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(no audio) - [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" is provided in part by HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Christine and Philip Dial.

(no audio) - I'm Evan Smith.

He's one of the most recognizable, likable, and trusted journalists working today.

A longtime CNN anchor, who's also a bestselling author.

His third novel, "All the Demons are Here," has just been published.

He's Jake Tapper.

This is "Overheard."

(gentle music) "A platform and a voice is a powerful thing."

You really turned the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing by giving in to the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

- Two.

- This is "Overheard."

(gentle music) (audience clapping) Jake, it's so good to have you back in Austin.

- Always great to be here, thanks so much, Evan.

- [Evan] Thanks so much for being on the show.

- Of course.

- So you used to be a TV guy who wrote novels as a sideline, and you're becoming a novelist who does a little TV.

- No, no, no, no.

The TV journalism is still my main passion.

I still love going into work every day.

The novels are fun.

I might go back to nonfiction when it comes to books.

I do miss that.

But, no, the broadcast journalism is still- - This is not a sign, you're crying for help or something?

- No, no, no.

- This is actually, "Get me off of television."

- It's a nice escape from my day-to-day job, which is, I don't know if you've noticed, but the news is not all good.

- Tough times, I agree.

- It's a lot of bad news.

- Well, we're gonna come back and talk about that.

Look, I would say it's escapism for us also.

I've now read all three of these books.

- Yeah, you have.

- And I will tell you that I found myself lost in the middle of a difficult day, or at a tough moment at work, you turn to this book.

It's really great.

- Thank you.

- You have a natural flare for this.

It's three books, but the reality is it's a series.

- Yeah, well, it's about one family and their trip through the '50s, the '60s, and the '70s.

- And that's the conceit.

So the first book, "Hellfire Club," was set in the '50s.

- During the Joe McCarthy era, the Eisenhower years.

- Second book is set in the '60s.

- Yeah, the Rat Pack.

- Rat Pack, you guys... You guys, by which I mean the Marders, your characters.

- The Marder family, yeah.

- They're out on the West Coast at the direction of Robert Kennedy.

It's a great book, people should read it, and have adventures out in California.

And then, this third book is set in the '70s.

- It's their two kids who are in the second book, they're now in their twenties and it's 1977, and it's the whole weird era of the '70s.

You know, I initially was gonna pass the '70s 'cause this is the first one that I was alive for, I was eight in the '70s.

- Right, you were born in 1969, I was born in '66.

Just judging by myself, I don't remember a ton of the '70s.

- Of what goes on in this book, I remember gas lines and Elvis dying, that's about it.

- But you also had Jimmy Carter elected.

You had a blackout in New York City.

- I don't remember that though.

- Studio 54 opening, a lot of stuff happened.

- Yeah, you might not be surprised that I was not hip to the Studio 54 opening.

- At that time, at age seven, or whatever, yeah.

- And my parents were pretty good at keeping the entire Son of Sam serial killer thing away from me when they were making me watch "Sesame Street" and "Mister Roger's."

But I will say I was gonna skip the era because I thought it was just kind of lame, 'cause that's how it's portrayed.

But it actually was a wild era.

First of all, you have a nation, an entire country that is tremendously disillusioned with the government.

- Post-Watergate.

- Post-Watergate.

- Another thing that happened in the '70s, that's right, yes.

- And post-Vietnam.

The country is not trusting its leaders in a major way.

I mean, that's how Jimmy Carter got elected, barely.

Because he said, "I will not lie to you."

- Right.

- And then, there was just the rampant mistrust, and just a whole bunch of weird things happening.

It was the rise of tabloid journalism because of the Summer of Sam, the "New York Post," the "New York Daily News."

Anyway, one of the main characters in the book, there are two main characters, Ike and Lucy, the kids of the Marders, Charlie and Margaret, who are the main characters in the first two books.

Ike is an AWOL marine, disillusioned with the government.

- 20 years old.

- 20 years old.

