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In the first episode of the fourth season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent for the PBS News Hour. Woodruff opens by discussing the discernment process that led her to make the transition from her long-standing role as the anchor and managing editor for the PBS News Hour to serving as senior correspondent for the News Hour’s “America at a Crossroads with Judy Woodruff” project. The impetus for launching that project is a desire to understand the faultlines defining the socially and politically divided season in which Americans find themselves living. Coming the terms with those faultlines leads Woodruff to travel the country, talking with ordinary Americans, and, whenever possible, drawing inspiration from Americans seeking to reknit the fabric of their communities. One episode Woodruff highlights involves the city in which she was born, Tulsa Oklahoma, which is in the midst of coming to terms with a racially motivated massacre that occurred approximately 100 years ago. Woodruff then discusses her calling to journalism, the challenges and opportunities she encountered in newsrooms initially dominated by men, and the lessons she learned while serving for almost all of the major networks. Those lessons, however, proved most compelling while Woodruff served at PBS with Jim Lehrer and Robert (Robin) MacNeil and, in turn, proved critical when she inherited the responsibility she inherited of serving as anchor and managing editor for the News Hour. Woodruff closes by discussing the virtues journalists need to cultivate as they focus on telling stories well, representing the people with whom they interact with charity, and discerning their commitment to inform the public. In the end, Woodruff believes the Church and the university both have roles to play in that process of cultivation.
- PBS News Hour’s “America at a Crossroads with Judy Woodruff,” Racial Reckoning, May 17, 2023.
- PBS News Hour’s “America at a Crossroads with Judy Woodruff,” Project Overview, December 19, 2023.
- Judy Woodruff’’s (with Kathleen Maxa) “This is Judy Woodruff at the White House”(Addison-Wesley, 1982)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent for the PBS News Hour. Thank you for joining us.
Judy Woodruff: Delighted to be with you, Todd.
Todd Ream: In December 2022, you retired from your long-standing role as the anchor and managing editor of PBS’ News Hour, only to begin work on the News Hour’s America at a Crossroads project.
Would you begin by describing the discernment process that led you to decide to retire as anchor and managing editor at that time, but then take on this new challenge with this new project?
Judy Woodruff: Well, thank you for asking, and I’m, I really am delighted to join you today to talk about this. Yes, as the time drew closer to the moment when I knew I wanted to turn over the anchor desk to the younger generation and that was, you know, and that’s been in the works for some, that was in the works some years back.
I knew that I wanted to continue reporting. And fortunately, the News Hour wanted me to continue reporting. And so I thought about, you know, what is it that I really would love to work on, and the thing hit me immediately. And this was in early 2022, actually late ’21. And it, you could argue it had been there, sitting there in my head for a long time, and that is how divided we had become as a country.
And I you know, I’ve been covering politics now for over 50 years, and I’ve never seen America not just divided, because yes, we were divided over the war in Vietnam, and we were divided over civil rights. We’ve been divided over other issues. But there’s a division now that’s very personal, where people feel, have very dark feelings about people on the other side, and I wanted to understand that better.
And I thought, what I’d love to do is travel the country and talk to as many ordinary Americans as possible, and put together reports airing every other week on the News Hour, biweekly from different parts of the country. And so that’s what we did. We started in early 2023. My first segment actually turned out to be an interview I did with then President Biden because I wanted to ask him how he saw our division.
So I went to Wisconsin and interviewed him there. That ended up being the first piece. It aired in February of ’23. But after that, I traveled around the country, and that’s what I did for the first two years. I was, you know, just, just going everywhere we could find what we thought would be a place to demonstrate the division and talk to people who understood it.
So we mainly talked to people, ordinary people, but we also talked to some scholars. We talked to pollsters, the people at the Pew Research Center because they’ve done a ton of work trying to understand what’s going on and historians. But mainly I wanted to get around the country. We did that for two years.
And last year, Todd, we spent the year focusing on efforts to bring people together. So we were looking for groups and organizations and people and thinkers who were worried about this and trying to do something about it. This year, we’ve turned the focus in the direction of our 250th birthday, because it’s the logical theme for this year, 2026.
