Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / Rob Rosen - Crimes of Omission, Media Bias, and Journalistic Integrity

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Rob Rosen - Crimes of Omission, Media Bias, and Journalistic Integrity · World Ablaze with George Fontes

• 0:00
  and welcome rob rosen um rob honestly i'm just gonna put out this on the recording i was late
• 0:12
  so thank you for waiting for me apologize i hate my guests i'm gonna put it out there just so
• 0:17
  everybody knows i'm not perfect here whatsoever i screwed up um i had a project go a little longer
• 0:22
  than it should so thanks for being patient uh so i let's let's talk about your journey i'm gonna
• 0:29
  to open up and let you give us some background because I know that you've been a TV producer.
• 0:32
  You've been in broadcast journalism and investigative journalism, by the way.
• 0:38
  And you have a lot to say. You got a new book coming out June 2nd. I can't even talk. I need
• 0:43
  more coffee over here. June 2nd. And Crimes of Omission is the title. So before we dive into
• 0:49
  that, I believe you have a lot to say about media in general, as well as the news, for example.
• 0:55
  Maybe you can give us a little background,
• 0:57
  give my listeners some background,
• 0:58
  give me a little bit about what you're about
• 1:01
  and why you chose to go down this path of releasing this book.
• 1:04
  And I'll give you the floor.
• 1:06
  All right.
• 1:07
  I'll give you the very, very quick bio.
• 1:08
  But I started in...
• 1:10
  I came out from Boston to Los Angeles
• 1:15
  with stars in my eyes,
• 1:17
  and I wanted to be in journalism
• 1:18
  and didn't quite understand that
• 1:21
  just having a degree from Boston University Journalism and Film School and promising to
• 1:27
  work hard wasn't going to get me very far. So in order to keep my California dreams alive and stay
• 1:33
  afloat, I found myself selling cars near the Mexican border for a year and did not think
• 1:41
  this dream was going to happen. And there was a small radio station that had a license out of
• 1:47
  Tijuana. Their transmitter was out of Tijuana called XTRA, which became kind of a better known
• 1:52
  sports station later, but they were going to a news format. And that was my entryway in.
• 1:58
  I was able to get a job there. And then from there, after a lot of begging and sending out
• 2:05
  resumes, I got a job at a local TV station in San Diego. And then from there, began a good run
• 2:12
  broadcast journalism, ended up coming up to Los Angeles pretty quick, read KCAL and then KCBS TV,
• 2:20
  where I was part of a team that won a couple of Emmys for 11 o'clock newscast and went into
• 2:27
  entertainment reporting, worked at Extra, was a reporter on air for a show called Celebrity Justice,
• 2:33
  which was Harvey Levin's show before TMZ, and decided I wanted to do long form. So I kind of
• 2:38
  got out of journalism for a bit, I was doing Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay. I took
• 2:46
  on a show called The Dead Files, a paranormal show that's still on HBO Max. And we had a 15-season
• 2:52
  run, which was amazing. And during that time, in the middle of it, a lot of this movement,
• 2:57
  the anti-police movement, was starting up. And I wanted to really, for myself, investigate it a
• 3:03
  little bit more. And I created a show called Reasonable Doubt, where we took a look at possible
• 3:08
  wrongful murder convictions, but it was going to be a search for truth. We weren't going to just
• 3:11
  say that every convict was innocent, and in fact, most of them were not, but our reporting did help
• 3:18
  get nine people who had been wrongfully convicted, or we felt they had been released. And that is a
• 3:27
  very condensed version of 30 years, but basically, this book came from the frustration that I looked
• 3:34
  at journalism and I'm almost a naive purist about journalism. I mean, I love it. I love TV.
• 3:42
  I love broadcast journalism. And I think that it plays such an important role.
• 3:49
  But I started seeing that since I had left it, it had gone from being flawed, but still
• 3:55
  a source of searching for truth into activist and activism. And that bothered me so much that
• 4:05
  I wanted to explore it through the lens of the anti-police movement of the 2010s because
• 4:10
  that was something I knew from reasonable doubt. So starting with Trayvon Martin,
• 4:15
  going through a lot of the big cases that animated the movement up to George Floyd in 2020,
• 4:22
  I wanted to go through public records and tell the whole story. And hopefully I've told it in a way
• 4:28
  that's kind of compelling and makes it feel like a true crime mystery. But I try to tell the stories
• 4:33
  in their entirety. And I'm not saying this isn't, you know, oh, the police were always in the right.
• 4:41
  It's simply that journalism was almost always in the wrong. They were only cherry picking the
• 4:47
  evidence. They're only cherry picking the cases they did. They were only telling a little bit of
• 4:52
  the story. And they had left people with the inexorable conclusion that police in this country,
• 4:59
  like it was 1950 Mississippi, were hunting people of color. And I think that that was no longer the
• 5:08
  case in the 2010s, even though there were some really tragic incidents. So there's the long-winded
• 5:14
  answer for everything, but that's just to give you an overview of what brought me to write this book.
• 5:18
  Yeah, and I'm going to have to ask you to touch or expand on a bit
• 5:24
  when you're talking about telling the truth versus basically sensationalizing the news.
• 5:33
  I would say where it was always sensational.
• 5:34
  I would say activism, right?
• 5:36
  So truth versus activism.
• 5:39
  Right, it was always sensational, right?
• 5:41
  You always wanted to get as many eyeballs on a story as possible.
• 5:44
  But just to give you an example, when I was still in the news game,
• 5:48
  And I was working at CBS and the Monica Lewinsky story broke.
• 5:53
  Now, that was a story that today I would tell you almost without a doubt would have been soft peddled or ignored or minimized because it damages the presidency of someone who was slightly somewhat progressive.
• 6:10
  At that time, though, a good story was a good story.
• 6:14
  And even though I would say the majority of television newscasters were probably much more sympathetic to Bill Clinton than Newt Gingrich and the contract with America, they went after that story ferociously because a good story is a good story.
• 6:30
  And they were on it.
• 6:32
  and you look at, for example, the allegations that Tara Reade,
• 6:37
  not the actress, made against Joe Biden,
• 6:39
  and that was just completely dismissed and ignored,
• 6:42
  even though there was, I'm not saying she was right, I don't know,
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  but I mean, it certainly was newsworthy.
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  All right, so that being said, let's talk about the activism part,
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  when it became more activism than telling the truth.
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  and how is it that you feel it became more activism?
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  On whose part, though, too?
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  I mean, we know there's a lot of bias in news.
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  We have less first right.
• 7:07
  I mean, politics has become so huge these days.
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  You can't go anywhere without being bombarded by anything that's political.
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  Before, we'd be able to escape it, put our head down and go,
• 7:17
  yeah, I don't really talk about that.
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  But now, forget it.
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  Every app you open, everything that you do,
• 7:21
  every news article is all about politics now.
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  And we've seen that in the news,
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  especially when COVID came around.
• 7:28
  It was like really, really heavy.
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  So why don't you explain when you saw the turn,
• 7:32
  when you saw that it became more activism
• 7:34
  than it was truth?
• 7:37
  I think it's really hard to pinpoint the turn.
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  For sure, something happened in the culture around 2012.
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  It might have started with Trayvon Martin.
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  And that's where I start the book.
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  But I think that something happened there.
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  And all of a sudden, there was a feeling in a lot of newsrooms.
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  And I talked to dozens of insiders.
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  There's a feeling that one, this was just an amazing story.
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  You had race, you had passion, you had anger, you had violence.
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  But also, especially amongst the younger members of the staff, I think there was a feeling that
• 8:13
  this was a generational movement that was going to provoke seminal change in America,
• 8:22
  systemic change, and they wanted to be on the right side of it. And so you have this weird
• 8:27
  alliance where, you know, let's just fast forward just to drop a couple of years. You had, you know,
• 8:33
  this town of Ferguson in two different stretches burning itself down.
• 8:37
  I hate to be flip about this, but that's great TV, right? CNN brings out a live truck,
• 8:45
  they send out their reporters, and you just plug and play, and you just watch it go.
• 8:50
  And you've got days and nights of coverage that is compelling, and it's an easy story to cover.
• 8:56
  For the management, I would say their motivation is what it's always been, maximum eyeballs.
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  For some of the younger staff members and some of the more socially justice-inclined reporters and producers, this was a chance to be part of a really, really important story.
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  And this is where they lost sight of a journalist's mission.
• 9:19
  It wasn't to expose the truth no matter which way it landed, but it was in order to evoke change.
• 9:26
  And that's not a journalist's job.
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  And I think that's the slippery slope to hell.
• 9:32
  It doesn't start from a bad place.
• 9:34
  But a journalist's job is not to create change.
• 9:38
  That's an advocate's job.
• 9:40
  A journalist's job is to inform the public and hold a mirror up to society.
• 9:46
  Right.
• 9:46
  So at some point, it really became journalists turned into activists and using these media
• 9:52
  outlets or news channels as a platform to push their narratives.
• 9:57
  And some of them were open about it.
• 9:59
  Look, some people that I spoke to to this day would say, you know, oh, that didn't really happen.
• 10:05
  And I'll kind of minimize it a little bit.
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  But I had a chapter sort of outlining the old school versus the new school of journalists.
• 10:14
  And there were people who were very explicit, who were posting tweets or writing papers saying that telling both sides of the story was a relic of the past.
• 10:23
  and that objectivity was just code for white supremacy
• 10:30
  and all sorts of notions that were probably taught
• 10:35
  in expensive and fancy J schools,
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  but really compromised the mission of the profession.
