Latest / UK Column Radio / Lara Logan: What Happened to Journalism?

Transcript

Lara Logan: What Happened to Journalism? · UK Column Radio

0:38
Laura Logan, thank you for joining me again in the
0:40
Trenches. I'm very glad to be here Jeremy,
0:44
you're one of my favourite people.
0:45
Can I say still South African? Sure.
0:48
Of course, you know, in my heart, I mean, I'm an American
0:51
citizen now, but I'm born and raised and forged my soul,
0:55
forged in the fires of South Africa.
0:56
So without question, you know, I have a massive loyalty in
1:01
myself, you know, in my, in my heart.
1:03
For my UK column audience who might not know you, let's let's
1:08
go back to the start. You're from Durban.
1:09
Take me back. Well, I'm from Durban, South
1:12
Africa. I started as a journalist when I
1:14
was 17 years old in newspapers and then went from a Sunday
1:18
paper to a daily paper and worked all the way through
1:22
college. So by the time I graduated from
1:24
university, I had years of journalism behind me.
1:27
Then went into television to an international news agency,
1:30
Reuters in Johannesburg. South Africa was one of the
1:33
biggest stories in the world for a very long time.
1:36
And you know, sort of was at its zenith when I was working on
1:40
that. The was pretty bad and it was
1:42
gearing, you know, this was sort of in the late 80s and then the
1:45
early 90s going into the South African elections.
1:49
Then I went and worked in London, worked for NBC News, ABC
1:54
News, then got a job at CBS. Ended up being the foreign chief
2:00
foreign correspondent and chief foreign affairs correspondent
2:02
for CBS News was a full time correspondent at 60 minutes,
2:06
which was sort of the, the, the, the height right of American
2:09
media and known a lot for my reporting from the battlefields,
2:15
Iraq, Afghanistan. But way beyond that.
2:17
You know, when I was in Angola when I was 20 years old
2:21
reporting for Reuters television long before anyone really knew
2:25
my my name, I was doing a lot of war reporting and then of course
2:30
hit the roadblock with cancelled culture.
2:33
That's when you suddenly discover that following the
2:35
facts regardless, you know, of where they take you was not
2:40
popular. It wasn't popular in the
2:42
mainstream media because we had sort of very insidiously been
2:47
taken over by political interests.
2:50
And so when they discover that you're very talented, you know,
2:55
they prop you, they they support you.
2:57
I mean, it's still, it was still a fight for me because as a as a
3:00
woman, I really had to claw out my place on the battlefield
3:03
because that was sort of the domain of of man until Katie.
3:08
You know, Katie from the BBC was one of the very first women who
3:11
really distinguished themselves as a war correspondent.
3:13
And then, and then you had Christiane Amanpour at CNN and,
3:19
and then, you know, there were a few more that Alex Crawford from
3:22
Sky and Lindsay Hilson from Channel 4.
3:24
You know, they started to come into it.
3:25
But really in the United States, there wasn't anyone in network
3:29
news unless they were Canadian or American.
3:32
So I kind of shredded that glass ceiling and changed and changed
3:38
the way really, for everyone who came, all the women who came
3:41
after me. But I have this annoying habit
3:46
of not being controllable because I just wasn't born that
3:50
way. And I think it's an out South
3:51
African DNA when we're just not controllable.
3:54
You can't order me to do something because I have a
3:56
conscience. So you got to tell me I can't
3:58
report on something because I have a conscience.
4:00
I'm not going to not report on child trafficking because it
4:03
upsets people or I'm not going to, you know, be critical.
4:07
I'm not going to say the Steel Dossier as it was created is not
4:09
propaganda because it was obvious from the start it was
4:12
propaganda. If they wrote it about Obama, if
4:14
they wrote it about Biden, I would have said the same thing
4:17
because it was obvious that it wasn't true.
4:18
But with Donald Trump, suddenly we encountered something so
4:21
weird for me. I mean, it was unbelievable.
4:24
If you said, if you spoke up for the truth, you were instantly
4:28
branded as some right wing lunatic, some Trump Nazi.
4:32
And whether you supported Donald Trump or not was irrelevant.
4:35
And so, you know, then I went into kind of, it's almost like
4:39
it's a tsunami. I think of it like being in a
4:41
washing machine since the since 2016.
4:45
I mean, you know, I was there cheering for Obama in the
4:48
beginning because we were coming out of the Bush Cheney years,
4:51
which was so awful. These people were horrible.
4:54
We hated them as journalists. They lied about everything
4:57
happening on the battlefield. And I exposed them.
4:59
And when I exposed them, I was lifted up and everybody loved
5:02
me. So, you know, Obama gets into
5:05
office, I'm full of hope, right? That was his message of hope.
5:08
And I keep doing what I've always done and suddenly nobody
5:12
loves me anymore. In the media, you know, and in
5:15
the power, in the halls of power.
5:17
And I don't just mean Washington DCI mean the halls of power,
5:20
media organisations, institutions to support the
5:24
media, academic institutions. I mean, all these people, the
5:28
think tanks, the people that come crawling, you know, to your
5:32
door, hordes of them when you're, when you're a big voice
5:37
in the media that all want a piece of you, right?
5:39
And they all want you to tell their story.
5:41
They all want you to cover this and they all want to give you an
5:43
award and they all want to do that.
5:44
Suddenly, none of those people. When I said, when I kept doing
5:48
what I learned to do in South Africa as a newspaper
5:52
journalist, what I continued to do at CBS News as a radio,
5:55
television and newspaper journalist, when I worked at the
5:58
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a freelance writer.
6:00
And all that time I did the same thing.
6:03
I asked the obvious questions, I questioned everything and I
6:09
reported what I believe to be the truth.
6:10
And then suddenly they hated me. And then they start attacking
6:16
your reporting and you don't stand a chance because you're
6:20
going up against the CIA and, and these entire networks that
6:24
they have built. And they go throughout the
6:27
corporate world, they go throughout the academic world,
6:29
they go throughout the PR world, the legal world.
6:32
I mean, they're, they're, they're, they have lines of
6:36
operation into every part of your business.
6:39
And and then of course, there's human nature, you know, so if
6:43
you're if you're very successful, as I was, and if
6:46
you're one of the top people in television news in America,
6:49
which puts you at the top in the world and they can find
6:53
something to take you down. Oh boy, it's like sharks that
6:56
are feeding frenzy. They smell that blood in the
6:59
water. And it takes very little.
7:01
And then you place a few, you know, strategically placed
7:04
assets who are pretty much on your side.
7:06
They're either political operatives or they're, you know,
7:09
whatever they or they're just corrupt or they're just weak,
7:12
jealous, whatever. And then they start with the
7:15
anonymous, you know, articles and the hit pieces and all the
7:18
anonymous people that want to take you down.
