- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman, coming up a conversation with veteran broadcaster and interim PBS North Carolina CEO, David Crabtree.

Next.

- [Announcer] Major funding for Front Row is provided by, Robert L. Luddy, additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by, funding for the lightning round provided by, Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome back to Front Row my friend.

- Good to be here, Thank you.

- Good to see you.

Why don't we start with your recent reports from Poland.

- Marc I was there about four weeks ago, we traveled with a group called Baptist on Mission, they do disaster relief around the world, wherever there's a need, going in to do whatever they could for Ukrainian refugees throughout Poland.

We were based primarily in Warsaw, but spoke out of there to other parts of the country, saw thousands and thousands of people who had left home with their lives in a suitcase, didn't know where they would end up, still don't know where they may end up.

Women primarily, children, grandmothers, grandfathers, most of the fathers and some of the middle aged men of course are still in Ukraine fighting or about to be tapped to fight, it was quite moving, it was war in reality, and the wake of war no longer in the abstract.

- What there are about 5 million refugees to date?

- Close to that, and about 400,000 have come into Warsaw alone, and it's so amazing that you didn't see tent cities set up or people sleeping on the streets, either there are giant refugee centers, basically warehouses for humanity, or the people of Warsaw had taken people into their homes, and the great irony of that, that these are descendants of people who are possibly killed during World War II, now taking in the descendants of people who may have perpetrated the crimes, against their relatives generation earlier, it was amazing to see and very moving.

- Samaritan's Purse is over there helping out, correct?

- Samaritan's Purse is right inside the border with a hospital that is amazing, it serves everything from OB work to a hospice, all people who are volunteering to come and to help.

- I wanna talk about some of your most memorable stories, and one of them is your reports from Normandy, talk to us about that.

- Well, that idea to go to Normandy was born in the studio just to my right here, as we were raising money, to tell stories for veterans, of World War II veterans of North Carolina, and I remember telling the general manager at the time, the only way I can tell those stories effectively is to go to Normandy, so I went the first time, I thought I was ready to see what I was going to see, until I got to the cemetery.

- It's very moving.

- Very moving, very sobering, and Marc, the last person I saw when I was leaving the cemetery that day, was an older German coming in, and he had a bouquet of flowers, I don't speak German, he spoke very little English, but I said, are these flowers for anyone special?

And this old German man looked at me with tears in his eyes, and he said, I'm just here to say, I'm sorry.

- You talked to a vet that was on Omaha Beach, from World War II, correct?

- Oh, I talked to several, interesting thing about their stories, in three separate occasions, we sat and talked with feds, one who was on Omaha, he was D day plus one at Omaha Beach, he came in the day after the initial landing to clean up, and we will let that lie there, what all they cleaning up meant, but it was the same with him and with other veterans, as they told their story, there were family members in the room behind them, and we wrapped up the interview, and each time, the family members were sobbing, and they came to me and said, we had never heard that story before, daddy or granddaddy wouldn't talk about it.

- That's amazing.

- The veterans were waiting to be asked, particularly as they moved on through life to tell their stories, and what a privilege it was listening to them.

- You know, over the years, you've talked about five presidents.

- Yes.

- Tell me the story about Jimmy Carter.

- Which one do you wanna hear?

- You met with him after he was out of office?

- Yes, I interviewed him, he had written a book on his mother, Ms. Lillian, and he came to the WRAL studios, he could not have been more gracious, more gracious.

I said, tell me something I'm really going to find interesting about your mother I don't know, or that may not be in the book, and he said, well, he said, let me tell how she ended up in the Peace Corps, she sort of pulled a Margaret Mitchell, she would have a little more bourbon than necessary at two or three in the morning and start calling reporters, and he would say, mama, you gotta stop this, so he finally shipped her off to the Peace Corps, but, I said to the president, I said, wait a minute, I thought there was no liquor in the white house, he said, no, no, no, that was just for state events, my mother always had a bottle of Jack Daniels.

- You talked to Obama as well.

- I talked to Obama in his first term, it was about two years in to the office, and you know, with many presidents, there's a malaise that can come in during that time, you're nothing but beaten up by everyone.