• 10:44
  Right.
• 10:45
  We see it all the time in all media.
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  And I find it funny that these same people
• 10:50
  that you're discussing that turned news into being not necessarily news anymore,
• 10:55
  more like activism.
• 10:57
  They're activists pushing narratives now.
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  It's like they're getting on a team, pushing the narrative
• 11:02
  instead of actually telling the truth, telling both sides of the story.
• 11:07
  And so how do you feel about social media though?
• 11:10
  Because now since we're talking about news
• 11:11
  and we're talking about telling both sides of the story,
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  I mean like everybody assumes that you're getting the truth on X, for example.
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  A lot of these same personalities that have these news shows,
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  these, you know, I call them pseudo-broadcasters.
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  I mean, most of these guys, I'm going to be honest with you,
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  this is how I view it.
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  And I know you've been in this business a long time.
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  I just see them as talking heads.
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  Most of these guys aren't even journalists.
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  They're just reading a teleprompter,
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  and most stuff is literally prepared for them.
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  There's very few that actually do any journalism anymore.
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  And so they've been pushed.
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  They're sensationalizing everything.
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  And yes, everything is sensationalism,
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  because ever since, you know,
• 11:45
  you're able to make money in advertising,
• 11:47
  They're going to want to get eyeballs.
• 11:48
  I completely understand that.
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  But I agree with you that we got away from telling both sides.
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  We really have.
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  I try to do that on my show.
• 11:55
  Yeah, sure, I lean a certain way.
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  But if I'm going to talk to a guest like you,
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  I'm going to let you say whatever you have to say.
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  And I'm not going to try to get in your way whatsoever.
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  But I think we lost that.
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  I agree that we need to get back to it.
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  But how are we going to convince people to trust media outlets
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  or people who are like yourself?
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  It sounds like you're someone who wants to come back to reality
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  and tell both sides.
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  So how are we going to get people to trust that again?
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  And yeah, go ahead.
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  I'm going to treat this as a compound question, if you don't mind.
• 12:24
  Yeah, there's a lot of things there.
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  The first part is both sides, right?
• 12:27
  Yeah.
• 12:27
  So look, there are two different types of things when you talk about both sides, okay?
• 12:32
  Because that can get a little bit complex.
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  All right.
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  So today, I'm making this up.
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  The S&P 500 was down 0.1%, 67.23.
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  That is a empirically true objective fact.
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  You do not need both sides of that story.
• 12:50
  There a well you like to think even though I would say at this point this is even open to debate but okay A Lebanese American man loads his car up with fireworks drives into a daycare well a synagogue that had 100 preschool kids for a daycare with the intent to blow them up
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  I don't think you really need the other side of the story, even though NPR did seem to think you
• 13:16
  did. So there's certain things that don't need two sides of the story. And I think people do get
• 13:22
  a little bit tripped up by that.
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  I think that getting two sides of the story
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  is an art and it's about intent.
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  It can never be perfect.
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  But let's just say, for example, right now,
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  I don't know exactly when you're going to run this,
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  but there's the whole question about the funding,
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  you know, funding the budget
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  so that TSA workers can get paid
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  and we don't have these delays at the airport.
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  That's a story that lends itself to both sides, right?
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  The Republicans are saying,
• 13:49
  this is the Democrats doing,
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  and if you're in line,
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  you should be pissed off at them.
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  The Democrats are saying the Republicans are holding it up.
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  You need a credible person from both sides to give the best case.
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  And that's where intent comes in, right?
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  Because these biases can come in in so many different ways.
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  The media can distort the news without lying very easily.
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  And sometimes it's simply getting somebody who's not very credible to tell the other side.
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  So you do say, hey, I got both sides of the story.
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  The only problem is you chose someone who was kind of ridiculous or not particularly credible.
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  So that's a question of intent.
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  And it's a question of good judgment.
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  And it's never perfect.
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  But I think that the desire has to be there to be objective in order for a really balanced newscast.
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  As far as your second question,
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  I'm sorry to jump on two completely different thoughts,
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  but you were saying, how does it heal itself?
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  I mean, the last chapter of the book,
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  I do, I call it Pottery Barn's Rules.
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  You know, you broke it, you got to fix it,
• 15:00
  got to pay for it.
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  I do outline some possibilities,
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  but basically it's this.
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  I talked to so many news managers,
• 15:11
  executives, and everybody says,
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  well, the audience has really been trained
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  to expect their biases to be reinforced by the news.
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  And they're never going to go for objective news.
• 15:26
  Maybe that's true.
• 15:27
  But I do make the point that if you look at the ratings
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  for the network newscasts now compared to 20 years ago,
• 15:33
  they've lost 60% of their audience.
• 15:36
  CNN has lost a ton of its audience.
• 15:39
  Fox is doing just fine.
• 15:41
  MS Now is doing just fine.
• 15:42
  they're always going to just do news that confirms the biases of their audience. I don't expect those
• 15:49
  two to change. But everybody else who's hurting, here's a chance to get back to your roots,
• 15:55
  do real journalism. I think it can work because the one thing that I think a lot of people miss is
• 16:02
  if you watch a biased newscast, if you just go turn on an hour of MSNAP, an hour of Fox News,
• 16:09
  you kind of know what you're going to get, right?
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  You kind of know the spin you're going to get.
• 16:14
  Isn't it more interesting to turn on a truly balanced newscast
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  and it's like a law and order, a CSI?
• 16:21
  Like for one second, you think you're out with that side.
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  Then you hear something else and you're like,
• 16:25
  wait a minute, wait a minute.
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  That changes things.
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  It's just, to me, it's more interesting.
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  It's more dynamic, less predictable.
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  And it's trusting you to actually have the good sense
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  to make your opinion based on all the facts
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  because facts are messy.
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  They're not always going to point in one direction.
• 16:42
  All right.
• 16:43
  Well, so there's a couple of things there too that I would like to address.
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  Number one, how do we know who is actually credible?
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  And the example that you gave, I mean, it's easier if it's something that's being reported
• 16:53
  as a crime, for example, because then you could look at figures of authority within law
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  enforcement or whatever, also talking about the victim, given their side of the story.
• 17:01
  Anybody who's directly involved in the incident would be credible, right?
• 17:05
  But when we're talking politics, it's a little bit harder because I don't think either side
• 17:09
  is ever going to want to tell you the truth.
• 17:11
  They're going to try to tell you
• 17:12
  what you want to hear, as you said.
• 17:14
  They want to basically affirm your bias
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  because, and when it comes to news,
• 17:18
  the easiest way to keep an audience
• 17:19
  or any media is to what?
• 17:21
  Make the person feel good about what they believe.
• 17:23
  So you're just going to keep feeding that rhetoric
• 17:25
  and that BS to those people to keep them.
• 17:27
  So how are we able to even qualify
• 17:30
  who is considered a good source, for example?
• 17:35
  Especially the example you gave earlier.
• 17:38
  Okay, so let's take the example of the fight over the TSA.
• 17:41
  I mean, whatever anybody's opinions are of any of the people I'm going to mention, but
• 17:45
  I mean, look, if you get a credible Democratic congressman, if you get Hakeem Jeffries, who
• 17:50
  has been involved in these negotiations, and you get his take on it, or Chuck Schumer,
• 17:54
  and then you get the president, or you get Mike Johnson, whatever your personal opinion
• 18:00
  about them is, these are the people who are in the room, who are in the know, who can
• 18:04
  represent their party well.
• 18:06
  If you go to Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson, you're going to get an outlier opinion that may not be very reflective of the conservative point of view. If you go to Omar or if you go to, oh God, I just forgot the name. What is the name of that influencer? The guy who just went to Cuba? Hiker?
• 18:32
  Hassan Piker.
• 18:32
  I'm sorry. Hassan Piker, thank you. Right. So, you know, if you're going to go get your bite from
• 18:38
  them, you know, the average viewer, if you're on Fox News and on one side you have Mike Johnson,
• 18:43
  on the other side you have Hassan Piker, you're going to walk away thinking, wow, they really are,
• 18:48
  you know, those Democrats really are. So I think it's a matter of intent. It's a matter of
• 18:55
  credibility. And then if you are going to try to play the referee, you got to be really fair and
• 19:01
  really careful is, you know, when you talk to Hakeem Jeffries and he makes a claim about
• 19:06
  the negotiations, is it all accurate based on what we're seeing as far as what they're
• 19:13
  fighting over?
• 19:14
  Same with the Republican side.
• 19:15
  Are you holding both accountable to the same standards, right?
• 19:19
  Which is another problem that we've run into because, yeah, just to give an example, like
• 19:24
  in 2024, when you had the Trump-Kamala Harris debate, right?
• 19:31
  Mostly rightly. I think the moderators in that debate called out Trump a few times when he's been known to exaggerate. But Kamala had said four or five things that were just objectively untrue and they were never called out. So you have to hold both sides to the same standard and that's objectivity.
• 19:50
  Yeah, understood.
• 19:52
  The reason I asked that question was because we're talking about when you made the statement
• 19:59
  earlier, how you were told like, well, the audience has been conditioned.
• 20:04
  Okay.
• 20:04
  I believe that people have been conditioned to not believe anybody and see them as like
• 20:10
  an uncredible source anyway.
• 20:12
  And so I think it lends back to like, how do we, how do we retrain people?
• 20:16
  for example, to understand how to view something as credible versus uncredible or not credible.
