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Did 24-Hour Cable News Kill America? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
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  Speaker 2: Now here's the episode for real.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and it's just two of us today. That's all right.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Jerry is a very busy person with loss on our plate.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: We understand that. Fully.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: It's right.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: It's still stuff you should know.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That's right. It is still stuff you should know. And
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: today we are talking about cable news possibly ruining our country.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know that there's much possibly about it.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I never really thought about it. I mean,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I think about our country being ruined a lot. Yeah,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: but I you know, I never really thought a lot
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: about like what was the initial cause of stuff. But
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it's hard to not make an argument that cable news
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: has been like twenty four hour, twenty four to seven
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: cable news coverage is what we're talking about. Yeah, is
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: that didn't make a real dent in things?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And like there's study after study that
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: just shows all the negative effects it has, like ONLI
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: like a collective scale, on an individual scale, Like it's
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: just not good stuff. I looked all over. You can't
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: really find any positive like studies on it. They're like, yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: it's really good for this. I mean, I guess it
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: does make you feel alive to some degree, But I
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: think that's also kind of like trying to find the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: good and mental cigarettes by saying they like make your
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: throat feel icy when you're smoking them.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I think we're going to talk
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: about this a good place to start as sort of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: a brief little look at the old days before cable
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: news was. You know, when you and I were growing up,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: there were big the Big three CBS, NBC and ABC
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: News or you know the networks, and they had news
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: shows that came on at you know, in the evening
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and then like six or six thirty and then eleven,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and that's where people got their national news, and it
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: was reported on in a way where they just sort
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of said, here's what's going on in the world, here
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: are the facts of what's happening, and we all had
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a shared reality of what was going on, and you
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: could kind of make up your own mind about it.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Shared reality is a great way to put it.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: And there has been lots of study about the importance
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: of that too. Right, So, like even if the people
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: who are watching the news didn't agree with other people
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: who are watching the news about, you know, what the
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: solution was to this problem, they were still thinking and
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: looking at the same problem, right, Right. That shared reality
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was a set of facts that everyone agreed like, this
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: is what's going on, this is the problems that our
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: country's facing. And then you have like an argument in
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the marketplace of ideas about you know, what's the best
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: solution and the best way to move forward? Right, Yeah,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: And when you have that kind of thing people have,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: it was called a sort of social, cultural, and political
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: glue that just kind of brought people together and very
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: importantly gave people a sense of a shared national identity,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: like people were all Americans, right, everybody living in the
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: United States, We're all Americans. Even though we don't always agree,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: we don't hate each other for being different. Necessarily we
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: are all at the end of the day, Americans.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And at the center of that glue, well,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: or maybe it was the glue, I guess, was that
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: shared reality of hey, we're all agreeing on the at
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: least the basic facts of what's going on. We did
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: an entire episode on the Fairness Doctrine. It was released
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: appropriately on July fourth, twenty nineteen, So if you want
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: to go listen like in depth about the fairness Doctrine,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: you can, but just sort of a quick overview for
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: this purpose though, is the FCC here in the United States.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: The Federal Communications Commission was created in the early nineteen
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: thirties and their mandate was to quote encourage the larger
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: and more effective use of radio in the public interest.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: And you know, radio was their jam early on, obviously
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: before television and the fairness doctrine was conceived in the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: radio days in the nineteen thirties and forties because there
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: were a bunch of one sided political editorials on the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: radio at the time. So they said, hey, after World
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: War two pass, let's get together and at least decide
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: on a set of rules that all radio and eventually
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: TV stations need to adhere to.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of it had to do with
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: the duty that broadcasters had to serve the public good.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: That was the point of getting a broadcast license. Right. Yeah,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: you made money selling ads and stuff like that, but
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: ultimately what the government wanted you to do was to
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: basically serve the public. And the way that you did
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: that was you devoted airtime to objective, non partisan coverage
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: of all issues. Right, you have to be fair. You
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: had to give other people who had a different point
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: of view a chance to get their coverage as well.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: If somebody in particular was criticized by the station itself,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: by the newscast, so it's an editorials, that person should
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: have ample opportunity to respond. And then this also was
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: part of our Presidential Debates episode. Yeah, part of fairness
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: doctrine was if you were a political candidate, you got
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: equal time to every other political candidate, like all political candidates,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: had to get exactly the same amount of airtime over
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: the course of the race.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was the fairness doctrine. It worked really
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: well for a long time. And then, you know, as
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: we detailed in the episode, in nineteen eighty Ronald Reagan
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: came around and said, let me quote Josh Clark of
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the Future nuts to that, and so he said, yeah's,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: you know, let's open it up to competition. If you're
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a broadcaster, you should be able to compete in the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: marketplace for viewers and just let the chips fall where
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: they may. And so in nineteen eighty seven, the FCC
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: stopped enforcing the fairness doctrine, and almost immediately radio was
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: the first place where we saw the big change. Talk radio,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: especially in the AM dial, exploded, I think over a
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: thirty five year period between nineteen sixty and nineteen ninety five.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: There they went from two talk radio stations in the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: United States as in one followed by two to more
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: than eleven hundred and most of those, I think about
