Gray haired men in suits talking below a sign that says The Tennessean, a Gannett Company — Pat talking to a colleague at the Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean. Photo provided by Pat Embry.

This is a transcript of the conversation between myself, Brandi Fleck, Host of the Human Amplified podcast, and Pat Embry, a long-time Nashville journalist who’s helped shape the culture of journalism over 50 years and who has his finger on the pulse of what’s real news.

If you’d rather listen than read, you can do that here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

What does being human mean to you?

Brandi Fleck:

What does being human mean to you?

Pat Embry:

I believe humanity involves being thoughtful as opposed to being thoughtless and being aware as opposed to being unaware. And I think our ultimate goal is to, like journalism, oddly, I picked that field back when I was 10 years old, was you engage, enlighten, and illuminate. So does that answer any of it?

Brandi Fleck:

You did. Thoughtful and aware, which I think is a really interesting perspective on it. So thank you, Pat.

Pat Embry:

[2:48] You're welcome, Brandi.

How Newspapers Have Changed Over the Years

Brandi Fleck:

[2:50] Everybody, today we are welcoming to the show Pat Embry. He is a longtime Nashville journalist who's now retired, but Pat, you were an editor at the Nashville Banner, the Tennessean, of the best-selling guidebook based out of Brentwood, Tennessee called Locals Eat. Then you became the director of the John Siegenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. And your latest position, which you retired from, was the communications director of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. And so this rich experience and firsthand involvement with media and its evolution is why you are such an amazing guest to talk to about what we're going to talk about today, which is the current state of journalism and how we can all have discernment when it comes to misinformation and propaganda and what's even real anymore. So welcome to the show and thanks for being here.

Pat Embry:

[3:49] Thanks for having me, Brandi. Um, yes, as all the interns I've worked with, you're my absolute favorite and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Brandi Fleck:

[3:58] I bet you say that to all the interns.

Pat Embry:

[4:01] But how could you really know?

Brandi Fleck:

[4:03] I know. I actually told my husband the other day, I was like, I am so excited that I get to talk to Pat Embry because I feel like I was very fortunate to have had you as an, like a mentor early in my career. And seriously, it's been, it's been amazing. And so thank you.

Pat Embry:

[4:20] It's so sweet and going on 50 years that I've been in the business. The banner folded after 122 years and local eats folded and on and on. But I did leave MTSU for the Community Foundation.

Brandi Fleck:

[4:35] You know, you mentioned that these things folded, but I think that in the height of your career, like journalism was shifting and changing all throughout it. Print was sort of dying. Digital was coming about. So much changed as you were in the throes of it.

Pat Embry:

[4:54] Yeah, I was told when I went to journalism school in the mid-70s, that's how old I am. Oh, you don't want to go into journalism because the journalism programs are packed to the gills. This was right after Watergate. Everybody had vision that we all looked like Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. And, you know, people will meet you at a parking lot and tell you all these secrets. And I told people at the time, well, it's too late because that's all I've ever wanted to do since I was 10 years old. And I certainly knew enough from growing up in a small farming community that I didn't want to work at a farm. I had factory jobs. I had my first job was at a paper route when I was 10 years old and ended up having three. That's just a small town, so it's only a mile wide. So it's not like I was, you know, I wasn't old enough to have a car.

[5:47] And back then you didn't throw the paper unless the dog was chasing you. If Mrs. Jones wanted the paper in her living room, that's where you put it. You just opened up the screen door and boom, there it goes. So it was all individual uh but i've been i've been reading paper um or papers multiple papers every day since i was about five or six years old and then i was i was working in the business and folks told me at the time brandy that um You know, journalism's dying. People aren't getting their news that way. They're going to get it from television. And then this same thing happened when the internet and online came about. And it's just different now. There's still print. I've told folks for at least 40 years, I don't care if they're beaming that content off my eyelids. It doesn't matter to me. I haven't had a print newspaper delivered to the door in going on 10 years.

Brandi Fleck:

[6:47] Yeah.

