Hello Isaac with Isaac MizrahiIsaac Mizrahi talks to Soledad O’Brien about the event that helped define her role as a journalist, her husband’s unwavering support of her career, what a CNN story about Britney Spears revealed to her and more.
Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and Soledad O’Brien at @soledadobrien.
(Recorded on October 3, 2023)
Being a woman for me, was less of an issue than being a mom. Being a mom, you had to constantly convince people that, like you were still able to get on a plane and go cover a story and don't worry, we have a nanny. My kids will be fine, and they have a dad and.
He will watch them.
You know, people would genuinely say like, oh my god, so like who's watching your kids? I'm like, who's watching your kids? Dude with five kids? Like, ron are you talking about?
This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Msrahi and in this episode, I talked to award winning journalist, documentarian, and author Solidad O'Brien.
Hello, Isaac, it's Solidad O'Brien. Looking forward to our conversation.
I met Solidad O'Brien a really really long time ago, and I've always been such a big fan of hers because not only does she give us the news, not only does she make these incredible documentaries and write these incredible books, but she's also kind of fun. You know, She's kind of fun to watch and funny, and I want to talk to her about like this balance between what is fun and what is considered appropriate for the media these days.
And how it's changed. Anyway, I'm excited. Let's get going solely. Dad O'Brien, Hello, Hello, are ye? Well? You know, I mean, I'm fine.
I think the last time I saw you was in California on the set of Celebrity Jeopardy.
What was that like ten years ago?
Maybe more?
No, I think it was a long time ago.
It was.
It was Yeah, that's hard that game, by the way, not the questions, although I was very strong in the Jennifer Aniston category.
I would just like to remind.
My Harvard education went to waste because I'm like, the buzzer is really sticky.
Yeah it is.
I don't know who it was that what at the time that we were on together, but it wasn't you, and it wasn't me. And I always think it's Michael McKean because he kept winning because he had a real knack with the buzzer and you know, like eighty five or ninety percent of those things we all know. Okay, you don't have to be a Harvard graduate. They sort of dumb it down a little bit for celebrities, right God, thank God, Oh my God. All right, So you know what I want to talk to you eventually, like where you started, where you ended up, all that. We're going to go over that, but first I want to talk for a minute about this idea of impartiality, right, Like, because you are a journalist, right, you see yourself as a journalist. You're an author, you're a personality, or a lot of things. But I think you started and like the thrust of what you do has a lot to do with journalism, is that right?
Yeah?
Mostly I'd say, ah, my are based on journalism, and there are lots of docs that are not, But I would say most of my documentaries and our series are kind of grounded in journalism. And when I'm asked to join a project, it's usually to kind of add the value of journalism into the project.
Mm hmm.
Okay, So as a journalist, I think you're behooved of something, you must kind of remain impartial, Is.
That right or what?
Well, here's the challenge I have with that.
And I started having these conversations actually when we started reporting on policing in inner city communities, right, And because sometimes impartiality means you just agree with your bosses who are usually like older, middle aged white men, right, so you so often you know, they would say things like here's their take on policing, and so you know that's not particularly impartial, but it's like, this is what we all we believe this police come into a neighborhood and they're there to help. And I will promise you that many people of color in communities where police have more challenging relationships, they don't feel that way, right, Their reality is actually.
Well in.
And so so I think that the challenge becomes, are we talking about being impartial or are we actually saying we agree with this common theory of the people who run newsrooms who are mostly older white men. And I think that that is the challenge.
Right.
So, for example, when you go and say, actually police in some of these communities by working on a documentary and the police are doing wheelies in the middle because they're trying to kind of scare the people in East New York, I'm not going to say that the police are you know this line the police are always there to protect people.
That's just objectively not true. And so I think the challenge.
Becomes the people say, well, you know, journalists shouldn't have opinions, and I think people who genuinely don't have an opinion on something are probably pretty under educated.
I mean, really you don't have an opinion.
I think the key is to make sure that you were making sure that you're reporting really looks deeply into an issue, and you use your point of view to either push back on someone or really challenge them. And sometimes, I mean I believe in mid of an interview and someone will say something and they make me rethink. So for example, I was having breakfast with a guy I know pretty well, and he said, I was boarding a Delta flight and there was a picture of two men you know those ads they do, like on the way down on the jet bridge, And one of the pictures was a picture of two guys, right, and they were kind of like snuggling because they were on a plane together. And he's like, I just felt that was inappropriate for my five.
Year old Ah wow, right.
And I'm lad.
And so he said to me, am I wrong? And I was like, well, all I can do is tell you how I think about this issue. So in my point of view, you are wrong because you're three to five year old. His sexuality has nothing to do with looking at pictures going down.
The Delta jet bridge.
Right, So I think what you want to bring is not let me dictate to you here's how I feel, but let me inform you with my experience and my point of view. But I'm not going to pretend like I don't have a thought on this topic. That would be dishonest. And I think when journalists pretend they don't understand something, they pretend they don't have a point of view. That's just not accurate. That's just not true. If your dad's a cop, you have a different point of view. I'm reporting on policing. And by the way, I think it's great to have someone say, you know, my dad was a cop.
So when I hear these stories.
They're really upsetting to me because I find it so foreign to how my dad worked.
