Editor’s note: Welcome to another segment of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney.” Today we look at Don Lemon’s arrest, the use of the words murder and execute by two columnists in reference to the deadly ICE shootings in Minnesota, looming cutbacks and an identity crisis at the Washington Post, and the end of an era at The Boston Globe and New York Times as two long-time columnists leave.
If you would rather use a different platform, you can also watch this segment on Contrarian Boston’s YouTube channel, where it will be posted later. You can also find two other recent segments there - one on upheaval at the Globe, the other on the rocky debut of Tony Dokoupil, the new anchor at “CBS Evening News.”
And a special thanks to Tonia Magras for an amazing job producing today’s piece. Tonia was the supervising producer for “Beat the Press” when it was on GBH and is the principal owner of Hull Bay Productions.
Edited transcript of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney.”
Hi, I’m Emily Rooney. Welcome to another edition of “Beat the Press on Contrarian Boston.”
I’m joined here today by Contrarian Boston editor Scott Van Voorhis and Media Nation’s Dan Kennedy, who’s also a professor at Northeastern University.
We’ve got a jam-packed show today. First of all, we’re going to talk about that bizarre arrest of Don Lemon in Minnesota when he entered a church where there was an anti-ICE protest going on, but they disrupted the service.
Now we’re going to talk about the use of the terms execute and murder when referring to what happened to the two protesters in Minnesota and whether any journalists should be using those terms.
Then we’re going to look at the crazy stuff that’s going on in the Washington Post. First of all, they’re sending a team to the Olympics, and then they’re not. Then they’re sending them again, but they are cutting back on their foreign coverage.
So we’ll look at that. And then we’re going to say farewell to two really well-liked columnists, David Brooks from the New York Times and Scot Lehigh from The Boston Globe, who just coincidentally resigned on the same day.
All right, so first, former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested after entering a Minnesota church and filming as anti immigration enforcement protesters were disrupting that service. Lemon, who everybody knows used to work for CNN, was arrested, and he’s now an independent journalist. He was arrested more than a week after the event. Charges include conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with First Amendment rights, meaning the church group. Of course, one other journalist was also arrested. Here’s what Attorney General Pam Bondi had to say:
He was in there with all these other people. If you were in there, if you protested and went into that church on the Sunday, and you terrorized the parishioners, we are coming after you.
So, Scott, starting with you, first of all, I’m always stunned at how much time the Trump administration has on its hands to go after its perceived enemies. Even what Donald Trump said after Trevor Noah, you know, hosted the Grammys this week, I mean, it’s like he’s going after people. But let’s just talk about Don Lemon. Was he part of the protest, do you think? Did he deserve to be arrested? Did they go after other protesters? What’s your take?
Scott Van Voorhis: That’s ridiculous. I mean, he’s covering the event. It’s a very basic practice of journalism to cover a protest. And I mean, if you cover the Capitol Hill insurrection, would you be arrested for covering that? I mean, it gets into kind of ridiculous territory, and we can all argue over the tactics. Is it really going to get you a lot of more support - disrupting a church service is maybe not the best way to broaden your appeal. But this is grandstanding, and Trump likes to go after people in the media that he doesn’t like. And he just kind of makes it up as he goes along in terms of his, you know, or Pam Bondi, his lieutenants making it up as they go along in terms of the actual law they think they’re following.
So, Dan, I think one of the questions is, I mean, is Don a journalist? Is he an activist? Is he a James O’Keefe? I mean, what was he doing? What was the point? I mean, I was kind of unaware of, know, Don’s new gig anyway, but it sounds clear to me what, what his point was. Do you, do you know?
Dan Kennedy: Well, well, both he and Georgia Fort, who was also arrested, are independent journalists. And I know that Lemon at least has a pretty active YouTube channel, as well as a, a major presence on social media. But I think that what matters here isn’t who’s a journalist - it’s what is journalism. And Lemon and Fort were clearly engaged in acts of journalism. I have to admit that I watched some of what Don Lemon did. I have not been able to watch what Georgia Fort did. But he’s outside the church, he’s saying what he’s going to do. He walks in with the protesters. He live streams, he interviews people, and he interviews the pastor. The pastor asks him to leave. And he didn’t leave immediately, but a few minutes later, he left. This is just basic journalism, and it is a, a grotesque breach of the First Amendment to say that he was doing anything illegal.
