The Miller Center hosted an event Thursday morning that featured a conversation between William Antholis, director and chief executive officer of the Miller Center, and John Dickerson, former co-anchor of CBS Evening News and Class of 1991 alum, who discussed the state of journalism in the United States, the presidency and the nation’s current political climate.
The event was part of an annual Miller Center series of “James C. Lehrer Lectures” — events held in honor of the late James Lehrer, former CBS News anchor and member of the Miller Center Governing Council.
The first topic that Antholis and Dickerson discussed was how the field of journalism has changed over the years, specifically since the era of investigative journalism that uncovered the Watergate scandal in 1972.
According to Dickerson, one of the biggest changes to journalism since the scandal has been the shift in how media broadcast companies receive their funding. He said that in the past, media and news organizations earned their revenue through advertising, but that funding source is no longer sufficient. He said organizations now need to focus on gaining and sustaining viewer attention to remain financially stable.
Dickerson said the shift from prioritizing ad sales to instead focusing on audience attention and retention has changed how media outlets broadcast information.
“What [is] replaced is a revenue model that's built on attention. Can you hold that attention? Can you freak them out enough so that they will turn from what they're doing to watch what you're doing? That creates a very different kind of journalism,” Dickerson said.
Antholis and Dickerson then moved from talking about the field of journalism to how the presidency has changed over the past 50 years. Dickerson specifically mentioned that he feels previous presidents operated in a less politically polarized environment and were more openly self-aware about their weaknesses. Dickerson discussed how former President Dwight Eisenhower acknowledged to his staff that he had anger issues, and he let them know that he would “fly off the handle sometimes.”
Dickerson also said he believes that previous presidents, including Eisenhower and former President Richard Nixon, had a firmer belief in the press as a fundamental constitutional power. Specifically, Dickerson mentioned Nixon saying that every president has the right to complain about an adversarial media, but at the end of the day, it is an inevitable aspect of the job.
“[Nixon] obviously doesn't respect the press. He called them the animated people,” Dickerson said. “But he believed in the norm of having an adversarial press system, and I don't think the current president does.”
Following the discussion on how presidents have changed over time, Dickerson discussed what it was like to moderate presidential debates as a reporter. Dickerson said that all the presidents he interviewed or moderated were very different.
Dickerson specifically mentioned Eisenhower because he refused to participate in presidential debates due to a belief that presidential candidates could lie and fabricate facts during debates, whereas an incumbent president could not.
Dickerson also discussed the times he interviewed President Donald Trump, saying that Trump has traditionally been accessible to the media, and he has interviewed him 19 times. Dickerson said one takeaway from his interviews with Trump is that he is “ready to take any question,” but traditionally avoids citing why he says certain things or where he gets evidence for certain claims.
Lastly, Antholis steered the conversation toward a discussion on the state of the economy. Dickerson said he believes that Trump can accurately identify issues that Americans are passionate about — such as the fact that the number of Americans with manufacturing jobs has decreased, leading to high unemployment rates, because of globalization.
In an interview after the event, third-year College student Fletcher Gillespie told The Cavalier Daily he attended Thursday’s event because he saw it advertised in a Miller Center email, and it seemed to align with his interest in politics and government. He also shared some of what he took away from the conversation between Dickerson and Antholis.
“My biggest takeaway was that the press has a really important role to play in checking the role of the government and that to be responsible citizens we need to really think critically about the types of information that we consume and where we get our news from, what we know, how we know what we know and to not buy into narratives blindly,” Gillespie said.
Dickerson said he has hope for the future of both journalism and politics in the U.S., saying that some issues that are at the top of constituents' minds can be solved outside of the political realm. Something like the economy, he said, is an "undulating thing” that should be explored outside of the scope of Trump and his policies.
“I have hope in journalism because I have hope in the audience … I was a political reporter on the road for so long … and you can't engage with the American people that much and not have hope and also not see and recognize the humanity of all the people in the country,” Dickerson said. “Not every issue in this country needs to be sorted through the political lens. In fact, most of them get destroyed when that happens.”
More Miller Center events are available on the Center’s website. The next event hosted by the Center is titled “Nuclear Stability in a Time of Global Tension” Tuesday.
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