• 20:25
  And your explanation, I completely understand, especially from someone who was like a journalist
• 20:29
  who was going to pick these individuals as credible sources, give them both air, so to speak,
• 20:34
  say, here's your side, here's the other person's side. And I get that. But I guess I was more
• 20:40
  asking as far as, well, how do we get the audience back on board to being able to decipher
• 20:45
  like that person is a credible representative,
• 20:48
  for example, of the Democrat Party
• 20:50
  versus the Republican Party or whatnot.
• 20:53
  I think that's more where I was trying to go with it
• 20:55
  because it seems like...
• 20:57
  Go ahead.
• 20:57
  I think they just have to trust the source
• 20:59
  and the mainstream media lost...
• 21:03
  I mean, in the book I talk about
• 21:05
  during the rioting in the summer of 2020,
• 21:07
  one of the first things you're taught
• 21:08
  when you get into a newsroom
• 21:10
  and you're a young, aspiring journalist
• 21:14
  is especially, I mean, explicitly for broadcast journalism, you're taught that the pictures are
• 21:21
  paramount. So you don't write a script and then try to find video. You look at the video you have
• 21:27
  and write to it. Sounds really obvious, but it makes a big difference in the way you put together
• 21:31
  footage. I went to Vanderbilt University and they record all the newscasts and I spent a week there
• 21:37
  just watching so much of this coverage. And what I was struck by was so many times that
• 21:44
  there were just images of absolute chaos.
• 21:47
  It was like apocalyptic.
• 21:49
  Fires are burning.
• 21:52
  Rides, rioters are throwing stuff at police.
• 21:55
  And you always had this live shot,
• 21:58
  this reporter who would be standing in front of these scenes,
• 22:01
  fighting his own footage and saying,
• 22:03
  just so you know, these protests have mostly been peaceful, right?
• 22:07
  And so, you know, that's a credibility killer.
• 22:10
  It's Orwellian.
• 22:10
  Do not believe your eyes.
• 22:12
  Yes.
• 22:12
  And so the audience isn't stupid.
• 22:15
  Now, Jeremy Boring, who was part of the Ben Shapiro empire for a while,
• 22:22
  and I gave an interview recently and I thought he made a great point.
• 22:26
  When people are able to convince you and to show you that you've been lied to,
• 22:31
  it's very powerful and people can believe in them.
• 22:34
  The problem is that a lot of these alternative sources are even worse.
• 22:38
  So I would say, look, I don't know that Candace Owen owes anything to anyone.
• 22:44
  She's on her own trip.
• 22:46
  But I would say that if somebody's trying to get their news from her, they're better off watching NBC.
• 22:52
  Having said that, NBC has done a lot to destroy its own credibility.
• 22:56
  And how do we get it back?
• 22:58
  We get it back by it's going to take time.
• 23:01
  But if we start getting to the point where reporters aren't agenda-driven, where they're
• 23:08
  seeking the truth and only the truth, there'll always be politicians and corporate leaders
• 23:13
  who complain about that because they're trying to get one over.
• 23:17
  But if the public starts trusting that this is not a partisan game, media is there to tell
• 23:24
  you the truth, to hold truth to power, to hold people accountable, that's the role that
• 23:28
  it's supposed to play in this society.
• 23:31
  over time, I think they will trust.
• 23:34
  They start regaining trust, right?
• 23:35
  It's like a bad relationship.
• 23:37
  And so if you have a story about a fight over the federal budget
• 23:44
  and TSA employees who aren't getting paid,
• 23:48
  and that's the longest roundabout way to answer your question from 10 minutes ago.
• 23:52
  But I mean, if that's the case, then I think people just trust them, right?
• 23:55
  If you trust the source that it's coming from,
• 23:59
  you're not going to question every single story that comes out of their mouth.
• 24:03
  But because you've had eight years of cases being cherry-picked,
• 24:08
  reporters standing in front of burning buildings and telling you everything's fine,
• 24:15
  of refusing to question COVID mandates and even ask any tough questions of people in power,
• 24:23
  just years of eroding that trust, it's going to take just that long to get it back.
• 24:29
  Right. I think I'm with you on that. And unfortunately, when you brought up on
• 24:32
  alternative media, we do have too many alternative media personalities that are giving
• 24:37
  people, you know, I'll just throw myself in there that are trying to make their own way
• 24:42
  in this space, kind of a bad name. Now you see everywhere where people are going,
• 24:45
  oh, it's just another one of those podcasters, right? They're starting to lose faith in these
• 24:50
  bigger personalities who are giving others, you know, a credibility issue at this point because
• 24:55
  of how they're acting. There's no truth in media, it seems, in the alternative media anymore,
• 25:00
  which is unfortunate. What you said is correct. Okay. So in my circle, people in my circle within
• 25:06
  the podcast industry and also other people I know that I do know, journalists, authors,
• 25:11
  and people in the Intel community. So the people that I surround myself with actually
• 25:16
  are looking for real sources that they can trust, real news outlets. I don't believe everybody is
• 25:22
  really trying to look for what makes them feel good. I mean, I get that some just, I think at
• 25:27
  this point, some of the news that people are looking for, they're not really looking for news.
• 25:30
  They're looking for entertainment. It's a certain brand of entertainment that they're attaching
• 25:32
  themselves to, right? That they just want to hear the sensationalism. And when you brought up
• 25:38
  Candice Owens, she's a perfect example of that. She sensationalizes everything. She turns everything
• 25:42
  into like a Nancy Drew story or whatever, like some weird investigative, you know, juvenile novel
• 25:46
  that keeps you kind of hooked to where you're like, oh, what's next? Oh, next podcast. We got
• 25:50
  to hear this next truth, so to speak.
• 25:52
  But there's people like me and everyone in my circle that are like, no, we just want to
• 25:56
  be told what's going on.
• 25:57
  We want facts and data We want it delivered so that we can make our own assessments form our own informed opinions So I think that the road getting back like there a hunger for it
• 26:08
  I think with your book coming out and you talking about a lot of things that you're saying right now and exposing, you know, the truths in the matter.
• 26:16
  I really believe that people are wanting it to come back, Rob.
• 26:20
  They really are.
• 26:20
  They just don't know where to look.
• 26:22
  I think right now we're in that trust issue period, like you said.
• 26:25
  You know, they don't know who they could trust yet.
• 26:26
  They know what they're looking for, but they're not sure they can trust that personality, for example, that is trying to deliver the truth quite yet because maybe they're not as established.
• 26:34
  Or some of these guys are doing a 180.
• 26:36
  They realize what they're doing isn't working.
• 26:37
  And they're like, wait, I got to get back to reality.
• 26:41
  I mean, there's no way around it.
• 26:42
  For the consumer of news, you're making a decision whether you know it or not.
• 26:48
  So I'll give you an example of, let's just say, the medical establishment.
• 26:51
  Okay.
• 26:51
  Okay, so due to the influence of big pharma, due to some questionable dogma that came out of the COVID days,
• 27:03
  due to the relationship between big pharma and government, a lot of trust has been lost in the medical establishment.
• 27:12
  Now, does that mean that every guy out there, every guy and woman out there who's selling something on X or YouTube
• 27:21
  and claims to have the answer,
• 27:23
  you know, pomegranates are going to cure your cancer.
• 27:26
  You know, like, you know,
• 27:28
  and that goes back to the whole thing.
• 27:29
  If you're going to choose between Candace Owen and NBC,
• 27:31
  take NBC.
• 27:32
  If you're going to choose between,
• 27:34
  you know, one of these quacks
• 27:37
  or an establishment doctor,
• 27:40
  I would still go with an establishment doctor.
• 27:42
  But to me, it's up to the institutions, right?
• 27:47
  I mean, the whole world of YouTube and social media,
• 27:50
  I'm not expecting a random person to necessarily be credible.
• 27:54
  They might be, right?
• 27:56
  But unless I have a relationship built with someone who's on a YouTube channel
• 28:01
  and I really trust them and maybe they have some credentials
• 28:03
  or I've watched them for a bit,
• 28:05
  I'm not going to assume that the information they're passing along is correct.
• 28:10
  So I think it's much more important and much healthier for the country
• 28:15
  if at least the institutions,
• 28:18
  and in this case I'm talking about journalism,
• 28:19
  can lay a foundation of truth
• 28:21
  so that we're all living in the same reality.
• 28:23
  Because the biggest thing that has happened
• 28:25
  and the biggest reasons why I think
• 28:27
  there are really almost irreconcilable differences
• 28:29
  between the two sides that are polarized in this country
• 28:32
  is you're not really having a debate
• 28:36
  about what we should do about X problem.
• 28:40
  We're having a debate about which reality we live in.
• 28:43
  Is climate change an existential threat?
• 28:47
  And if we don't get our hands around it in the next two or three years, we're doomed?
• 28:52
  Or is it a hoax?
• 28:54
  Or is it somewhere in the middle?
• 28:56
  Right?
• 28:56
  And I think these are issues that unless you had a journalism that was able to deal with
• 29:06
  the gray areas of complicated issues like that, you have these kinds of polarizations.
• 29:12
  Okay.
• 29:12
  So I'm going to tell you what I always say.
• 29:16
  there's a couple of things
• 29:19
  I think it's almost like we gotta
• 29:20
  retrain the people to read past headlines
• 29:23
  first because a lot of people also
• 29:25
  just read a headline and just believe that is the truth
• 29:27
  of the matter and they don't even dive deeper into the article
• 29:28
  the other thing is
• 29:30
  for example watching a YouTuber you don't know
• 29:33
  yeah I mean I'm the same way it's like well who is this person
• 29:35
  right I think vetting
• 29:37
  the person you're watching or that
• 29:38
  you know new source for a while is
• 29:40
  absolutely key most people don't have the patience
• 29:42
  though I mean we're dealing with people who have
• 29:44
  30 seconds at most in terms of their attention span.