And I also, and I wanted to do that in the context of understanding our division. Because at a moment when we’re so divided, and we’re also supposed to be celebrating this country, how are we doing that? And so that’s the work I’ve been doing this year.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Could you offer an example of an episode that you found particularly compelling that you might highlight for us?
Judy Woodruff: Well, I’m prejudiced, I think they’re all compelling. We did about 23-24 pieces, we’ve done each year. So we’re now up to more than 80. But I’ll tell you, in the first year, one of my favorite reporting excursions was to the city where I was born, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I wanted to go back to understand what I was reading and was told there was a serious division in that city. A lot of it is between the white community and the black community, but that’s too, that’s painting it in too simple a way. It’s much more complex than that.
At the same time, the division there can be connected to something that happened there 100 years ago. In 1921, there was a massacre of the black citizens in Tulsa, there’s a neighborhood called Greenwood, by white citizens. They firebombed, they even flew planes over this prosperous black neighborhood, they called it Black Wall Street then, back then, and killed an unknown number of people.
People fled the city. The city basically tried to cover this up. They never wanted to talk about it. It didn’t make it to history books. I never had heard about it until just recent, recent years I had heard something about it. And since I moved away from Tulsa as a child, and my father was in the military, in the Army, we moved away when I was five years old, but I talked to my cousins who did grow up there.
My mother was from Tulsa. And they hadn’t heard about it. It hadn’t been taught in school. It’s now come to the fore. Tulsa at that point had a young Republican mayor who was trying to address it. He had invested in what they call ground-penetrating radar to try to discover the remains of people who had died 100 years earlier.
And he was dealing with this in a very interesting way, and I wanted to talk to him. We interviewed him. We talked to individuals leaders in the black community, a city councilwoman who drove us through parts of Tulsa, and she talked about how what happened back then, and also the placement of a super highway through the middle of a black, what was then a black neighborhood, had essentially shut down so much black progress, and how the houses in one neighborhood were in disrepair, where the valuation was much less than it was in the white neighborhoods of Tulsa.
Separately, I talked to a mother, a school a mom who was very active in a group called Moms for Liberty, who, which is a group, originated in Florida, all about trying to impose new restrictions and rules on teaching in schools, and restrictions including on the teaching around race and our racial history. So all that came together in what I thought was a very rich reporting, not because of me, but I have a great producer I worked with to explain how this city that today, that had this happen 100 years ago, 100 and some years ago, is today still grappling with the aftermath of that, aftermath of that.
And it is a reminder, Todd, that everywhere we go is cities, communities, rural areas are building on their own history. If it’s an area that in the past has dealt in a healthy way with their challenges and they’ve been forward-thinking, they’ve had inspired leadership connected to the community they’ve worked their way through tough problems.
There are other parts of the country where people are seriously divided that haven’t had inspired leadership, and don’t have it now. And so that has something to do with it. It doesn’t explain it all. Our division is very complicated. There are a whole lot of different strands to it. But I have found that history and leadership certainly play a role.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As we’ll discuss later in our conversation, you’re a graduate of Duke University, and have served as a faculty member for its Sanford School of Public Policy, which I must, you know, take a moment of pride in, in my older daughter, who is a student at Sanford School right now, Addison.
Judy Woodruff: Fabulous. Oh, great. Great school.
Todd Ream: But your longest standing commitment to your alma mater is service you offered as a trustee for 12 years, 1985 to ’97. When you think about the ways that the frayed cultural fabric in America is being reknitted, in what ways have universities contributed to its fraying, perhaps? But in what ways are they also contributing to that being reknitted?
Judy Woodruff: You know, that’s such a big, big question, and I know that I’m not qualified to answer it. But I will say this, I will say what I think is, I’m stating the obvious here, that the United States system of colleges and universities, including our community colleges, is an extraordinary system that has to rival any other country on the planet. I mean, we have strived for decades, for centuries now, to make sure education was available. We’ve waxed and waned. There have been moments when education has been more available and promoted at other times, at some times than others.
But we have this extraordinary system, and it is also a system that’s gotten way too expensive for ordinary people, at least, the schools at this, what we call the higher end of the spectrum. But they’re all important. And frankly, there’s been a bit of an ivory tower that’s developed in our colleges and universities and that the scholars there do such important work. But they’ve also become more, I think, isolated from the rest of the country. I think the same thing has happened to the news media.
