Transcript: Capehart with Katy Tur

MR. CAPEHART: Good morning, and welcome to the “Capehart” podcast on Washington Post Live. I am Jonathan Capehart, associate editor at The Washington Post.

Journalism is in the blood of Katy Tur. Her parents pioneered breaking‑news chopper reporting, chopper reporting with her father flying the helicopter and her mother holding the camera, even dangling out of the copter to get the shot. They were household names. But, in her new book, "Rough Draft: A Memoir," Tur writes unflinchingly about the pain that enveloped her family, particularly her father's violence, his transition from Bob to Zoey, and their ongoing estrangement.

And joining me now is Katy Tur. Welcome. Welcome to "Capehart" and Washington Post Live.

MS. TUR: Thanks so much for having me, Jonathan. I need to up my background game, very clearly, considering yours.

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[Laughter.]

MR. CAPEHART: Oh. And I can tell you're in the office. You are at 30 Rock right now. I can tell by the radiator behind you, and as folks know, you and I are MSNBC colleagues.

So let's jump into this. I think part of the reason you wrote this book was to spotlight the amazing career of your mom and dad, Marika and Bob Tur. With their Los Angeles News Service, they broke the biggest stories of the '90s, the Los Angeles riots, the slow‑speed chase of O.J. Simpson, among countless others. Talk about their storied career.

MS. TUR: They were amazing parents in a lot of ways, and they were incredible journalists. And I knew that I wanted to get this story down, because in so many ways, it was completely unbelievable. I mean, my parents had nothing.

My dad and my mom met when my dad was 18, my mom was 23. She was working as a ticket person at a movie theater counter, and my dad stalked her and asked her out a thousand times. Their first few dates were trying to find the Skid Row Stabber in the late 1970s because, apparently, they thought it would be romantic to try to break some news, I guess.

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And from there, they created together this company called "Los Angeles News Service" from nothing again. My dad walked into a helicopter company and said, "Please let me lease a helicopter," and they said, "Do you have any cash?" and he said no. They laughed him out of the office. He walked into another one, had a business plan, and managed to convince the person there to hand him over a multimillion‑dollar helicopter that he had no money for, and from there, they started covering news in Los Angeles in a way that nobody else was doing. And they really revolutionized the news business. They were able to capture real‑time images from the air in a city that, frankly, it's hard to get to anywhere in a timely manner, and there might be a fire, but by the time you drive there, the fire is usually out. So they were able to capture things happening, stories breaking in real time, and they did it with much success. Pretty much, every police pursuit you saw in Los Angeles in the late '80s and '90s was my parents, Malibu fires, you name it.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. And, in fact, you write that you rode along. You were in the copter, particularly in one fire where you were‑‑the copter was so close, you could feel the fire, the heat on your shins or on your legs.

MS. TUR: Yes. It was incredible. We went along for a lot of the stories. I mean, it was just‑‑the helicopter was like another sibling. I mean, it was part of my family. I spent more time in the helicopter than I did my own bed. I felt more comfortable there than I did in my own bed, and you, again, could feel the heat from the flames covering the Malibu fires on your shins.

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We would cover the Rose Parade, which was my favorite thing to cover growing up because it was like a storybook come to life.

I got a unique vantage point of Los Angeles. I became weirdly obsessed with backyard pools. Everyone in L.A. has a backyard pool, and I didn't have one. I really wanted one. But I also got to witness the city changing, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better, right before my very eyes, and I felt like I was getting a real‑life lesson in how the world worked, even at a really young age.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. And you caught me earlier looking down because I have the book right here, and I was trying to find this‑‑and I found it‑‑this passage to sort of amplify what you were saying about your parents pioneering the breaking news from the sky and always being first, and this story really got me. "My dad got a call from a fire department source saying there was a story in the parking lot of KABC."

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MS. TUR: [Laughs]

MR. CAPEHART: "'I can't tell you what it is,' the source said, 'but you'll definitely want to get there fast.' He was right. Turns out KABC's own 11 p.m. anchor, an institution in L.A., had been shot in a botched robbery just outside of the station. My parents got there so fast, they scooped ABC on the story and then sold the tape back to them, back to KABC." That in a nutshell‑‑and I love that because that was Los Angeles News Service right there in a nutshell.