- We first meet him in Montana.

- He has gone AWOL, he is working on Evel Knievel's pit crew.

- Pit crew, that's the thing.

Evel Knievel is a character in this book.

- A pretty big one.

- Significant.

- I started getting comfortable with the idea of having real characters be major characters in the book.

I did it a little bit in the first book.

I had Joe McCarthy, and Roy Cohn, and Estes Kefauver as characters.

At first, I was uncomfortable with it.

In the second draft, I got a little bit more comfortable with it.

In the second book, I just went all in, and I had Sinatra be a big character in it.

- Sinatra was a part of it at one point, yeah.

- And because if you're gonna do it, just have fun with it, right?

I mean, you can't have them doing things they would never do.

It has to be believable.

- Right.

- And then, this one, I'm a friend of mine pushed me to look more into Evel Knievel.

'Cause his charm completely escaped me when I was a kid.

- Yeah.

- He wasn't really an athlete, but he was on the cover of "Sports Illustrated."

He's on the cover of "Rolling Stone."

- He's a phenomenon.

- He was a phenomenon.

And there is something interesting and archetypal American about him, a salesman, a showman, he's not a great motorcyclist, but he's willing to do things that others aren't.

He's willing to jump over and do these stunts at others don't match.

- But as you portray him, and, you know, we can come back to this if you want, in the book, formally, he's not a really good person.

- No, he's a bad person.

- Right?

He has terrible personal attributes that are on display all through the book.

Let me go back to the Marders.

So the Marders are the through line, as you say.

In the first book, Charlie Marder becomes a congressman because his predecessor, I believe, commits... - Well, I don't wanna get into it, but yeah, he dies.

- He dies let's just say.

But, initially, what we're told, or we think is- - [Jake] Is that he committed suicide.

- He committed suicide.

- Right.

- And he had bee a professor at Columbia?

- Charlie, he's a history professor.

- And so he's a Republican, but he's a New York Republican.

- Yeah, he's a Dewey, Rockefeller Republican.

- You know what we call that person in Texas?

A Democrat.

(Jake laughing) That's exactly right.

So Charlie Marder starts out in the first book as a member of Congress.

By the time we get to this book, Charlie Marder is now a United States Senator.

- He's a senator, yeah.

- United States Senator.

His wife Margaret is a zoologist.

And as you say, Ike and Lucy are in the second book.

- Yeah, Lucy is in Margaret's, is in utero in the first book.

- In the first book?

- Yeah.

- But by the time we encounter them here, Ike, I think is 20, Lucy is 22.

Ike, as you say, is an AWOL marine working on the pit crew of Evel Knievel.

Lucy is a journalist for a respectable newspaper in D.C. - "The Washington Star."

- But then becomes a journalist for one of these new... - Tabloids.

- Tabloids.

- So she gets wooed by a fictitious family, the Lyon family.

And Maxwell Lyon is very directly, I'm not hiding this at all- - Well, you've acknowledged it.

- Yeah, based on Rupert Murdoch.

I mean, he's British, not Australian, but he is very directly based on Rupert Murdoch.

And that's because in this era, Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch are coming into the United States and expanding their media empires.

And actually it was in San Antonio that Murdoch first bought newspapers.

- Indeed.

- And first, actually successfully, like had a, I think he bucked trends by having an afternoon newspaper.

This is when afternoon newspapers were closing all over the country.

But by having a sensationalist newspaper in San Antonio, he kept it alive.

And he is the one, I found out by doing the research for this book on Rupert Murdoch, the reason I was terrified of killer bees as a kid is because of Rupert Murdoch.

- Because of something that ran on- - Because the "San Antonio News" and "Express," when at the time they were two different newspapers, were scaring the holy, whatever I can say on PBS, they were scaring everybody about these killer bees that were gonna come and kill everybody.

- Right, well, the concept of the front page, which, you know, you refer to the headline on the front page as the Wood.

- The Wood.

