On this episode of The Chuck ToddCast, Chuck dives into the new waters he’s swimming in—the world of independent media and journalism.He shares his concerns about attacks on the free press by the Donald Trump administration and the lack of a unified pushback from the media. He explains how the erosion of local news sowed the seeds of public distrust, and he expresses his goal to help rebuild media from the ground up.Later, he’s joined by independent journalist Tara Palmeri to dissect the new media landscape.Tara describes her journey into independent media and why authenticity resonates more than polish with digital news consumers. They discuss bias in journalism, why the WHCA made a mistake in selecting comedian Amber Ruffin to host the Correspondents’ Dinner, and why the Trump administration’s adversarial stance toward the media is a façade.Finally, Chuck explains his theories behind the “SignalGate” scandal, asks Tara how her relatives in Poland are processing the threat of the Ukraine war on their border, and discusses why both of them find the American right's embrace of Russia deeply disturbing.Timeline:0:00 Introduction1:45 Kicking AP out of press briefings is unconstitutional4:00 Traditional media has capitulated, lost trust7:00 Appeal of independent media11:00 OJ trial + Craigslist changed everything12:00 Loss of local news broke trust16:15 Local media was a character reference for national media19:00 Need to rebuild local media21:57 Tara Palmeri joins the show22:57 Going independent as a journalist27:56 Lack of trust in mainstream media30:52 Authenticity resonates on social media34:32 All journalism is affected by bias37:17 Is mainstream media pulling punches?41:36 Mistake picking Amber Ruffin for WH correspondents dinner45:26 Trump administration officials court the media50:07 Anchors were drinking before reporting Bin Laden was killed52:15 Where Tara gets her news57:11 Is there more to “SignalGate”59:25 Trump DOESN’T like to fire people1:02:41 Tara’s Polish citizenship/How are Poles feeling about the Ukraine war?1:08:30 American right’s embrace of Russia1:10:47 Where to find Tara’s work1:13:16 Chuck’s closing thoughts(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
Full Episode
Hello there. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. My guest today is Tara Palmieri. Tara is somebody I've known as a colleague in political journalism, whether it was Politico, whether it's Puck. And she's most recently gone independent.
There's a lot of us that have recently gone independent, and there's plenty of explanations of why suddenly being an independent journalist feels a bit more liberating and, frankly, a place to be that makes it a bit easier to practice journalism. Because I think right now, as you can see, traditional media is struggling to deal with Trump 2.0.
I think, for instance, it's been atrocious how traditional media has handled the Trump White House's attempts to kick the Associated Press, for instance, out of the press pool. The inability of the press corps to unite together to sort of stand with AP because the rationale the White House used to kick AP out of the press pool was. was unconstitutional.
You know, look, I'm not going to sit here and say they should protest over office space and all this stuff. But when the rationale for kicking AP out of the press pool is the way they describe the body of water that borders the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, as the world calls it, and what America called it up until
About about 60 days ago and Gulf of America, which President Trump renamed via executive order, the Associated Press made it clear they were sort of going to use both names at times, but mostly refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico, considering that they're an international news organization, etc.,
The fact that the White House used that decision as the rationale to kick him out, that's just simply unconstitutional. Just like you can't fire somebody simply because of how they look. Right. There are protections in the law for that. Well, the Constitution is the ultimate protector on this one. So it's unconstitutional. A pretty simple thing to stand for, principally.
And yet there's not a single leader of a single traditional media company that is willing to stick their head out on behalf of the Associated Press. If anything, you saw certain competitive news organizations come out with their own decision on what they were going to call it. And in some way, it was almost sort of not dissimilar to what happened with the Paul Weiss law firm, right?
In the memo that the managing partner put out when he said, We sort of explained why they capitulated to the demands of the White House when it came to providing pro bono work in exchange for them not being targeted or not being denied security clearances and things like that.
What the managing partner said is, you know, they tried to rally other law firms and instead they found that other law firms were trying to poach their clients where everybody was out for themselves. Everybody was looking for a short term advantage, even if it was going to wound or hurt a long term principle. In this case, the principle being the First Amendment.
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