• 29:47
  So it's like, you got to, you got to give them the information dump within the first
• 29:50
  five seconds.
• 29:51
  And then if you don't, they've already moved on.
• 29:53
  So it's, it's going to be an uphill battle.
• 29:56
  And I, and I, I agree with you.
• 29:57
  I think traditional journalists, credential journalists, if we're talking legacy, legacy
• 30:01
  media needs to get back to, um, set, you know, setting that foundation again and, and, and
• 30:07
  setting the bar as to which all others should be judged by going back to just telling the
• 30:11
  truth, the truth being whatever the actual story is.
• 30:13
  just remove your bias, get it out there, and let people make their own decisions.
• 30:19
  But we also just can't accept sloppy journalism either.
• 30:23
  And I've seen that as well.
• 30:27
  I'm one of those deep dive guys.
• 30:29
  I'll look at a story.
• 30:30
  I'll take about three or four different stories.
• 30:32
  And I'm not just going to believe each one.
• 30:33
  I'm going to read them.
• 30:34
  I'm going to go and look at, okay, who's consistent the most?
• 30:39
  Do they all corroborate?
• 30:41
  do they all end up giving me the same, you know, outcome in terms of the story as in
• 30:46
  everything they're saying ends up being true because A plus B equals C in every single story,
• 30:52
  for example. Now there may be bias in there, but in the end, are they all telling the story? Are
• 30:57
  they still at some point giving me the truth? You can manipulate the bias of anything just by
• 31:02
  changing the wording on something. You know, you can have a left-leaning story by saying something
• 31:06
  a certain way versus a right-leaning story, but in the end, I don't care if it's left or right,
• 31:11
  tell me what happened and give me the details in between.
• 31:16
  But a lot of it is emphasis.
• 31:17
  A lot of it is emphasis, right?
• 31:19
  Exactly.
• 31:20
  So I write about in the book, at the end of Ferguson,
• 31:24
  Eric Holder, Barack Obama's progressive attorney general,
• 31:27
  puts out a report on what happened in Ferguson with Michael Brown.
• 31:32
  In quite good detail, he basically dismantles the entire activist argument
• 31:39
  about what happened to Michael Brown.
• 31:40
  There was no hands up, don't shoot.
• 31:42
  He was not shot from behind.
• 31:43
  He did, physical evidence did show that he went in and punched the officer, Daryl Wilson,
• 31:48
  a couple of times.
• 31:50
  And basically they said there was no evidence that it wasn't a justifiable shooting.
• 31:55
  They also said in the same report that they found systemic issues within the Ferguson
• 32:01
  Police Department, that the department had too many people from out of town.
• 32:06
  Yeah, I remember that.
• 32:07
  Not representative of the community.
• 32:08
  Okay, but then I watched those newscasts that night and was taking notes on it.
• 32:14
  All of them started off with explosive report from Attorney General Eric Holder pointing out to systemic racism in the Ferguson Police Department.
• 32:26
  And maybe one line slipped in there about, hey, by the way, that whole Michael Brown story that we've been dwelling on for a year and watching the city burn itself.
• 32:35
  Yeah, that was wrong.
• 32:36
  But that's a matter of emphasis, right?
• 32:39
  I mean, to me, the headline is for sure,
• 32:42
  this officer, if you're seeking the truth,
• 32:45
  this officer was exonerated.
• 32:47
  Like he had been, he wasn't hiding at that point.
• 32:49
  This officer has been exonerated by this report.
• 32:53
  It turns out that the activists were not correct.
• 32:56
  It does turn out that this was a justifiable shooting.
• 32:59
  And by the way, that doesn't mean
• 33:00
  that the Ferguson Police Department doesn't have issues
• 33:02
  because the report also did state
• 33:04
  that there were some systemic problems.
• 33:06
  That's a fair, balanced account of the story,
• 33:09
  but that's not what people got.
• 33:11
  And so I talked to people who are pretty well-educated
• 33:14
  and I asked them, do you know that it was found ultimately
• 33:19
  by Barack Obama's attorney general
• 33:22
  that Daryl Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown?
• 33:27
  No, where did you get that?
• 33:28
  Did he watch Fox News?
• 33:30
  Where did you hear that?
• 33:31
  So that's where the trust has gone, right?
• 33:35
  because they didn't lie.
• 33:38
  The story did,
• 33:39
  they just included the part of the story
• 33:41
  that they wanted to talk about.
• 33:42
  Well, true.
• 33:43
  Okay, that is very true.
• 33:44
  But that also goes back to what I said.
• 33:45
  People live on the surface of information.
• 33:47
  They don't get past the headline.
• 33:48
  So in this case, you have,
• 33:50
  let's say if it's CNN versus Fox, right?
• 33:53
  That headline is a hook.
• 33:54
  They know which audience they're trying to hook.
• 33:57
  Right from the outset.
• 33:58
  That's what it is.
• 33:59
  They know that they want
• 34:01
  the left-leaning audience over here
• 34:02
  and they want the right-leaning audience over there.
• 34:04
  where I have issue is
• 34:06
  I think that they need to have,
• 34:09
  they need to be more responsible.
• 34:11
  It's clear that most broadcast news outlets
• 34:15
  or we're just talking journalism,
• 34:17
  you can clearly see it.
• 34:18
  They pick the side.
• 34:20
  I'm not sure how we're going to get people
• 34:22
  to get away from that
• 34:23
  and get back to what you're talking about,
• 34:25
  which is just basically delivering the news.
• 34:27
  Like the old Walter Cronkite type thing, right?
• 34:29
  But it's not working for them.
• 34:31
  It's not.
• 34:31
  I mean,
• 34:32
  I understand that.
• 34:32
  The whole point is,
• 34:33
  it's one thing if you're Fox or MSNOW,
• 34:36
  and that's why I say, eliminate them.
• 34:38
  They are going to be news for the already converted.
• 34:42
  But I think most of the other mainstream sources
• 34:45
  are really hurting
• 34:46
  and have lost more than half their audience.
• 34:49
  So it's not working.
• 34:50
  And they're doubling down on failure
• 34:54
  because people don't believe them.
• 34:56
  So tell the story, go back to real journalism.
• 34:59
  It's more interesting anyway.
• 35:00
  And why are you doubling down on something that's just not working?
• 35:05
  Because look, NBC is not MS Now.
• 35:08
  There's a bias and it's an obvious bias.
• 35:12
  But if you really just want a daily dose of Republicans suck, you're going to watch MS Now.
• 35:20
  You're not really going to get that on NBC.
• 35:21
  And if you really want a dose of Democrats are trying to undermine this country, you're
• 35:27
  going to watch Fox.
• 35:28
  You're not, you know, or maybe Newsmax if the Fox isn't doing it enough for you.
• 35:33
  So I think that, you know, for all of the other outlets, I mean, look at the daily newspapers
• 35:40
  and how they're dying.
• 35:41
  And I understand there are other forces at work here.
• 35:44
  But part of it is self-inflicted.
• 35:48
  Part of it is the fact that people just don't believe them anymore.
• 35:52
  And you're in the business in journalism, you're in the business of trust.
• 35:55
  Once you've lost that, you don't have much else.
• 35:59
  Yeah, no, you're right.
• 36:01
  Speaking of news outlets that are trying to turn the corner too,
• 36:04
  CBS lady has gotten a lot better, I've noticed.
• 36:08
  Yeah, well, Barry Weiss, I do talk about her in the book a little bit.
• 36:13
  So she left the New York Times and wrote a big open letter about why she left.
• 36:16
  And she made a really important point.
• 36:19
  They work backwards.
• 36:21
  They start with their conclusion.
• 36:22
  They already know.
• 36:23
  And now they are trying to find evidence to support that and to convert people as opposed to simply telling the story and seeing where things lead.
• 36:37
  So, yeah, she went and did the Free Press, which I subscribe to, which is a great little kind of sub-stax sort of little newspaper.
• 36:45
  And now she's at CBS.
• 36:47
  Yeah, so look, I hope.
• 36:49
  I spent years at CBS
• 36:52
  and I would love to see it reform itself.
• 36:57
  And it's not going without a fight
• 36:59
  because you see people are so conditioned
• 37:01
  to one-sided journalism
• 37:05
  that there are a lot of people
• 37:06
  who are internally at CBS
• 37:08
  and also pundits
• 37:10
  who are just hoping this fails
• 37:13
  and they're looking to trip her up
• 37:15
  at every step of the way.
• 37:17
  And I'm one of those people that are absolutely on your side and all this.
• 37:21
  I am tired of the people.
• 37:24
  It's team sports.
• 37:25
  They're trying to see which team's going to win, get more points, really.
• 37:28
  Same thing in politics.
• 37:30
  And I just want the freaking info.
• 37:34
  That's all I want.
• 37:36
  I don't need to be swayed.
• 37:37
  I don't need you to try to convince me.
• 37:38
  I'll be honest.
• 37:39
  I've used to have a sales rep company.
• 37:42
  You're not going to sell me.
• 37:43
  I can see right through it.
• 37:44
  and the thing is,
• 37:46
  I want the information.
• 37:48
  I think people are ready for that too.
• 37:49
  I think people want to get back
• 37:50
  to trusting the media.