We can talk about that later. But I think that that’s happened in a way, and I think while I wouldn’t paint it all with one brush because I, you know, I hate, assuming that one pronouncement covers everything. I do believe that much of higher education in this country has become, well, I’ll say it again, has become separated from the way real people live. And at the same time, it’s trying to lift people up and educate the next generation. It’s promoted ideas that seem farther and farther away from what ordinary folks understand.
Todd Ream: Along the lines of the themes that you’ve addressed to date and continue to address in America at a Crossroads project, I want to ask you now also about churches. You and your husband, Al Hunt, also a journalist, were married in 1980 in Washington, DC at St. Albans.
And in what ways have you found that church communities have contributed to this reknitting of the cultural fabric, but at some points in time are also contributing perhaps to its fraying?
Judy Woodruff: Yeah, and that’s another huge, huge question, Todd. You know, our faith is such a defining feature of American life. I mean, whether it’s a faith that we hold close or our freedom to not have a faith. That’s what the founders set forth in the Constitution, separation of Church and state. And so people have the freedom in this country to worship as they will. They don’t have to worship under one church or one belief or another.
At the same time there’s no question in my mind, I mean, I was raised as a Baptist. And then, over time as I grew older and married my husband, who was Episcopalian, I gravitated to the Episcopal Church, where we’re now parishioners. I’ve seen the Church have such a fabulous, such a profound and, and long-lasting effect on the lives of so many people. I see what our church does, how it is engaged in the community, people giving back you know, reaching out to those with less. And I see that happening in, in congregation after congregation after congregation.
No matter whether Presbyterian or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim, I mean, I see, and I see all of it. And in fact, we just aired a piece on the News Hour this week. And you and I are talking in early June about the role that faith plays in our country, in our 250th year. So yes, I mean, the, the, the role of the Church, the role of faith has had a profoundly healthy and positive effect on us.
At the same time, there have been some extreme views that have grown up inside the Church, churches, that have not been good, that have harmed us. And so we have to, we have to hold that contradiction in our mind.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to transition now to asking about your formation as a journalist and how your commitment to the Fourth Estate developed over time. As you mentioned, you were born in Tulsa. Your father was in the Army, which involved your family relocating at times within and beyond the United States.
You graduated from high school in Augusta, Georgia, and began college at Baptist-related Meredith College, but eventually transferred across the Triangle there to Duke University, where you earned a degree in political science in 1968. A fascinating year to be a college student, I might just note there.
At what point in time did you discern journalism would play a critical role in how you were called to exercise your vocation?
Judy Woodruff: Well, I would love to tell you that it was something that I had in mind when I was seven or eight years old and I worked on my grammar, my elementary school newspaper. That wasn’t the case. This was a situation where I fell into journalism, because as I was growing up, most of the women, I knew I want my mother always said to me, she was not able to finish 10th grade. She was not able to finish high school.
My father ended up earning his high school degree as equivalent in, in the military, in the Army. Neither one of them was able to go to college. My mother always said to me, “You’re going to go to college. You’re going to have a career. You’re not going to be dependent.” She was very dependent on my father.
She didn’t know how to drive. And she didn’t want me to be that. And so I grew up knowing I was going to do something. I was going to get an education. I loved school. I had a lot of things that I was interested in, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I was going to do something.
And so I just, I started talking to my teachers in high school. And they said, a couple of them said, “Well, you’re really good at math and science. Did you think about that?” And I said, “Well, sure.” You know, and I loved biology and chemistry, and I even liked physics even though the male physics teacher never called on another girl in the class or me for our entire senior year. That was, that was the age that we lived in.
But I, I, so I signed up, went to Meredith, as you said, a Baptist school in Raleigh, said I was going to major in math because I did like numbers, but I had an instructor my freshman year, who was a graduate student at another unnamed college in Raleigh, I won’t name where he was, and who really didn’t think women should be given the time of day with advanced math. And so I was turned off by math. I mean, there, not that the world of mathematics has lost any great, great mind.
