Chris Stirewalt On Fox And Journalism

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan

Politics, News, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 836 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Chris is a political analyst and author. He worked at Fox News for more than a decade until they fired him in the wake of the 2020 election, when he was part of the election team that accurately called Arizona for Biden. He’s now the politics editor for NewsNation and a contributing editor for The Dispatch. His new book is Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back. He’s also a blast.

For two clips of our convo — on how the unbundling the news corrupted it, and why Trump voters can’t quit him — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Chris’ upbringing in West Virginia; working as a sports writer alongside “crabby profane smokers”; transitioning to local TV; my young days on Fleet Street; loud newsrooms and gossip at the pub; the benefits of news being bundled and magazines stapled; the unbundling force of the Internet; how blogs challenged and checked legacy journalists; covering the Iraq War; the demonization of the Clintons; some history of The Daily Dish (e.g. Palin); the perverse incentives of seeing stats on posts; how hatred drives the most traffic; losing readers to keep principles; the shift to social media; the loss of any gatekeeping; the roots of online tribalism; why Canadians and African-Americans are often the best comedians; Steve Kornacki’s The Red and the Blue; Russiagate; Trump’s rape case; Alvin Bragg’s blunder; Murdoch and Ailes; Shep Smith’s integrity; the social costs of political dissent; how cable news is designed for personality cults; Carlson and his firing by Fox News; Peretti and Denton; Ben Smith’s new book; and the 2024 election.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Ben Smith on going viral, Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, John Oberg on veganism, and Patrick Deneen on a post-liberal future. Send your guest recs and pod dissent to [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Hi and welcome to you another dishcast.
0:32.6	Coming to you from DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C. We have a little studio here where Chris and I sit,
0:41.8	and we have our wonderful technician general impresario, Selchuk. We have a whole bunch of
0:49.0	really great guests coming up. We have veganism coming up. But today, we're in a slight change of tune. We also have
0:56.2	Ben Smith, whose book, Traffic is just out. I've been some reading. And actually, that's been
1:00.9	a helpful thing to also read alongside the book I've also just read, which is Chris Starwalt's
1:06.7	book, Broken News, Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back.
1:14.5	And Chris is here today. I'm thrilled to have him, really excited to have him on the show.
1:18.6	He's a political analyst and author. He worked at Fox News for more than a decade until they fired him in the wake of the 2020 election when he was part of the election team that accurately called Arizona for Biden.
1:32.3	He committed an act of journalism and Fox News and was fired for it.
1:38.3	He's now the politics editor for News Nation and a contributing editor for the dispatch.
1:43.3	A wonderful little, I'm going to say,
1:46.8	use the word remnant, but that would be too close to the bone.
1:51.9	Jonah Goldberg's brigade, for whom I have immense respect, and he's the author of every man
1:59.3	a king, a short, colorful history of American populists, and he's the author of Every Man a King, a short, colorful history of American populists,
2:03.4	and this new book.
2:05.4	In fact, Chris, reading your book, you really do have a phenomenal grasp of American political
2:10.7	history, and your discussion of Huey Long was really kind of helpful to me.
2:16.0	I mean, it's sometimes I's, it's sometimes I feel, uh, we get trapped in presentism
2:22.8	and we, we, we don't see that lots of the things that we think are endemic to our moment
2:29.4	are not new to humanity and have come around and not new to America either in that way.
2:36.1	So I hope we'll get into that, especially with partisan, feisty, tribalized media.
	...

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