing some reporting on white supremacists, and this is kind of a good contrast to the paper. The place where he's published, his reporting is in a local newsletter, it seems. It's not exactly a robust news outfit, let's say. Mm-hmm. It has news about strippers. Possibly and crime like that's, it's called Tulsa Beat.
It's 
Vinson: called Tulsa Beat. The editor of it is Killer Mike. Killer Mike. He's great. Yeah. Who's doing a great job as like, you know, a, a tabloid showman. 
Alex: Exactly. So this, he just wants to get the word out about these white supremacists and Tulsa beat, which is. Really not generally about this kind of thing, and he gets into trouble that way.
But what I like about the show, I like a lot of things about the show. I like the texture and the sense that it's based in a real place. That's always a major plus. And I have to say, I like this twist on the classic Americans conspiratorial thinking character because what's so confusing about America, what's so confusing about American journalism is.
The bad stuff is often true, but not always true. And people wanna believe so many things, but not the truth. You know? Like, 
Vinson: yeah, it's, 
Alex: there's so many bad things that are real, and yet there are so many other peddlers trying to convince you of the things that aren't real and they meld in this way and never more so than in this moment where anybody can speak to anybody where we have.
Social media and you, you can just broadcast your own thing. And so what I like about this show is that it's someone who still really believes in the process. Yeah. Who's trying to dig up the goods and who's trying to prove something. He doesn't even quite know what, but he's sees a scheme and he's trying to follow it much as they do in all the President's men.
Vinson: That's right. 
Alex: And he does not have the backing of the Washington Post behind him. What do you guys think? 
Naomi: I liked it. I enjoyed it. I found it diverting. I don't know how seriously I can take the character. Sorry you didn't find him. No, I do find him. I think he's a, he's a great actor and, and you know, he, he does a good job. 
Vinson: I kid Ethan Hawk, 
Naomi: but much like we were saying about the paper. I mean, it's, it's a different type of show. it's more nore, it's more hard boiled. It's, it's tougher, et cetera. But there was something about the character that didn't totally compute to me as a realistic, uh, figure.
You know, it, he seemed a little bit like a collection of tropes rather than an actual. Character, and that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi: But if we're talking about like a depiction of journalism in the modern era, right. Which we are. 
Vinson: Yeah. 
Naomi: Um, I don't know that I completely believe this version of it, you know, this sort of like, I have like a bookstore in Tulsa, but I'm also like fighting neo-Nazis at night.
And like my ex-wife is still in love with, you know, I don't know. It just seemed like a little bit too, I. Kind of a convenient collapse o of a bunch of different things. Mm-hmm. Which again, is not a bad thing, but it was kind of more of a, an idiosyncratic kind of collection of, uh, yeah. Gestures. I 
Alex: mean, a hundred percent.
Like don't, if you're looking to get into journalism, let's just say this, to be a hundred percent clear, don't get kidnapped by white supremacists and put in the back of a trunk. Yeah. Like, don't do that. Try not, try not to, try not to. There are other ways. 
Vinson: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I would say that there's something interesting formally in it.
Naomi: Interesting. Say more 
Vinson: th that, you know, it's kind of trippy to watch, 
There's a kind of surreal edge to it. Yeah. Where you're not sure if there's, there's moments when you're kind of standing on the edge of dream and reality. It made me think. Maybe Hawk isn't necessarily the figure of the journalist so much as the individual even trying to understand the truth now.
Mm-hmm. Who is beset by options that come at you in these weird different ways. Mm-hmm. People like sort of whispering into your ear, uh, sort of the corporate world. Be like being like, Hey look, listen, just here's an algorithm for you. Go over here. You know, people offering you. Alternate ways to accept, do your own research, man, it almost, you know, the, the kind of surrealism of looking for what actually happened.
Um, it's just like, just to be a person trying to understand the truth. You're on this weird frontier by yourself and there are mirage everywhere that I, I appreciated about this. 
Alex: You know, Nomi, I think what I'd say, I hear what, I hear your critique and it makes total sense to me. Like certainly this is not a depiction of like, here's how the news works in, in 21st Century America.
It's one kooky guy with a creepy van who's like running around getting beat up. But he has a lot of heart, but he has a lot of heart. I think it points to the same thing though, that the paper does, which is like this guy is a, he calls himself a truth historian, but. He does wanna be a journalist. There just is nowhere for him to do that, like Right.
There's no local paper for in the world of the show. For him to do that. There's Tulsa beat, And there's a mention that he makes. Quite comically, I think, when he's getting beat up by the white supremacist of writing for, um, a long form magazine.
So he aspires to the thing, but the thing isn't there for him to, um, absolutely. Yeah. And that, and that is the commentary, I guess I would say because this Lee RayBan character, whatever else you can say about him, he's a true local, you know? Mm-hmm.
