Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim on Their New Podcast, Fake News and the Risks of News Avoidance
The World With Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim, a new weekly global affairs podcast from the well-known NBC News and Sky News faces, will only launch on Wednesday, Oct. 9. But its two stars are already busy preparing for it.
The podcast, revealed exclusively by The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, promises to “combine eyewitness reporting from the front line of the world’s most hazardous areas with in-depth analysis and conversation with some of the most important and influential figures on the global stage.”
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On Wednesday, Sky News’ Hakim, recently deployed to Beirut in Lebanon, and NBC News’ Engel, as he was on his way to Beirut, took time for a video call with THR about their vision for the podcast, the challenge of fake news, the rise of social media and AI and the risks of more people avoiding the news. Plus, they gave a first taste of how they converse when the TV cameras are not on.
Yalda, you are already in Beirut, and Richard, you are en route there. Will you two meet up soon and discuss the first edition of your podcast?
YALDA HAKIM He will be on air with me tonight. As soon as he lands, he’s coming to do the end of my TV show with me. So we’re going to catch up for the first time on-air probably.
Will the audio format allow you to approach news and hot topics differently from the way we are used to seeing you two on TV? And I know podcasts have been on the rise, but why did you two find this the right time to launch a podcast?
HAKIM I’d say: why not?! We are at the forefront of the world’s biggest stories, the biggest conflicts right now, whether it’s Ukraine or whether it’s the war in Gaza. Richard was recently in Gaza. And we’re talking to the biggest players on the planet. Just in the last week, I spoke to the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. We’re speaking to leaders. We’re speaking to ordinary people. Both Richard and I have an incredible platform where we basically have a front-row seat to what is happening, and we’re holding those in power accountable, but we’re also allowing people to understand what’s going on in the world.
I think this podcast will really open it up beyond news reporting, beyond anchoring, beyond the journalism that you see through our pieces and packages and the storytelling we do to be able to really offer deeper analysis. And we can have a conversation and friendship between two foreign correspondents. You know, we rarely see that behind-the-scenes window that we’re letting the world into. Our paths have crossed for a long time, and we’re hoping that we can bring that to the airwaves, on a deeper level.
But also at a time when people are incredibly nervous and they are anxious about what they’re seeing, there is a lot of news avoidance. We just want to help people understand what on Earth is going on. And we truly believe that what is happening here in the Middle East does impact peopeople everywhere.
[Looks over her shoulder.]
Sorry, I can hear another loud boom right now. This has been the state of things: we’re hearing drones, we’re hearing sonic booms, we’re hearing loud explosions every few hours at the moment here in the capital Beirut.
RICHARD ENGEL First of all, I agree with everything she said. Conceptually, as Yalda was saying, I really believe this job, this career, gives us the privilege to ride in the front car of the train of history. And that’s the best part of journalism. It’s the thing that gets me excited every single morning. We have this unique profession that allows us to travel and be curious and have a press pass. That is the most wonderful thing in the world, that we get to go places. I almost can’t even believe that we are allowed to go to places in times of political flux and ask around, and that’s an acceptable job. I do reports for NBC platforms. Yalda does her show on Sky and does reports for Sky. But there’s a lot more that can be done.
Oftentimes, we find that when we’re having dinner or we have people over, the conversations that we’re having together over a drink or a coffee or a meal people usually find more interesting, or as interesting, as the stories that we’re doing on our respective platforms. So why not do that in a [podcast] at this particular moment? Because if you stay with the train of history analogy, the train is going through some very rough terrain at this moment, and people are genuinely scared. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience in your personal lives, but just a few days ago, I was talking to some friends and to a neighbor, but I don’t really know her very well. She was almost in tears. She comes to me and she sees me as a person who deals with the news, and I represent world events to her. With the election in the U.S., with climate change, with what just seems like endless wars in the Middle East that seem to be getting more and more violent and there seem to be no rules, and kidnapping children and torture and massive carpet bombings, people are terrified of the world.
And that fear leads to, I think, two outcomes. People either make really bad political decisions. They go for the person who says that they can make all the problems go away, even if they can’t, or they go into news avoidance mode. They just try and bury their head in the sand. And I think both options are bad — either falling for simplistic rhetoric when times are tough or just trying to pretend and avoid everything: ‘I’m just going to focus on my family, I’m going to focus on my little garden. I’m going to focus on my hobbies,’ or whatever it is. But what we’re hoping to do is — in addition to doing our reports, which are fundamental to this because that’s what keeps us moving, that’s what keeps the material flowing and keeps that press pass alive — [is] allow people into a more intimate conversation, a more personal conversation.
I do news reports, and lights come on and there’s the camera on me, and behind me, maybe there’s a blown-out building, or maybe there’s a crowd, or maybe there’s a rooftop, or whatever the situation is. But that’s not the way I talk at home. I don’t carry around studio lights at home when I’m having dinner with my wife and turn it on and she asks me a question and I give an answer. We’re human beings too, and those kinds of conversations that Yalda and I have been having over the years are the ones we’re going to be bringing to this platform.
I did recently hear a young woman say that she doesn’t watch the news anymore because it’s all horrible, but she does listen to hours and hours of podcasts.
ENGEL Send her an email or tell her to listen. Because that’s it. People are terrified. They don’t want to turn on the news. They’re afraid. ‘But okay, I know Richard, I know Yalda. These are nice people. Maybe they’ll give me a [better] sense.’ Because tuning out is a bad thing.