Right, That's interesting.
It adds value, and the person can go out and really do good reporting and talk to you about their background and what they bring to the conversation, versus saying I have no point of view.
That's an I do think what you're saying is true, and it is right, and it is somewhat modern because if you spoke to like some other news anchor like fifteen years ago or twenty years ago, they would say, I have to say stuff with a straight face, and I know what you're doing. You're going like, yeah, the higher ups write the copy, they edit the copy, all of that. But in for instance, politics, right, like, you're not supposed to tip your hand, you're not supposed to say you're a Republican or a Democrat. I think that's gone for.
Good, you know, Yeah, I think that's true. Although I think what's more interesting because I just don't care if someone's a Republican or a Democrat. I'm much more interested on do they call the person who they're interviewing out as a bullshitter and a liar, whether they're a Republican they're talking to or a Democrat, Like, well, I don't care how they vote.
It literally makes no difference to me.
I do. I don't.
I have to say I care how they vote, you know, because ultimately it really hurts our society if they vote one way or the other, you know. So that's a conversation that we can have, and I think it's going to come organically. Let's talk about you, Okay. First of all, my favorite topic. You look so beautiful in that sweater today, I must say, that's a beautiful color.
Darling. Where are you from?
I grew up in Smithtown, Long Island, New York, And in fact I was sent by NBC News in must have been early nineties to Juilliard to work on my accent and to lose, of course, very.
We all did.
I went to performing our high school, and they taught us not to sound like we were from Long Island.
To Brooklyn exactly exactly. So I grew up in Long Island. My parents, however, were both foreigners. My mom was from Cuba. She was she passed away a couple of years ago Afro Cuban. And my dad was white and from Australia. And they met in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, and then eventually my dad became a professor and at Sunny Stonybrook. So we moved near Stonybrook, Long Island, New York.
And why did you go to Harvard? Like what you just earlier in the podcast you said you went to Harvard.
Every Harvard person works that in in some conversation, you know, I mean, you know at my time at Harvard.
No, But I mean, what what propelled you? Were? You?
Extremely smart did you get great grades? Did you work really hard as a student? Was are you like, you know, like Rory Gilmore, was that like the thing you always wanted to do was go to Harvard and then you went to Yale.
I a little bit of all of the above, although I didn't necessarily always going to go to Harvard, but my older sister went, and then I had an older brother who went, and then I had.
Another older sister who went, So I was very familiar with.
Ooh, amazing, were really smart people.
They were kind of smart.
Also, my parents were very strict, so we just did nothing but like sit around and study, and we were pretty smart and we were pretty good students, and we were not allowed to do a whole lot because my parents were foreigners and they had the immigrant mentality around education and so so yeah, but it's much easier, and it's much I think it demystifies the process when your sisters go, right, because you're.
Like, oh, my gosh, they're not they're not so smart.
But they can also tell you, like which cafeterias to go to, how to dress, you know, not to get engaged with certain kind of people on campus, et cetera. But Darling you know, this is a question I ask a lot on this podcast, and I love the answers I get from people. Do you think that your education was a really good kind of preparation for you?
My into the wordcation was helpful, and in my business, Harvard is a thing that helps equalize you. So you're talking to a senator and you say, oh, gosh, I was in Strauss Hall too, and they suddenly actually like treat you better. And I think, especially if you're a woman and a woman of color, there is actually a study that says for people of color, for women of color, specifically, where you go to college really matters. And I don't think it's because, oh, my goodness, the education is so far better. I think you can get a great education in a whole lot of places. I do think that there's a sense of oh, oh.
You went to Harvard.
Let me you know, however I might have thought about you or whatever, maybe bias someone had.
They that it can have an impact on that.
So it certainly helped on that front, especially when I was interviewing people or I was relatively young as a producer at NBC, and I felt like it helped equalize.
Me a little bit.
Right, of course, but you'd learn nothing.
You know, at Harvard they like to say you learn how to think, which means you don't learn any actual practical things at all.
No, nothing, And I remember, you know, Parsons was a pretty good preparation for design, but it wasn't.
I mean, the minute you get out into the.
Real world, you learn what the hell is going on and how to get places right and how to do things, how to get things accomplished. But so take me back, because you finished Harvard, I'm assuming, right, and then you did what how did you get started in your career path?
I left Harvard before I graduated and started working at a TV station. I was I was pre med actually, and and I decided not to go, which was a lot of you know, my sister is a doctor, my sister in law's a doctor, my brother in law's a doctor, My brother is a doctor. And I really had this you know, Long Island, right. The doctors were the wealthy people in town. The doctors were, you know, on the scale, the higher archy.
Yes, so I was like that.
Also also they can write prescriptions, which is always a good point.
Exactly.
So I wanted to be a doctor. And then you know, I'm taking organic chemistry with my sister. She was sort of had this conversation around, this is not something you should do. So I didn't well, only because I wasn't particularly passionate about it. And I think she sort of pointed out to me, like, you know, if you're not passionate, then it's something you shouldn't do.
You know, like she said to me, you're memorizing stuff.
And back then, before I had kids, I had a good memory, and I could memorize it and then regurgitate it on a test. And she's like, you're just clearly not passionate about it. And she was she's a surgeon now and she's a great doctor. So I actually he was right.