- Like, we still talk about the "New York Post" and "The Daily News" in New York.

- Yeah, what's on the Wood?

- Something happens, what's the Wood tomorrow gonna be for this?

- "Headless body in topless bar."

- "Topless bar," would be an example of that, right.

- That's a famous "New York Post," perhaps- - [Evan] That is totally true, totally true.

- Perhaps their best one.

- Well, but also, was there not during the '70s, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead"?

- Yeah, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead," when he refused, yeah, to bail out the city.

- To bail out the city, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead," was also Wood.

So the tabloid culture, the concept of the front page of stories that honestly have some facts but are juiced- - Juiced to make the Wood.

- To make the Wood, that is a huge piece of this book.

- So this book gets into journalism, not in a journalism school, lecturey way.

But Lucy is given a story that is, she comes to this newspaper and immediately she's covering a serial killer.

And her stories are goosed to get on the front page, to get on the Wood.

- Yep.

- And she loves the attention and she loves the fame, but she also has, you know- - Misgivings.

- Misgivings about the fact that some of her facts are being tweaked to give more attention.

Because she is getting scoops that no other journalist in town gets, she's being invited to come on local TV.

She has a showdown with two actual legendary, the first two Black co-anchors in, I think, any major metropolitan market in D.C. history.

She has a showdown with them, they were real people.

That showdown did not actually happen, of course, 'cause Lucy does not exist.

- This is fiction.

- This is fiction.

But they were heroes in D.C. and so I wanted to have this showdown.

But it gets into a lot of what we are dealing with today, because, obviously, Murdoch and the tabloidization of news, and not just Fox, although, obviously, that is the most consequential example that we're dealing with when you think of January 6th and all the lies that were told on that channel then, but the tabloidization of media that exists almost everywhere, perhaps with the one exception of PBS, is something that we all deal with.

- Right, it feels very familiar, if you're reading the book today, to go back and to look at that.

Talk about the process.

You alluded to doing research, again, kid of the '70s who doesn't necessarily remember much from the '70s.

You've gotta do research to augment this.

You're a busy guy.

- Yeah.

- You host a couple shows on CNN.

You're at the center of so much activity kind of in and around politics and current events, news, these days.

You've got a family.

When are you writing this book?

- Well, first of all, you need to understand that I love the research.

I love the history, it's enjoyable for me.

Like, right now, I am reading a book called "Scoundrel," that is about this murderer that William F. Buckley took up his cause and got him out of prison.

Edgar Smith, I don't know if you know the story.

- This is a nonfiction book?

- This is a nonfiction book, Edgar Smith.

I don't wanna ruin it for you, but it's just really... A true story about a PBS alum, who got this guy out of prison.

Long story short, doesn't end so well.

But it's a great story.

And I just love it, I mean, I love history, so it's fun.

That's enjoyable for me.

I'm the guy that, you know, when Kevin McCarthy's going through 15 votes, I'm the guy on our stage in our studio on newspapers.com looking at, like, newspapers from like 1820 to find out, you know, what the vote count was, like, you know, when they went through like multiple ballots in previous times, it's fun for me.

- So this is not work for you, although it does take time.

- It takes time, but I love it, I do like it, it's fun.

- How long does it take you to write a book like this?

- A couple years, a couple years.

- Well, and in fact, you're already at work on a book.

- Well, right now I'm taking a little bit of a pause 'cause I have a few ideas and I need to figure out what I wanna- - Well, I thought you were working on a book about the '80s that was set on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

- Didn't you say that?

- I was, I was, but- - That might've, in fact, had the Marders.

It was the fourth, eventually, yeah?

- Yeah, yeah, that will be the next book.

But I have a couple nonfiction ideas and I have to figure- - So we may have to wait for that one?

- Yeah, I wanna figure out what I wanna do next.

And there were a couple nonfiction ideas, and I haven't written a nonfiction book since "The Outpost," about Afghanistan that came out in 2012, and I kind of missed that.

