July 2, 2025
When Journalists Become the Story: Who Really Controls the Narrative?
In this live edition of The PR Breakdown, Molly McPherson is joined by Warren Weeks and John Perenak, the hosts of the Reputation Town podcast, to explore the widening gap between journalism and public trust. The conversation centers on CNN’s Jake Tapper and his new book with Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
Is this book a mea culpa? A career pivot? Or a strategic move to rebuild credibility?
- The reputation strategy behind Tapper’s timing
- Whether journalists should profit from stories they once protected
- How media control is shifting from legacy outlets to podcasters and independent creators
- Why access journalism is losing public trust
- The pressure journalists face when reporting truth conflicts with institutional loyalty
This episode is not just about one book or one anchor. It’s about the changing role of journalism, the rise of independent media, and the challenge of earning trust in today’s media environment.
If you work in communications, follow the news closely, or just want to understand what’s really happening behind the headlines, this conversation is for you.
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00:00 - Welcome to PR Breakdown
05:15 - Jake Tapper's Book Controversy
12:58 - Modern Journalism vs Content Creators
18:37 - Media Bias and Political Access
25:23 - Bezos-Sanchez Wedding and Billionaire Backlash
32:10 - Final Thoughts on Media Relevance
WEBVTT
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Welcome to a live edition of the PR Breakdown, bringing back two of my favorite guests.
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It is the I think I wrote this today the guys behind the Reputation Town podcast.
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Briefly, for the new people here listening what do you guys do?
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Why are you here?
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Why do I love you guys?
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We like to give different takes on PR and communications.
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You might not hear elsewhere, Certainly in Canada anyway, where Warren and I operate from.
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Warren, what say you?
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A media training guy, 30-some years in public relations, and I just love chatting about it, which is why we're here.
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What's interesting?
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We've been doing this for a couple years.
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You two have had your podcast for a while, but I popped in as a guest and you've been a guest on my podcast.
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I always find that our opinions align, for the most part, not often that we are on other sides of the argument.
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One was the election, john, and I miscalled it big time.
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Warren, you, you correctly said that Donald Trump would win the election, but I'm going to tie this into that.
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Donald Trump would win the election, but I'm going to tie this into, I think, another place where we do not align, and that would be our take on Jake Tapper's book, or co-author of Original Sin, all about Joe Biden, and now it's been a month or two since the publication date and I have to ask you guys what do you think?
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Should we go with John first on this one, or Warren?
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Who's going to drop the bomb on this one?
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I've got the contrarian take.
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You think you have the contrarian.
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I'll throw that out there and then you can tell me what you think of it.
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So obviously, the backstory to that book everybody knows Jake Tapper really didn't give a lot of time to the Joe Biden is in decline story and so he was trying to, I think, create a path for him to be able to talk about this going forward.
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And what's the best way to get past an issue you have?
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Sometimes it's to embrace it, and I think that's what his strategy was here.
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He searched out Alex Thompson, who had been reported about Biden's decline, out Alex Thompson who had been reported about Biden's decline, and wrapped himself tightly around him to write this book.
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And then he's using it as a vehicle to give himself credibility going forward to say you know what?
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I got it wrong, but now I've made amends and I've written this book that gives all this great detail about what actually did happen and so I can be credible on the subject again.
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That's the approach I think he's taking here.
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Okay, so I can't tell.
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Though, in your answer, do you think he was, do you have a problem with him writing a book like this, or do you understand why some people had problems with him?
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This.
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I don't have a problem with it, particularly because, if he was, if he came to me as a client and said, hi, help me get past this issue I have.
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This is probably the best way of doing it, giving himself freedom to work past this in the future and have a discussion about this in the future so he isn't constantly being called out.
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I think there's going to be hearings coming up in the not too distant future in Congress about Biden's decline, so he has given himself a platform to be able to talk about this in a way that he couldn't have otherwise.
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Okay, warren, what is your take Now?
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I will say a little backstory here.
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When I had a podcast about it because I started listening to the book, I was flying to San Francisco and I thought, oh, this is perfect Cross country, perfect time to start listening to the book.
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I loved it.
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I looked at it as an insider's view of what was happening in the White House.
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I was not really thinking about the authors and what they were lacking.