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: seventy percent of those radio stations were conservative. That just
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: exploded in conservative talk radio with people like you know,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the King of that whole movement Rush Limbaugh.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they stopped enforcing in nineteen eighty seven. He
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: went on the air for the first time in nineteen
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: eighty eight, and in about six years he had a
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: three hour show every day that was broadcast live across
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: the nation in six hundred and fifty stations and there
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: are twenty million people who tuned into it. Dittoheads, he
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: called them. And this was like he was the first
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: person to introduce the United States to the concept of
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: just bashing the other party. Yeah, he was the guy
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: that just laid the groundwork for this, and as a result,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: he kind of because he was so popular and because
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: it was so entertaining if you shared his political views,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: he basically brought the GOP to heel, Like he was
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: the head of the GOP de facto. So much so
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: that when the GOP took over in nineteen ninety four,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: took over Congress, they I saw it made him an
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: honorary member of that Congress because he was considered so
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: responsible for getting all of those Republicans elected.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that was a thing.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I didn't either. I think they actually made it up
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: for him.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Uh right, honorary Congress member pretty much. So yeah, that
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: was a you know, TV took notice and later, as
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: we'll see, you know, we'll get to Fox News in
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit after we talk about the first one CNN,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: but later Fox News would say like, hey, here's a
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: model of you know, kind of political commentary as entertainment
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: we can emulate, and like, people love this guy. He's
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: got twenty million listeners every day, and like, imagine the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: kind of cash we can make if we brought that
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: model to television. But first was CNN. We just lost
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: one of my childhood heroes growing up, Ted Turner, very
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: recently he passed away, like less than two weeks ago
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: as we record this in real time, but Ted was
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the founder of CNN, the very first twenty four hour
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: cable news channel, and that came around in nineteen eighty
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: after he had made a bunch of money inheriting and
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: then running his father's billboard advertising business, and he was like,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know what, I think we could use a twenty
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: four hour news cable channel. And his literal quote was
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to bring together in brotherhood, in kindness and friendship and
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: in peace the people of this nation and this world.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: That was his vision.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Ted Turner was the real deal as far as founding CNN.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: And this was bran New Like like you said, people
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: tuned in at six thirty and eleven PM, and that's
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: where you got your news. Now you could tune to
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: CNN and watch news twenty four hours a day. No
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: one had ever done anything like that ever, And it
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: took a little while to catch on because people were like,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: it's not a lot to watch, or I'm watching the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: same stuff over and over again. These people seem to
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: be trying really hard. And then the Challenger Space Shuttle
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: exploded in nineteen eighty six, and that is when CNN
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: showed why it was around.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And can I just have a quick
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: aside about Ted Turner? Oh sure, because he was if
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: he grew up in Atlanta in the nineteen seventies and eighties,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: he was you know, a good chance he might have
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: been your hero like he was mine, because not only
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: did he launch CNN, but more importantly to a kid
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: like me, he was the owner at one point of
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: both the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks, and he
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: launched the superstation WTBS, which was a you know, that's
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: where I learned about what comedy was by watching stuff
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: like the Carol Burnett Show and old black and white
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: stuff like Illigan's Island and Andy Griffith and Green Acres.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And he was just this larger than life guy. He
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: won an America's Cup his philanthropy. He gave a billion
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: dollars in nineteen ninety seven, which was unheard of it
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: at the time for somebody to give that amount of
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: money to the UN to support humanitarian aid and global
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: health and the empowerment of women and developing countries. He
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: saved the American Bison. He's just an amazing dude. And
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I was at a Willie Nelson concert at an outdoor
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: venue at Chastain Park in Atlanta in the nineties and
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Ted came in a little late and it was like
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: you would have thought the ghost of Elvis had walked in.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: There was a murmur, like an audible murmur in the crowd,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and people like pointing to the point where Willie Nelson was,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: like what's going on? When he was singing and he
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: finished his song and he just went, oh, Ted's here,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And it was great. It was just like he was
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a He basically was Atlanta. He owned that town in
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the in the seventies and eighties. So yeah, very sad
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: when he passed. So I just wanted to give a
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: little quick tribute.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's fitting too, because like his that journalistic
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: vision of like bringing everyone together through you know, global
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: coverage of all the issues facing us like that, Like
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: he was a true believer in that. It wasn't like
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: a cynical thing where he's like, I'm really just trying
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: to get a license to print money. I even saw
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Fox News article or profile on him that they ran
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: recently after he died, and they were even speaking about
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: him like respectfully as far as his journalistic integrity goes.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: So he really did. When he founded CNN, it really
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: was like for good reason.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was you know, twenty four seven news.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: No one had ever seen anything like that. That was
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the first like reporting of news in progress when something broke.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: It was the first time that they had the newsticker
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of a screen. You know. People liked CNN.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like it was some huge, like mad success
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: right off the bat. But then when things started happening
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: in real time in the eighties, like the Space Shuttle
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Challenger disaster, obviously, the Berlin Wall falling when little baby
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Jessica was rescued in nineteen eighty seven, and then like
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: hugely impactful when the Gulf War started. CNN was there
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for all of that stuff, like second by second reporting,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and no one had ever seen stuff like that before,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: no like.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And they were highly criticized for some of their reporting.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: They were allowed to stay in a rock and they
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: in some ways became a propaganda arm for Saddam Hussein accidentally,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: but they still like showed what you were supposed to
