Exclusive: Wolf Blitzer On Israel, Harry Reid, Dirty Campaigns, And Cable News

Tommy: CNN seems to do really well when big news happens, but how do you fix it so that you have those ratings all the time?

Wolf: Well, there are a lot of executives at CNN who spend their day thinking about that question. That’s an excellent question, you know, how do we do? What should we do? I, you know, have a limited amount of real estate on CNN, now it’s a little bit more than normal at three hours. It’s a lot, believe me, two hours is a lot, too. So, I focus in, you know, the way I was trained as a journalist was to do serious, important news and add a little bit of fun occasionally and do some Jeanne Moos pieces, stuff like that. But I’m basically an old-school kind of reporter – get some facts out there, do some analysis, get good guests, hopefully make some news – and after three hours, or two hours, or one hour, or fifteen minutes, people are watching. Hopefully, they’ll come away and say, “Hey! I learned something, I’m a little bit smarter now than I was an hour ago. Thanks Wolf for helping me learn something about, you know, the Sikh killing in Wisconsin or the brutality that’s going on in Syria right now.” Or, you know, the Harry Reid and Mitt Romney feud and whatever stories we’re working on. So I try to keep myself focused on that and do the best I can. I’ve got a great staff, good producers, great reporters out there, and we’re all working hard to do it. I can only control what I can do, I can’t control the whole thing so a lot of executives and other people get into that.

Tommy: Cable news is increasingly more personality-based, do you feel the need to make the effort to keep your own personal opinions to yourself?

Wolf: I let some of the personal opinions come out a little bit here and there. But I try to be responsible and I try to ask tough questions of the Republicans that a lot of Democrats would probably want answers to, and I ask a lot of Democrats about Republicans. So in the end, I’m very active on social media and Twitter. When I do an interview with a Republican and it’s tough. The Republicans all accuse me of being liberal, pro-Obama. So then I do an interview with someone from the Obama campaign and it’s a tough interview. They accuse me of being conservative, pro-Romney. That just comes with the territory. My sense is that if I’m equally tough on both sides that’s fine, and I’ll try to do the best I can and ask tough, important and serious questions, not just to be irritable or whatever, but stuff that…I’ve always, and, you know, I’ve been at CNN for 23 years, I’m always said to myself that I’m blessed to have this position that I have access to these newsmakers that our viewers don’t, and I think it’s my responsibility to ask them the questions that our viewers want answers to. I take that responsibility very seriously and sometimes it irritates the left, sometimes it irritates the right.

Tommy: Well I guess that means you’re doing a good job.

Wolf: I’m trying to do that. And so far it’s worked, people still watch me.

Tommy: As a referee, can you claim that one campaign is being more honest than the other campaign? (In reference to campaign ads)

Wolf: Yes. Yes. I think that we try to take these ads and we try to fact-check them, and keep them honest. Anderson Cooper tries to do that on his show, I try to do that on my show, and we call it as we see it. That Romney ad that distorted and totally took out of context what Obama said, we pointed that out completely. Also, that other point you made about “you didn’t build it,” if you take the sentence he’s talking about the roads, the bridges, the highways, and of course the small business guy didn’t build the roads, the bridges, and the highways. So we’ve done that, and I don’t have a problem.

Tommy: Do you think both campaigns have been the same, or do you think one campaign has been more honest than the other?

Wolf: I think that they have both done things that have been dishonest. But then again I’ve been covering politics for a long time and this is not a new phenomenon.

Tommy: But do you think they’re the same or…?

Wolf: I can’t give you a quantitative “this is 60% and this is 40%,” that I can’t tell you. I know that some of these super-PAC ads, now there’s one out where the pro-Obama super-PAC has put out about this woman who’s died because Romney shut down the steel company, that’s pretty brutal.

Tommy: What do you think about that ad?

Wolf: I think it goes too far.

Tommy: But do you think it goes too far because it’s mean or because it’s not true?

Wolf: You’re accusing the Republican presidential candidate of murder, basically, and of killing this woman because Bain Capital shut down this steel company. That’s a pretty brutal accusation, that’s a pretty tough accusation.

Tommy: Well it is, but if it’s true, then what’s wrong with it?

Wolf: I don’t know if it’s true. I mean, she has stage 4 cancer, and apparently she died four weeks after the company…So I mean, so she had access to insurance, I don’t know all the details. I know that today Brianna Keiler is working on a piece and we’ll fact-check it, if you watch The Situation Room. We’re going to focus in on that ad today. (You can see the fact check here) And as I say, I don’t have all the facts on that ad. But on the surface, when a pro-Obama super PAC accuses Romney of killing somebody, then that’s pretty brutal. That’s a little tougher than, “You didn’t build it.”

Tommy: I haven’t seen any coverage of the ad yet.

Wolf: Oh you’ll see it on my show. She’s working on it right now and we’ve asked Paul Begala, who’s one of our contributor’s who’s active in the super PAC, he’s on the case. We’ve asked Bill Burton, former White House press secretary, we’ve asked him to come in and hopefully somebody from that super PAC will come in and defend that ad and say, “Here are the facts, and we’ll discuss it.” (Neither Begala nor Burton were available for that night’s show)

Tommy: I want to talk about the media landscape, people talk about Fox News and MSNBC as two sides of the same coin, do you see them that way?

Wolf: I see them as competition. And I see Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post…I see all of the news organizations, AP, Reuters, as competition. And if they get something that we don’t have, I feel bad because we’re a serious news organization. I welcome the competition. I think it makes me better, it makes all of us better. I used to play a lot of tennis in my day, and I always appreciated that when I played against an opponent who was better than me, my game improved. I worked a little bit harder, my serve was better, I was a little bit faster, and I sweat a little bit more and got a better workout, and I was a better tennis player, as opposed to when I played against somebody weaker and took it easy and didn’t need to worry. So I welcome the competition and I think Fox is strong, MSNBC is strong, all these news organizations are strong and I think it puts the pressure on us to be better, which I welcome, which I deeply appreciate.

Tommy: What’s one thing you think Fox does well that you would like to do better?

Wolf: I think that their primetime, you know Bill O’Reilly, Hannity, and all those opinionated guys, you know they do that well. They’re very talented, they’re very smart, they know how to get their viewers going, they have a loyal…

Tommy: But it doesn’t fit your model.

Wolf: It doesn’t fit my model, but they do that well. And I think the same of MSNBC, you know Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, I think that they do that well, too. I mean, I think that they both know how to do that and they do it well and I don’t have a problem with that.

Tommy: Jon Stewart has been having a lot of fun with you guys and the election coverage, how do you respond to that criticism?

Wolf: He’s been having fun at our expense for a long time, so I don’t have a problem with that.

Tommy: Do you take that criticism and try to work with it?

Wolf: Sometimes he has good criticism, sometimes it’s not so good. But I’m not obsessed by it or anything like that, he’s a comedian. He’s a funny guy, he’s a smart guy, very intelligent. But he’s trying to get laughs, so sometimes I’m the butt of the joke so what can you do? You can’t take that all so seriously. But I watch it, it’s fun.

Tommy: So Jon Stewart makes you laugh.

Wolf: Yes. And Jimmy Kimmel makes me laugh, and Jimmy Fallon make me laugh, they all make me laugh. I work hard, I study all day so if somebody makes me laugh, I’m happy about that.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.