Why Good News Is Worth the Effort with Journalist David Begnaud

0:00 Let's talk about good news, because you and I have that in common. I think there's a craving for positivity. I meet it on the street every day. I don't watch the news anymore. I can't stand the news. I only want the good stuff. I only want the hard stuff. It's what I hear all the time. But it frustrates me because you say you want it, but you guys don't watch it in a way that meaningfully rates or meaningfully makes money.

0:20 Fear is louder than hope. A story about a horrible murder is more, dare I say it, attractive than a wedding, for example. And for good reason. We're attracted to bad news because that fear, that paranoia helps us stay alive. At least it did in caveman times. And even though our world has changed, our biology hasn't.

0:44 And news organizations exploit that for ratings. Which is why I wanted to talk to journalist David Begnaud. For 20 years, David covered the worst days of people's lives as the lead national correspondent for CBS News. Until it actually broke him. He walked away intent to tell the feel-good stories that unite us, or at least to prove that spreading good news is a worthwhile pursuit.

1:07 And pursue them he does. As host of Begnose America on CBS Mornings and founder of Do Good Crew. You'd think because David and I are both optimists that this is a very mushy episode. But it's not. Because I think the media itself needs to take more responsibility for the news it reports. And we got into it.

1:29 If you were running CBS, what would you do? If I was CBS, CBS News. If you were running it. But we talked about more than how we found ourselves in this mess. We also talked about how we can get out of it. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. You went to Brandeis.

1:53 I did. And so I went to a school at the edge of the Brandeis campus. And I'll never forget, someone wrote to me saying, David, there is a girl with autism, who's I think in the, she was in the second grade, who has befriended and made a best friend out of our school police officer. You should come and see it.

2:12 And they sent me the video. And sure enough, we went there because I tell the stories that kind of remind us of our shared humanity. where this girl who was nonverbal every day would run to the school's only police officer, grab his hand, and would walk around the playground while everyone else played.

2:28 And she'd walk with him. And they would do nothing but circle and circle and circle. And she was his safety net and his safe place. Story got millions of views. But it was at the edge of the campus. And so it's as close as I came to your campus. Well, I'd like to say it's a pretty campus. It's not as pretty as some, but it was home for me for four years.

2:46 I liked it there. I had a good education and made some great friends. A perfect segue, though, because you said you like to tell the stories that remind us of our humanity, our shared humanity. You and I have that in common. I'm just trying to bring human back into everything, work, the way we interact in a somewhat less and less human world.

3:07 Was that a discovery? Like, did you come to that as a cause, as a desire, as a cornerstone for your work? Or was it a sort of an early decision? I'm obsessed with the fact that most people can't tell their own story in a way that makes them feel like they did a good job. And I had somebody who helped me realize that the good Lord put me on this earth to use my voice to tell stories.

3:28 And I'm grateful I found it. And I think one thing that I'm good at is helping people tell their story. So that's number one. Number two, I think I started doing what I do because I needed to see it because I was becoming broken by what I was doing. Right. So I was the lead national correspondent at CBS.

3:45 Right. And I was, you know, I say that I've knocked on more doors of mothers whose kids have had their heads blown off at school than I can remember. Done more massacres and mass shootings and volcanoes and earthquakes. I was able to compartmentalize it, Simon, in what I thought was a very effective way.

4:01 I could go to the scene of a massacre and meet you for dinner and not trauma dump on you and have a very enjoyable dinner. And then all of a sudden it became too much. After one story in particular, when I went to Puerto Rico and I covered a hurricane there, and I think it became too much because despite my ability to guardrail around my intentions, meaning in journalism, it is not your job to cross the line and affect change.

4:28 But my heart always felt compelled and called to do it. However, I had good boundaries. And this hurricane in Puerto Rico made it to where... I couldn't stay on the other side of the fence. And so I danced on that line. And then I came back and I said, I'm exhausted, it's affecting my mental health. I've been pouring so much of my time and effort and joy and heart into this story.

4:54 And I just don't wanna do the tough things anymore. I want to focus on the things that remind us of our better angels. I want to go out of my way to focus on the things that plug into the same algorithm. I can't change Zuckerberg's algorithm. But what I can do is become better at triggering it the same way hate and rage does.

5:13 And so that's what I spend my days doing now. So what was happening in Puerto Rico that made you cross the line? Or was it just the straw that broke the camel's back? Hurricane Maria, 2017, September 20th. I went to sleep having broadcasted one report. So the storm makes landfall and civilization, as you know it on the island, collapsed.

5:35 And I filed a report for the CBS Evening News and it was two minutes and some seconds in length. And I went to sleep. Like you always did after every massacre. Like I always did and I felt like shit. Because I thought, how do you convey how dire the situation is here in a wham bam thank you ma'am piece?

5:55 And so because of the brilliance of one of my colleagues who was a former United States Marine and was on our team as an IT professional, he had talked to the general manager of the hotel to get permission to get through the firewall to tap into the Wi-Fi so that if God forbid everything went down and the generator at the hotel could still provide the signal for a Wi-Fi, we could get word out.

6:16 And we did. And so what I did was at about... Nine o'clock that night, I picked up my phone and I started talking. Now, this is worth noting. I had spent a decade trying to build an audience on social media, doing everything I thought had been told, all this bit. And I think I had amassed like 10,000 followers on Facebook.

6:40 And I posted a video that night in Puerto Rico. I don't even remember what the video said, but to the best of my recollection, I just dumped as much information as I could to people just to say what we were seeing on the island. And I woke up and there was a message from New York by way of a walkie talkie app called Zelle.

6:59 And New York said, we're having people at the front door who are dropping off cakes and flowers and cards and asking us to get it to you. We're not sure what's going on, what's happening over there. And I had woke up and I think there was like 100,000 followers overnight. And what happened was a lot of people found this guy whose name they couldn't pronounce.