7:20
And so I've just, you know, I've kept fighting because I don't
7:23
know how to I'm a fighter and I don't know how to do or be
7:27
anything other than who I am and a journalist.
7:31
Those are that's, you know, what I was born to do.
7:34
Never done anything else and don't know how to do anything
7:36
else, never will do anything else.
7:38
Although I thought about it a couple times and I why am I
7:40
still doing this to myself? But you know, people come to you
7:44
all the time. They say thank you for being our
7:46
voice. Thank you for standing up.
7:47
Thank you for not, you know, falling on your knees and
7:50
crawling in the dirt like the others.
7:51
Thank you for not taking the hand and becoming corrupt.
7:54
Thank you for being so brave, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
7:57
But you know what they don't do, Jeremy?
8:00
They want you to take all the risk and they want, you know, to
8:06
prop you up, but they don't want to take any risk.
8:10
So you're left. It's a, it's a, you're left
8:12
fighting this battle, which is, which is an endurance marathon.
8:16
But it's OK because it is what it is.
8:19
When you're talking about meeting cancel culture, were you
8:23
referring to the Benghazi 60 Minutes thing?
8:27
Yes, that's when I really, you know, got my first full blown
8:31
encounter. I mean, it was it.
8:34
There were sort of hints of it just leading into that.
8:37
Like I did a story about Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
8:41
So at the time, Obama and his CIA chief were out telling the
8:44
world that al Qaeda was decimated, they were on the run,
8:47
There was less than 200 al Qaeda operatives left in the world,
8:49
blah, blah, blah. And so I collected for 2 1/2
8:52
years the battlefield reports from Afghanistan.
8:56
And I showed that they were capturing and killing and
8:59
wounding more al Qaeda people in a month, in any given month, in
9:04
2 1/2 years than they said existed.
9:06
So they were a lot. So what was the first thing the
9:08
Obama administration did when my story came out?
9:12
They they stopped all battlefield reporting to the
9:15
media. They cut it off.
9:17
So you had people like when I was sitting, you know, in, in
9:21
bars in Washington, DC watching Obama speak on television and
9:25
cheering him on, right? Because we, he said it was going
9:28
to be the most transparent administration ever.
9:30
And we, we all thought, OK, finally, here's someone who's
9:34
not going to lie, who's going to tell the truth about what's
9:36
happening on the ground in the war, who's going to stand for
9:39
principle, blah, blah, blah. So you believe those things.
9:42
I mean, I had no reason to doubt him.
9:44
I interviewed Obama when I was six months pregnant with my son.
9:48
I flew to Afghanistan to interview him in Kabul,
9:51
Afghanistan. They chose me, Jeremy.
9:54
They chose me for their only interview during foreign
9:57
interview during Obama's campaign for the presidency in
10:01
2008. Why did they choose me?
10:03
Because I had the most credibility of any journalist in
10:08
the United States of America when it came to Afghanistan,
10:11
Pakistan and that region. And how And what did Obama lack
10:15
at the time? He had no foreign policy
10:17
credentials. And he was being criticised
10:19
because he had so called, you know, barely left the United
10:22
States. So they did a foreign trip to
10:24
Afghanistan. And who did they use?
10:26
I didn't know at the time I was being used.
10:29
You know, you're blown away. Oh, the president's guy, David
10:32
Axelrod is calling you. And he's like, you want an
10:34
exclusive with the boss? And you know, you never get
10:37
those kind of exclusives, right? There's no that hardly ever
10:39
happened. So you think, wow, you're blown
10:41
away. OK, I've got this exclusive.
10:43
CBS is happy. You know, everybody's excited.
10:46
You're flying over there, you're doing the logistics.
10:48
And you don't stop and think, why, Why me?
10:52
Why am I being? Nobody gives you exclusives.
10:56
They don't fall in your lap. So when someone does, actually,
10:59
what I've learned now is that the first thing that should
11:01
happen is all the hackles on your neck should rise.
11:04
And you should ask yourself why they're giving this to me.
11:07
Because they've selected you to use you for a reason.
11:12
Because most stories that are worth reporting, that means
11:16
something. You've got to claw them out of
11:18
stone. You know, it's hard.
11:21
They don't just fall in your lap.
11:22
So when something falls in your lap, that's a sure sign that you
11:26
need to be extra careful. How do you navigate the the the
11:32
fog of propaganda? Well, part of it is experience,
11:38
right? I mean, because when I think
11:40
back to myself as a young reporter, I was sure I was
11:43
really naive. Like I remember the first time I
11:46
I was assigned a story that involved it was a criminal story
11:51
and I had to call the police. And I remember as I was a
11:53
newspaper reporter, I remember calling the police and having
11:58
this conversation with them and the police officers telling me
12:00
all of this, you know, and part of me, I'm a 17 year old kid.
12:03
I can't believe I'm interviewing the police chief, right?
12:08
And so I'm kind of, you know, sort of blown away by this whole
12:11
thing. Get off the phone and I'm like a
12:14
little puppy, right? Go bounding up to the news
12:16
editor who's been in this game a long time gone cigarette hanging
12:20
out the corner of his mouth got popped mocked skin, wild hair
12:23
that into the absolute the absolute embodiment of a
12:27
hardened news guy, right? He's been doing this forever.
12:32
Every second word is, you know, F this and F that, blah blah,
12:35
blah. But he knows the news.
12:36
And so I come and report. This is what I found out about
12:39
the story. And he looks at me and he's
12:43
like, he said, what? Did you ask him this?
12:47
Did you ask him this? Oh, he's foolish.
12:49
You know, he's full of crap. He's lying to you.
12:51
This isn't true. That's not true.
12:53
That's not true. What about this, this, this,
12:55
this and this? And I'm like, OK, that's how you
12:59
learn, Jeremy. But we are getting rid of
13:02
newsrooms. We are getting rid of the
13:05
reporters that learn over time, that know, that can smell a lie
13:11
a mile away because they've been doing this for a long time and
13:14
they question everything and they stay true to the
13:16
principles. We've blended the lines between
13:19
activists and journalists, you know, And sure, you can report
13:23
on something, you know, like you can.
13:26
You can be a reporter in your report, like I did on the mass
13:28
graves in Kosovo. And you can become very
13:31
passionate and emotional about what you're reporting on.
13:35
But there are, you know, a reporter is supposed to follow
13:38
the facts wherever they take them and an activist will bury
13:42
inconvenient facts if they hurt the 'cause that's the definition
13:46
of being an activist is that you put the cause before everything
13:49
else. So now that does that mean that
13:51
you won't find an activist that discovers something, you know,
13:55
like corruption within their organisation and and comes out
13:59
about it and is honest about it? Sure.
