My personal experience is that the immigrant experience and the race experience are inextricably tied together, even though they often tend to be seen differently. Usually we think of race as interchangeable with ethnicity. That’s an issue that’s been particularly interesting for me to cover, because there’s so much data on it and because you can always tell when you hit a nerve. Today there’s ongoing conversation around immigration and immigration reform, which can be distilled from the conversation about race but often intersects with it. I did a story in Lewiston, Maine, where people were talking about immigration, except they were actually talking about race, because Somalis were a key part of the discussion. Immigration and race often come bundled together.

I’ve always been interested in understanding why. Why do people feel free to line up and taunt their eighth-grade classmates about deportation? Why does someone feel so angry when a woman is running for office? Why is there this intersection of anger about immigration, race, and gender? I’m not thinking just of Hillary Clinton, but other women, any woman. Look at how often the comments are violent. Every single day someone is tweeting something that’s inappropriate—hostile toward women, hostile toward African Americans, hostile toward Latinos, hostile toward people who are gay. It’s just insane. It’s such a crazy time, and the question that interests me is: Why? What’s going on now? What flames are being fanned? Why?

The truth is that every week the Washington Post and the New York Times try to answer that question. What is happening? Is it economic anxiety? Is it that the leadership wants to fan the flames? Is it a great way to get media attention? Twenty years ago, if you were a white supremacist, it was hard to get on television. Now, if you’re a white supremacist, I could probably get you booked on somebody’s show in about ten minutes. This is where we are. We give a platform to people we know are despicable because we know it will drive ratings.

Why does racism drive ratings? I think we’d all agree that when you put people like that on TV, you elevate their platform. You’re not in any way, shape, or form hoping that somebody throws tomatoes at them. You’re trying to create something over the top and promotable so your show will stand out. People want attention. There was a time when you would frame certain things very carefully. I know because I was around then. I remember when David Duke was running for governor of Louisiana. We had these intense, thoughtful conversations about how you cover someone who spews hate. At the same time, the man is genuinely running for governor in Louisiana, so you need to talk about him and you need to cover him. Those subtle newsroom conversations rarely happen today. If someone is going to be disgusting and over the top and improper, you can just be sure that’s going to be good for ratings. We’ve elevated those people with very little critical assessment of the effect they’re having on our discourse. I think the political leadership has decided there’s a real upside to having divisive conversations. It’s not even dog-whistling anymore. Congressman Steve King of Iowa is a really good example. He says horrific things about African Americans and Latinos, and the response is, “Remember back in the day when Steve King said something and people would actually bother to comment? No one bothers to comment anymore.” So, you know, the media has aided and abetted, and the political leadership—well, it wins because this stuff galvanized voters. If you layer on top of that the current widespread economic anxiety—people feeling like they’re falling behind—it’s very attractive to blame people who are different. It’s OK.

KK: The press is doing terrible things like never before, as you’ve just described, but the press is also under attack like never before. How does that impact who we are as Americans?

SO: The press is under attack in a very intentional way because politicians intend to undermine the people who are saying bad things about them. Some of the press is doing some of the finest reporting we’ve ever seen, and that’s wonderful. At the same time, there’s a lot of crap around. I remember years ago now when I got a CNN breaking news alert that Britney Spears had cut her hair. At some point you’re complicit in people being able to attack you. We’re at a really troubled time, not just because people are attacking the media, but because the media itself is struggling to figure out what good journalism is. What is good reporting? What are the stories we should tell? What is the best way to tell those stories? It’s a really scary time for the industry, not just because of the hordes of people who are trying to undermine the press, which it clearly serves their interests to do. If you can prove the press is wrong most of the time, it undermines anything negative they might say about you. The press is a broad category, but it’s hard to ask people to take you seriously when you undermine your own seriousness too often. I think that’s a real challenge. I think it’s hard to say, “We stand for X” at the same time you’re promenading the white supremacist of the day because you know it will build your ratings.

My approach is to do very little political reporting. We do a weekly public affairs show now, and it’s really about context, which I like a lot. I really like being able to say, “If we’re going to talk about the First Amendment, what does the First Amendment actually say? If we’re going to talk about gerrymandering, what does that mean? What’s going on with that?” Tit-for-tat political football is not interesting to me. Twenty-four hours of Trump every day is not interesting to me. It’s not educating people; it’s just over-the-top anxiety provoking for people. Whether you’re talking about Fox, or you’re talking about MSNBC, or you’re talking about CNN, the coverage is just a little over the top for me.

We do some really good documentaries. We try to tell some surprising stories about people’s lives, whether it’s about veterans or about African Americans or about Latinos or about education. My documentaries are not on just one issue; they’re about human beings who exist, whom we don’t get to hear a lot from. If you had to pin someone down and force them to watch one of my documentaries, well, that person would get the idea that there are a lot of remarkable stories that deserve more airtime.

When I was growing up, my parents were obsessed with just a few well-known people. They were obsessed with the Kennedys. They were obsessed with the founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper, the activist Dorothy Day. They were also intensely interested in Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Those were the people they looked to, what those people said, what philosophies of life and action motivated those people. My parents admired them, though I don’t think they ever had an opportunity to meet any of them. In the case of your father—and I’m talking about myself now too—I think the fascination has a lot to do with this: He was remarkable in that he was a politician who was willing to grapple with the complicated stories around race when everybody else wanted to dodge the issue completely. When you look back at that time, he and the others were willing to call it as it was. They were willing to say, “These are the issues in America. This is what’s not working.” It’s a different time now. People are not quite so willing to do that, at the risk of not being perceived to be patriotic. Back then, we thought asking a question was patriotic, to say that America has its flaws and our goal is to help make those flaws go away; our goal is to make the nation better. That approach was considered patriotic. Today, it’s unpatriotic to acknowledge the problems everyone knows we have. When I look back now and think about it, I believe a lot of people today would say that what your father was saying then was un-American. I think your father and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day and Rosa Parks are some of the people most invested in America and most interested and committed to America and the American philosophy. But we live in interesting times.

KK: My father quoted the Chinese curse that said, “May you live in interesting times.”

SO: And James Baldwin’s words about desegregation, which I can’t quote precisely, are that “this is not the solution, people. It’s the first step.” That is the honest approach to race that we don’t hear enough of: “It’s tricky stuff, people. It’s not going to be solved tomorrow. We have to navigate through it.” I think the politicians who are willing to say that are few and far between today.