CNN’s Pamela Brown on a ‘Scary Time’ for Journalism: ‘Do People Care About the Facts Like I Do?’

CNN Chief Investigative Correspondent and anchor of The Situation Room, Pamela Brown, does not present herself as the story. If anything, she seems almost resistant to it.

On a new episode of Mediaite’s Press Club, she offered a candid look at how she navigates an environment where trust in the media is collapsing, political rhetoric is intensifying, and the stakes of reporting feel higher than ever.

“I look at my role as a vehicle for people,” Brown told Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall. “Not some big TV star.”

That self-conception has shaped her approach across a career that now spans everything from breaking political news in Washington to deeply personal, emotionally fraught field reporting.

Nowhere was that tested more than during her coverage of the 2025 deadly flooding at Camp Mystic in Texas — a place she once attended as a child.

“It was by far the hardest story I’ve ever had to cover,” Brown said.

She wasn’t just reporting on tragedy, but revisiting her own childhood memories while speaking to parents who had lost their daughters.

“I started thinking about those letters that those little girls who had died had sent home… and they’re gonna be arriving in the mail to their parents,” she said. “That hit me hard.”

Brown described offering herself as “a vessel” for grieving families, a phrase that seems to mirror how she understands her role more broadly.

That instinct — to understand rather than judge — is at the center of her upcoming CNN Whole Story documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism, a movement she argues is becoming increasingly influential in American political life.

This past summer, Brown traveled to Moscow, Idaho, to interview Pastor Doug Wilson, a leading figure in a network of churches that includes ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I wanted to better understand the thinking of his church network that could be influencing him as the DoD secretary,” she said.

The connection between Wilson’s theology and figures inside President Donald Trump’s administration is central to the project. Brown frames the documentary not as an argument, but as an examination of a movement gaining proximity to power.

“He just opened a church in D.C., and Hegseth attended with other prominent members in D.C., so he’s getting closer to the seat of power,” she said.

Wilson, she noted, was initially wary and viewed CNN as hostile.

“He said, ‘CNN is on the other side of the barrier,’” she recalled.

So Brown said, “I’m not going in with judgment. I’m going in with curiosity.”

That approach produced one of the most striking exchanges of the interview. Asked about women’s role in society, Wilson replied: “Women are the kind of people that people come out of.”

Her response was immediate.

“Well, hold on a second, so you just think we’re a vessel?” Brown asked.

The moment went viral, not because she sought confrontation, but because she allowed the worldview to be expressed clearly, then challenged it plainly.

“You can be nice and firm,” she emphasized.

The documentary expands beyond that interview, embedding with communities that embrace Christian nationalist ideas — including views about gender roles, family structure, and the relationship between religion and the state. It also explores critics of the movement, including women who left those communities and describe them as restrictive or even abusive.

For Brown, the goal is not to tell viewers what to think.

But the implications are hard to ignore. Experts she spoke to argue the movement’s influence is growing, even as organized religion declines more broadly, and is increasingly intersecting with political power, particularly within Trump’s orbit.

“[Viewers] should know that this is a consequential moment in America,” she said. “These are people in power… People need to understand, in my view, the thinking of [White House adviser] Stephen Miller and the thinking of President Trump.”

At a time when many critics argue that certain voices should not be platformed, Brown takes the opposite view: understanding is a prerequisite for holding powerful people accountable.

“That’s my job, to push back with the facts, with the evidence,” she said.

Still, she acknowledges the emotional reality of modern media consumption.

“No matter what you do, it’ll never be enough,” she said.

And the deeper problem, she suggests, is that journalism is now operating in a fractured informational landscape where facts alone often fail to persuade.

“Do people care about the facts like I do?” she asked, pointing to algorithms, repetition, and political messaging as powerful forces shaping public perception. “It’s a scary time in that way.”

“Emotion will always win out over facts, sadly,” she said. “That is just the truth.”

Even so, Brown rejects the idea that journalists are simply mouthpieces for institutions, a perception she encounters frequently.

“People still think that I’m a puppet and the corporate overlords are telling me what to do,” she said.

“Really educated people are like, ‘Really, you have editorial independence?’” she said. “I decide who’s coming on my show, and what questions I’m asking them.”

If there’s a throughline in Brown’s view of journalism, it’s the idea that credibility is not assumed, but rather earned, often imperfectly.

“If I give a softball interview… I should be called out for that,” she said. “That’s how you build trust… Why are we so afraid to admit mistakes?”

In an era defined by polarization, skepticism, and competing realities, Brown’s approach is undoubtedly refreshing.

Subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Colby Hall: Hi, I’m Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall, and this is Press Club. On today’s exciting episode, we have longtime CNN star, co-anchor of The Situation Room, and owner of a new puppy, Pamela Brown.

Pamela Brown: I love that you threw that into my title. Thank you.

There we go. Do you prefer Pam or Pamela, or does it matter?