14:01
I mean, you can find the one in a million activists is willing
14:04
to do that and you can find the reporter that is reporters can
14:10
be very passionate about what they're working on, stories that
14:13
they tell without becoming, you know, a full blown activist.
14:17
But if you don't, if you're not very careful about separating
14:20
those things, then you you get into a very bad space.
14:24
And I, years ago, I met a young girl who was dying to meet me
14:29
because I was a, you know, experienced journalist and she
14:32
was studying journalism. And I was one of her, you know,
14:36
idols. And so and I said, So what are
14:38
you studying? And she said, I am a human
14:42
rights journalist. And I looked at her and I said,
14:47
what does that mean? What do you mean you're a human
14:50
rights journalist? And she looked at me like,
14:54
what's wrong with her? Why is she asking me such a
14:56
stupid question? What does she mean?
14:58
What does it mean? And I said to her, you know, I
15:00
said, you didn't tell me you're a sports journalist.
15:04
Like, if you're a sports journalist, I know you cover
15:06
sport, but you. But you technically take the
15:09
principles and the craft of journalism and you apply them to
15:13
a subject matter. But when you tell me you're a
15:16
human rights journalist, I said, so when I say you go to Egypt,
15:22
cover a human rights issue, you're going to find out what
15:25
the, the government of Egypt has been the victim of the the
15:30
previous regime, right? And so now you're going to cover
15:33
the new regime and the all the human rights violations of the
15:36
past. And what if you find out that
15:37
the people that you're interviewing have committed
15:39
human rights violations? What's your job then?
15:43
What if Amnesty International, what if you discover that
15:46
they're trafficking children? What if Human Rights Watch you
15:50
discover that they're burying murders because it doesn't
15:55
they're they're waiting the research to benefit one side
15:58
because they're invested in that side or they get money from
16:03
them. Like what do you mean you're a
16:04
human rights journalist? There is no such thing, you
16:07
know, are you a human rights activist?
16:09
Because then you need to go join Human Rights Watch or Amnesty.
16:12
But if you're a journalist, I don't even understand what kind
16:15
of college programme is training you to be a human rights
16:17
journalist. I mean, it's nonsense.
16:20
So when you say how do I do it, well, I have the benefit number
16:24
one of, of having been in this for more than 35 years.
16:27
So I'm as cynical as it gets. I question everything and I
16:30
question everyone. I've also had enough time to
16:32
make mistakes. And so I have learned to, I've
16:38
learned the importance of being as sceptical about the people I
16:41
like or the people I agree with as the people I disagree with.
16:46
I've also always understood that journalism is not objective.
16:52
It's highly subjective. The stories you choose, the
16:55
characters you focus on, whatever it happens to be.
17:00
We're we're human. Of course we have our own bias,
17:04
but the craft of journalism, the professionalism of it, is what's
17:09
supposed to protect us from our own bias, right?
17:13
So if you, if you're diligent about your craft, it can
17:16
insulate you to a degree. Not always, nothing is 100%, but
17:20
at least by going through the process you you begin to
17:24
separate yourself from your opinions and your emotions and
17:28
things like that. That's, that's a very
17:32
interesting point, Laura. I've often wondered where that
17:38
line is between getting personally involved in the story
17:43
or, you know, observing it from a distance.
17:48
Yeah, well, there and how much distance, right, is the
17:52
question. Because, you know, some people
17:55
will say, well, why is this woman commenting on South Africa
17:58
when she's thousands of miles away in America?
18:01
And even though she's South African, it's been, I don't know
18:03
how many years it is since I lived in South Africa.
18:05
So, you know, what does she know versus I'm an American
18:09
journalist. I've never been to South Africa,
18:11
couldn't find it on a map. But I'm commenting because I
18:14
cover the White House and that's my beat.
18:16
You know, I mean, how much distance is good and how much
18:20
distance is blinds you to certain realities?
18:24
I think the truth is that when you're close to something,
18:28
there's a certain perspective that you get and a knowledge, a
18:31
depth of knowledge and a detail, hopefully, and substance, right?
18:36
Because that depth means substance versus when you're
18:39
further removed from it, you are without question more
18:43
superficial. So for example, I can go to
18:46
Mexico, which I have done, I've reported extensively on the
18:48
cartels, but I've always, but I've lived to fight another day.
18:52
Whereas in Mexico, they kill journalists all the time because
18:56
who's more threatening to a member of the cartel?
18:59
It's the local journalist who's digging into the details of
19:03
exactly who's doing what on this street corner or in this big
19:08
deal or what, right? They're the real threat.
19:11
So if you look at the DuPont Awards, which is the highest
19:13
award for television journalism in the United States, most of
19:16
the Dupont's go to the batons, go to local news reporters,
19:22
because who's really exposing the details of corruption?
19:26
When I lived in Baghdad for five years, I knew that place
19:29
backwards. But who did they want to talk
19:32
to? Most of the time they wanted to
19:34
bring in the journalists from the United States who were
19:36
famous, who had big reach and very little.
19:41
Quite often, not always, but most of them didn't know a whole
19:44
lot. Because it's easier to sell
19:47
someone a narrative when they don't have a depth of knowledge.
19:50
So you have this balance between beat reporting, because when a
19:54
reporter has a beat, they really learn their subjects.
19:56
So it used to be you were the crime reporter, you were the
19:59
sports reporter, you were the entertainment reporter, right?
20:02
And now if you're a journalist, you should be able to move
20:06
between those different beats. You know, maybe here you're
20:09
doing local government, now you're doing politics, now
20:11
you're covering the White House, now you're a general reporter.
20:13
So, right. So you can have specialists and
20:15
generalists and you learn in each of those functions.
20:19
The benefit of having beat reporters like say you have the
20:21
BBC Asia correspondent is there for years because they really
20:24
learn and understand Asia first hand, you know.
20:28
So on the one hand, proximity and closeness can be very
20:31
helpful. Of course, you can get blinded
20:35
by your own emotion. You can get too close to it, you
20:38
can become corrupted or you can just become, you know, so
20:42
biassed that you forget to do your job.
20:45
And that's when, that's why I've always liked being part of a
20:50
team in journalism, right? Because inevitably we have our
20:56
own perspectives. But what we would do at 60
20:58
minutes, my team, we would argue with each other all the time.
21:01
But then what you discover is when you step back from that,
21:04
you see, wait a minute. So now what happens?
21:06
Because every team sees certain things the same way.
21:12
Certain issues like Roe V Wade in the United States, the right
21:16
to have an abortion, my body, my choice.