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: do covering a war. And also CNN was largely responsible
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: for making the goal for the first live televised war
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: in history because they covered it that much.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember sitting around watching it with my roommates
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: in college, like just coming home from after class and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: like putting the war on. Yep, it was really weird.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: It was always on because CNN was always on covering it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, we all should also
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: point out that there would be a change at CNN
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: after Turner, and we'll get to that. But if you're
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: on the right side politically and you hate CNN, that
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: was not Ted Turner's vision to start a left leaning
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: media outlet. That was not what he was trying to
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: do at all. So I hope those words kind of
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: come through here.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Sure. Sure, So there was a kind of out of
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: the gate an issue that CNN faced, which was if
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: you're covering news, like, yeah, news happens pretty frequently, but
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: four hours of coverage can be overdoing it. So rather
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: than just saying the same reporting over and over and
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: over again, they brought in people analysts to talk about
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: to kind of unpack what that news meant, maybe make
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: predictions about how news was going to break, like which
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: way is Congress going to vote? You know, is the
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: President going to veto this? And that became like an
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: established part of twenty four hour news and from that
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: moment that those people started to come in, talking heads,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: pundits like that laid the groundwork for opinion opinion based journalism.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. It was you know, after the Gulf
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: War in the mid nineties, when is when things really
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: started to change and started to lead to our current
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: kind of sad state of affairs with the news cycle.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And one of those things I kind of hinted at
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: was when Ted Turner left Scene and Time Warner brought
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: out CNN in nineteen ninety six, and they were the
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: ones responsible for saying, like, hey, I think if we
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: get a little more divisive here and we lean left
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: of center, we can get more ad revenue. And I
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: mean that's kind of the the sad thing about all
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: this stuff we're going to talk about moving forward. It
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: was it was all money driven, you know, right, Yes,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: it was. It was all for and still is for
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: advertising dollars. And at the time you had two really
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: great political foils, and Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich on
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the screen. Yeah, who two very much on the opposite
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: sides of the spectrum. Guys who you know, Clinton was
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: a good villain for for Republicans and then you know
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: later liberals as we would learn more stuff about him, right,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and Gingrich was on the other side. Man, just he
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: really is the guy like in entrenched in politics that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: ushered in that real good versus evil thing.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as in the Democrats are evil, were good, It's
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: up to us to save America. Before that, the existential
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: threats to the United States were external, namely the USSR.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: After Ginkrich like Rose and took power of the GOP,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the threat was domestic. It was the Democrats that were
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the threat to America as far as the GOP was concerned.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: That was new. Yeah, that was new, and that was
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: the beginning of the end of bipartisanship, whereas now today,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: if you defect and vote against your own party, you're
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: a trader to your party, you know, not that you're
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: doing what your constituents think you should do or voting
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: by your conscience. You're a trader. That's new, and that's
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: basically where it began.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I remember being a kid, and I
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't involved in politics when I was younger, like very
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: into that kind of thing. But I remember hearing the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: adults during election season, not my parents because they never
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: talked about any of that stuff, but just other people, like,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna I'm gonna see which one of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: these men speaks to me the most, and I'm going
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: to make up my mind on who I think is
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: going to be the best leader. And it's just like,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know they're technically or probably independence today,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: but it's hard to imagine just that being a thing
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: today at all. You know.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: It's I'm sure for people who didn't grow up in
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: times where that was possible, it's very hard to imagine Yeah.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Another thing that happened in the nineties, like we talked about,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Rush Limbaugh was enormous. Yeah. Fox News was another huge
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: thing that happened when it was founded in nineteen ninety six,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: and we'll talk about that afterward. And then I have
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: a pet theory, Chuck, what did you think about this?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I had a dealing this with you.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think?
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Sure, I agree.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: My theory is that the Real World premiered in nineteen
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: ninety two, and you might say, what does that have
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: to do with anything, Well, it exposed people to reality television,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: which is not real. But this idea that you can
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: just be horrible to other people and that's like an
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: acceptable way to be. The groundwork for that was laid around.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: And then yeah, so you put all those things together.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: The mid nineties were a really bad beginning. The seed,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the evil dark seed that rotted the core in heart
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: of America out that started in the mid nineties.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: That's right. It sounds like a great time for a
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: break because you mentioned something happening in nineteen ninety six,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that right after this, all right,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So before we broke, you mentioned Fox News debuting in
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six. Fuck just very quickly about Roger Ales,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: who helped launch Fox News. He was a Republican political
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: consultant for many, many years. He worked. He helped to
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: get Reagan Nixon, all the way back to Nixon George H. W.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Bush elected. He understood that TV was a very powerful
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: thing as far as shaping public opinion. By this point,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: he had met Rush Limbaugh in nineteen ninety one and
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: for a little while produced a TV version of Limball's
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: show in the early nineties. But it was in nineteen
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: ninety six when in Ozzy named Rupert Murdoch, who had
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: previously given us The Simpsons with the Fox Broadcasting Company,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: which he launched in nineteen eighty six, the Fox Company,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: he said, you know what, we need our own news station.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Let's get Fox News on the airwaves, and Roger Ayles
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: you're going to be the guy to do it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He designed Fox News as we understand it today,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: basically right out of the gate. And one thing to