Emily Rooney: I mean, I know it’s fairly easy to indict somebody, but on what grounds? I mean, they’ve got these crazy, even KKK conspiracy theory chart. I mean, it’s wild.
Dan Kennedy: It really is. I mean, one of them is some Ku Klux Klan law, as you say. I don’t understand that at all. And then there is a law that was originally written to prevent anti abortion activists from interfering at abortion clinics, that in order to get the law passed, they added, you can’t interfere at a house of worship either. And presumably the protesters themselves could face charges under that law. But if you’re a journalist who’s accompanying the protesters to document what’s going on to bring us an important story to the public, that’s protected by the First Amendment. This is absurd.
Emily Rooney: All right, well, it certainly has put Don Lemon back in the spotlight, which is. I. I was always kind of a fan, I have to confess. So now I’m. Now he’s back on my radar screen. All right, so, Dan and Scott, also this week in Minneapolis, you know, following the deaths of the two ICE enforcement protesters, some journalists and opinion columnists mostly started referring to the two deaths as executions and murders. And I’m wondering, Dan, I’ll start with you on this. How do you feel about that? I mean, even if you. Even if you perceived it that way or you saw it that way, I mean, “60 Minutes” this week really took a hard look at it, and you could come away with that impression. But is that the right terminology for a journalist to be using?
Dan Kennedy: Well, I would say that execution is a little bit of a squishy term. So let me put that aside for a moment and talk about murder. What caught my eye about this was that The New York Times ran a piece by their standards editor arguing as to why the Times does not refer to these killings as murders. And it’s because it is a very serious legal charge, and you can be charged with murder, you can be convicted of murder, but unless either of those things happens, a journalist is going to refer to them as a killing. The federal agent shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and that’s all we know for now. It’ll be up to a jury to decide whether they murdered. They committed the crime of murder. Now, after the standards editor wrote this piece, I decided to go down the rabbit hole a little bit, and I saw that the AP Style book, which is used by many news organizations, offers the same guidance. Don’t use murder except in the context of a legal charge. The AP Style book also refers people to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Same thing. Exactly the same thing. Now, execution, the guidance is don’t use execution unless you’re talking about the death penalty. But I think execution also has more of a generic meaning to it. And I’m not as troubled by referring to especially the killing of Alex Preddy as an execution, but technically, that’s not correct either.
Emily Rooney: No, it isn’t. I mean, execution is what China does to protesters. But, Scott. So both Paul Krugman from New York Times and Will Bunch, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, use terms execution and murder. But these are columnists. Does that put them in a category?
Scott Van Voorhis: Yeah, as a columnist, you can say that, right? I mean, you can say this was a murder, or this was, I think, feel this is an execution. I think if you’re writing a story, as Dan is saying, these are legal terms like murder or even execution. I mean, I would think of it more as like a state execution, like which, you know, somebody getting the death penalty. I think it’s, I think the, the point is that you have to have some sort of legal review or investigation into it and whatever. Even if it looks completely, as some of these videos do, completely outrageous. You just don’t know. That’s why we do, why we, we should have an investigation. That’s why we investigate police shootings or have legal proceedings, because you need to look at everything and then make a charge and then move ahead with that.
Dan Kennedy: You know, I think I’m going to disagree. I think that columnists are bound by exactly the same rules of journalistic ethics as any other journalists. And if a opinion columnist is going to use the word murder, I think it’s acceptable to say, I think that these agents should be charged with murder. That’s fine, but don’t call it a murder when they haven’t been charged with a murder or convicted of murder.
Emily Rooney: Yeah, but I’m wondering if, if, you know, if the cynicism hasn’t really sunk deep into journalists across the country because of the kinds of terminology and accusations, false ones, that the Trump administration levies against. You know, you’re fake journalism, you’re fraud, and you’re this and you’re that. And I mean, the level, it has just risen to that level. So they, they use this kind of language to kind of call attention. You know, it’s like nothing shocks anybody.
Nothing does shock anybody. Not anymore.
Scott Van Voorhis: No, I agree. No one. People are, I mean, the level of vitriol and, and kind of, you know, exaggerated or hyperbolic language is the norm now. Right. So it doesn’t. Yeah, I guess I would, I would say, if that’s your argument, I mean, make your argument that you think it’s, you think it’s murder. I still think that’s probably within the realm of opinion, but. But not in a story where you’re reporting on the shooting.
