Former NPR and Slate fixture Mike Pesca discusses media meltdowns, objectivity vs. moral clarity, and whether we are better or worse off now that media gatekeepers have less influence.
0:00- Introduction
2:34- Being the ‘sports guy’ at NPR
6:12- What went wrong at NPR
9:45- NPR’s poor business decisions
12:32- Working at Slate
14:55- ‘Deplatforming’ is censorship by proxy
18:47- How Pesca was purged from Slate
24:08- Ad: Lumen
25:45- Legacy media jettisoned objectivity for ‘moral clarity’
34:19- Are we better or worse off without media gatekeepers?
45:57- Misinformation’ & ‘Disinformation’
52:13- Twitter Files revelations
54:40- Visiting Israel after Oct. 7
57:58- Tucker Carlson & the revisionist right
1:02:16- "The Gist": Pesca’s anti-ideological daily podcast
1:04:36- How Pesca’s father shaped his principles
Mike Pesca publishes "The Gist" podcast every weekday. "The Gist", which launched in 2014, is a tight 30 minutes of news, interviews, and opinions on the biggest issues of the day. Pesca is a veteran of NPR and Slate—experiences that have made him an outspoken critic of legacy media, especially its willingness to overthrow longstanding commitments to objectivity and fairness in pursuit of progressive versions of "moral clarity."
Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with him about his controversial 2021 separation from Slate after he defended a New York Times reporter's use of a racial slur, why once-vaunted newspapers such as The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are rightly losing readers and money, and whether the old world of three broadcast TV networks and heavily gate-kept media had any value.
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