Trump is going after the media. The New Yorker's editor says he will not bend the knee

The Current23:49The New Yorker magazine turns 100

The New Yorker is celebrating its 100th anniversary later this month, as the American news media faces renewed hostility from its president. But its editor says the magazine will never bend to the will of a government.

"I won't do it," David Remnick told The Current's Matt Galloway. "This is a promise I make to our subscribers and our readers, that the leadership of The New Yorker is devoted to the end to doing our jobs properly."

U.S. President Donald Trump has gone after several media outlets since last fall. In December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million US toward Trump's U.S. presidential library to settle a lawsuit over an anchor's inaccurate on-air assertion that he had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump filed another lawsuit against CBS for their pre-election interview with Kamala Harris, saying the organization edited Harris's answers to give her an advantage. CBS has denied wrongdoing, but parent company Paramount is reportedly in settlement talks with Trump.

In late January after Trump's inauguration, the Federal Communications Commission opened investigations into NPR and PBS which could unwind federal funding for the public broadcasters.

Remnick spoke to Galloway about the role of longform journalism in a fast-paced news environment and how The New Yorker plans to cover the second Trump administration. Here is part of their conversation.

You said to Seth Meyers just before the election that we live in such a world where nothing registers. How do you break through with longform journalism in the time of hot takes and social media and algorithms?

I think some things can register, but it's very hard to do in the noisiness of the world that we live in, in the speed of the world that we live in. And so in order for things to register, they have to be of enormous quality. And what we're devoted to at The New Yorker is writing that is immensely clear, beautiful, [and] fact-checked so that there's an appeal there that really makes a difference.

There's definitely a lot of junk in the world. There just is. And all of us at one time or another during the course of a day lend ourselves over to that junk. … And it can be fun. I don't doubt that.

But there has to be, in life, time for thinking and beauty and humour that is a cut above. And this is not a matter of snobbery. It's just a matter of effort and devotion and care.

And I have to believe in this world … that there are a lot of people who want to know more deeply about the world they live in and they want to explore the lives of other people, not just themselves. 

What would you say to people who say that that's not enough of a job? That your job now is not just to report on things and be a voice of record as accurately as you can, but that you need to be the resistance … in this unprecedented moment?

The function of The New Yorker and the press is, the way I see it, not to be leaning on the barricades, but to inform people. And that is a hugely complex, difficult task. It's complicated enough.

It's not enough for us to just scream and yell, "Trump is terrible. This is awful." There needs to be a marshaling of a clear picture of the evidence, and not like in a court case, but in fair journalism.

I want conservatives as well as liberals and people on the left and the right to read The New Yorker and maybe go away for a piece saying, you know, I don't necessarily agree with this, that or the other thing, but I feel that I was treated with respect and somebody was respecting my intelligence and my point of view. And maybe that changes that reader.

Day 65:24From Obama to Trump in two New Yorker magazine covers

Eight years ago, illustrator Bob Staake drew the New Yorker cover marking Barack Obama's election — a rendering of the Lincoln Monument meant to reflect the hope he felt. This week, he drew the cover marking Donald Trump's victory: a red brick wall.

The historian Timothy Snyder has talked about that idea of "Do not obey in advance" in his book On Tyranny. And that quotation is circulating widely now because of what you're seeing with ABC News settling a lawsuit with Trump, the head of the FCC launching an investigation into National Public Radio and PBS.… What does all of that signal to you? 

Well, a number of things. First of all, I want to say this — I won't do it.

This is a promise I make to our subscribers and our readers, that the leadership of The New Yorker is devoted to the end to doing our jobs properly, the way they must be in a liberal democracy.

You will not kiss the ring?

No, it's not our job. It's not our place in life.

Now, you're asking me why it's happening. I think there are a number of reasons. One of them is, if you're looking at it from a kind of historian's point of view or an economic historian's point of view, what you have is media entities that are owned by gigantic conglomerates whose business interests are much larger than the media they own.

For example, ABC is owned by Disney. ABC for Disney is not a big deal. So to fork over $15 million to settle a lawsuit so they can get rid of it and continue having decent relations with the government and not get attacked by the Trump administration through lawsuits … and whatever other levers that the administration has. And this is an administration spiritually built on vengeance [so] they're going to make that deal.

Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. He paid $250 million for The Post. That's pocket change. The Post is a very small part of his empire. His empire is built around Amazon. And so if he withdraws a potential endorsement of Kamala Harris, as he insisted the paper do, he wants to dodge problems with the U.S. government for Amazon.

So you know that that is at the heart of this. The heads of huge businesses want to avoid having bad relations with an often vengeful U.S. government.

Where does that leave … the public as we are trying to sift through the moment?

Well at the risk of being self-serving, it leaves us depending on The New Yorker, The New York Times and other publications and media outlets that do not kiss the ring.

Now, I want to say this about something like The Washington Post. The newsroom of The Washington Post is filled with people who do their jobs and do it well, despite what the ownership has done lately, which is deeply unfortunate.

So I'm not counselling people to stop reading The Washington Post or to, you know, abandon complete attention from all these other places. But to be aware of what's going on.

I refuse to lose faith. However challenged, however difficult, however much of an emergency this is, we are still capable of turning things around. There's a [midterm] election in less than two years in which things could change quite markedly. Donald Trump is not forever.