But at the same time, I was taking a course in political science my freshman year. And the professor was a woman, and she’s still alive to this day. I owe her so much, Carolyn Happer. She got me so excited about thinking about the role of government, politics, political science, policy. And so I changed my major after a couple of years, and then transferred to Duke. Decided I was maybe interested in, in fact, before I transferred to Duke I thought, “Well, maybe I’m interested in international affairs.”
I applied to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service to see if I could be a foreign service officer. They told me that they accepted very few women, and almost no transfers. And that I shouldn’t waste my time. And so I went back to my Duke application, which fortunately Duke accepted me as a transfer.
And I dug in and I was very interested in international affairs. I took Indian history, studied, and wrote a thesis. One of my thesis was on the Congo, which at the time was undergoing great political upheaval. However, I still didn’t know what I was going to do. And the summer, and two summers I worked in Washington for my congressman from Georgia.
The second summer I worked on Capitol Hill here in Washington. The women who worked with me, who were a little, a few years older, and I told them I wanted to come back to Washington and work as a researcher or, you know, whatever I could do to work on the Hill or in government. And they said, “Oh, you don’t want to do that. You’ll be the gopher. You’ll be the coffee girl. So don’t do that.” And I picked that up just by watching what they were doing, and also by what they said to me.
So I went back to Duke my senior year, and talked to my professors. I said, “Wait a minute, I wanted to go to Washington. What should I do? I’m hearing this.” And one professor just, an off, happenstance said to me one, he said, “Judy, did you ever think about covering politics, being a reporter?” And I said, “Not really, but that’s kind of interesting.” So then I went chasing, you know, that idea.
I thought, “Well, what if I could report on politics?” I mean, this was how ungrounded I was. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I know I wanted to do something that mattered, that made a difference. And so I applied for a job, TV, because I didn’t have any clips to show. You can’t get a job at a newspaper unless you’ve got clips. So I thought, ” I’ll apply for a job as a newsroom, you know, secretary.” Applied for jobs.
I went to Atlanta spring break senior year. The news director at the ABC station hired me after 30 minutes. And he, and as I got up to leave and I said, “Thank you, Mr. Conover,” he said, “Of course. How could I not hire somebody with legs like yours?” So there I was. And you know, I’d like to tell you that I had some great, smart comeback, but I didn’t. I just, I frankly thought okay, math doesn’t really want women.
And I had been told that in politics, you know, there was no room for women at the entry level, and here the same thing was happening in journalism. But I stuck with it. The difference is this time I stuck with it. I saw what was going on in the newsroom. I fell in love with it within the first few months, and I was determined I was going to be a reporter. And I started pestering the news director. Ended up after a year and a half getting a job as a reporter at the CBS station in Atlanta. When I think about it, it’s kind of amazing.
Todd Ream: You eventually then also became the NBC correspondent assigned to the Southeast, and at this time there was a governor who was running for president, Jimmy Carter. NBC then asks you, you covered his run, and eventually NBC then asked you to move to Washington, DC, so you, you did eventually. You had to go to Atlanta first, but eventually did, come to DC, in order to serve as their White House correspondent.
What, if anything, did you learn about your vocation, about the canons of journalism, responsibility, freedom of the press, independence, sincerity, impartiality, fair play, and decency during those years when you were a young journalist?
Judy Woodruff: Frank, I’d love to tell you that I had high-minded thoughts about all those questions and issues that you just mentioned, Todd, ethics and the canon and so forth. But frankly, for the first few years, after I came to Washington, I was scrambling just to get it right.
I had been a reporter for only five years as a local reporter in Atlanta covering politics at the Georgia state legislature, local politics. And then I covered a little bit of national politics. In those two years I was still based in Atlanta for NBC, mainly through Jimmy Carter’s campaign, because I had covered him as governor.
By the time I got to Washington, I was suddenly surrounded by all these people who had so much more experience than I did, who knew so much more clearly than I did, and I woke up every day scared to death that I was going to make a mistake. And I was driven to do well and to get the story right, because I loved what I was doing. I love reporting.
But I didn’t, in those early years, I didn’t, I’ll be very honest with you, I didn’t have time to think big thoughts about the role of journalism in our society and the role of journalists. I was just thinking about, you know, how do I get this, how do I get this done, and how do we serve our viewers, our followers, people who trust us with information. And frankly, how do I not fall flat on my face and make a mistake, which I was deadly afraid of every day.