Congress is probably about to flip, you didn't get done in those first two years, what you were confident you could get done, and he was really interesting, I remember his eyes though, looked dead that day, I just thought the weight of this office already on this young man, only 24 months in had really taken a toll.

- You had some interesting observations, the last time we talked about Bill Clinton, and you said he looked past you when he was talking, correct?

- Yes.

I have a photograph, I should have sent you this Marc, of shaking hands with Bill Clinton, and I'm looking right into his eyes, and he's looking right over here at the next person, I've known several office holders who did that, and I'm not sure that they know that they do that.

- You know, Romney's like that.

- I've never met Mitt Romney.

I didn't know that.

- Yeah, you know, with Clinton and Grich, that's the last time we ever had a balanced budget, anything really got done in my view.

- Well, and part of the reason was because of his chief of staff, Erskine Bowles knew how to come in and say, let's not try to destroy each other, let's sit at this table, tell me what you need, and let's find a way to get to yes.

- In 2020 cycle, election cycle, you interviewed Donald Trump.

Talk to me about the vaccines.

- Yes, we were in Morrisville, at a plant that was involved in the warp speed operation, when no one would believe this president that we were this close to a vaccine, do you remember those days?

- He turned out to be right.

- It turned out to be exactly right.

I found him, again Marc, you go in with the opportunity to interview the most powerful person in the free world.

Number one, it's a privilege to do it, number two, you think you're prepared, you have a list of questions or at least the bullet points, the day we interviewed president Trump, it was in a small room at this bio lab, and we could only set up one camera, normally we set up three, we were not allowed to put a microphone on him, so we had to use a boom mic, so, I had to hold the mic, hold my note card under an arm, try to focus on him, think of my questions at the same time and let him talk.

Here was something interesting, he walked in the room and there'd been so much made about him, not wanting to wear a mask or misinformation, or Dr. Fauci saying one thing, saying something else, he walks into this room wearing a mask with the presidential seal, and looked at me and said, do I need to wear this?

And I said, well, with all do you respect sir you're the president, you do whatever the hell you wanted to.

I mean, really.

- Was he different in person than you thought?

- He was very different in person.

We were told we would have five or six minutes with him, he talked for like nine minutes, and I think might have still been talking today had I not ended the interview, he was very engaging, and of course I received a round of criticism as I knew I would from that interview, because as a local anchor person, my job was not to ask him the same questions that the national Press Corps, and the white house Press Corps ask every day, it's to ask questions about one, North Carolina, or to try to find a threat of humanity within someone.

- You met with Biden as well during that cycle.

- I did, I met with, the last time I met with Biden, he was candidate Biden, he was in Durham, and it was a day that the Trump administration had taken out a key Al Qaeda member or key ISIS member, and Biden gave a tip of the hat to the president.

- The Randy in general.

- Thank you, thank you.

He did acknowledge what the sitting president had done.

- That was good I think, you know, I think the jury's out on Biden, but we're in for tough times right now, but I wanna talk about a very moving piece that I looked back at now, and that was your piece on the Holocaust victims, just tremendous I thought.

- Yeah, you know, as a non-Jew, and as a person who grew up in a generation, where we weren't taught that much about the Holocaust, quite honestly, in my public school, in Tennessee, the depth of the horrors of that came to me later in life, and it began with a guy named Morris Glass, may he rest in peace.

Morris was in the ghettos in Warsaw when he was 13, so he was never able to have a bar mitzvah until he was 82.

- Wow.

- And I met him after his bar mitzvah, we became friends before he died, he lost his mother, his father, and his sister at Birkenau, he told me the story of how he remembered his hand slipping out of his mother's hand, after they got off the train, and that led me to wanting to know more and to think how do we as non-Jews, better interpret for other non-Jews what has happened in history, and it was real.

- Are you concerned right now about the rise of antisemitism in this country?

- Oh, of course.

And it's real.

- It's real, isn't it?

- You don't have to look far from where we're sitting today, to see examples of racism and antisemitism that happened down in Chatham county with a mock slave auction, I mean, and think about it, these young students, didn't learn that in a book, it's in the air at places, and we're afraid to talk about or reluctant to talk about it at times, we've been branded with words like systemic or defund or whatever, as opposed to saying, let's look underneath this, and see what's there, I think it's a very real, a concern, and you talk with rabbis or people within the Jewish community, and they'll tell you the same thing.