And there are a couple, and I really do love nonfiction too, so I just have to figure it out.

- So you'll be continuing to write, but we'll just sort of see what the sequence is?

- Yeah, the one about the world, the next book in the series would be on a ship that takes place on the anniversary of D-Day.

- It's 1984.

- In 1984, the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

We're about next year we're gonna celebrate the 80th anniversary.

This would be like, kind of like a "Death on the Nile," except on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, a ship that is sailing to Normandy Beach.

And it's filled with all these World War II heroes and celebrities, on the first day, one of the generals disappears.

- Yeah, well, I have to say, when I read that description of the book, I thought, "Well, okay, bring it."

I'm looking forward to actually see this book.

So we talked about Fox a little bit in and around and Murdoch.

You gave an interview to Scott Simon of NPR recently, in which you said something to the effect of, "A platform and a voice is a powerful thing, and it can do damage."

- Well, it's a responsibility.

- It absolutely is, and you were talking specifically about the Boston Marathon bombing.

And the, so-called, "Bag Men" picture that appeared on the front page of the "New York Post," or in the "New York Post," I guess.

- It was on the front page.

- Front page, right.

- Yeah.

- Where they identified two people and they sort of made it look like these were people involved with the bombing, turned out not to be and they sued.

- They sued, they got money.

- They sued successfully the "Post."

You were referring to that with that quote.

But, of course, I heard you say that, and I thought, "He's talking about Fox News."

"A platform and a voice is a powerful thing and it can do damage."

- Well, they're both News Corp. - Right, but I was thinking, but I took the quote to another extreme.

- They're both Murdoch.

- Yeah.

So same-same, as far as you're concerned?

- Yeah, I mean, it's the same ethos.

It's the same, it doesn't matter.

- But, of course, Fox News has so much more, I'll push a little bit on this, in that Fox News has so much more of a pervasive reach than the "New York Post" does.

- Yes, sure.

- Even the iconic "New York Post."

What we've witnessed for the last several years, since- - But when you said the iconic "New York Post," I mean, I think if Alexander Hamilton woke up and saw what was being done to the iconic "New York Post-" - He might vomit.

- I mean, I think he would say, "Oh my god, kill me again."

(audience laughing) - After vomiting, right, yeah.

But I'm thinking about just the last two years.

And what we have seen come out through court action, you know, and leaks about texts and everything else, what's happened at Fox has indeed done damage, has it not?

- To the Murdoch brand?

- To all of us.

- Yes.

- Yes?

- Yes, it hurts all of journalism.

I mean, all of it does damage, all of it does damage.

Anytime there is bad journalism, it hurts all of us.

- Right, I mean, the reality is we're all painted by the same brush.

- Right, right.

I mean, one of the things that's different about Fox is Fox attacks everyone else.

I mean, they're not just providing a center-right channel, which, you know, as far as I'm concerned, would be fine, who caress?

I mean, that's great.

There should be a center-right alternative.

- And, to be honest, for many years, until the last couple of years, it sort of kind of was just that, sort of.

- I would say until the war in Iraq maybe.

- So you would go back even farther?

- Yeah, because they really became a propaganda arm of the Bush White House.

I think that's really when it started to, because yes, in the '90s, I think it was center-right.

You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with, I remember Tucker Carlson, years ago, giving a speech at maybe CPAC or something like that, talking about how instead of complaining about the media, why don't conservatives do something like put out their own version of a center-right "New York Times"?

- And that's a reasonable thing as far as you're concerned?

- Why not?

- Why not?

Right, I mean, Tucker Carlson used to be on CNN.

We've come a long way.

- Tucker Carlson used to be on MSNBC.

- Right, we have come a very long way, right.

- But I don't think, I mean, yeah, why not?

I mean, like, I think that "The Weekly Standard," may it rest in peace, was a magazine I read all the time.

I read the "National Review."

- Right, there are many more options in that space than there used to be.