MS. TUR: Just to be clear. The anchor ended up being fine, so don't worry about him. That was also, Jonathan, the night I was born. My mom was‑‑

MR. CAPEHART: Oh, that's right. That's right.

MS. TUR: ‑‑nine months‑plus pregnant with me. She was 10 days past her due date with me, and she's carrying‑‑and back in those days, you know, you had a giant Betacam, and it was 40, 50 pounds, but you didn't get to roll tape on it. It wasn't even a Betacam. You had to hold‑‑there was a wire that went from‑‑the cable that went from the camera to the deck, and the deck is where you recorded the tape. And my mom was carrying this deck while she was 10 days overdue with me capturing that breaking news story, just waiting, waiting, I guess, to give birth.

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[Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: You know, your parents had unbelievable success, a hangar, I think, at the Santa Monica Airport, two Porsches. You didn't get the pool, but you got a Jacuzzi. Nice house, got a Jacuzzi, private schools for you and your brother, but for all their success, you write, "The business tore them apart. Their relationship was a mess. My dad clearly took on all of that stress and didn't deal with it well," and he took all of that stress and took it out on your mom and you.

MS. TUR: Yeah.

MR. CAPEHART: I mean, he threw things, and he threw fists, didn't he?

MS. TUR: Yeah. Listen‑‑and just a note about pronouns because I'm looking backwards, the memories of my childhood. I use "he" here. I use "she" for my dad‑‑and we can get into this‑‑every time after 2013 when my dad told me that she was not Bob Tur at all but Zoey Tur. But since we're looking in the past, allow me to use "he."

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Yeah. My dad had a really tough childhood of his own. His dad was violent and abusive. He was an alcoholic. He was a gambler. He would gamble all the family's money away. They would have to move in the middle of the night, evicted, or they'd just run because they couldn't pay the bills. He would take my dad to the racetrack and say, "Hold on to the rent money. Don't give it to me, no matter what," and then when he would lose the money that he brought to use and look at my dad for the rest of the money, when my dad refused, he would beat my dad up. You know, he cut part of his ear off. He had a terrible, terrible, terrible childhood.

And he had me, my dad, when he was so young. He was 23. They started this business. I think the weight of the world was really on his shoulders, and he never really dealt with the trauma of his own upbringing, the trauma of his grandfather, and it carried on. That cycle continued in our household. While not at all as awful as what he went through, there were still some pretty rough moments. I mean, there were holes in all of the walls, and the one I most specifically remember was one of my first childhood homes. I know it kind of carried on throughout, but my first childhood home, I felt like every other day, we were plastering up a hole in the wall because he would punch the walls. He'd get so, so angry, and he would throw things at my mother. My brother and I bore the brunt of it here and there, but more than anything, it was just emotionally wretched at times because he would yell and yell and yell and yell.

And, ultimately, Jonathan, even though we had all these fancy things‑‑we had these Porsches, a helicopter, a Jacuzzi, I went to private school‑‑it all‑‑we lost it all, including our health insurance, lost everything, because my dad just couldn't control his rage, and it just ended up being toxic for the business and for the people who were looking to employ him, even though my parents broke news and were unbeatable.

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MR. CAPEHART: You know, you write about an instance where because they were hooked into all of these‑‑all of these news stations, they could hear everything that was happening in the helicopter, and you write about how at one station, they put together like a Bob Tur's greatest hits that was more than an hour long and sent it to you‑‑sent it to your home where‑‑

MS. TUR: It was him berating my mother or sometimes throwing things. Yeah. That stuff is on tape, and it's hard. It's really hard. Everybody would hear what was happening in the helicopter.

My mom said that when they were covering big breaking stories that were important, everything was calm. It was great. It was those in‑between times that got really bad, my dad got stressed, and he would lash out.

But it's an interesting commentary, Jonathan, on the world, on not just the news business but the world at that time, because everybody heard it. They heard the abuse.

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MR. CAPEHART: Right.

