Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 463: Weisswashing the Media

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Episode 463: Weisswashing the Media · Words & Numbers

0:00
Today on words and numbers, an American war zone.
0:02
What's up with the price of gold?
0:04
Bad Bunny and Barry Weiss takes the helm at CBS News.
0:08
All this and more coming up on Words and Numbers, the Civil
0:11
original production. Check us out at civl.com.
0:14
Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony.
0:16
And this is words and numbers. Aunt, what's new and exciting in
0:24
your world this week? Well, I kind of went down a
0:26
rabbit hole recently. You went.
0:28
Down a rabbit hole every day of your life.
0:30
Who are you kidding? Somebody wrote me and said, hey,
0:33
did you notice the price of gold crossed the $4000 an ounce mark
0:38
for the first? Time.
0:40
And that, that led me to looking up the and not just the price of
0:44
gold, but the inflation adjusted price of gold.
0:46
And it is at and well, the data that I have goes back go back to
0:52
1915. It's an all time high adjusted
0:56
for inflation. The next most, the next highest
0:59
high was January of 1980, when it was in today's terms just shy
1:05
of $2800 an ounce. You might remember, I think it
1:09
peaked at the time it was in nominal dollars was like 800.
1:12
So that's the equivalent of 2000 a day.
1:15
Yeah, but $4000 today. Yeah, Silver's been out on a
1:18
Bender as well. Oh has it?
1:21
I haven't watched Silver. They they tend to go in, in in
1:25
lockstep. There's interesting stuff going
1:28
on in the economy that we might devote a whole episode to
1:33
because I have some thoughts on it.
1:34
But but the interesting part is, is this dichotomy of on the one
1:39
hand, the economy is kind of tepid, you know, yeah, we're not
1:44
in recession, but economic growth isn't great.
1:47
And inflation, excuse me, unemployment is lower than it
1:51
was, has been in recent history, but it's going up.
1:56
Inflation is, quote UN quote under control, but it's still
1:59
not back to where it was prior to COVID.
2:02
So everything on the economic side looks kind of tepid.
2:05
Nothing to write home about, but on the financial side, it's like
2:08
a different planet. The NASDAQ is U 25 year over
2:16
year, 18 year to date and I wanted to say that so that I
2:21
could explain to the listeners the difference.
2:23
Everybody knows the difference. Move on, move on.
2:25
No, they may not know. Year over year is NASDAQ today
2:29
versus the same time last year. Year to date of course is NASDAQ
2:34
today versus January 1st. Year over year becomes important
2:38
in a lot of these measures because you get you get seasonal
2:42
fluctuations. So just because something is up
2:46
versus 6 months ago, is it because the economy's better or
2:50
is it because it's just what happens in the summertime?
2:53
So you look at year over year, but NASDAC 25% year over year,
2:57
S&P 517% year over year. Gold, of course, has hit its all
3:02
time high. IP OS, we are on a streak.
3:07
This is companies that are going public on.
3:11
They're issuing stock on stock exchanges for the first time.
3:14
IPOs. We are on track, James, for the
3:18
third highest year for IPOs since 2001.
3:24
And don't forget Bitcoin, which is marching straight into the
3:27
stratosphere. I just saw that, did Bitcoin
3:30
cross something weird like 140 a $150,000 recently?
3:34
Well, not, not quite that high, but it's been going up and and
3:38
up and up. Yeah.
3:40
And and so how do you explain on the one hand the financial
3:45
markets just going gangbusters, I mean like it levels
3:48
thatthatare.com era growth while at the same time the economy is
3:54
tepid. And I have hypotheses about
3:57
this, but I want to point out something that's very
3:59
interesting. On the economic side, there is
4:04
tremendous uncertainty. If you look at the consumer
4:07
sentiment index, it is at a near historic low and it's been just
4:12
been tanking for a while now, solidly consumer sentiment
4:16
index. Anything over 100 consumers are
4:19
are believing that the economy is good and their prospects for
4:23
the future are good. Anything below 100 is kind of
4:26
recessionary. We're at 55, right?
4:29
So solid. I mean, we're almost halfway to
4:31
0, which is as low as you can go.
4:34
I submit that part of what's going on on the on the consumer
4:40
side, which is what largely drives the economy, is we have
4:46
managed to stuff, and I'm not exaggerating here, we have
4:50
stuffed a century's worth of economic upheaval into just the
4:56
past five years. For example, we re enacted since
5:01
2020, we have re enacted the influenza epidemic of the 1920s.
5:06
Granted not without the the death count, but certainly with
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the economic upheaval. Influenza epidemic epidemic of
5:14
the 1920s, unemployment rates not seen since the depression of
5:19
the 1930s, tariffs not seen since the 1950s, double digit
5:25
inflation of the 1970s, interest rate hikes of the 1990s, housing
5:31
price run UPS of the early 2000s and the crypto mania of the 20
5:36
tens. All of this a century's worth of
5:39
economic upheaval in the past five years.
5:42
I think consumers are just, in a psychological sense, blown out
5:47
of the water. They're all sitting on their
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hands, largely speaking because they don't know what the lay of
5:52
the economic landscapes going to be 5 years from now.
5:56
Well, nobody does, and nobody ever has.
5:59
So there's. No, but at least you have some
6:01
kind of idea. You're going to be X.