7:16 Begno, my last name. There are 8 million Puerto Ricans living on the mainland. And all of a sudden they found this guy who they weren't sure who I was, but they could tell that I think I had the best intentions and was moving with a sense of urgency to get the word out. But why, again? What was it about this news story that you reported it differently and were incapable of compartmentalizing that in a way that you had done so well previously?

7:43 Was it something particular about this or was it just the straw that broke the camel's back? I think it was this one because the magnitude was like no other. And I felt a sense of responsibility, even though every journalist from every organization was there. We were the only ones who had Wi-Fi, though I didn't know it.

7:59 And we were one of the only ones who could get the word out, though I didn't know it. And so I just, in a fit of screw it, I'm just going to dump. So it was a perfect storm. Dump. Bad, bad. Yeah, I'm just going to dump information. And it changed everything. So you became the lone voice. And you happened to have this epiphany at a time where you were the lone voice.

8:17 So the reporting wasn't. It doesn't sound like other reporters. It sounded you were reporting. It sounded like an advocate. Can I play devil's advocate? Is that irresponsible as a journalist? Of course it made a lot of people uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. But at the end of the day, I will never apologize for doing what feels like the human thing to do.

8:34 Right. Never, ever. If I am driving down the street and I see a man attacking a child, I will pull over, try to stop it and call 911. Sure, of course. I'm just going to do that. If I am, and this has happened before, if I am covering a story as I was in Houston and a woman was walking out of her flooded home with the ashes of her husband, which were on the second story, and that was the only story that hadn't flooded.

8:59 And she gets into the boat and the boat gets to where we're going and there's nobody to help her get out. I put the woman on my back and got her out. Of course, of course. So that's as simple as it is for me. So I agree with all those things. Where I'm curious is if we go back to a time before we rated the news and sold – advertising on the news based on the ratings.

9:21 Because it used to not happen. Because it used to not happen. I'm glad you're not up. And the reason the news was, let's be blunt, better, is because it was part of the deal of using the public airwaves that the government said to the media, you can use the public airwaves to make money and make TV shows.

9:39 And you perform the civic responsibility called the news in return for using the news. for making financial gain off the public airwaves. And that's how it worked. And that's how we had people like Walter Cronkite. And you know this, it was the Iran hostages where everything changed. And they saw the ratings go up and the executives went, wait, what?

9:57 When we started rating the news and treating it like any other TV show and selling ads on the news like any other TV show, there now becomes a financial incentive to make more people watch our news coverage over somebody else's rather than report the news. You know all this. Sure, sure. You know all this.

10:13 And so we know what bleeds leads. We know this. We know that being incendiary or political is good for ratings. We know this. Where I'm getting at is it is having an opinion, having a point of view, intervening as a person Like, I'm going to help that little old lady out of the house. I'm going to call 911, which is what human beings are expected to do.

10:38 But a journalist, it's not a normal human being. A journalist has to dance the fine line. You said it before. Who made those rules? Wasn't that... Wasn't that what you were taught in journalism school? Sure, but who made those rules? Wasn't that established back in the Walter Cronkite days that we try not to give our opinions.

10:58 We try and report the facts as they are. Sure, but I'm loving this exercise. I didn't give my opinion, right? Like a storm made landfall and devastated the civilization. Remember, this is also different in the sense that it wasn't a political story, wasn't a business story, wasn't even a controversial story.

11:15 So this in terms of advocating and here's where people would ask the question. No one ever accused me of advocacy. Right. But the guy who was actually and he's a salt of the earth human being, the head of our standards and practices, Al Ortiz, who still works at the network, once said to me, what do you say to people who might think that your work is advocacy?

11:35 And that's when I said, I'll never apologize for doing what is human. And here's what it looked like. When I was at the hotel and someone ran in and said the children's hospital is running out of diesel. And if we don't get it in the next half hour, we've got kids on ventilators who will die. What I mean is I immediately took to social media.

11:53 I interviewed the man. We went live. And then diesel showed up. Yeah. So what's the line between reporting and advocacy? Because if you report that there's children in this hospital, they've run out of diesel, you know, if you report that, I have to believe the goodness of people, they'll show up the same.

12:10 Yes, but there was probably an element in my tone and my voice that sounded more advocacy than it did observant. Look, I agree with everything you've said and done because you are talking about human stories, children in hospitals, people who are subjected to the tragedy of hurricanes. Like those are all, as you said, apolitical.

12:29 And your point is, I'm not going to apologize for my advocacy. because it's the human thing to do. The question I'm raising is, should there be a journalistic standard? Because somebody else may say this is the right thing to do, and their advocacy actually has political leanings. But in their mind, this is the human thing to do.

12:49 This is the right thing to do. Like, who makes that? You just, you raised the question, well, who decided there should be this journalistic and, you know, line down the middle? Well, who decides what the line of advocacy is? 100% and institutions do. So for example, in CBS, having some of the most stringent and strongest, right?

13:04 I mean, our people are so diligent about the standards. They flip over backwards, talking about the verbs and whether the verb is suggestive of something that we're not intending to suggest. Right. And so the people within the organizations do, which is why social media bothers me so much. You know why?

13:21 Because we in the news business don't cover suicides. Why? Because there's a belief that a suicide might lead to somebody wanting to copycat it. At the end of the day, no twerp with a social media account is stopped from doing it. And they do it all the damn time. The internet's way more dangerous for that than the reporting.

13:38 100%. And so that's what drives me fucking crazy is that you've got people sitting at home with accounts with millions of followers who don't have the prudence and the appropriateness of an editor. When I hear fake news, fake news to me is singularly defined as this. a denial of what is obvious and the truth.

13:58 That's what fake news, anybody who yells fake news, and I think we're now at a point where society kind of just laughs, like, oh, they're yelling fake news. Yeah, they must not just like the news. The news is not meant for you to like. It is also not meant for you to agree with. And so I miss the days when, yes, you would have an editor who would say, we're going to give people a balance of what the news is today in a consumption diet that is appropriate, that is diverse, that is local, regional and national and is contextualized.

