Robert Costa

OF ‘WASHINGTON WEEK’ ON PBS

Do you have any predictions about the 2020 election? I don’t like to predict anything. My mantra is assume nothing as a reporter . ... You never know who’s going to rise and fall in politics. So people, pollsters, predict a possible blue wave in November. But when you’re out there on the trail and you see this in polling as well, President Trump’s base is still pretty strong. The Democratic resistance is very strong, too. So I don’t like to predict anything, but I know that voters are highly engaged. A lot of times, covering midterm elections, you don’t see this kind of engagement. We’re in an intense political environment right now. You see it on both sides. The president’s defenders want to be out there defending him. And Democrats see a real opportunity to take over the House and maybe even the Senate. When the elections are over, all the people that are infected with the concept of fake news, how are we going to break that spell for them? There is power that comes from having nonpartisan news organizations do the reporting. So what “Washington Week” is trying to do is encourage people to hear that the people who are reporting the news ... are real people with real news judgment and real values. And one of the ways to fight fake news and just call it fake news and to get people out of the boxes editorially or politically is to show the people behind the news production, that if you watch “Washington Week,” I challenge anyone to watch this show and say there’s some kind of agenda of the people who are on this show.