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Journalism vs. the World · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do what we Do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: influencing host, Abraham.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm your well researched host Shane.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the things that humans and non human animals do, and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes we talk about how we talk to each other
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: in a way, and sometimes we bring on guests to
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: help us do that thing.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so today we are going to dive into
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: the wild and wonderful world and I would imagine fairly
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: complicated world of journalism with an expert on journalism, our
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: friend here that we are going to introduce in just
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: a second.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, So before we introduce our guest, I would like
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: to say the things that I have to say, which is,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. If you like
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  Speaker 1: those things at the end of this discussion. If you
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  Speaker 1: and if you are new, then welcome. We don't do
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  Speaker 1: a lot of interview style episodes, but they are fun
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  Speaker 1: and we get to do them, and so this will
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: be one of those. And I hope that you enjoy
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: it as much as we are going to enjoy it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And I would also like to wish you a happy
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: National Banana Day.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: It's also the Day of the mushroom.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Nice. It is National Librarian Day. Just kind of appropriate
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  Speaker 1: for our topic.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: That's fun. It's Emancipation Day.
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  Speaker 1: It is Save the Elephant Day.
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  Speaker 2: It is four Square Day, National Eggs Benedict Day. It
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  Speaker 2: is National Book Modeal Day, is Canadian Film Day. It
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: is also National Stress Awareness.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Day, National where your Pajamas to Work Day. That's fun.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, don't get yourself in trouble, but if you can,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: that's fun. Yeah.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Is Teach your Daughter to Volunteer Day.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: It is National Orchid.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Day, and it is World Semicolon Day.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Awesome. It is National Bean Counter Day. It is right
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: after taxes were due. I hope that happy tax Day,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I guess everybody.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is Building Safety Week. It is
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Discover National Parks Fortnite hmm, that's fun. This is something
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: that's come up on every single list for the last
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: couple of weeks. It's still make Mine Chocolate. Oh yeah,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: it's still continuing on so like for whatever reason. But
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: that's not what I was gonna say. It's a California
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Native Plant Week.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Oh all right, It's Edinburgh Science Festival. Love that.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Oh that's fun. It is World Irish Dancing Week.
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  Speaker 1: Relatedly, it's National Green Week.
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  Speaker 2: I kind of love that. And it's National Dog Bite
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Prevention Week.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And it is still a Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is, all right.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's a good amount of holidays for everyone
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: to celebrate. Just want to recognize that. I'm sure that
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: every one of our listeners celebrates most or all of
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: those holidays. And Happy day of holidays to you.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: So much to celebrate today.
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  Speaker 1: But as we said, we are actually here with a guest,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: so we're gonna wann to introduce our guest here. This
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  Speaker 1: is journalist Ben Miller. Thank you for joining us, Thank
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: you for having me.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I gotta say real quick before we get into it.
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  Speaker 2: Ben Miller's a really good journalism name. Like that's a
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: very good like. I feel like that's like somebody that
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: would show up in a comic that is like a
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: really good journalist that gets themselves in trouble and the
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: superhero comes to help out, and they're like friends, like
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: they're like they're mutually beneficial to each other.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: That's good to hear.
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: I guess it does have a little bit of a
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: maybe Jimmy Olsen type r into its supporting Superman Kent.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 4: It's also very common, so I get to be kind
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: of semi anonymous because there are so many Ben Miller's
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: out there. I have actually interviewed a Ben Miller before
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  Speaker 4: for one of my stories, so I got to have
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: the byline Ben Miller and quote a Ben Miller and
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: one of my.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Stories that's you know, I love that. I love that
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  Speaker 2: you did that because a few years ago I discovered
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: that there were multiple Shane Spikers, and I became friends
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: with them on Facebook and we would comment back and
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: forth on our posts as each other as a collective consciousness.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So it was like, oh, yeah, we love this, like
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: we think this is great, you know, And that was
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of fun. So it's always fun when you
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: find somebody who is like participatory in that sharing of
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: the name situation.
