A veteran LA Times correspondent on Trump’s assault on the press, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner security scare, and the fight for truth in a fractured media era.
[00:00:02] Margaret H. Henoch:
Good morning. My name is Margaret Henoch. I’m a member of The Steady State. I retired from the Central Intelligence Agency after 25 years as an operations officer, and I’m now working with The Steady State for the protection of democracy and the Constitution.
My guest this morning is Bob Drogin, a longtime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, whom I’ve known for a fair number of years because he wrote a book about something I was part of.
At any rate, Bob, over to you. Introduce yourself.
[00:00:37] Bob Drogin:
I’m Bob Drogin. I spent 38 years at the Los Angeles Times as a national correspondent, a foreign correspondent, and ultimately a Washington correspondent. When I covered intelligence and national security, my last job there was as White House editor during the first Trump administration.
When he lost, I left because I thought, my work is done. We’re never going to see this putz again.
[00:01:05] Margaret H. Henoch:
I guess I’d like to start with how you got into journalism and how you got into national security.
[00:01:14] Bob Drogin:
I was a student at Oberlin College in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when it was a very progressive place with constant protests and political activism.
One day the Dean of Students mentioned that the CIA was coming to recruit on campus. Apparently they had decided to recruit “all those white guys from the Abbey” to cut into the Third World, and they were coming to what was then called Afro House.
So I wrote it up for the local paper. It led to protests, the CIA pulled out, the Associated Press picked it up, and suddenly it appeared in The New York Times.
And I thought: This isn’t very hard.
[00:02:18] Margaret H. Henoch:
Anybody can do this.
[00:02:27] Bob Drogin:
I then worked at the Charlotte Observer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and eventually the Los Angeles Times.
When I came to Washington in 1999, I wrote a memo to my editors titled “Nukes, Kooks, and Spooks.” I proposed covering nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and intelligence agencies — subjects that had fallen somewhat by the wayside after the Cold War.
So I was already on that beat when 9/11 happened, and I spent the next decade immersed in national security reporting.
[00:06:24] Margaret H. Henoch:
How does Trump’s assault on the press come across to someone who is a member of the press, as opposed to how it comes across to the rest of us?
[00:06:40] Bob Drogin:
He came into office promising to be a dictator on day one, and he has absolutely fulfilled that promise regarding the media.
From my perspective, he is conducting an unprecedented, full-out war against freedom of expression, journalism, and the First Amendment.
Because of the daily churn of chaos in this administration, it’s difficult to keep track of everything. But when you list it all together, it’s astonishing.
His administration has cut funding for NPR and PBS. It’s threatened broadcast licenses for networks other than Fox. It’s filed punitive lawsuits against media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the BBC, and others. It has limited FOIA processing, demanded the firing of Jimmy Kimmel, barred the Associated Press from the White House briefing room because it refused to use Trump’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico, taken over the White House press pool, restricted Pentagon access unless reporters agree to publish government handouts, created a so-called “Wall of Shame” website targeting journalists, censored government data and removed public information on issues ranging from vaccines to climate change, dismantled Voice of America and other U.S. international broadcasting outlets, installed political loyalists at the FCC, and arrested and detained journalists.
It’s one horror show after another.
At the same time, you have corporate owners at CBS, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere either pulling critical editorials, replacing management, or paying millions of dollars to settle frivolous lawsuits.
All of this has tremendous implications for freedom of the press and for democracy.
Because he’s following the playbook of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin, Mussolini — authoritarian leaders who understand that if you control the press, you control public reality.
[00:08:15] Margaret H. Henoch:
When you say he’s “taken over the pool,” what does that mean?
[00:08:23] Bob Drogin:
The White House press pool has existed since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. It’s a rotating group of journalists assigned to follow the president everywhere he goes.
Traditionally, that pool has been independent and organized by reporters themselves through the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Trump basically said: No. I’m going to decide who covers me.
It’s the classic authoritarian move: punish unfavorable coverage and reward loyalty.
[00:11:13] Margaret H. Henoch:
Tell me how suppressing the press damages democracy.
[00:11:44] Bob Drogin:
The whole point of the First Amendment is accountability.
Journalists are supposed to be watchdogs — not lapdogs and not attack dogs — watchdogs over government power.
What we’re seeing now is a shrinking of traditional journalism at the exact moment government access is being cut off.
