Texas Monthly Talks

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Narrator

Funding for Texas Monthly Talks is provided in part by Hillco Partners, offering creative business, public policy, and government affairs solutions to public and private sector organizations. And by JPMorgan Chase, a Texas financial institution serving large and small businesses, governments, schools, churches and individual Texans just like you for more than 135 years. And also by the Mattson McHale Foundation in support of public television. And by MFI Foundation, improving the quality of life within our community.

And also by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation. And viewers like you. Thank you. I'm Evan Smith.

For 11 years, she's been the no nonsense host of the one program that makes sense of the week's events, puts them in context, adds navigation and nuance, and an insider's perspective, and scrupulously avoids the shouting and slap fighting and general lowering of the discourse that other shows and networks should be called to account for. Yes, networks. It's Washington Week I'm talking about and I'm pleased to have as this week's guest, Gwen Ifill, who is temperamentally well suited to life on planet PBS as all of you watching this program likely are as well. In today's crazy, hyper competitive, media over saturated world, the cable channels and even the Big Four networks too easily succumb to the temptations of a ratings driven marketplace.

That's how we get theatrics, and antics, and histrionics instead of straight news. Your local PBS station sees things differently and so do journalists like Ifill who serves not only as managing editor of Washington Week, but also as a senior correspondent for the gold standard of television news, the News Hour. Born in New York City, educated at Simmons College, Ifill worked as a print reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Washington Post, and the New York Times before jumping over to TV and NBC where her professional prospects were carefully tended to by the late Tim Russert. In October 1999, she took over Washington Week and the rest is, yes, history.

The 54 year old is one of a very small handful of African American women to ascend to such heights in serious journalism. This many years into it, she shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down or becoming less serious. A conversation with Gwen Ifill on this edition of Texas Monthly Talks. (jazzy mid-tempo music) That they do a version of that.

(mumbles) This'll be a fun time. (jazzy mid-tempo music) Work that out. - I got the call. It's on PBS.

(jazzy mid-tempo music) Then, you know, I saw my show. Hi. Think it backed up but it's okay. (jazzy mid-tempo music) Good, how are you?

- Good for you. I'm fine. Can I run this? (jazzy mid-tempo music) Okay everybody, please take your seats.

Alright, good, good. (jazzy mid-tempo music) Gwen Ifill, welcome. Thank you. Welcome back.

That's true, I've been here before. We have had you on this program but it was very long ago. It was long ago and there was not a lovely audience. But there's a lovely audience now.

(audience laughs) Well we thank you for making the time to come back. Couldn't have gone too badly the first time if you're back. - Exactly. (laughing) So you're in Austin and in Texas this week because there was a national meeting of the people who run PBS stations all across the country.

We love to meet. Meeting is a good thing actually. Meeting is good. These are people who do really extraordinarily important work, public media folks who give to their communities in the form of the service of these stations.

You're here to speak to them and to encourage them in a tough economic time. Also to give them the kind of the good talk about what we do that's good and what we do that's unique, and what our mission is. You're out there slogging, you're trying to raise some money to keep the shows on the air, you're trying to do the uplifting work and you forget, you lose such sight sometimes at the fact that we have become this unique place to go for smart, interesting, challenging public affairs television at which, just, it's gone away in many other settings. The decline of the media economy being what it is.

- Exactly. PBS is more important today than it's ever been. More important than ever. So that's your assessment because, of course, we're both PBS people, I'm in the small way at the local level, you at the national level.

Please say things are going well. Tell us that things are going well. Things are going better. I tell my friends in commercial broadcasting that when they get a cold, we have pneumonia.

So now they have pneumonia and we're, you know. (laughs) We have some issues but we're not doing badly 'cause we're used to doing more with less. So it's been a challenge that when the economy is stumbling, the people who support our programming, the foundations, the corporations, they're stumbling too. So we're trying to find a way to keep afloat not just because it's a financial incentive, because lord knows no one's gettin' rich.

It's a question of trying to tell the stories without having people have made up their minds in advance. The show specifically, Washington Week In Review, you have hosted since 1999. How is that possible? The fact that he calls it In Review, that shows that you're a real fan.

