Postscript: The Calls I Don't Take

Two interviews. Two parties. Two attempts to influence editorial decisions—and why I said no.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

This is the Postscript—where I offer insight into my reporting and explain the editorial decisions that shape the journalism you read and watch here.

Recently, both Republicans and Democrats have asked me to change stories after publication. For very different reasons, which I’ll explain below, but from a similar belief that the press should work for politicians, rather than for the same public those politicians serve.

The first request came after my conversation with Congresswoman Kat Cammack on June 19. Her team began critiquing the interview as soon as we wrapped, and once I hit publish, they were joined by right-wing activists. The latest request followed my interview with Stacey Abrams. The interview had been “good,” her team told me, but they took issue with a word I selected for my headline.

In both instances, these politicians weren’t challenging the reporting.

They were challenging the editorial decision.

That’s exactly why I started The Red Letter.

After 18 years in legacy media, I wanted to create a newsroom where editorial decisions answered to one group: you, the audience.

That’s not because reporters inside major news organizations lack integrity. I worked with some of the best journalists in the business. But I also saw how editorial decisions can become tangled with competing pressures—access, legal concerns, advertisers, ownership, political backlash, and increasingly, government pressure on the press itself.

Independent journalism doesn’t eliminate difficult decisions. It simply removes as many competing incentives as possible.

The question I try to answer is straightforward:

Is it true? By true, I mean factually accurate. Is it fair? By fair, I mean the information was obtained and would be published lawfully and morally. Is it newsworthy? By newsworthy, I mean the information is something the public should know about

Congresswoman Kat Cammack (R-FL)

On June 21, I published a conversation with pro-life Republican Rep. Kat Cammack. She opened up about her ectopic pregnancy and about what it was like to almost die while medical professionals debated whether to administer a life-saving abortion.

Cammack asked me not to air part of the interview about her emergency abortion, which she had spoken about previously with the Wall Street Journal. She had not hesitated to answer my question in real time on camera. Only after the interview concluded did she express hesitation, saying that her family was facing death threats.

I chose to publish the full conversation because I believed it was an important, on-the-record account of how abortion laws affect women during a medical emergency.

On June 30, I published a conversation with Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist and two-time gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, under the headline: “Stacey Abrams: Supreme Court’s Rulings Are a ‘Failure for Democracy’—And Why She Still Won’t Concede.”

Almost immediately, a member of her team argued that the headline should be changed.

This week, that standard was tested when her team took issue with the word concede, a word she used, not me, saying in a text message to my producer: “this is a sticking point for us and has been for a long time.”

But during our interview, Abrams told me: “I acknowledged the certified winner. I actually congratulated him. But I also said I would not concede that the system used to elect him was right.”

That distinction was the very point of our conversation.

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After the insurrection, the Democratic Party thought the integrity of the democratic process itself was the issue on which to win federal elections. In the 2024 campaign, Joe Biden made democracy his central argument for his second term in office. I asked Abrams whether Democrats still had a responsibility to demonstrate faith in elections. It was an important question for Abrams specifically, since she’s one of the country’s most prominent voting-rights advocates, yet after she lost the Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018 by just 1.7 points, she challenged the results. She has gone so far as to decline to refer to the victor, Brian Kemp, as “legitimate” – allowing only that he is governor as a “legal” distinction. Since then, Abrams has remained powerful on the ground and as part of the national political conversation.

I thought her answer was thoughtful. I thought it added nuance. And I thought it was newsworthy.

That’s why the headline stayed.

This wasn’t a judgment about Stacey Abrams. It wasn’t about Stacey Abrams at all. It was an editorial judgment about what my readers would find most important in the interview.

That’s the difference.

Politicians are supposed to advocate for themselves. Their teams are supposed to protect their brands. That’s their job.

My job is different.

My responsibility is to decide what is most newsworthy—not what is most politically convenient. The same principle applies no matter who’s sitting across from me.

In the span of one two weeks, I was pressured by both sides to change my content. But neither criticism changes the standard. One week Republicans are angry with me. The next week Democrats are. If both sides occasionally think I’m being unfair to them, that probably means I’m asking the questions they don’t want asked.

That’s not because I enjoy controversy but because I don’t think politicians—of either party—should get editorial control over journalism. I ask these questions for us.

Independent journalism only works if readers trust that the standards remain the same regardless of whose ox is being gored.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never make mistakes. I will. When I do, I’ll correct them. But I won’t change accurate reporting because someone powerful would prefer a different version of the story.

That’s the promise I made when I started this company.

It’s the promise I intend to keep.

If you’ve chosen to support The Red Letter, you’re not just paying for reporting. You’re investing in a newsroom where editorial decisions aren’t negotiated behind closed doors, where you get to see not only the finished story but the thinking behind it. Your support has allowed me to build a team with the same values.

That’s the kind of journalism I want to build.

Thank you for making it possible.

— Tara