Dealing with misinformation is tough. It’s prolific. It spreads like wildfire. You don’t want to elevate something and elevate a conspiracy that’s circulating or something. So, you’re addressing it on air, but you’re also dealing with it when you’re dealing with officials who may have seen this misinformation and think it’s real.
And this is why it’s important to be right in on everything and be extremely prepared is because if somebody brings it up in an interview, you as the anchor need to be able to say that’s not true or that was exaggerated or that was a clip actually from 2012 that wasn’t even relevant to this. because you need to be able to to nip that stuff before it spreads even further. Hi, I’m Caitlyn Collins.
I’m CNN’s chief White House correspondent and anchor of The Source at 900 PM. And today we’re going to be reviewing movie clips and TV shows to review how the news is done on TV versus real life. Let’s start with watching a scene from the newsroom. >> Heads up. >> Where’s what’s going on? >> All hands has been a shooting in Tucson and a congresswoman Gabrielle Gard’s been shot in the head. Good morning.
>> Okay, this is pretty realistic just in terms of when there is breaking news, people are running inside the newsroom, yelling, screaming. There’s a a bit of a frantic atmosphere at times, especially when it’s something incredibly serious and that you know is going to to potentially take over the news cycle.
>> Give me our Tucson affiliate. >> Charlie Skinner, New York controls breaking in in 15 minutes. >> Tess, >> I’m giving you a phone number. That’s something that I do think resonates in terms of obviously the newsroom is a dramatized version of what actually happens in real newsrooms. But that moment when you are covering a story and it goes from every network is covering something different or there’s specials happening and then everyone breaks in with the same story.
If there is a mass shooting or or a major death or a huge development, it’s this feeling covering news that that things can change any moment. And anytime you say, you know, it’s a slow news day, in an instant, that can change. >> We’re cutting into our program with breaking news. A local Tucson newspaper is reporting that Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Gabrielle Gfords has been shot while holding a public event in Tucson outside of a grocery store.
you know, there’s such a difference in in a regular program and when there is breaking news because when there’s a regular show, you know, you’ve thought through all the segments and the guest and as an anchor, I’ve reviewed, you know, pretty much every word that is that is in the show that I’m going to be reading that night, the questions that we’re going to be asking.
But when there’s breaking news, you don’t have time to do that because sometimes it happens as you’re sitting down in the chair as it does here. I mean, clearly he has one piece of paper in front of him. He has no information in front of him. and you kind of are sitting down helming this moment where you know you have a very limited set of information available to you and you figure it out on a rolling basis.
You don’t know who’s you’re going to be talking to next. There are moments in the control room where we’ve had breaking news happen and there’s one person that is relevant that we want to hear from while they’re still calling and getting other guests on air and you’re just with that one person or that one reporter.
There’s nothing imprompter. It’s just totally blank. A and there have been a lot of shows where we’ve had that for the entire show and it feels like the 60 minutes passes in 5 minutes. There’s no commercial breaks, nothing to reset. It’s just you and the camera and you’re just listening as these reporters are are feeding in the news in real time.
>> NPR is saying she’s dead. >> Anyone else? >> No, >> she’s not dead yet. I think that was a great news instinct actually there because there are moments where this happens and when it is breaking news whether it’s a mass shooting or or anything you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t want to report something erroneously.
You want to report as updated and new information as possible but you don’t want to get anything wrong. I mean we’ve seen moments of this with with President Trump’s attempted assassination where you don’t know the extent of it. Was he hit? What happened? Obviously with with Charlie Kirk. I mean, we saw that play out as well because initially it was shots were fired at a Charlie Kirk event.
That doesn’t mean that he himself had been shot. You’re still waiting to to confirm that. Moments later, we confirmed that, but obviously it’s chaos happening on the ground in Utah as we’ve seen from the videos of of the attendees. Then obviously later on it was there were videos that surfaced. I mean, I think that is something that’s changed in terms of the Gabby Gford shooting and where we are now with social media that you’re watching all this in real time, trying to discern what’s real and what’s not.