Meanwhile, AI is making things up, social media is flooded with misinformation, and people increasingly don’t know what’s true.
The public needs trusted institutions capable of verifying facts independently of government control.
Without that, democracy weakens very quickly.
[00:13:16] Margaret H. Henoch:
How does it feel to go from being a respected voice against government overreach to being treated as an enemy?
[00:13:33] Bob Drogin:
I’m retired now, so I’m a civilian these days.
But what’s happening is outrageous.
The attacks are incremental, which makes them easy to overlook. But when you add them together, you realize there’s an organized effort to undermine independent journalism itself.
Thomas Jefferson famously said he would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers.
And looking at Trump, you understand exactly why.
[00:15:15] Margaret H. Henoch:
Tell me about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
[00:15:23] Bob Drogin:
I have an iconoclastic view of it. Frankly, I think the modern version is an abomination.
It should go back to its original purpose: raising scholarship money for journalism students and recognizing good reporting.
Instead, it became this celebrity spectacle.
I attended somewhere between fifteen and seventeen of them over the years, including the famous 2011 dinner where President Obama mocked Trump.
Trump has always denied that it motivated him to run for president, but who knows? He lies about everything.
Ironically, that night the real story wasn’t Trump at all.
The big news — which none of us knew yet — was that Obama had approved the Osama bin Laden raid earlier that afternoon.
[00:18:27] Margaret H. Henoch:
You mentioned the “golden age” of journalism was actually pretty short-lived.
[00:18:39] Bob Drogin:
People imagine journalism was always objective and trustworthy, but that’s historically inaccurate.
A hundred years ago, America had hyper-partisan newspapers run by press barons like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer — people deeply involved in politics and propaganda.
What we think of as the golden age really began around Watergate and lasted maybe thirty years.
Then the internet, social media, and collapsing advertising models shattered that system.
Now we’re back in a fragmented media environment dominated by billionaires and ideological ecosystems.
In many ways, we’re going back to the future.
[00:21:49] Margaret H. Henoch:
How do people figure out what information sources to trust now?
[00:22:09] Bob Drogin:
It’s a supermarket now.
People curate their own media diets. I read The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Substack writers, and independent reporting outlets.
No single source is perfect.
But I still trust organizations trying to verify facts honestly and independently.
Nobody at those institutions is intentionally inserting false information — at least they’re not supposed to.
[00:23:08] Bob Drogin:
Journalism schools are adapting because people consume information differently now.
Students are taught to think visually and digitally: write a paragraph, add a photo, add a graph, embed video, and link supporting material.
People increasingly experience news through phones and short visual bursts rather than long newspaper articles.
And then there’s AI.
AI is already transforming journalism. It can analyze massive datasets quickly and automate repetitive work.
But it’s also unreliable and potentially dangerous.
We still don’t fully understand how profoundly it’s going to change the information ecosystem.
[00:28:49] Margaret H. Henoch:
So is there any hope?
[00:28:49] Bob Drogin:
Actually, yes.
For one thing, Trump isn’t succeeding everywhere.
Courts have thrown out several of his lawsuits against media organizations. There’s increasing pushback.
And despite all the noise, there’s more information available today than at any point in history.
Everybody carries a camera now. Everybody documents events in real time.
The challenge is figuring out what’s real.
But the availability of information itself is extraordinary.
[00:30:41] Bob Drogin:
I covered three presidential campaigns: Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and John McCain.
They all lost.
So apparently I was the kiss of death.
One thing campaign reporting taught me is: never trust polls too much.
If you don’t believe me, ask President Hillary Clinton or President Kamala Harris.
Polls can tell you trends, but they’re not destiny.
[00:32:26] Margaret H. Henoch:
It’s been a pleasure talking to you again after a long drought.
Thank you for agreeing to do this.
Keep reading The Steady State. And next time, try to give us a little more hope.
[00:32:56] Bob Drogin:
I was honored to do this, Margaret. Thank you for inviting me.
The Steady State Sentinel is produced by The Steady State, a community of former national security professionals who spent their careers safeguarding the United States at home and abroad. Today, we continue that mission by staying true to our oaths to defend the Constitution, uphold democracy, and protect national security. Each episode features expert hosts in conversation with accomplished guests whose experience sheds light on the crises and challenges facing the nation.