21:19
I never heard anyone I ever worked with at ABCNBCCBS or any
21:24
of the other places I worked in the American media.
21:27
Cnni never heard someone say they were pro life or, you know,
21:31
against abortion. Never if they, if they existed,
21:35
they didn't speak up because they were outnumbered.
21:38
So within your, what you learn is that within your organisation
21:42
where you feel very noble because you have these lofty
21:46
goals of bringing truth to power, shining a light, blah,
21:50
blah, blah. Democracy dies in darkness,
21:52
right? This is our job.
21:52
We are the light bearers because we are, we are bringing light
21:56
and exposing things that people need to know about.
21:58
Why am I going to live in Baghdad for five years?
22:00
Why am I going to Afghanistan in the middle of the war?
22:03
Because I really believe that if people know the truth, why did I
22:06
do it? Risk my life in South Africa?
22:08
Because if people know the truth, when there's a major
22:11
injustice happening, they're going to do the right thing.
22:13
But now we live in a time where people don't want you to believe
22:18
it, even don't believe your lying eyes.
22:20
Someone can stand in front of a riot with the the flames burning
22:25
and say this is a mostly peaceful protest.
22:29
Don't worry about the flames behind me, right?
22:33
So now we've got into a crazy situation where, for example,
22:35
Donald Trump has to show a video because some people deny that
22:40
people that white farmers are even being murdered.
22:42
Some, I've heard lots of people deny it.
22:44
They say, oh, that's not happening.
22:46
Or oh, it's it's happening in such small numbers, it doesn't
22:49
matter. Or it's miniscule numbers in
22:52
comparison to all of the mostly black people being murdered
22:57
every day in the crime ridden South Africa.
23:00
Therefore, it doesn't matter. And so you can't even you're not
23:05
even starting the conversation in an honest place.
23:09
It's not even starting there. So, so like people, it's like
23:14
having a story, you know, having a conversation with someone
23:16
about the Holocaust when you're talking to someone says the
23:19
Holocaust didn't happen because there are a lot of Holocaust
23:22
deniers out there. No, it didn't happen.
23:25
That's a lie. 6,000,000 Jews didn't die or some people say,
23:29
well, they killed them, they did it to themselves or they did it
23:32
for this reason or whatever. You know, I mean, there's a
23:34
there's a million different arguments, but you can't even
23:36
have an honest conversation. Like we can have an honest
23:39
conversation about the so called race based laws in South Africa.
23:45
These 140 laws that were that were, you know, written about, I
23:49
think was by Afriforum or someone connected to Afriforum.
23:53
And now that you know, someone else from the Guardian and from
23:55
another paper, they said these are not race based laws.
23:57
But then when you look at the laws, they're all talk about,
24:00
you know, either things like equity, diversity, inclusion and
24:06
righting the wrongs of the past. Well, if the wrongs of the past
24:10
were racial injustice, how do you right the wrongs of the past
24:15
without being the centre of that?
24:17
Sorry, Laura, but hang on, hang on, hang on.
24:19
When people say, when people say there aren't any race based laws
24:24
in South Africa, it's so absurd. Let me give you an example.
24:28
Everybody knows that Elon Musk has got Starlink.
24:31
Starlink hasn't been able to launch.
24:34
It hasn't been able to launch in South Africa.
24:37
Because of B EE black economic empowerment because Elon doesn't
24:40
want to give 30% of his company to some random black person to
24:45
in order to meet the legal requirements.
24:47
I don't I. Understand this.
24:49
But the law doesn't. But but the law, that's the case
24:52
where the law actually says it has to be a black person.
24:55
Yes, that's race based. Right.
24:58
But what they argue about is, well, of this 140 laws, this 140
25:02
number is not accurate, right? Because at least half of these
25:05
140 laws, when you actually look at each law, you don't see the
25:09
word race or you don't see the word black or whatever it is,
25:12
right? But we all know that when you
25:14
see the word that you know equity, that that's a Marxist
25:19
term. When you strive for equity, that
25:24
is literally, that is literally one of the, the sort of
25:27
foundations of Marxism. So what does that mean when you
25:30
see righting the wrongs of the past, that means taking from
25:34
white people to give to black people.
25:37
That's what it means. Or, you know, it means that you
25:40
have to give preference to black people because white people got
25:43
preference in the past. That's what it means.
25:45
So one person says this is a race based law.
25:47
The other person says there's no mention of race in this law, you
25:50
know, And so it's, you're, it's a ridiculous conversation.
25:54
It's a ridiculous conversation. And, and, and then if you talk
25:56
about it, then the other part that's ridiculous.
25:59
Now I'm accused, you know, I've had people say to me, did you
26:02
feel persecuted in South Africa? No, of course they didn't feel
26:05
persecuted, you know, and are there many other white people
26:09
who don't feel persecuted? Absolutely.
26:11
Is there great unity and love and, you know, a, a shared
26:18
identity and togetherness among most black and white people in
26:23
South Africa? 100% But does that mean that
26:26
it's OK to say that slit the throat of whiteness and then
26:30
pretend that that has that that's doesn't have any impact?
26:35
Kill the bull. Well, I mean, look, we know what
26:39
they we know what the arguments are with kill the bull.
26:41
So I grew up in the days of kill a farmer, kill a bull when it
26:45
was actually a cry, a battle cry of the resistance.
26:48
Then came Pizza Mokaba and he wasn't he wasn't of the time,
26:52
you know, he wasn't there in the 80s, OK, Peter Macabre came
26:55
later in the in the 90s, in the early 90s.
26:58
So this this for me even was a new was new generation.
27:02
So this is they inherit these songs that are seeped in the
27:08
romantic ideal of the revolution, which by the way, is
27:12
a Marxist communist revolution. But we all know that what
27:15
happened to the ANC when they actually came to power, they
27:18
were not Marxist. They did not install a Marxist
27:21
government in South Africa. Why?
27:22
Because they nobody would have signed off on that.
27:25
None of the power brokers that were involved in those
27:27
negotiations were arguing for Marxism.
27:30
And why were they really Marxist?
27:32
Well, some people were Marxist at heart, but most people were
27:34
Marxist because those are the people who gave them the money.
27:38
Because who funded the revolution?
27:41
The Russians and the Cubans? Why?
27:43
Because it was a proxy war. South Africa was one of the many
27:46
proxies of the Cold War. So you had in Angola, in
27:50
Namibia, in Mozambique, in South Africa you had the Cubans and
27:55
the Russians and the Marxist communist countries versus the
27:58
United States and the UK. But then what did you have in
28:01
South Africa? Well, you had this little
28:02
problem of this thing called apartheid, which no one in good
28:06
conscience could actually agree was a good system.