I go back to the old. - That's true. Well Washington Week is doing great. It's funny, it's never become more interesting and imperative that we figure out what's going on in Washington than now.

When I first took over the program in 1999 there was a lot of disdain for Washington. Still is. (laughing) But they're a little allowed to stand about why do we need to know. Then 2001 happened and I didn't have to make the case anymore.

People understood what was important. Then as time, as we've basically watched our country shift, and change, and wrestle with things, it's become more and more essential that people have all the information they need. Every day all this stuff is thrown at them. They see headlines in their cell phones, they think they information, comedians give them the news.

Somewhere in all of this chaos has got to be a place they can go where someone's just telling them here is the information, figure it out. As the competitive set has grown, it's this sort of strange reversal of what you think. There are more sources and yet there's less credibility. - No.

There are more opportunities to get news but you really need an honest broker anyway. Exactly, there's always gonna be room for a place where people can say oh, it's okay for me to say this 'cause no one's gonna call me an ignorant so and so. They're just gonna talk it out, figure it out. The people who watch the program now it's not a debate.

- No. It's a discussion. No and I think they would be very angry at us if we turned it into a debate. If you suddenly, Pete Williams bopped Martha Raddatz in the nose with something.

That would actually be kinda fun. I would encourage that. Well it would be an unusual night on Washington Week. Yes it would.

So I am a consumer of this show in its many forms and last week you did Elena Kagan, and you did the oil spill, and you did Hamid Karzai's trip to Washington, and you did the primaries, kind of a preview of what's going on. That seems to me to have been the news of the week. It seems obvious but it's hard even to accomplish the obvious. But here's the best part.

We did the Hamid Karzai trip to Washington but not from a White House reporter who covered the press conference but with a reporter who 24 hours before had just gotten off a plane from Afghanistan. - Martha Raddatz from ABC News had just been there. Who's been there more than a dozen times and comes back with these amazing stories about what's actually happening on a ground as opposed to what the politicians are saying about what's happening the ground. She's one of the great reporters of wars and foreign policy.

- She's amazing. Pete Williams broke the Elena Kagan story. He was the first one with it on the air. So I mean we like the fact that we bring to the table kind of the smartest folks who aren't just saying this happened but here's what really happened.

This is what the senators told me in the elevator. They're emptying their notebooks. Even in the case of a story like Kagan which has gotten attention in a lot of different ways from a lot of different people, you tended to stay away from the stuff that has gotten the most attention. You really focused on does the fact that she has no judicial experience make her a better candidate from an Obama perspective or a worst candidate, and a better candidate or a worst candidate as a potential justice.

Pete told a great story. - Substance. I think it was either on our program or on the webcast afterward, which I hadn't heard anywhere, which is that when she was in elementary school and she had to do show and tell, she acted out the Cuban missile crisis. Right, at age 14.

(audience laughs) Right and she posed for photographs in robes. That woman needs to be a Supreme Court Justice. Clearly. - Based just on that.

Save her from herself. Give her what she wants. - She's better than we are. That's exactly right.

But I appreciated that and I also appreciate the fact that the people who are on your program tend not to be the people on every other program. You actually have people who have somethin' to say but don't get their shot on other shows. You know what? They don't resist their shots on other shows.

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Evan

Why is that? Because they know when they come on Washington Week and this is what I felt when I was a panelist before I was the moderator, it was a safe place to go. Part of it is a credibility and responsibility issue. If you cover the State Department and you show up one day and say this is what I think Hillary Clinton oughta do, then you go the next day and there's Hillary Clinton looking at you saying, "What?" I mean you have to face these people in the morning.

So you're gonna bring credibility to the job, to your analysis. Sometimes we're subject to critique and people say we should challenge more. Well I think challenging is asking questions and pushing for answers. But not necessarily telling people what they oughta do.

Well in fact, I wanna ask you about that. There is a journalism professor at NYU named Jay Rosen who you elected not to name in your blog post. Yes I did. - But I will name.

I was trying not to drive extra traffic to his website. - But I will say Jay Rosen, who is a critic of the media, and as you describe a self-appointed critic, nobody made him this person, he decided he was this person, who has criticized the show recently and criticized it, and got under your skin apparently enough that you felt the need or desire to respond. Well one of the things I've learned about the web, the internet, the tubes, is that if you leave something out there un-responded to, it lives. Well it's tantamount to confirming it, right?