He's of a place. And he wants the place to be better and that like maybe the cheesiness of the paper didn't totally do it for me, but for whatever reason, the cheesiness of that mm-hmm. Does do it for me because it's something I believe in.
Vinson: Trust in media institutions, let's face it, is at an all time low. So how does art about that same media reflect that? That's in a minute on critics at large.
:: MIDROLL 2 :: 
Vinson: Maybe what we can do next is make two departures from the fictional to perhaps the nonfictional and from. I think what we've established are these two pretty positive depictions of journalism in the paper and the lowdown to a more negative affect that reigns today about the news. One way to do both of those things is to talk about the news of the day.
The murder of Charlie Kirk and perhaps not so much about that fact itself at, but how it has been digested in media and how like all of us are taking that in. We live in a society, we work for a news organization. I wrote a piece over the weekend and I could feel all of us working together, my editors fact checkers, um, the editor of our magazine, all working to be like.
Is it the right tone? Uh, one of the things was, you know, let's bring down the temperature. Something about how the news still does play this societal role. And perhaps the reason that people don't like journalists as much anymore as we've established is because people think that. Journalists, whether they're like individual people, you know, playing a role or the great multinational corporations that tend to own the media outlets that that make their way to the public are trying to effectuate something negative like in the world, pit us against each other or tug to the right or to the left.
Trump, when he is sort of excoriating, the media is always talking about. You know, M-S-D-N-C. And so you, the, the fact that, you know, perhaps journalists have become these faceless part of a conspiracy as opposed to the person like struggling to uncover it. Mm-hmm. Um, have you guys felt that recently this like, I don't know, this kind of cloud, this environment 
Alex: Yeah, I'd say I felt it. Yeah. I think, um, going back at this point, almost 10 years, when you have a then presidential candidate and soon to be president, pointing to a bunch of people in a press box and saying. You know, everybody boo them here. Here's the fake news. Mm-hmm.
Here's your enemy. These are not the things of healthy democracies. I think we know, and it's, it's scary. The paranoid style of the seventies that the three of us are very attracted to, that we've been talking about today, which presents news gathering as. A dangerous thing because people don't want the truth to be out there.
The powerful don't want the truth to be out. You know, at your risk. Again, going, going right back to all the President's men, the movie ends on this note of Deep Throat, tells Woodward, your lives are in danger. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: I was very struck this morning. Um, every morning I read. Speaking of my own news habits, I read reliable Sources with Brian Stelter from CNN. This is not a paid advertisement, it's just something I do. It's 
Vinson: a good digest. It's 
Alex: a very good digest, um, of shout 
Vinson: out to Stelter 
Alex: of what's going on in the day.
And so I read this morning that according to the AP quote, two men have been arrested on suspicion of placing an incendiary device under a news media vehicle in Salt Lake City. Um, I don't know much more about what's going on with it. By the time this air certainly more will be known, but. I don't need to know much more right now than people wanting to kill journalists 
Vinson: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 
Alex: And I think Vincent, like you're, you're talking about what's been said and done in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. I was reading, um, an article in another mainstream publication. Those, some of us may have heard of the New York Times And, um. There's a professor at the University of Delaware, professor of Communications who is talking about noticing a restraint, which is what you're describing, Vincent. This kind of, you know, everyone trying to be careful about what they say, to realize that words matter and they absolutely do.
Um, at the same time. I think this restraint can drive you a little bit crazy when you're reporting on things that are so unrestrained. Mm-hmm. so much of the challenge is if you're trying to account for reality and trying to present reality.
And reality is increasingly in temperate and divisive and angry and aggressive and violent, how to do that without. Fanning the flames or seeming like you can't meet the moment. That's a big challenge. And you know, I think just if we wanna talk about depictions. So many of the depictions that I've recently loved about journalism are on two totally opposite poles.
Mm-hmm. I love Spotlight the movie about the Boston Globe's investigation into the crimes of Catholic priests. Mm-hmm. The Pedophilic Crimes against Children of Catholic Priests because it shows what commitment to a story and to truth can do. 
It's a very moving and exciting story of how Truth gets out. Love Spotlight. And on the other hand, I love succession and its depiction of the Evil Empire, ATN, based on Fox News, which is totally in cahoots. With power.
There's an amazing sequence from the end of succession where ATN calls the election early in favor of the far, far right candidate. And when I first watched it, I felt like, wait, what's going on? Of course, like a news organization, can't decide who wins the presidency. And then I realized, oh, right, of course, in this poisoned landscape, what you can do is give the impression that if anyone contests this.