Pat Embry:

[6:47] Much to my wife's pleasure because I still read so many newspapers that they were still with newsprint. I mean, you could tell the places I lived because there was newsprint on every drawer. Pick the kitchens that are lighter. Well, not my house because there's just every place. It's newsprint everywhere. It's on your face. I mean, it's just ridiculous, but that's how much that I care about the format. But yeah, now I have no problem at all. I prefer reading magazines on an iPad. And I still prefer reading actual books instead of using a Kindle or something. I just like the feel for it. But otherwise, I'm not bemoaning what's left of newspapers. And the deadline is for the Tennessean now, which is 2.30 in the afternoon for the next day, which means they have no news that's even remotely close to being breaking. It's just different. And back when I was at the Banner as an afternoon newspaper, something could happen at quarter to noon, it would be an afternoon paper.

[7:55] A lot of the court stuff, a lot of the political stuff coming from, particularly from the state capitol, all happened in the morning. And then an inordinate amount of mayhem, Challenger exploding, the whole Gulf War in the early 90s was all really done on our time. And then this sounds kind of grisly, but since I'm balancing my phone right now, cradle on the New York Times Book of the Dead, which is spectacular. It's the size of, if you recall, dictionaries back in the day.

[8:30] And I love obituaries anyway. I think that's sometimes the first and the last time people are memorialized that I can still remember the celebrities that died on Banner Time, which is good and really, really kind of macabre. But Roy Acuff, for instance, who is one of the fathers of the Grand Ole Opry and Acuff, the Banner was a traditional Republican newspaper. But it sure wasn't by the time I, I, uh.

[9:02] I ended up going down to the ship because you couldn't tell our editorial stances from the Tennesseans to save your life. Anyway, I'm working the city desk at 430 in the morning, and I get a call from Baptist Hospital from a friend of mine named Eileen Katcher. And she goes, Pat, I have bad news that Mr. Acuff has passed. He'd been sick for quite some. So I went, you know, I didn't say that. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. And so I hang up with Eileen and then call my music writer, who I'd specifically sent to the Opry that weekend and told him to interview anybody that he could wrangle to talk about Roy because he was on desk door. And so I brought him in. He hadn't even broken down his tape and quotes yet, but he worked on deadline. Our obituary writer had worked on the obit for at least 20 years, updating it, fluffing the pillow and all that. So we get out.

[10:05] He's leading the paper, obviously. And then between editions, Roy Acuff was buried. So we got to change. We got to update it. We won second place in the Tennessee Press Association for breaking news for an obituary that was started 20 years ago. I mean, that's pretty incredible. So now I bemoan people who died on Tennessee in times. Like, why? Why did you do that? You could have been with us, right? Isn't that awful?

Brandi Fleck:

[10:37] You bring up a really good point with the fact that there just isn't breaking news in newspapers really anymore.

The Current State of Journalism

Brandi Fleck:

[10:44] And that brings me to the question, what is the current state of journalism in your opinion?

Pat Embry:

[10:51] It's cautious. It's always been that way. It's always been cautious. I think having the president of the United States off and on the last several years, and then this dates back to eons as well, saying that we're the enemy of the people instead of, or the one of if they not were there's a reason why that journalism is the only is the only profession that's mentioned in the bill of rights after all it's because we've always been the folks who keep government honest yes and so and and that's still the case i mean and you can pick any time through history now is a lot squirreler than what it has been in the past but i grew up in the Richard Nixon era. So I know what comes out of it, and this will touch some on propaganda and what's real or not, what comes out of an elected official's mouth, whether it's your city council person or the president of the United States, what comes out of their mouth is exactly what's happening, right? And you have to rely on quality news sources by quality, meaning folks who get the closest they can to the truth on what really happened and the nuances and all that. And I think that even to this day, I believe newspapers are where that's coming from.