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  Speaker 1: The Shane Spiker I have mind, I love it, and
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: the Ben on Ben journalism action all right, So we
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: asked Ben to join us because one of the things
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: that we think is very important is general reporting of things,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: aggregation of knowledge and sharing and disseminating that knowledge to people,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and doing so as widely as possible and as freely
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: as possible. We make this podcast free, partially because if
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it wasn't free, no one would listen to it, but
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: also because we want like a lot of people to
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: be able to have access to it, and so it
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: is easily and widely available unless you want some like
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: bonus behind the scenes stuff, and you do, and then
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: you go to Patreon and support us, and then you've
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: got some skin in the game and you enjoy even more.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: This is how I understand that to work. But for
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: those of us who do the work of just getting
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: information out, those are journalists, and there are real journalists,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and there are people who do they call what they
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: do journalism, and we might make a distinction between those.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: But Ben, if you could tell us a little bit
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: about yourself and your history and experience with journalism to
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: help set the stage here forever, everyone sure.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: So I am a journalist by training, a journalist by profession.
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  Speaker 4: I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: of Nevada Arino a little over a decade ago, sorry
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: more than a decade ago. Adhering to style here, I
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: was the editor in chief of the newspaper there, the
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: Nevada Sagebrush. The student newspaper went into local news shortly
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: after that, and then I got into the digital news world.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: So I've been for most of my career writing for
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: websites and specifically some niche websites that cater to sort
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: of professional audiences who have professional interests. We're trying to
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: inform them a little bit more so. Right now, I
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: am an editor slash writer for two publications, Government Technology
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: Magazine and Industry Insider. Both it is a magazine government technology,
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: but primarily, you know, most of our content goes on
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: the website. We write about state and local government in
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: the United States and how it uses technology. So we
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: tend to write for a professional audience, and therefore we
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: tend to do a little bit less definition and explaining
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: of things than usual. But within technology there are plenty
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: of niches, so we also feel the need to, you know,
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: explain technical concepts sometime for a larger audience, because if
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: you're in networking, you don't necessarily know all the terms
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: from cybersecurity, et.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Cetera, sure or a cryptocurrency awesome. Yeah, So I think
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: that highlights a point that there are so many different
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: ways that journalism can kind of exist out in the world,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and I think that a lot of people think of
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: journalism as simply talking on a screen, maybe a panel
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  Speaker 1: of people commenting on the state of the news and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the state of world affairs. And of course there are
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  Speaker 1: I think people will also conjure up people who write
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  Speaker 1: for newspapers to some extent, and people who are just
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: like they're on the ground reporting what they see. But
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I do think that a lot of people think of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: journalism as a visual medium and it being fairly opinionated,
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  Speaker 1: and that there has been somewhat of an erosion in
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  Speaker 1: trust and acceptance of sort of traditional and mainstream journalism
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  Speaker 1: that has led people to maybe turn to and consider
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  Speaker 1: other forms of dissemination for where they sort of gather
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  Speaker 1: their information. Absolutely, so let's start then by even defining
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  Speaker 1: our terms here. What in your mind or how would
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: you define journalism to be somewhat colloquial but also technically precise.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: There's a scene from an older now HBO show called
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: The Newsroom. I don't think it was particularly popular, but
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: very popular among journalists, I think. And the scene is,
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: there are these journalists on a plane. The plane is
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: stuck on the runway. People can't use their phones because
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: they're on the plane, but one of the journalists is
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: able to get the message from their editor that Osama
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: bin Laden has been killed. And you got these journalists
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  Speaker 4: sitting here surrounded by people who don't know what's going on,
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  Speaker 4: and they have this huge story to tell, and they're deciding,
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: you know, whether or not because they're sworn to secrecy,
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  Speaker 4: they're not able to report this yet. I think they
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: might be under embargo or something, if you don't know.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: That's an agreement a journalist makes not to tell the
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  Speaker 4: news until a certain point. And at a certain point
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  Speaker 4: they just decide to tell it, and they tell the
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  Speaker 4: people on the plane, and everybody's sort of like reacting
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: to that news, and they look at each other and
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: they go, we just did the news.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Journalism.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, here was a group of people who didn't know
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  Speaker 4: a fact and you relay this fact to them, and
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: now they are more informed about the current state of