I really don’t care, but my mother cared. She always wanted it to be Pamela. So if you notice, Wolf Blitzer only calls me Pamela because my mom called him one day, years ago, and was like, “Her name is Pamela, not Pam.”

Sounds like maybe you were in trouble. “Pamela! Pamela Brown!”

Exactly. So on air, we stick with Pamela, but I have all kinds of names off air.

So you posted on social media that, I believe, if I understood it correctly, you just got a new puppy.

Yes, Lucy Blitz.

And you have an older dog who is being super petulant and protesting the fact that there’s a new dog in your life.

My dog Bingo, my five-year-old lab, is pouting. Protesting. He went on a hunger strike first. He then just retreated to his crate, because labs don’t do hunger strikes very long. They’re big eaters. So then once he couldn’t sustain that, then it was like, “I’m gonna just hang out in my crate.” But when he’d come out, he started to limp. And we were like, “Oh my God, wait, is he injured?” And so we’re like, let’s do a test. So I got a piece of cheese, because again, labs love food, and I stood across the room, and I was like, “Bingo, come,” and guess what?

The limp went away.

The limp went away immediately. And I turned to my husband, and I said — he was a military dog handler, and so he knows a lot about dogs. I was like, “Wait, did he fake an injury?” And my husband said, “Yes, actually, dogs fake injuries.”

That’s excellent.

And so I did some Googling, and it is true. And so Bingo is really having a rough time, but everyone tells me, give it a few weeks, give him space from Lucy Blitz, and he’ll come around.

So Bingo has a little bit of a main character syndrome. Where do you think he gets that from?

I don’t know!

TV people.

TV people ego. We’re all about the ego, right? And we just like to have all the attention on us. So maybe ol’ mom passed it on to him.

I think the interview is good. I think we got everything we need.

Okay, great, we can just wrap it up.

So let’s start at the beginning, all right?

Okay, let’s go.

You grew up in Kentucky, the daughter of the governor and a well-known television host. People of a certain age know your mother well from CBS’s NFL Today with Brent Musburger, Jimmy the Greek, and Irv Cross. What was it like for you growing up with parents who were so well known, and I dare say famous in your world?

Yeah, I definitely grew up in the public eye, but I also, growing up in Lexington, Kentucky, felt like I had a very normal, grounded childhood, and I give my parents a lot of credit for the people they surrounded me with, and also the friend group that I had — they were just amazing. And so while my parents were “famous,” I didn’t really pay much attention to it, and I just kind of did my own thing. I was riding. I loved riding horses, I loved playing soccer, I loved hanging out with my friends, and I loved growing up in Kentucky. And the people that were around me were just salt-of-the-earth people.

And like, okay, we’re all human beings. Who cares if you’re famous or not? It actually taught me a lot about power and influence and fame and how it doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness as well. I think a lot of people in the media business might be trying to climb this ladder of more and more, and “I wanna become famous.” But having had two famous parents, it actually put a lot in perspective for me.

Right.

That you can have this insatiable appetite, and you may never be happy. And not to say that my parents weren’t happy, but they were human beings just like everyone else.

Everyone suffers from the same human condition.

Exactly. Everyone suffers from the same human condition. And so I’m really grateful in many ways that I had the upbringing I did to learn that at a young age.

I said this earlier — joking — but in today’s culture, you’d be dragged as a “nepo baby,” but you’re on CNN, you’re in DC, you’re inside the star-maker machinery, from a political news perspective, but you do come across as very grounded, right? And is there anything specific from, apart from being in Kentucky or perhaps maybe your mom being on TV, that has kept you more rooted? Was it education, church, or what was it that your parents did that kept you so down to earth?

That’s really nice of you to say. I do give my parents a lot of credit. First of all, they never pushed me to pursue this career path. In fact, my dad discouraged me. He was like, “You’re never gonna be able to live up to what your mom did,” but I never felt that pressure. I was like, well, I wanna do my own thing. I don’t wanna go into sports, but I wanna be a journalist. And ever since I was young, I loved asking questions, and learning from people, and talking to people. I’ve always been interested in people.

And so my mom, for her part, never pushed me either. Never pushed me into pageants. She was Miss America. She was always just like, “Follow your heart and what you think you’re good at, and Pam, you love interviewing. You love asking questions. So maybe, if that’s what interests you, pursue that.” And so I think that gave me an inner confidence to just kind of pursue what I’m passionate about.

And I thought a lot about the whole nepo baby thing. And I’ll never be able to say definitively if I would be where I am now without my parents, right? Who can actually say that, right? But what I can say definitively is that I am so grateful, and I never take what I have for granted, and I try to work hard every day and take advantage of the opportunity and the blessings given to me. And I think that helps keep it in perspective. And the groundedness, I do think it comes from Kentucky, and just growing up with just great people and just being able to relate to people. But also, I think it comes from my genuine passion for what I do.

Right.

