Last week, Joe Klein and I talked law, politics and the news media for an hour or so. Our producer, Mano Sundaresan, turned it into Episode 18 of ‘Night Owls’.
We started with the stunning Arizona State Supreme Court ruling on abortion. From CNN:
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday the state must adhere to a 160-year-old law barring all abortions except in cases when “it is necessary to save” a pregnant person’s life – a significant ruling that will make a Civil War-era abortion law enforceable in the state.
The law can be traced to as early as 1864 – before Arizona became a state – and was codified in 1901. It carries a prison sentence of two to five years for abortion providers – and it puts Arizona among the states with the strictest abortion laws in the country, alongside Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, where bans exist with almost no exceptions.
For Democrats, the ruling was good news, because the Court’s decision will (essentially) be “ruled upon” by Arizonans in the fall. Via CNN:
Arizona for Abortion Access, a group of reproductive rights organizations, has said it has gathered enough signatures for a November 2024 ballot measure that would ask voters to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
Legal abortion referenda (in various forms) have been successful in a number of states, including Kansas, one of the most conservative states in the country. There’s every reason to believe the Arizona abortion referendum — assuming it meets the legal requirements to be on the ballot — will win the Arizona electorate’s approval by a comfortable margin. There’s also every reason to believe it will boost turnout of voters who are “more Biden than not.” In 2020, Arizona was decided by ~11,000 votes (in Biden’s favor). The abortion referendum has the potential of making that number larger, perhaps much larger.
As a result of the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling, the prevailing “mainstream” news media narrative shifted from “OMG, Biden’s going to lose” to “Biden is on the comeback trail.” Mr. Klein isn’t convinced. Ditto. We keep agreeing with each other. This may hurt our ratings.
Toward the end, we talked about Uri Berliner’s essay (published in The Free Press), which argues that National Public Radio lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think. Joe and I (again) agree with Berliner’s commentary, which makes the distinction between being a liberal news source (NPR has long been that) and one that has become “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
I’m prone to saying (ad nauseam, according to certain family members): “the audience programs the network, not the other way around”. This applies not just to NPR, but news media outlets of many kinds. Mr. Berliner’s provides the key data points that explain the shift in NPR’s editorial “stance”:
Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.
There’s good stuff in between. Have a listen. Click on the arrow at the top.
Programming note: This Thursday, Joe and I will be talking to Mark Tercek, former Goldman Sachs partner, former CEO of the Nature Conservancy, now a partner at Center|View Partners. There’s been an avalanche of climate news these past few months. We’ll ask Mark to help us understand what it means and what might (or can or will) be done about it.
We’ll post Episode #19 a week from today. I’ve interviewed Mark before, so I know it will be a good one.
P.S.: You can subscribe to Joe’s Substack newsletter by clicking on this link. It’s very, very good.
Night Owls: Episode #18