You got a job at a TV station rare in Boston.
So right behind Boston the Harvard Playing Fields was a station called WBZTV. It was an NBC station. It's now a CBS station. And I got a job as first as an intern and then as a production assistant. So that was my first actual paying job, making eight dollars a year.
Can you imagine forget you never forget those numbers.
Oh my gosh, go crazy.
I forgot what I got paid. But I'll never forget that. My first apartment was four hundred and forty dollars a month. Yeah, and so you started there and was that because you felt like it was the right field for you to be going into.
I didn't know it when I was an intern at first, but then I went down to visit the newsroom because I wasn't an intern in the newsroom, and I saw people running around like trying to make air, and I thought, oh my god, this is amazing. I mean, it's one of the reasons I really like internships, because you'll tell people, well, I want to work with people, and I'm a people person, you know. But there's ten zillion versions of what that means. And so I realize that I love a job that is over. Like you do a show and you're done. It could have been a great show, it could have been a horrific show, but like it's done, and then you get to come back again tomorrow and start fresh. I loved the idea of doing deep research. I loved the idea of being under pressure every day and having to deliver, Like those were these things that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't been in a newsroom. You know, being a PA, as you know is I'm sure there's an equivalent in fashion production, right, somebody who gets coffee and they they run the errands, right, they do everything, and sometimes they get to go on an important, you know, errand, but usually it's something you know, running for us, running scripts, this and that. And I was good at all that, and I thought it was a great opportunity. I was good at making myself useful. When I talk to young people, I'm always telling them, like, you get your foot in, and then you have to figure out how to be valuable so that you don't just stay in that job that people say, oh, she's really useful and helpful on this, we should move her.
So what was the first thing that occurred to you that said, you know, I'm going to go here, because I feel like if I were a journalist, I mean, can you finish that thought?
Yeah, I would say at the very beginning, one of the things we covered was a Boston marathon.
So I'm a PA in Boston. I moved up.
I became an AP but when I really was starting at the beginning, and you could volunteer back in the day and work for free on a Saturday, So there are no laws against it, and so I did, and so I and my thinking was, if I want to be a journalist, I'm going to need to one have something to talk about that I've done that's not getting sandwiches and running scripts. And number two, they're going to let me be a producer on the Boston Marathon, which is, you know, doesn't really mean a thing. I mean, producer can mean a million things. And so I became a producer, which made my resume bigger and better even and then the printer broke actually, and so we had no printer, and so I ended up writing the entire show in a shark with another mouth. You know, but you sit in an interview for your next job, right, and you're like a funny story. When I was producing the Boston Marathon, the printers died.
We couldn't run scripts.
So I wrote the show, and you know, and so it gives you stories, it gives you something.
New culture exact culture.
Exactly, and so that I sort of figured out early. And that meant when I was next interviewing for a job as a reporter, I was a PA and an associate producer and a producer in Boston. No, no, I left to take a producer job at NBC News. I went to the network, and when I went there, I knew that I wanted more responsibility and that I would be allowed to start producing. And I know it's because I told people like I had been producing. I was responsible for the Boston Marathon show that we were airing. I don't know that I was thinking journalism as much as a job and working on a story probably be more of the way I would put it.
Right, So it wasn't like a plan for you to become this world famous kind of person, and you weren't yearning to do anything.
It was just you followed along the path. Am I getting that right? I think?
I think that's right, And I was good at it, right, So you're sort of like, oh, yeah, I'm actually pretty I can get sandwiches and also start editing scripts.
I can do this and that. Oh I like doing this.
I had a woman who I was working for who used to have me get her dry cleaning.
Oh.
People were so mad, You're not allowed.
To get people's dry clean And I'm like, you know what, this is a person who when I was looking for an apartment in Boston, which, by the way, was so expensive even back then, you know, and she would like hook me up with a friend who had a basement apart and for me to write. And I'm like, this is the quid pro quota of knowing people, favors getting promoted, getting you know, assistance, And so I think I kind of learned that as well. But I wouldn't say there was a strategic path. It was more of, huh, I'm actually pretty good at this.
Okay.
I got to figure out how to write scripts, I got to figure out how to do live shot, I got to figure out how to time out a show. I got to figure out how to do this next thing. But I'm pretty good at this, this and this.
So when did you go?
All Right, I'm not getting sandwiches anymore. That said, I've had it, And when did you go? I think I could be really good on air?
You know, this is a terrible this is a terrible story.
Back then, it was the collapse of the Soviet Union, right, So this was nineteen ninety one ish and I was watching this anchor woman who was so mean to me, and I remember thinking watching her do an interview about Russia, of which was something or the Soviet Union that she knew nothing about. And I remember thinking, well, shit, my questions could be equally as stupid, Like anybody could do that, Like she doesn't know a thing.
I remember, this is pre this is pre Google.
If you didn't know and you didn't have an expert on the phone, you could say, Professor Jones, tell me what I should be asking during this live breaking news conference. And I thought, well, she's she's really not smart. Anybody could do that. I could do that. That's careful, but that is literally what happened.
Wow, that's funny coming from like a Harvard graduate, you know, like someone who isn't not smart, like you are extremely smart?
