We have a pretty heavy “In Profile” this week:
Earlier this week, Dax Shepard sat down with Dateline’s Keith Morrison on his podcast.
“My love for Keith Morrison started with the obvious things that attract most everyone to him—his appearance and style, his vocal acrobatics, the poetry behind his storytelling,” Shepard explained. “But somewhere around my hundredth episode, his subtler, more nuanced qualities began to surface—his ability to lean on almost any surface (barbed wire, fire, wind), his high-octane brand ofempathy and his spot-on eye for pairing any environment with the perfect leather jacket. He is that unique blend of scrappy hustler and honed professional, an intoxicating mix to say the least.”
Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier, NBC News chief foreign affairs Correspondent/ MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell, and CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell participated in a TimesTalks panel earlier this week, “One Nation, Divisible by Media.” The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg moderated.
“I hate the term ‘fake news’. I hate it because I hate that the president can think something is fake news because he doesn’t like it. I hate the term ‘enemy of the people’ about the media,” said Baier.
On the relationship between President Trump and the press, Mitchell remarked: “I think it’s really unhelpful for democracy for the President of the United States to create this enemy of the people, fake news meme and for reporters to be threatened and called out from the podium at rallies from the campaign on and since.”
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not everyone is entitled to their own set of facts,” said O’Donnell,
While she does come from the broadcast news side, O’Donnell did remind people that she worked with Mitchell when she was at NBC News and MSNBC and so she saw the growth of a cable news channel. “They have different business goals, and make money in different ways…but the cable news audience is largely driven by reinforcing people’s opinions about something, especially in prime time.” O’Donnell said while there is “incredible journalism that goes on in prime time on CNN, Fox and MSNBC, but there are also a number of commentators and hosts who also infuse with a lot of their own opinions…”
NBC Nightly News & Dateline NBC anchor Lester Holt was featured in People magazine’s “One Last Thing” page:
When asked what his last recurring dream was, Holt says: “I can’t get to the studio, and the newscast is going to start. Sometimes they hold it for me, which of course they don’t do. Although that would be pretty cool if I had that kind of power.”
Fox News/FBN anchor Neil Cavuto appeared on Axios’ Pro Rata podcast to talk about the 2008 financial crisis:
The old notion of ‘it can’t happen to me.’ My neighbor might be getting in too deep, but I’m not. My neighbor might be taking on a lot of debt and unable to pay it back, but I won’t. My neighbor’s making a risky investment, but I’m not. Even those banks who lent, our bank can afford taking on this risk but that other bank can’t. There’s sort of this cockiness that develops in the go-go times where you think you’re bulletproof or you’re looking at your portfolio return and thinking all of your sudden you’re Warren Buffett. I think that is what’s dangerous. I think you have to be very very careful and keep your head about you and be modest and humble enough to know that market forces and other forces can eat you alive and I think that what people have to realize is they’re not above historical forces, they’re not above getting caught up in a wave of selling that could be triggered by something as innocuous as a computer crash. I think when people get to the point where they start believing their own press clippings or start thinking that they’re a genius or start thinking that simply because they were lucky enough to be invested in Apple, or Amazon, or Facebook, or Google- and that has been a disproportionate run-up in the Nasdaq, that you’re Peter Lynch. You’re not. You’ve had a good ride. And I always advise people to keep your head about you, keep a balance about you, and try not to point fingers.
NBC’s Megyn Kelly spoke with her alma mater, Maxwell at Syracuse University about journalism and democracy.
A pivotal moment behind her career change came on 9/11, when she was living in Chicago and watching TV journalists such as veteran TV newser Ashleigh Banfield reporting from the midst of the chaos in lower Manhattan: “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is a public service, what they are doing: reporting without being overly emotional, but being appropriate to the circumstances that we’re seeing; bringing us minute-by-minute updates at great risk to themselves in some cases,’” Kelly says. “‘This is extraordinary.’ I felt envy — of course, not for the circumstances of the day, but for the nobility of some of the press and how they carried themselves and what they did. That was absolutely an inspiration to me.”
Kelly also sang Banfield’s praises when she appeared on her program earlier this year, saying “you are one of the reasons I’m sitting here.”