6:04
And Y. Well, what?
6:06
When I see precious metals and Bitcoin spiking at the same
6:11
time, that tells me that people generally are very nervous and
6:18
they don't know what to do with their money, so they're finding
6:21
places to park it that they think won't just disappear over
6:27
the next few years. Yeah, I think you're, I think
6:29
you're right about that. And I think there's another
6:31
thing at play here as well, which is the, the residual of
6:35
all of that quote UN quote, money printing that the Fed did
6:39
back in, in 2020. We haven't flushed that out of
6:43
the system. And where's that money largely
6:45
sitting? It's not sitting in goods
6:47
markets for the reason you just said.
6:49
People are low to spend the money.
6:51
It's sitting in financial markets, driving up, driving
6:54
bubbles in virtually everything around.
6:57
Right, this is AI mean. I hesitate to use the word, but
7:02
it's a kind of inflation. Yeah, yeah.
7:04
We don't call it inflation, but it's the same kind of thing in
7:07
the financial market. I hesitate to use the word
7:10
because it has an actual definition, but.
7:12
Right, right. This, this, this, if we're
7:15
right, if our analysis is on point, this is actually
7:18
government created. And, and I'll I'll go you a step
7:22
further because I keep seeing a recurring news story now that
7:27
President Trump is considering sending out $2000 checks to all
7:31
Americans. How interesting because I had it
7:34
on my list here to talk about and I forgot to mention it.
7:37
I'm in Virginia, the state of Virginia.
7:39
Just I just got a check for $400.00.
7:41
I said what the heck is? This that's a that's a rebate on
7:44
taxes paid that they didn't spend.
7:47
That's what it, but it's not a rebate like of my personal
7:51
taxes. It's that the state had a
7:53
surplus and just started cutting checks to everybody.
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Everybody got the same amount. It's 200.
7:58
Dollars. Trust me, the United States does
8:01
not have a surplus. We're in no danger of having a
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surplus. We will never have a surplus.
8:05
Yeah. But Donald Trump wants to send
8:07
out $2000 checks. Why?
8:09
Because people love that sort of thing.
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What don't they like? The inflation that necessarily
8:14
comes right behind it. Right, right.
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So that's where we are. It's tremendously uncertain and
8:23
that's all we can tell you. Good luck and God bless.
8:26
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8:32
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8:35
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8:39
I want to talk, aunt, about the lady who's become known as as
8:44
Ice Barbie, our secretary of whatever she is.
8:49
I'm drawing a. Christy, Christy Noem.
8:51
The name doesn't ring a distant bell to you.
8:54
No, no, tell them that. Seems that seems odd.
8:58
Didn't really how? How can this be true?
9:01
She is our Homeland Security secretary.
9:04
Because I'm no longer an academic, I don't have to pay
9:07
attention to minute to a small area of things over here.
9:11
Well. Let me put it this way.
9:13
Many people. Not me exactly, but not not me
9:17
exactly. Many people think she's really
9:19
pretty and she goes on raids with ICE agents as they go do
9:25
various idiotic and or illegal things.
9:29
And they're in Chicago now who and and remember aunt that both
9:34
Noam and President Trump have referred to Chicago as a war
9:39
zone, right? Things are things are so bad
9:43
there that it's a war zone. And Christy Noam has made a
9:47
couple of complaints over the last few days.
9:52
The first was that she wasn't allowed to use a bathroom in a
9:57
federal building. Why was she not allowed and
9:59
who's going to tell her no? Whoever the guy was at the door,
10:03
he said get your ass out of here, which, you know, fine, but
10:07
do you really worry about bathrooms in a war zone?
10:11
Last I checked, soldiers in war zones did their business all
10:15
kinds of horrible places. And, and the second thing she
10:18
complained about, which I thought was even funnier, was
10:21
that she can't get good lunch in Chicago because getting good,
10:28
getting good lunch happens in a war zone too, or in her mind
10:33
should. And the reason why she can't get
10:35
a good lunch is because restaurant owners keep throwing
10:37
her out of their restaurants. Well, what can you do?
10:39
I think we're operating on a mistaken assumption of what a
10:42
war zone actually is. You want to see a war zone, go
10:45
to the Ukraine. And I just said the Ukraine.
10:47
And we get all kinds of mail correcting me.
10:49
So don't I already know that it's Ukraine?
10:53
OK. So I think it's worth mentioning
10:57
this thing that you say frequently that words matter in
11:00
words do matter. In our book Cooperation and
11:02
Coercion, we hit on this, we have a, a chapter, The War on
11:06
Nouns. And to use the term war, and it
11:11
seems like a simple thing you say, well, everybody knows it's
11:13
not really a war. Be careful.
11:15
It puts a mindset in people's heads and all of a sudden it's
11:19
OK to do certain things like send soldiers into the city.
11:25
Yeah, that's right. And it's so easy, as a matter of
11:28
fact, to do that that Donald Trump watched a video from
11:32
Portland when it was thoroughly out of control in 2020.
11:36
And it was broadcast on the news, which means it was on Fox
11:39
News because that's the channel he watches and saw it.
11:44
And he said, oh, my God, it's out of control there.
11:46
Send. Send the National Guard, never
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realizing that that was video from five years ago.