Right?
I just had better questions. I mean I felt like I have decent Soviet Union questions.
Did you have like a break or something? Is there a scene from broadcast news like where you went, Like, oh my god, this is who I am. I can't believe it. I mean, what happened? How did you get there?
You know?
I often tell people, young people.
I was at an event over the weekend in Vegas and someone asked me my advice that I'm like, hard work is often underappreciated. I don't really have like the momentous event until much later in my career, because I think the first decade was really just a slog coming in early, staying late, helping people, doing it again, doing another rewrite, telling somebody, hey, do you need me to help you on this project?
You know, just sucking it up. Now.
Once I got to CNN and I was covering Hurricane Katrina, I think that coverage really helped define the work that I would do and what kind of a reporter I was. I think I sort of grew up on that. But by then that was two thousand and five. I had been at CNN for two years. You're already a star, darling. You're a star by two thousand and five.
Only in my own head, but no, I mean Celebrity Jeopardy what like literally nineteen ninety something, So you were already like a glamorous, fabulous star.
You know, seriously, Yeah, but I don't think anybody would say, oh, solidad. You know, she's the kind of reporter who does this, like where you come into your own you know what I'm saying, Like someone walks into a store and says, I need Isaac mss Rahi because he makes this dress and it's exactly what I'm thinking in my head versus like, oh, I know him, he's a designer. Let me go over here and look. And I think it became like I stood for something and I think I figured out my own I wonder if that happened to you, Like do you figure out like, ah, this is who I am, this is what I'm creating.
Darling.
I'm still trying to figure that out, and I'm literally strying to the Did you have, like any mentors in your career.
Was there some like person who helped you?
Oh, my gosh, so many.
Yeah.
I had a great first boster name was Jean Blake at WBZTV. She was the medical reporter and she was a great mentor because she was so intense and she was so smart, and she believed in quality so much that you know, I started my career at the very lowest levels, but with somebody who was like, precision is everything, Being right is everything, never be sloppy. And it's very easy to I think, enter the industry and if you're around people are like, eh, here's how you fake it, here's how you just get it done. It would be it would be easy to kind of grow up in a way that's a little bit sloppy, And instead I felt like I learned at the foot of somebody who was just obsessed with quality, and she also wanted to do a lot of important stories. She was one of the first reporters reporting on HIV AIDS. She was, and she had to battle people in the newsroom who didn't want to go on those stories.
A cameraman.
I mean so like, she was just a hardcore at every level in what she believed and what she did. And you know, you look back and you think there were plenty of perfectly good reporters who were not that right, who you couldn't say, you know, stood for something. A lot of people are like, hey, listen, I'm here for a paycheck. I like my job, it's fun, I enjoy it. But she was a really great first boss to have. And then my next boss was her colleague at NBC News. He was the medical reporter at NBC News, and same thing. He was obsessed with quality, and we got to work on a lot of interesting stories, and I think he was very much a person who allowed me to go out and just be in the field by myself and do stuff, which I appreciated. So I was very lucky, but you know, you learn. I think there's also people who mentor you and you see bad behavior and you're like, oh, oh, never do that.
Oh.
I've met a woman who used to say all the time, do you know who I am?
Was?
God, she's an acre woman. Do you know who I am?
She telled me, And I was like, oh, God, if I ever become an acre person, I will never do that.
That's horrible.
And what about whenever it was that you felt that you were on a great career path, right, did you have some kind of failure? Did you have some kind of setback that you both remember and learn something from.
Yeah, I had a lot of setbacks, but not that early. I think when I became a reporter at CNN and started anchoring, you know, you ended up being on a bigger platform. And I was doing a show I think it was called American Morning maybe and it got canceled. And the thing about being an anchor on a show, a news show for CNN, I think it still happens to this day is usually you read about it first before someone tells you.
It's not good.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and you realize at some point, like everybody's been there. But so I think to have something embarrassing happen, but to have it with everybody watching, like, oh.
My god, did you see her on air today? She's been fired?
I was hard. God, Oh my god.
You know, And so again I think you end up learning about like what are the things that I believe in and what are my values? Because for me, I remember getting to say goodbye they fired me and my co anchor, and they actually moved us into I got to go to the doc unit, which ended up being the greatest thing of my life. It actually made my career as documentarian. It allowed me to begin my own business at some point. So it it ended up being great, But at the moment, it felt terrible and embarrassing, very embarrassing. But I think, you know, you realize, like, okay, so how do you want to handle this thing that's public and awkward? And you know, who are you in how you're going to handle this publicly?
You know? It's funny.
So the dad, because I had a very public failure too in like nineteen ninety seven or whatever that was, and I swear to you I didn't perceive it as a failure. I swear like I kind of pulled the trigger myself. I made the decision to close my doors. But everybody was calling me and leaving me messages, and those those who were really persistent, like just wanted to commiserate with me, and you know who you are, you know, they just wanted me to be miserable, and I wasn't miserable. I felt like freer and better than I had ever felt in my life. And what you learn from failure, you know, it's like, not necessarily do you learn a lesson particularly, but you learn that you have what you need. If you're a smart person and you're committed to something and you love working, and you love excellence and you love quality, then you have what you need. Also if you have a dog that you love and a husband that you loved. You know, it's like all of that stuff, that's what you learn, not necessarily how to go forward in a more kind of though of course, you learn that. What you learn is that at the core, everybody is going to be okay, and failure is something that is constant.