I I think obviously with something as grave as this, you wait for official word. It’s not It’s something you’re reporting that’s so serious and has such grave consequences that there is no room for error in a situation like this. >> We’re going to show you now an interview Gabriel Gfords gave just last year. This is Congresswoman Gfords.
>> All right, hang up. What’s going on? >> I’ll call security. >> Every second you’re not current, a thousand people are changing the channel to the guy who is that’s the business you’re in. >> This is real that during a sound bite sometimes or when someone’s talking that that’s when the anchor is getting fed a lot of the information or or getting the latest updates that are approved for air because otherwise in real time you’ll be listening to to the control room, but you’re also listening to what the guest
is saying. And you kind of have to be able to do both at the same time and juggle both to know, you know, first what’s the latest in in this breaking news situation, but two also what is your guest saying and making sure you’re keyed into that as well. >> MSNBC, Fox and CNN all say she’s dead. Don, tell them.
Don, it’s a person. A doctor pronounces her dead, not the news. >> You as the anchor are in control of what you say. really the buck stops with you because yes, someone may say this is how we should frame this or this is the question we should ask. You’re the one who actually has to say it and to ask the question and so I think you know with my team personally everyone throws out ideas or has suggestions or we debate how to do something but ultimately it’s it’s your call as the anchor as to what you’re saying on air.
In a moment like this, I mean he’s he’s basically encouraging him saying everyone else is reporting that she’s dead. We’re the ones who are behind. We look slow. And you can see the editorial people seem to be in clear disagreement with him because they don’t have it yet. >> NPR called it wrong. She’s alive.
>> She’s alive. >> Well, all right. We’re learning now that Gerts is being prepped for surgery. And we have our ACN affiliate at University Hospital. >> There’s no music playing in the background when this is all happening. Just for the record. >> And now we’re going to watch a scene from the morning show. >> Over twoird of its passengers and crew mysterious illness.
What the is she doing? I I don’t know. >> I’m coming. >> I love this moment where the control room is like, “What the f is she doing?” Obviously, this is a really serious story that she’s about to to reveal, but you know, as an anchor, you think about what are they saying in the control room versus what you’re doing out on the set.
>> A spokesperson for the cruise line says that they are working. >> She walks in front of the camera, which is obviously a huge no that you never walk in front of the camera. Even if you’re in commercial break, I walk behind the camera. It’s a good lesson to have as a reporter so that never happens. >> What’s your name? >> They are quote sorry this cruise short of the standard.
>> 15 years I’ve never met Joe. >> There are definitely people who don’t always know the names of the the photojournalists who are behind the cameras. I think a good lesson for every reporter is to always know your PJs. When I started at the White House, they were immensely helpful to me because they’re reporters.
I mean, they they watch everything just as much as we do. And they were instrumental in my success covering the White House. And they’re my boys. is I love them. The the PJs are the best. >> What the hell? >> All of the ship’s passengers will get a full refund due to the outbreak. >> Stay on three. >> I mean, you can see it in Bradley’s face here as she’s reading the report about this cruise that she’s not even really paying attention to, but like she’s also keeping an eye on what’s happening beside her. That’s actually a skill you
do have to have if you’re on camera, is to kind of be self-aware of what’s happening around you, especially in the press briefing room at the White House. you know, you’re delivering a report and speaking to the anchor, but there’s four people next to you doing the same thing. And you you have to have this ability to kind of tune out what is happening around you, but also still be paying attention enough to to be aware of if someone’s walking into the room, they’re trying to hand you something, a piece of paper with information on it. You you do
have a moment where despite what’s happening in your surroundings, you have to kind of ignore it and just pay attention to the camera. >> And there are some really bad things going on here. Some really bad things. to some really bad. They’re bad people. And >> are we doing this? >> Yeah. You want to >> We should just tell the truth quickly.
