The Chuck ToddCast
How To Cover Trump As An Independent Journalist With Tara Palmeri
Wed, 9 Apr 2025
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)
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this 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.
Chapter 2: How has traditional media failed during the Trump administration?
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?
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Chapter 3: What is the appeal of independent journalism?
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.
Look, whenever you've got somebody trying to push back, if you don't draw a line in the sand, they're going to keep coming back for more. All you have to do is read the children's book if you give a mouse a cookie and you will know how this will keep going. And in fact, it has. First, it was the Associated Press. Then it was Office Space.
Now it's sort of deciding where different news organizations sit. And when a government is trying to pick its press corps, it's as if you were allowing a college football team to pick its referees. Imagine if the home team gets to decide, we're going to decide who the referees are. We're not going to have a fair – make this fair with the team on the other side. It is certainly –
frankly, un-American, right? It's certainly unconstitutional, but I think things that are unconstitutional, that that is synonymous with the phrase un-American. And I will tell you, I think traditional media made a gigantic business mistake by the decision not to stand by the Associated Press, and if anything, capitulate to the White House, because
What it does is traditional media has already lost one part of the country, either fairly or unfairly on ideological charges. The folks that are still trusting and reading traditional media now have to ask themselves, hmm, how are they rounding the edges? Are they holding back reporting? Are they pulling their punches simply to maintain access?
Are they pulling their punches simply to maintain their ability to work within the confines of the US government? And that's an uncomfortable place to be. I know if I were at one of these organizations, I would probably be a louder voice of complaint. And look, I was among the journalists back 10 years ago when the Obama White House attempted to block Fox from access to a pooled interview.
We said we weren't gonna participate unless Fox was also included. Why did we make that decision then as leaders of the White House press corps back then? Simply because we knew someday the shoe could be on the other foot. and that you might have an administration that decided to leave us out and only allow Fox special access.
And it's been disappointing that Fox has not stood up more aggressively on behalf of their colleagues at the Associated Press or others, given the history of, and given the fact that traditional media companies stood by them when there was a time that they were going to get ostracized by a White House that didn't trust their reporting. But it seemed like a basic principle.
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Chapter 4: Why is authenticity important in today's media?
Plant that flag right here and explain how O.J. Simpson sort of got us, you know, without the O.J. Simpson trial, maybe Donald Trump is an elected president. But the second big change and disruption arguably began when a man named Craig decided that classifieds ought to be free.
And I'm referring, of course, to Craigslist and the gentleman being Craig Newmar, a conversation I've had with him, by the way, and something that he's aware of. In fairness to him, had he known that Craigslist was going to lead to essentially the destruction of just about every local news organization with a circulation of 50,000 or less, he might not have pursued free classifieds.
But as he says, guess what? Somebody else would have. Right. This is this is what happens. Right. Technology, things can change. Business models can evaporate and change overnight. You know, there used to be a robust block of ice industry until we figured out refrigeration and we didn't need blocks of ice in order to preserve our foods. So in many ways, this is sort of
A form of creative destruction, if you will, in the world of capitalism. So here we are. But what did that do? Well, the loss of local news, what it did was, you know, I take it with my first job. My first job was at the hotline. And we were a trade publication in the 90s that aggregated local political news.
Well, if I were trying to aggregate local political news today, I wouldn't have very many locally local sources to do that with. Most political coverage these days actually emanates out of Washington. Not that long ago, just a generation ago, it was the reverse. In fact, the folks that worked in Washington were all associated with a local or regional paper.
In the early 90s, for instance, Knight-Ritter was a massive newspaper conglomerate. And they had a pretty large Washington bureau. And in essence, they had one journalist assigned to each paper that they had. The Philadelphia Inquirer was a Knight-Ritter paper, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, St. Paul Pioneer Press, San Jose Mercury News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I could go on.
And there'd be one reporter in Washington dedicated to that newspaper. So what does that mean? Well, that meant when Congress passed a big law, take Joe Biden's large energy bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, as it was named, was really more of a of a of an energy bill more than anything else. But still.
Each one of those stories would have had a local lead to it, local explanation of how the local members of Congress voted, perhaps how some of the money would be spent locally, would be divvied up locally, what some of the local elected officials were hoping. They get out of this bill, you get my drift. And what did that do? Well, that informed local citizens about what their government was up to.
Well, fast forward 30 years and. The Washington bureaus are almost nonexistent for domestic news news organizations. The very largest ones have large Washington, D.C. presence. Some international news organizations do. But, you know, most of these sort of midsize news organizations around the country do not have a dedicated Washington presence anymore now. There's some startups trying to do this.
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Chapter 5: What mistakes did the WHCA make regarding the Correspondents' Dinner?
Chapter 6: How do local media influence trust in journalism?