It's every day, you know.
So let's talk for a minute, because I don't know why I talk to women this way, because I don't talk to men about this, but it's because they don't need to express this part of it. And I talked to homosexuals about this, and I talked to queer people about this. Talk to me about like being a woman in that industry for a second, Is there anything like that's not extremely general that you could point out about it or something.
I thought that being being a woman for me was less of an issue than being a mom.
Being a mom, you had.
To constantly convince people that, like you were still able to get on a plane and go cover a story and don't worry, we have a nanny. My kids will be fine, and they have a dad and he will watch them.
You know.
People would genuinely say like, oh my god, So like who's watching your kids?
I'm like, well, the fuck.
Is watching your kids? Dude with five kids? Like ro what are you talking about?
Wow?
So so that got annoying. So I think I ended up making a lot of jokes about it. I remember once I got a call actually during the tsunami in two thousand and four in Southeast Asia. They wanted to send me to Thailand, but I had just had twin boys and they were like, so they kind of called to say how they weren't gonna send me. Hey, we know you're a new mom you're a new mommy, and I'm sure you're home and so and I said to them like, oh my god, I now have four kids under four. Put me on a plane to Thailand. That sounds amazing actually right about now, you know. And and I think I constantly would joke about like ha ha, you know I have no money.
Uh huh, I've got four kids.
I got to keep you. You know.
My boss once came up to me at CNN when I had my twins, where I was pregnant with twins, and he said something like, listen, you don't need to make any decisions about what you want to do when you have your kids. And I was like, I can tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to work because I will have four children. I live in an expensive city like that. And I remember thinking there is not a soul in my husband's office who's taking him aside and saying, so listen, bread, bread, you know what, just you don't worry your pretty little head about what's going to happen after the kids are born. You know, if you don't want to work, it might be something to think. No one was having that conversation with him right at all. They were more like, so, you're not really going to take any time right off with these kids, You're.
Going to be back here.
Well wait a minute, a few things.
One.
I don't know if you saw Michelle Wolfe's amazing specials on Netflix, because she talks about this and it's really really hilarious. By the way, she's not a mother. But the other thing I was going to say is that Ra's chast she's that fantastic illustrator. And she was on the podcast and she said one of the smartest things I've ever heard. She said, you know, when you pick your husband, pick somebody who will help you know, are you married to a great guy that you I.
Am married to a great guy, and I think you know. I mean, whenever he would have the kids, people literally would come over and congratulate him. Oh my god, Brad, look at you. Yeah, because he's not babysitting those children aren't. Actually, it's not called babysitting when it's your own children, called babysitting when it's somebody else's exactly. So, yeah, No, he's great, and he's always been very sort of competent when it came childcare. And he's a great cook, so he loves to cook. I've never had any issues around how we were going to divide things up. He was busy, I was busy, and I think we both kind of did the thing that we were interested in doing. Like I was more than happy to do cleaning and garbage gathering. The guys of the dump love him, so he loves to go to the dump and hang out with the dudes.
At the dumb That is crazy.
There was a very short probably a month where he was so busy in traveling that I had to go to the dump and the guys for all, like, is everything okay with your marriage? He likes to cook. I don't like to cook. I love to do laundry, you know. So I think we were able to just say, like, let's just divide it up into what we want to do, and then every so often somebody's going to have to take on more because the other person's just really swamp. So I think he just was sane and also very ambitious for me, maybe was most helpful. And I think somebody being ambitious for you, they wanted to see where you could go. They were rooting for you all the way that that's been really wonderful. I really have felt very lucky that my husband has always been somebody who just is like, you know, I think if someone said, hey, your wife's going to make more money than you, he'd just be.
Like, WHOA, wow, that's great, let's do it.
Do you have like a great agent or a manager, or somebody that you work with on your team that you adore as well?
I work with Courtney Catzel.
They're now CIA, but they were ICM and she's fantastic, and she was the first young woman who I've ever worked with, and it's been great because I think often for someone like me, who if you've anchored a cable show or a network show, everybody wants to have you do the same thing you used to do this.
Hey, listen, we now have this open from two to four. Oh, we don't want to do that. Well over here, there's eleven to twelve. Oh there's this block over here.
And I think she just really was very good at saying, you know, maybe you want to do documentaries. Maybe you could create a business and sell series and specials and still anchor some stuff and do this and do that. But I think for a lot of people when I would say, you know, I think I want to run a production company, they would just look at me, like, you know, but what we have over here is such and such from twelve to two. That's what you do. So she could see it, where a lot of other people, I think just couldn't, you know, couldn't quite get it.
I don't know how you do it, because when I have to leave my dogs yeh, by the way, I'm not kidding. And it's never a rational kind of a fear. It's never a rational anxiety that you feel. It's just the emotional anxiety of leaving these beings that rely so much upon you right for any length of time. I mean, do you ever regret it? I'm sorry to go back to this, but I would like a good question because I feel like, is there ever a moment when you regretted not going to the tsunami? Did you go like, oh shit, if I wasn't lying here with these twins, like you know, I'm serious, Like, well.