They're lying. They're on the side of corruption. They're not. You can create a total question mark around the truth so that the actual truth doesn't end up mattering. These are two depictions I love because they show to me are very polarized reality. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Those are two forces that are duking it out.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: Yeah. And I don't know exactly where it leaves us. It leaves me scared. Yeah. 
Naomi: Sometimes when I like. Huh? Look at my Twitter feed or on Instagram or whatever. I'm just like, does the news even matter anymore? Mm-hmm. Does any, is anyone even listening either? For Ill or good like with Ill or good intentions.
Like the fact that journalists are still, still seen as a threat along these lines almost surprised me because like in the response to Kirk and his assassination, of course there was much written in the Times and like everywhere in, in our own magazine, you know, it's every news organization responded to it, but so much has just been going on.
On social media which seems to be, to be just as if not more effective than people actually reporting on what happened. Mm-hmm. Or writing opinions for like recognized institutions about what happened.
That it seems like almost quaint and kind of like. Again, just to make clear, I'm not happy that, you know, journalists are being threatened. God, God forbid anything happens, but it just seems to me that like in, in the current landscape, especially when it's we're talking about such polarizing characters, so much of the conversation is happening not from people who are officially journalists or official news institutions, but rather just.
People voicing their opinions. 
Alex: Yeah. There's a, there's a huge dilution in the environment and there is a huge, I mean, I think, I think we all know this, but it's, it's definitely worth stating over and over again, there's a trust issue. The, the story of the American news is the, since the seventies to today is the story of extreme hyper.
Partisanship. Mm-hmm. Where the news just increasingly is about. Mm-hmm. It is, mm-hmm. About slant and bias and the people who are, who are fighting against that often get like shunted to the sides because it's not as exciting or enraging. It doesn't give you that, that little boost and it doesn't reflect your truth back to you.
And so certainly less clickable. Yes. It can feel very, I mean, obviously it can feel. Extremely demoralizing. And yet the job is to really like, keep going 
Vinson: mm-hmm.
Alex: In the face of ever increasing opposition. Yeah. 
Vinson: To look back at these new shows and kind of maybe use them as a way to look forward, does all of this trouble that we just outlined plus these new. Narratives, these new representations, does it give you any idea of where we're going in terms of this kind of representation, even who the journalist is supposed to be in the popular imagination?
Naomi: It's interesting that there's the depiction itself, the most recent depictions that we talked about, whether it's these two new shows or something like succession, which is quite recent. Are so polarized in and of themselves. That is one is kind of like drilling down, like super particular. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi: Super local, super particular.
And the other is talking about the system essentially. And I'm wondering is there a space for something in in between? 
Alex: Yeah, I think there is. here's where I wanna say something a bit rousing. I I
Naomi: Okay, thank you. I need
Alex: I wanna say something a bit rousing, Rous, um,
Vinson: ROS on
Alex: The figure of the journalist is not gonna go away because it's something that is bigger than any particular business model. The journalist is someone who wants to know the truth about what is going on and who wants to tell other people and who thinks that that goal is vital and is necessary in and of itself. In an ideal world, the journalist has a large institutional backing that shares those goals that can fund them, that can provide the means so that they can be properly researched and edited and fact checked. That's in an ideal world, and it still happens, but not as widely as we might like.
Mm-hmm. But the journalists themselves, take for instance, this documentary that's recently been released here by Julia Octav Called My Undesirable Friends, and it's about a group of Russian journalists who are reporting in Russia on a situation that endangers them personally.
Just trying to tell the truth in Moscow is a dangerous business. Mm-hmm. And, but they're out there trying to do it.
Naomi: Mm-hmm.
Alex: Look at that. Look at, for instance, like other business models that are cropping up because pe because the journalist is gonna continue to exist.  I've become interested recently in this thing called 4 0 4 Media. Do you guys know about this? I
Naomi: don't.
Alex: So it's an a site that has a lot of investigative work. for instance, a story that
came out today the day we're recording September 15th.
And, um, here's what the story says at the top.
Four. Four Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists. And then It asks people to subscribe. We're used to that. Mm-hmm. This is what we know, but then it says, or send us a one-time donation via our tip jar. Wow. Fascinating. Do I want journalists working for tips? No. I want them working for like, salaries with health benefits and like, you know, in 4 0 1 Ks, that's what I want, but. The work continues and so. 
Here's where I'm coming out in all of this. Watch the paper if you want. You know, hopefully you'll enjoy it a bit like I did. And then subscribe to a paper. 
Vinson: Yeah, 
Naomi: Yes! Yes.
Vinson: This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle O'Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's. Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Rado composed our theme music. And we had engineering help today from James Yost with Mixing by Mike Kuman.
You can find every episode of Critics at Large at New yorker.com/critics.