Emily Rooney: All right, moving along, we’re going to talk about the Washington Post. So there’s been a couple of really kind of ominous signals emerging from the Washington Post recently. We saw last week where suddenly they decided they were going to send more than a dozen journalists to the Olympics, then put out a, you know, a memo to the, to the staff saying that no one was going to the Olympics. There was a lot of pushback from that. A number of people, you know, were outraged, including some former reporters and editors from around the country. Here’s, here’s one of them writing it said if, if you want to go big and national, you don’t get rid of your foreign coverage and bureaus all over the world because you can’t be a player in the national conversation without them. And if you want to go deep and local, you double down on sports coverage because there is nothing that drives eyeballs like sports coverage. And then another reporter, Jeff Pasan from ESPN, said the Washington Post has the best sports section in the country. And I don’t think it’s particularly close. Only a soulless corporate goon would think the paper is better without it. A shortsighted, cowardly decision. Shame on your legacy. That’s ESPN. So the Post did reverse itself this week and decided they were going to send four reporters to, to the Olympics. But they haven’t said anything about their foreign coverage. And as many people have said, it’s like the Washington Post is by nature because it covers them. You know, their local city is the nation’s capital, which is the heartbeat of the country, which is the heartbeat of the world. So by nature, they are a national newspaper, which makes them a foreign associated newspaper as well. Dan, what’s your take on that? What, why would they be cutting back? And has,you’ve written about Jeff Bezos extensively? I mean, has, has he reached full blown Goondom? Dan?
Dan Kennedy: Yeah, I mean, I wrote a book about Jeff Bezos stewardship of the Washington Post. And you know, for 10 years he was an absolutely model owner. You couldn’t ask for somebody better. He, he built up the Post, he drove it to profitability. It’s not like he was losing money on it. They gained readers, they gained respect. They had probably the most respected editor in the country with Marty Baron, and then Barron retired. And somewhere about a couple of years ago, Bezos just really started taking the Post in a different direction. And of course, I think the time that most people really woke up and noticed that something had changed was when Bezos killed that endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election. And now he just, he just seems to have completely lost interest, which is a shame because the news section continues to do very good work. The opinion section has become kind of a joke, but the news section is doing a good job. The editor, Matt Murray, is respected, but it just all seems to be going down the drain. The latest predictions Are they’re going to cut another 300 people any day now.
Emily Rooney: He’s too busy wearing tight leather pants and going to hot parties with Lauren Sanchez. I mean, oh, man, it’s become like, I mean, he’s become a cartoon, Scott. It’s, it’s, you know, this embarrassing, ridiculous. He was a good owner originally, right?
Scott Van Voorhis: It’s, he did it once, he could do it again. Somebody else could do it. So it’s possible to, to make a comeback to revive the paper’s fortunes. You know, the problem is there are a lot of great Washington Post reporters out there, but the problem is a lot of them no longer work at the Post. Like Chris Cillizza was the one who wrote the piece that you had mentioned, or Catherine Rampel. I mean, you go down the list of people who’ve left out of frustration or pushed out or some of their op ed columnists just basically forced out. So they’ve gotten rid of a lot of really good people. And it’s, it’s, it’s who you hire, right? Who he’s hired as editors and, and, and how he’s approached this. And he doesn’t seem, he seems like he’s checked out. He doesn’t care. It’s a liability to him. But, you know, cutting back on the, the foreign coverage makes, you know, no sense. If you’re trying to do national politics and, and, and if you’re trying to have any sort of local presence, you would keep your sports section or keep, keep that going at least. But I mean, the Post became a player because they had a really, a brilliant editor and two guys on the metro desk who started, they were the ones that started reporting on Watergate. I mean, it, it’s a mindset of going after the news and getting stories. I mean, I’ve been frustrated. I’m a subscriber and it’s really declined. I mean, since Marty Baron. I mean, it became for a while like USA Today light. And it’s like, why would I pay for this? What are you, what are you doing here? What’s your strategy? It’s, it doesn’t take. Reporters in this world come cheap. I mean, compared to a lot of other talent out there in the world, you’re not paying them millions and millions of dollars. But you need to have the right people and give them the freedom to do stuff and go after stories.