Todd Ream: In 1983, you then became the Washington correspondent for what was known at the time as PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. I want to ask you what you learned from Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer during those years, and in what ways did their investment in journalism impact your sense of vocation?
Judy Woodruff: Well, making the move that I did after just six years, at the White House, six and a half, I guess six and a half years at the White House and then a year for the Today Show at NBC, I was, I noticed that my friend Jim Lehrer, I had gotten to know Jim a little, and Robert MacNeil, Robin MacNeil were expanding from half an hour to an hour. And that was, as you said, in 1983. And I was still, you know, I had a secure job at NBC, but I thought, wow, that’s amazing that they’re going to have a whole hour.
This is something the commercial networks have talked about doing, but they weren’t doing. There was no sign they were going to do it. Local stations didn’t want to give up that real estate, you know, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! So they were, you know, Jim and Robin were doing something extraordinary, and I just loved the idea of having more time because I knew enough to know at that point I’d been cut back so many times. And, “Judy, you gotta do this in a minute and a half, a minute 20.” You know, minute 45, you know, and I had gotten used to that, but I also chafed at it.
And I thought, wow, to be able to do longer pieces, seven minutes, eight minutes, 15 minutes. So I made the jump. Everybody I worked with at NBC told me I was crazy to leave the network, but it turned out to be the best professional decision I ever made, of course. And I went to the News Hour. They made me the chief Washington correspondent, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I mean, I thought this is, this is amazing.
And I, what I learned from them was not that I didn’t know this before, but in a deeper, much deeper way. I learned about the responsibilities of journalists. To go into every story with an open mind, to remember to keep my own views out of it, which I’d already learned to do. I mean, I knew that from day one when I started working as a reporter. My first producer at WAGA said to me, “Nobody gives a damn what Judy Woodruff thinks. Just go out and cover the story.” And you know, “We don’t, we don’t care what you think. ” And so that was there. I mean, that was who I was.
But what I learned from Robin and Jim was to keep myself in the background, that reporting is about the news. It’s not about the star, the, the person. And just, you know, giving all sides the chance to tell their side of the story. That was what I learned, to respect people. Everybody we talk to, you respect them. And a culture of respect at the News Hour. And as, I mean, if we had a mantra, it was, we’re about light and not heat. And I continue to believe that, that for me, that’s the kind of journalism we need today.
We want to shed light, not heat. There’s plenty of heat out there. There are plenty of people yelling at each other. But if we can shed some light, and do it, of course, do it in an interesting way. We want people to watch. Robin infamously once said “We dare to be boring.” And you know, was given a lot of flack for that.
But he had some, you know, something to that. You know, we dare to tell the stories that, you know, they aren’t the Kim Kardashians or the, I mean, for example, the News Hour didn’t cover OJ Simpson’s chase and the whole trial business until the very, very end when there were verdicts. You could argue that it went too far. I don’t know what you would think about it, but that was what they believed. I came away with a, I have come away, I should say, with a much, I think, better grounding and a deeper understanding of the role of journalists.
Todd Ream: In 1993 then you joined CNN, serving in a host of roles with, over the course of a decade with the cable news organization. Would you describe in what ways, if any, did working sort of at the advent of the 24-hour news organizations, how did it impact your view of journalism and the way you practiced it?
Judy Woodruff: Well first of all, I’ll say I had no intention of leaving the News Hour. I loved what I was doing. I had been there 10 years, and then my good friend, Tom Johnson, who I had known when he was publisher of the Los Angeles Times, we served on a board together at Stanford University. He came to me and he said, “I want to make you, you know, the anchor,” uh, you know, the chief female anchor.
He didn’t say this, but along, alongside Bernie Shaw, Bernard Shaw, who was their lead anchor in Washington. And I said, “I’m not really interested in going anywhere. I love what I’m doing.” But he finally wore me down. He’s still my friend today. We laugh a lot about this, about how he chased me around the table at a dinner where we were, you know, to talk about it.