28:09
OK, in the you know, it, it was pushed and really in the wake by
28:13
Hendrik provoked and the Afrikaans in the wake of the
28:16
Second World War because because it was the what was that?
28:18
The first election after the Second World War, the Black
28:20
peril election, right? That was what this idea that you
28:24
as a minority, the only way you're really going to survive
28:28
being a minority in this country is if you, you band together and
28:32
you create a system of control, which is really what apartheid
28:35
was, separate people control them, right?
28:38
And so and do it based on race and then use fear, intimidation,
28:42
tyranny, force, censorship, all the tools that come with every
28:46
system that isn't, that isn't free, that isn't based on
28:50
honesty and liberty and justice and equality.
28:53
I mean, what do you have to do whenever you create a system
28:56
like that? Put whatever name you want on
28:58
it. You can call it a dictatorship,
29:00
like in Iraq and Saddam Hussein, which I witnessed personally.
29:03
You can call it a democracy, a fake one under Hosni Mubarak in
29:06
Egypt, right. You can call it a communism in
29:10
Russia or in China. Call it whatever you want.
29:12
But when you create a system that isn't founded in the in
29:17
things that are true and honest and enduring, you always need
29:21
the tools of tyranny of darkness to prop it up.
29:25
It's like telling a lie. What happens to your lie?
29:27
Oh, shit, it starts to crumble. OK, ask anybody who's ever
29:31
cheated on their spouse or their their partner.
29:34
Tell one lie and what do you got to do?
29:35
You got to keep telling more lies to keep it up.
29:38
So what happens is you build these systems based on that and
29:40
they crumble. Marxism always crumbles because
29:43
what do you have to do in the end to ensure equity over
29:46
equality? You have?
29:49
You've got some animals are more equal than others because the
29:52
ones ensuring the system are always more equal, right,
29:56
because, because this runs counter to everything that's
29:59
true in of human nature. And what happened?
30:01
So what happened? The Marxist recognised that
30:03
these openings to dominate society with things like
30:06
religion, things like race, these are natural openings in
30:10
free societies where you can exploit people's emotions, you
30:13
can exploit their misfortune, You can you can find a foothold
30:17
for your ideology to grow. Because I call them the good
30:20
idea fairies, right? They come to you when you're
30:22
young and they say, isn't it terrible that people starve to
30:25
death? Yes.
30:27
Wouldn't you prefer a system? Capitalism is responsible for
30:30
this because you live in a capitalist society.
30:32
Wouldn't it be better to have a system where people, nobody
30:36
starved, nobody was homeless, nobody had to die because they
30:42
couldn't afford medical care? Like, what person?
30:45
If we're basically good in our hearts as human beings, who's
30:48
going to say no to that? You know who says no to that?
30:51
The person who says who's going to pay for it, how are you going
30:55
to pay for it? Like my father taught me when I
30:58
would go to Musgrave Centre in Durban.
31:00
Remember Musgrave Centre in Durban for all the Durbanites in
31:02
your audience in South Africa, the shopping mall.
31:05
And we would go off to school to the welcome chair.
31:07
I don't even know if it's still there.
31:09
And I love to order a budded scone.
31:12
And it was toasted. And my dad would say to me, he
31:16
said, you know, how much does that cost?
31:20
And, you know, look on the menu. And I looked at the price and
31:22
then he said, how much does that really cost?
31:25
And I said, well, I mean, you know, this SCON doesn't cost
31:29
more than a few cents and they're charging this amount of
31:32
money for it. My dad said that's a RIP off,
31:34
right? And I said, yeah, it's a RIP
31:35
off. And he said, well, who who paid
31:39
for this? Who paid for the that brought it
31:41
to your table? Who's paying to clean these
31:44
tables? Who paid for the furniture?
31:46
Who's keeping the lights on? How far was it transported?
31:48
Where is it cooked? Where did the ingredients come
31:50
from? And you start to break down the
31:52
supply chain and then you start to understand what the real cost
31:57
is, right. And so these are the tools that
32:00
no, these are, these are more complex things that you have to
32:03
understand. What's the easy thing to do is
32:06
to take people who are poor, take people who are
32:08
disenfranchised, take people who are suffering and play on their
32:11
emotions and then blame somebody else.
32:14
You find the bad guy. So let's find the bad guy.
32:17
So, you know, I, I, I raised all of this because I, I want there
32:22
to be no misunderstanding. I love my country and I love my
32:29
people very, very, very much. And I recognise fully that South
32:36
Africa has come through a difficult history and a dark
32:40
past, and people gave up everything during the
32:44
revolution. And those who are using this
32:46
kind of song today, they're trading on that.
32:50
All those sacrifices that were made, they didn't earn it.
32:53
Peter Macabre wasn't even alive in that time, OK?
32:57
And I mean, not Julius Malema, sorry.
32:59
It wasn't even alive during that time.
33:01
They're trading on all those sacrifices that were made, all
33:04
that suffering and injustice that happened.
33:06
They're taking that, the romantic side of the revolution,
33:11
and they're using that. But it's very obvious when you
33:14
look at their policies. I mean, Malema is a Marxist
33:16
because he's funded by the Marxists.
33:18
I swear, if Malema was funded by capitalists, he would be the
33:21
biggest capitalist there was. These are not people who truly
33:25
carry in their hearts like Nelson Mandela said.
33:28
No, time and time again, I was there.
33:30
I lived through those days when they would offer him his
33:32
freedom. And because it was conditional,
33:35
he didn't take it. You think Julius Malema would
33:37
stay in prison for the sake of his people?
33:41
You think Julius Malema is ever going to live like the people
33:44
that keep him propped up or the people that he speaks to?
33:48
You think he no, he's not going to live like that.
33:50
Neither, by the way, does Jacob Zuma and neither, by the way,
33:53
does Cyril Ramaphosa. Look at these people, at the
33:57
money that they have amassed. And I don't understand why This
34:02
is one thing that I've encountered is very hard for a
34:05
lot of South Africans, especially a lot of the white S
34:08
Africans that I've talked to. There's there's a there's
34:10
something where they have where they go blind, Jeremy, and it's
34:14
at this point where they can't recognise that you can be honest
34:19
about apartheid. You can be honest about how this
34:22
has benefited white people. You can be honest about all of
34:26
this stuff and where we are today.
34:28
But they still think that taking away commercial farmland from
34:35
white farmers and giving it to people who are never going to
34:38
farm it and are never going to turn that land into something
34:40
productive is a real solution. And, and somehow if you
34:45
acknowledge that white farmers are being murdered in what is
34:49
which, what can be argued is a genocide, that somehow that
34:54
means that you're blind to everything else.
34:56
And also, why do they not, Why can they not recognise that
35:00
there are globalist forces that are at work in South Africa?