14:31 Ted Koppel said this. I mean, he said we used to give people the news they needed, whether they wanted it or not. And now we give people the news they want, whether they need it or not. 100 percent. The journalistic integrity, the journalistic standard is giving people the news they need, whether they want it or not.

14:48 But because of the screwed up financial incentives, we give people the news they want, whether they need it or not. As if you don't, they'll go get it themselves. Or it's just not good for ratings. It's just not good for ratings. And this is the problem, which is if you sell, I have a solution for this, by the way, that nobody ever listens to me.

15:05 Which is- Tell me, because I haven't heard. Which is, I think it's super easy, because it's all about financial. Tell me how somebody's paid, I'll tell you how they behave, right? So if you wanna remove the financial incentive, all you do is each broadcaster, They don't have to volunteer their entire broadcast.

15:22 They don't have to their entire station. They could pick one hour per day, one program and say, we agree that we will sell advertising at a fixed rate that will not go up and down based on the ratings. So we can make money, but there's no financial incentive to get more people to watch. We sell advertising at a fixed rate and that's it.

15:42 And you can put a seal at the bottom of the program that this is a free press broadcast where there's no advertising financial incentive. And if you get multiple stations... multiple broadcasters to elect just one show, one hour, that they agree, everybody agrees, not to care about the ratings, I think the quality and the integrity of that reporting gets better because you remove the financial incentive.

16:09 What do the critics say to that? Nobody wants to do it because if you can squeeze, why agree to a fixed rate when you can potentially make more? Like I'm saying, one program is all you need. And my belief is that if you did that and you remove the financial incentive, Then the executives aren't involved.

16:25 Then nobody's putting pressure on anybody. And the journalists in the room can report on the things they think that people need to hear whether they want it or not. And it might mean that the ratings go down, but the quality goes up. The other thing that I think, and journalists haven't taken accountability for this, made a huge mistake.

16:40 It wasn't the journalist's fault. It was the executive's fault. I remember this. I remember when the Internet was young and coming alive and blogging became a thing. Yeah. Right. Now. To be a journalist, you traditionally had to study journalism. You obeyed certain accepted standards and practices. And there was a striving for a certain standard, right?

17:06 That's what a quote unquote journalist was, right? And then to be a blogger, you needed an email address and a wifi signal. And that was it. And so bloggers started quote unquote reporting, but they had no training, no journalistic integrity, no standards that they were upholding, right? And the biggest mistake that journalism made in this time, and I remember when it happened, instead of separating themselves saying, we appreciate the role of bloggers.

17:34 They are there to give their opinions and do whatever they do. But as journalists, we obey. And this is what distinguishes us. But because blogging was a new thing, everybody got freaked out about it. And you probably remember this. And there was pressure put on journalists from the companies to start blogging.

17:52 And the modern day version was you better have a social media following. The pressure they put on journalists to get on Instagram, get on TikTok and build your following. Now, that's the pressure. Same, same. But back then it was you better start blogging. And so by bringing the journalist down, it elevated the blogger and said, we're the same because we're going to do what you're doing.

18:13 I have no problem with blogging, but we blurred the lines of what journalism and blogging is. And journalism has only itself to blame. Because it could have said, we like this new technology, but as journalists, we obey different standards. But that's not what happened. And I think we now live in a world where we don't trust the news for all the good reasons, because the money's infected it.

18:39 And I think we're going to agree on this. I don't think journalism as a profession has taken any accountability in their role in getting us to this point. They're the punching bag and they're very defensive. But this is a relationship of me as listener and consumer and you as reported. It's a relationship.

18:58 And journalism as a profession bears some responsibility for where we are now. Yes, but here's the contextualization that's key and important. When Roger Ailes, and this is a story I was told, so take it for what it's worth. Somebody can fact check me on this. When he started Fox News... Someone said to him, you know, how are we going to go get all the people at all the other networks?

19:17 And he's like, we're not. I'm not going to worry about those people. We're going to go to the people who've been forgotten, who feel like they've been left out, ostracized in the middle of America, who have already tuned those folks out. And he did it from a business standpoint brilliantly. The problem is people watch Fox primetime like it's the news.

19:38 And what ends up happening is the actual news is not being consumed for what it is. By the way, that happens on the left, too. A hundred percent. I mean, MSNBC is Fox for liberals. A thousand percent. But the bottom line is someone giving their opinion on the news is not. It's not the news. I understand.

19:54 And that. But that's a massive. But that's that. OK, let's talk about accountability. That was Ted Turner. When you invent CNN and you invent the concept of 24-hour news, there isn't 24 hours of news, right? And you got to fill the airwaves. And there's only so many times you can repeat a story. But that's how they used to fill it in the early days.

20:14 They used to repeat it and you just turn up and like, I've seen this already four times. And so you got to start filling the airwaves. And so you start filling with an entertainment, newsertainment, which turns out because it is newsertaining, kind of more fun to watch than the news. Because people are yelling at each other and screaming bloody murder about something that happened, making mountains out of molehills.

20:34 It's unbelievably entertaining, which is good for ratings, which is good for advertising, which is good for money. And so, all of a sudden, you have 23 hours worth of newsertainment and one hour of news. But here's what I would say. There's not a journalist at CBS News who I have encountered or worked with who...

20:53 Who is to blame for where we are today? Blame is not the right word. I don't like the word blame. Okay, accountability. But there's no one who I would hold accountable that I have worked with day in and day out from my experience. Okay. I'm just saying that you add social media, which is a place where anybody can show up.

21:11 Anybody with a phone can now stream live the same way a news organization does. Well, OK. All of a sudden, then you have the people giving their opinions on the news. I think it's in my experience, and I'm only speaking from my experience. This is less about a cabal of people wanting to betray journalists.