But our conversations went on. I did leave the News Hour eventually because I thought this was an opportunity to be in the beginning or near the beginning, I mean, Ted Turner had started CNN in 1970. So it was, by that time, a dozen or so years old. But it was a chance to be part of 24/7 news, and I was told and promised that I’d be allowed to do longer pieces, I’d be allowed to travel.
CNN was global, and it was doing something no one else had done. And as you know, by then CNN had put itself on the map covering the first war in Iraq. And so, I mean, every newsroom in the country was glued to CNN because they had correspondents in Baghdad. And that was just one of a number of things they had done to raise them, you know, the level of respectability, you know, coming from Chicken Noodle Network or whatever we called them in the beginning. Even what I called them because I didn’t know what, you know, who knew what they were going to do?
But they turned out to be a place that was serious about the news. I met with Ted Turner. And what I learned, you asked what I learned, I learned a great deal about news today, about the, you know, the technology, the fact that, you know, journalists today have to be able to keep their composure in fast-breaking news situations, that that’s important because you’re conveying to the public, you know, information that’s not only important, but it may be personally affecting to them. And you have a big responsibility. So I learned a lot about that.
I did a lot of live, I mean, everything I did was almost was live at CNN. Tom did at one point, I’ll just say this he green-lighted my proposal to go cover the fourth United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, World Congress on Women in Beijing. So I spent two weeks in Beijing, filed a half-hour, did a half-hour show out of Beijing for CNN every day for two weeks, which today I don’t know if that kind of thing would happen.
But Ted and Tom both had a very strong interest in international news. I stayed 12 years, as I frankly saw not just CNN, but the other cable channels becoming something different, a little bit different in their focus on competing with each other and numbers of eyeballs and so forth. I mean, the audience is always important when you’re in commercial news. But I realized that it was going in a direction that I was probably not going to want to spend the rest of my career, and so I stepped away from CNN, not frankly, in 2005, not really knowing what I was going to do next.
Todd Ream: You taught at your alma mater at the Sanford School.
Judy Woodruff: One course, one semester. I was reminded of how hard teaching is. And so I already respect teachers everywhere, a lot, but doing it myself, I absolutely, you know, fell in love.
Todd Ream: You also served as a fellow with Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government during that tenure. But in 2006, you returned to PBS, and in 2009 you began your tenure as co-anchor for what became the PBS News Hour, eventually serving as anchor and managing editor. Over the course of your career, you’ve talked with more guests and covered more stories than I can ever begin to do justice in the time that we have today.
And in 1982, fortunately, Addison Wesley published, “This Is Judy Woodruff at the White House.” You’ve also contributed forewords to books by authors such as Chris Dubbs, Donna Thompson, and Zachary White, and Tom Johnson, who I believe you just mentioned a minute ago, too. If I may overstep my role at this point, if you have any interest at any point in time writing a comprehensive full-length memoir, I’d be interested, and I know others would.
But returning to the question at hand, from which guests did you learn the most about your vocation as a journalist? Is there a couple that really stands out, maybe that helped you think through your commitments and why you do what you do?
Judy Woodruff: You know, that is such a good question, Todd. I don’t think anybody’s ever asked it of me exactly like that. I would have to think, you know, is there one, I’ve interviewed, as you said, so many people over so many years. It’s hard to say that there’s one guest in particular. I’ve learned so much from so many people. I mean, I think back to the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was surging in this country, and people didn’t understand it.
I remember interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci back then. Repeatedly, we would have him on the News Hour very, very frequently because there was news coming in every day about the alarming numbers, and people didn’t know what to do. There were no treatments. And it was scary. And he was a voice of reason.
And I know that that had an effect on me in terms of realizing that when there is fear in the air, it’s important to have, to talk with people, to put people on who are, can explain clearly and carefully what’s going on and can put things in context. And I use him as an example because, of course, everybody now knows who he is because he went on to be the face, the voice of science during the COVID pandemic and, of course, also became the source for political reasons of controversy.
But going back to his early, early days earlier days, I think is, you know, is one thing I would point to. I’ve interviewed so many politicians, Todd, I don’t know where to begin. They’re all different. They’re all, to me, fascinating. Most of them are fascinating. Most of them. And I’ve learned, you know, how skillful they can be at ducking questions. That’s one thing I’ve learned.