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Oh my God, really? Really.
11:55
And a bunch of his followers now think that that's what happens
11:59
in Portland every day, all the time, because they saw the
12:02
video. It did happen.
12:04
It happened in 2020. So there were a lot of things
12:07
happening in 2020. I'll leave it to you.
12:09
To figure out what these things were my son lives out there and
12:14
apparently in Portland they have this thing every year a naked
12:18
bike run. Oh, Jesus.
12:20
And and they've decided to protest the soldiers there.
12:24
They've they've advanced the date.
12:28
So in protest, a bunch of of scantily clad Portlanders are
12:33
going to be riding up and down on bicycles.
12:35
I'm going to say this as a blanket statement.
12:37
If you're outside, you need to have clothes on the end.
12:41
People need to cut this nonsense out.
12:44
But Aunt, this, this was not the foolishness of the week.
12:48
Instead, something even Dumber is the foolishness of the week.
12:52
And for this, we have to talk about one of those things that
12:56
you know literally nothing about, are we?
12:58
Going to talk about sports? The Super Bowl, as a matter of
13:01
fact, yes, football the the biggest, that's right, the
13:04
biggest football. Good for you.
13:06
The biggest football game of the year, the most important one,
13:10
the one to determine which American team are world
13:14
champions, because that's how we do things.
13:16
We we just nobody else has football teams when it comes to.
13:20
Football do we say world champion with a straight face?
13:23
Of course we do. How many other countries play
13:26
American football? None.
13:29
OK. And why don't we just say the
13:31
solar system champions? I I would be in favor of that.
13:35
That'd be fine by me. Milky Way, let's go.
13:39
Solar Bowl. That's, hey, why not?
13:42
But then aliens might come down and they might be 45 feet tall
13:46
and and you know, 3000 tons and they beat us every time.
13:49
But anyway, you know that at the the Super Bowl has a halftime
13:54
show, correct? Right.
13:56
That's the part where you start watching.
13:58
No, actually I I I hate. You you watch the commercials.
14:01
You watch the commercials. Yeah, yeah, people like
14:05
commercials are superbs. The commercials are when you go
14:08
to the bathroom and get more potato chips.
14:10
But anyway, look, the the NFL is trying very hard to expand
14:17
across national borders. So they're having Games in
14:21
London. They had a game in Ireland this
14:24
year. They're in South America or
14:26
Mexico, I believe it was. Maybe it was further down, well,
14:31
South of the American border at any rate, right.
14:35
So they're trying to break out and the Super Bowl halftime show
14:38
is a way to attract non fans to the game, right?
14:44
It this it's it's not about anything other than that.
14:48
The the NFL sits back and says, how many people who don't care
14:52
about football at all can we get with this person or this one or
14:57
this one? And This is why the Super Bowl
15:00
halftime show is always incredibly confusing to most
15:04
football fans. The last three or four I've
15:07
watched and I've thought, what the hell is this?
15:11
It's just incomprehensible. I don't think we've had a truly
15:14
great Super Bowl halftime show since Prince did it.
15:18
But, you know, if you were, if you were running the NFL,
15:21
wouldn't you think, hey, that Prince fella, the kids like him,
15:25
the kids who don't watch football like him, maybe, maybe
15:29
we can get them to watch the game, if only for the halftime
15:33
show. So they're always thinking this
15:34
way. And this year they have chosen a
15:38
very strange man who goes by the name of Bad Bunny.
15:41
Now Bad Bunny. I wish I knew his real name.
15:46
It would make this so less ridiculous.
15:48
But anyway, Bad Bunny just decided not to have.
15:51
Well, look, it's asinine to call yourself Bad Bunny.
15:54
It's just stupid. We just like hearing you say it.
15:57
That's funny thing. Yeah, this used to mean
16:00
something else in the 1970s. I'll just leave it at that.
16:03
He he didn't do a tour of the United States this year, even
16:07
though he's apparently the biggest pop star going since
16:11
Taylor Swift, because he was worried about what ice would do
16:15
to his audience, that they might show up at his concerts.
16:19
Because he does a lot of his his thing in Spanish and that might
16:23
attract attention and he didn't want any part of it.
16:26
Turns out he's Puerto Rican, right, Which makes him an
16:31
American citizen. So, you know all the people who
16:38
got up on the rooftops when he was announced and said he
16:41
shouldn't be allowed to do it. We got to have an American do
16:44
it. Well, well, OK, but we we do.
16:46
He is an American. You don't have to like his
16:50
performance to admit that he's an American citizen.
16:53
These are two completely different things, and you could
16:55
address them separately. But here, here's the thing.
16:59
Donald Trump came out and said it's absolutely ridiculous that
17:04
he was chosen. How would the how on earth would
17:07
the commander in chief know that?
17:09
Is it ridiculous? Well, it depends on why you
17:12
chose him. Am I looking forward to Mr.
17:14
Bunny's performance? I most certainly am not.
17:18
I'll probably go out and grill something when that's happening
17:21
because I live in Tucson and it's going to be 68° outside on
17:25
on Super Bowl Sunday here. I don't.