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: understand about him being a political operative who worked on
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: the Nixon campaign. That sixty eight Nixon campaign was where
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: a guy named Kevin Phillips came up with what's called
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: the Southern strategy today, which was essentially the idea that
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: politics is about who hates who and then playing on
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: those prejudices to get people to vote essentially about other people.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: It's where the culture war started. And Roger Ayles basically
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: took that the politics of who hates who and put
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: it on TV as a twenty four hour cable news network.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in charge for it.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another thing too that we'll see. Like they
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: have made tons and tons of cash, but they're in
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: a really big turning point right now because of how
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: they their business model.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So in the beginning they had a claim,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: you know, Ales and Murdoch that it was going to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: be Fox News is going to be an a political channel. Quote,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: we expect to do fine balanced journalism. But behind the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: scenes they were like, hey, we think that most mainstream
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: news outlets have a liberal bias, so we're going to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: come along and correct that with Fox News. And that
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: fair and balance motto that Fox News launched under Ales
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: was a It was a literal troll to liberal critics.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It was, you know, he knew it wasn't fair and balanced,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: and so that was his way of poking the bear.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: They I think in twenty seventeen when Ales was fired
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and the very famous or infamous rather sexual harassment scandal.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: That's when they got rid of the fair and balance
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: tag for good.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Roger Ales and Bill O'Reilly yeah, among others.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So Ales was out, but he had been you know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: he had governed this thing for twenty years and like
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: his his vision is still still there today. Like the
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: way that he shaped it is still Fox is essentially
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: still the same thing as it was from nineteen ninety six.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: It was he perfected it right out of the box, essentially,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: and it really started to kind of gain traction pretty
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: quickly after it came along because Bill Clinton handed them
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: a beautiful gift in like a Robin's egg blue Tiffany's
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: box with a beautiful bow on it, and that is
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: called the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In that box was a cigar and a blue dress.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was you know, yeah, there's no other way
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to look at it than a gift. Because they were
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: able to run wild with that, and they saw ratings
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: jump by four hundred percent and we're like, wow, we
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: can literally print money now, this is amazing, you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: not too far on the heels of that was the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: contested two thousand election, of which we had a complete
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: episode of bushby Gore, and then not too long after
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that nine to eleven and then the subsequent war in Iraq.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: So Fox News really got off to a strong start
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: thanks to these sort of big media events.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, for sure. And one other thing about the same
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: stuff too, the two thousand election nine to eleven, Fox
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: News was reporting this from the Republican viewpoint, all of
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: these things, like they were supporting George Bush, they weren't
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: questioning whether we should invade a rock, like this was
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: the angle that it was coming from. And all the
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: way back then, say around two thousand, like they were
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: the only ones just overtly producing slanted news. The other
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: cable news and broadcast news were still trying to essentially
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: carry out the fairness doctrine to the best of their ability.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we should point that out. But Fox News
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: really jumped ahead and was, you know, beating CNN in
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the ratings for the first time by two thousand and two.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I think they command about seventy percent of the cable
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: news audience today, right, So they're they're kicking everyone's butt
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: on that front, right, We need to talk about MSNBC,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: which we'll get to the name change to ms now later.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: We'll refer to them as MSNBC in this section because
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: it's about when they launched, which was a few months
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: before Fox News in nineteen ninety six. I never knew
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: that it was ms was Microsoft.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: I think I knew that.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was launched as a partnership with Microsoft. So
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: MSNBC was Microsoft NBC, and they were trying to get like,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you know, this was the beginning of the tech movement.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: They were trying to get young, tech savvy audience members.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: They had like shows kind of tailored to that. There
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: was one called The Site Site with Solidad O'Brien. It
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: did not work out. And then after that they were like,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: all right, you know what we need to do This
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: saturation coverage model that CNN launched that Fox News is
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: crushing it. But they started out doing conservative news.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were trying to basically take Fox on where
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: it was on its own territory. Yeah, very surprisingly, Laura
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Ingram and Tucker Carlson both started at MSNBC.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: It's funny to think about now, right, And I.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Think Tucker Carlson was the one who later convinced MSNBC
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: executives to hire Rachel Maddow. Yeah, the same year that
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson was hired. So like MSNBC was this kind
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: of Petrie dish for all sorts of TV on air
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: newsy personalities. Yeah, that would become huge later on. And again,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: like you were saying, it was because they were basically
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: trying to take on Fox. And that's one thing to
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: understand about MSNBC is the moment it pivoted from trying
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: to be like the tech the tech news channel, to
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: you know, opinion news. It was essentially just completely agnostic.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: It was up for whoever was going to pay the most,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: which is why they tried to take on Fox, because
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: it was clear that Fox was making the most money, right,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: And then they found well, actually, if we present ourselves
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: as the antidote to Fox, like the liberal Fox, then
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: you know, we can probably make even more money. And
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: they did, and that's what happened.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's they really hit it big. In two
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: thousand and six, when Keith Oberman hit the airwaves, he
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: had a show called Countdown. It was a primetime show
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and on Countdown one week he did a rant that
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: he called a special commentary where he was criticizing the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Bush administration's handling or mishandling rather a Hurricane Katrina. And
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: MSNBC even at that time, we're like, no, man, that's
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a little much like you need to tone that down.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: But then the ratings were going through the roof. People
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: loved it, and so they're like, oh, okay, well, I