21:30 There's no there's no I don't have a. I don't have a conspiracy theory here. Sure. I don't think there's a group of people going like, moohaha, and we're going to screw journalism. I think this is a slow, steady drumbeat. I have not seen a news executive who would sit here and tell you that they have successfully navigated the waters of the last 10 years of technological changes that affects our business.

21:51 I don't know that there's one. I haven't met them. Maybe there is. So how did we get here? How did we get here? Something happened by accident. I mean, I can look at business as a whole and I can show you this slow but steady change of events that got us to the point where we now use mass layoffs to balance the books and short-termism.

22:11 Nobody decided to do it in a way of upending anything. It was done for short-term, valid business reasons, but it's come to the point where we've accidentally screwed capitalism and made it excessively short-term. We do long-term damage at the expense of the happiness of people. Yeah. Something similar has happened in journalism.

22:31 I don't think anybody was personally to blame. I don't think there were well-intended decisions. But over the course of time, we've chipped away at this thing called journalistic integrity. And I agree, there are good and high integrity journalists that exist, of course. But as a category, journalism is fighting for its relevance.

22:52 But I think you're lumping in things you see on channels like MSNBC, CNN, and Fox, and you're applying it to the legacy institutions like ABC, NBC, and CBS. ABC, CBS, and NBC have lost their positions on the mantle. Listen, to some degree, 100%. I mean, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokoth. I mean...

23:16 I don't think they've been replaced. I think they were the last of a generation, you know? Perhaps, but I think that was also influenced by the fact that there was one place to get the news. And if you didn't read the newspaper- Well, there were three places to get the news. Sure, but if you didn't read the newspaper, you didn't listen to the radio, that was the only other place.

23:32 I don't think Tom Brokaw, or let me say, God rest his soul, Walter Cronkite. I don't know that Walter Cronkite could get a job in news today. I don't think he could. I don't think Walter Cronkite could command the audience that he did. The audience has been fractioned and cut up a hundred different ways.

23:48 The diffuse nature of the news and what has happened is definitely contributing. It's a contributing factor. But when I look at publishing or the music industry or the TV industry, how poorly they understood the internet, You know, it's embarrassing that Amazon invented the e-reader, the Kindle, and not the publishing industry.

24:17 It's embarrassing that Apple invented iTunes and not the music industry. It's embarrassing that Netflix that pioneered streaming or a new model of subscription to get our movies was a startup. And it didn't come from the television and movie industry or Blockbuster, right? The incumbents. And it's because they were too busy protecting their old business models.

24:40 didn't really know how to wrap their head around how they could use this new technology called the internet. So it's because the publishing industry was trying to sell books, not trying to give people things to read. And if they were trying to give people things to read, they would have pioneered the e-reader when the technology showed up.

24:57 It's because the music industry was trying to sell us albums and CDs and completely missed the fact that because the internet and MP3 players would change into a song culture. They weren't giving us things to listen to. They were trying to sell us albums. And I would argue that the news, maybe like those industries, is yet another industry that really couldn't wrap its head around music.

25:19 how to use the internet to give people the news they need, but play defense until other organizations sort of became the iTunes, became the... I think that's a very fair assessment. I just looking at that, I don't blame anyone. I simply say it was inevitable. And again, I go back to, I don't think there's one executive in broadcast television who would say they were the best at handling the change.

25:50 Okay, we're onto something here. Yeah. I would love a journalist. Yeah. An executive. Yeah. To come out and say that. No, but I'm saying the best at navigating the chain. You gave the examples of the movie business and the music business. It's not because they want it to fall behind. It's just because no one was at the helm who could see like Reed Hastings did when he started Netflix.

26:14 I think it's because they had a warped sense of what their job was. They thought their job was sell albums. They didn't understand their job was give us music. Sure. One is serving us and one is serving the customer. Sure. And I think when you have a product-centric mentality, sell more of what we make versus give people the thing that they want rather than sell them more of what we make.

26:35 Subtle but significant difference. I will tell you as a business owner, it's easy. And I think you're a business owner as well. To fall back on the numbers and the stuff in the side. I have a whole lot more grace towards people who run a fucking business. You know, it is so easy to stand out on the street and criticize the guy in the CEO's office when the guy in the CEO's office is just trying to preserve as many jobs as he can, keep the lights on while also do what the business needs to do.

27:04 So I'm just saying, I give a little bit more grace. But I'm not screaming on my soapbox. I am a business owner and I do face these conflicts of interest. Do I do the right thing for the bottom line or do the right thing for the customer? And we've been out of balance before and we've caught ourselves and said, guys, guys, guys, hold on.

27:21 Let's get back to why we're in this business and what we're doing. And that might mean that we may not make the money in the short term, but we believe this is the right thing to do the long term. If you were running CBS, what would you do? If I was CBS... CBS News. If you were running it. If I was running CBS News or any of the news organizations, the first thing I would do as the new boss is I would make a public accounting, both internally and then to the broader public saying, the news as a category is weirdly controversial, right?

27:54 There are accusations of bias. And to some, we've lost relevancy. And to some, we can't be trusted. And to some, we aren't the main and best source of quote unquote truth. And whether these things are true or not, to some degree, perception is truth. And we as a profession bear some responsibility. We have to own that we find ourselves in the situation in part of Because we got us here.

28:20 It's like being in a relationship. It's not just your husband or your wife that got you here. We both got us here to this point of tension. And we are committed to once again restoring all of journalism to a profession of legitimacy and nobility that people will seek out our... trained reporters, trained journalists for truth, even though we sometimes get it wrong.

28:47 But I think they need to work together as opposed to apart from each other. You know more about this than I do, but I think they need to cooperate. If the goal is to restore integrity in the category, then the whole category has to work together. I do wonder if we still have, you know, maybe CNBC, CBS, PBS, Fox, CNN.

29:05 You know, it's like- There's a bit much. Yeah, just- Maybe what you're proposing is that ABC, CBS, NBC decide to combine forces rather than compete and then all work together in one unified news department that they all feed on all their channels at the same time. It's kind of like when there's a presidential address or a shuttle launch.