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It certainly came up, but I didn't have as much of a problem with it because I have my thoughts on journalism nowadays and what it's like to be a journalist and work in media companies I don't even call them news companies anymore and I had posted something and you were the first person to chime in with your thoughts.
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Warren, share your thoughts on Jake Tapper specifically.
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My comment was I can't believe you gave Jake Tapper $30.
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And my honest response was technically, I didn't.
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On Spotify, which I didn't know.
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This is great If you have a Spotify membership, you can listen to any audio book, basically.
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Oh yes.
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I've been stewing about this for a couple of weeks, so I love that I have an opportunity to vent a little bit now.
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I think that and this is just one guy's opinion this to me was the most blatant and shameless display of hypocrisy I've seen in the book publishing world and also, on the tail end, probably one of the least successful.
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If you look at his book, would you call it a success?
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Do you think it was a great launch?
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Do you think he sold a bunch of copies?
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What do you think his numbers have been?
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Oh, he was on the top of the list when I recorded the podcast.
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He was number two on the Amazon list behind Mel Robbins, and I don't know if you know who he is.
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She wrote the Let them Theory.
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That annoyed me in and of itself, but he was at the top of the New York Times list.
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There was a pre-sale.
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I think he did well.
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Manufactured.
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I would say that's manufactured by CNN.
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It was probably one of the most promoted books Every time.
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Hey guys, my book's coming out next week and they just promote like millions of dollars worth of free promotion.
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First week he sold 53,000 copies, which is certainly respectable.
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If you compare that to Bob Woodward Fear, the book he had about Donald Trump, first week 1.1 million books.
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Mary Trump, right.
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So Bob Woodward is like you know.
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Obviously Watergate.
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Mary Trump's book about Donald Trump that came out a couple years ago 900,000 copies in the first week, and those books also held their sales for a tremendous amount of time.
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Jake Tabber second week 17,000.
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And now it's just it's off the list.
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So, sales aside and I listened to the first two chapters but I started throwing up in my mouth a little bit, so I just like were those the free chapters?
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I have the whole book.
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I have it's on Spotify as well.
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I'm like, oh, I'll listen to it.
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And as I went for a walk, I'm just like Jesus Christ.
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So the stories are great.
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You're right Like, the stories are excellent, it's interesting, you can picture it.
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You're like, oh, I had a suspicion.
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It's to me, you have to separate the art from the artist.
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I just I think he's the wrong messenger for this, because if you look back, as I have, there are many video clips when he's always sharp as a tack.
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He's the best Joe Biden he's ever been.
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This guy's I mean Like, how dare you make fun of his stutter?
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And the dude had clear cognitive decline and like dementia, whatever you want to call it.
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And for him, the moment when Joe Biden becomes out of power and not useful to him anymore, he stabs him in the back and uses him to climb up, and I found that really, really offensive.
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So interesting stories in the book, but I was really offended by the balls that this guy had to actually say that he was not complicit.
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I would say he was one of the top four or five journalists, because of his platform who was actually promoting this.
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Like he was the guy moderating the debate the terrible debate and he was actually working on this book before all that.
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So it's not like he had this eureka moment during the debate of oh my God, what's happening.
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He was writing the book and folks in the journalism and the media world would say if your job is a journalist and you're on CNN, should you maybe not be reporting stuff when you know it?
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So that's my beef with Jake Tapper, yeah, and that has certainly come up before I'm blanking on the New York Times, maureen O'Dowd, you know it's the same thing.
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No, not Maureen O'Dowd, but writing, writing about Trump and then coming out with a book about Trump.
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Yeah, certainly, with journalists, I and something that I had said to you.
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I think your argument is valid.
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It is absolutely valid.
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But my take on it for the Jake Tappers of the world is this is that the media industry is changing.
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When Bob Woodward was reporting on Watergate newspaper really was king Woodward and Bernstein.
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They were doing the work, they were hustling.
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They didn't even have the respect in the newsroom with Ben Bradley, but he gave them the story hustle, hustle because they did it for the love of news.
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But nowadays, I think it's a combination of journalism, ego, but also how the media world is structured.
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Now we don't have news businesses, we just have entertainment businesses.
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So whether it's cable television, if it's news or book, I think it's all the same.
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It's like content.
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The reality is that I think Jake Tava wrote the book to give him the credibility as a journalist.
