Matt Murray on the Challenges Facing Journalists Today

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: It’s uncomfortable but surely a much-watched film that is out in selected cinemas across the United States today. Our next guest is the “Wall Street Journal’s” Editor-in-Chief, Matt Murray. Taking over the paper in 2018, Murray has since been working tirelessly to win back the dwindling public trust in the news media. He sat down with our Walter Isaacson to discuss the ongoing challenges facing journalists today and celebrating 130 years of the “Wall Street Journal” in print.

WALTER ISAACSON: Matt, thank you for being with us.

MATT MURRAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, thanks Walter for having me for your first. It’s great to be here with you. I really appreciate it.

ISAACSON: You know, the “Wall Street Journal” has one of the most trusted names in the media according to surveys. But in some ways, that’s like being the highest mountain of Louisiana that trust in the media’s collapse so much. Why is that happening and how do you fight that?

MURRAY: It’s a challenge. And I think the media has to take very seriously that we have a major major trust problem among ourselves. So, yes, as you say, I’m happy that in most surveys, we are at the top or right near the top as trusted but the whole media has slid. I mean look, I think it’s things we know. Technology has driven more polarization in how we consume consent and the awareness of content. I think that’s been a real challenge for us. Obviously, lots of politicians and executives. The president being the foremost example but not the only example, have found that they can just beat about the media for whatever we write, deny anything is truthful that they don’t like. Generally, of course, often the rule is the more truthful it is, the more views you get. And that’s been accepted by people in this polarized world. And look, I personally think, to some extent, there are self-inflicted wounds here that we have to take seriously on our part. There’s been a move in certainly mainstream dealing news reporting of the kind of the “Wall Street Journal” does. There’s been a move toward so embracing audience data that I think we’re getting too opinionated sometimes with our news. We’re confusing opinion and fact too often and there’s strong points of view in a lot of stories that I think are aimed often with good intentions to engage with audience but have the risk of only speaking to part of the audience out there. And that leaves some of the rest of the audience feeling alienated. One more thing I’ll say is I think when we make mistakes, and we do, journalism is a human enterprise. We as an industry have to be very forthright about them, own up to them, talk about them, admit them, explain what we do. We’re not very transparent. We are suffering the same kind of loss of faith in institutions that every institution is suffering but we’re not always helping ourselves.

ISAACSON: Do you think that the media has moved away from a concept of objectivity and a desire or belief that you can actually do objective reporting?

MURRAY: I think corners of it have. I think corners of it have. And look, I want to be clear that there’s always, of course, room for a very robust media environment with, you know, opinion journalism and point of view and different elements. But I think that in the core where you want objective-straight news, when you declare that that’s your intention, I think at times yes, it’s been harder to find that. Understandably in some ways because some of the pressures of today and the challenges of covering the president sometimes attest everybody’s objectivity and the challenge of being in the middle and finding an audience in the middle in some ways is harder these days than it might have been in the past. But I do think also there are people who think a point of view is truthful. That the idea of objectivity is a bit of canard that nobody is truly objective so embrace your point of view.

ISAACSON: You don’t believe that, do you?

MURRAY: I think if you declare that’s what you’re doing and you admit that you have it and you are transparent about it, I can accept that. The change I have is, if you’re going to be objective and play it straight, you’ve got to really strive to do that, which includes an awareness of your own biases and how you accommodate them.

ISAACSON: You said that the age of Trump and Trump himself makes it harder to just stay on the straight and arrow and be objective. Why is that?

MURRAY: Well, because he likes to put us on the playing field, the press, not the “Wall Street Journal” particularly. But he likes to make it issue of us. And he has a habit, sometime, as we know, of saying things and then when they report it saying I didn’t say that or I was mischaracterized or wanting to use us as a hobby horse. And I think it’s a game that he plays with us. And so the challenge I think is to cover him fairly inaccurately, hold your ground. But look, a president sometimes wants to pull you down there in the mud. And I think others are learning that habit from him a little bit.

ISAACSON: Your predecessor was sometimes criticized within your own newsroom and sort of a tamped down morale, people said, by edging and trying to keep it more pro-Trump or not as anti-Trump as the rest of the press. Do you feel that’s something you have to wrestle with and how do you handle that? Does your staff sometimes push you and say “Hey, how come we can’t use the word racist or use the word lies?”