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: guess that's the new way forward, and go Keith Oberman.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Go.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Yep. They unleashed the beast, and he just set the
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: groundwork for everybody else. And that's exactly what they were doing.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: During prime time. They had talking heads who hosted their
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: own show that were just like overtly dismissing other kind
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: of trairie opinions and talking about how dumb that was,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: and you know, really just trying to destabilize the opposing
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: party's ideas. Right, Yeah, so they're there. I mean, their
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: primetime ratings just went through the roof. Apparently, I think
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: it went up sixty percent from two thousand and seven
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: to two thousand and eight when they started attacking the
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: right and also when Obama was like a candidate and
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: then you know, president, and it was this huge thing
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: that apparently also boosted their ratings, and I saw the
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: MSNBC traditionally has actually done better when they're promoting a
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Democrat who has who's in charge of the White House
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: or in charge of Congress, then they are bashing the right.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Fox tends to do the opposite. They do better when
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: there's a Democrat in power and they bash them, they
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: do better when they're out of power.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean that's something we should talk about quickly.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I guess it was a paper in twenty twenty five
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: from UC Boulder finance professor named Diego Garcia who analyze
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: like who, like what these networks are talking about, who
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: they're talking about, and like how are they talking about them?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And they found like kind of supporting what you just
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: said that MSNBC spent the majority of their time about
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: sixty percent of their time talking about Republicans, Fox News
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: about the same and reverse talking about Democrats and obviously
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: both speaking very negatively about the others. And this also
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: trickles down to CNBC in Bloomberg and then Fox Business
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: on the right. And that outrage like attacking the opposite side,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that outrage viewership they found really sold that you know,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: that goes by a lot of names like rage profiteering
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: or you know, obviously just selling anger or angertainment. I'm
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: not a big fan of that one.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: What about the anger industrial complex?
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's pretty good. Sure, yeah, but they found out
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: it sells listeners, which in turn sells ads and makes money.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So they really all sort of are those too. At
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the very least down on that. CNN is still and
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: this isn't just us opinionizing, if they're literal media watchdogs
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: that you know, study and rate these channels, and CNN
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: of the big three cable news networks, is ranked you know,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: slightly left of center compared to more left on NBC
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: and obviously way more right for Box News.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Right. And then also bear in mind CNN typically has
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: the lowest ratings of MSNBC and CNN. Right. Yeah, yeah,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: because angertainment sorry, sells like really well. And the reason
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: why is because you get a physical like pop from
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: being angry, like it releases neurotransmitters that make you feel
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: good and powerful and alive again. And then you start
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: to come down and you want it again, so you
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: go back, You stay tuned, you stay glued for more,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: and like you said, that's this divide in America has
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: just come from people who are targeting the brains of
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: people just sing that button over and over again to
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: keep them on the same channel for money. That's it.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: That's it, That's all there is to it. Yeah.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I was trying my best to find out any kind
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: of study on or just statistics on how many hours
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: a day loyal viewers of each of these channels like
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: has it on? And I could only just go from
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: what I anecdotally see, which is I know people on
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the right that in their house like have Fox News
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: just on as Oh yeah, that's the background music. It's
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: on all day long. When you're passing through the room,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you can just pick up a tidbit here and there,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: not necessarily just sitting literally and watching it eyes glued
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: forward the entire time. But it's just on. And I
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: don't know anybody on the left that I know that
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: has the TV literally constantly on their favorite cable news network.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: It's interesting, I do. It's typically CNN that'll have that'll
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: be on all day.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: H see, I don't know anyone that does that. That's
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: good to know that that happens, but yeah, it definitely does.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It seems just to me it seems unhealthy and really
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: out there to only have that on all day long.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: It is no matter what side.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: You probably deeply unhealthy. It's bad for the person, it's
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: bad for society to have that on all day long.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, any channel or any television, Oh sure for that.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Totally, totally. So there was a study also that we found.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: It was from twenty twenty five and they looked at
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: it was in Nature magazine or Nature of the Journal.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: They looked at primetime shows from twenty twelve to twenty
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: twenty two on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN to find out
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: which were the most polarized. They found that over those
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: ten years, Fox had the largest number of highly polarizing
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: shows Sean Hannity, The O'Reilly Factor, Tucker Carls and Laura Ingram,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: but stnn's Cuomo Prime Time MSNBC's Deadline White House were
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: the most polarizing shows across all three networks. Oh, interesting,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: there's something else to unpack their two Chuck, These are
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: primetime shows. Yeah, that is a that's new as well.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: That means that people like this is where these these
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: cable networks make like the bulk of their advertising revenue
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: is prime time. That means that people left entertainment, They
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: left cop shows, court shows, medical dramas, and moved over
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: to news cable news. That's what they watch in primetime.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Now that's just boring, But it's not though. It's like
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: for me, like your your buttons are just pressed over
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: and over and over.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah for sure. Uh. You know. One
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: thing we do need to point out though, because these
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: are primetime shows that like it's changing the political landscape
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and how our country like thinks about our fellow citizens.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So it's an important thing to address. Some of the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: stuff you see on Fox News is not based in truth.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: And that is not just my opinion as somebody who's
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: clearly on the left side of things. You need only
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: look at something like the eight one hundred million dollar
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: like close to a billion dollar settlement to avoid a
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: very public, highly anticipated trial where they were going to
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: have to trot up, you know, Chucker Carlson and Sean