35:04
I mean, one of the biggest, most vocal people, the first time the
35:07
land expropriation thing came up years ago, one of the most vocal
35:10
people who was outspoken on this issue was Patrick Gaspard, who
35:14
was the US ambassador to South Africa at the time under Obama.
35:19
Why was Patrick Gaspard out there encouraging land
35:22
expropriation? We all know land expropriation
35:26
does not lead to a better place. It doesn't.
35:29
I mean, you could say it rights the wrongs of the past, OK.
35:32
And maybe it'll it maybe it'll make people feel better.
35:35
But the reality is 30,000 commercial farms in South
35:38
Africa, most of them farmed by white people.
35:41
You take will people will starve to death.
35:44
And as I I tell people all the time, millions will starve and
35:48
most of them will be black. But you know who won't starve?
35:52
Julius Malamba, head of the Economic freedom frontier.
35:55
So Ramaphosa, head of the ANC, right?
35:58
Jacob Zuma, head of MK, All the big leaders in South Africa,
36:02
none of them will suffer. None of them, not one.
36:06
And what have they done? You know, a woman who was very
36:09
close to me, Florence Meduna, who was, I knew all my life
36:15
until she died. She lived in my mother's
36:18
apartment for years before she finally died.
36:22
And that was because I'm, when she got sick, I, I insisted she
36:25
move out of her shack and live in my mom's place.
36:29
And I was always asking her, Florrie, please, can I get you a
36:33
house? And she used to say, no, I say,
36:35
why not? She said, because the ANC
36:37
promised me a house and they're going to keep their promise.
36:40
They're going to keep their word.
36:42
How many people did they let down?
36:47
How many people? Millions.
36:51
And it's not getting better. It's getting worse.
36:54
And people say, you know, certain people say, oh, well, it
36:58
was, it was fine until Jacob Zuma got into power.
37:01
No, it wasn't. It wasn't fine.
37:03
They were, they were not investing in infrastructure in
37:05
that time from day one. One of the first things that
37:08
happened is they stopped investing in infrastructure in
37:11
the roads, in the grid, in the in the water systems from day
37:16
one. I mean, it didn't drop off 100%,
37:19
but it started to go down. It was going downhill from the
37:22
beginning. Laura, why did you leave South
37:25
Africa? Now it was so long ago, you
37:31
know, I've even forgotten why I left.
37:34
I'll never get, you know, honestly, when I left, I never
37:49
left. I thought I was gone for a time.
37:54
I always believed I would come. I had a vision of a little house
38:08
on the water. I always loved Glendeno.
38:11
So expensive, I couldn't afford it, but I always thought that I
38:16
would come home. And I love Durban, you know,
38:21
That's where I was born and raised, but I never left.
38:26
I went to follow my instinct, which was I understood that
38:33
South Africa's place in the world.
38:34
I think one of the things that makes us interesting as S
38:37
Africans is that we've always understood that we're not the
38:42
centre of the universe. We just know that, right?
38:46
We're not in Europe, we're not in the United States.
38:48
We're not the centre of the universe.
38:50
We don't drive the global agenda and we're OK with that.
38:54
I mean, you know, I don't, I don't know about you, but a lot
38:57
of us are. We're OK with that.
38:58
But what we, what we have is, you know, we have something else
39:04
like we were born in this place that was truly blessed by God.
39:09
I mean, look at South Africa, look how we grew up.
39:14
I mean, I go to beaches. I've been to beaches all over
39:16
the world. I've been to the South of
39:18
France. I've been all up the Gold Coast
39:20
in Australia. I have been to beautiful beaches
39:23
in Florida. I have been, you know, to
39:26
beaches all over Europe. I've been to the best beaches in
39:28
the UK where people will say, oh, the UK beaches are terrible,
39:30
but there's some great beaches here.
39:32
And you go there and you look at it and you're like.
39:35
What is this? You know this.
39:39
What is this this? You call this a beach.
39:42
Let me tell you about this place called South Africa, right?
39:45
So, so you're, you're blessed. I mean, we are there in the the
39:49
centre of life. We may not be the centre of the
39:52
world or the centre of geopolitics, but in this place
39:55
where life began on earth, where every inch of ground is teeming
40:01
with life of some kind, where you you really get to experience
40:06
life in all kinds of extremes. Right, you're, and that's why I
40:09
said forged in the fires of Africa, right?
40:13
So I, you know, I was born in this incredibly beautiful place.
40:16
But then you do start to realise, wait a minute, I'm
40:19
still going to fundraisers where people are raising money to
40:23
build wells in Africa. I'm doing this for 30-40 years
40:27
now. How come there's nowhere in
40:28
Africa where you can point to and say they don't have a water
40:31
problem anymore? All these people that are
40:34
Building Schools and yet there's nowhere where you can say they
40:37
have a great functioning school system.
40:40
Or all these organisations? That have been raising money to
40:43
save animals. What animals have they saved?
40:46
Jeremy? What?
40:49
What? I can't hear you, you know what
40:51
I mean? So you start out as this
40:53
idealistic person and you're, you know, I'm in with the world,
40:56
you know, Wildlife Foundation. Oh, look at this great work
41:00
they're doing in Africa. And here's look, look at these
41:02
great people who are doing work in Africa.
41:04
And you start to realise, wait, all these people are just
41:06
stealing. They're just.
41:08
Stealing they created. So you have this continent that
41:12
was not to say that, you know, African politicians and
41:15
corruption and you know, and all kinds of things and, and that
41:18
the continent is very different, Southern Africa versus East
41:21
versus West versus the north. And you know, we all know Egypt
41:24
is nothing, you know, like Angola, right?
41:26
So, so I know I'm not meaning to put it all together the way a
41:29
lot of people do when they don't know that the place, but I just
41:32
mean that you you have a you have country after country,
41:36
whether it's former Democratic Republic of Congo.
41:40
There, there is arguably not a single piece of ground on earth
41:47
that is richer and more blessed in mineral wealth than the
41:52
former Democratic Republic of Congo.
41:54
And yet 80% of the population lives on a dollar or less a day.
41:59
How? How would?
42:00
How did that happen? So you have to start looking at
42:02
that, well, how did that happen, right.
42:04
And so there's individual responsibility and then there's,
42:07
you know, the, the sort of the external forces that are part of
42:11
that. And you start to look at all
42:13
that. So I just understood that being
42:15
in this place called South Africa, I was on the one hand
42:18
incredibly blessed, but on the other hand I had, I was.
42:24
Given. What were my blessings from God?
42:27
My blessings were that I had a near photographic memory in many
42:33
respects. I had the ability to grasp
42:37
strategic things and tactical things.