• 37:52
  They want to get back
• 37:52
  to trusting traditional journalists,
• 37:54
  and unfortunately, like you said,
• 37:55
  they did lose that trust,
• 37:56
  and we thought that, you know,
• 37:57
  many people thought
• 37:58
  they're going to get that
• 37:58
  in alternative media.
• 37:59
  Now you saw like,
• 38:00
  well, Tucker's like,
• 38:01
  oh, now I'm independent.
• 38:02
  I'm going to go do my own thing,
• 38:03
  have my own podcast,
• 38:04
  come to find out later
• 38:05
  while Fox actually bought the company
• 38:06
  that put your show out,
• 38:07
  so kind of still work for Fox.
• 38:11
  And unfortunately now,
• 38:13
  the alternative media is starting to lose credibility, but we also got to discuss
• 38:17
  that the alternative media is not really alternative anymore because all these
• 38:21
  so-called journalists, I'm going to say that not to offend you, but some of them are
• 38:25
  pseudo journalists in my opinion, have moved on from their broadcast network shows because
• 38:29
  they weren't getting the ratings anymore, infiltrated alternative media, and now with
• 38:34
  their experience and the money behind them, they're taking it over and turning it into exactly what they
• 38:38
  did in legacy media, which is horrifying.
• 38:42
  So it's like, we're going to have, we have a long road to go to gain people's trust back.
• 38:47
  I think it's really going to be about consistency.
• 38:49
  Like you said earlier, like people just have to be consistent in delivering the truth and
• 38:53
  telling the story as the story actually is.
• 38:56
  And I think over time people will begin to trust certain sources and hopefully that that spreads to everybody else Everybody else being wanting to be able to deliver the news and the story as it should be and just removing your bias
• 39:09
  Maybe we disagree on this,
• 39:10
  but I think like to me,
• 39:12
  I don't hold alternative media to the same standard
• 39:15
  because to me, alternative media would be like,
• 39:18
  I'm going into a town square
• 39:20
  and there are a bunch of people with bullhorns talking
• 39:22
  and one person's telling me the world's going to end
• 39:25
  on such and such a date.
• 39:26
  So I kind of like brush that off
• 39:27
  Another one's telling me, you know, Jesus is coming.
• 39:30
  This is your chance to repent.
• 39:32
  I kind of brushed that off.
• 39:33
  Another one, maybe he's making some good points.
• 39:36
  And maybe another one is, I don't know,
• 39:39
  saying that the Chinese Communist Party
• 39:42
  is something we want to emulate.
• 39:43
  Who knows, right?
• 39:44
  So to me, you know, you go to a town square,
• 39:46
  people are exercising their free speech.
• 39:48
  It's messy.
• 39:49
  It could be the homeless guy who's ranting and raving.
• 39:52
  I'm not holding them to any standard.
• 39:54
  The difference is, you're talking about the New York Times.
• 39:57
  you're talking about CBS News.
• 39:59
  These are the ones that we should be able to trust.
• 40:04
  And look, citizen journalists who can consistently,
• 40:08
  and I think some of them do a good job.
• 40:10
  Like, I don't know, one that just comes to mind is Andy Ngo.
• 40:13
  I don't know if you followed him.
• 40:15
  I know he's, yeah.
• 40:15
  On X, and he was doing a good job
• 40:17
  documenting a lot of the Antifa stuff
• 40:19
  at a time when the official position
• 40:22
  of the mainstream media and Democrats
• 40:25
  was that it was a figment of conservatives' imagination.
• 40:28
  And yet, every day he was showing them.
• 40:31
  And so I thought that was good citizen reporting, right?
• 40:34
  But he's got a niche and he's doing that.
• 40:38
  He's not trying to tell you what's happening in the Ukraine war.
• 40:41
  So I think citizen journalists have a role.
• 40:45
  If there's a little piece of something that they can credibly do that they understand,
• 40:50
  I think that's important.
• 40:51
  or if they can show footage of things that maybe are inconvenient,
• 40:55
  that someone's out in Iran during these demonstrations
• 40:58
  and they're getting video of, that's really important for us to see.
• 41:03
  Do I consider Tucker Carlson part of that?
• 41:07
  I don't.
• 41:08
  I mean, to me, he was always a pundit.
• 41:09
  He's not a journalist.
• 41:10
  And I think he's losing credibility as a pundit every day.
• 41:14
  But that's punditry, right?
• 41:16
  So there's a big difference between news blocks and punditry.
• 41:21
  And I think that also has gotten kind of mushed together.
• 41:28
  And because of that, it's easy for people to conflate the two.
• 41:33
  And, right, so if you have Lawrence O'Donnell doing a show
• 41:38
  that's very different from the news blog,
• 41:40
  like he's just there to give opinion.
• 41:42
  Yeah, but okay, so let me push back on that.
• 41:46
  How did the New York Times and all these legacy media
• 41:49
  or news outlets become credible?
• 41:51
  time and consistency.
• 41:52
  They've been out for a very long time.
• 41:54
  They're known for being that thing, the news.
• 41:56
  But if you want to go back further,
• 41:58
  we can talk about how William Randolph Hearst
• 42:00
  manipulated news and media outlets
• 42:02
  by buying most of them up
• 42:03
  to push his agenda and narrative.
• 42:05
  It was total manipulation of the media.
• 42:07
  But yet people still trusted these news sources
• 42:09
  because they were established.
• 42:11
  And I hold alternative media to a different standard
• 42:13
  because of this.
• 42:15
  It is alternative media being the key word,
• 42:18
  which means it could be anything.
• 42:19
  It could be entertainment.
• 42:20
  It could be leisure stories, podcasts, whatever it is.
• 42:23
  But for those who claim to be people that tell the news, political commentators, etc.,
• 42:28
  I believe they do have a responsibility.
• 42:30
  Those particular people who are trying to sell themselves as truth tellers should be
• 42:35
  held accountable.
• 42:37
  I'm not saying everything in alternative media should be under that same banner, right?
• 42:41
  Because there's just, there's too many different segments.
• 42:44
  It's not specifically news.
• 42:45
  You can't just say alternative media is just news because it's not.
• 42:47
  but those who are trying to portray themselves as being a newscaster,
• 42:51
  for example,
• 42:51
  or telling the truth or getting down to the bottom of the story,
• 42:54
  giving political opinions because allegedly they have an inside track on the
• 42:58
  story or they have sources.
• 42:59
  Those people should be held accountable.
• 43:00
  To me,
• 43:01
  there's no difference between that and a newscaster.
• 43:03
  It's just a different way of broadcasting it.
• 43:05
  You know?
• 43:06
  Yeah.
• 43:06
  But I think there is a big difference.
• 43:07
  There's no barrier to entry and alternative media.
• 43:10
  You don't,
• 43:11
  you don't have to go to school.
• 43:12
  You don't have to get hired.
• 43:13
  You don't have to answer to anyone.
• 43:15
  So to me,
• 43:16
  it's back to the Times Square. I mean, there's a supermarket in me. And of course, because I lived
• 43:21
  in Los Angeles, they're homeless in front. They can say whatever they want. I don't hold them to
• 43:26
  the same standard as... So it sounds like you don't expect it to be to the standards you're
• 43:31
  used to, really, right? I think that it's good in certain aspects. I think people who can take
• 43:38
  footage on the ground are doing a really good service, right? Whether it's in a war scenario
• 43:43
  or like Andy Ngo did with Antifa.
• 43:46
  I think people who maybe are expertise in one level
• 43:50
  might find a following and hopefully they're credible.
• 43:54
  Well, but then we're getting into it.
• 43:57
  Let's take medicine.
• 43:58
  Let's take medicine, right?
• 44:00
  I think there was a lot of corruption
• 44:01
  in the world of medicine
• 44:03
  and we've seen it with some of the extremism
• 44:05
  with trans issues and some of the COVID things.
• 44:10
  And we've seen it in a lot of ways
• 44:12
  have lost a lot of trust. But at least a doctor has to go through medical school and know all the
• 44:17
  body parts and spend six years interning at a hospital. There's a large barrier to entry.
• 44:26
  The barrier to entry to declare yourself an expert on health and open up a YouTube channel
• 44:31
  is to have a phone. And I just don't think it's the same, right? So you're going to have a lot
• 44:35
  more of a percentage of quacks out there who are telling you something ridiculous or maybe even
• 44:39
  harmful for your health, then doctors, which though flawed, still have to answer and have,
• 44:47
  and had to put in a lot of time before they got to the position where they could tell you
• 44:50
  what they recommend. Okay. I get, I understand where you're coming from. Um, but doctors and
• 44:59
  journalists aren't the same. And I understand the barrier to entry. And I understand being around a
• 45:03
  community that you can learn from and be corrected. And then you have, you have things that you have
• 45:08
  to do to be able to become an actual real journalist. I don't put myself in that category,
• 45:11
  by the way. I'm just talking. I'm just giving you the other side, just pushing back a bit.
• 45:16
  But then I can make the other argument. Now we get into like, okay, well, now we hold
• 45:19
  people with doctorates above those who are blue collar to a different standard because they went
• 45:26
  to school and spent six to eight years to get the degree. But yet the guy who owns a construction
• 45:30
  company and probably making four times more than the person with a degree is not respected.
• 45:34
  That doesn't make sense to me.
• 45:35
  No, I think it's...
• 45:36
  So now...
• 45:36
  Hold on.
• 45:37
  Now we have to talk about...
• 45:39
  Now we have to get back to what you were saying,
• 45:41
  which is very true.