29:27 Everybody shows the same thing simultaneously and you go to your coverage of choice, but it's basically the same coverage that if you happen to be watching whatever sitcom was on CBS before the news, you end up watching it on CBS, And you get the viewers you get. But maybe that's a solution. Yeah, I just wonder if consolidation.

29:42 But it's not consolidation of everything. It's just the consolidation of three. Yeah, exactly. So I don't think it's anti-trust. How did you, I mean, you're no longer at CBS, right? Oh, yeah, of course I am. Oh, you are still at CBS? But you're doing your own thing too. Every Monday morning. So I host Beg Knows America.

29:59 So I went from the lead national correspondent. And this is actually applicable to this conversation. So the standards apply to the lead national correspondent, right? Pretty heavily. And so when I went to them, I said, hey, here's something I want to do. And you can't let me do it. So love me enough to let me go.

30:15 And I said this to Wendy McMahon, who at the time and for the first time, I think, was the CEO of CBS News, CBS News and stations and media ventures, which is all of syndication. Mm hmm. And she said, what are you going to pitch me? And I said, I want to do something. I want to tell the stories that unite us.

30:33 I want to tell the feel good stories. I want to prove they can rate well. And I want to help effect change. You can't let me do it. So let me go. And to her credit, she said, well, this is an experiment that you and I are going to do together. And the biggest thing confronting us was, but how do we let you do it as the lead national correspondent?

30:49 And I said, you don't let me say the lead national correspondent. So I said, why don't I become a contributor? Right. We have contributors all the time and contributors do things on the outside. And so they said, ah, great. That's what we can do. So I stepped back. I became a contributor. Then I started my company, Do Good Crew.

31:06 Yeah. And so I still have my Begnose America segment, which airs every Monday morning on CBS mornings. But I don't do the news anymore. Did you miss it? Not one bit. Not one flippin' freakin' bit. And I will tell you, and I'm also not ashamed to say this. I don't watch any news because I can't. I just can't.

31:31 I don't know what's happened to me, Simon. I can't handle bad news anymore. I admire how much you've been defending the CBS and the institutional news in our conversation while at the same time no longer consume it. I read. I read. Who do you read? I read the Wall Street Journal. I read the New York Times.

31:51 I read The Economist and I peruse the Financial Times and The Washington Post from time to time. But let's be clear when you say defending. What I'm doing is I'm simply telling you that if I took you to an assignment meeting at CBS News, you would be dreadfully bored. No, no. Because you would understand that the whole boogeyman perspective people have on the outside is not what it is.

32:16 When a script gets sent to standards and we're arguing over the right fucking verb, that tells me we're doing a pretty damn good job at adhering to our standards. Okay. Let's talk about good news because you and I have that in common. I love good news. You and I have that in common. I think there's a craving for positivity.

32:34 Yeah. Yeah. I meet it on the street every day. I don't watch the news anymore. I can't stay in the news. I only want the good stuff. I only want the hard stuff. It's what I hear all the time. But. But, yes, finish the sentence. But it frustrates me because you say you want it, but you guys don't watch it in a way that meaningfully rates or meaningfully makes money.

32:53 And so I end up having a conversation now as the CEO of a company that talks more about the bottom line, because despite what people say, you know what they click on? The porn that is a crime scene. Yeah, of course. And a travesty and a tragedy. Yeah. And so you got to put your money where your mouth is.

33:10 Meanwhile, I've had some people who agree with me and believe in me and have helped me to support building the company. So there's a bunch of influencers on socials who are out there giving away money and, you know, setting people up and surprising them with goodness and kindness. And the videos are very inspiring and they're lovely to see.

33:34 Some of them have amassed significant followings. Significant. But I have an opinion as to why, even though they've amassed and done well, they still can't compete with negative. What's the opinion? It's repetitive. Whereas tragedy- But people love that repetition. Or fear or any of those things. Is repetition with a different time date and character.

34:01 Yes. It's like this person got shot. This person got hit by a car. This person jumped off a bridge. This person held somebody hostage. In 20 years of journalism, I covered the same story 50 different ways. I could give you a shooting script and tell you it happened in Torrance, tell you it happened on a Saturday and plug in the name.

34:18 The rest of the story wrote itself. Yeah. So is it just our biological – A thousand percent. Just our biology that because we have to stay alive, you know, our inherent sense of fear and paranoia is much more important to us as cavemen. A hundred percent. The rustle in the leaves that could be a saber-toothed tiger is more important than the beautiful sunset.

34:39 One requires a cortisol response. Yeah. The other requires a meditative response. And one keeps you alive and the other one's just nice. A hundred percent. Yeah. But I'm in the business of making the argument that after 25 years of a cortisol response, I don't want to live the rest of my life like that.

34:56 Because I think the kind of work I do now is going to help me extend my life. That I agree with. And I think that's the irony, which is people who tune into, cortisol is right, stressful stories. Yeah. are injecting stress in their bodies. 100%. They're making themselves angry, they're making themselves paranoid, they're making themselves upset, which is just not good for the body.

35:18 And I have put boundaries around myself. You know, my parents used to say to me when I would call them, and I don't know why I would do this to my poor parents from time to time, but you know, I would, The worst things happened for a decade. And I was the one who got the call, right? COVID, when nobody's traveling and when airports are empty and streets in America are empty, I'm traveling on empty airplanes, driving down streets that are empty, walking COVID ICU units, watching people die.

35:46 And then tell me after they survived that. I remember asking a man in Louisiana if he planned to wear a mask or get a vaccination. And he was like, no, that's bullshit. Now, this man had just come off the ventilator, had just come off the water and was still against it. So anyway, I would call my parents and I would tell them what I was doing.