I’m in it because I love being a journalist and talking to people, and I look at my role as a vehicle for people, and telling their stories, and helping the public understand what’s happening in the world around them. And so I look at myself as a vehicle for that, not some big TV star. And I think maybe that’s what helps me stay grounded because I’m just a vehicle for people.

I think also if you see everyone as a person that deserves the same respect that you would get, it makes it a lot easier. And I think sometimes people get a little bit caught up in that. I’m reminded of this because last year was a big, big year for you in a lot of ways, but you did some amazing reporting surrounding the tragedy at Camp Mystic —

Thank you.

— in the Hill Country in Texas.

Yeah, horrible, yeah.

And what informed your reporting was that you had been a camper there. It’s a Christian girls camp, and I grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, and church camps and Christian camps are standard. I think some people hear Christian camp and they think of cults or some other thing. First of all, what was it like being a camper there, and then following, did that make your reporting harder or easier, given your relationship with the institution?

I think it made it harder in that it just brought back this flood of emotions. And we went back to the archives and found my old bracelet and letters I wrote home, letters I wrote to my mom, who is no longer here.

Right.

Those memories came flooding back of my mom dropping me off at camp, and the homesickness I felt at camp, and also just the love I had of being there and the outdoors at Camp Mystic, and the amazing, transformative experience you have there as a kid. And so it was a really unique experience for me because I was grappling with that personal emotion of being a former camper and everything flooding back.

But then also, I was a professional. I had to be a professional, and be a journalist, and report what was happening. Also, though, being a mother added another layer to it, because I had a little girl, and you just think about how awful it is, these sweet little innocent girls swept away in the floods, and their parents, and the pain they must be feeling.

So it was by far the hardest story I’ve ever had to cover, but also the most important, I feel like, because I felt like I could give a window into what was happening on the ground that others couldn’t just by the fact that I was a camper there, right? And there were other challenges. We were up against law enforcement. They create a lot of barriers for the media. They made it very clear that they did not want us there. The people there on the ground, for the most part, a lot of people I interacted with were very skeptical because I was with CNN. And so I had to gain their trust and talk to them and let them know I was there to share their stories and for nothing else.

Well, I would imagine that also the fact that you weren’t just flown in from DC to represent CNN to cover the story, but that you had personal experience as a kid there, was something that maybe eased your access or maybe generated some like, “Oh, you know this camp because you had been at camp.”

I think the fact that I was a camper there did help with people opening up to me, like, “Oh, you went to camp there.” Also, my mom and my family are from Texas.

Got it.

So I already had a deep Texas connection. I’m from Kentucky, but I also basically grew up in Texas, because my mom was always taking us there, and she has deep roots. She was Miss Texas, and then she became Miss America, Miss Texas. So whenever you’re a journalist, and you’re doing a story, you always try to fight a common connection, right? And so I would, when I talked to people who may have been skeptical and didn’t want to talk to me, I would bring up that I was a former camper, my mom’s from Texas, and I grew up coming here, and I just would love to hear what you have to say and how this is impacting you. And you find that people will open up, and they look at you in a different way than maybe their preconceived notions.

It must have been really challenging to speak with, on camera, parents who are in their most raw state of grief, having just learned that they’ve lost a loved one. And I honestly think that that’s an important story to tell and to get across, but also it requires unbelievable nuance and care to make sure that it does not come across as in any way exploitative or disrespectful. That must be really challenging. And I’m curious what you used, or what you did to broker that.

Well, it took some building of trust and also just giving them the opportunity. Some grieving parents want to share their story and highlight the legacy of their child, right? It’s cathartic for them. It’s therapeutic for them. And so I offered myself up as, like I said earlier, like a vessel for that, sharing that story and taking care and being a good steward of that and being respectful. And others, I said, “I’m giving you the opportunity, but don’t feel any pressure.”

And so I just kind of put it out there on the table. And then over time, they would come to me, or they would open up. And others didn’t want to, but actually, I found that many did once they went through the initial shock of what happened. They did want to tell the story. They did want to talk about their daughter, and they did wanna talk about accountability for Camp Mystic.

And so I covered that story for many months. I didn’t just leave. The thing that sometimes irritates me as a journalist is that you just get so wrapped up in a story, you’re there on the ground, you’re in it, and then you just leave it behind. And I couldn’t just leave it behind, right? And of course, there was a personal connection to it, but I wanted to make sure that I was also sharing what was going on with Camp Mystic, and I had the Camp Mystic lawyer on because no one had heard from Camp Mystic, and I was the first to have him on.

I wanted to just stay on it and continue to shine a spotlight. But at the same time, at some point, you just have to come to grips with, “All right, Pam, your heart is so in this, but maybe this isn’t where the new cycle is right now,” and you have to kind of come to terms with that.

Well, there’s going to be a one-year anniversary, and that will probably be a good follow-up. I was a big camp counselor, and I understand that everything comes with risk, and every camp operates with its fingers crossed that tragedy doesn’t strike. Anyway, you did wonderful reporting.

There were no villains.

Right.

There are no villains in the story. It’s not like covering a school shooting where there’s a clear-cut bad guy.

