Thomas Edsall on the new 'anti-democratic party,' and the challenges for the media

Reliable Sources

CNN

News

3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New York Times contributing op-ed writer Thomas Edsall warns about Republicans attempting to enforce "white political dominance;" anti-democratic trends in American politics; and the blind spots he sees in media coverage. "Trump and the Republican Party have created a real dilemma for the media," he tells Brian Stelter. "When you have a party that is moving in this extreme fashion, how do we in the media describe it?" Stelter also asks Edsall about bridging the academic and journalistic worlds, pointing to the staggering amount of academic research on "democratic decline," and why this is "not just an ivory tower issue." To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A slow and steady attack on democracy.
0:07.5	That's what's been in the news this year.
0:09.5	All of these proposals, all these laws aimed at restricting voting rights, the so-called
0:16.6	audit in Arizona looking back at the 2020 election, other developments that signal an anti-democratic
0:24.5	movement within the Republican Party.
0:29.4	It is a massive but quite hard to cover story.
0:36.3	So how does a professional pessimist view all of this?
0:40.4	Someone who looks at the research talks with scholars and tries to understand where America's
0:46.8	heading.
0:47.8	Those are some of the questions for this week's Reliable Sources podcast.
0:52.7	Let's cue the music.
0:55.2	I'm Brian Stelter and this weekly podcast is our chance to go more in depth talking
1:00.5	about the story behind the story.
1:03.2	And this week, my guest is Thomas Edsel, the weekly contributing writer for the New York
1:08.1	Times' opinion section.
1:10.5	His essays have been invaluable to me and probably for many others as well as he studies the
1:19.3	academic research, talks with professors and scholars and tries to understand what's
1:24.1	happening to the U.S. democracy.
1:27.1	Edsel is a veteran reporter who spent 25 years of the Washington Post.
1:31.3	He's also written for the Huffington Post, the New York Times, other outlets.
1:35.3	So let's get right to it, Tom.
1:36.7	Thanks for joining me.
	...

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