36:05 My mother would say, David, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. And I used to be like, why do you want to hear it? I'm the same fucking way now. Like shit happens and people come to me. I'm like, I don't want to hear it. Even if I'm watching a scripted series, I don't want to hear it. I've seen the worst of humanity.

36:19 There's nothing you can show or tell me that I hadn't seen. I guarantee I've seen it worse than you have, but I protect my peace now. And I'm very serious about it. And was it because of Puerto Rico? No, it's because of the culmination of everything. Puerto Rico was, it broke the camel's back because it was the time where I said, I'm not standing on the sidelines anymore.

36:38 I'm not standing back. The good Lord didn't put me on this earth to make the next 25 years of my life something that puts me behind the metaphorical line. Like, I'm not doing it. Like, that's a me decision. And that's why I absolved CBS of it. I went to them and I was like, you can't let me do this. So love me enough to let me go.

36:55 And to their credit, they took a risk. And we are still defining it as we go. We're still defining it as we go. Now, there's an irony in this conversation. And it is. I spread optimism for a living. The name of our company is The Optimism Company. Oh, I know it is. The name of the podcast is a bit of optimism.

37:12 I know it is. Are we not being optimistic? We are being optimistic. I think I can be cynical and optimistic at the same time. I'm not Pollyanna-ish about these things. But I do believe that the world tends towards good. And I believe people... A hundred percent. What did Churchill say about America? Yeah.

37:28 He said, you can always count on America to do the right thing after they've exhausted all other options. Do you know where I've encountered some of the happiest people? On their deathbed. Yeah. Why is it that in our final days, we talk about things that bring us joy, perspective, and reflection rather than rage?

37:47 Yeah. Why do we go to that? Nobody wants to die angry. I'm talking about people who have had difficult lives who go to that. Right. My death and dying teacher, which was my favorite course in college, just died. And my classmate who was in the class with me called me probably four months ago to tell me she was in hospice.

38:07 And I thanked her for the call. And I was outside walking. And it just kind of hit me like a lightning bolt. And I said, well, I wonder if I should like Mitch album, go and visit her for one final lesson. And so I did. And the woman was almost radiant. And she gave me some of the best lessons, which I shared with the people around the country.

38:31 and put it on CBS. And why would you put a story about death on morning television? I still don't understand why they let me do that. But it is because I am dead set on proving that we can do difficult things and we can talk about difficult things without gutting people emotionally. And so that for me, you talk about the influencers who are doing the money.

38:51 I'll be honest with you. Sometimes I'm a little jealous because sometimes I wish I could be doing that. I mean, they're really fucking good at it. It's seductive. They're really, it's very, and I get sucked in. But at the end of the day, what I do can't be so saccharine that it's a turnoff. It can't be too sweet.

39:08 And so I, I bring a realistic approach to stories that will melt your heart. And that's what we do. What's your favorite story? Like, give me an example of a specific story that you've told. Maybe you've told it publicly. Maybe you haven't yet. That really encapsulates why this mission is so important to you.

39:27 It really makes the point that this is the example of why I'm doing this. Hmm. I hate getting stumped on a good question. Damn it. Can I give you a story that sets my soul on fire? No, answer the question. I don't have a good answer. I don't have a good. I hate getting stumped on a story, on a question.

39:50 Then what's it all for? Then why is it worth it? You made a significant sacrifice. Because the stories I tell now. Yeah. Okay. The stories I used to do when I would knock on people's door, they would run or call their criminal defense attorney. I walk in people's houses now and they greet me with a hug and they write to me and they say thank you.

40:09 And they check in with me a decade later. At the end of the day, when the simplicity of life comes to bear on our deathbed. There are no complexities and no contradictions. Things tend to get real fucking simple, right? Okay. And so I simplify it. And so for me, it's that simple, right? You can call me less intelligent than most.

40:28 I don't give a shit. Tell me a specific story that when you walked away, you went, yep, I'm going to want to, I want to keep doing this. Yep. Miss Roberta Bell was a prison guard in Mississippi. When an inmate came up to her and said, Miss Bell, Miss Bell, I'm about to deliver my baby, but my parents can't take it, would you?

40:47 And Ms. Bell, who has a thick Mississippi accent, said she was into it, open, and interested. The warden found out, came to her and said, Roberta Bell, is it true that you said this? And she said, yes, sir. If the hospital calls and that baby's going to go to Child Protective Services, I'll go get it.

41:04 He said, will you be fired? And Roberta Bell, a week later, without a job, living in a mobile home on a rural lot in Mississippi. Took a phone call from a hospital in Monroe that said, Roberta Bell, your name is on the list. The baby has been born and you have 24 hours to pick it up. And if you don't, we will deliver it to Child Protective Services.

41:29 That lady went and picked up that baby. Miss Bell is African-American. The baby was white. She took that baby home and she raised that baby as her own for 30 days until the mother got out of prison, jail. The mother ended up reoffending, went back to jail. Ms. Bell gave it back to them. Anyway, the story ends with the baby going into foster care, but the story ends with the baby actually going to the foster parents who were raising its biological sister.

41:58 And so they will grow up together. Ms. Bell has been invited to be the godmother to the baby as part of the new family. We were able to come together and give Ms. Bell some assistance that has financially supported her in ways that have been immeasurably helpful. My point is that, Simon, is where I go every time when I travel across the country looking for those kinds of stories.

42:23 That's what I'm looking for. I just did a story. I was at home in Sherman Oaks, California on a Saturday when I saw the cover of the Cincinnati Inquirer. And it was a photo of a principal standing next to a boy in a cap and gown. The boy, as it turns out, was his former student. Here's the story. Lakota East High School in Ohio.

42:43 The principal finds out the student is homeless, living in his car, not safe to live at home. Principal's like, hey, let's help you. They start, all right. The district finds out his mother's living in another part of town in another school district. So they send a letter saying he's got to leave Lakota East and go to another school.