Emily Rooney: Now, Dan, I think you pointed out or somebody else this week that The New York Times has not suffered the same fate for a number of reasons. They’ve been able to maintain some of their subscriptions. They’ve done some creative things, like whether you like it or not, but you can buy a subscription to Wordle or, you know, Spelling Bee or all those games and all that kind of stuff. So they’ve kept their eyeballs coming in different ways. But going back to the Post, I mean, is, is Bezos currying favor with Donald Trump, and if so, for what reason? He doesn’t need the money, he doesn’t need the adoration. He doesn’t need to be invited to, you know, Mar-a-Lago. Why?
Dan Kennedy: I think some of it may have to do with aspirations that he has for his Blue Origin Rocket company, which does depend on federal contracts. He’s pretty much checked out of Amazon. I think he’s mainly interested in his Rocket company these days. And, and it’s a shame. I mean, it’s a real shame. You know, the foreign bureaus were largely built up fairly recently by Marty Barron’s successor, Sally Busbee. And now, as soon as it’s built up, they’re tearing them apart again. The Post made its reputation during the early Bezos years as having a tougher tone to its political coverage during the early Trump era. And that drew them. A lot of fans, a lot of people who thought that the Times was being a little bit wishy washy, ended up gravitating to the Post. But now the Times looks like, you know, the only game in town. Although I should add that I really like what the Wall Street Journal has been doing lately, too.
Emily Rooney: And I’m going to give a nod to The Boston Globe too. And I think it’s going to get even better. The return of Brian McGrory. We’re going to talk about that at a future Beat the Press. But there seems to be a change of tone already. And you know, I, I, I, I got to give them credit, they still maintain a really good staff and although, so it shows that you can have a good billionaire owner. Yes, the Globe is proof of that.
Dan Kennedy: I, I agree.
Emily Rooney: All right. Well, speaking of the Globe and others, finally we’re going to talk say farewell today to two really well-respected, longtime columnists. David Brooks announced last Friday that he’s leaving the New York Times and Scot Lehigh is leaving the Boston Globe after 36 years. In his final column, he wrote “too much of the story in today’s politics is Donald Trump. I’m tired of writing about him, tired of tracking his many destructive moves further in well-educated New England. Critiquing his demagogic authoritarianism is like preaching to the choir. “
Hear, hear. Scot. But I will miss it anyway.
Scott Van Voorhis: Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s interesting what he, you know, the, the issue that he brought up, which is it is an area where, like, we’re kind of an unusual part of the country and, and that. So if you’re, you’re right, you ar almost forced to write about Trump, he injects himself into everything. And preaching to the choir can be, you know, after a while that could get old. Right. So how do you balance that? And he’s, you know, Lehigh has gone, wrote a first novel, did fairly well, “Just East of Nowhere.” And now he’s on to a second book. And so that’s, it takes a lot of bravery to launch into the world of fiction, but I think it’s an exciting new chapter for him.
Emily Rooney: Well, I’m gonna miss, did everything with. Humor, so that’s one of the reasons I wanted.
Dan Kennedy: And I’m, I’m gonna miss Scott’s voice. And he’s truly retiring. I mean, he’ll continue to write fiction, but I don’t think we’re gonna get any of his journalism anymore.
Emily Rooney: He said maybe. Didn’t he say that in the comments?
Okay, well, I hope he, I hope he does. As for David Brooks, he’s not really going much of anywhere. He’s, he’s joined the staff of the Atlantic. I’ve always thought he is better writing longer pieces with less frequency. Anyway, he’s gonna have a podcast. Presumably, he’ll still be on the PBS NewsHour. So, you know, it’s onward and upward with David Brooks, I guess. And I, I like him too. I’m glad he’ll still be around.
Dan Kennedy: Yeah, they have a passive people who can fill his shoes, but, you know, he, he’s, he’s, he’s. Unique voice.
He has a unique voice, that’s for sure. But. Yeah. So.
All right, everybody, you want to add to it?
Scott Van Voorhis: Yeah, just his last column was. I mean, you need an antidepressant after it. It was pretty like, you know, I’m, I’m saying goodbye. Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket.
All right, Scott Van Voorhis, Dan Kennedy, thank you very much for joining me. That’s it for this edition of Beat the Press on contrarian Boston. I’m Emily Rooney. See you later.