And I like to use Jim Baker as an example, bless his heart. He’s still alive, living in Texas. He was Ronald Reagan’s White House Chief of Staff. He is, of course, Secretary of the Treasury. He was then Secretary of State, and before that, he was involved in government. He was probably one of the best people I’ve ever interviewed when it came to not answering a question. You know, “Oh, Judy, that’s such a great question,” you know, and then saying whatever he wanted to say and saying it in an interesting way so that you wanted to hear it. But, you know, you didn’t necessarily get an answer.
And I would say in more recent years, I’ve been frustrated because we now live in an era when there are just a lot of false claims flying around. And some people, if you interview them, they believe what they say they believe something that is demonstrably not the case, whether it’s you know, the 2020 election. I don’t believe any evidence, I haven’t seen any evidence that proves that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, although I know he continues to say so. I’m just using that as an example. There are people who will still cite that.
There are people who, who will cite other matters that I know are not actual, not factual. And how do you deal with that as a reporter? It’s challenging, because I’m not used to, I mean, I wasn’t trained to interrupt constantly and browbeat people, so I don’t do that. But I do believe it’s our responsibility as reporters to say when somebody states something that’s clearly either purely their opinion, you know, you can say, “Okay, that’s your opinion,” or if they just state something as fact that isn’t factual.
And I don’t care where they are on the political spectrum. If they say something that isn’t factual, that is known not to be the case, it’s my responsibility to say, “Well, you know, that’s not right.” So that’s just a few. I mean, there’s so much more I’ve learned. I don’t know where to begin.
Todd Ream: In a comparable manner, given the myriad of stories that you’ve covered over the course of your career, is there one that demanded that your appreciation for the canons of journalism, the reasons why you went into journalism, you know, sort of asked more of you and shaped you more than maybe another story or, or two?
Judy Woodruff: You know, I would say that’s happened time and time again, I mean, with stories that I’ve covered. Whether it’s been a campaign, talking to people out on the campaign trail. I love talking to voters, trying to pull out of them, why do you like this person or that person? And I will tell you, to this day, and especially in this very, very divided moment for our country, I’m still trying to understand how it is that people come to their political beliefs.
I think that’s a fascinating subject. I know there are researchers and there are scholars who’ve looked at this and tried to understand and say they think they have a clue for how, you know, how people make up their minds, but I’m fascinated by that. I want to know, what was the thought process? How did you get to be, you know, whether you’re a liberal or a conservative or somebody in the middle who goes back and forth, you’re a swing voter. What, what’s influenced you? What are the influences in your life? I find that fascinating, because I love the fact that we have the freedom in this country to make up our minds about what we think.
I mean, as we know, there are so many other places on the planet where people don’t have that freedom. Huge swaths of the planet, people don’t have that freedom. We do. And so how do we arrive at our opinions? Where does that come from? And then what does it take to, to cause us to rethink something or to change our mind? And so I don’t think I’m answering your question, but to me, that is endlessly interesting, and I still don’t, I still don’t have the answer to it.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As our time unfortunately begins to become short, I want to ask you some broader questions now about your vocation as a journalist. And in particular, in terms of how you’ve described it and how you’ve sought to practice it, what routines, habits, or practices did you find that were important in which to invest, you know, as you sought to cultivate it?
And then in particular, any virtues that you found to be more important perhaps than even perhaps others that have kept you anchored and help continue shape your calling?
Judy Woodruff: Wow. You’re asking such profound questions and I appreciate all of them. I will say habits. The habit for me of being a reporter is, and I’ve said this I think a few minutes ago, is going into every story with an open mind. Even though I may think I know something because of, and yes, I’ve been around a long, many decades, so I’ve observed a lot. So I have more, I like to think I have a little more wisdom than the ones who are in their 20s, but not necessarily. Sometimes they have insights that we need to listen to.
So I try to go in with an open mind, not to assume anything. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I try until they prove otherwise. I try to respect all voices and viewpoints in the stories that I cover. And I think very hard about it. I know there’s this pushback these days about, oh, we don’t want seesaw journalism where it’s either this or that.