It lives and so first I said it's just a blog, let's ignore it. Then I thought I'll respond in kind because I have my own blog. Let's say what the critique was. The critique was that we are not, that we don't challenge enough, that we are a little too accepting, that we're too cozy with the people we cover.

But he didn't suggest what we ought to be doing instead. The impression left in my mind, and I've never talked to him, I've met him. But the impression left in my mind was that he wanted us to put our dukes up and fight the people we cover. - That he in fact, he wanted exactly the kinda show that you differentiate yourself from.

Which exactly is the point. There's plenty of that out there and there's very little of what we do out there. He wrote this in the Washington Post. It was a series of pieces they assigned to people saying if you could dump one thing in the world, what would it be?

One person wrote Karl Rove. Ed Begley Jr. said forget about bringing lawns, we waste too much water. I mean it was, a lot of people kinda heart hearted about it.

Of all the things he could've said to dump, he said dump Washington Week. Yeah I think it's misguided. Well boo Jay Rosen, you don't actually. Boo, boo.

(audience laughs) I'm with Gwen. (Gwen laughs) Let's come back to the problem and the ways that the program is different from how it used to be. I'm one of those people who doesn't watch the program. Arianna Huffington was a guest on the show last week and she made a very interesting point that, ask people in the world, how many of you have seen Tine Fey as Sarah Palin?

They all raise their hand. Then you say how many of you watched

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

30 on NBC? Many fewer hands go up. I listed to Washington Week as a podcast. Never actually watched the program.

I suspect that there are probably a lot of people who get the show in different ways. Some watch it when it airs, some watch it on DVRs. People tell me they've listened to the podcast on the beach which I think is going too far. (audience laughs) No it's both sick and fabulous because it actually says good things about the world that we live in.

But I wanna ask you about that because, you know, this is kind of an old school show. It says that it is quiet, and substantive, and thoughtful. It's not crazy, and shouting, and everything. Yet here's this modern world and I wonder what, does that matter at all to you that you have to live in the modern world?

No, it matters that we have to go where the viewers are. The fact is if we don't change, we die. So if we decide we're just gonna be perfectly happy with people who are used to watch, sitting down at 8 o'clock on Friday nights. Believe me, that's a very strong and loyal audience.

I bet. - People who tell me they don't leave the house, they pour a drink. One woman told me it saved her marriage 'cause it's the only time that they get together. (audience laughs) I'd like to interview her.

What is the-- - Once again, I think there were other issues going on in that marriage, but. Seriously. (audience laughs) But people have their habits and we want that. But on the other hand, we also know that to survive we wanna get folks who have finally gotten the kids out of the house and maybe they're 40 or 50 years old, and they're creating new habits for themselves.

Or young people who watch the news whenever they watch it or listen to it whenever they listen to it. I wanna make sure there is this streaming version of the program on the air, that we do have web exclusive content, and we do. That's what survival's all about now, trying to figure a way to flourish in different ways. A 55 year old woman sits down with a glass of wine and watches on Friday night, or if I listen to it at five in the morning while running as a podcast, it's all good.

It's all great. From your standpoint you don't care. I don't care. Yeah, it doesn't make a difference.

I just want you watching, listening, and letting someone know you're doing it. And engaging. Yes, and engaging. That's really the important part.

I mean the other thing that happened when I first started this program is people had decided ah, it doesn't matter. Meh, this is Washington, this is politics. It has nothing to do with me. If we saw anything that happened in this last election is with a lot of people for a lot of different reasons got engaged, the Tea Party movement's about engagement.

It's all about engagement so we've gotta find a way to get in on that as well. -

Evan

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

And be part of the conversation. Absolutely. What happened to journalism? This is the question I find myself asking a lot of people these days because it is something that you care about enormously.

You've lived your life there, I've lived my life there. We know that there has been this decline partly fueled by economic changes but partly just fueled by evolution. A lot of people who lived in the world that we lived in for a long time are findin' themselves on the wrong end of that. I actually think journalism is still alive and robust.