MURRAY: I think that the first six months or year of the president’s term provoked a lot of discussions, a lot of newsrooms, and caused a lot of challenges for everybody. And he’s such a unique figure, in some ways. One of the challenges, sometimes, of course, he has a habit of tweeting outrageous things and then you go write to tweet but you don’t want to take your eye off the policy over here. So you don’t always want to give attention to every outrageous thing. Look, he’s a master of media. He probably understands the things that punches media’s buttons better than certainly any president we’ve seen in our lifetime I think. And he’s good at it. So he knows what organizations will do to get clicks and readers and what T.V. viewers, he’s good at that. So I think everybody wrestles with that. And I think — you know, I was deputy at the “Wall Street Journal” so I was part of it. I think it was about all of us and not just my predecessor. So, you know, my judgment is we did pretty well in the end not falling into those traps. And I think, actually, I’m not going to, you know, name, I think some people went a little far in the other direction, all sort of —

ISAACSON: Anti-Trump.

MURRAY: Yes, very anti-Trump all the time in a way that, you know, was not — I don’t know whether the reporting always backed up the assertions, I would say. My predecessor also was the one who signed off on the Michal Cohen coverage and supported that and ran the early stories on Michael Cohen which led to the entire investigation of Cohen. It’s the only reporting on from any major publication that’s implicated the president directly in the commission of the crime. We won the Pulitzer Prize for it this year. And, you know, I’m in the job and I get credit for that but my predecessor deserves — Jerry deserves the credit for a lot of that work. So I think what we’re going through was being felt in other newsrooms, too.

ISAACSON: Give me an example, you know, recently of a meeting you had to have in the newsroom where you had to sort something out and figure out how do we play the strength.

MURRAY: We spent a lot of time last week when the president sent out his initial tweets on the squad about whether or not the term of racist which was a big discussion in a lot of newsrooms. And, you know, it was a very typical kind of a Trump tweet where he walked right up to the line, didn’t overtly necessarily in the eyes of some people use explicitly racist language. Some people characterized it as xenophobic because go back where you came from has been used for Irish and Germans and others in American history. So, like, on the first day we described it in a headline on the front page as racially charged. I think we actually went furthest of the big papers in putting race in the headline on the first day. But there was a lot of debated discussion on the journalism world about whether to call it racist and how far to push it. And I think people felt good about how we did it but we continued to have a discussion with reporters in our Washington Bureau and talk about it amongst ourselves. There are people of color in the newsroom that we talked to. And every single person I solicited and asked what they thought, they said, “From my experience, it’s not even a close call. I’ve heard it all my life.”

ISAACSON: It’s racist?

MURRAY: Racist. And so, you know, we ended up using the word to describe the tweets. And this came about after a lot of discussion and debate amongst ourselves. So I think you have to have a newsroom that has those kind of conversations as you run into these issues and as the world evolves.

ISAACSON: The American economy is booming for almost a decade.

MURRAY: Yes.

ISAACSON: I get there’s this big populist and resentment backlash of a feeling of discomfort. Why is that?

MURRAY: Well, I think the middle class and the working class in the United States was battered for a long time, even prior to the financial crisis. Our economic center at the time was writing stories which we we weren’t always — we didn’t know at the time how spot on he was about how much of the economy in the odds years, in the odds of the Bush years was fueled by credit and home equity loans and people borrowing but the real wages and real growth have really stagnated around 1999. And then, of course, you throw in China and it’s clear that as the Chinese economy took off a lot of jobs did go overseas to China and did go overseas to Mexico and something was happening there. Then you get the meltdown hits all of us, unemployment shoots very high. A lot of people lost their houses. A lot of people took big hits on their credit. And I think there are just deep scars, deep traumas on a lot of people out there that are still with us. I think there’s little doubt that a lot of people who were feeling battered five years ago are feeling much better today and should be feeling much better today but I think there’s still an era of contingency about some of it for some people and they’re still making up ground that was lost.

ISAACSON: You’ve often said that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t interfere with your way of guiding the editorial product. But what sort of guidance, what sort of involvement does Rupert Murdoch, and for that matter News Corps path, in setting the direction of the “Wall Street Journal”?

MURRAY: So since I’ve been in the job, I have to say he genuinely has been hands-off on guiding on any stories or story selection or how to play particular stories. I really had no guidance on that. And in fact, have been told explicitly you’re the editor, your decision. Rupert does have, I think, strong feelings about having a newspaper and a product that is lively and engaging. So, you know, he’s a believer that often our stories are too long and that people lose interest quickly. And that you can see it in the data so say what you want to say, get out, and move on. I think we’ve been owned by News Corps. I’ve been there 25 years and we’ve been owned by News Corps for almost 12 years now. So, you know, the “Wall Street Journal” did not really use much art prior to their acquisition and they have big thoughts about photography and creative use of art and the engaging visual sensibility which we’ve developed by leaps and bounds in the last 12 years. So, you know, thinking about the drama of photography and the splash of the front page, those kinds of things, sort of the classic components of an exciting newspaper that way. So I hear thoughts on that. And being engaging and grabbing attention and making people want to sit down and really read you and compel their attention and not taking it for granted. I mean there’s a lot of that which is useful in translating to how we think about the digital product as well in the same way.