42:40
I could see through things and I could see through people.
42:43
I had the ability to go like I saw everybody.
42:46
We're raised in South Africa. Everybody was equal to me.
42:49
You know, whether I'm I'm sitting down with street kids,
42:53
sleeping with street kids on the streets of Luanda in Angola, or
42:57
whether I'm sitting down with the Secretary of Defence or.
43:00
I'm at the White House OR. I'm being honoured by the Queen
43:02
of England, you know, by her son and his wife, you know, who are
43:08
having dinner with me in my honour to give me an award from
43:11
the Queen, right? It doesn't.
43:12
Or, you know, I'm meeting Obama for the first time in the, in
43:15
the Afghan embassy when I'm six months pregnant or whatever.
43:18
It is like is, is I think in South Africa to me.
43:23
I was raised to see all people as equally deserving of respect,
43:30
kindness, love, and protection under the law.
43:33
And then you discover, wait a minute, there's a country called
43:37
the United States where these things are enshrined in this
43:42
covenant with God and built into the Constitution and the
43:46
Declaration of Independence and so on.
43:48
Like they actually founded a country like that.
43:51
It's not to say that the United States is better than every
43:54
country on earth. I'm not saying that.
43:56
But if you look at how other nations were founded, they don't
43:59
have that. We didn't have that in South
44:01
Africa. God is not important to us in
44:03
South Africa. I mean, most of the South
44:06
Africans that I know are very secular.
44:08
We, we looked at religion as whites, English speaking South
44:11
Africans, we looked down on religion.
44:13
You know what I mean? I mean, sure that my mother was
44:15
a in a convent and you know, she was a lapsed Catholic.
44:18
And so I had some grounding in Catholicism and religion.
44:22
But I mean, mostly South Africa is very secular.
44:25
I mean, unless you're talking about in the black community
44:28
where you still have of course, traditional religions, right.
44:31
But but look at it, what's the fastest growing religion in
44:33
South Africa? I mean, I don't know the
44:35
statistics, but it's pretty obvious it'll be Islam, right?
44:40
I mean. That's that's a good question.
44:42
It's, I mean, you know. Because look at what's growing
44:45
all over the world. So I mean, there's places where
44:48
pockets where Christianity is growing, but everywhere that
44:51
Islam is, it's growing everywhere, right?
44:55
It's not declining in Saudi Arabia and it's certainly not
44:58
declining in London or by the way, the United States.
45:02
But what is declining all over the world?
45:04
Christianity, What is being rejected by people all over the
45:06
world? Christianity.
45:08
So anyway, I say this to you because my instincts were always
45:14
to go to the heart of the story. And it would, you know, when I
45:18
was growing up under apartheid, I was in the heart, living in
45:22
the heart of one of the biggest stories in the world.
45:24
And then I went to Angola during the war and Mozambique during
45:27
the war. So in my region and in my
45:29
sphere, I went to the heart of all those big stories.
45:33
And then I, it was just natural for me to keep doing that.
45:36
So I did that going across the world and I went to Iraq and I
45:38
went to Afghanistan and stayed there for years and years.
45:41
And, you know, it was very obvious that America was kind of
45:43
the epicentre of this. I wasn't really British in
45:46
nature. Like I worked for a British
45:48
company and I, I didn't really identify with the British kind
45:53
of passive aggressive thing. I was more my fiery South
45:57
African, Irish, Sicilian roots found more, I identified more
46:02
with the, the, the new world of the United States where if you
46:06
could demonstrate real skill if, and you could work your way up,
46:12
that wasn't, you know, there's limits.
46:14
There's more limits to that in the British sort of system.
46:17
And in America, I knew there would be no limits for me.
46:21
I knew that as far as I could go, I just believed I could.
46:25
I could do it. And so I did that.
46:26
And then something happened to me.
46:28
And I know I'm giving you a very long answer to a simple
46:30
question, but I'll tell you. Then this happened.
46:34
I had babies. Ha ha ha, yes.
46:38
And it was over my. My African dream was, was over.
46:42
My, and I mean my dream of returning to South Africa to
46:47
live out the rest of my life in the place you know that I, that
46:51
I love so much. That was it.
46:53
Because once you have kids, everything changes.
46:55
Not for sure. Well, I mean, the most important
46:59
question, Laura, of all the questions I have to ask you is
47:04
Kanye and N Africans the claim Bikifistan Yohat me, Scott?
47:14
Yeah, take a look. What's OK with me?
47:18
Do you miss Durban? Oh yeah.
47:21
Of course, of course I do. I mean, I love, you know, I love
47:25
what I love about the South African people.
47:27
Like the, I don't know, there's, there's just a, a genuineness to
47:32
your relationships and interactions with everybody,
47:35
right? I mean, they're just, it's, and
47:38
there's so much love. And in spite of all the
47:41
suffering of the vast majority of, of people there, of course,
47:46
most of whom were black, but there were many of us that were
47:50
in the trenches with them and there was such joy.
47:55
I have so much respect. Like I just have so much
47:59
respect. I mean, I knew Mandela nuts, you
48:01
know, wasn't like we were best buddies on first name terms.
48:04
But I was a journalist and in his time and his every move and
48:07
we were always around him and you know, and so and I, he would
48:11
host a breakfast with us and we would go and have breakfast with
48:15
him. Bunch of journalists.
48:16
And I actually had one interaction with him where the
48:18
Queen of England came to South Africa on her first official
48:21
visit after he was elected. I remember that.
48:25
Do you remember that? Yeah, so that was crazy covering
48:27
that. And we had a pool coverage and
48:29
all the rest of it. And I was one of the main people
48:31
in that because I was part of Reuters news agency and, you
48:34
know, the agencies always have to do everything.
48:36
And we would deal with the correspondence and they had
48:37
other jobs to do, you know, they had to write their scripts and
48:40
all that. So we were, you know, like the
48:42
gatherers of all the news and information and we had to put it
48:44
out, but not, you know, the way they did.
48:46
And so we were right at the centre of this and it was just
48:49
those royal visits are just insane.
48:52
And so we get to the end the very last day and the Queen
48:54
hosted a reception for the media on the HMS.
48:58
You know, her, her ship that was in the port there in Cape Town.
49:02
And you know, we had to go and courtesy for the Queen and shake
49:06
hands with Prince Philip and so on and so on.
49:08
And I'm leaving the ship with all the journalists and I scrape
49:11
my Achilles on the back of a of a step, which is just pure
49:15
metal. So it's OK And I'm bleeding
49:18
everywhere. And the Queen says take her, you
49:20
know, take care of her. So there's some say, like
49:23
carries me. I'm not kidding you, Jeremy.