I judge journalism contests and when I see the kind of work that's being done, the Bristol Herald in Virginia which won the Pulitzer Prize this year has, what, 13 reporters? Look what they did. Look what they did. I mean there's so much amazing work being done, it's not being done in the ways people our age are used to.

We were used to picking up a newspaper and reading it, and that told us everything we want to knew, do, or watching Walter Cronkite, and he told us everything we needed to know. Now it's coming at you from a million different directions. It obscures the fact that a lot of really good serious work is still being done by places you would think wouldn't be able to do it. So I actually am more optimistic about journalism than a lot of people.

You're hopeful about the economics of it in that we've seen, we know, that when I moved to Texas for instance almost 20 years ago there were two daily newspapers in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso. Today there are five markets in the country with two daily papers, none in Texas. There are just simply fewer venues for this kind of journal, that doesn't make you pessimistic, worried, you're still thinking hopeful? - It makes me completely, the state of the newspaper industry makes me incredibly said because I actually grew up, four newspapers I worked at before I came to television.

- Is that right? That was all I ever wanted to do was write for a newspaper. The smell of newsprint still gets me going in the morning. But I understand that's not how people are getting their information exclusively anymore.

That saddens me but it doesn't mean that journalism is dead or dying, it means that we're finding different ways now to practice it. - We needed a delivery mechanism and all that. - We do, yeah. -

Evan

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

Are you an online consumer as well? Do you read some of these sites that are non-traditional? Oh yes. In fact, I'm a big fan of news aggregator sites 'cause they take me to a lot of places I wouldn't otherwise go.

One-stop shopping. One-stop shopping. It's pretty good. - Yeah.

Let's move away from that and talk about your book, The Breakthrough, which was published, now it's almost two years ago, is that right? - Mhmm. About President Obama but really about the evolution of African Americans in politics and the moment that President Obama occasion. So here we are a year and a half after he was put in office.

What do you think? Was it as much of a breakthrough in retrospect as it appeared to be at the time? How's it gone? In some ways yes, in some ways no.

In some ways he's exactly what every other president of this time would be, which is he is a control freak. He controls the information that comes out of the White House, he controls the way we cover him. He and his wife have very carefully shaped their image. Part of that is because of who they are, because of the breakthrough nature.

I remember growing up, you know, my parents expected a lot of us but they also warned us that if we screwed it up for us, we were screwing it up for the whole race. I mean you carry this burden. Kind of a lot of burden. - You know?

When you're the first one through the door, a lot of people are gonna judge a lot more than just how you do. So he's got that and so on one hand it's a tough job anyhow to be president. It's a tough job to be president in the middle of a historic recession. -

Evan

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

Two wars. Two wars. I mean there was a lot on his plate when he got in there and he is controlling as much as he can. On top of that, in fact, seems leaning away from having discussion or spending too long publicly ruminating about his breakthrough qualities because it speaks for himself.

That's his world. He didn't really run as a breakthrough candidate. He ran as a candidate who happened to be a breakthrough. He kinda didn't have to.

He didn't have to. I mean it was fairly obvious. The story was obvious to anybody, right. He has disappointed people on both the right, that's not a big shock, and the left, which is maybe more of a shock because they saw him as one of theirs.

They, a lot of people, have put their own interpretation of who he was an what he was. They hated George W. Bush, a lot of these liberals, and they then decided that Barack Obama would be the anti-Bush, which he is in many respects. But not as much as they think.

If they paid attention to things he was saying and the arc of his career, he's always steered toward the middle which was bound to make people on the far left very unhappy and the people on the far right unhappy. So his willful disregard on their part during the campaign of the things about him that were more centrist in nature. I've done that on dates. (audience laughs) You meet a guy and you think, you know, maybe that's he'll be what I need.

I'll, change him. I'll change him. (laughing) - That's how that goes. You can't change him.

Never actually happens. First draft's your destiny. - No. Isn't that we say?

- Absolutely. I actually thought that your, back to the show for a second, the discussion that you, and Pete Williams, and the group had about Elena Kagan really focused on the idea that Obama is who Obama is. He picked someone who actually is very much like he is. - A lot like him.

It's true. Right? She's not gonna make everybody on the left as happy as they might want to be and she's gonna frustrate some people on the right. But that's kinda who.