42:59 Sounds reasonable. But because that school he was at was a place of safety and security and he would eat there, that's where he got his meals, he didn't want to leave. So anyway, the principal goes home, tells his wife. The wife says, well, if he needs a place, he can come here. The principal lets the kid move in with him.

43:15 The wife, and they end up adopting him as a guardian. But the school district finds out and they end up firing the principal because we told you he has to leave. His mother lives in that district. He can't stay here. But the principal wanted him to stay here. The principal lost his job trying to help this student stay there.

43:34 Fast forward. They helped him graduate. He's now in aviation school. I told the story. And here is the one thing I couldn't do, Simon, that I finally was able to do. We told the story, it got millions of views and people said, I want to help. I want to help. I want to help. And as a show of how we are still figuring it out, I called New York and I said, I want to put out, I don't think I've told this story publicly.

43:55 I got taken to HR about two years ago for putting out the GoFundMe page of a homeless man who I was trying to help. Now, the rules of CBS News say you can't put out GoFundMe pages. Why? Because number one, do we know if it's an authentic GoFundMe page? Okay, that's a very reasonable thing. Second, if we put out this GoFundMe, we got to put out others.

44:18 So we don't want to do it. Okay, fair. I put it out because I made the argument that I knew it had been created. I could vet it and verify it. Anyway, got taken to HR. Okay. by someone who's no longer at the company. And I remember telling the boss at the time, can you imagine the headline in the New York Post, David Begnaud fired from CBS News for putting out GoFundMe page to help homeless man.

44:41 And that there lies in where my conundrum falls. I will not apologize for trying to help a homeless man while at the same time abiding by your rules. And the rules are we don't put out a GoFundMe unless we know it's legitimate. I found out it was legitimate. And as an employee of CBS News, I can show you that.

45:03 But you didn't give me the chance to show you. And so I got a thing in my file and an official formal talking to now back to the student and the principal. I just did the story. And so I told my senior, I was like, I don't want to get in trouble again. So I called New York and had a conversation and we were able to work out that, hey, we're not going to put the GoFundMe on television.

45:24 That's the decision. But you can put it out. And we raised $55,000 for the man. Fantastic. And so the $55,000 is going to be used by the principal. to help start scholarships for other people like Didi, who's the kid's name, and also to help Didi go to aviation mechanics school. But Didi is now a part of the family.

45:42 The principal has six other kids, and Didi is number seven. So he got his job back. He never got his job back. So wait, he's the principal, though. He got fired. Oh, he's no longer the principal. Never got his job back. So in every story you've told, both the two stories about other people and your own story, of course, there's the obvious person who did the good thing, the right thing, who put themselves out there.

46:04 But there is. In every story you're telling, there's the person who interrupted, got in the way, denied them. 100%. And put stakes on the ground and threatened them. If you do good, you're going to suffer. what my old stories used to, which was tension and pain, right? Roberta Bell had the pain of saying, I got fired because I did the right thing.

46:32 And so you tell that story. And by the way, in fairness, Miss Bell acknowledges she broke the prison rules. You can't be taking an inmate's baby. Like, why would they allow that? That doesn't make sense. She understands that they said no. I understand that they didn't want me to post the GoFundMe of a homeless man, but she I authenticated it.

46:51 That should have been enough, okay? Miss Bell did the right thing. The principal did the right thing. And to your point, yes. I look for stories that have some difficulty. So is your message, do the right thing? Or is your message, if you're in a position of authority where you are tasked with upholding standards and enforcing rules, and somebody wants to do the right thing, find ways to support them and work with them.

47:19 It's all three. And it takes me back to the question I asked you at the very beginning is who made the rules? At the end of the day, we as man make the rules and I agree and fully support. And if said a hundred times, Simon, I believe in the standards and practices of CBS news. And I will say it until my dying day.

47:38 But at the end of the day, we need to bring sensibility to situations where people can look at it on a case by case basis. And my experience more often than not has been that they always do. And CBS deserves the credit for putting me in this position to be able to define a lane while working consistently with them to get it right.

47:59 What you're talking about. Is one of the challenges we have in our modern social media world, which is everything is right, wrong, good, bad, black, white. Correct. And the truth is always in the middle and there's always nuance. Complexity. And complexity. Everywhere. What we're getting to is the intention of the law and the enforcement of the law.

48:13 That's right. The law says no mechanical vehicles in the park. Yes. They didn't mean electric wheelchairs. But technically- You know, and so the law says don't speed over 55. If you're heading to Cedars and the woman's bleeding out in the backseat, I'm going to do. OK, so here's a let's make this shit up.

48:33 A story comes across my desk of a CHP officer who pulls over a man and the wife's in the backseat bleeding out, delivering the baby. And the CHP officer keeps the man on the side of the road to write him a ticket and the baby dies. That, to me, is the quintessential story where I want us as a public to talk about.

48:53 Whether or not it was right for him to enforce that ticket, because he was driving too damn fast. Or whether he should have said, you know what? Listen, this is a ticket that can wait for another day. But it's also, look, the reason we have speed limits is to keep the public roadways safe. And the reason you don't want somebody driving very, very fast is because it's a danger to them and to other people.

49:13 100%. So if the cop pulls him over because what he's doing is dangerous... And there are extenuating circumstances as to why he's speeding. The goal isn't hold him accountable. The goal is how do I get this guy to the hospital quickly and safely? And it should be. And if I turn my sirens on and let him drive behind me, everybody will get out of our way.

49:31 And I didn't used to be that great. I grew up, based on my childhood, very black and white. And the cop knows that he could get in trouble for that. Of course. But a good leader can see. And again, we're talking about this problem that we have in our world, which is we do not appreciate nuance anymore.

49:49 at all we do not appreciate context anymore and we're quick to judge we're quick to judge to can we can hear a 30 second clip or watch a 30 second video that's right and judge and jury we've got it all figured out that's right i know exactly what happened that's right and i think where journalists have incredible value And it goes right back to your story, which is to bear witness.