17:28
You don't have to watch if you don't like it, but the speaker
17:32
of the House, and that's where the action is, the speaker of
17:37
the House. Mr. Johnson said that this is a
17:42
terrible decision for the Super Bowl, but he offered a positive
17:46
solution. Give any idea what the Speaker
17:51
of the House Mike Johnson thinks would be a perfectly good,
17:55
acceptable thing for the halftime show of the Super Bowl.
17:59
Tell me. Lee Greenwood, the 80 year old
18:03
guy who comes out at every Trump event and sings.
18:06
I'm proud to be an American. Really.
18:09
That guy sucks. Yeah.
18:11
Well, First off, he's not going to attract.
18:12
Well, he'll attract some people, but.
18:14
No, those people are already watching the game.
18:16
Yeah. OK, great.
18:17
All right. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll buy that.
18:20
But I mean, what? What goes?
18:21
I'm just trying to picture what what do you do?
18:23
Just put him in the middle of the field and give him a
18:24
microphone. I mean, I can't imagine like
18:27
fireworks and all that's kind of thing going on.
18:29
Or choreography, for God's sake. You mean a Lee Greenwood
18:33
extravaganza? No.
18:36
That's not going to happen. He'd fall down and break a hip.
18:39
He's literally 82 years old. I mean, for God's sake, what are
18:43
you thinking? Bring back ZZ Top if that's
18:46
going to be how you want to go. But look, these people are
18:49
marketers. They have an objective.
18:51
They they have a thing they need to accomplish.
18:54
Is Lee Greenwood going to do that?
18:55
No. But Speaker of the House Mike
18:58
Johnson has an objective that needs to be accomplished too.
19:03
And mouthing off and bringing up President Trump's absolute
19:06
favorite guy in the world accomplishes that objective.
19:10
It gets his lips puckered up and placed on the presidential
19:14
behind without any trouble, which makes both him and the
19:20
president apparently happier than they were before so.
19:23
Not so much of football fans. No, we're all just disgusted by
19:27
this. I mean, look, I, I would like it
19:29
to be an American performer. I think the Super Bowl is a, an
19:34
essentially American thing. So I, I wanted to be an
19:38
American. I'm, I'm relatively agnostic as
19:42
to the form of music. I would like it to be Americana,
19:47
right? So somebody, somebody in the
19:49
Bruce Springsteen Tom Petty range.
19:52
But that's not going to bring that's not going to bring new
19:55
people to the to the thing. And I get that.
19:58
So, you know, you want to have the most popular guy right now,
20:02
and they think that's going to be Bad Bunny, and they've
20:05
already signed him up. I have to ask, has has it not
20:08
occurred to anybody that maybe the sports just boring?
20:11
I mean, if you have to, like, if you have to have big name
20:13
performers to bring fans in, is there not something fundamental
20:17
mentally wrong with the product that you're?
20:19
Pushing, I don't know how to tell you this, but that is
20:22
literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
20:27
And you should stop talking about that right now.
20:31
And, and let's just move on because we kind of had two
20:35
foolishnesses of the week already.
20:37
And and we're about to have a third because we're we're kind
20:41
of talking about journalism and the culture war today.
20:45
And as unless you've been living under a rock for a while, you'll
20:48
know that Barry Weiss has been made the editor in chief of CBS
20:54
News. And Barry Weiss is, is, or was,
20:57
I guess, the founder of Free Press.
21:00
Is that why? She worked for she.
21:02
She had articles in I, I don't want to overstate it.
21:06
She wasn't a regular columnist, but she wrote pretty
21:09
consistently for the New York Times, wore out her welcome
21:13
there given political differences, went on to form the
21:18
Free Press, did quite well with that, and then kind of
21:24
capitalized on it, right? It's the right moment in time.
21:27
People at CBS, long the third network of the three in terms of
21:33
news, right there. Their news department, for lack
21:37
of a better word, sucks. And it sucked for a long time.
21:41
So yeah, long time meaning decades.
21:44
Decades and the the people at CBS thought quite reasonably
21:49
maybe we should maybe we need to really shake things up here.
21:54
Maybe if we keep doing the same thing we're going to get the
21:58
same result in that that would be bad.
22:01
So let's do a different thing and get a different result and
22:04
enter Barry Weiss and and I think it's fair to say that
22:08
she's in charge of CBS News at this point, although as we'll
22:13
get to later, some of the people who work at CBS News are
22:16
confused on that point. But but Weiss being I, I think a
22:21
perfectly rational, level headed woman showed up and sent a
22:27
letter out to everybody, her new colleagues and said, I've got
22:31
these these points and this is what we're going to do from now
22:35
on. And you know what, Aunt?
22:37
If you're in charge, you get to decide that sort of thing, and
22:41
then you get to sink or swim by the merits of that thing.
22:45
And it's not just, it's not simply things we're going to do
22:48
like we're going to cover more of this or less of that.
22:51
These are these are 10 principles of journalism.
22:56
Yeah, well, for, for lack of a better word, I, I think it's
23:00
safe to say these are in the neighborhood of principles, and
23:07
some of them clearly are. Others you could debate about,
23:10
but we're going to go through them numbers one through 10,
23:13
just so you can hear what she said.
23:17
How crazy she is right? Before you hear what a nut job
23:21
she is, because I'm frankly not seeing nutjob in what I'm
23:27
reading in the letter that she sent out.