That's what is called confirmability. Is that what it is? (audience laughs) Exactly, you sort of sneak him in under the deal. - Exactly.

What's really interesting to me is to see what has happened within the universe of African American candidates and politicians since the emergence of Obama. So you write about, in the book, not only Barack Obama but Deval Patrick is another example of somebody who comes up in the book. Governor of Massachusetts, up for reelection this year, in a three way race, may actually squeak it out. There are an unprecedented number-- Or may not.

Or may not, but maybe. - Yeah, maybe. The Independent candidate may actually help him in the end. Exactly.

There are an unprecedented number of African American Republicans running this year for Congress. I think it's some astronomically high number. But you know there hasn't been a Black Republican in Congress since J. C.

Watts. - Since J. C. Watts, right?

I mean it's been so long and it's kind of amazing actually, especially since it's an opportunity. If you were an ambitious politician of any race, you oughta be going where the openings are and that's where there is something that needs to be filled, a void that needs to be filled. You know, it's interesting to watch because a lot of these folks who came of age before and after Barack Obama, politically, they all see the world the same way which is people always ask them the same questions they asked him which are you too Black or are you Black enough? They asked him to prove their racial-- Nobody asked a candidate are you white enough.

No, funny about that. - Isn't that ridiculous? Living as a minority in a majority society, things get turned on their head. Chris Rock said during the campaign what does that mean?

It means do you dunk? (Gwen and audience laughing) Right? I mean are you Black enough? I meant it's actually really funny.

Exactly, exactly. If it weren't so serious, it would be funny. But it's something they all head to deal with. They were all told don't, sunny boy, just wait, we'll get to you, it's not your turn yet.

They're all told these and then they all, when they got elected, each one of them had to deal with the same questions, and the doubts, and the push back, in while they were governing that they felt when they were running. So it's not a surprise that Deval Patrick in some respects is having such a hard time. He had never run for anything before when he got elected governor in Massachusetts. He was in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

Of the Justice Department, that's right. But he had never run for elective office. Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Brilliant guy but what a tough city to try to govern.

He's hangin' in there but there's always a lot of push back on the ground for everything he tries to do. That's true with all of these folks. I mean the mayor of Buffalo, New York is Black and having a toughest time in the world. Of course there are the obvious ones who stumble.

The ones like Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit who get the job and then screw it up. By the way that's not a screw up because he's African American. - No. It's a screw up because he's a screw up, right?

(Gwen and audience laugh) It's a screw up because there's gonna be some percentage who don't quite live up to it. As you look out across the country and you look at how far we've come as a country, and how far, frankly, we haven't come as a country, assess for us, you know. If you're an African American who wants to get into politics these days, even in the age of Obama, I hasten to say. Or maybe especially in the age of Obama.

It's a real double edge, isn't it? You know, I've had the most interesting time this year going around and talking about the book 'cause it wasn't what I expected. I thought in my head I'd written a book about politics. But it turns out what the audiences wanted to talk about, tentatively at first, and then sidle into it, was about race.

It was Obama's election and my presence in their living rooms perhaps gave them permission to ask some questions which usually we did not, we don't let people ask. Like one guy said to me, "You know, "you're pretty well spoken and so is the president. "Wouldn't it be better for all your people "if you were all well spoken?" The audience sees-- - Talking about two steps from clean and articulate, I mean that's-- It's not even two steps. I responded by saying what about your people?

Are they so well spoken? Right, good. - Now, he had never thought about it that way and half of this discussion about race is flipping the script so you can hear it the way someone else hears it. But so often in our discussions about race we just, we call each other names and the conversation shuts down.

So to have a chance to finally be a facilitator for this other conversation, this kind of edging our way sideways in a way that's not about comedy or Bill Cosby, but about something real that's happening before our eyes and some things that maybe we're uncomfortable with on all sides of the racial divide, it's been a fascinating time. Immensely valuable. - Yeah. Let's end by talking about the Tea Party and the climate out there in the world.

Because we really are at pitchforks and torches time, right? If you're somebody inside. - Does Pat Buchanan know? Well yeah, he probably likes it, I'm sure, right?

Yeah. If you're inside whatever you're inside, then people outside wanna get you. It doesn't make a difference if you're a Democrat, if you're a Republican like Bob Bennett in Utah who finds suddenly that his long career in public service. - Gone.