50:14 I bring the journalistic principles to what I do. But to bear witness. To bear witness. To say, I understand why you would think that. But let me give you some context because I was there. Let's go back to Puerto Rico. Yeah, because I was there. I was bearing witness. I mean, I remember, you know, you talked about when the Gulf War kicked off.

50:32 And what was his name was in the hotel room reporting. Bernie Shaw. Bernie Shaw was in the hotel room. Bernard Shaw. Bernard Shaw was in the hotel room reporting from a telephone. And he was bearing witness. Now, he didn't have all the context. He had one point of view, but he gave us a point of view that we didn't have.

50:46 That's right. And I think there's something to be said for bearing witness as opposed to I saw a post on Reddit or on X or on Instagram. Well, and it's why we still go there. If you were to say to me, what's the one thing you miss? It's going there. But the thing that I also can't do after spending 200 days a year in hotel rooms for many years is I just I abhor travel now.

51:10 But the bearing witness thing, we still do that. We still spend in journalism a lot of money to go there and bear witness. Yeah, but more and more they're closing those. Sure, because it costs money. So I'm going to make an argument that goes counter to my argument. Okay. There is something to be said for bearing witness digitally after George Floyd was murdered.

51:33 I remember calling a friend of mine, African-American friend, and I couldn't believe what I had seen. And I was moved. I was emotionally moved. A guy in handcuffs who's no longer a threat to himself or anyone else, why that would continue. And I was caught up and he wasn't. And I said, how come I'm upset and you're not?

51:54 And he goes, because this is the first time you've seen it. Exactly. He goes, he says, this is the hundredth time I've seen it. And so the bearing witness, because there are plenty of people who are like, um, George Floyd, prior to George Floyd, the difference was there was no cameras. But here's what you have to understand.

52:16 The camera bore witness for us. But here's what's so important about what you're saying. Oftentimes people walk into a situation bearing witness because it is the first time they've experienced it. And they get turned away by people who go, this happens all the time. You know, hey, and I've been called this before.

52:30 Hey, white boy, you're late to the party. You know, like did it. Okay. If I would have done that in Puerto Rico. You know what the best thing about me in Puerto Rico was? My ignorance. My ignorance. You know why? I had no clue that Puerto Rico has been treated like second class citizens since the early 1900s.

52:47 The Puerto Ricans are US citizens simply because the US needed them to fight in World War I. And so they made them US citizens so they could go and die for the American flag. I had no idea that the island's been treated like a redheaded stepchild. And so I reacted wet as shit behind the ears in a way that the Puerto Ricans were like, He must not know the history, but all right, guy, let's go.

53:10 And that may be funny, but you know what? It was so fucking effective because it led to lives being saved. Those are not my words. Those are the words that people will tell you. The coverage was pivotal. I would make a report. The White House would would respond within a half hour. The Pentagon would respond within a half hour.

53:27 I would have the governor and mayors and Jeffrey Buchanan, who was a four star general, come to me because they wanted to get on my social media so we could put it out because they knew that the right players were watching. So what I would say to that is when you run up to a situation where somebody says, babe, it's the first time you experience this.

53:44 It's always been like that. Still bear witness. You know, it's funny because we're ending up in a place that I don't think... provides the clarity that i was hoping to get to which is naivete and ignorance is the thing that gets us in trouble but it's also the thing that solves the problem bearing witness with your eyes is what we need because bearing witness with a camera lacks the context but bearing witness with the camera is a way to bear witness where none other can bear witness no other can bear witness and so we're back at square one which is there are benefits and detriments to all of it It goes right back to your work.

54:25 The only thing that makes it work is somebody with a big heart who's just trying to do the right thing. Right? Because it's such an imperfect system and all of it can be skewed for right or skewed for wrong or skewed for this or skewed for that. And so long as there's a person who is driven by their objective sense of this is just the right thing to do.

54:50 And I accept the consequences because I understand that I may be breaking rules, which is, you know, what civil disobedience is. Civil disobedience is you can break the law to do the right thing, but you have to also accept the consequences that you might go to jail. That's right. Right? Civil disobedience gave gays the right to marry and women the right to vote.

55:11 And blacks and our Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the right to legally marry a white woman. That's what civil disobedience gave us. I'm not advocating for any fighting in the street. But let me tell you something. When I walk into a situation and I'm outnumbered by someone who's got more degrees than a thermometer or more wealth than I'll ever imagine.

55:32 I always am equal with everyone when I come at it through the lens of what's the right thing to do. It may not be popular in the moment. But at the end of the day, when the final paragraph is written, the biggest critics kind of come around to the point you're making. I think what we're talking about is short term versus long term, which is if it bleeds, it leads.

55:52 It's good for short term ratings, short term readers and short term this. But over the course of 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, you have no integrity and you have no following and you have no trust. That's right. But if you do the right thing as often as you can, knowing that you will make mistakes and taking accountability when you do, if you stick to that.

56:09 It may be a slower burn, but what you end up with is more integrity, more trust and more honor at the end of the day. And you'll die with a smile on your face. We are born alone and we will die alone. And longer I live, I realize that I just need to be okay with my soul and myself. And I do that by doing what I believe is right.

56:34 I may not always get it right, but I'm going to work damn hard to try and get it right. I may not always be right, but I try to get it right. You know, and I work with a lot of people, Simon, in the journalism world who are very uncertain about where things are going and are terrified about whether they'll have a job, what's gonna exist next year, what's gonna exist five years from now.

57:01 It's why I'm building a company, right? But the key for me is I didn't say, hey, CBS, you guys are like old timers, peace out. I said, hey, What if we do this together? And to their credit, they said, yeah, let's give it a go. They let you experiment with an MP3. Let's give it. There you go. In the record business.

57:23 There you go. David, thank you for coming. My pleasure. What a treat. What an absolute treat. This was great. This was really good. I love a spirited conversation. This was really good. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Phoebe Bradford and Devin Johnson.

57:40 Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsynic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.