MS. TUR: Yet no one said anything about it. They sent the tape to the house eventually, but no one ever, you know, called HR that I know of at least. No one called the cops that I know of.

I mean, my mom and I discussed calling the cops. I discussed with her calling the cops and saying, you know, "This has got to stop. We've got to send a message." But we didn't. I didn't because, you know, if my dad's name was in a police blotter, there goes the whole business. There goes the way we make money.

And looking back on it now as an adult myself, as, you know, a grown woman in the Me Too era, I realize that that's‑‑you know, I realize very personally that that's the way this just continues. That's the way that people get caught in these cycles and can't escape because their whole lives are tied to it.

MR. CAPEHART: You write that you tried to bury that part of your past, but you gave that up after hearing disturbing audio from a scene in a documentary about your parents. What did you hear?

MS. TUR: My dad saying‑‑and I'm paraphrasing, but something along the lines of "I don't know how to communicate you except through violence," and he was really frustrated with her in the helicopter.

There's another scene in that documentary where it's the last flight in the helicopter, and it's really a gut‑wrenching moment. Even I cry when I watch it because the business is falling apart, and the helicopter is going back to the company, the leasing company, and they lose‑‑have lost their contracts. My grandmother who is a member of the business but also like the glue that held the family together is dead, and my dad is trying to‑‑my mom is taping my dad, trying to wrap intros and outros for all the footage that they shot over the years so they could repackage it and sell it. And he's yelling at her, and my mom says, you know, "I think I'm holding it straight. I'm doing it my best, the camera," and she says, "Don't hit me." And it's awful. It's an awful thing to hear.

And I found that I‑‑this was in the middle of the pandemic when I‑‑the very beginning of the pandemic, right before everything went to hell, when I saw this documentary, and then in the middle of the pandemic, my mom sent me the server that contained all of the news footage they shot over the years, every single piece of it, thousands of hours, also all of our home videotapes, the stuff that the documentary was based on, the video the documentary used. And in the middle of the pandemic, I felt really isolated. I was broadcasting from my basement. I was starting to wonder what I was doing with my life. Was journalism the career for me? Were we making things worse or were we making things better as journalists? Do I need to quit? You know, I got‑‑it got really dark in my head.

And so when my mom sent me this hard drive, I realized that in order to answer the question of where I'm going, I had to go back and confront the things that I had been running away from.

MR. CAPEHART: All of this brings me to your father's transition from Bob to Zoey. In retrospect, do you think your father's anger was driven by his dealing with or not dealing with his gender identity at the time?

MS. TUR: You know, I'm not a psychiatrist, and so I'm not going to venture to say where the root of everything was with any‑‑you know, that's for my dad to answer definitively.

I think, though, not being your true self is a difficult thing, and I empathize with my dad for that. It must really have sucked trying to hide the person you were for as long as she did. I mean, she was in her 50s when she decided to transition, and I hate that it took so long for her to be comfortable to announce who she was and to take that step. And I wish that it was the move that made everything all better between us, but unfortunately, it didn't and not because of the transition but because of her desire to wipe away everything before then to say Bob Tur is dead and my desire to say hold on, the things Bob Tur did are not dead to me. Bob Tur was my dad, and, you know, let's deal with it. It's tough. It was a pivotal moment in my life. It was hard.

MR. CAPEHART: Yeah. And Bob Tur called you to tell you that he was transitioning when you were covering the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. Folks can read how that call went, but I want to keep going on your father's lack of willingness to take responsibility for what happened during your childhood.

You tried to talk about your childhood with Zoey, but you write, quote, "It felt like my dad was using a Get Out of Gender‑Free card I didn't know existed." Why do you think Zoey Tur won't take responsibility for what Bob Tur did?

MS. TUR: I think because she's ashamed, and she said as much. She said so in the documentary about her life at the end of it. She's ashamed for what she did, and she regrets it. And I think it's hard to confront the bad things that any‑‑I mean, if I‑‑if it were me, it would be hard for me to confront it, and I empathize with that. But I also know that, you know, as a mother myself, you have to confront the things that are hard and uncomfortable in order to move past them, to gain an understanding of them, and to break that cycle.