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  Speaker 4: the world. So, at its most basic, that's what journalism is.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: It's just informing people. And for that reason, that's why
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: it's so hard to draw concrete lines here when you're
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: talking about podcasters and opinion journalists and broadcast news versus
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: opinion on broadcast news, or opinion on a website in
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: the newspaper, in a magazine anywhere, because it's just informing people.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: But for our purposes today and for the purposes of
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: sort of distinguishing between different practices here, I'm going to
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: go ahead and say that journalism is a discipline. You
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: don't have to be a trained journalist necessarily. You don't
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: have to to have a lot of experience in this
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: area or have a degree in it or anything like that.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: But it's a discipline where you are really just trying
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: to inform people above all else, and be honest, be clear,
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: tell people what they need to know without trying to
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: advance an argument or necessarily push them toward a belief.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: I think that's key.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: You're not trying to really push people toward a belief
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: so much as you are trying to advance their understanding
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: of the world.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: That's the primary goal.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: It's interesting and I can already sort of hear in
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: my mind where people might push back on this, and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: they're thinking, I think in many instances about commentators, people
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: who are sort of injecting their own sort of spin
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: on things. And I do think there's also the consideration
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: that any time you tell a story, you're sort of
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: deciding what is newsworthy, what is what the thing that
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: people should know, And it's in a way it's dissemination,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and in a way it's also gatekeeping. It's sort of saying, like,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the more space and room we give to this particular topic,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the more a sort of saying, this is a thing
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people need to know, and that
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: might totally miss another topic that is a thing that
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of people need to know. So like, if,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: for example, journalists had decided not to cover the murder
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: of George Floyd, or at least to do so very briefly,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: it's possible that that would not have had the worldwide
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: effect that it had, and that that that choice was
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: part of what sparked a sort of worldwide I would
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: call it a revolution, but I mean it was a
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: pretty substantial movement that followed that story, and part of
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that was because people decided to spend time on it.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And it's possible that like there are other there are
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: other people who were killed by police under similar circumstances
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: whose story just never made it to the news, and
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that those didn't become big movers and shakers, if you will.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious, you know, I don't maybe there's nowhere
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: to go with that, but I am thinking about like
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: what it is as a journalist, like what you feel
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: is your responsible your responsibility for like how we decide
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: what things are the things that are important and what's
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: news worthy versus what isn't.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: This is a really important point in journalism and it's
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: something that I want non journalists to understand, and I
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: think people mostly do understand it, But really I think
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: it's key here that is the biggest If there is
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: bias in journalism, as I have defined it, the biggest
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: bias is what are you covering? That's where it comes from,
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: because what are you covering? And what do you talk
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: about first? How do you place the news what is
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: most prominent? Those are all decisions that we make as journalists.
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: And as editors and as publishers that reflect our beliefs
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: about what's most important. That's where we can't really remove
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: subjectivity from what we're doing, because we have to make
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: that judgment for ourselves. We try so many ways to
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: remove subjectivity from what we're doing, but we cannot remove
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: our subjectivity from our own judgment about what's worth telling
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: people in order to account for that set standards of
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: you know, okay, we're trying to trying to think about
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: this from different perspectives. From a neutral perspective, really, what
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: is most important? And how does that guide where we're placing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: Is it at the top of the website or is
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: it five stories down? Is above the fold below fold?
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Are you going to lead off your news segment with
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: it or is it going to be toward the end?
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: And how are you how are you going to talk
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: about you know, the newspapers will use bigger font for
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: bigger stories that you'll you'll have a giant block of
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: text or you'll have a little, tiny, little headline. And
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: what's your eye going to be drawn to when you're
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: looking at that on the website?
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, That's something that I think comes up often because
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of the criticism I see about news outlets
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: and media, it really to me sounds like people are
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: calling into question journalistic integrity and and like your you know, ethics,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: like journalism ethics, which I think to people don't realize
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: to that degree that there is like a whole set
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: of ethics and discussion about ethics and journalism and stuff
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: that's beyond just like oh are you reporting the right
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: thing in that subjectivity?
