In honor of Women’s History Month, Barrett Media is sitting down for conversations with some of the most respected women in the industry, including Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren.
“I’m sort of an accidental anchor,” she remarked.
After finishing law school and starting her own practice with a friend, Van Susteren was asked to do courthouse commentary. “Anyone could do courthouse commentary and be a lawyer and just explain what an opening statement is,” she said. “Then after that, William Kenny Smith’s trial went gavel to gavel at CNN. So CNN called me up to do the gavel to gavel.”
Van Susteren was teaching as an adjunct professor at Georgetown and thought the CNN gig would be over in roughly two weeks. “Well, that was 30 years ago,” she joked.
So a two-week gig turned into an entirely new career path. Van Susteren has spanned the media’s political spectrum from CNN to Fox News, MSNBC, and now Newsmax. The secret to this wide-ranging success: just provide the facts.
“I grew up trying cases and in the courtroom, [and there] you can only do facts. The only opinion you can provide in the courtroom is that a witness is allowed to give an opinion — whether someone looks drunk or not, oddly enough.” She added, “I’m very fact-driven. If you look at my shows through all the networks I’ve [been at], I can get Republicans and Democrats on every single network I’m on, regardless of what the network is perceived to be.”
She also noted that aside from her CNN shows, all the other networks gave her show a similar name. “On the Record, For the Record, The Record. I’ve used the same sort of names.” It goes to her point — she’ll cover politics, but she is not taking a political side. Instead, she’s presenting the facts, and she sometimes does it with the help of artificial intelligence.
“You know, [AI] depends on who’s using it and how you use it. I use it as a research tool. I don’t use it to write anything for me.” She noted AI has gotten some facts about her wrong. “I looked it up once and said, ‘How did Greta Van Susteren do in high school?’ And it said I was great. Well, I’ve got to tell you, that was a failing on the part of AI.”
“Frankly, with AI I use about three different ones — Perplexity, Grok, ChatGPT — and I compare and contrast them. I don’t rely on one of them, because I’ve seen too many things that are inconsistent.” She noted, “AI can be a wonderful tool, but it can also be frightening — because it’s so possible to poison people.”
To young journalists who are truly searching for the pursuit of truth, Van Susteren can be considered an icon, but it’s a label not on her own personal radar. “I don’t have that sense of, like, I’m an icon. I have a sense that this is my job, but my rest of my life is so regular.” She added, “People aren’t driving me around in cars, unless it happens to be an Uber or something. My perception is so vastly different. I just happen to have a ringside seat on the most interesting things that happen in our lives.”
She later noted, “I don’t feel, quote, iconic at all. I feel lucky, but not iconic. I don’t have that sense of me, and it sort of surprises me when I hear that. And I think I’m a survivor.”
“I work very hard, I study hard, and I show up for my show. I get up in the morning early and I’m studying. And I read everything in sight. I read so much more beyond what the average person would do.”
She gave an example: “Recently, we had a guest who was going to be talking about the war. It would have been enough just to have his name and the fact that he was going to be covering the war. But I dug deeper and found out that when he was in high school, he went to school in Tehran. So I dig a little deeper. I’m curious.”
For those looking to follow in Van Susteren’s footsteps, she suggests, “Obviously, they need to distinguish themselves.” She proceeded by saying, “I’ll tell you what I think is a mistake. People want to be anchors. Anchors, for the most part, are in studios. What you really want to be is a reporter. I’ve been fortunate enough to be an anchor-reporter, because a reporter gets out and investigates and learns things. And I think if you want to be an anchor, spend 10 or 15 years as a reporter so that you build up a portfolio of experience.”
Imparting words of wisdom she received from Ted Turner and Larry King, Van Susteren attested, “Ted Turner said, ‘The news is the star.’ And he was really right. That taught me that you are there to deliver the news. It’s not about you.” She went on to say, “Something else that Larry King told me: ‘Don’t talk too much.’ The reason he told me that is he said people may be interested in you in the first four or five, six, seven, eight nights. But after that, they’re going to get bored with you. They tune in to watch your guest and hear what your guest has to say.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
A useful and rare story on Barrett. Not one sentence about the psychological train wrecks on sports radio who call each other names whenever their egos are threatened, which is once or twice a day.
Let’s have more of this and less of “Dog Man calls The Bear a Bird Brain.”
Let it be me please 🙏