- Yeah, there's nothing wrong with alternative points of view.

- Right.

- I think that the challenge is when they subscribe to the Murdoch model, which is that news consumer behavior is driven by fear or rage.

- Yeah.

- And once you see that, you can't unsee it, that is what they are trying to get news consumers to react to, fear or rage.

"You should be mad at these people.

You should be scared about these people."

- Right.

- And that is what they do.

And they're always telling their viewers or readers, "Don't trust Evan, don't trust Jake.

Don't trust anyone else, you should only trust us."

- "We're the only ones."

I mean, there's a line in the back of this book.

"No one is more opaque than wealthy media families who demand transparency from everyone else."

That was a line that you wrote in this book.

And I thought to myself, it's so interesting because- - I was talking about the Lyon family.

- But, of course, I roll it forward and say, "How much don't we know about what Fox has done and not done over the last couple years behind the scenes?"

- Sure, of course, well, yeah, of course, I'm talking about the Murdochs.

- We don't hold ourselves, as an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

We should be as transparent.

- Yeah, of course.

And, I mean, when you look at the Dominion lawsuit, and you look at the texts that came out, and the fact that they knew that they were lying to their viewers.

And the only reason they were lying to their viewers is because they were only concerned about losing them as viewers.

They were only concerned about money and the business end of things.

They had no concern about the truth.

They had no concern about the journalism.

That shows you, ultimately, what they care about.

And that shows me that they're not in the same business that I'm in.

- So let's talk about the business you're in, the inevitable CNN question.

- Sure.

- It's been a challenging year, or so, at CNN.

It's been a challenging few years.

- Few years, but specifically, this year, there's been some churn in leadership, the programming schedule hosts and so on have changed.

But, you know, as I turn on the television at night, I see Kaitlan Collins hosting, then I see Abby Phillip hosting.

Of course, I watch your show.

Things seem to have reset, am I wrong about that?

- No, I think we're in a good place now.

We have a new leader, Sir Mark Thompson, who- - Had run "The New York Times" and BBC before that.

- Yeah, yeah, he seems great.

- Yeah, serious guy.

- Serious guy.

Serious news values.

Look, it's not fun to be in a news organization that has a number of different leaders in a number of different years.

That's not fun.

But as a general note, you know, I've been on at four, and except for like a few weeks right before the midterm when the previous president, Chris Licht, asked me to do the nine o'clock just for a few weeks, I've been on at four and we've just been doing the best show we can do from four to six, or here in Texas from three to five every day, just doing the news as fairly and as substantively as we can do it.

And that's just the mission, and we've been trying to do that day in, day out, no matter who the president of our network is.

And I feel like we're in a good place.

I look around at the anchors that we have at CNN, whether it's Abby Phillip, or Kasie Hunt, or Dana Bash, or, I mean, I'm not gonna name them all, but they're all great.

I respect them all, I love them all, and it's a really good place.

And, yeah, I don't like all the stuff, all the churn as you put it.

- But down here, at ground level, the work is being done?

The work continues?

- I think so.

And there's no place I'd rather be, like, you know, to be able to, like, Clarissa Ward comes back from the Central African Republic doing a piece on the Wagner Group.

I mean, there's no other channel that's doing that, you know?

- Right, so we have about five minutes left.

I wanna ask you about the work, which really relates back to something that we said earlier in this conversation, which is, "Oh my god, the news moment and the news environment that we're in."

- Which we don't have to tell you, because you're all in Texas and we just did a piece on our Sunday show about your attorney general being acquitted, despite a vast array of evidence that the Republicans in the House voted 126 to 23.

- A super majority of Republicans in the Texas House, right.

- After a serious investigation by House Republicans.

- It's a national story to be sure.

And the reality is that all local is national these days, and all national is local, right?

We know that everything has kind of become all in the same bucket.

- When Republicans are even shocking "The Wall Street Journal" editorial page.

(audience laughing) - That's news.