23:30
But if you out there think that Ant and I might be crazy
23:34
ourselves, but feel free to tell us exactly how.
23:37
Nothing about football to Ant. Number one, we want journalism
23:41
that reports on the world as it actually is.
23:45
Doesn't every journalist want to report on the world as it
23:48
actually is? I thought that was the
23:50
definition of. News.
23:52
Yeah, but wait a minute, I used to see Don Lemon on CNN lying
23:56
about things all the time. As a matter of fact, I see all
24:01
kinds of so-called journalists lying about things all the time.
24:06
And I've seen journalists on CBS lying about things.
24:13
And not just not just lying, but they're, you know, her principle
24:17
is report on the world as it actually is.
24:20
Journalists nowadays aren't doing, aren't reporting.
24:23
They're telling me how I should think about the world.
24:25
Well. That's there's an interesting
24:27
thing here because I remember back when I was taking public
24:30
opinion polls very seriously when I was at the at UConn, they
24:34
have the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and I, I was in
24:37
and out of that place for a few years.
24:41
Journalists, when asked what do you want to do with your life,
24:46
the most common answer was change the world.
24:51
The most common answer, the only answer should have been report
24:54
on the news. Yes, right.
24:58
And that's what we're getting to here.
25:00
Barry Weiss is saying we're going to have journalism that
25:02
reports on the news as it actually is, not as you wash it,
25:07
not as you wish it were, not as I wish it were, but as it is.
25:12
And if you want news, that's exactly what you should have.
25:16
I want to sit down every night, frankly, aunt, and have a source
25:19
that I can turn on in the evening, you know, from 6 to 8
25:24
in that period of time. Typically 6:00 and 6:30 are
25:28
local, but seven is somewhat more national.
25:32
I would love a news source that I could watch and generally
25:36
trust. Not right and I.
25:38
Trust all the time not believe right down to the marrow.
25:42
But then I could just. Generally trust.
25:44
I began as a news junkie when I was in junior high school that
25:48
far back. And I can tell you the last
25:53
reporter who I felt was reporting the world as it is is
26:00
Walter Cronkite. And that was he went off the air
26:03
in what, 7879 something? Long time ago and and Walter
26:08
Cronkite let let's not romanticize things.
26:11
He was a reliable man of the soft left right.
26:16
He he, he just was he his voice got into the news and I I
26:21
understand and I know that that's always going to happen to
26:24
some degree or another with him. It really became clear in the
26:28
Vietnam War, right? You you knew Walter Cronkite was
26:32
against that war and he wasn't helping you be for it.
26:37
Nonetheless, he was relatively objective and he did a pretty
26:40
good job, way better than anything we've got now.
26:44
And, and it's idiotic to say that you're going to go to Fox
26:49
or MSNBC to get your news. They're not presenting the news.
26:53
They're presenting rage bait. Right.
26:55
You're you're getting the opposite side of the of the
26:59
extreme, but you're getting the extreme.
27:01
And even CNN, which used to be pretty good by my estimation,
27:05
never great, but pretty good, right?
27:08
And I would call it that probably back in the very early
27:11
90s, Gulf War, first Gulf War era.
27:14
But they did a. They did an.
27:15
Admirable job of presenting the news.
27:20
Not anymore, right? I know that.
27:22
I know they're messing with me when I turn on Cnni literally
27:26
have not one great news source to turn to at night.
27:30
I've been defaulting for years to NBC for the Evening News.
27:36
Lester Holt did a pretty good job.
27:39
He's now gone. You know Barry Weiss seems to be
27:43
saying hey guys, the truth matters.
27:46
Get get your personal crap out of here.
27:48
Just give us the facts. But then she also says she wants
27:52
journalism that's fair, fearless and factual.
27:55
I want that too. I want them.
27:57
I want journalists doing honest work.
27:59
I don't want them taking talking points from the administration
28:03
or from some clown in Congress. I want them doing investigative
28:07
journalism. Find out what the Hell's going
28:09
on and don't worry about it. You're protected by the 1st
28:11
Amendment in so doing. Right and and follow up with her
28:15
next journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the
28:19
truth plainly wherever it leads. It's the same kind of thing when
28:24
you think it right through. And this is, I mean, these first
28:28
three reporting the world's actually is news that's fair,
28:31
fearless, factual, respects our audience enough to tell the
28:34
truth plainly. These are three things that when
28:36
I, when I over the years have talked to people on both the
28:40
left and the right and we've talked about problems with
28:42
media, everybody says, yeah, why can't the media be like this?
28:47
Yeah, so she it turns out she's not crazy so far.
28:50
Maybe we'll find the lunacy in numbers 4-5 and six.
28:54
Four, Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing
28:57
world 5. Journalism that explains things
29:00
clearly without pretension or jargon 6 I think I just found
29:05
the crazy one. Journalism that holds both
29:07
American political parties to equal scrutiny I sense that I
29:12
know where the internal pushback is going to come from the vast
29:17
majority of reporters in the United states simply and the
29:24
vast majority of CBS News employees are on the political
29:30
left the. Thought I think I think it's
29:34
it's only it the journalism world is only exceeded in their
29:38
political in extremist extremism of their political leanings by
29:42
academia. Academia, which leans so far
29:45
left it it tilted right over. So, yeah.