I mean, it's the same for our country. We've got to confront the ugly parts of our past. We can't just bury them or pretend they didn't happen. We have to confront them to move on and be a better country. Same thing with relationships.

And, you know, while that was a real pivotal moment in my life, what I was finding‑‑and this is part of what started to click for me over the pandemic‑‑was that we're also faced in a really pivotal moment in the world and a pivotal moment for journalism in general, the way that we are able to speak to people, what we are able to tell people, how we are able to educate people. It's broken right now, Jonathan. I know you know this.

And I think the January 6th insurrection and all that we are witnessing now during these hearings is exemplifying an astounding failure of this country to come together on basic facts, an astounding failure of one man who happened to be president to accept the truth. But, also, I wonder if we're going to look at ourselves as journalists. Isn't it also an astounding failure of our ability to communicate?

MR. CAPEHART: Yes. [Laughs] I think the answer to that question is yes.

You know, when you spoke with CBS "Sunday Morning," you said you decided to share your story, including your family's dirty laundry, because it is a great story to share. What can people learn from your story?

MS. TUR: You know, I have been surprised. I didn't write this with any intention of‑‑or any thought that I would find anybody else who had been through something similar. I know everyone has a more complicated childhood than maybe it appears from the surface. For instance, my husband had a wild childhood where his dad was a drug smuggler and went to jail and disappeared from his life, which is probably why we are together because we're two crazy people with crazy upbringings.

But I have been surprised, Jonathan, at how many people have reached out to say that they had, while not similar in the details, similar in the broad strokes, experiences in their childhood. Estrangement is a big thing. I think one in four Americans are estranged to a close family member, and it's tough, you know, and it's a complicated thing to talk about, if somebody asks you, "Where's your dad?" "Where's your mom?" "Where's your sister?" And I think that most people don't really know how to have that conversation, don't really know how to say it without feeling judged or feeling like they've done something wrong, and I certainly felt that way for a lot of time when I would have to talk about my childhood or anybody would ask me about, you know, how is grandpa doing with the grandkids.

And I think that for me, writing this book was a release just to say this is the story and it's complicated, and, you know, I'd love to tell you the sugarcoated version, but the sugarcoated version is not the truth. Here it all is. Lay all your cards out on the table.

MR. CAPEHART: We got to talk about your career. You rose up‑‑well, one, you didn't want‑‑initially didn't want to go into journalism. You wanted to run as far away from it as possible, and yet here we are. You rose up through the ranks of local news and covered tons of crazy stories, but nothing, I don't think, probably compares to your covering the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016, does it?

MS. TUR: How could anything compare to that? I mean, that was‑‑

MR. CAPEHART: [Laughs]

MS. TUR: I mean, honestly, how could anything compare to it? Yeah. I covered‑‑I chased tornadoes. I covered crane collapses. I covered plane crashes. I covered all manner of tragedy, breaking news, everything falling apart around me, but nothing could prepare me for‑‑other than maybe my childhood‑‑for the Trump campaign.

And, you know, it was‑‑it was interesting because, like, I got assigned to it not because I was a politics reporter or not because anybody thought that the campaign would last, but because I happened to be in town. Donald Trump was making noises, and they weren't going to put somebody on it that they thought would be here, you know, for the next 510 days.

I lived in London at the time, spending the summer here.

MR. CAPEHART: Right. That's where you were living, in London then.

MS. TUR: I lived in London. I mean, I literally‑‑I was here for a few days. I left milk in my refrigerator. I left clothes in the laundry, and I came back, and after that, I only spent the night in my bed in London, I think, like eight more times for a year. And then by the time I was done with the Trump campaign, I had moved out my flat in London.

[Laughter]

MS. TUR: My life had totally changed, but yeah, I mean, I get asked a lot about, you know, why did you stick with the campaign. Donald Trump would go after you. There were death threats against you. He singled you out in a way he didn't single anybody else out. Why didn't you just say, hey, listen, I'm going to go back to London and live the life I was living, go back to the French boyfriend I had and the European lifestyle where I had wine at lunch? I mean, nobody would begrudge you that if you did it, but I found myself riveted. And that's not to say that I thought it was an amazing, great campaign, but it was the country changing in front of our eyes. And I wanted to try to understand what was going on.