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Going forward, and a year from now, when we're more deep into congressional hearings about Joe Biden's competency, he's gonna be able to credibly say you know what?
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I did get that wrong.
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I covered it in my book.
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I laid out like the first clear account of what that decline was like, and he will be able to, I think, have a lot more room to maneuver and talk about these issues than he would have otherwise.
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So another way down to the reputational play for him.
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So, 50 years from now, when people don't remember the minutia, they'll remember he was the guy that set the record straight.
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That's what we'll remember.
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So yeah, actually still a bullshit move.
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A couple other things, if I can.
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Jake Tapper hired a crisis manager.
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I thought when I first heard that I thought it was you.
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I'm like, oh my God, molly, please.
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No, but let's just say, though, that Jake Tapper does follow me and his response what you could tell he was doing crisis management.
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Then I heard that he did hire someone.
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It did follow my framework.
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I'm just saying but go on Having.
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I'm just saying but go on.
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Having said all that, if you have to hire a crisis manager to launch a book, like, maybe there's an issue.
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The other thing is one of your, one of your listeners here said where do we find stories that are true?
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What do you and here's I'm going to say something that is maybe going to rub people the wrong way, but I actually believe this is the case.
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The best journalists we have in the world right now are these independent podcasters like Theo Vaughn, which is crazy and I know Joe Rogan is a very polarizing figure, but if you go back and just objectively listen to his podcasts over the past four years, he was asking tough questions of politicians, of health care professionals that no actual journalists were, Got just vilified for it and CNN had him in a yellow filter, made him look all weird but like, why is Theo Vaughn asking harder questions than 60 minutes?
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That's problematic.
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And here's your answer.
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And on this chat before and I should say on this episode we do have the chat going I said my smarty sometimes snarky smart people they chime in and we talked about this issue at great length.
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I had touched on the fact that the media industry is changing so much.
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And you bring up 60 Minutes when CBS, owned by Paramount, is brokering a deal to be purchased and then there's pressure on the executive producer of 60 Minutes and then the head of CBS News, wendy McMahon, is asked to leave.
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Business now forms journalism.
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So a lot of these journalists, their hands are tied on what they can and cannot report on.
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But you get content creators the Theo Vons, the Joe Rogans, the oh my gosh, call Her Daddy Alex boys.
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No, someone in the chat will tell me why am I blanking?
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I just watched her on Netflix.
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They can say what they want, they can ask any question what they want, but also they have the ability to go so deep.
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That's what makes them interesting.
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And so the question was are they really journalists or not?
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But they're knowledgeable, that's what people are driven to.
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How are they not journalists?
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How are they not?
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I say this they're not credentialed.
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But you're right.
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What makes a journalist?
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Do they follow ethics and rules?
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The journalism, the rules of ethics.
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Do the journalists today like do the MSNBCs and the Fox?
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It's if you look at what's happened in the media business and I know this was not really our topic that we were going to chat about, but it's I find it depressing what's going on and like to the point where, at this advanced age that I'm at here in this business and I went to journalism school I am credentialed right from way back in the day and a lot of people I would say would think that credential is worth the paper it's written on, because they learn how to do it in a newsroom and they learn how to go out on the street and ask questions.
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But it makes me actually want to go out and start a program where I ask these people because no one is asking no one is asking.
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No one's taking these politicians to task and asking them great questions because they're scared of losing their access.
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Yeah, exactly, if you're comparing, let's say, alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy, which has between her and Joe Rogan, they're at the top and the reason why it's entertaining they ask the questions that a credentialed journalist who is on a media outlet is not going to ask.
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But then you have Terry Moran being fired from ABC News for the tweet that he posted about Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.
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Now what do you think about that?
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So that strays into.
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What does a news organization have to do to stay in good stead with the White House to be able to effectively report?
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We've already seen them kick both AP out of the press pool or out of the White House offices.
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The thing about the media right now is that there's all these businesses that look like news outlets and from an outsider you would say, oh, that's a news outlet, but they don't actually operate that way.
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The quote-unquote journalists who run them and who actually do the reporting.
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They don't operate on the same basis, with the same rules and the same sort of standards that a traditional journalist would.
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But at the same time you as an organization are left trying to protect your reputation or maybe get a story accurately reported on those platforms, and it's very difficult because they often have their own interests, their own objectives they don't disclose and often motivated by their own political or financial motivations that again aren't disclosed.