• 45:42
  Maybe we just need to hold the individual accountable,
• 45:47
  for example,
• 45:47
  because there's newscasters that honestly are horrible.
• 45:51
  You know, they've obviously picked a side.
• 45:52
  They obviously are pushing a narrative regardless.
• 45:54
  And they've crossed all those barriers of entry
• 45:56
  and they're giving a show and they're pushed
• 45:59
  and they're put on a pedal stool
• 46:00
  and they're horrible.
• 46:02
  So it's like...
• 46:03
  George, just to be clear,
• 46:05
  you know, to use the example that you just used,
• 46:07
  I'm not saying that the guy who owns a construction company
• 46:10
  or even the guy who works in a crew.
• 46:11
  Oh, no, no.
• 46:11
  I didn't say you did.
• 46:12
  I was just using that as an example
• 46:14
  because I thought it would be like an easy relatable type of...
• 46:17
  But if I'm having dizzy spells and I fainted,
• 46:20
  I still rather hear from the doctor than the guy in the...
• 46:24
  Okay, right.
• 46:25
  I was just using that as an easy relatable example
• 46:28
  for most people is all.
• 46:30
  Right.
• 46:30
  So, I mean, I guess my only point is this,
• 46:32
  And maybe in some ways we're,
• 46:35
  sound like we're disagreeing,
• 46:36
  but we're kind of saying the same thing.
• 46:38
  To me, the core issue is that institutional media
• 46:45
  that has the resources to cover the entire world,
• 46:48
  that have the eyeballs, that have the reach,
• 46:51
  they need to reform themselves
• 46:54
  so that people can start trusting what they say again.
• 46:58
  When they do,
• 46:59
  and we all live in basically the same reality,
• 47:03
  we can have much better and healthier disagreements
• 47:05
  about what should be done if we all agree with what is.
• 47:09
  And because right now we don't even agree
• 47:11
  with facts on the ground,
• 47:13
  we don't even agree on the most basic realities
• 47:16
  of the world we live in,
• 47:18
  these differences are now breaking apart families,
• 47:21
  breaking apart friendships and relationships
• 47:24
  because instead of seeing that what's really happening
• 47:28
  is that people are fighting
• 47:31
  because they are getting their information
• 47:34
  from different corporate news sources.
• 47:36
  They're making moral judgments about each other
• 47:38
  because they're kind of being distorted
• 47:40
  and led to that point
• 47:42
  where they believe that the other side is bad,
• 47:45
  not that they're informed in a different way.
• 47:48
  Yeah, and people aren't talking to each other anymore.
• 47:50
  And I don't think independent journalism
• 47:54
  has much of a role to play in that
• 47:56
  because whether we like it or not,
• 47:59
  our information sources are still shaped by the major players.
• 48:05
  Yeah, for the most part.
• 48:07
  Yeah.
• 48:07
  Yeah.
• 48:08
  So that needs to, you know, I use the analogy in the book.
• 48:12
  Imagine a house, a glass house.
• 48:15
  It's a metaphorical glass house, and it had four different views.
• 48:18
  And in one of them, you're looking out in the backyard,
• 48:21
  and it's beautiful.
• 48:22
  It's a pool, and it's a lush garden.
• 48:25
  And in the front, it's like all these other nice houses.
• 48:28
  You're in a beautiful neighborhood.
• 48:29
  But you look out on one side and it's like a broken down trailer park.
• 48:32
  And people have got like the old rusty truck in the back there.
• 48:37
  And you look on the other side and it's a boarded up strip mall.
• 48:41
  The way that news works, they put you in one quadrant of this metaphorical house.
• 48:46
  And that's the view you see.
• 48:48
  So the person who's looking out on the boarded up strip mall
• 48:52
  absolutely cannot understand
• 48:54
  why someone else is so optimistic
• 48:55
  about the country and the future
• 48:57
  because they're looking out
• 48:58
  on that nice backyard.
• 49:00
  And so that's the danger.
• 49:03
  The danger is this unshared reality.
• 49:07
  Yeah, well, they're controlling the narrative.
• 49:08
  I go back to the issue of climate change.
• 49:12
  That's the big one.
• 49:13
  The anti-police movement, right?
• 49:15
  It was very hard for people
• 49:16
  to talk to each other about it
• 49:18
  because they had incomplete information.
• 49:20
  If you were watching...
• 49:22
  basic cable news, or if you're watching network news, you really were being led to believe like,
• 49:30
  this is a historical moment of reckoning because we are hunting people of color in our streets.
• 49:39
  Here's an interesting, you may have heard this before. So they did a poll, I think it was in
• 49:44
  2020. And they asked people, how many unarmed black men do you believe had been killed by police in
• 49:50
  2019. So people who identified as liberal to very liberal chose the category that was between 1,000
• 49:56
  to 10,000. Even those who were very conservative, who identified as very conservative, said 100.
• 50:03
  Do you know what the actual number was? I don't remember. I remember this poll,
• 50:06
  but I don't remember the number. 14. Yeah. Okay. So that is, right? So that's a distortion,
• 50:12
  right? We knew the names of those 14 people or most of them, right? But did we know how
• 50:20
  low it was historically? Did we know that, yes, these cases in their own rights are often tragic,
• 50:27
  even though sometimes the officer is found to be in the right, like Darren Wilson, I think I called
• 50:32
  him Darrell earlier, that they're found in the right. But there was no context. These stories
• 50:37
  were just brought up and then just sensationalized and part of a huge news block. And nobody was
• 50:44
  trying to contextualize them. Nobody was even allowing law enforcement to really make their own
• 50:49
  case. That became just
• 50:51
  outside of the Overton window.
• 50:53
  You couldn't even discuss it.
• 50:57
  So, that's how dangerous
• 50:59
  I think that this landscape is.
• 51:02
  It's more than... It was always
• 51:03
  sensationalist. It always...
• 51:07
  Well,
• 51:07
  they could make a lot of money on it.
• 51:09
  It became sensationalist. But you can make a lot
• 51:11
  of money on it without it. You don't
• 51:13
  have to kill your own credibility. Sure, you can
• 51:15
  hype up a story. There's a
• 51:17
  you know, a huge earthquake and, you know, dozens died. The heart-breaking picture is coming up.
• 51:25
  It's all true. Distorting news, leading people to a political opinion does not have to be a part
• 51:34
  of doing an exciting, interesting, and somewhat sensationalistic newscast. I mean, this is a
• 51:42
  capitalist country. They are trying to get the maximum amount of eyeballs. I'm not arguing that
• 51:46
  they should not be sensationalist.
• 51:49
  I'm just saying that it should be objective.
• 51:51
  Let's switch gears slightly though.
• 51:54
  Let's go down the road of why you think most of these outlets chose to go down
• 51:59
  this path because now what we're really looking at, what we're really discussing
• 52:03
  is controlling a narrative.
• 52:04
  narrative, for example, you're controlling the message and pushing a narrative. Not you,
• 52:09
  but just the media in general. Why would they choose, in your opinion, to get away from just
• 52:14
  telling the news and the truth to pushing a certain narrative based on their perspective,
• 52:20
  based on which team they're on? What happened that caused this, do you think? Or why did they
• 52:26
  choose to go that way? I think it was a slow... I don't think they would ever admit that they went
• 52:32
  that way to begin with. They will mostly insist that they didn't, even though I spoke to a lot of
• 52:38
  high profile people who I talked to in the book who do admit it. But I think part of what happened
• 52:43
  was the old school journalists. If you went back, like I started in 1991. So I kind of bridged,
• 52:50
  like I was one of the young Gen X, MTV generation people who was going to destroy news. And that's
• 52:58
  how the old-timers saw it. I mean, turns out they were kind of right. But those were like blue-collar
• 53:05
  guys. Most of them didn't have a college education. Walter Cronkite never finished college.
• 53:10
  They were blue-collar guys. They came from the newspaper world. They were hardscrabble. They
• 53:14
  had no problems asking a tough question of a governor, a mayor, a politician, CEO of a company.
• 53:21
  They were aggressive. And they didn't have to figure out their audience. They were blue-collar
• 53:27
  people. They lived in communities where people worried about how do you send your kid to college,
• 53:32
  how much food is, how much the price of gas is. So they were the audience. Slowly, this became a
• 53:37
  very white collar profession. Most of the people in these newsrooms are college graduates. Most of
• 53:44
  them grew up around some kind of upper middle class wealthy. Most of them went to these very
• 53:52
  good schools and got a good indoctrination there. And now you've got a disconnect between the people
• 54:00
  who are telling the news and the people who are receiving it. Because now you're broadcasting to
• 54:07
  people you don't understand, these flyover state people. And the people who are doing this,
• 54:15
  especially if you're an upper management of these cable companies, you've got a nice place in the
• 54:20
  Hamptons and you're partying with elite people and hedge fund managers. And if you're lower down
• 54:25
  the rung, you're not living like that, but you might be in Brooklyn and you go to your co-op
• 54:31
  and you buy vinyl records and you pretend you have a gluten allergy and you're living that
• 54:39
  lifestyle. And so you really, there's a remove. And so one of the biggest crimes of omissions is
• 54:46
  what do you cover in the first place?
• 54:48
  If you have a newscast,
• 54:49
  I said in countless, countless of these meetings,
• 54:52
  you have a one-hour newscast
• 54:54
  and in the morning you have a morning meeting
• 54:55
  and you're trying to figure out
• 54:57
  out of everything that's going on in the entire planet,
• 54:59
  what are you going to cover?