What it does is traditional media has already lost one part of the country, either fairly or unfairly on ideological charges. The folks that are still trusting and reading traditional media now have to ask themselves, hmm, how are they rounding the edges? Are they holding back reporting? Are they pulling their punches simply to maintain access?
Are they pulling their punches simply to maintain their ability to work within the confines of the US government? And that's an uncomfortable place to be. I know if I were at one of these organizations, I would probably be a louder voice of complaint. And look, I was among the journalists back 10 years ago when the Obama White House attempted to block Fox from access to a pooled interview.
We said we weren't gonna participate unless Fox was also included. Why did we make that decision then as leaders of the White House press corps back then? Simply because we knew someday the shoe could be on the other foot. and that you might have an administration that decided to leave us out and only allow Fox special access.
And it's been disappointing that Fox has not stood up more aggressively on behalf of their colleagues at the Associated Press or others, given the history of, and given the fact that traditional media companies stood by them when there was a time that they were going to get ostracized by a White House that didn't trust their reporting. But it seemed like a basic principle.
It was an easy decision for me and others to sort of sit by there. And to the Obama White House's credit, they certainly didn't want to pick a fight with all of us. So they capitulated. And I think the fact that. that you have leaders, the current leaders of traditional media, not willing to do this for a variety of reasons.
Some of them are because they're owned by corporations that have other business before this government. The most obvious place to look these days is the Paramount merger and CBS. That decision by it looks like by CBS to find a way to settle this ridiculous 60 minutes lawsuit that Donald Trump filed rather than stand on principles and fight the ridiculous lawsuit.
ABC did a similar thing with George Stephanopoulos, again, sort of in some ways undermining its reporters by by settling and leaving the impression that somehow they were in the wrong. and that they certainly didn't have a first amendment right in this case to be in the wrong, they did. And it certainly wasn't defamation by any stretch of the imagination.
But the point is, is all of these decisions by traditional media in not pushing back at the Trump White House, has not made them stop. If anything, they're getting more aggressive and more aggressive. And so when they ask themselves, why are they losing audience? Why are they losing trust? I would argue they've already lost trust with one half of the country.
Now they're gonna lose trust with the other half. because they're capitulating and they're gonna be raising questions, can you trust everything they say? So now you understand the appeal of frankly declaring your independence, right? We've seen politicians do it because they don't wanna be defined by the unpopularity of the Democratic Party brand or the Republican Party brand.
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Chapter 7: What role does bias play in journalism today?
Chapter 8: How can we rebuild local news sources?
But the point is, is all of these decisions by traditional media in not pushing back at the Trump White House, has not made them stop. If anything, they're getting more aggressive and more aggressive. And so when they ask themselves, why are they losing audience? Why are they losing trust? I would argue they've already lost trust with one half of the country.
Now they're gonna lose trust with the other half. because they're capitulating and they're gonna be raising questions, can you trust everything they say? So now you understand the appeal of frankly declaring your independence, right? We've seen politicians do it because they don't wanna be defined by the unpopularity of the Democratic Party brand or the Republican Party brand.
Well, I think many of us journalists don't like to be defined by the unpopularity of bad decision making by by bosses of said media companies rather than being judged by the journalism itself. And I do think that we're in a period where there look, we're in the middle of recreating a new mainstream media.
One of the things that I said is a Trump victory was probably going to be the end of this era of mainstream media. And some of it has to do with technology. You know, when Life magazine stopped being relevant, I don't remember a lot of articles going, oh, boy, there goes the end of mainstream media because Life magazine isn't relevant.
Life magazine stopped being relevant because moving pictures is a lot more interesting and easier to showcase than still photos. Still, photos are great, but moving pictures tell a richer story. And of course, we all want to see the pictures move more than we want to see the pictures not move. So there is part of this is technological.
And and so but but that doesn't mean we're not in the middle of something here. And I think that we see this sort of fragmentation of media. It's actually something similar that we've seen at the beginning of different technological advancements, right? When magazines first started, the ability to reproduce a photograph, magazines popped up all over the place.
And after a couple of decades, you started to see the consolidation of magazines. When radio stations and radio signals were first started to, you had radio stations pop up all over the place. And then over a couple of decades, you had consolidation. Television sort of became sort of morphed from radio and that consolidation continued until we had fragmentation. Right.
Thanks to satellites and and and the like. And that gave us more. And we had some fragmentation and then we got some consolidation. And then here we now in the era of streaming digital video, we have fragmentation again. And at some point, I think we will have consolidation, right?
Whether it's Substack or YouTube, these are two of the sort of best examples of sort of, it's almost as if there was a shattering of mainstream media and pieces of it are showing up everywhere. Newsletters and Substack, video podcasts, hello, like this one on YouTube and in other places. Which inevitably will probably lead to some sort of curation consolidation of some point.
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