And, I mean, listen, I've still been trying to understand what's going on six years later, seven years later.

MR. CAPEHART: Yeah.

MS. TUR: It's remarkable how this‑‑how this country has changed. I mean, when I was here in 2015, when I got assigned Trump, that was when it was the weekend or the week that‑‑the day that gay marriage or same‑sex marriage was upheld in the Supreme Court. It was a celebratory day, and I thought to myself, wow, this country has come so far. Love really does win.

And then yesterday I find out that in the Texas GOP, the new platform, is that being gay is an abnormal lifestyle choice. Going from there to there in seven short years is‑‑it's weird to me. What's going on?

MR. CAPEHART: Yeah. It's frightening.

You know, you are anchoring MSNBC's January 6th hearing coverage with Andrea Mitchell and Hallie Jackson. Has there been anything out of the hearings that have surprised you‑‑that surprised you?

MS. TUR: I think what has surprised me is how many people behind the scenes were saying this is not right, this is corrupt, this is potentially criminal, how many people were telling him that he had lost. He lost. He lost. There was no fraud. He lost. You can't pressure Mike Pence. That is corrupt. He doesn't have the legal authority. You can't do it; he did it, anyways.

We're going to hear today about how he pressured Georgia officials. I'm imagining we're going to get a lot more information surrounding‑‑and Arizona officials‑‑surrounding the calls, the call that he made to Brad Raffensperger asking him to find those 11,000‑plus votes.

I'm surprised at how widely accepted it was among his administration and how there were so many people that didn't come out and say that publicly.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm.

MS. TUR: I mean, I guess that's not that surprising. It's depressing.

MR. CAPEHART: That's the word. It's depressing, and I'm still reeling from the hearing where we learn about the pressure on then Vice President Mike Pence and how close he came to, quite literally, being assassinated.

You and I could talk all day long, and we only have five minutes left, but I'm just going to give a warning. We're going to try to stretch this just a little bit longer because there are two things I need to ask you about.

MS. TUR: Okay.

MR. CAPEHART: One is talk about being a woman in this business and the things you had to‑‑you had to put up with as you rose through the ranks by dint of your determination and skill.

MS. TUR: [Laughs] I think any woman coming up in any business will recognize some version of this, and, you know, it's nice to have it out there. You get treated differently, and you get treated in a nonserious way. I hope it's changing.

But when I was coming up in the business, I had a‑‑you know, I had a meeting with my first news director, one of my first news directors, my first one where I was a reporter, and the meeting was "We love you. We think you're so great. We're happy to hire you, but you can't be on my station unless you change the way you look." He told me my boobs were too big for my clothes in so many words. He handed me a quite literal binder full of women, Jonathan, that contains a bunch of glossy images of haircuts that he wanted me to get, short, severe bob cuts with streaky highlights, the kind of things you would see in front of a mall salon in 1989. And it was‑‑the message that was given to me was it very much matters, very much matters the way you look.

And then later on when I was climbing the ladder, I was at a local station here in New York, and‑‑WPIX, and the assignment editor, you know, sent me on a story about pole dancing as exercise, and it was kind of a fad at the time. But he didn't just send me to cover it. He said, "Hey, do you have these stripper shoes you can wear while you're doing this story? You can get on the pole and do some, you know, examples of the routine," and I remember thinking you'd never ask any of my male colleagues to do this. And it just exemplified that in order to be taken seriously, I had to suck it up and just smile and pretend like I wasn't hearing those things and then try to move on to get the harder news, the more serious story. I had to fight for it, prove myself in a way that some of my male colleagues did not have to. And it's frustrating, and I don't like it. I don't like that you automatically assume that the girl on the‑‑or the woman, the young woman on your staff is the person that should go cover gossip girl. Like, we're doing gossip girl segments to try to keep people into the news. Let's have her do it because she's the youngest woman on staff, just assuming that it was, you know, a genre that I would naturally love to talk about as a news reporter. It felt really‑‑it felt really dumb and minimizing.