• 55:01
  And what interests people who live in that lifestyle
• 55:04
  is very different from what interested people
• 55:07
  who were in that first wave of journalists, right?
• 55:12
  So it shows in the coverage.
• 55:16
  It shows, I don't think anyone made a conscious decision to create this bias and to create this disconnect.
• 55:23
  It just happened.
• 55:24
  And then it became self-perpetuating.
• 55:26
  If you look at the numbers of like what percentage of registered Republicans are in newsrooms, I think it's like five.
• 55:31
  So do you believe this was unintentional then?
• 55:34
  It just became the case of a disconnection between the audience and the people in management and broadcasting in general over time?
• 55:43
  Yeah, I don't think anybody made the decision.
• 55:45
  And I do think that the people who, you know, these are still for-profit corporations.
• 55:51
  And so, you know, if you take a story like Ferguson, right?
• 55:57
  You had just nights, two waves, right?
• 55:59
  First, when it happened, when the Michael Brown shooting happened.
• 56:02
  And then again, when the grand jury decided not to indict, right?
• 56:07
  So you had two different waves of this.
• 56:09
  And you had like six or seven nights of the city burning itself down.
• 56:12
  And for CNN, you bring out a bunch of live trucks, you bring out your reporters, you're getting huge numbers.
• 56:20
  It's not like investigative reporting where it takes a lot of time and effort and care.
• 56:24
  You're just reacting to the images around you and you just have nights.
• 56:29
  So if you're on the management side, Jeff Zucker was running the operation at that point, that's gold.
• 56:35
  I mean, it's a great news story, not to sound flip about it.
• 56:38
  But if you younger this younger breed of journalists that were coming up I think they saw it as a seminal and important moment in American history and a long overdue reckoning with race And so they were happy to cover the story from that end
• 56:55
  And you know what?
• 56:55
  They both came to the same place.
• 56:59
  They wanted to do the story in the way that they did it,
• 57:01
  very much tilted towards the point of view of the activists
• 57:05
  and really pointed away from law enforcement,
• 57:08
  but they both had their own reasons for doing it.
• 57:10
  it was a marriage of convenience.
• 57:12
  You think it would be also better moving forward?
• 57:16
  Because I don't think the opinion part of news these days is going to go away.
• 57:21
  But for those who built their career on that,
• 57:24
  should they not in the show somewhere have a disclaimer
• 57:28
  to where they're stating this is news commentary
• 57:32
  and news opinion versus a news broadcast?
• 57:37
  I think so.
• 57:38
  One of the things that we talked about a lot,
• 57:40
  and a couple of reporters were saying to me is,
• 57:46
  one of the things that really blurred the line
• 57:48
  between news and opinion is,
• 57:49
  especially like on CNN,
• 57:51
  you'll have a story,
• 57:53
  they'll run a real news story,
• 57:54
  and then you go to this panel of six people
• 57:57
  and then they talk about it for 10 minutes.
• 58:00
  And it's very difficult for the average viewer
• 58:02
  to know where the story ended
• 58:03
  and where the opinion begins.
• 58:05
  And so, yes, it would be very helpful to have a,
• 58:08
  you know, you do the story
• 58:09
  and then afterwards it's like,
• 58:11
  this is commentary or something.
• 58:12
  Right.
• 58:12
  Just something to differentiate it.
• 58:14
  Yeah, I believe they should do that.
• 58:19
  Let me ask you this, though.
• 58:20
  So your book is labeled Crimes of Omission.
• 58:23
  It's titled Crimes of Omission.
• 58:24
  So that being said,
• 58:26
  what is the story behind that title?
• 58:30
  Because when I hear that,
• 58:31
  I'm assuming that,
• 58:33
  assuming, by the way,
• 58:35
  that there's an intent in media
• 58:39
  to omit facts and truth and data.
• 58:43
  Is that in your book?
• 58:45
  Are there stories behind that
• 58:48
  that lead to actual events
• 58:51
  that took place to where you're like,
• 58:52
  whoa, wait a minute,
• 58:53
  you're intentionally omitting these facts?
• 58:58
  Yeah.
• 58:59
  I mean, I think the only thing
• 59:00
  that I would nuance
• 59:01
  is maybe the intentionally.
• 59:02
  But yeah, I mean, look,
• 59:04
  I do a whole chapter, two chapters,
• 59:06
  one on what happened
• 59:07
  with George Floyd and Chauvin
• 59:08
  and then the riots and the aftermath
• 59:10
  and the coverage of it.
• 59:12
  I talked to a longtime news anchor in Minneapolis
• 59:15
  who was pulled off the air
• 59:17
  because her husband was a police union leader.
• 59:21
  And that was the only reason.
• 59:22
  They just said, you know, you can't, yeah, you can't.
• 59:25
  And she had activists who were coming in front of her house
• 59:27
  with pinatas of them, you know,
• 59:29
  killing them in effigy
• 59:32
  and demanding that they both be fired.
• 59:34
  And you just had this kind of like, you had this madness.
• 59:43
  She was telling me, she saw internal memos at her station where they were saying, you cannot call it a riot, call it an uprising.
• 59:53
  Let's not focus too much on the damage.
• 59:55
  Let's focus on the anger.
• 59:57
  And so, yeah, they were admitting facts because they were scared of being seen as being on the wrong side of history or they were scared of being called racist.
• 1:00:12
  There was a lot of fear. If anyone who's worked in television or in the media knows, probably fear is the biggest overriding emotion of executive decisions, for the most part, more than vision.
• 1:00:27
  And so there was a lot of fear, safer to just go along than to try to say, no, no, we need to really explore the story.
• 1:00:37
  We need to tell the story because the truth of the matter was during the day, I'm generalizing here, but during the day, there generally was a lot of like mass protests of people who seriously were upset about what was happening and they want to change.
• 1:00:51
  nighttime was pretty much about looting and setting fires and getting free shit and
• 1:00:59
  there's no reason that the media couldn't cover those two as two distinct events but there was
• 1:01:05
  such a fear that to somehow call what was happening at night for what it was would somehow then look
• 1:01:12
  would diminish the movement would hurt the movement and it's not the job of the media
• 1:01:17
  to protect or hurt the movement.
• 1:01:19
  It's just the job to,
• 1:01:21
  this is what is happening Yeah and especially in that example like those were two different groups of people You know they had the people who cared and you had people that were just taking advantage of the situation you know and and getting away with crimes under the banner of
• 1:01:36
  protests when many of those people didn't even, they weren't involved in the protest or even
• 1:01:39
  cared. They're just taking advantage of the situation. So. And this is happening in the
• 1:01:43
  middle of COVID, by the way, as you remember. And we had been told, you know, if you went
• 1:01:47
  outside for a walk, you were a killer, a grandma killer. And now you had tens of thousands of
• 1:01:53
  people running out in the streets, chanting in unison and COVID for three weeks was forgotten.
• 1:02:00
  We're getting arrested for going to the beach. I mean, come on. You had complete businesses,
• 1:02:06
  enterprises shut down that there was no way they were ever going to survive,
• 1:02:09
  you know, going into this. And then you saw preferential treatment given to certain
• 1:02:15
  people that did have
• 1:02:17
  certain businesses that
• 1:02:18
  were able to operate
• 1:02:19
  somehow.
• 1:02:20
  And so like the whole
• 1:02:22
  COVID thing, I mean,
• 1:02:22
  that's a whole different
• 1:02:23
  conversation, but it
• 1:02:24
  just, it literally
• 1:02:25
  destroyed and kind of
• 1:02:26
  reset America to a
• 1:02:27
  degree.
• 1:02:28
  And even though it's
• 1:02:29
  been five years, there's
• 1:02:31
  a lot of industries that
• 1:02:32
  never, six, okay, six,
• 1:02:34
  geez, there's still a lot
• 1:02:35
  of industries that never
• 1:02:36
  came back.
• 1:02:36
  Like I'm, I'm in the
• 1:02:37
  entertainment industry.
• 1:02:38
  I'm in the event
• 1:02:39
  production business.
• 1:02:40
  I provide for concerts
• 1:02:41
  and events and stuff like
• 1:02:42
  that.
• 1:02:42
  That's the, that's what I
• 1:02:43
  do.
• 1:02:43
  That industry never came
• 1:02:44
  back the same.
• 1:02:45
  ever, ever.
• 1:02:46
  I mean, you have a hard time
• 1:02:47
  even finding people
• 1:02:48
  that want to do laborers,
• 1:02:50
  for example.
• 1:02:52
  It was just a really bad time
• 1:02:54
  and it wasn't being reported
• 1:02:56
  accurately
• 1:02:57
  or from the position
• 1:02:59
  of actually telling the truth
• 1:03:00
  because everybody was going to be,
• 1:03:02
  they were afraid
• 1:03:02
  they were going to shut down
• 1:03:03
  or not get their funding.
• 1:03:05
  It was a ridiculous time
• 1:03:07
  in journalism
• 1:03:07
  because it was just bad.
• 1:03:10
  I mean, we all lived through it.
• 1:03:11
  It was just bad.
• 1:03:11
  And I believe there were people
• 1:03:12
  who wanted to tell the truth,
• 1:03:13
  but they were afraid of
• 1:03:14
  getting canceled, you know, social pressures, for example.
• 1:03:18
  It was just a really bad time.
• 1:03:20
  And let's just say, it's not about, just to be clear,
• 1:03:25
  it's not about journalists taking a stance
• 1:03:27
  and saying this side's right, this side's wrong.