49:24
Some say like, carries me. A few, you know, below deck into
49:28
the bowels of this ship. And they patch it up and I go
49:31
back. But now I'm late for the
49:33
official banquet to which is mocking the end of the Queen's
49:38
visit. So I.
49:40
Come running into the. Hotel like a bat out of hell and
49:43
I'm. It's a Cape Sun and I go to the
49:46
elevator and I'm, you know, on the elevator, elevator button
49:50
because I'm frantic now to change for the for the dinner
49:53
and get down there. And I just hear this voice and
49:55
it's hello, Lara, how are you? And I turn around and it's like
50:00
there's the president of South Africa waiting to receive the
50:02
Queen of England. And as always, you know, Mandela
50:05
has his security, but he never let them cut them off from the
50:09
people. And so I'm just like Madiba
50:13
Howie and you and I stood there for like 20 minutes chatting to
50:15
him until the Queen got there and like you said earlier.
50:19
It's part of you. You'll always be a journalist at
50:22
heart and a journalist in reality.
50:24
The word has got such a tainted meaning these days, doesn't it
50:30
it? Does, yeah.
50:31
And. It's the thing I worry about,
50:33
Jeremy, is that I'm all for embracing new forms of media and
50:39
I, and I understand that, you know, we're in a new era of
50:45
technology and people are breaking away from the formal
50:49
media structures of the past. And I, I understand why.
50:51
I mean, you know, hell, I've been targeted, falsely labelled
50:56
as extreme right wing and all the rest of it.
50:58
And but at the same time, you know, the infrastructure that
51:04
allowed me to go all over the world and witness things first
51:08
hand is breaking down and nothing is replacing it yet.
51:14
Now, that doesn't mean something won't happen.
51:16
But where is the there? Where's The Newsroom?
51:19
Where is there? Like, if you, it's great that
51:21
anyone with a microphone can be a podcaster, OK, but how are
51:26
they going to survive financially?
51:28
How much? Where are they investing in the
51:31
next generation of journalists? Who's coming in there and
51:33
learning first hand from them? Who's who are the mentors?
51:37
Who are, who's, who are you handing over?
51:39
Like there's tonnes of journalists that I know, very
51:42
experienced, very knowledgeable. Where is their?
51:46
Knowledge going. If they're taking it to the
51:49
grave with them because, because you, you know what I mean.
51:52
And so journalists have stopped being journalists.
51:55
So you get a lot of people in mainstream media that have a lot
51:58
of skill and experience, but they've lost their moral courage
52:02
or they're ideologically blinded, or some of them have
52:05
political operatives, or some of them are corrupted, you know,
52:09
and paid off. Or some of them are so bored and
52:11
entrenched. And they're, you know, in the,
52:13
the, the role that they've played in the many false
52:17
narratives that that have been around for the last 10 years or
52:20
so. So they don't want to, you know,
52:22
they don't want to break out of that.
52:24
It's like people that don't want to admit that the vaccine has
52:27
killed more people than COVID in in many places, because then
52:30
they have to admit that maybe they're at risk, right?
52:33
Or they vaccinated their kids and put their kids at risk.
52:35
They didn't know any better, but they'd rather not believe it.
52:38
It's, it's harder to face that reality than it is to go on
52:42
believing the lot. So you have part of that is at
52:46
play in the media world. But as long as the media
52:50
remains. Unwilling.
52:52
Or unable is that formal corporate infrastructure to
52:56
acknowledge the the truth and to correct it, to invest in
53:00
correcting it. Then you can pretty much write
53:03
that off, right. And then what, when you look at
53:06
well, new media, well, so a lot of people define themselves as
53:09
conservative media. I get it.
53:11
That's sort of the that's not how I define myself.
53:14
And, and I don't like as a journalist, that kind of goes
53:17
against the grain for me. But I do recognise that there
53:20
are people, you know, and, and especially the way social media
53:24
is today, that there are people sort of who are, who are defined
53:28
by their, their political view. And there's room for that, no
53:32
question. The opinion pages in a
53:34
newspaper, you know, speak to that.
53:38
So there's always been room for analysis and opinion.
53:40
The, the problem is that there isn't really a home for people
53:45
who don't belong to the left and they don't belong to the right.
53:48
Nobody wants us. And as long as there's no money
53:53
in it, you will not know what's happening right on your
53:57
doorstep. Like a good example is in the
53:59
United States in North Carolina right before the election.
54:02
You know, they had that absolute catastrophic flood.
54:06
Well, what what's happening in North Carolina now?
54:09
What's happened to those people? Where's the first hand
54:12
reporting? No one's investing in that.
54:14
You know, you have an entire state of California, which is
54:16
coming apart at the seams and how many people are reporting on
54:20
on that issue first hand and showing the growing number of
54:24
homeless tents that line the Pacific Coast Highway, You know,
54:27
and what does that mean And challenging you, You know,
54:30
you're not it's not happening. There's no investment in
54:34
reporting. And and it's partly because we
54:36
as journalists, as an industry have yet to own our failures.
54:41
We're still basically, we're still in the front lines of an
54:44
ideological war. How can I follow?
54:47
You. Well, I have my show.
54:50
Going Rogue with Lara Logan, which is a podcast that's on
54:54
it's on X, it's on YouTube until they sits or until they kick us
54:58
off. It's on rumble.
55:00
You can find it on laralogan.com and sub stack and you know,
55:06
basically any platform out there that we can be on, we're on
55:11
we're on Spotify. So if, if people, you know, we
55:16
tried going on TikTok, by the way, we got a couple strikes
55:18
straight out of the box. So I don't know how long we'll
55:21
survive on TikTok, but I would, I would really love people to
55:25
watch my show because, you know, I'm taking on some very
55:28
significant topics, everything from satanic accelerationist
55:32
cults, which are these people who believe that by committing
55:35
evil, they can accelerate the decline of humanity and the role
55:38
that they have to these mass shootings in America,
55:41
trafficking, high level trafficking in the music
55:43
industry, you know, low fare in the United States, which effects
55:47
everything the Trump administration is doing right
55:49
now. So I mean, you know, we're,
55:51
we're the people love the show very much.
55:55
And I think it's, it's sort of because people are starved of
56:00
substantial information, right? They want substance.
56:04
They don't want just the the headlines.
56:06
There's room for just the headlines.
56:07
We all need that. Sometimes in the morning, you
56:09
just want to know what the news is, right?
56:10
But but there's a lot of people that want to go beyond the
56:13
headlines. And that's kind of the nature of
56:15
the show. Well, on that note.
56:19
My favourite African American journalist, Laura Logan, thank
56:22
you for joining me in the trenches.
56:24
Thank you SO. Much, Jeremy.
56:26
We'll talk soon, OK?