- You know, I wanna change gears and talk to you a little bit about when you first became interested in broadcasting, I think our viewers would love to hear about that.

- Walked into a radio station when I was 14 years old, with a high school tour, it was in Nashville Tennessee, I can still smell the cigarette smoke, I can still see the microphone, I can hear the teletype was a United press international, I can see the giant clock that was Greenwich meantime, and I thought Greenwich was pronounced green witch, I didn't know what that was, and how it reset itself every hour, and just realized, this is what I want to do.

- You got hooked?

- I did, and I said about, I would bug disc jockeys at that station, I would bug general managers saying, I'll come in, I'll sweep the floor, I'll run get coffee, I'll do whatever, I just wanted to be around it, and finally found a guy that said, all right, come on in, let me get you in after hours, and I think someone had done that for him, and it became this world of mystery to me, Marc in my bedroom at home growing up, I set up a little radio studio, had a turntable, a real.

- Your first podcast.

- A real real tape recorder, a gooseneck lamp that I had taken a magic mark or two, and designed it like a microphone, and just knew that's what I wanted to do.

- So along the way you went to Denver, you came down to ITN, Eastern North Carolina, and in '94 you showed up at WRAL.

- Yep.

I thought I'd be here three years, maybe four, I thought, you know, I was on my way to Washington, or I'd lived in the middle east for a while, I thought I'll go back there, and here 28 years later, North Carolina really is now my home.

- Talk to me about your relationship with Charlie Gaddy.

- Oh my gosh, wonderful relationship, Charlie is now 90, I succeeded him, I did not replace him at WRAL, I followed him into that anchor chair, and together we share 50 years of institutional knowledge of working at that television station.

Charlie made me feel so welcomed when I came here, he knew that I knew that he was handing over something very special to me, he was a guy of great integrity, great wisdom still, and an incredible sense of humor.

- How's broadcasting changed since you came up?

- Well, it's delivered differently, and people have different expectations, people now get their information whenever they want it.

- Has social media really changed the medium?

- Oh, of course it has, it's made it far more difficult, and it's not something very good though, it's given people access that they haven't had before, it has also given voice to people, that sometimes is abused, particularly in this country, but in countries where media is restricted, particularly with, we see what's going on in parts of Europe now or Russia, when people have been able to use social media to get a message to the world, it's invaluable, it also on the flip side, like anything else has a dark side, and an underbelly that drives you crazy.

- Let me ask you, do you think that local news delivers better product than cable?

- Better, we deliver a different product, we're licensed differently, you know, cable can say.

- But you're not as provocative.

- No, because cable can do whatever it wants to do, there's nothing about fairness with cable, cable can only be accessed if you pay for it, and there if you pay for it, they're basically licensed to say whatever they want, whatever ideology, nothing has to be fact checked, they're not held accountable, except by the viewers, by the ratings.

And in local news, we are licensed differently by the FCC, our first mission is to provide information about safety, which this television station does, secondly, to provide news coverage, and we are held to a standard that is far different than cable.

- Well, do you think that when you look around at media today, do young reporters follow a story now, or are they just more interested in cliques?

- Oh, I think that's a misnomer, I think they're really interested in doing.

- They have to be utility ball players today.

- They have to be utility ball players, look, when I started, that was far different, now the new hires, most of the new hires that are made, are called multimedia journalists, we used to call them one man band, that terminology is offensive to some, now we don't say that, but they have to do everything, they have to shoot their own stories, have to edit their own stories, have to take their own life shots, they do everything, the job of three people has now become the job of one.

If I were having to do that, that would really diminish what I'm doing, but young people are such multi taskers, they're able to do this, and overall provide really good product with a desire for it to be better, and that's the key.

- David in this country now, we have so many venues, do you think that people self-segregate and only go to the corners where they get the answers that they want?

- Do you?

- I do, I do, I think we're self-segregating, I think people go to Fox CNN for a different look.

- And, excuse me.

