‘A Real Conundrum’: Katie Couric, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Bemoan That Covering Trump Is ‘Really Hard’

Journalist Katie Couric and MSNBC host Chris Hayes during a Tuesday podcast episode lamented the challenges they face in covering President Donald Trump.

Americans’ trust in the mass media fell to a record low ahead of the November election, according to an October Gallup survey. Couric and Hayes, on “Next Question with Katie Couric,” both acknowledged that they are “wrestling with” how to change their approach to reporting on Trump during his second term.

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“People say they don’t want to know, but my job is to tell them what’s happening. And if it’s fact-based reporting, then to pro-MAGA people, it seems biased. And it’s a real conundrum,” Couric said. “And sometimes you just have to say, ‘To hell with it, I’m just going to do the best I can.’ But it’s tricky.”

“It’s really hard. I don’t think I’ve — it’s still an unsolved problem, even these ten years in. I’ve got a few guiding principles that I’ve been thinking about, some of which I’ve thought of before, some of which have become the sharper focus this time around. The first is modulation is key,” Hayes responded. “If you turn the volume on your stereo up to 10 and you leave it there, it starts to sound like five. And then you can’t ever turn it up past 10. So you have to modulate. And that was really important in the first term and it’s important here. Not everything is of equal urgency or danger.”