29:51
So this idea that you might hold Democrats to some level of
29:56
scrutiny seems ridiculous to a number of journalists.
30:00
And you and, And look, the Fox News people have that same
30:03
disease. There's just far fewer of them.
30:07
And it it, you know, came pretty clear when various allegations
30:13
would come out about Bill Clinton.
30:14
And they say, well, we have to rally around him.
30:16
He's our guy. Would he have been your guy if
30:20
he had done all the same things and he was a Republican?
30:25
No, you would have been out there with pitchforks.
30:28
So having equal standards for a news department is so important
30:34
that I can't believe anybody has to say it out loud.
30:37
So maybe it is number six. But then again #6 shares
30:42
something with #7 doesn't it? Journalism that embraces a wide
30:47
spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend
30:51
with the best arguments on all sides of the debate.
30:55
And it's easy to see how this one would be crazy if you're
31:00
going in position is that the other side doesn't have a good
31:04
argument. Yeah, that you're right and
31:06
nobody else has a point. Right.
31:09
Yes, yes. And that's precisely what most
31:12
people in the media believe. They're right, and nobody else
31:17
even has a point. I like #8 in a lot of ways, most
31:21
of all, journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and
31:24
important stories, regardless of their unpopularity.
31:28
Wouldn't that be something if we got to hear what was actually
31:33
going on from a bunch of fearless journalists?
31:37
Yeah. For example, I think history is
31:39
going to look back aghast that the media let Joe Biden, in
31:45
effect, be mentally incompetent, remain as president while
31:48
mentally incompetent? No, because nobody was asking
31:52
the right questions. Well, nobody was not.
31:54
Popular. Well, they weren't interested
31:57
because that was their guy. Yep.
32:00
And they had to, they had to do anything to keep him in that
32:04
office lest Donald Trump win it back.
32:08
Well, I, I would submit that those are personal political
32:12
views and they shouldn't color your your reporting at all.
32:16
I mean, there's one guy Jake Tapper wrote a book about about
32:19
this nonsense. And nobody ever asks him.
32:21
Well, why didn't you tell us until you wrote your book that
32:26
the president was demented? Clearly you knew, you know, what
32:30
the hell? At some point, when are these
32:33
people accountable? And Barry Weiss seems to be
32:36
saying, how about right now? How about how about right now?
32:41
And I, as an American, am thrilled.
32:44
I don't know what it's going to look like, but so far I'm with
32:48
her on literally every single point #9 journalism that uses
32:53
all the tools of the digital era.
32:56
All right? That doesn't seem to be a thing
32:59
at all. Yeah, I don't know what tools
33:01
journalism isn't using. Yeah, nor I and then journalism
33:05
that understands that the best way to serve America is to
33:08
endeavor to present. Yeah, that seems exactly right.
33:12
I think it was really a list of nine that she wanted 1/10 for so
33:15
#9 got thrown in. And let me let me underline 10
33:19
because I I had to think about that for a moment, but I like
33:21
it. Journalism understands the best
33:23
way to serve America is to present.
33:27
And I would add as opposed to process.
33:31
Or proselytize. Or, you know, there's any number
33:35
of words that you could throw in there, But the news, broadly
33:40
construed, hasn't been presenting much of anything
33:44
except their own political views for decades.
33:47
And I think James, I think it's more than that.
33:49
We've this has been going on for so long that we have we no
33:55
longer recognize that the stuff that's presented as news is
33:59
really opinion. The opinion pages used to be
34:03
separate. That's where you got opinion.
34:06
Now the entire thing is opinion. It it does seem that that's what
34:10
it's become, and it's a sad thing.
34:13
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That's civl.com. Use the code words and numbers.
34:50
That's one word for a discount on an annual.
34:53
Subscription. So let's let's turn to CBS
34:57
employees and their actual reaction to Barry Weiss's letter
35:03
and Barry Weiss's presence, because they've kind of gone on
35:08
the record, although most of them have shared their thoughts
35:14
anonymously because reporters are courageous people and
35:19
they're. Willing to stand up for.
35:21
Willing to stand up for principle when it really matters
35:24
the. Most tell the truth plainly
35:26
wherever it leads. Yeah, wherever it leads, as long
35:29
as I don't get in trouble for it in any way.
35:34
What the F word is the the first one anonymous CBS source.
35:39
A throwing up emoji is not enough of a reflection of the
35:42
feelings in here. Anonymous CBS staffer.
35:46
People are using words like depressing and doomsday.
35:49
Feels like some sort of doomsday anonymous reporter.
35:56
I think the massive impending, the impending, massive layoffs
35:59
that are coming in a couple of weeks have everyone just kind of
36:02
freaking out. Literally freaking out.
36:05
Anonymous CBS journalist. Are you noticing a pattern here?
36:09
Ant we don't know what the hell her job is going to be.
36:12
I mean, editor in chief, What does that even mean?
36:15
It makes no sense. Where does she fit in the
36:18
hierarchy? Anonymous CBS Source.
36:21
Right time Out Editor in chief is.
36:24
It seems pretty. Long, long is it.
36:27
That title's been around forever.
36:29
What do you mean you don't know? That's the guy in charge.
36:32
Who? Well, ants don't be a sexist.
36:34
It's the lady in church, of course.
36:37
Do I know she's a woman? Yes, I do.