Right.

Being there on the ground, clearly, there was some incompetence. There were things that they fixed. There were things they should have done years before, right? Not just Camp Mystic, but just the city, the town, and they learned from that, sadly. But they had to learn through this tragedy of so many lives lost.

And it was one of the few times, Colby, that I actually got emotional on camera and cried, which I try not to do. But I also feel like it was raw, and it was authentic, and it was in the moment. And Anderson Cooper asked me about my time as a camper, and I started talking about it. And then I just started thinking about those letters that those little girls who had died had sent home, and they’re gonna be arriving in the mail to their parents, their grieving parents. And that just hit me. That hit me hard. Again, it wasn’t planned; it just happened. But I think it also taught me that sometimes it’s okay to show a little bit of emotion because it helps the viewer understand the story.

Well, it’s authentic, right? And also, Anderson is the guy who seems to elicit the most genuine conversations —

He’s so amazing, yes.

— about grief and death.

He’s lost his mom, too.

Right, and he’s very good at that.

I felt safe doing it. Even though I was live on television, because it was Anderson, I felt safe.

Well, it didn’t come across as performative.

And he sent me the nicest note after, and he’s so supportive.

That’s lovely.

Yeah, he’s an amazing colleague. You’re right. He created that safe space in that moment because he understands grief so deeply.

So this is a nice pivot to the new doc that you have coming for Whole Story about the rise of Christian nationalism, right?

Yes.

I was able to watch a small snippet in advance. But why don’t you explain what this hour-long special is about?

So I traveled to Moscow, Idaho, last year and interviewed Pastor Doug Wilson. And he is the head of this network of churches called CREC that the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is a part of. And I’ve always been interested in this subject, and I was always thinking about Pete Hegseth and the way he was bringing prayer into DoD and doing other things, and some of the tweets coming out of DoD around religion. I wanted to better understand the thinking of his church network that could be influencing him as the DoD secretary, and give us a window into that. And so I reached out to Pastor Wilson, and he was open to doing the interview. He made it clear: “CNN,” he said, “is on the other side of the barrier.” He definitely made it clear that he viewed us as the enemy.

He distrusted you.

He distrusted me, and I tried to make clear to him, “Look, I’m just really interested in your worldview and your thinking.” Please just allow us to come out, talk to you, and understand it because you’re growing in influence, and that can be shown through various metrics, but he just opened a church in D.C., and Hegseth attended and other prominent members in D.C. So he’s getting closer to the seat of power, and it’s important to understand his thinking that’s growing in influence.

So he did, he agreed. We traveled out there, and I interviewed him for an hour and a half, and it was a very respectful interview. Of course, I did my due diligence as a journalist and pushed back and challenged him in different areas, but there was this one moment that ended up going viral, where he has very strict views of gender roles, and he really believes that the man should go out and be the breadwinner and a woman’s primary role is to be a mother and be a housewife and take care of the husband and so forth — complementary roles. He does not believe in egalitarianism.

So I asked him, “What do you think a woman’s role is in society?” And he said, without missing a beat, “Women are the kind of people that people come out of.” And I sat there waiting for him to expand on that, and he didn’t.

Full stop.

Full stop. That was it. That was his response. And so I just had this very authentic, raw reaction. And I said, “Well, hold on a second, so you just think we’re a vessel?” And then he went on to say, “Well, no, it’s not like pigs and horses, it doesn’t take any talent.”

Oh, good. Oh, relief.

They reproduce, too, just like women do, but it doesn’t take any talent.

It’s not animal husbandry.

Right, but then you become, once you have a child, you become the CEO of the home, and we think it’s a bad thing to throw your kids in daycare. And that went viral. Many millions of views, and I think it struck a chord with a lot of people who went, “Wait a second, who is this guy? He thinks this way, and a lot of people think this way.” The DoD secretary, he retweeted my piece.

Yeah, I don’t wanna be all fawning, but what struck me in that interview was that you pushed back, but respectfully. I think you even asked, “I’m a working mother, do I offend you?” And he said, “No, but…” And it was really good journalism because it allowed your subject to reveal his true belief without you painting him in a corner. You asked simple questions that he responded to and hung a lantern on how different, such starkly different views exist in our society.

Right, and I think that’s important. My approach was, I’m not going in with judgment. I’m going in with curiosity.

Right.

I’m not going in with judgment. I’m going in with curiosity. Who am I to judge, right? I’m really going in with genuine curiosity, and I think he could feel that. I wasn’t out to get him, right? It was just like, “Hey, help me better understand this.”

You were nice.

Well, but I think you can be nice and firm, and I think people can feel that, right?

You weren’t confrontational, and you didn’t go in looking to “Gotcha,” you went in looking for answers to genuine questions, and I think people sense a difference in it. That’s what a good interviewer does. They make people feel comfortable enough so that they can say what they really believe instead of trying to formulate answers that they think you might want to hear.