[12:13] I don't care where they're published. I mean, the National Banner has been revived as an online product. The banner's been out in full throttle for over a year. It's free publication now. I pay them money because it's the right thing to do. They're trying their best. They work really hard. They're trained journalists. And they're at their best when horrible things happen. It's either weather or school shooting at Covenant. As a, for instance, from a couple of years ago, the education reporter was coming back from another assignment. I believe it was around Sumner County or no, Rutherford County. And she hears the dispatch. She just points her car in the direction of Covenant and Green Hills, and off she goes. I mean, it's like first responders.

[13:07] Journalists are first responders, and that's the case now, just like it was when I broke into the journalism world. And that hasn't changed, nor will it change. You want to have somebody that knows how to get the information, what questions to ask, how to be sensitive about it, and still get the information out. And then, maybe not surprisingly, the next day, those papers sell out.

[13:33] You don't really know that something's existed until you can see it in print, which is odd if you think about it. But if you think about, name your wars and conflicts and so many things that happened in life, what do you remember the most about it? Most of the time, it's a still photo, even though everything's on video right now. Yeah. Still, the still photography that is what she remembered in the Tennessean's case with the Covenant shooting, the photographer, a young journalist named Nicole Hester, she had the shot from there since it all happened. Boom, boom, boom. Now, you can go and see it. It's very disturbing to see the security camera inside the school, but you can pull that up and still see it. But the shot is that she was named a Pulitzer finalist for was a shot of a, they were bussing all those kids out and down to the church and just down the street from me in Green Hills. And this little girl with tears in her eyes has her face pressed against the glass of the bus.

Brandi Fleck:

[14:44] I remember that photo.

Pat Embry:

[14:46] Yeah, well, that's an example. And there wasn't anything else to shoot down there anyway. I mean, and the kids are ultimately, as so often the case, it's always the kids that are the window of society for us. And so just like if you really want to find skullduggery in government, you follow the money. And that remains true to this day and name your your level of government. And chances are, if you follow the money, won't mention any names, Elon Musk, you know.

[15:16] You'll see that there's a money trail there that's just undeniable. If you go back to what being human is about, human is also being about what does history show us? Stay up on your history. If we just did that, there's nothing happening in Ukraine that's not happened time after time after time through history. And we've seen the likes of Donald Trump before, demagogues and autocrats and the gilded age when an inordinate amount of people had most of the money. We've been here before. So if you just keep to that, then you know to not be surprised, one and two, let's take care of each other. And if we can do that, then we'll be okay. But I believe journalism is still front and center. It separates us from total mayhem. So, but it's easy to downplay. I worked at the banner 18 years and 16 of 18 years. We lost circulation because it was an afternoon paper. I was asked every single day, when's the banner going to fold?

[16:19] Every single day for 18 years in some way, shape or form.

Knowing What's True

Brandi Fleck:

[16:22] Pat, I think one thing that really stood out to me when you were talking is you described journalists as, I think you said they get the closest they can to the truth. And that's what is hard for me personally right now. And I think that other people struggle with. So I'll give the example of the Super Bowl. You know, there's a lot of stuff going around right now. And this episode is going to come out in March. So just for, you know, listeners, we're recording this in February, a couple of weeks after the Super Bowl. And there are stories going around about how President Trump was booed, but Fox chose to edit that out or not cover it. And then there are people saying, well, the rest of the world saw it. You're not fooling us. Why are you trying to present it in a different way? And it's really difficult to tell what actually happened if you weren't there. So what would you say someone should do to even know what the truth is or who got closest to it?

Pat Embry:

[17:25] Well, you mentioned the network, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think anybody.

Brandi Fleck:

[17:32] There are people!