They sent me.
I got to go to the tsunami, so I didn't regret that. But you know, I never regretted.
I didn't.
I didn't partly just I don't do a lot of like, you know, living and regret is sort of a little bit of how I'm made up.
But I remember my daughter. I went to school in New York City. She's twenty three now.
She's still mad that I didn't go to fourth grade graduation because here in New York City people graduate at the end of every and I'm like, what, what you're gonna We assumed, with all the money I'm spending on your education, you are going to do just fine and get through to graduation. But she was mad about it, and so the next year I made sure I went to graduation. I never regretted whatever I was doing as a parent. I never regretted being in the field. I love my work, and I think partly because my spouse was very supportive. I just think everybody knew, like, mom loves this job. Mom has a cool job, and she loves her job. I remember when I was trying to get to go to Haiti for the earthquake, and I was on the phone trying to get people, somebody to send me to Haiti, and my daughter was pretty young back then, so she's probably must have been five or six, and she's like somebody better send Mommy to Haiti. She's so I think that they both understood, like everybody's much happier if.
Mom gets to go on her stories.
And also like I did miss some things that they did, and we tried to come up with ways in which to stay engaged. I'm really close to all of my kids, and I know people who stayed home and have some tense relationship with their kids.
So I don't think the formula.
I don't think the formula is, you know, time with them equals equals right.
There isn't one answer for that. There really isn't.
But you know, we were also lucky.
I thank god, I have one child who's got very severe hearing issues, but outside of that, he's always been healthy. And you know, we didn't have any childhood illness, thank goodness. You know, we were pretty able to kind of make it work, and we had good help. I had a couple of bad sitters, but once I kind of cleared that out, I ended up having pretty good people who stayed for years and years and years when the kids were little. And you know, so all those things are very lucky, and if they if it goes wrong, then you find yourself with a bad sitter and having to travel. I had a sitter once who ended up. You know, someone told me that she was hitting my daughter, one of my daughters.
No, wow, Jesus, Well that'll make you feel anxious.
Well, now, just to continue this conversation about being a woman in your industry and a woman with a great deal of integrity. I remember a long time ago, I did this thing with Cindy Crawford. Remember George Magazine. It was a JFK junior is magazine that he ran, and he hired me and Cindy and we sat in his office and he clicked these slides for us and there was this kind of crazy mandate for politicians about what they should and shouldn't wear, like don't wear a dangling earring, don't wear too much eyeliner, you know, whatever it was. It was a bunch of stuff and it was shocking, and we commented on it and he published.
It as a story. Do you have a dress code?
Like do you have stuff that you should wear and shouldn't wear? And do you have a glam squad? Do you have a stylist?
So usually you get a stylist for your show because the show has kind of a dress code, so we do. We just started the ninth season of Matter of Fact, which is a show about public policy. It's a syndicated show, and so that show has a stylist, and we are just moved into a new studio and so we actually had to kind of rethink what we're doing and what we're wearing because now it's full body. I mean, part of what I was wearing was my I was in my bedroom during the pandemic shooting the show, so I only had to wear it like mattered from the waist up. So you know, I think we all sit around and say, you know, what is the show about, what makes sense for me, what makes sense for the audience, what makes sense for the stories? And then of course when you're in the field, over time, thank god, you just get better at figuring out like that buttoned down Oxfordy type shirt that you're wearing as you walk through a disaster zone.
You know, you figure out like this I can wear.
And you've all seen people who are inappropriately dressed on a story, but there was never like creezy or they have you know, fake eyelashes and you're like, well, you're covering a disaster, this is not okay.
I guess so, except there's a funny thing about working for networks, right, Like Deborah Messing once told me that when she first started appearing in Willn Gray, someone said, you know what, you have to wear a padded bra because your boobies are too small, you know. And I just wonder if you ever came across any of that kind of weird funny things.
There's less pressure like at the network. No one would say for me, at least, no one would ever say something like that. In local news, they did have a very big hand back then when I was there, and you couldn't cut your hair without permission, you couldn't rise without permission.
If you gained weight, it made people uncomfortable.
So I knew people who had those kinds of things in their contract, but I never saw that in network news. I had a boss once who told me when I was pregnant, I was always a very big, old pregnant lady. I just gained a lot of weight and he said I was making him uncomfortable. And I was like, you want to talk about uncomfortable, let me tell you about being uncomfortable.
That is hilarious.
Well, I'm sure there were things about how men dressed too, but it was simple. It was like, don't wear double breasted suits, you know. And I often wonder if David Muir gets notes like could you cut your hair a little bit, please shave or something, or I'm guessing he does get those notes. And I'm also guessing that men have stylists as well.
Yeah, most networks will do that.
Maybe the gap is closing a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I think most most men do at the network level.
So now do you notice something about the way people present themselves? Now that's different than say Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather or you know, Diane Sawyer or something. You know, It's like they were like quote unquote impartial. They couldn't say, oh my god, can you believe like what Donald Trump is saying today, you know, whereas like now I can tell when you talk how you feel about a certain thing.
You know.