They’re going to cut us off. We have 1 minute. >> Let’s go. >> Roll the tape. >> Ignore that, Donnie. Do not roll tape. Stay on the teacup and get everything. >> It’s such a great scene with Jennifer Aniston. I mean, she really the buildup to this moment. I think they did a really good job with just dramatically in terms of, you know, she’s being self-critical, saying she’s never met Joe, the camera operator.
her co-orker is trying to kind of hold it down in case she’s just having a meltdown. Clearly, this is the moment where it switches and I think Bradley starts to realize what’s about to happen. >> We would like to share some information about our network. >> We believe Fred Miklin to have been central in creating an environment that silenced women who came forward to complain about sexual misconduct.
>> Those No. >> Typically, there a CEO would not be in or the president of the news company would not be in the control room. that happens on special occasions or or sometimes that they’re just dropping by. But I I do think that if you were in a moment like this and the president or the CEO was inside the control room, they’d probably listen to what they are saying if they’re saying, “No, keep going. Stay on this.
” I think that would be a debate maybe between the the news team that’s in there and and the CEO, but typically they probably listen. Corporate culture comes from the top down and Fred Miklin dictated a culture of fear and silence. >> I always say I have no idea what’s going on in the control room because I know my role at the desk and in front of the camera and I defer to the control room for for a lot of issues because you know they’re in there and they are listening to a million things.
Everyone’s got headsets on so a lot of people can key in to me and talk to me if they want to. Typically, it’s only one person, unless it’s a big interview or a breaking news situation and the executive producers doing something else. But it’s basically the senior producers sit at the front. Then you’ve got the more junior producers. You’ve got bookers in there.
So, if there is breaking news, I mean, it’s chaos in the control room because the bookers are trying to get people on air. and they’re telling the producers who they’ve gotten gotten ready, when they’re ready to go on air. People are preparing graphics, people are preparing questions, intros, and they’re also doing math the whole time because they have to time it with the commercial breaks.
Something that I am not very helpful with when my interviews go long. But I always say my job is not to do the math. My job is to ask the questions. And this is a scene from the West Wink. >> We’re at threat condition Bravo right now. >> Why? >> Why? >> Cuz five Bay sleepers we were watching disappeared. They disappeared. Yeah. And it coincides with increased chatter.
We’re hearing you print. We did this right now and I’m worried what the five guys are going to do. >> 3 days and I get an exclusive on the sleepers. Done. >> This scene is actually really interesting because I do think that happens to a degree where there have been moments where people try to get you not to report things and there are moments where you hear officials say it’s a national security matter.
you shouldn’t report on it for this reason. Is that sometimes the case? I do think so. Is it usually the case? Probably not. I think when Trump got COVID and he tested positive, we heard from people who said it was a national security issue to report before that that people around him had gotten COVID.
Obviously, it was relevant to the president’s health. We reported it anyway. But there were moments where people try I mean, they’ll try anything to get you not to report what you’re reporting, I think. And so you have to be good at discerning as a reporter what’s truth, what’s what’s spin. Um, and and knowing that I don’t think the national security adviser and the press secretary would come out to the to the press area where we sit, which is actually underneath the briefing room that you watch on TV. We have little tiny offices
underneath there where we’re all kind of crammed in in very close quarters and that’s where we work from when we’re not in the briefing room. I would be rare to see the press secretary down in that area. But there is this interaction between the press corps and the press office where you can go upstairs, you can stand outside the press secretary’s office and often when there’s breaking news, you’ll see a line of reporters outside the office waiting to get comment or clarity.
I can remember this happening when President Zalinsky visited the White House and there was a huge blow up with President Trump and then they basically pushed him out the door and then had him leave. Several of us were upstairs in Caroline Levit’s office uh trying to get details on what happened behind the scenes after that huge blow up that everybody watched on TV.
>> If it’s determined that genocide is taking place, the United States is compelled to intervene. >> The problem is the convention distinguishes between acts of genocide and genocide. >> It distinguishes between acts of genocide and genocide. >> It does. Mark, >> how many acts of genocide constitute a genocide? >> I don’t know.
Danny, >> what’s the weather report for Sunday? >> Two below with the windchill. That’s a full lid. Good night. If you’re a White House correspondent, you are tracking every single thing the president does and you’re trying to talk to your sources about what’s coming next, what they’re they’re doing, what’s happening behind the scenes.