36:40
Actually. Shut up.
36:42
Anyway, I don't think a lot of the stuff that's on Barry
36:46
Weiss's Free Press would pass our standards.
36:49
It's offensive that someone's being hired who has zero
36:52
experience in television. There are people at CBS who have
36:55
dedicated their entire careers to understanding and developing
36:59
the skills that are needed. Anonymous CBS source.
37:03
Yeah. They've dedicated decades of
37:05
their lives so well that CBS is the last place network news
37:10
channel. It's just like anybody that you
37:13
think isn't qualified for the job that comes in, there's going
37:16
to be trepidation, right? Whether it's Barry Weiss or, you
37:19
know, Michael Scott from the Office.
37:21
Anonymous CBS correspondent. Here's Here's an idiot from
37:26
salon.com who thinks that we should look to Dan Rather as a
37:31
paragon of truthful news virtue. Dan, Dan So.
37:37
That's where the whole thing started going downhill.
37:40
Dan Rather was a filthy liar on on television.
37:43
Got fired for it, but but I digress. 2 decades after Dan
37:47
Rather warned that corporate control would erode journalism,
37:50
CBS News may be proving him right.
37:53
Under new owner Larry Ellison, the network is named Barry
37:56
Weiss, founder of the Free Press, as its new editor in
37:59
chief, raising fears of political interference and
38:03
layoffs. Good Lord, here's what I would
38:08
love to see. Put those 10 principles out
38:12
there and let them and invite Americans to vote yes.
38:17
No. Do you agree with this and watch
38:19
99% of Americans say yes. That's exactly what we want.
38:24
They would if you didn't tell them where it came from.
38:27
If you told them where it came from, only half of them would
38:30
agree. Right.
38:32
Probably, probably 30% actually you.
38:36
Know there and therein lies a fascinating example if any
38:40
students are, are listening and you need and, and some project
38:45
for one of your classes, do this take these 10 principles and put
38:51
them under the Fox News banner and and go around your campus
38:58
asking students, do you think you know, here's these
39:00
principles Fox is going to adopt.
39:02
What do you think? And then put it under the MSNBC
39:04
banner and do the same thing. I used to give a lecture, quite
39:08
often actually, that I, I would have Donald Trump and I on the,
39:13
the big screen behind me. And I'd say, I want you to look
39:16
at all these things. And I would go through item
39:19
after item after item that from where I stood were crazy ass
39:25
ideas that nobody should have ever even thought about.
39:29
And I would say, how many of you think these are good ideas?
39:32
And roughly half the hands would go up and then I'd put Barack
39:35
Obama up and I'd do the exact same thing.
39:38
And the other half would their hands would go up.
39:40
And I would say, I lied to you. They were all switched.
39:44
Trump did all the Obama ones and Obama did all the Trump ones.
39:47
What do you think now? And everybody's just mad at me.
39:50
They never thought anything, right?
39:51
They they're just mad at me. They're mad at you.
39:54
Yeah. Oh, I I was, I was not to be
39:57
tolerated after I pulled that kind of crap with them.
40:01
I mean here here's here's another one for you.
40:04
In case it wasn't clear, the anti DEI crusade has never been
40:08
about merit. 0 News experience never been a reporter, elevated
40:13
to editor in chief of CBS News, one of the most storied news
40:17
institutions in the nation. That was by noted imbecile and
40:23
race hustler Hannah Nicole Jones of the 1619 Project fame, a book
40:29
that our friend Phil Magnus has debunked from one end to the
40:33
other and that I've done a little bit of debunking onto.
40:37
And I can tell you, if you knew what I knew about Hannah Nicole
40:40
Jones, you wouldn't listen to her for a minute of your life.
40:43
She is a liar to her core and OK, the these are all the things
40:49
that we're saying. And I've, I didn't even cherry
40:52
pick these. I just read from the top to the
40:54
bottom and I certainly didn't read all of them.
40:57
There's a whole bunch more, but you get the sense of what
41:01
they're all saying. Did you encounter any positive
41:04
comments? No, but I didn't look for them
41:06
either, right. So I'm sure they're out there.
41:09
I'm sure they're as partisan as the negative comments.
41:13
I want to see how she's going to do, because here's the thing,
41:17
the Free Press, she actually built it from scratch.
41:21
It's an impressive, it's an impressive operation that she
41:24
built. Well, why wouldn't that put her
41:27
in a position to know something about building out a news
41:30
organization? Maybe I want somebody who's
41:33
gotten her hands dirty instead of somebody who's been in a feet
41:37
snob for the last 30 years. But let's see what she can do.
41:41
She can't do much worse. Can she do worse?
41:44
Sure. Is it likely to be worse?
41:47
No, it's really not. CBS is a laughingstock.
41:52
Which is. A shame because you know, again,
41:54
back in the late 70s under Cronkite, it was hands down the
41:59
number one news organization in the in the world it.
42:02
Was it was the gold standard? And again, I'm not saying it was
42:06
perfect, I'm just saying it was pretty damn good.
42:09
So good that it was the gold standard.
42:11
Quick, tell me who the the evening Anchorman were on NBC
42:16
and ABC during the same time period.
42:19
Yeah, I don't. Know that's right, You can't do
42:21
it. Which tells you all you need to
42:24
know about what America thought of Walter Cronkite.