Exactly, or be adversarial. And actually after that interview aired, he wrote a really nice blog post, not to toot our own horn, but he thanked us publicly, and said we were very fair.

There you go. Toot your own horn again.

Toot the horn. But I want to because I think it showed something. He started this off thinking we were the enemy. And then he ended it, after we did the journalism, thanking us and saying we didn’t just put the provocative parts out there. We put the context out there around the provocative parts or the controversial parts. I hope that opens the minds of others who may have had the same thinking as him, who looked at us a certain way, because I know his views were changed. They opened up.

And now he’s in this hour-long documentary, but we expanded beyond that. We embedded into a community in Taylor, Texas, of Christian nationalists under the CREC network. And I will say this: they were lovely and welcoming. These are their deeply held beliefs, right? This is what they believe in. They believe this is what the Bible mandates, that this is to be a Christian nation, and they are having kids to make them kingdom builders, and they really firmly believe that women, their role, their primary role is in the home, and they believe that’s what the Bible is telling them.

It opened my mind up, too, as a journalist going in and embedding with them and spending some time with them. I think we’re in this culture now where everyone wants to vilify — good guy, bad guy — because of their belief system. And people come to their worldview or belief system for so many different reasons, right? I know I grew up in Kentucky and spent time in Texas, and I had parents who were famous and gave me different experiences. Of course, that shaped my worldview. And for many of the people I spoke to, they were raised in religious homes, and they felt like this is the way that you’re supposed to live, and I want people to understand that.

Now we also spoke to women who had left the church, different churches, different conservative Christian denominations. Christian patriarchy is what they call it. And they were very, very clear that they were happy to leave and that structure can really lead to abuse, is what they said, that when you create a hierarchy where women are at the bottom, lower —

Subservient.

Subservient and submissive to the husband, and you create that hierarchy, it can lead to abusive situations without recourse.

It doesn’t always work out well. It doesn’t always end with a happy ending. Shocking.

It doesn’t mean that everyone has that experience in these communities, but if it goes to its natural conclusion with someone who might have controlling or abusive tendencies, you see where that can lead. And some of these women had those experiences, and it took a while for them to unravel and deconstruct and leave, and that was really hard, because in these communities, the other is seen as the bad guy. It’s like David and Goliath, and they believe that secularism and non-secularism cannot coexist, right? So, one’s going to win out. And for them, the outer society, the outside of society, is bad.

Is Goliath.

Yeah, exactly. They think public school — it’s not a monolith necessarily — but a lot of them I spoke to thought public school was a sin. And so these women who I spoke to who left, who have experienced, whether it’s emotional abuse or physical abuse, they really sounded the alarm of what can happen in these high control religious communities, and they drew the line to the Trump administration and how we’re seeing the influence of Christian nationalism grow within this administration in a way that we’ve never seen historically.

Well, I helped my son do a junior year paper on Night in the Garden, which was the 30s Nazi rally that was a Christian rally. And he opened his paper with the Mark Twain quote: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” And lo and behold, there were a lot of people who felt that the Trump rally at the end of the election at Madison Square Garden echoed some of those themes. And I’m curious, in this documentary — I only saw the segment where you’re in Taylor, Texas. How explicit do you direct that? And maybe the final cut isn’t locked, but do you connect it to the Trump administration? Does this come across as a warning or more of an observation that this is a rising trend?

I don’t look at it as my place as a journalist to use it as a warning, right?

So this isn’t alarmist or even a concern. It’s more of this is happening, and we should be aware of it.

This is showing all sides, both sides, right? Like the women who have left and others who are Jewish or of other faiths, or even Christians, think that they’re an existential threat. “They’re” as in these Christian nationalist groups. These Christian nationalist groups believe that America has gotten so far away from the Christian values that it’s an existential threat to them and that we need to get back to Christian values to survive as a society. And so it’s more about examining the roots of these movements and that existential pull from both, and why they feel that way.

Interesting.

And it’s really up to the viewer to decide what they think about it. I can tell you that, just from what I’ve received from social media, a lot of people are very worried about it, just the growing influence, because they look at it as a way of being regressive, taking away women’s rights. I interviewed a pastor under Doug Wilson who said, “Look, the 19th Amendment should be repealed,” because they believe there should be household voting, the man should vote. And I said, as a woman myself who votes, “Well, help us better understand that thinking.” He said he thinks that individualism in society has led to a breakdown in society, and he thinks it’s about the family unit, and we need to have more cohesion. So people can watch it and take away what they want, but they should be aware of it. They should know that this is a consequential moment in America, and Christian nationalism’s influence is at its highest peak per the experts we spoke to, even as Christianity as a whole is on the decline.

It’s fascinating. And I honestly grew up going to church, and I was on a church council, and my kid was at preschool at Plymouth Congregational in Brooklyn Heights, but I keep it to myself, right? And you went to a Christian camp, you —

I grew up Christian. I grew up going to a Christian —

And I think that, almost religion aside — and this is maybe me being a congregationalist — the sense of community that we felt from churches and schools and Little League and any other affinity seems to have really abated to a dangerous level, right?