You’re tracking all of his movements and speeches. I mean, there’s so many quotes of of President Trump’s or even President Biden’s, both of whom I’ve covered, where you can kind of recite it from memory because a lot of politicians say the same thing repeatedly over and over again. I think being a White House correspondent is the greatest job in the world because you’re covering history.
You can cover healthcare one day, you’re covering Russia the next day, you’re covering Jeffrey Epstein the day after that. It’s kind of like school. You’re studying constantly. I mean, I remember during COVID calling doctors and asking them to explain spike proteins to me because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about when I was on TV subsequently or in briefings.
And so, being a White House correspondent, you really have to know at least something about almost everything because you never know what’s going to come up. And now we’re going to watch a scene from Bombshell. >> Yes, sir. You idiot. That’s not Glenn Fry. It’s Don Henley. >> Dump the b- roll. >> Back to anchor. That’s not Glenn Fry.
That’s Don Henley. >> Oh >> What the Kayla? I’m sorry. I don’t know secular music. >> The Eagles. >> Luckily, that has not happened to me. I have an excellent team who ensures that this doesn’t happen because you’re not in control of what goes up on screen, but you are accountable for what is on the screen when this is happening.
And so obviously when it’s something like that, you never want to get it wrong. You never want to All of these are people that you’re reporting on and you don’t want to misspell their names. You don’t want to misidentify them. You don’t want to use the wrong picture. I mean, that is like the ultimate control room rule.
Mistakes do happen, but you want as few as possible. I would like none, basically. Down in the basement is the Fox News room. All our shows have crews who work in these pods. This is my staff. We do have a whole newsroom section at CNN. We have a round section in the middle where a lot of the editors sit and that’s basically kind of the nucleus when like decisions are made.
What are we going with? Is this cleared for air? Is this source approved for for reporting on air? And then there are show teams that are in pods as well in different areas. It’s rowdy and they’re all talking and debating what guests we should have on or what question we should ask. And so it roughly is is is like that. The actual studios are scattered around the building.
Most anchor and show offices are here. Above are Fox Business, radio, New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Most of the American conservative establishment in one building. >> I mean, my show is actually our set is actually in the newsroom in Washington. And so you can see behind us like those are desks. They’re not fake desks.
Real reporters actually sit at those. They’re working late if they’re there when when we’re on air. But yeah, that is generally what it looks like. And every section, every show is like kind of sectioned off um by show team. >> The anchors and their key producers have base campus here on 17 and 18, often decorated with viewer art.
>> Actually, this is really funny because in my office right now on my door in New York, there are two pictures of me that are not flattering, but that someone drew with good intentions, I believe, and mailed them to me and said that if I would like to get them framed, uh that I’m free to do so.
And so we just put them on my on my door so everyone can see them. I get a lot of weird stuff in the mail. And now we’re going to watch a scene from Anchor Man. >> Well, that’s going to do it for all of us here at Channel 4 News. You stay classy, San Diego. I’m Ron Burgundy. >> Damn it. Who typed a question mark on the teleprompter? >> It’s such a great scene.
It’s like I’m Caitlyn Collins. It does show you why punctuation is important. Because even if I’ve read it and I know what I’m going to be saying and I’ve edited it or even written it at times, you still have to have it right so when you’re reading it, it doesn’t sound like you’re reading it.
That is the art of, you know, being a good anchor is that you read off a prompter, but people can’t really tell. >> From the entire Channel 4 News team, I’m Veronica Corningstone >> and I’m Ron Burgundy. Go yourself, San Diego. >> It’s harder than it seems. I think people think it’s it’s really easy and that I do think there is a a bit of anchor manish in in some people’s brains that reporters just sit down and read whatever’s in the prompter and then that’s it.