ISAACSON: Let me ask about a few things that could worry you and you tell me what worries you the most. The federal deficit.

MURRAY: I think it’s worrying. I think we’ve crossed a point here to where there isn’t anybody in either party really holding up the flag for the deficit. I think both parties have crossed the line in their openness to building the deficit up more and more and more and I think that will catch up to us eventually.

ISAACSON: Trade skirmish with China.

MURRAY: You know I think we’re seeing some effects of this trade skirmish right now on us. I think probably we’ll get a deal of some kind. It might be a more modest deal, not a transformative deal. And I think we’ve actually absorbed it so far a little better than I would have predicted a year ago. I’m cautious on making predictions, but, obviously, it extended a kind of very distant ongoing trade battle would have real effects on both countries. I think we probably are in some ways maybe with good reason, we probably are headed to a permanent recalibration of the economic relationship between the United States and China. Even if we get a deal here on the immediate trade stuff.

ISAACSON: Crisis with Iran or war with Iran and maybe an oil crisis that would come from that.

MURRAY: I hate — I mean I hate to sound cavalier about something that I think is a risk. I think the risk with Iran is probably more of an accidental thing that happens that sets off a larger thing. But I think right now, I think there’s a kind of calculated escalation gamesmanship going on here that probably is resolvable in some way at some point.

ISAACSON: What other things worry you about the economy? What are you sort of tell your reporters, hey, we better keep an eye on this?

MURRAY: Well, I think that you know, I think a lot of people are still left out on the prosperity of the United States and the economy in the United States in ways that not all of us fully understand and fully realize. You know, people who have been — I was reading this book “Dignity” that just came out by Chris Arnade who I don’t know but that is getting some attention. And you think about some of the other bold books, the think pieces about what they call the Trump voter and some of that could be a bit simplistic. But nonetheless, you know, there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of hollowed uptowns in America, that were prosperous towns 30 or 40 years ago. There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of people without access to proper educational systems or opportunities to move out and who feel very left out, who are vulnerable in the country. And at the same time, I think you’ve got New York and San Francisco and other cities getting more and more concentrated by and more and more expensive and in some ways harder and harder to break into for many people, harder and harder to understand. And I worry about that divide, as many people do who are much smarter than I am about it a lot. I think, you know, are we really in a place of two economies for many people? I think that’s something that should concern all of us. How do we bring more Americans on board? I mean if you — you know I’ve heard people talk about this. If you can raise everybody’s credit score in the United States by 50 points and you can bring them more into the economy, it would be great for them and more prosperity for all of us. I worry we don’t know how to do that. We don’t have answers for those people anymore. And I think some of our politics reflects maybe sometimes a sense that there’s a finite pie and we’re grabbing for pieces of it. I don’t know how we make the pie bigger for everybody. I think that’s a concern.

ISAACSON: Your father became a monk.

MURRAY: Yes, and a priest.

ISAACSON: And a priest. Tell me how that affected your view of your purpose in life.

MURRAY: That’s a good — it’s an interesting question. So, yes, my parents were both writers, which had an influence on me. And then my mother died when I was seven and my father retired early from his job in the government. I grew up in Washington. And he felt he had a calling. And he became religious as I was in high school. And after I went to college, he ended up going to Central Illinois to take vows in the monastery. He went to seminary for four years, became a priest, spent the last 18 years of his life as a priest in this area. You know, I guess the ways that it influenced me and ways I wasn’t conscious of at the time was a strong desire that my father had to have purpose and meaning in life and to pursue meaning and to actively pursue and particularly to do something meaningful, engage with other people. And really overtime, in the service of other people. You know, my father was an extraordinarily generous person to others with his time, far more than I am. Far more than I am. And I think the example he set for me of putting others first and sort of pursuing what, for him, was the ultimate meaning in importance was a pretty strong example for me to try to, you know, not just think about what you’re doing today or the immediate task in front of you but about doing something meaningful and really always remembering that you’re working with human beings in front of you or whatever the circumstances, whether you’re writing hard stories about them, which we do a lot of times at the journal, whether you’re having meetings with them, whether they’re working for you, whether they’re your bosses. Try always to think about the personal human interaction and the meaning of two individuals coming together. So I hope I’ve got some of that from him.

ISAACSON: Matt, thank you very much.

MURRAY: Thank you.

ISAACSON: I really appreciate it.

MURRAY: Thank you.