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: So like there is there. I think there are just
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: some of those conversations too, about like I think it's
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: deeper than just going I'm reporting this or I am
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: sharing this information. It is like there are ethical implications
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: for discussing certain things, and there your journalistic integrity is
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: like how far do you go? I mean, we know
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: right now that you've got the conversation about the journalist
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: who received all the war plans in the in the
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: accidental text message, and you're kind of going like, this
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: is sensitive information. I have some obligation to do something
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: with this, I would imagine, So like to what degree
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: does this go out? What do I do with this?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Especially in certain like uncertain times. So I think it's
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: like I'm so glad that you brought that up about
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: that like issue of subjectivity, because like that does become
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: a moral, an integrity and an ethics question at its core,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: I would imagine.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and journalism does need ads to survive, and so
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: do podcasts.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, and and and for that reason, journalism is
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: pretty segmented traditionally and still is. You don't really have
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: the advertise the advertising part of the house talking to
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: the editorial department, the people who write the news, or
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: even the people who write the opinions. You know, we
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: see them, We know who the advertisers are and everything,
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: but we for that reason, like we don't we're not
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: really aware of business decisions. Usually we write stories if
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: it happens to be about an advertiser, we can't let
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: that affect us because if you start to think, well, this,
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: this person's only writing the story because they're an advertiser,
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: or they decided not to write the story because they're
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: an advertisers, that's that's where trust starts to erode. And
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: a lot of people do think this, but it doesn't.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: It doesn't really enter into that. We keep these things
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: separate and we and we we don't really talk to
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: each other.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I love how much you elaborate on. That was my
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: way of segueing to an ad break, and I love
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: that that was like a good amount of time describing
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: it actually really wonderful. I'm going to do that to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: you a couple more times, is spring them in sort
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: of as surprised sick ways. That was really good, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I think it is still an important point is understanding
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: that some people, I think, assume that the financial relationship
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: between journalists and the sponsors of journalist content means that
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: they cannot trust the reporting on those And as you
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: said it, like ideally what happens is that they're separate
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: enough that they don't there's not a fear of reporting
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: on things just because someone is a financial backer, which
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: is where a huge amount of corruption comes from in
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: many other places, you know, and definitely in the government.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And that's definitely what is happening in the United States
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: right now is people who are essentially paining to have
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the government work the way that they want it to work,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and not in the way that is legal, constitutional, or
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: in the best interest of most people, if anyone. But really,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: why we brought you on today is to talk more
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: about sort of different forms of journalism and what they
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: look like and what sort of counts as journalism and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: news and whatnot, because there are a lot of people
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: who have sort of inserted themselves in the space, and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: with the advent of the Internet, we're now at an
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: age where Joe Schmoe with a computer and an opinion
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: can influence millions and millions of people, much more so
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: than like a professional journalist who has some kind of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: training or standards or understanding of like what it takes
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: to report the news in a way that communicates the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: most information the most effectively. And I would imagine in
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: most cases the most I want to say, empirically, but
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: it's more like maybe cohesively or comprehensively. Then you sort
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of get instead the because when we talked about, like,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: choosing what to report is one thing, and that's definitely
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and I think you could slot the next point I'm
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: going to make into that, but there's also like from
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: what do you report it? It's sort of like, if
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: we're talking about a protest, are you primarily focusing on
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the counter protesters or are you primarily focusing your story
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: on the protesters? Are you focusing on what maybe went wrong?
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Or are you focusing on what went well in a
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: particular situation, and so I think there are people who
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: are maybe what I would call bad faith actors who
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: have a specific agenda that they're reporting. Is starting to push.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: But let's actually even take a step back from that
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and just start with the distinction between sort of what
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you do as journalism and other forms of maybe quote
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: unquote reporting.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: Right, well, there's a big gray zone. Sorry to say,
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: it's hard to draw lines here. There are a lot
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: of news journalists out there working for traditional outlets.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: I think if you have a.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: Reporter who's working for a newspaper, a reporter going out
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: and doing stand up segments on the street for your
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: local broadcast station, a magazine writer who's writing pieces that
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: are not opinion, a digital reporter who is a news
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: reporter just telling things as they are.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: This is kind of the core of what I'm talking
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: about with journalism.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: And traditionally you see those people as an audience, as
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: a reader consumer of news, and you understand these people
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: all tend to operate basically the same way. The lines
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: have gotten a lot blurrier in recent years, and there
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: is plenty of value to the people in gray areas
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: who are not these traditional news reporters. They can bring
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: a lot of things to the surface. They can have
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: a completely biased approach and still break news, still tell
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: people things that they didn't know. Matt Drudge is very,
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: very conservative. Was the one who broke the story about
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky back in the nineties.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: You know, your opinions aside on the importance of that news.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: This person, who was completely biased and made no secret
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: about it, was the one who broke that story. So
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: it does happen. There's there's there's plenty of people out
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: there who do that. But what I wanted to talk
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: about a bit was kind of going over some differences
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: in language and how we use language, how we use
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: our approach that separate us because I don't I don't
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: ever really want to say this person's not a journalist
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: because they don't have a degree.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: They're not They're not a news reporter like me or something.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: To me, that's that's disregarding a lot of value that's
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: out there in the media ecosystem. But the principles are
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: what matter, the practices and the way that we do things.