• 1:03:30
  It's asking questions.
• 1:03:31
  Governor Newsom, why, you know,
• 1:03:34
  why is Target and Walmart open,
• 1:03:36
  but all these mod-paw shops closed?
• 1:03:39
  What is the difference about COVID transmission
• 1:03:41
  when it's a multi-billion dollar corporation?
• 1:03:45
  Tough questions.
• 1:03:46
  Maybe he's got a great answer
• 1:03:47
  that we never heard,
• 1:03:48
  but make him defend his position.
• 1:03:51
  That's the job.
• 1:03:52
  Why are schools closed in Los Angeles
• 1:03:55
  for two years when Europe
• 1:03:56
  had been open forever
• 1:03:57
  and the teachers union in LA said,
• 1:03:59
  we'll reopen,
• 1:04:00
  but one of the conditions
• 1:04:01
  is funding for BLM.
• 1:04:02
  What does that have to do with COVID?
• 1:04:04
  So nobody was asking tough questions.
• 1:04:08
  Yes.
• 1:04:08
  Reporters are supposed to hold truth to power
• 1:04:10
  and they weren't doing it.
• 1:04:11
  They hold truth to power
• 1:04:13
  when the power is from a side that they're not supporting.
• 1:04:19
  And then they totally roll over when it's the other way around.
• 1:04:23
  And I get into it just to drop.
• 1:04:26
  I don't know exactly which way your audience goes on this.
• 1:04:30
  I don't necessarily have a huge problem with the tough reporting on Trump.
• 1:04:36
  I think there's a hard time for journalists to also talk about the successes.
• 1:04:44
  They seem to gloss those over.
• 1:04:46
  But I think, you know, like a lot of times he asks for it.
• 1:04:49
  You know, when you write a tweet like he did after Rob Reiner, you're going to get a lot of crap and you deserve it.
• 1:04:57
  But the problem was then the kid loves treatment when it's another president.
• 1:05:03
  When with Joe Biden, just, you know, it's a conspiracy that the laptop story could be real.
• 1:05:09
  It's a Russian hoax or he's never been sharper and more engaged.
• 1:05:14
  And, you know, this is now you're getting like into, you know, state run propaganda.
• 1:05:19
  It's starting to feel like product.
• 1:05:20
  Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  Well, that goes back to what you were just talking about earlier when we first started
• 1:05:25
  the conversation, bias in media, you know, when it became opinions versus truth.
• 1:05:30
  I don't, I personally look, my audience, I don't even know which way they all lean.
• 1:05:35
  I'm kind of in the center.
• 1:05:36
  I'm right of center.
• 1:05:37
  And even though Trump's my president, I mean, I don't have a problem with calling him out
• 1:05:42
  myself.
• 1:05:43
  You know, facts are facts.
• 1:05:45
  If something is wrong, you can call it out.
• 1:05:46
  I have no problem with that.
• 1:05:48
  And I think journalists should be able to ask tough questions.
• 1:05:51
  But as you stated before, it's like, it's not consistent.
• 1:05:54
  That's the problem.
• 1:05:55
  If you're going to be tough on somebody, be tough on the other guy too, for example.
• 1:05:59
  You got to be very consistent in it.
• 1:06:00
  I think that'll be one of the,
• 1:06:02
  one of the key things that will start to bring people back to trusting journalists again you know definitely Yeah I have no problem with tough questions I mean they should be asked That a journalist job
• 1:06:13
  You're able to do what most people like me can't do.
• 1:06:16
  I don't have access to that person.
• 1:06:17
  You do ask the question.
• 1:06:20
  Right.
• 1:06:21
  And yeah.
• 1:06:22
  And so, again, that's a loss of trust when people aren't dumb.
• 1:06:28
  So when they see that the coverage is so vociferous.
• 1:06:36
  And by the way, the funny thing is,
• 1:06:37
  in 2016 through the primaries,
• 1:06:39
  he kind of got a free ride.
• 1:06:40
  The press was just kind of amused by him.
• 1:06:42
  He was a good story.
• 1:06:43
  As soon as he got the nomination,
• 1:06:45
  it turned and it never went back.
• 1:06:47
  And again, I think it's okay,
• 1:06:52
  especially when you have someone who's this unusual
• 1:06:55
  and makes so many outrageous statements.
• 1:06:56
  there's going to be a lot of tough questions and tough coverage.
• 1:07:01
  But when the media gets to the point where they feel like,
• 1:07:05
  oh, if there are good reports about GDP growth or about unemployment,
• 1:07:11
  we're not going to really highlight those.
• 1:07:14
  Now you're getting into activism and you're getting into bias.
• 1:07:16
  And when somebody else is in power and they're facing a scandal
• 1:07:20
  or there are serious questions about their capacity to govern
• 1:07:24
  and you're soft peddling that,
• 1:07:27
  that's activism, that's not truth-telling.
• 1:07:29
  And it's just not the job of journalists
• 1:07:32
  to want an outcome.
• 1:07:34
  And yet they are not behaving like that's the case.
• 1:07:37
  Crimes of omission.
• 1:07:39
  Exactly.
• 1:07:40
  Available at bookstores near you.
• 1:07:42
  So no, pre-sale now, correct?
• 1:07:45
  Yeah, pre-sale now.
• 1:07:46
  It's crimes of omission, Rob Rosen.
• 1:07:47
  Now I did find out,
• 1:07:49
  make sure to look it up under crimes of omission
• 1:07:51
  because I did find out,
• 1:07:52
  and I didn't know this till after I published it,
• 1:07:54
  there is an erotic publisher with my same name.
• 1:07:56
  It's not me, I promise you.
• 1:07:58
  But if you want this book,
• 1:08:00
  I mean, maybe you want to check out that guy's book too.
• 1:08:02
  But if you want this book,
• 1:08:04
  this is the only book I've written.
• 1:08:05
  And I'm taking pre-orders now.
• 1:08:07
  And I think that it's told in an engaging way.
• 1:08:11
  Like I really try to take people through,
• 1:08:14
  you know, Philando Castile,
• 1:08:16
  all these cases and take people like,
• 1:08:18
  what happened that morning
• 1:08:19
  with the four officers and George Floyd?
• 1:08:23
  I try to take you through their day.
• 1:08:25
  Like what happened?
• 1:08:26
  What happened in the weeks?
• 1:08:27
  How did we get here?
• 1:08:28
  And sort of in a true crime story form,
• 1:08:30
  just the whole story.
• 1:08:31
  And then see at the end of it,
• 1:08:32
  maybe it doesn't change
• 1:08:34
  whatever your opinion was before.
• 1:08:36
  But I have a feeling,
• 1:08:37
  I think more than anything,
• 1:08:38
  the truth moderates.
• 1:08:40
  And the more you know,
• 1:08:42
  whatever side of this you're on,
• 1:08:45
  you get a little more into the gray
• 1:08:46
  because it's never that black or white.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah.
• 1:08:48
  I mean, honestly, we live in the gray.
• 1:08:49
  We really do.
• 1:08:50
  I believe most people's lives are in the gray.
• 1:08:53
  it's never really black or white.
• 1:08:55
  Okay, so the book is June 2nd release.
• 1:08:57
  Is that correct?
• 1:08:58
  Yes.
• 1:08:59
  All right.
• 1:08:59
  Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Let me ask you this.
• 1:09:01
  Before we sign off here,
• 1:09:03
  are there any other secrets
• 1:09:04
  that you want to tell people
• 1:09:05
  that are in the book
• 1:09:05
  or do we have to wait?
• 1:09:07
  You got to wait.
• 1:09:08
  But there is,
• 1:09:09
  look, there are some pretty juicy stories
• 1:09:14
  that I got from the inside
• 1:09:16
  about what was going on
• 1:09:17
  inside these newsrooms
• 1:09:18
  when they were making these decisions
• 1:09:19
  and, you know,
• 1:09:21
  in the pressure of the moment.
• 1:09:23
  And so I think it'll be, it's an interesting read
• 1:09:25
  because it takes you back and forth from the newsrooms
• 1:09:28
  where all this is going down, but also out into the streets.
• 1:09:32
  I talked to a lot of cops for this
• 1:09:33
  and a lot of homicide detectives
• 1:09:35
  and got their perspective on it.
• 1:09:36
  And it kind of flips back and forth.
• 1:09:38
  And I think it's an interesting perspective.
• 1:09:42
  Awesome.
• 1:09:43
  I'm going to wrap it up, Rob.
• 1:09:45
  Can I tell you the truth?
• 1:09:46
  I like this conversation.
• 1:09:47
  It was engaging.
• 1:09:48
  I love that you held your ground.
• 1:09:49
  You pushed back on me when I pushed on you though.
• 1:09:51
  I love that stuff.
• 1:09:53
  I appreciate it.
• 1:09:54
  It was very informative.
• 1:09:55
  And I look forward to reading the book myself.
• 1:09:57
  So anything else you want to say?
• 1:10:00
  No, thank you.
• 1:10:01
  I enjoyed it.
• 1:10:02
  I'm going to go back and listen to some of your podcasts now.
• 1:10:04
  So I appreciate it.
• 1:10:06
  Well, don't go in with too high of an expectation.
• 1:10:09
  I don't believe that.
• 1:10:11
  Hey, no, seriously.
• 1:10:11
  Thank you very much for your time.
• 1:10:12
  I appreciate it.
• 1:10:13
  All right.
• 1:10:14
  Thank you.
• 1:10:14
  Thanks, Roger.
• 1:10:23
  Bye.