Have you guys found yourselves covering the news in different ways or looking for new angles in the age of fake news? I’m always thinking: these people are risking their lives to go places and tell us what they see, but I hear others berating journalists and not trusting what they report.
HAKIM We’re in an ever-changing world with technology, and with that technology comes the positive and the negative. I often talk about covering this particular war in the Middle East. It has been particularly difficult because it is a conflict that is also gripped by social media, and you are constantly targeted, attacked. People are dissecting what you say. They clip it up in different ways, and they sometimes take it out of context. So, on top of the stress of what we’re actually covering, there is the social media elements of this, and the trolls and those who are sitting either in their basements or have big opinions and views about what we’re doing. As you say, sometimes we are risking our lives, leaving our families behind because of the privilege of what we do and the fact that we believe in what we do and in getting the truth out there.
I have often said, whether it’s interviewing militants or when I was interviewing the Taliban, I was saying to them: if it’s good, I’ll report it; if it’s bad, I’ll report it, because I’m trying to get to the heart of the truth. So you’re better off just talking to me and allowing me to interview you, rather than avoiding me or not wanting to talk to me because I’m a woman, or because you think I’m Western media, or you think I come here with an agenda.
So I think in the climate that we are in, we’re not necessarily looking for different angles. I just want to get to the heart of the truth, because the truth itself is being questioned by people. We’re seeing a lot of fake news, fake imagery, and things being taken out of context, being plastered all over social media, and people have very strong views on these things.
Engel I feel very strongly about the subject as well. And it’s not just people who are having fun with it or trolls. It’s also government campaigns to utilize the news. A lot of this stuff doesn’t happen by accident. I think of two kinds of censorship in the world: there’s the old-fashioned kind of censorship where you don’t like the reporter, you take them out back and shoot them and burn down the newspaper, or put so many lawsuits up that the newspaper can no longer function. The newer kind of censorship is where you delegitimize the whole message. You put so much static and noise and chaos out there that people can’t tell what’s real, can’t tell what’s fake. They question everything, and in that environment of static, they turn off. The end result is the same, which is good for strong men, which is good for dictators, which is good for people who don’t want to know the truth. If you question everything, and everything is possible and nothing is certain and nothing is true, then I don’t want to believe anything except what I already believe or what some authoritarian figure wants to tell me.
Part of it is the nature of the platform, and part of it is put there by design to keep people misinformed. So the more we can do with our podcast to get people engaged, to keep them engaged, the [better].
Hopefully, they’ll realize we’re real people. I’m not an avatar. Yalda is not an avatar. We have children. We’re friends. If some AI were to try and copy us, well, good luck! We have to do the best we can. I think it’s partly because of that climate of fear, of mistrust, of the chaos in the information space that you need to have these kinds of intimate conversations. And if you like it and you walk away informed, you’re going to want more. That’s been our experience in the past when people have interacted with us and they don’t walk away thinking, that’s all fake news.
HAKIM Wherever we go, people want to know what’s going on. We both get approached. If I’m at the school gate, if I’m out and about, people say to me: ‘What on Earth is going on in X, Y, and Z place?’ And this is really a space where we can sort of have those conversations with the two of us, with guests, and analyze, break down what’s going on based on the experiences we’ve had and the people that we’ve been speaking to.
Speaking of guests: will the podcast be a place to showcase people who may not be featured as guests on TV much?
HAKIM Whether it’s people who are the decision makers or people who are going through the experience of something in a society, this is going to be a 35-, 40-, 45-minute podcast that is really going to open it up and allow people to have more in-depth conversations.
In a news package, you might have three to four minutes if you’re lucky. In an interview, you might have four or five minutes. This is a chance for us to sit down with people and have those conversations that matter.
ENGEL If you turn on the average cable news show, you get a lot of strategists. This person is a strategist, that person is a strategist. I’m not as excited about having those people on as a concept. If they have real expertise, they have real personal knowledge, they have something to add — wonderful! I’ll love to hear it. But when it comes to just the standard talking TV heads, there are too many of that. They get too much exposure already as it is.
Anything else that you two would like to add?
ENGEL Going back to this philosophical approach, I think we are in a dangerous time right now, and this tendency of people to tune out is very bad. And I don’t just mean for ratings. I don’t own the company, I’m not worried about that. I’m talking about the fact that people just sort of say, ‘I don’t want to know about the news.’ I think that’s really dangerous.
I think they’re increasingly getting news pushed to them in small bites on their social media feed, which is sorted by an algorithm. And I think over time, that does damage to society. We’re not going to fix society, but hopefully, we can create a place where, if people tune in once a week, they’ll feel better about the world, or they’ll feel better about themselves, they’ll feel that they at least understand it a little bit more.
And if you have a little bit more knowledge that makes you feel powerful and maybe feel a little bit more in control of your life in an uncertain time. We can only do so much, but if we can help people along this crazy journey that we’re on and help people understand what they’re seeing and understand where all the bumps and shakes are from, that’s a worthwhile project for me.
HAKIM I think Richard and I, we both have about 20 years of experience. So you’re talking to two people who have 40 years of experience between themselves. And we have been to most corners of this world and seen the horrors of the world, and we’ve seen humanity, and we’ve seen the things that bring communities and people together. This isn’t going to be some kind of doom-and-gloom death podcast bringing out the worst in the state of the world.
This is a chance for two foreign affairs specialists, two people who travel and have this incredibly privileged [position]. And we’re going to try and help people understand what’s going on in the world and why it matters to be aware of what is happening in different parts of the world and why it impacts them.
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