I think you’re right.

We’re isolated by social media and the internet, and the constructs that kept us tethered in the social fabric — churches, schools, PTAs — have largely gone away. And you can see how the pendulum has maybe swung really hard in some cases, where you see Christian nationalists. Do you think there’s something to that?

I think absolutely you’re right. And I will say when I embedded with the community in Taylor, Texas, that was what stood out to me the most. Everything was interwoven. They did seem really happy, and they did have a strong, tight-knit community, right? They were all watching each other’s kids and helping each other out. The kids were just out there roaming around, playing with each other, all different ages.

Idyllic.

Yeah, and there is something to that, and that can’t be ignored. Now, I asked Doug Wilson, the pastor, “At what point would you call this a cult, right?” And he said, “Look, people lament not having community, and then as soon as you build community, they say you have a cult. We’re Christians, we believe things.”

It’s a fair point. And I’m not a Christian nationalist, and I think a lot of what he stands for is not for me, at least, but I can agree that a strong family structure is good for society and good for the family. Not always, but there are parts to their that ring true. It does feel extremist.

Yeah, certainly their views are extreme. They are rigid. There is no wiggle room. There is no opening up my mind. There was no talking to them and saying, “Well, hold on a second, what about this?” It’s like they have their views and that is it.

And both can be true, right? That they could have these views that are seen as extreme and rigid, but also they have a great sense of community and connection that many of us in this country have lost. And so that’s what I think is gonna be really interesting for the viewers of this: to look at it and look at all sides of it and the complexities of it and decide for themselves how they wanna view it.

Well, I look forward to seeing it. This could become a religious studies conversation, so I won’t —

I can go on and on. I really could.

It’s fascinating. I want to pivot back to something you said about the interview with Doug Wilson and how he had a prejudiced opinion about CNN, vis-à-vis you. And I suspect, you said you got the same when you went to Camp Mystic, and I assume also in Taylor.

Well, Taylor only let us in because of the interview with Doug Wilson.

Oh, interesting.

They said, “Because you were fair to him, we let you in. Otherwise, there was no way we would have.”

So what is it behind this deep skepticism that exists, particularly in middle America, particularly in conservative circles, of CNN?

It’s not just CNN, I think. We get targeted by this White House that will single us out, unfortunately. I think that there’s an anti-establishment, anti-institution sentiment that’s growing.

Did you find that was a barrier for you to broker? Some of my dearest friends in Kansas still think of me as an elitist, and they belong to multiple country clubs and live large, while I’m in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn.

Isn’t that funny how that works?

Like, how am I elitist? But there is this connotation if you work in media. A lot of it is well-earned.

Yeah, right. Absolutely.

There is a lot of elitist, cultural media, Ivy Leaguers that sneer at middle America. And so I think the distrust is in many ways earned. But I’m curious more about how you won them over? Do you think CNN is in any way over the last 10 years — it’s been some tough years — responsible? Is this a problem of some of their own making?

Look, I always think we should self-examine, and we’re not perfect. Of course, there are things if you go back, you say, “You know what, we should have done that differently.” Of course. But what I can say is — and I wish people understood this more — people still think that I’m a puppet and the corporate overlords are telling me what to do. “Don’t do this.”

It’s stunning.

And it’s stunning when I tell people that, really educated people are like, “Really, you have editorial independence?” And I’m like, “Yeah. I decide who’s coming on my show, and what questions I’m asking them.” So I see the amount of tireless work and effort that goes into verifying what we put out there, especially in this AI age, and making sure we’re being fair to guests and all of that, right? But we’re also up against a really tough time. And it is true, we have a president who has repeatedly said that we’re fake news over and over again. And so that’s very hard to compete with. Now, that’s not to absolve CNN or other press organizations from anything we could have done differently or better. And I do think you’re right that there are times when we’re too in the bubble with horse race politics and that elitist view.

Well, nobody’s perfect, and there’s always room for —

You should always examine and scrutinize, and that’s why I actually appreciate Mediaite. I think the media should be scrutinized. We still have a lot of influence. We should be held to account.

Tell me more about what you like about Mediaite.

Because you want to toot your own horn. But no, I’m a big believer, we should be held to account, right?

Thank you.

If I give a softball interview to a person in power, I should be called out for that.

The rarest thing in political media, in politics, and in media, is the individual who says, “You know what, you’re right, I got that wrong.”

But that’s how you build trust, by the way.

Right, that’s a fair critique. I write columns, and someone will say, “Well, you missed this.” I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t make that clear. I assumed that, but that’s fair. I could have been clearer on that.”

See, that’s great because, guess what? As far as I know, there has never been a perfect human being. Has there been?

I don’t know.