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: So I think you know, we were talking about focus
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: there's a concept in journalism school one of the very
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: first things you learn is inverted pyramid style, So the
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: top of the pyramid is the largest piece. That means
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: the first thing that you report is the most important thing.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: And there's a very simple reason for this. People lose
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: focus as they go down a story.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: At the Google search results, like you look at the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: top three and anything below that may as well not exist.
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's data on this. People don't go past the
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: first page very often. Yeah, So you say what you
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: need to what you need to say, what you need
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: them to hear as quickly as you possibly can, as
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: concisely and clearly as you possibly can, because they may
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: not stick with you past that. That's one of the things.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: I think that there's some concepts in there that are
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: really core to what journalists do. We say what's most important,
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: and we say it as quickly as possible, we say
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: it concisely. I think if you look at academic writing,
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: narrative writing, fiction writing, other other kinds of writing and
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: language use, there's a tendency to introduce things to say
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: this is okay, I'm going to talk about this, I'm
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: going to say this, and then I'm going to tell
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: you about this, and I'm going to tell you about this,
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: and then you go and do those things. Journalism cuts
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: all that out. The mantra is show, don't tell, so
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: we don't have to tell you I'm going to talk
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: about this. You just start talking about it. We tend
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: to avoid adjectives for the same reason, or at least
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: we try to the fewer adjectives generally, the better, you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: a factual adjective. The car was read okay, the car
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: was fast. What's more useful to say that the car
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: was faster, that the car was traveling one hundred.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Miles per hour?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Definitely the second.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: That's showing instead of telling. You know, the police said
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: this person was speeding. Okay, you know, I speed, I
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: go five miles over the limit. Now they were going
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: sixty miles per hour over the limit. That's how you
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: tell people their re elements details. So showing instead of telling,
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: saying things up front that are the most important, being concise,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: being clear as possible. Part of this being clear is
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: avoiding passive voice.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: So mistakes were made.
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: You know. The classic example is the ball was kicked
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: versus I kicked the ball. The ball was kicked or
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: the ball was kicked by me, versus I kicked the ball,
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: the ball was kicked, or the ball was kicked by me.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: As passive voice, it avoids responsibility and it allows you
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: to not say who did something. And it's wordy. It
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: adds too many words, I kicked the ball. It's fewer,
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: it's fewer words. It tells you who did it. It
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: tells you exactly what you need to know as fast
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: as possible. That's that's being concise and clear subject of
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: an object.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly all of this you're describing as like the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: opposite of our podcast, by the way, describe what we're
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: going to talk about. Elaborate on that description like just
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: endlessly and then at some point hopefully arrive at your point. Yeah.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: And I mean, you know they're different modes too. Journalism.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: You know, me writing a news story, I demand a
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: lot of your attention. Unfortunate for my own, to my
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: own peril, I demand a lot of your attention. I
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: need you to sit down and focus on my story
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: and read through it. A podcast as is easier. You
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: put it on while you're driving, you put it on
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: while you're cooking. You can listen to it while you're jogging,
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: you can listen to pieces of it and then your
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: mind wanders a little bit and then you come back.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: It's it's different modes of engagements, and what you do
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: is valuable. You inform people, you tell them things, but
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: it's it's a different discipline.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: We depend on our charming personalities. Yes, truth and wity delivery.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: That's that's a perfect segment.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: Journalists take ourselves out completely, or at least we almost
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: always do. You don't see the word my in journalism.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: You don't see I me, this reporter. That was one
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: of the first things I learned going into journalism school.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: I thought from TV that you would, you know, write
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: a story you'd say in this reporter's opinion that got
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: cut out of medium. My professor stamped that out of me.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: But you don't know it's unnecessary. Yeah, it's unnecessary. It
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: doesn't add anything for the reader, and it inserts yourself
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: where you don't need to be. There's actually a distinction
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: to be made in print media between opinion and news
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: by simply seeing whether or not you see the reporter's face.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: If you see the reporter's.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: Face in the story, the mugshot, we call it that's
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: an opinion piece. You show your face because you're saying,
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: this is this person's opinion, look at him, This is
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: who's talking to you. When it's a news story, it's
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: just a byline at the top. We don't put our
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: face in it. Yeah, Sometimes like a picture of the
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: event itself.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we show the subject.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: It's all about the subject and we're not inserting ourselves
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: into it.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's an ad. All right, there's nother surprise ad segue,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: but we're back, all right, so yeah, sorry, continue.