Yeah, I think the thing I find frustrating is opinion right where people instead of saying okay, where they just want to talk only about their own point of view, And I'm like, I don't I don't care about your point of view. I want to hear from an expert, an expert I agree with, even maybe an expert I don't agree with. But I'm interested in others people's point of view, and if I'm giving my own opinion, it's here's how I feel about it, and let me tell you why I'm informed that way. So, for example, when you have a guest Don who is against interracial marriage, and often when I was at CNN, we would be reporting on that. I'm not gonna pretend as a kid who's a product of an interracial marriage, like, oh yeah, I have no thoughts on this, and that would just be that's just would be disingenuous, right think you you know. On the other hand, I'm not an expert outside of my own personal experience, so the whole segment is not going to be about my take on it.
I'm interested in their take.
But I feel like you have to explain to people your point of view if you have a strong one or some kind of connection. That said, I do think in the Walter Cronkite days, as much as they were objective, remember they left a whole bunch of communities just out right objective, and yet they're like, we don't believe these people.
Matter so right.
There, we got their point.
Of view by who they just left out right like they were not going to bother with certain communities, they were not going to hire certain people, and they did not think certain issues were worthy of talking about.
They didn't call it their bias.
They were completely objective, and yet there was tons of bias.
Darling, can you talk for a minute about where the phrase fake news is concerned, because you know, before twenty sixteen, if somebody reported on an insurrection taking place on the White House, they wouldn't refer to it as politicizing the news and questioning its veracity because we have the footage, we have the story, we know it happens. So can you address that a little bit as an insider, you know, a person who understands what the hell.
Is going on.
So I think fake news kind of the definition is just news you don't agree with, right. Some people do it jokingly, Oh that's fake news, and some people are very serious. But really it's news that doesn't reflect your own personal opinion. It cannot be real because you disagree. Part of the challenge has been that Cable specifically, but news organizations across the board. The news is only political now right. I mean, back in the day, I spent so little time talking to people at the White House. You'd say, Jane's at the White House, Jane. They say, that's right, soll it ad. The President's going to do blah bla blah blah, and you'd say, Jane Jones at the White House for us, Thank you, Jane, and you'd move on to all the other stories. And then suddenly we started covering really politics as kind of the main story. The country itself also at the same time becoming more and more partisan, and more and more divided, and more and more political, and then people started picking and choosing because every story became political. Part of the challenge is where I think news bears some responsibility. You know, they say, if you only have a hammer, everything's in right. And I think if if your whole point is to really just cover the politics of something, as opposed to going into communities and just reporting, traveling, doing stories. I do a public policy show, we do so little of reporting on politics. I do not let people on the air to argue. And also, one thing the news has really messed up is that when you put people against each other, Right, this person on the left and this person on the right. They fight in real life, it's usually not the way actual organizations ran. I mean, imagine if in your business you're like, I'm going to take my most far person over here, put them against this person who has a completely I'm gonna let them battle it out, you'd say, no, no, no. The person I want to elevate is the guy in my office or the woman in my office, who has consensus, who brings people together, who's interested in hearing people's suff of.
Course, but can you please take into account like what Twitter has done to the news, what social media you're done to the news.
Absolutely, the news is competing with Twitter. They're competing with social media. That means your stuff has to be more salacious and things that were just I can't believe they're covering that story became I don't believe this story. I remember when CNN had a breaking news Britney Spears cut her hair and we're like, this is so embarrassing, Like what this breaking news? Because we're CNN. Are we reporting on this story like it's a story?
Today? I think it's gone further.
But news is trying to compete with social media, right people, My daughters, my sons. They don't watch the news. I wish I could tell you they did, but they don't. They get snippets of the news through TikTok, through x now, through Instagram. They look up whatever they're interested in. They read the paper if it's sitting there on the table, but they don't run to the couch and sit down. My dad used to sit down and say, shush, everybody, make Neil lair news hours on and God, God save you, God save you if you were like made noise during the McNeil Larra news hour. But now, I mean news to some degree has become entertainment because they're trying to compete every time the news says like here's a heartwarming story from Instagram, this little kid, you know, funny wacky video, because they're trying to grab those eyeballs and migrate them over. But I think most of the people who are on social media have already seen it.
Do you think we're doomed a little bit?
Darling?
Do you think what do you think is going to happen? Yeah?
Right, Like, don't you think it's corroded to such an extent now by social media? It's kind of like yell, people just go, oh, I hate that restaurant. Meantime, they're talking about a really good restaurant, and I don't know why they're hating on it so much, just because they have nothing better to do with something, you know what I mean.
It starts becoming a little irrelevant, and I think that is a real risk. But you know, there's a whole generation of people, I think, who are going to come up with a new strategy because right now, news on the Internet is literally just migrated from the evening news. Right every time you see it, it's a boy and a girl and.
They're sitting next to each other and they're like, oh, that's right, bob. You know they they had this chit chat.
They haven't figured out like, all right, but what is news delivery on the internet in a way that people will actually say, oh, I like this. We really haven't figured that out yet. I think a lot of what people want to see is traveling, going places, bringing information. It's why documentaries, I think do so well. People are interested in understanding context. Yeah, the little show that we do, I'm telling you does so well. And it's we don't allow politicians on, we don't allow debates.
We literally send.
