David Andelman is a graduate of Harvard College and of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Andelman was the editor of World Policy Journal from 2008 until 2015. Previously, he served as an executive editor at Forbes.com, as business editor of New York Daily News, as a Washington correspondent for CNBC, and as a reporter, correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in covering Southeast Asia from his base in Bangkok, Eastern Europe from his base in Belgrade, and New York. Following The New York Times, he served for seven years as the Paris correspondent for CBS News.
David has covered presidents throughout the years, all the way back to 1960 as the news director of the Harvard news station. In 1964 he covered his first election event. So he has followed presidents since Kennedy and there has never been one quite like this.
“I’m willing to give any president the benefit of the doubt and was hopeful that he (Donald Trump) would rise to the occasion. And he hasn’t.”
He spoke about the most important function of any journalist is to report what happens and then unpack what it means and how it fits into the lives of the listeners. And Trump has “the attention span of a flea” and the reporters are obligated to report the news of the day. That’s why it seems the media is reporting on trivial topics like his tweets, etc. when there are more substantial stories.
We discussed the topic of “fake news”. It has polarized us to an amazing degree. There have been moments in our history, the 60s, the civil war where we were polarized but we look for ways to get out of the cycle.
Not only is our current environment a health crisis, but it is an economic crisis as well.
David shares advice he heard from a trusted economist: the motor of the American economy is the consumer. As long as the motor is working we will keep moving along.
Martin brings up his fear is that we are just spending stimulus money and what will happen when it runs out? We discussed how historically we got out of an economic crisis in the past, and hopefully, it won’t take a world war this time…
They say there is a liberal bias in the mainstream media. David has been a journalist his whole life and he answers this question from an insider’s viewpoint. You’re going to find his answer informative.
“If we can’t trust our press our whole democracy is in deep trouble.”
We spoke about David’s campaign he brought up on CNN recently called the $.55 campaign. By simply placing a $.55 cent stamp on your mail-in voting form you bypass the slower mail delivery times and will greatly relieve any issues with a COVID-19 era election.
The final question of the episode we discussed was “Is there such a thing as voter fraud?”
Check out David’s books, they are amazing.