42:28
Now, look, the news world has changed.
42:30
It's splintered. There are many, many more
42:34
outlets now than we could have even imagined then, even with
42:37
all the newspapers that existed then.
42:40
Hell, even what we're doing right now counts in a way, as as
42:44
news analysis. So, you know, it's a different
42:47
world. The landscape has changed.
42:49
You can't put that genie back in the bottle and you probably
42:52
don't want to even if you could. So here we are.
42:57
I'm actually interested to see how it all works out.
43:00
I don't know any other way to put it.
43:02
And, and, and I think it's largely because I feel so
43:05
disrespected as a human being and as a viewer by the people
43:10
who have tried to sell me the news for the last 30 ish years.
43:16
That hell man, something's got to give.
43:20
And yeah, God bless him. Let's give this a shot.
43:23
And you know what? Maybe this will move ABC, which
43:28
doesn't have a particularly wonderful news operation either.
43:34
Maybe this will move them to do something and then maybe NBC
43:37
will react to the moves in the market.
43:40
Yeah, I just, I, it's going to be interesting to watch.
43:43
I hope, I hope she doesn't encounter an insurmountable wall
43:49
of resistance. I'm picturing, for example, the
43:52
few cases I know of in, in what I consider the analogous
43:56
industry higher education, where you get a, a president in there
44:01
who's going to do the same kinds of things that she's doing and
44:05
just cannot overcome the inertia.
44:07
Well, these these people don't have tenure.
44:12
Yes. They can all be fired.
44:16
You know, you President Trump used to say things like I'm
44:18
going to drain the swamp. Come to find out he probably
44:21
can't, right it it's either can't or won't.
44:25
And I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, right?
44:27
That the bureaucratic state has built has become a monster.
44:31
You can't just waltz in and undo that.
44:34
You can't waltz into a university and undo what that's
44:37
become. But I think you can when you
44:39
say. And when you say can't, you
44:42
don't mean shouldn't, you mean actually cannot do.
44:45
It, I mean, it's, I mean it's literally impossible to to have
44:48
that outcome, but I don't think it's literally impossible for it
44:52
to happen here. I think you can walk into a news
44:56
organization as editor in chief with the support of the primary,
45:01
the principal owner, and just do it.
45:05
Clean house yo. Clean house, go ahead.
45:07
And you know, hey, Barry, if you're out there, give us a
45:11
call. Boy, that'd be fun.
45:14
We'll. We'll come over.
45:15
We'll, we'll, we'll take a look. I'm not saying that we'll go
45:18
work for you, but I'd like to. I'd like to hang out for a
45:21
little bit. Yeah, I tell you, the principles
45:24
are are impressive. They are impressive.
45:27
And I I think in our way, we do our best to live up to them.
45:32
Yeah. Now granted, we're not news.
45:35
We're opinion. That's right.
45:36
And we make no bones about it and we often tell you what the
45:40
reasonable counter opinion is and that that's the better
45:43
approach. I've been doing this new thing
45:46
on, on Twitter though, because I, I come across people who are
45:49
obviously lying. I mean obviously lying.
45:53
And I click into their accounts and I see 800,000 followers, 1.4
45:58
million followers and I call it the ex idiocy of the day.
46:04
And I just say he's got $1.4 million.
46:07
But in him 3 seconds to do a quick Fact Check.
46:10
How many followers do I have? Not 1.4 million.
46:15
We are a boutique taste. I would like it to be a bigger
46:20
boutique. But serving the truth doesn't
46:24
win you immediate praise. It does win you long term
46:28
respect and that really should be what people are thinking
46:33
about the most. Respect is earned over time.
46:37
It's not just given. And when it is earned, it's
46:40
fragile and it has to be maintained.
46:43
And here we are. I hope to God this is a first
46:46
step down that happy road. And if it's not, I hope
46:50
something else is really, really soon.
46:54
We often say, Aunt you and me, that the the market will correct
47:00
over time and we might be seeing a market correction here.
47:04
I hope we. Are and and to our listeners who
47:07
always ask us, So what should I do?
47:10
Go subscribe to CBS. News Well, keep a keep an eye on
47:16
it. Give it a chance, right?
47:18
The the employees aren't giving it a chance, at least the it's
47:23
not it's, it's likely not a perfectly representative sample,
47:26
of course, But, you know, the hostility is seething right now.
47:31
Well, OK, let's see where it goes.
47:33
Let's see what she can build. I'm sure her first impulse will
47:37
be to gain some kind of consensus.
47:39
And if and when that doesn't happen, it'll be to trim out the
47:42
malcontents. And what will, what will
47:45
doubtlessly remain is something that she can work with.
47:49
Which is what everybody wants, right?
47:50
Something you can work with. I am happy to give her some time
47:54
to figure it out. And I'm going to be watching as
47:57
a very, very interested observer.
48:02
Until next week. Next time, I should say.
48:05
Why do I keep saying next week? Until next time, remember to be
48:09
nice to each other. Not like the CBS News people are
48:12
being to Barry Weiss, but you know, like honest people can be
48:15
with each other when they bump into each other in the real
48:18
world. And we'll see you real soon.
48:20
See you next time, James. Take it easy, Aunt.
48:22
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