Pat Embry:

[17:34] And the sport I watched, the only time I watched Fox, just to be brutally honest, is a sporting event. Maybe I'm jumping the gun on propaganda. There's no question that the commentators, and they're not reporters, every night on Fox are spreading propaganda for the Republican Party and in particular for the president. So I don't think they make any bones about that. That's how Rupert Murdoch set up the end Roger Ailes as his devil in charge back in the day. It was totally set up that way. And there's never been, contrary to popular belief, that newspapers and the media, which I hate that expression, the media, like there's one, the media. There's never been a TV station like that, national TV station like that, set up like that. The progressive slash liberals, whatever you want to call folks on the other side, the blue states. We've never had MSNBC as a wisp of what Fox is. So, of course, Fox is not going to show the president being booed. There's some stuff that makes good TV and some stuff that doesn't. I don't think that's a calamity. One of the hardest things for me, and back to journalism, Brandy, is that folks say, well, I don't want to pay for my media. And you go, well, do you know, have you followed media through the…

Followed television through the history of television or followed newspapers or magazines or whatever, what do they all have in common? They have advertising. And it was in the 50s, it was the earliest, draw it up to the 70s, maybe catch a few more of your viewers, listeners. It was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, right? It was a popular show on Sunday nights, brought to you by Mutual of Omaha, an insurance company, right? It was the Texaco Hour starring Milton Berle in the 50s. It was the biggest show on television, but it was brought to you by somebody. The banner was, I don't know what this let's say it was 35 cents when I okay you can't get a stale donut for 35 cent people griped about the money even then well it's filled with ads they don't you never took a course I presume Brandy in how to research not specifically yeah you just they just kind of expect you just learn right well I think that should be required and and certainly by high school years.

[20:05] If not, uh, not middle school years is teach our students how to, how to research something. And that's the same things we're talking about. Is it, is it a trustworthy source? Why is it trustworthy? I mean, you get multiple sources. It's the old saying, if your mom tells you she loves you, get a second source, right? Does she really love you or does she love, love your sister more, right? It's a, you just don't know.

[20:33] But you see that every day, and after a while again, particularly with politicians, name them. It doesn't matter what the…what their name is, is that they are prone to exaggeration and complete falsehood. No, Ukrainians did not start this war with Russia. Russia did. Everybody should know that by now. But guess what the President of the United States said in the last 18 hours? Russia didn't start it. Come on. Come on. That's just not true, right? No small country said, oh, yeah, I think this massive power that we worked so hard to the generations to pull away from and become a democracy, all of a sudden we want to go back to that regime.

And why would we buy that? Just because the president of the United States says it?

Brandi Fleck:

[21:28] That's a really good question.

Pat Embry:

[21:30] Yeah. But why do you watch Fox News?

Defining Propaganda

Brandi Fleck:

[21:33] Well, so when we were talking about Fox News, you mentioned the way it's structured. And I think a lot of people don't understand how certain outlets are structured and why that would make them less news and more entertainment. And this brings me also to, like, I think knowing how an organization or an outlet is structured can help you determine if it's propaganda or not. So what are your thoughts around what is propaganda and what's not?

Pat Embry:

[22:08] Thanks for the question, Brandi. It's just the word propaganda is loaded with… what's propaganda and what's not propaganda. And can you tell the difference?

[22:22] Propaganda's first cousin is advertising, after all, and marketing. So do you want to use Bounty as your paper towel of choice or not? Well, if you watch the ads for Bounty, you might say, God, that must be a spectacular. They spend so much money. Well, that doesn't mean this is the best paper towel. That's propaganda. I mean, it's by definition. Propaganda is normally used in politics, But that can be the case for any product that you have to try it out. Maybe you don't like Bounty because their sheets are too big and you like the smaller sheets. So you've got to break it down from that. So you have to do the same thing with media if the ownership is weighted one way or another. I mean, my feelings on the Washington Post are different than it was several months ago because Bezos has decided, who's the gazillionaire who started Amazon? And Lord knows, we almost all of us use Amazon. They used to be having pretty much an independent newsroom. Well, they don't anymore. The owner who has every right to do that is saying, no, we're not going to, in this particular case, we're not going to endorse Kamala Harris. We're just not going to endorse anybody. His prerogative, and it's either Bezos making the call or it's, in this case, the guy who's run the newsroom who was hired specifically to follow orders.