You’re pretty close to it, Colby. Pretty close. So my view is always that every day I’m learning and I can evolve, get better, and grow. And so if I get feedback from someone whom I respect, I’m like, “Okay, you know what, you are right, I’m gonna do better next time,” and I don’t make the same mistake again. Why are we so afraid to admit mistakes and be transparent? To me, that is how you build trust, and you build a connection with your audience, in my opinion.

I have to ask the question about the undermining of the credibility of CNN and mainstream media, very systematically, by President Trump and his surrogates. Again, caricatures and stereotypes exist because they’re rooted in the truth, so there is some resonance there.

Of course. Right, yeah.

But how have you dealt with it? It seems like the network is constantly trying, and is almost challenged to have any voice at all because of the fear of being accused of being biased. And so sometimes, it’s almost too neutral. How has the network and you worked to deal with it? You have Trump surrogates on.

All the time.

And you ask them tough questions, but people will say, “Why are you platforming someone who’s speaking about election lies that are baseless?” How do you strike that balance between engaging with the executive branch and their positions, even if you know that their positions may not always be accurate, fair, or even true?

I think it’s a really fair question. I’ve thought a lot about this. And look, we’re not a monolith, so you might ask another seasoned journalist, and they could have a different view.

They’d get it wrong, so I’m asking you.

My viewpoint is that these are people in power. And it’s just like the Christian nationalists. This is happening, and you may not agree with it. And you may think it’s totally wrong. And the facts might totally undercut everything they’re saying. Guess what: that’s my job, to push back with the facts, with the evidence.

But people need to understand what is happening. People need to understand, in my view, the thinking of Stephen Miller and the thinking of President Trump and others who are in power that are shaping this country and its future and the world’s global order, right? People should understand that, in my view. And I think sometimes people like to shoot the messenger, right? It’s like, “Why are you platforming it?” Sometimes, when I engage with people who will reach out to me because they didn’t think I was hard enough or whatever — “You should have asked about this” — I’ll respond to them in a very respectful way. Just say, “Could you be a little clearer? I’d like to better understand what you felt like was off.” And then they say, “Oh my gosh, you know what, it’s not you. I’m just so upset about this environment we’re in right now.”

And I think it triggers a deep, visceral feeling in people when they come on the show. And no matter what you do, it’ll never be enough. But that’s not my job, to please the public or please the internet. I view my job as having on people of power from all different spectrums and all different politics, and holding them to account, and challenging them, and letting people take that in the way they feel they wanna take it in.

I understand the logic behind platforming people that you know are not good-faith actors. However, one of the big problems I have with a lot of that line of thinking is that if you break it down, you arrive at hoping that ignoring the problem will make it go away. And it’s a real tricky situation, because at the end of the day, we no longer live in a shared reality.

I know. It’s really sad, right? Sometimes I’m like, “Do people care about the facts like I do?”

We can’t even agree on the same set of facts, right?

I know.

And it almost makes journalism, which is entirely based on objective reporting of facts, it almost renders it moot or useless in a postmodern age where everything is subjective.

It’s a scary time in that way.

It really is. We feel untethered. I’ve written about it. And we have algorithms that —

I was just going to bring that up.

— that reward conflict, conspiracy.

Disinformation.

And it doesn’t reward factual reporting. No one clicks on nuance.

Because people want to have their views reaffirmed. It feels comfortable to them. And anything other than that, anything that challenges that, challenges their own identity, that’s scary, and that’s threatening, right? And so they want to go back into their little bubble or echo chamber. That makes them feel good and comfy and cozy. And I really am concerned that people, there’s just not the respect, deference, and reverence for just the truth, facts, and evidence that there once was. And Trump’s lie about the election being stolen is a prime example of that.

It’s persistent.

He says it over and over again, and he has his own theories about why.

Reasonable people believe it now.

Yeah, but all the facts and evidence show otherwise.

Georgia’s election was run by Republicans. And they looked at it over and over and over again.

Right, recounted and recounted. Exactly, and so that scares me, because no matter what, emotion will always win out over facts, sadly. That is just the truth. And for a lot of people, it’s the emotion —

And the repetition.

And the repetition. Once you say it enough, it gets in their head. Seeds of doubt, “Well, wait a second, hmm. Maybe it was stolen.”

I hate to say it, but it follows patterns of really ugly chapters in our world’s history. It’s stunning how similar the patterns of rhetoric are. A couple more questions. One, talking about your role at CNN and you are in D.C., I have heard criticism, and I’ve observed this myself, that the CNN bureau in D.C. seems to really punch above its weight. A lot of the network’s programming comes from D.C., as it should. One of the criticisms is that CNN may focus too much on the inside-the-Beltway, Capitol Hill drama. And credit to Manu Raju, who’s the best in class.

Manu’s amazing.

And I do see how D.C. political maneuvering is a story worth covering. But does it sometimes come at the cost of some real-world coverage of what’s happening in middle America? Do you feel that sometimes it’s a little navel-gazing or solipsistic in the D.C. world way?