Only anchors really use prompter. I as a reporter at the White House, I never use a prompter because it’s your reporting. You should be able to report it without needing scripts or notes. Uh, obviously when you’re doing an entire show and you want to make sure editorially everything is is crisp and clean, you basically type something into i news, this news program, and whatever is in there pulls up on the teleprompter to where even if you make a small change and then you save it, it immediately changes on the teleprompter. And so you
can see that this happens all the time. We cut introductions in half or segments or questions and they go out the window. And now we’re going to watch a scene from Good Night and Good Luck. That’s too much. >> Don, a commercial in the booth. What do you want me to do? >> 2 minutes later. >> I just rewatched this whole movie recently.
Actually, there’s definitely no smoking anymore. Maybe vaping. I’m just kidding. >> Keep it down, please. It’s a little loud. >> Can I just say one thing that stands out to me though about this? When I watched this movie recently, it’s all men basically who are making the decisions and and reporting the news. You just I mean that’s obviously you watch it and that was indicative of the time but you watch it now and it’s so different.
>> Our reporter Joe Worba cameraman Charlie Mack. >> This is the town of Dexter, Michigan. Population 1500. >> This statue is at the end of Ann Arbor. >> In this they’re like doing interviews and then days later cutting the tape and recording it and putting it on and oftent times in the movie a point of tension is they’re just rolling it hot and they’re truly running the tape over and it’s seconds away from not making it.
That’s true to a degree that still happens. If we’ve done an interview right before the show that we’ve pre-taped and then we’re we’re airing it and we haven’t had time to perfectly cut it and and make it as nice and timed as we’d like. It would be nice to have it cut perfectly, but the news is not perfect, which is I always remind my team.
I mean, we we want everything to be correct editorially, but sometimes, you know, you’re living it in real time and you’re just rolling the interview. Uh, and then afterwards, you know, you can adjust and and you don’t have to stick to a script or anything like that. Was it hearsay, rumor, gossip, slander, or hard ascertainable facts that could be backed by credible witnesses? We do not know.
We believe the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father even though that iniquity be proved and in this case it was not. >> I think he’s in one of the best journalists of all time. And I think the takeaway from this movie and why I loved the the the play was so huge is that what Edward Armoro did is not was not guaranteed or pre-ordained.
And I think people accept it now as as fact that he was able to to push back on on McCarthy and to to hold these senators accountable who were intimidating people and getting them fired for no reason. I mean, he dealt with it on his own staff. But that wasn’t a given. I mean, that was because he was brave and courageous and willing to fight with the top brass at his network and to say editorially this is the right thing to do.
And we don’t actually know what the end result’s going to be. He had no clue that that he would be revered decades later for for what he did. But he took that moment and I think it’s important to remember he was risking his own reputation, his job, his financial security by just reporting what he felt was was right.
>> But we believe too that this case illustrates the urgent need for the armed forces to communicate more fully than they have so far done. >> They’re in the control room. my my team is, but they are, you know, when you’re when you’re doing an interview or you have a big report, they’re the ones who are in your ear saying, you know, two more minutes, got to wrap, this is it, or keep this going because we’re going to skip a commercial break because something huge has just happened.
You really have to have a trusting relationship with your producers because they’re basically your eyes and ears for what you can’t see when you’re on air and when you’re reporting the news. I loved the the camaraderie though between the two of them in the film and in the play because I think that is actually really important with your team, whether it’s your White House team, your producers, your show team, because you have to have a a level of trust with them that you’re all kind of in this together and you’re all working for for
one great show that you want to produce. >> And it seems to us that is Fred Friendley and myself that this is a subject that should be argued about endlessly. Good night and good luck. >> I mean, I probably laughed the hardest at Anchor Man because this is like my dad’s favorite movie and his perception of what news was when I started.
And I love having like my family come into the newsroom and to to CNN to see like what it’s actually like behind the scenes because I think there’s so much more behind the scenes than people realize than you just sitting down or people telling you what to ask and what to say. That’s just not how it works.
Um, but I but I do love that and I unfortunately I think because Anger Man is so popular that it is now in the lexicon that people think that’s a newsroom with Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone. Most meaningful probably Good Night and Good Luck because I do think Edward Maro’s work is is instrumental and it’s such a classic film but it still resonates today because all of the undertones of of what’s in there and the messages and and what the work that they were doing was still resonates.
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