MR. CAPEHART: And that's one aspect. The other aspect, which you write about forthrightly in the book, is that when you moved‑‑you moved to New York, and you were dating Keith Olbermann, who at the time was--

MS. TUR: Oh, yeah.

MR. CAPEHART: ‑‑a giant at MSNBC, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." And you had to deal with the chatter behind the scenes of people saying, well, you're getting where you're‑‑you're rising because of who you're dating.

MS. TUR: So there was a big age difference, and I think I kind of knew that there would be chatter going into it. I couldn't have been too blind to it, but I was surprised at the way that it was people really grabbed onto it. I was in the New York Post a lot. I had, you know, Fox News' PR team going after me trying to get to Keith by taking down somebody that was close to him. So I was the easiest target. They dug up old photos of me from college where I was dancing with people, insinuating that I was, you know, a drunk slut or some version of that. And then I also felt like the people in my life that I‑‑my colleagues in the jobs that I held were whispering behind my back, and some were. Some were definitely, like calling me, you know, all sorts of names, saying that I only got to where I was because of who I was dating, and I'm sure they used more colorful language than that.

And even now today, if somebody is trying to take me down a notch or try to diminish me, they'll bring up Keith, and you can just look at my Twitter feed and the comments on it. You get a ton of those, "Well, she dated Keith Olbermann. That's the only reason she's in the job that she's in." It's‑‑you know, it's part and parcel with this career, but it shouldn't be.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. And It's also‑‑it's minimizing, to use the word that you used to talk about the other aspects of your career. So that was then.

And so now‑‑you mentioned your husband before, Tony Dokoupil. He is anchor at CBS, at CBS "Mornings." I saw‑‑I think it was the interview you did with Nicolle Wallace where you said, with all the gushing that you could possibly muster, "I love my husband."

MS. TUR: I do. I do.

MR. CAPEHART: And to hear you say that‑‑I don't know if you remember. You and I talked when you and Tony first started dating, and it has never‑‑I have never forgotten the look on your face and the fervor with which you talked about Tony and how you love that man and you were hoping that you would get married.

MS. TUR: [Laughs]

MR. CAPEHART: And so to see that it went from the initial spark to see that it's still there is wonderful to see.

And I want to close by asking. You wrote in the book that there were things in the book that Tony didn't even know. How did he react to those things, and how has he reacted to everything you've put in this book?

MS. TUR: You know, there were some nights where I looked at him and I worried that he thought that he had made a mistake. I was like, "Oh, no. Do you love me less because of all of this?" and that's what I was afraid of. I mean, are you going to love me less if I tell you all of my deepest, darkest secrets? And, you know, I would tell him a story, and he'd get a look on his face like, oh, my God, that's horrible. And I'd start seeing it in a new light and realize that, oh, God, you know, maybe I'm‑‑maybe I've been sugarcoating a lot of this to myself. It was hard. It was hard to reveal it even to the person who was closest to me, but he is‑‑he's the most wonderful person I have ever met, and he is such a strong ally and supporter and lover of all things Katy Tur that I don't think I could have revealed any of this to anyone else had he not been by my side. I just frankly could not have done this book. I could not have finished it. I would have stayed, huddled in a corner, with my blanket over my head crying, or I just would have never confronted any of this, and I would have been, you know, threating to repeat the cycle all over again. Tony is the best.

MR. CAPEHART: Having seen the two of you together recently, I can‑‑I can confirm that Tony Dokoupil is a lover of all things Katy Tur. Katy Tur‑‑

MS. TUR: And I'm a lover of all things Tony Dokoupil.

[Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: Katy Tur, Mrs. Tony Dokoupil, MSNBC anchor, and author of the raw but really well‑done "Rough Draft: A Memoir." Thank you so much for coming to 'Capehart' on Washington Post Live.

MS. TUR: Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's great to be here.

MR. CAPEHART: And thank you for joining us. To check out interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com.

Once again, I'm Jonathan Capehart, associate editor at The Washington Post. Thank you for watching "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.

[End recorded session]

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