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Hannity and like put these people on the stand to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: talk about the literal lies they told about dominion voting systems.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So that trial was coming up, and they're like, no, no, no,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: that would be really bad if we had to go
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: up on the stand and admit under oath that we
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: lied about all this stuff. So let's just settle for
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: eight hundred million dollars and never even fully admit wrongdoing.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not just that one, like the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: cover up, the idea that there was a cover up
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: over Benghazi, conspiracy theories about the death of Seth Rich,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: the Birther conspiracy theory, all these things reported on lie
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump had the twenty twenty elections stolen from him.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Like these things were reported right, not like, hey, this
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: is what some people are saying, Like these were reported
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: as fact, right, And so this is that part of
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: the twisting or the separating of the shared reality that
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: has like scholars concerned, just everyday people who know about
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: this concerned, and like it's typically viewed from what I've
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: seen as a false equivocation to say, well, MSNBC does
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: that too. Nobody does it like Fox does. They just don't.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: That's just fact. But that's not to say it doesn't
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: happen on other networks like MSNBC. One really stand out
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: example is the Russia Gate episode with Rachel Maddow, who
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: was covering the molar investigation. Is basically like here, it
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: comes any moment, Now they're going to show that Trump
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: is this puppet that's being directed by the Kremlin, and
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: was really like so much so she got sued for
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: sixty seven million dollars Reliable and she beat that, but
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: you know, it was still it had legs like she
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: was really really promoting this conspiracy theory. And yes it
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: was tied to Robert Mueller's actual investigation and that actually
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: was happening, but the leaps and bounds and like intimation
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: she was making just went well beyond any kind of
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: journalistic standard. And then there's one other thing Chuck too,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: that all three do, and that is essentially filtering what
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: makes it on there? Right, So, like say CNN decides
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: that they're not going to put some negative coverage of
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama on and instead they're going to either just
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: not cover that or they're going to cover positive coverage
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: of him. Right, that's filtering. You're filtering news to help
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: promote like a favored candidate. And when you're doing opinion journalism,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: you have a favorite candidate, you have a candidate that
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: you hate, and your point is to teach your viewers
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: to love that candidate or hate that candidate. That's just
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: that arises from it naturally.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a study in twenty twenty three where
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: they paid Fox News viewers, like conservative people. They paid
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: them to watch CNN for a month for thirty days
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: to see what effect that had on their political views.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: And what they found was they were seeing news that
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Fox News didn't even cover. That's part of that filtering.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: They were like, oh, well, we didn't know this was
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: happening because Fox News just literally wouldn't cover it. Yeah,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: they filter out that stuff to fit a narrative. And
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I after the month, they had a slightly lower opinion
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, these conservatives did, and a slightly higher opinion.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And this was at the time in twenty twenty three
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: when mail in balloting was a big deal, a slightly
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: higher opinion of mail in ballots. But then they also
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: said in the follow up it was like a short
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: lived thing once they went back to Fox News, and
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: you know, that stuff went away. But you know, this
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: is something I see a lot when I'm I see
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: a story or I'm like, well, here's a big factual
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: thing that happened. That's a big black eye, and I
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: will go see and a lot of times and this
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: is online. Foxnews dot Com just literally just doesn't cover it, right,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: like at all. It's just not there, like it didn't happen.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: And if you're only getting your news from one source
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: and you don't know that something is literally happening because
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: it's not being covered, that's bad for democracy.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: For sure, you know, yeah, because you're you just yeah,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: you can't hold somebody accountable if you're not actually reporting
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: on the bad stuff too. You know, should we take
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: a break, Yeah, let's take a break, all right.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back, So, Chuck, we talked about opinion media.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: I've been calling opinion journalism, and I think that's actually
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: a contradiction in terms. Yeah, so opinion media, like we said,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: it's just basically like putting somebody who's willing to say
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: stuff about you know, they're fairly knowledgeable about a particular
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: topic and they're going to say something and maybe it's
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: even a controversial opinion. Like, that's opinion media. And it
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: is so much cheaper than actual journalism, which is one
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: reason why it's just such a huge prominent part of
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: prime time on cable news.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Cheaper meaning inexpensive, not like a cheap shot just
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: to clear that up. Like real journalism takes a lot
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: of time, which gets expensive. You have to conduct interviews,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and you have to research real data, and you have
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: to fact check, and you have to cultivate your sources.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: If you just throw someone on who's like, hey, I'm
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: mad about this thing, I'll go on TV and talk
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: about it like I'm a famous quote unquote journalist, Like
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: that's super cheap. All you have to do is kind
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: of frame the bare bones of a story and then
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: rant about it, and that negative negativity really sells. There
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: was an analysis into twenty eleven where a researcher examine
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the primetime lineups of the two really big opposing sides,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Fox News and MSNBC, and they were obviously ideologically opposed,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: but they were Fox News was as far as the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: tone and language they use, was ninety two percent negative,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: eight percent neutral, and zero percent positive. On the other side,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: MSNBC was ninety percent negative, five percent neutral, and five
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: percent positive. And it's that cultivation of anger that in
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: fear that very sadly, that's what drives the loyalty in
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the viewership these days.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly because again, the anger is an addictive thing and
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: they know how to press those buttons. One of the
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: ways they do press the buttons too. This is groundbreaking
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: as far as journalism goes. They've helped us with this.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: And the way that he put it was they make
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: you the viewer the protagonist. Yeah, so that means that
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: this news that's happening, it's happening to you. The Democrats
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: are doing this to you. They're trying to take money