We're heading into another election, Jake, this is really where I wanna go with this part of the conversation is we're, you know, about to have potentially a rematch from 2020.

I wonder if you would reflect on what you see coming up the road as it relates to the '24 election, and where the media should do the same or do different as it covers this version.

- I think it is very important that the news media not feel, "Okay, well, we're just gonna accept lies, because this percentage of the country, it's okay with them.

Therefore, we're just gonna accept lies because that's how it is."

That's not the business we're in.

We have to call balls and strikes.

- Yep.

- At the same time, we can't pick a side.

We can't say, "Well, this is so horrible, we have to pretend that this is," I don't need to be opaque about it, like, we can't say, "Well, because Donald Trump and what he did on January 6th is so awful, we have to pretend that like Hunter Biden and the millions he made off his dad's name that there's nothing here."

I don't know what's here, I have no idea.

There's a special counsel looking into it.

This is a legitimate news story.

Now, if they're lying about it in Congress, if they're saying things that there's no evidence for, I don't have to pretend there's evidence for it, but all of it's legitimate for us to cover.

I'm not saying they're equivalent, but I'm saying we can't be blinded to this because of this.

- You've had a position for a long time that you were not going to allow people to come on the air and lie.

I remember you telling me last time you were in Austin that you would not book election deniers on your shows.

- I said that we needed to have a conversation about it, because if you're going to lie about that, what won't you lie about?

I didn't have a ban in place.

And I will tell you, I have had election deniers on.

- So that's actually not, my perception of it was that you were not willing to have people on who you knew would not acknowledge that the election was legitimate.

- I have had them on not to talk about that, and I don't like to book them.

I'm like always like, "Ugh."

But, for instance, during Kevin McCarthy's 15 rounds, you know, you wanna talk about some of the people that were objecting to Kevin McCarthy, a bunch of them were election liars.

- I think what I told you at the time is I work in Texas.

If I didn't have election liars on... (audience laughing) - Right.

- There wouldn't be anything.

- But, you know, there are a bunch of Texans who did not vote that way, who are very conservative.

- Correct.

- Crenshaw, McCaul.

Chip Roy.

- Chip Roy.

- Chip Roy is about as conservative as they get.

And he actually did something very subversive.

Do you know what he did?

Congressman Chip Roy, I don't think there's anyone to his right.

But Congressman Chip Roy offered an amendment on the floor of the House saying, "If you vote against certifying the election from Arizona or Pennsylvania," which is, those were the two votes that people voted against, or voted, yeah, against certifying those states.

"You also have to vote against counting anyone elected on those ballots.

So, Pennsylvania Congressmen, Arizona Congressmen, you also have to vote that your elections were nullified as well."

Which was cheeky, you gotta give it to him.

He's basically saying, "All you Republicans from Pennsylvania-" - It's logical, it's logical.

- Yeah, "You're not elected either," which was, I mean, it's clever.

Right?

- Yeah, it is.

- I mean, he didn't advertise it, but that was pretty clever.

- Do you think, in the end, that we're gonna get through this cycle upright?

I mean, are we heading off the cliff again?

We have about 30 seconds.

Do you feel hopeful about where this is all going?

- It's always a struggle, as Winston Churchill says, "You can always count on the American people to do the right thing after they have exhausted every single other opportunity."

- Other opportunity.

(audience laughing) I wanted you to make me feel better here at the end.

- I'm just going to the end of it.

- Okay, all right, good.

Okay, well, speaking of the end of it, we're at the end of it.

Jake, it's great to see you.

- Thank you so much.

- Everybody, Jake Tapper.

(audience clapping) (gentle music) We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at: AustinPBS.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q and As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- Pence was on Sunday and I asked him about the UAW strike.

Like, and then, basically, the question was like, is it fair that the head of GM makes 362 times more than what her average employee makes?

You know, he gave kind of an answer like, "You know, it's up to the shareholders and they can pressure people."

- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" is provided in part by HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Christine and Philip Dial.

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