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So it is a very complicated environment to be in and this is actually why, to the point about content creators like podcasters, embracing them where you can to get your message out is the better way than trying to just rely on earned media alone, because if you just try and rely on earned media to tell your story.
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It is a losing game as far as I'm concerned, because there's not as many, there's not enough opportunity, your audience isn't necessarily there in the first place, and I find that this ties into what you were talking about, molly, about some of the traditional journalists in the White House.
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They really get hung up on what they think the storyline should be versus what an objective view of the matter might be.
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Recording this, it's June 25th and this morning, the dialogue is continually all about who's correct, about the way the White House is portraying the attack on Iran, where things completely obliterated or just partially obliterated, and trying to catch the president out in some way, shape or form.
00:14:10.947 --> 00:14:16.552
But the reality is, this is the same game they played for four years before and it was a losing game, and it's a losing game now.
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They're really focused on something so in the weeds that I think they're putting themselves at risk to have them being outstripped even further by these alternative content creators and podcasters, because that's more and more what is going to, I think, drive the narrative when it comes to news in the future.
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The White House giving press credentials to content creators, friendly content creators, and it's interesting, when you guys went to open the HuffPo the Huffington Post clip that I gave you it was gone, it was already pulled and what I had sent you was Caroline Levitt.
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She's the press secretary.
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She was welcoming a room full of online content creators, all very friendly, and so you can imagine what the questions were.
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The first question was given to a content creator and she said thank you so much for allowing me to ask the first question and to be here.
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And then everything was fluff, fluff, fluff.
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It's like how come you guys are so great and how can you be any better?
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So that's a big problem.
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They're really skewing it through social media and I'll say last night I was telling Warren, before we came on the air, I was at a show last night in Boston and it was with a bunch of influencers and they needed to invite the old person up there.
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I totally represented Gen X Offline, offline, when we were chit chatting, the conversation was how much, how much money is flowing to from PAC money coming from both sides, I think is just having the beat on their content creators and influencers who are spreading their messages.
00:16:03.023 --> 00:16:06.267
But here's the thing Is that really a problem or is that just reality?
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And as communicators, you have to adapt to reality and often embrace it in order to get the upper hand with your clients or your organization you're trying to represent.
00:16:15.985 --> 00:16:19.322
Yeah, but also the White House doesn't want traditional media in there.
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They're blocking them.
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So how does traditional media then report on what's happening in the White House?
00:16:24.697 --> 00:16:26.649
And then that could bring us back right to Jake Tapper.
00:16:26.649 --> 00:16:30.465
What we know happened on the inside, even with Biden.
00:16:30.966 --> 00:16:32.028
Maybe try reporting on it.
00:16:32.028 --> 00:16:38.926
Actually, the Biden administration had their friendly voices and they were MSNBC and CNN.
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They were doing the same thing that these independent podcasters are doing and the other thing that we haven't really mentioned here, and that is an actual fact.
00:16:47.552 --> 00:16:52.073
I mean, you sound like a tinfoil hat person, but there are a lot of these media outlets.
00:16:52.073 --> 00:16:57.135
These big ones in the States especially, are kind of communications arms of the government.
00:16:57.135 --> 00:17:06.184
There is someone from the government I can't remember if it's the FBI or the CIA who has a desk at Fox News, and I'm sure it's the same in all those other channels.
00:17:06.184 --> 00:17:08.551
They sit inside the outlet.
00:17:08.551 --> 00:17:09.494
I heard that the other day.
00:17:09.494 --> 00:17:10.648
Yeah, that's bananas.
00:17:11.365 --> 00:17:12.430
Oh, I haven't heard that.
00:17:12.430 --> 00:17:13.133
That's interesting.
00:17:13.133 --> 00:17:33.438
We know there's significant cuts to Voice of America, which is putting out propaganda, but we have one of the people in our chat here who is visiting us from Sweden is saying news in the USA looks like a game show and a tabloid in one in one big colors, yelling people over exaggerations and in competition with each other.
00:17:33.438 --> 00:17:39.693
It's such a setup for divide and untruths and they really nailed it there because it is true.
00:17:39.693 --> 00:17:44.790
It is like a game show, because it is it's ratings, it's advertising dollars.
00:17:44.790 --> 00:17:45.733
That's what they need.