But frankly, we do need to make sure people know that there is more than one side to every story. Now, yes, the Earth is not flat. We know that, and we know men did land on the moon. So there are some things that are, that are factually true, that have been proven, but there’s a whole lot else that we’re still arguing about. And we’re also learning about every day. I would say when you, I think you said verities things that I’ve seen.
I mean, to me, the thing that’s been, in addition to reporting for Crossroads, I’ve also done reporting around people with disabilities, because my husband and I happen to have, one of our three children has serious disabilities. So I’ve tried to do some reporting around that, and I will say that I’m still to this day struck by how little this country has done for people, individuals with disabilities. We have so much more to do. We passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. It’s been renewed.
But there’s still so much, so many doors that are not open. So much, so many accommodations that are not made, and I, it bothers me deeply, and I, I think if there’s one thing I would like to continue to do as long as I can, I mean, I want to report as long as I can, but is to highlight that. I mean, there’s a whole lot of inequality out there inequity.
I think about how many, I was just reading this morning about our first trillionaire is about to happen. And I think, wow, I’ve covered places where people are living in trailer homes, and I’ve been to a number of food banks around the country, one in Tucson, Arizona, where they serve thousands and thousands of people every day who can’t make ends meet, who don’t have enough food to feed their family, and I think something’s wrong with this picture. And it worries me. It hurts my heart.
Todd Ream: As we close our conversation, I want to return to those twin sets of institutions I asked you about earlier in terms of colleges and universities, but then, you know, also to faith communities. But to begin, in what ways can colleges and universities be of greater service to journalists moving forward into the future as they seek to discern their calling and develop the commitments they need to have to thrive in their calling?
Judy Woodruff: I would say being available to journalists. I mean, if it’s a school that’s training journalists, that’s one thing. I mean, we need good academic training. I never took a course in journalism. Duke didn’t offer that. I wish in retrospect that I had. I would love to have taken at least some courses in journalism ethics, just to understand the law better.
But for schools that don’t train journalists to be accessible to journalists, to be available and to translate whatever work, you know, scholars are doing so that more and more people can understand what it is that they’re doing so that you know, I mentioned the ivory tower phenomenon earlier. I think that’s happened with a number of our colleges and universities that has led them to be more isolated from ordinary Americans. And I think anything we can do to address that is important. You had a question about faith, I think.
Todd Ream: I was just going to ask as we close then now, in what ways can faith communities be of comparable service to journalists as they discern their vocation, but then also as they seek to sustain it in this time in which we live?
Judy Woodruff: Well, journalism is in big trouble right now. We are flailing in many ways. The business model is flailing. As you know, more than 2,500 newspapers have closed down in our country in the last decade or so. Tens of thousands of reporters have been laid off. We are hurting as a craft, as a profession, and we’re now seeking philanthropic support because the business model is gone.
People can pick up a device and read the news, and they don’t need to subscribe. They don’t need to pay, although, you know, there are some paying models. We’re in a moment of enormous transition. And so I would say the faith, for the faith community, it’s speaking about journalism as something that’s healthy for our country. We need good information.
I don’t think our democracy survives unless we have factual evidence, when we have information out there. If journalists aren’t doing their jobs, if we don’t have, you know, if people don’t know what’s going on and have a good accurate idea of what’s going on, how can they make good decisions about who to vote for? I mean, who, what policy to support?
And so I think churches, our faith community, even though, you know, it stands apart in a way, it’s very personal in our lives. And as I say, we’re a country where Church and state are separate. We still the verities that I think emerge from every faith in terms of honesty, respect, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
You know, take care of those who don’t have what you do. You know, care for those with less care for those who are humbled in some way. Be humble ourselves. Don’t be full of yourself, I think all of those messages that I, at least I’ve come up in, in my faith caring about and believing in, even setting aside a particular denomination are the values that matter to us as journalists.
We need to care. We do care about facts and about respect. And to the extent we get away from humility, that’s not good. I think the humility that is preached in many congregations is something that we could use more of in journalism.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent of the PBS News Hour. Thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us.
Judy Woodruff: I’m delighted to do that, Todd. I’ve enjoyed it and wish you the very best.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
Thanks for this, I didn’t anything about her background.