I think they do it sometimes without even knowing that's what they're doing, it's just natural, it feels good, I was watching coverage earlier this week after the draft memo from Supreme court was leaked, and I was astonished to see the different types of conversation on CNN, MSNBC and Fox that night, same news, same facts, interpretation was totally different.

- But are you worried that Supreme Court is becoming politicized, do you think.

- My concern today is that the Supreme Court, that we as journalists are going to be restricted even more about getting information from the court, and having justices, associate justices or chief justice open up and talk about their process more, I think what happened, it's not about the topic what I'm about to say, it's the fact that it happened, I had a friend who clerked at the court and they were told by chief justice Rehnquist early on, if you leak anything, if you leak anything, your law career is over, this is a place where we have total confidentiality.

Can you imagine bringing someone in who works for you now in this day and age, and saying, you have confidentiality in this space, I want you to trust me, and I trust you.

The divide in that type of trust that happened, is like an earthquake to me, and we have not begun to see.

- The ramifications you think?

- I think so.

- I mean some Republicans are calling for criminal prosecutions, do you think that's a bridge too far?

- I don't know if it's too far or not, what law was broken?

I haven't seen a law, I mean, what do you prosecute?

A prosecutor has to have a law that's been broken, with intent to break the law.

- You know, I just think when you go all the way back to book, there's just become so political, I mean, you look at some of these guys used to be, all women, Sandra Day O'Connor, 100 to nothing confirmed, now it's just a battle, and it's rather frustrating.

- It is a battle.

And it's, when I've watched the battles both ways, no matter who had nominated the nominee, it's one of those times you feel like I need a hot shower, I need to wash this off of me, how do we become this way?

But then Marc, in all fairness, I look back at history, And I think back in the days before there was mass media, my gosh, in the days of Hamilton and Jefferson, and Washington, the Federalist papers were written anonymously so they could blast the other side, there's nothing new about this, it just finds its way to us more quickly now.

- You're the new CEO of PBS North Carolina, what role do you think public media has in North Carolina, what would you like to see us do?

- I would like to see us build on the foundation that we already have, which is this, there's a mission, I'll never forget Bill Friday telling me this 25 years ago, the mission of this television station, this network by the way, that goes from the mountains to the coast, is to provide education for people, and part of that education is to let them know if there's a bad weather or a pandemic or whatever it may be to provide public safety, but above all, everybody in this state can access this television station for free, and our mission is to say, we want you to think about things you haven't thought about before, and when we talk about education, it's not just for children, it's for the children's parents and their uncles and aunts and their grandparents who maybe, maybe hear something and think, gosh, I didn't realize that, that we can reveal information to them, and to do it in a way that is really polished and professional and to let them know they matter, and I think there's no other broadcast entity on the planet that has a network the way we have it to serve a state.

- Yeah, I really think we're an unpolished Jim, I think there's a lot of opportunity for PBS, North Carolina.

- Oh, and this building, it's full of people with that commitment who have had it for years and have lived into it and to, I think, making this television operation one of the best in the country, so let's just, let's take it, like that, Charlie Gaddy handed me a piece of gold 28 years ago, I could have taken it and put it in the vault and just let it stay there, and instead I've tried to keep it in front of me, all this time, polishing it to increase its value, so I could hand it off to someone else, this has now been handed off to me the same way here to say, let's take this, let's make it even more so about North Carolina.

- So it really will serve the people of North Carolina and UNC system.

Is that your view?

- Yes, we are powered by the UNC system, you know, when this operation was called WUNC TV, there was no PBS, it began at the university of North Carolina, with the idea to be an educational television station.

PBS, as we know PBS came afterwards, this station is a pioneer, the philosophy here is still pioneering, we think because we have all the technology and we have all the great ways to get places and information so quickly, that there are no new roads to still build, but there are, there are new pathways, we've seen the little path beginning, let's either follow that path or let's chart a new course, and if we can chart a new course, we may get to people who've never been served before.

- We've got a role, but I think I speak for the whole team, wishing you all success in your new venture.

That's it for us, thanks for watching, see you next week on Front Row, have a great weekend.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Announcer] Major funding for Front Row was provided by Robert L. Luddy, additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen, through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by, [upbeat music] funding for the lightning round provided by, Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[upbeat music] ♪