Well, if you watch my show, you will see that we don’t do horse race politics panels, and that’s a deliberate decision. There are others at CNN who are much better at that than I am, first and foremost, but what I can speak to is what I do for the show, and I think that can tell you a lot. My team knows that what is very important to me is getting everyday Americans on the show. When there’s a government shutdown or health insurance premiums are going up, let’s get that person who’s in Kansas or Kentucky or Texas, who is really worried about how this is gonna impact them, because there’s no better way to understand it than the actual person rather than having a talking head. That’s always been my view. And then we have John King, whom I really am jealous of, and his job, because I would love to do that. Just go out in the country and talk to people and bring their stories back to Washington.

He’s a modern-day Jack Kerouac.

He’s amazing. And his stories are always really illuminating. Any time he does that, I’m like, get his piece on the show, get John King on. Let’s talk about that. What are people out in the country saying and thinking? And I was doing this radio segment — we shifted Michael Smerconish to do it because he has his own radio show — but the whole point of it is what are callers saying? What are the people who listen to your show, what are they calling in and saying to you?

Real feedback.

Real feedback from people all across the country. I just had Michael Smerconish on today to talk about that. What are your listeners saying about a partial government shutdown? Do they even care?

It’s unfiltered. Right.

Are they even paying attention to it? And he was like, “No, actually, they’re not unless they’re in a TSA line and it’s forever. They are not paying attention to that.” So, he’s able to be our vehicle for what listeners across the country are thinking and feeling about what’s happening in Washington. So that’s my personal approach.

When you went to Taylor, Texas, or Moscow, Idaho, it seems like a trap for D.C. or New York-based media outlets. You see some reports that feel like, “Look at how these people live.”

Like they’re at the zoo or something.

Like National Geographic, yeah, like zoo animals. Do you know what I’m saying?

Yeah.

I think perhaps because you grew up in Kentucky, you’ve been able to avoid that, but did you find that that was something that you had to be aware of, or did you just connect with the subjects?

No, I didn’t. I really just look at human beings as we’re all humans, and we’re all struggling in our own ways and suffering. I want to understand what you’re thinking. Help me understand it. Personally, I didn’t feel that way. Again, we are all born into a situation — like you were talking about earlier in the napo baby conversation, I was born into a family. I didn’t choose that. I feel blessed and all the things, but there were struggles that came with that, right? There were. I didn’t have a conventional upbringing, and I always just think humans are born into the world, into whatever family situation you’re put into, and then you just kind of figure it out.

Do the best you can.

And then do the best you can, and then learn from it, and you grow, and so we’re all in that together, right? No matter where you are, how you’re living, I just like connecting with humans at that basic level of understanding. This was another thing I wanted to say, just going back to the nepo baby thing. I want to ask people who would be critical, who say, “Oh, you’re just in this because of that,” what do you want me to do? Should I just stay in my room all day doing nothing, and twirling my hair? Or should I do the thing that I’m really passionate about, and I love to do, and I feel like is what I’m meant to do. And I’ve always thought about that. What do they want us to do?

Yeah, I think that’s the right answer. To be honest with you, I don’t think that you’re considered a nepo baby. I think nepo babies get that criticism because of, not just who their parents are, but the opportunities, their behavior, and their attitude. And I think that, as I’ve said repeatedly, you’re just fishing for compliments at this point.

Should I start doing my prima donna yelling at the staff? “Get me my coffee!”

Last question. You started co-anchoring The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Is he as difficult to work with as he seems?

Oh gosh, Wolf Bitzer, let me tell you, you’re talking about a prima donna.

He seems like the sweetest, nicest man in the whole world.

He actually is. I’m not just saying this because he’s my co-anchor and I have to say this. He actually is the easiest person to work with and the nicest person. He is so respectful and lovely to everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are; he just loves everyone. He has dance parties before the show. He’ll put on his music. He loves music.

What does Wolf Blitzer rock with?

Oh my God, Chumbawamba is one of his favorites. He’s got a lot that would really surprise you. He loves Taylor Swift. He’ll play music before, and we’re all dancing and singing. There’s no ego. The man could have the biggest ego in the world. He’s an icon.

He is.

And he’s nothing but a true professional. And if I want to jump in, if he’s doing an interview and I want to ask a question, he’ll be like, “Yeah, Pam, come in.” It’s not like, “This is my airtime.”

He’s not difficult.

No. He’s the opposite of that. And I feel really, really blessed to sit next to him every day and learn from him.

He’s a mensch.

He really is. The man is amazing, and I can’t say anything bad about him. And I don’t think anyone in the D.C. bureau, anyone who knows him, could.

No, I can confirm. I’ve been digging dirt on him for a long time. I’ve got nothing.

You still have nothing?

No, he seems to have earned a great reputation from being a great dude. This has been a great rehearsal. I think we should start taping.

Okay, should we? Let’s get it going. Let’s get the camera rolling.

Pamela Brown, co-anchor of The Situation Room, I look forward to watching your Whole Story doc on Christian nationalism. Thank you so much for coming in. 

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