[23:47] Like that, they turn that down. You look at the history of news in this country, if at one time you know anything about the Confederacy and Jim Crow and all that stuff, and we need to continually stay up on that. Well, one of the few newspapers, national newspapers in the country that cared enough to cover stuff like that was the New York Post, which is odd since the New York Post now is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and that's not what they do. It's sensational. It's totally weighted towards a certain political party and everything that's not done for justice of folks who don't have that voice. And so it changes through the years. You've got to know who owns it, and you've got to know where their background is. If I'm your professor and you're turning in something from Breitbart, I'm going to say, that's your source?

[24:44] I mean, do you know the background of Breitbart? And it's a right-wing propaganda publication. They don't make any bones about that. But if you just plug something into your Google machine or whatever, and it pops up, oh, that's a legitimate news source. Well, it's not. And where it gets even muddier is, okay, it's a Forbes byline. Well, Forbes is a respected, even though the owner is a right-wing businessman, but he's not a right, right-wing businessman. Steve Forbes, who I'm from president here several years ago, but part of the reason why they're still alive, they sell the right to, you and I have a story in there brought to you by Forbes and have no background to it at all. We paid for the right to be published by Forbes. And so it becomes still with the Forbes byline on it. That doesn't mean and it's legitimate.

[25:36] Right. But you can't do that unless it's on the op ed page. You can't do that with the New York Times. It's and they have a bank of editors that are faring out the right from the right. That's why you get why we get so mystified. We when we let some folks that clearly are utter falsehoods come out of our mouth, but it gets printed. One of the reasons why we need journalism is that we can keep people honest and also believe what you believe and not because somebody told you or you saw it on Fox or you saw it in a meme or whatever, or you just don't want to be involved at all. Somebody tells you, oh, I don't keep up with news. It's just so horrible. Well, that's not going to make it any less horrible than having worked for newspapers for going on a quarter century. There's so much good news in media, so much good news. it's just you choose not to read it or remember it.

[26:29] Heartwarming stories. Every obituary is a story about somebody nobody's ever, perhaps nobody's ever heard of. And you read about common people, maybe your mom or dad or grandfather or grandmother, that had wonderful, wonderful behind the scenes lives. And it's important that we herald that. But you turn around any local TV station in the country and you'll see, because there are photos involved, pictures involved video involved it feels like there's mayhem in the streets every single night well that's not how the world works it's following police blotters but police radio and and um it's it's leading with crime bleeds it leads as the old saying goes and that's not what the world's really like uh a success in a second grade class in in bonac was probably not going to make it just watching kids read is, is not, is not enough to satiate the, the appetites for folks who get all their news off of a local TV. I got, I'm just, I'm saying that with the caveat, I'm obviously a print guy, a newspaper guy. Now, I also wouldn't ever want to miss CBS Sunday Morning because I think it's the best news show on television.

Ways to Combat Propaganda and Misinformation

Brandi Fleck:

[27:42] Okay. Before we wrap up, Pat, I would like to summarize what I think you've presented as ways that we can sort of guard ourselves against misinformation or biased information or propaganda, which is, I've heard you say, sources are important. So you want to follow publications or outlets that usually get their information from more than one source, or you can know it's true. Maybe that's it. You can know the information is true. Actually, wait, I'm backtracking on what I'm thinking. Because I was going to say you can know the information is true if you see it reported in more than one source, or if there are more than one source sort of corroborating it, but that might not be.

Check Sources

Pat Embry:

[28:26] Yeah, it's more complicated than that. But I guess it's who do you believe? I won't use any names in this particular case, but you know who we're talking about. If somebody's a chronic liar, they choose not factually accurate or, I mean, you can dress up any way you want to, or grossly exaggerates and all that. Well, the chances are they do that continually. And so there are plenty of publications. The Washington Post does a great job. They have one guy. That's all he does. And if you're chronically lie about something and you get four Pinocchios for that particular subject matter. Right. So Pinocchio total lies is nose got nose got longer. And so you've got to, you've got trust sources, not just your, your journalism sources, but the source of who you're, who's speaking. So, um, it doesn't mean that they're always accurate, but, uh, chances are, uh, if it's, um…