00:17:45.733 --> 00:17:46.425
Truth.
00:17:46.425 --> 00:17:47.751
I don't know where truth falls.
00:17:48.265 --> 00:17:48.365
Yeah.
00:17:48.365 --> 00:17:55.153
Or in the case of a new content creator, subscriptions, and the more you can deliver content that your audience likes to see, the more subscriptions.
00:17:55.153 --> 00:17:57.326
You deliver content that your audience likes to see, the more subscriptions you get.
00:17:57.326 --> 00:18:02.415
Again, communicators aren't going to change all this.
00:18:02.415 --> 00:18:04.405
We are caught in the current.
00:18:04.405 --> 00:18:17.138
The current is going this way, and so the question is in my mind how do you use this to your advantage, versus trying to throw your hands up in the air and say, oh, this is terrible, how do we stop it?
00:18:17.138 --> 00:18:18.650
I don't think it's stoppable.
00:18:18.650 --> 00:18:19.212
It is what it is.
00:18:19.212 --> 00:18:21.994
This is the way that the media world is evolving.
00:18:22.744 --> 00:18:30.373
To wrap up this conversation, I'm going to bring in a comment from the chat and, warren, I'm going to direct this to you.
00:18:30.373 --> 00:18:34.154
She's a fellow Canadian and she works in politics.
00:18:34.154 --> 00:18:35.017
She's an operative.
00:18:35.017 --> 00:18:37.011
She always brings good intel in here.
00:18:37.011 --> 00:18:47.769
But her question is genuinely curious Do you think Jake Tapper is wrong for withholding the book's content as a reporter or making money off news as a reporter?
00:18:47.769 --> 00:18:49.269
And I will add or both.
00:18:49.891 --> 00:18:52.058
I guess it depends on your definition of his role.
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Is he a journalist or is he an entertainer?
00:18:53.977 --> 00:18:56.809
And I think he's answered that question for us right.
00:18:56.809 --> 00:19:02.482
If you're a journalist and you have news that the public should you know that the president can't function?
00:19:02.482 --> 00:19:05.317
Should you know that there's an auto pen that's signing everything?
00:19:05.317 --> 00:19:06.440
And what do they call it?
00:19:06.440 --> 00:19:07.122
Pardoning people?
00:19:07.122 --> 00:19:07.818
Should you know that?
00:19:07.858 --> 00:19:10.336
As an American citizen Like I live in a different country and I'm pissed.
00:19:10.336 --> 00:19:20.671
So I think that it just it's disappointing to me that the and maybe I nostalgize the Walter Cronkite, dan Rather era but like where do you go, where do you go for news?
00:19:20.671 --> 00:19:21.776
How do you know what's going on?
00:19:21.776 --> 00:19:27.913
And I would say like the best version of that and it might piss off some of your people here, it's like X for me.
00:19:27.913 --> 00:19:39.772
It's just it's an unfiltered window into what and that's why I said Trump was going to win the election like I was seeing something dramatically different on there than I was seeing on these different channels and New York Times.
00:19:39.813 --> 00:19:47.701
You look at the Globe and Mail here, or the Toronto Star, or the New York Times, the Washington Post, and you see that kind of title and I think there's this automatic.
00:19:47.701 --> 00:19:51.990
You say this is the same paper that existed 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 50 years ago and 80 years ago.
00:19:51.990 --> 00:19:52.592
But it's not.
00:19:52.592 --> 00:20:02.940
The cover looks the same, but the people underneath and the motivations are completely different and I think once you scratch below the surface, it's pretty ugly.
00:20:02.940 --> 00:20:04.665
What's going on in journalism and you have.
00:20:04.665 --> 00:20:14.577
You obviously have the echo chambers and the squeaky wheels on either side, but I think there are a lot of people in the moderate middle who don't really have a voice and who are super pissed off and super confused.
00:20:14.978 --> 00:20:28.974
Yeah, and speaking of being super confused, john Pernick, I cannot believe that Warren nailed the calling Trump, but he's saying he only got that from X, which is the most biased version of getting information about Trump.
00:20:28.974 --> 00:20:32.161
Is it, warren Weeks?
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Are you telling me X is your go-to social media?
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It's my go-to news information source.
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Like I dabble in all, like you have to get it from everywhere, right?
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