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: out of your pocket or vice versa. You know, the
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: GOP is trying to drive this country into fascism and authoritarianism. Like, like,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: it's you that this is happening to Your family's going
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: to get, you know, taken by in the middle of
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: the night by the jack boots or something like that. Right, Yeah,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: So like that's new and that huts through like directly
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: to the person. So if you're pressing someone's buttons to
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: try to make them angry, talking to them directly and
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: saying you are the victim, that will get things going
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: pretty easily. That primes the old pump pretty well.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, you know. I mean, I think that's
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: one of the saddest things about all this is the
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: fact that that negative content is what sells, and that's
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: just the reality of kind of where we are. But
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: that has fueled a partisan gap that is like we've
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: not seen at any other time in our history. And there,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: you know, it's always there's always been a Parson divides,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: but not like we have now. There was a Pew
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Research study on that Parson divide in nineteen ninety four,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: and this was before Fox News and MSNBC launched, because
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I think they launched in ninety six, like we said,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: but fewer at the time, fewer than twenty percent of
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: either Republicans or Democrats view the opposing party as very unfavorable.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: By twenty seventeen, that number was forty five percent, so
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: more than doubled. Also, that's from that same study. In
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, only sixty percent of Republicans identified themselves
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: as quote more consistently conservative than the average Democrat. By
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, that number had reached ninety five percent, and
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: on the Democrat side, ninety seven percent identified as more
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: consistently liberal than the average Republican, up from seventy percent
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four. So you know, they're both according
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: to their mandates, they're both doing what they want to
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: do very well.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I also saw to update it a little bit.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, seventy two percent of GOP respondents
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: said that Democrats were immoral, and sixty three percent said
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: that of Democrats said that Republicans were immoral. Yeah, that
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: is a character like attack. Yeah, not like you have
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: stupid ideas or you're gonna, you know.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Waste our country.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you are a bad person, your morals are compromised,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: maybe you don't even have any morals. That is a
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: totally different level of attack. And we're talking about this
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: American calling that American that because they believed something different politically,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: and all of this again is being fostered, supported and
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: stoked by the for our cable news that different sides
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: watch all the time.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not I mean I kind of thought before
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: we looked into this stuff and the actual data that
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: like online, you know, because things are so siloed online
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: as far as the echo chamber goes. If you get
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: your news from the internet or social media especially, but
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: there was a study from University of Pennsylvania that found
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: that cable TV news is way more divisive. Only four
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: percent of Americans get their online news, so you know,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: social media or whatever. Online from predominantly left or right
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: leaning sources, compared to seventeen percent of Americans that said
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: they got fifty percent of more of their TV news
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: from a very hard right or very hard left network.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and half watched Fox News. The other half watched
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: MSNBC or CNN.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Yep, right down the middle.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean. One of the other things too, is
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: like Foxes gets criticized and criticized, and yes, they were innovators, pioneers.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: They completely change journalism and they do stuff that CNN
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: and MSNBC don't do. But it just makes you wonder,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: like how different would things be today if CNN and
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: MSNBC had just stuck to good journalism and just let
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Fox do their own thing. The fact that they entrenched
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: and dug in on the other side because they wanted
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: advertising dollars too, And there's a whole untapped market out
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: there of liberals and left leaning people that aren't being
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: spoken to if they had just kept their their journalistic integrity,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Like what kind of Like I don't think we would
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: be in this mess today.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you don't watch this stuff. To you,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I haven't turned on a cable news network in I
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: don't know since the early two thousands.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe I've definitely watched it much more recent than that,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: But I mean, I think once, once, once I realized,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: and I think this is typically the case for people,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Like the point is to upset you and make you mad.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: That's what they're trying to do. That's the whole thing.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: It's tough not to resent that and just be like,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not subjecting myself to this.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for me was when you could really
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: source your news, very specifically online is when that's when
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I fully like made that switch.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Right, So, cable news is actually doing pretty good right now,
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: even though cable as a whole is losing viewership. More
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: and more people are cutting chords. I think, like more
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: people are getting their news and information online, even though
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: it's still smaller relative to the number of people who
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: get their news from cable news. It's the proportions. The
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: trends are shifting, and one of the reasons why is
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: because cable news viewers are literally dying off. Right, for
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: the most part, the median ages of CNN, Fox, and
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: MSNBC viewers are sixty seven, sixty eight, and seventy one. Right, Yeah,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: those people aren't going to live for and as they
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: as they start to pass away, there's not new people
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: who are younger coming in behind them. That's not where
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: younger people are going. First of all, they don't even
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: have cable anymore. And secondly, if they do, they're not
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: going to watch cable news necessarily. They're probably going to
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: be online getting their news.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, viewership is declining. Fox
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: News is seeing has seen the most dramatic decline. They
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: were down twenty one percent in total primetime viewership compared
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: to the same weeks year over year February to well,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: February to February twenty five to twenty six, and then
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five that is when MSNBC late I
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: guess late last year is when they parted ways with
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: their NBC News parent company, and that's when they relaunched
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: is what is now ms now. Their viewership actually looks
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: like that might have worked. They increased by fifteen percent
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: year over year for the same timeframe, and CNN is