[29:20] Dr. Schaffner at Vanderbilt, for instance, who's an expert on infectious diseases, he's quoted all over the place. Then what Dr. Schaffner says is most likely accurate, period. That's what he does for a living. That's what he's devoted his career on. He's the guy. But there are lots of other folks. You can check his research with other folks, but chances are you come back to it. Well, if Schaffner says it's true, it's true. That doesn't mean there are variations of that. Even if there are 2% of the people who took the COVID vaccine had bad reactions, then that's 2%, but 98% of people didn't. Does that mean you throw out the vaccine because 2% of, well, common sense tells you, no, it's the good. I feel aware and thoughtful about all things. It's the basics of humanity in a civilized society.

Pay Attention to the Biases of Ownership

Brandi Fleck:

[30:15] Okay, so we sort of covered the source part of finding the truth. And the other two things that I think are important that came up while you were talking were know who owns the outlet, figure out what their background is, so you know whether or not they are pushing an agenda or if they have a more objective editorial stance. And then the third thing you mentioned is that a publication is going to be more credible if the people who are writing are reviewed by an editorial team and they're not paid contributors. Is that correct?

Pat Embry:

[30:55] I would caution there's nothing that's in journalism that is objective. I can think it's all subjective. It depends on, as a, for instance, if a, if you're shooting a documentary with just one camera, depends on where that camera is to tell the story. And if the camera, it can only show part of the story. So where you put that camera means by definition, it's subjective. I don't think there is such a thing as objective. And what you and I might believe in, or I believe in and you don't, or vice versa, doesn't make it so. I mean, we all bring our biases to the table. We're trying to get as close to the truth as possible and to understand what the truth is. Was January 6th a friendly gathering of people with a few knuckleheads, or was it orchestrated?

[31:43] Was that election in 2020, was it a stolen election, or wasn't? Well, we know what happened. We watched it, and it's been battled in the courts for years that 2020 was a legit election. There's not a single person that just got into the cabinet, for instance, that will admit that was a legit election. know why? Well, we don't know the reason why. To me, it's easy. In this particular case, that we have government officials that are so lawless, I get the feeling that people are okay with that, that there's a fair amount, and I'm sure you have followers, readers, and viewers that think it'd be okay to have an autocracy for a while, to have something more along the lines of of royalty, that the law is based on what they want to do. Well, that's not, that's not how, what I believe. And I don't believe the general publicist, but if you don't say anything and people forget that Germany is a democratic country in 1932, it wasn't 1933 and 34.

[32:50] And it took a shocking little bit of twist in the dials. And it's always, you know, law and order and why are we worried about the rest of the world when we can't worry about ourselves and people don't look like us, different colored skin, they worship differently, are bad people. This has happened throughout humankind and it's happening right now. And if you're thinking, that's the thoughtfulest thing, you know the difference. And you've got to trust your senses. This is just not right, probably not right. And pay attention. Who's cooking your food? Who's mowing your grass? So you got to know that stuff. Think. Think.

[33:34] And money can whitewash a whole lot of stuff for folks. You can be aware and be thoughtful if you just pay attention. But we owe it to all of us to not just say this disturbs me too much. Or everything's fine or whatever to just to go to life being that way and put to have your head in the proverbial sand. That's not what we're supposed to be doing as citizens. And you can bad mouth your local publication because everybody does that. It's a sport that's been around for forever.

But if you want to know the news, you're going to have to get it from legitimate news operation, period. People who cover our government, watchdogs. It's part of the founding of journalism.

And Associated Press is the ultimate in non-biased reporting, no matter what people are saying right now.

Brandi Fleck:

[34:27] I was wondering if they still were.

