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That's where I'm at. Big cable news nerd. I walk in the control room late at night. It's totally dark. I'll just look around and I'll think, this technology is really powerful.

We can do so much with this. Are we living up to it? Or are we just phoning it in?

Hello, welcome to the show on the Vox Media podcast network. My guest today is Brian Stelter, CNN. He's the host of the show reliable sources.

Brian's got this fascinating career where as a teenager, he got obsessed with cable news and they began writing a blog from the outside. They became the most important industry analysis and tipsheet.

Then he eventually got hired to cover cable news and got to CNN. And now it's CNN. He's host of a cable news show that is about the news industry.

So there's nobody who's been deeper in this than Brian and has had as much of a fascinating outsider to insider trajectory.

But so this is the conversation I wanted to have with Brian because I think a lot about are we doing a good job? I've been on cable news. I've hosted shows at some point I almost took on a show.

And I wonder, is cable news good for America to use the old John Stewart formulation?

I think about this on Twitter. I think about it with digital media. You know, what what what effect are we having? What are our incentives really? What is business and what does that do to the way we make journalism decisions?

I had part of this conversation with Jay Rosen, a couple months back. If you guys like this conversation and haven't heard that one, you should listen to that one as well. But I wanted to bring this to Brian who's kind of in the belly of CNN now and has a really interesting vantage point on it.

This was a great conversation. If you want, you can email me, give me guest suggestions, feedback, whatever it might be at Ezra Klein show at Vox.com. Again, Ezra Klein show at Vox.com. But here without further ado is Brian Stelter.

Brian Stelter welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So take me back to the beginning. You got obsessed with cable news as a teenager. Yes, barely a teenager.

My first memory is of the golf war coverage on CNN through there. Those night scope lenses. But really it was in the early 2000s. Bush v Gore and 911 in the Iraq war that made me think a lot about the power and influence of cable news.

Power sometimes used to be an out responsibly and power sometimes used really irresponsibly. But but so I don't just mean how you got obsessed, but you started an early blog where as somebody but far outside the industry, you were tracking it almost like a trade publication.

That's the transition I'm interested in. That's an unusual hobby for a kid. Well, nobody was doing it. And nobody was writing it. It was a blog that I wanted to read. So why do you care about that side of it?

I think it's definitely in 2003 when I was graduating high school and the Iraq war was underway. And cable news coverage was bringing the war into people's homes every minute of every day.

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