Is worth nothing because angry people want him out. What is goin' on? How do we go into this November elections and assume that the government's gonna even be well functioning on the other side of it? Anger is kind of this two bladed sword.

Does it makes sense what I'm saying here? Yeah. Anyhow, anger's a problem. Sometimes it's good because it motivates and gets people engaged.

Sometimes it's bad because people end up just fighting with one another. I was in Florida not long ago, having a conversation about healthcare and at the table was a woman who said, "I'm a Tea Party activist "and they're taking too much from me." At the table was physician who was saying "The things you were saying about "this healthcare bill are not true. "We're not taking anything from you." Even though they argued head to head, they didn't change anybody's mind. We got tons of mail from people how could you let this woman, the Tea Party person, say this?

Well in fact, we had to let her say it 'cause we have to at least hear what it is that people are unhappy about, even if it's misguided. Even if someone looks them in the eye and says, "What you're saying is wrong and this is why." The fact that they still wanna believe it means that it speaks to something more fundamental that we have to get a handle on. Right, and she's not one person. She's representative of a very large movement, let's be honest, right?

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Gwen

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

I guess it's a-- There are people all over the country who believe this. I'm not sure it's a movement though. You don't think so? - Because I don't think that there is one single person who's gonna carry the flag for the Tea Party movement.

I think there's just a lot of inchoate unhappiness which is coming around this. I think a lot of people like Sarah Palin are trying to grab leadership of it. But to what end is still unclear. Well the notion is maybe that it's not so much Democrat or Republican, or Liberal or Conservative, as it is establishment and anti-establishment.

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Gwen

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

That's true. The folks, whoever they are in different groups around the country, are simply just mad at the establishment, however they define it. That happens periodically. We live through it and we come out the other side every time.

- Will there be consequences that will be significant enough that we will be talking about them in November? Or do you think it's mostly just loud as opposed to big? Oh no, it's gonna be loud and big. I think November's gonna be quite an interesting upheaval.

We'll see, based on the little elections we see along the way, what that points us to. But I think that this is gonna be something which everyone, including I'm sure the White House, is gonna have to deal with. They're paying a lot of attention to it. Oh yeah.

Well in the remaining two minutes, what's gonna happen with you? (Gwen laughs) Every time one of these guys on TV steps down from his show, they say, "Among the candidates who we're considering is Gwen Ifill." It's an honor to be considered. Yeah. (Evan and audience laughs) All of us and then the Oscar goes to somebody else, is that how that goes?

Yeah. (laughs) But then all of us who care at PBS go oh, and then we also go but good for her, but bad for us. Do you wanna take yourself out of the running for this stuff, or are you? You know, I think you should always be in the running.

I think you should always have your name mentioned and you should always consider what you wanna do next with your life. But you should also not forget that the grass under your own feet is awfully green. - Pretty green, right. And that a lot of people I know, my name, would stab me for my job.

They would take my life. - They would love your job. They would take my job. - They might like your job better than one of those other jobs, right?

Well which is important to remember. Being in the mix allows me to take a pretty long look at what it is I do, and what it is I would do, and make a choice to stay where I am. Could you actually do the kind of civil, thoughtful things on the networks that you do on PBS? I don't think so actually.

Yeah, it would be hard. Well I think we all would just like you to stay where you are. Thank you. - So please promise.

I'm not going anywhere tonight. Okay, good. (Gwen and audience laughs) Well at least we have you for one more day. Gwen Ifill, it's been a lot of fun to talk to you.

Thank you. Good luck and thank you again for being here. Thanks a lot. (audience applauds) (jazzy mid-tempo music) -

Narrator

it on Saturday Night Live at 11

Funding for Monthly Texas Talks is provided in part by Hillco Partners, offering creative business, public policy, and government affairs solutions to public and private sector organizations. And by JPMorgan Chase, a Texas financial institution serving large and small business, governments, schools, churches, and individual Texans just like you for more than 135 years. And also by the Mattson McHale Foundation in support of public television. And by MFI Foundation, improving the quality of life within our community.

And also by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation. And viewers like you. Thank you. (chimes ringing)