Pat Embry:

[34:30] Oh, God, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. They are squeaky clean. I mean, AP is the bedrock of American journalism. And to this day, they have maybe fewer people than what they've had in the past because people don't want to pay for AP as much. But no, absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a reason why they're not using Gulf of America right now. The AP goes worldwide. Yeah. Right? And there's a reason why they're not being allowed in the White House is because the AP Stylebook shows how best to label transgender people in such a way that it's humanistic as possible. The current regime, and it's a regime, they don't agree with that. They want it to either be wiped out like they want to wipe out history or they want the rules to be what their rules are.

Brandi Fleck:

[35:30] They want to control the narrative.

Pat Embry:

[35:32] They want to control the narrative and everything about it. And then they want to punish their enemies. Well, unless you form your way against them, right? That's what bullies do. That's what autocrats do. That's what dictators do. It's a takeover. It's a hard time and a great time to be a citizen right now. We've got so many great things going on, and yet we continue to keep our heads in the sand.

The Search for Truth

Brandi Fleck:

[35:58] So one closing thought that I would love to end with is that when I was coming up in school for journalism, we used to talk about how journalists are the writers of history. We are the first line of recording history. And if the standards go down, or if the narrative is allowed to be controlled by someone who has an agenda, then the record of history is not accurate. So, what, and I didn't plan to ask you this, but how do you define truth?

Pat Embry:

[36:42] How do you define truth? Truth is always in the eye of the beholder. Okay. For starters. There's no such thing as truth. There is such a thing as what's actually happening and why it's happening and how we can promote it or disallow it in our society and across the board. And sometimes it's an easy answer to me. And sometimes it's a harder answer to me. You have to have people in charge that do stuff. You have to have experts doing stuff for a living. You can't throw away as much as politicians now want to do that, the checks and balances. They don't want journalism schools, for starters. They don't want anybody to do journalism because they don't want anybody checking on them unless they're cowed down to the party line, right? It's what you learn as a parent. No, you can't have a cookie before dinner. You just can't. Well, why, Mom? Because it'll spoil your dinner, and you'll end up, all you eat is cookies, which is not healthy for you. And you can explain it to them, but if you leave it up to just anybody, I'm going to eat a cookie.

[38:01] That makes sense. Well, don't let people just eat cookies, right? Don't let yourself just eat cookies for consuming things. There's always bias.

[38:14] The journalist is the most important profession. It always has been in a democracy. You have to have them. That's the first thing dictators do. They get rid of the journalists. They don't want anybody watching. That's what's happening with AP right now.

Brandi Fleck:

[38:29] Yeah. Yeah, they get rid of the real ones and then call the propaganda machine journalism.

Pat Embry:

[38:37] Absolutely. Yeah. There's nothing journalism, there's no journalism about it. He's sticking a mic in your face and you blather on about whatever. They're not fact-checking squat. In fact, I get the impression that most people don't give a damn if it's fact or fiction. Hard work never hurt anybody and doing the right thing never hurt anybody. Try to treat people the same as what you would like to be treated in and I believe that most of the journalists I've worked with through the years, believe in that that's why they're journalists. There are a lot easier ways to make money make a living. And working on deadline is something that is not cut out for everybody and, I'm thankful that I've been able to thrive and I'm thankful that you're another intern Brandi that, I have some fond things to think and say about me and my advice to you, because it could be so much worse.

Brandi Fleck:

[39:38] Absolutely.

Pat Embry:

[39:39] Yeah. I hope I've been a good influence on now generations of journalists.

Brandi Fleck:

[39:45] I know you have.

Pat Embry:

[39:46] In this real area. Yeah. Not hard to check up on me. I've probably worked with most people. Yeah. So, yeah, I love the whole profession and obviously can't live without it.

Brandi Fleck:

[40:00] Thank you, Pat, for your insight today and for your contribution to journalism in Nashville. And I just feel very grateful to have been able to talk to you today.

Pat Embry:

[40:11] Oh, thank you. I appreciate all the kind words. It always thrills me and warms my heart that folks I've worked with that are younger than I am, which is most everybody at this stage have made such great successes of each other and have families and, and are making a difference every day. So I very much, very much don't take that for granted and very much appreciate it.