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the one that's really jumped up. They saw a forty
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: six percent year of a year increase over that same period.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Yea, And I think one reason why Fox is declining
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: relative to ms now in CNN is because there's Newsmax
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: News Nation one American news network.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Right, three further outlets.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, they were like, you thought Fox was hard, right,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: watch this. Yeah, Fox suddenly seems centrist compared to those guys.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: So they're dragging a lot of people away from Fox News.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: I think that's a big problem for Fox.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They lost some of their stars too. You know
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: when Tucker Carlson left, and obviously before that, what was
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: his face, Bill O'Reilly was. Yeah, those were big losses
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: for that network.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: For sure, and I think losing Roger Als two probably
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: was a big deal for it too.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Good point. But also their whole their whole business model
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: we were talking about earlier is in jeopardy because like
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: they make money through advertisers, true, but their advertisers are
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: from viewers, right, and so a fewer people are buying,
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: they have fewer viewers. They also make money from subscriptions, right.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: So when you pay for your cable and you're like,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: I have to pay my cable bill to the cable company,
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: you're actually not. You're paying the cable company a fraction
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: of that. The rest is being divided up among all
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: the cable channels who charge a fee to be included
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: in this bundle. That's the wholesale business model. That's what
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: cable news does, all cable channels do. That's with cable dying,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: they're not going to be able to do that anymore.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Now They're going to have to be like, actually, we
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: want to charge you directly like Netflix or Hulu does
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: to get Fox we're going to be streaming online, right
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: or to get CNN. Say, they're in the same jeopardy too,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: And that means people who are going to be like, wait,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: I got Fox News for free before. You didn't really
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: because it was part of cable you were paying for,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: but to you it was free, and now Fox is
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: asking you to pay, you know, twelve bucks a month
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: or something like that to get it. Some people will
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: do that, some people won't. So there really kind of
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: worried about that, and not just Fox again, MSNBC and
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: CNN are facing the same crisis, just apparently to a
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: slightly lesser degree right now.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Right but the writing's on the wall for everybody, and
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: they're all trying to pivot a little bit to the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: more online model, even in little ways like CNN prioritizing
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: vertical video podcast. You know, MSNBC has a lot of
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: very popular podcasts. Rachel Maddow is at the center, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: their world podcast wise. But those have found like big
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: time audiences, so they're you know, they they know what's
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: coming and they know that. I think three quarters of
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: the baby boomer generation are going to be gone by
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the year twenty thirty seven, and that's a big chunk
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: of all these audiences for sure.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: One last thing, something occurred to me while I was
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: researching this chuck that there is a silver lining. There's
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: a good thing to this huge partisan divide of one
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: side versus the other that cable news has helped bring about,
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: and that is that it is carved out a middle
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: of people who are like, wow, Democrats and Republicans are
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: terrible and they suck as both parties, which to me
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: has opened like a room for a viable third party
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: to start to develop, maybe multiple third parties start to
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: develop and actually get rid of like the two party
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: system might have shot itself in the foot by going
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: so full on tribal. That's my hope. That's I'm hoping
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: that at least that good comes out of this.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, because none of it's any good for
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: our country, you know.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: It genuinely isn't. It genuinely isn't. And to our conservative,
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Republican right on the right listeners like this is not
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: an attack on you or your beliefs, and us throwing
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Rachel Maddow into the mix was not just bait for
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: the right to you left leaning listeners like she really
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: did overdo Russiagate, Like we tried to do this as
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: a and balanced as we possibly could, so please don't
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: have taken it any other way.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we say, flush all three down the.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Toilet, exactly, Chuck, exactly.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Oh man, what a that's a fun episode. I enjoyed
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: this one.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you did, Chuck. I think you just
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: accidentally walked right into listener mail.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Then all right, I'm gonna call this a follow up
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: about the Hindenburg episode. Hey, guys, just finished listening to
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: the Hindenburg. Great stuff. One thing that really got me
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: laughing was the Bend Dover comments. Magically, I have an
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: adult friend whose name is Ben Dover. As you can imagine,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: he's a great guy. As I think anyone with names
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: like that could be teased or made fun of. Turn
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Out to be amazing people usually, so shout out to
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: all the Bendovers out there in the world, including my
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: friend Nice, longtime listener, and I work as a wildlife biologist.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: In the first time, I was introduced to your shows
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: during a long drive to get a California condor sick
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: with lead poisoning from northern California back to the San
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Diego Zoo to keep habituating the bird. We drove many
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: hours with the bird in a crate in the back
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: of the suv and absolute silence into past time. My
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: coworker and I shared one side of corded earbuds and
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: alternated between our favorite podcasts. This is long before smartphones
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: are an everyday occurrence and people could listen to whatever whenever.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: I'm now a mom and still find ourselves on long
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: drives because we live in a pretty remote place. My
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: family also listens and loves a podcast because its informational, interesting,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and kid friendly, and we hope to make it to
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a live show the next time you're close by. Thanks
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: for all you do and keeping us company over so
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: many years and so many miles. That is from Katie.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Oh thanks a lot, Katie. That was is it? Katie?
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Or kt Katie.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, thank you, Katie. That was a very cute little
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: sketch that you made for us.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: There.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: I can just imagine you and your coworker each with
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: the earbud.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like Katie and get in
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: touch with us with a cute little anecdote, we love those.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: and send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.