Crews, and we just say we are here to serve the viewer, and so I'm here to help them under understand an issue.
So here's an ishow. We're going to dig.
Into it, and we're going to help you walk away smarter. You're going to get it. I mean, it's crazy.
You might be onto something, darl You might be onto something if someone approached the news as though they were cutting a documentary. But of course then you have the editor who feels a certain way and who feels that you know that the insurrection was a lie, or that the Holocaust was a lie, or that slavery was a lie. I just wonder if there's a way around any of that anymore.
It's a scary time.
Is there an agency?
I don't know.
It's a scary time, Listen. I think that we're in the middle of a very big shift because what exists is not working. And I think you have you know, the viewership of these shows is dropping. And I remember years ago, you know, a lot of these news shows were the most important twenty two minutes of the day.
You wake up and you had to watch what was happening, and that's.
Just not the case today, Darling, Do you have conversations with people about what you watched this morning. You didn't because you've seen it already. If you missed it, it's already on Instagram. You can read the transcript on the internet.
You missed nothing.
And so I do think it's a very scary time for the end Street for sure.
Have you altered your reality based on followship or something like do you make your show fun and short or something, because you know that that's what gets people's attention.
Me on social media is very different than my show on social media, they just don't overlap that much. My boss was saying this the other day. She's like, our viewers are on TV. We're a syndicated show. We're a network of affiliates people who watch us. So we actually spend a lot of time traveling to Kansas City, Nevada, at West Palm Beach, Houston where we have stations and we go meet with people and we say, what's your story here? Because one thing people hate is having someone report on stories in their hometown and get it wrong. Whenever a poor reporter had to come to Long Island and they hadn't been there and they're like hop poggy and missing wog. I mean, they couldn't pronounce anything, you know, and you just knew, like this person doesn't know anything about this neighborhood.
They're just faking it.
And I do think that we try to make sure that we're going to talk about, you know, why are rural hospitals in Nebraska closing and what's the implication of that around the country. Like that's what we do, and for me, it's just much more interesting. That's just not on social media. It's not what's happening.
Well, you know what. My final question for you, it's about your obituary. What's the headline say and what is it about.
I've actually thought about this so much because people often ask you about your legacy, and I really think my obituary, my obituary would say something like solidad O'Brien, dedicated mom, devoted wife and really committed member of her community, drop dead yesterday. She was known for doing X, Y and Z and journalism. But like I think, like those are the things, right, don't you want to be like a good person. I want people to say, like, oh my god, my mom died and she was amazing.
I love I love people who love their parents.
I love My parents passed away a couple of years ago, and I just I miss them so much, and they were such good people and you know, you couldn't There's nothing you'd find on Google about them. They were just great people and I really miss so and I felt very lucky to have them. So I hope I'm that this is incredible. I mean, what an inspiration to hear that from you. I would never have guessed that, never, yes, especially not after this talk that we've had, that you would value those personal things more than oh, yeah, than you would like. You know, Solodet O'Brien, huge star on television, huge journalist, with incredible integrity, and no, none of that.
You don't care. You just want to be a good person.
That's great, No, I mean, you know, you win.
I like winning awards, But isn't it much nicer when you have a kid who like turns out well, or who takes your advice, or who just is a nice person and who loves us. My kids are all getting into that twenties age and it's really nice.
It's really nice, incredible, incredible, very inspiring answer, Darling. Okay, well, what do you want to promote on this podcast?
I'm going to promote matter of Fact because we were talking about it, and I think it's a really good option for people who are trying to get news. That's they're going to walk away learning more and understanding more. Our goal is to really serve the audience and help people understand issues. It's a syndicated show in the ninety five percent of the country, so you can find us online just by googling us matter of Fact dot tv. We'll tell you where we are in your matter of effect. Neck of the Woods matter of Fact with Solidad O'Brien.
I can't wait. Thank you, Thank you so much, so Lad you're the best.
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Nice to talk to you.
That was such a fascinating talk because I know Soldat O'Brien a little bit, and I know that she's a planner. One of her famous quotes is like, you know, one way to come across, you know, as someone smart, is to be more prepared than anyone else in the room. And when you consider all of that, and you consider that, you know, she and her entire family went to Harvard, right, and then the whole way that she sort of fell into journalism fell into the career that she has now and how incredibly far that has taken her, as you know, both a news anchor and a media personality. It's just so inspiring that she ended the whole thing by talking about what would be in her obituary, you know, like, oh, she was a great mom and a great wife, like all of that is always such a surprise to me coming from such incredibly erudite and accomplished personalities. And it was very, very inspiring to me personally that she cares more about being a good person and leaving the legacy of a good person behind as opposed to some kind of like giant, giant giant superstar who took over the world. I just think that's so inspiring, especially when you consider what we're all going through right now. You know, it's just inspiring when someone says they want to be remembered for being a good person. Well, I will always remember Sola Dad O'Brien for being a good person.
Darlings.
If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favorite and tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone you know.
Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love rating stuff.
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I Am Isaac Musrahi.
This is Isaac Misrahi, thank you, I love you, and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by Me Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti. Vis Executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Caarra Welker, and Nathan Klokey at Imagine Audio, Production management from Katie Hodges, Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Wilson. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah katanak At I Am entertainment,