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: So you know, another key thing in journalism is that
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: we source all information. We're kind of scientific in that regard.
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: You don't have to take our word for it because
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: we tell you where we get everything. Yeah, we're telling
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: you who said that, and maybe it's an opinion from
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: that person, but it's not our opinion. That's the distinction.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: We're giving you opinions and we're deciding whose opinion to include,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: and that's fair game, that's fair criticism, but we're not
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: putting our opinion into it.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: If you're reporting on like what happened to somebody, having
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: that somebody report what they experienced means like they're in
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: that moment they're a primary source. Even if they're editorializing
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: their own experience a little bit, you're still giving them
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the space to sort of say like, this is a thing,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and you're just being the megaphone for that person's voice.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, we amplify and we choose who to amplify,
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: but we also seek out credibility. So that's another thing.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Makes sense. There are so many people on YouTube.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: So there's more of that going around, right.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of people on YouTube who just
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: they put out these very long videos explaining a subject,
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: and they'll purport to tell you about a subject. It's
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: designs to push you toward an opinion. But they will
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: be extremely well sourced. They will have tons and tons
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: and tons of sources, and it becomes this big rabbit
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: hole that you can go down.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: I like sources. I'm a journalist.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: I just said, you know, we source everything, but we
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: seek how credible sources, and we try to tell you
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: fairly what that source is saying, and we try to
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: note if the source isn't completely credible or the limits
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: on what they're saying. This is the same thing as
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: a peer reviewed article. You know, you end your peer
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: reviewed article by talking about what you don't know right
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: and when what further study is needed. We try to
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: do the same thing in journalism, you know, we try
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: to note that, Okay, so the police department found that
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: there's more crime in this area, but why is there
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: more crime in that area? That's the unanswered question. So
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: we have to note something like that in a story.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: And so we're seeking out credible people in your example,
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: somebody telling you an experience that they went through in
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: their primary source. Yes, we want to do that, but
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: we also want to see if there's an expert on
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: the subject or somebody who works in this who's removed
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: from the situation and has a larger view to put
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: that the context to say, yeah, unfortunately, this thing happens
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: all the time, and here's how it affects people.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Fair. I don't know if you've touched on this directly,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: but sort of thinking about how influencers fit into this.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: We actually did a whole episode on influencers a while
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: back and noted that they mostly make money through specific
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: sponsorships and some you know, so there's definitely a chunk
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: of it comes from ad revenue, just from traffic to
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: their site, but they will be paid to promote certain products,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and some of them that's almost all they do. They're
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: very much like the Alex Jones of the like, you know,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: whatever Boner Pill is is paying them the most is
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the one they're going to spend a ludicrous amount of
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: time advocating for. And nevertheless, like they're pretty successful at
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: having a wide audience and communicating to them, and so
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: thinking about sort of where influencers fit into this discussion
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: because they feel they're obviously a relatively modern invention and
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: they feel like they have a lot of power and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: very little responsibility.
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's sponsorships, but there's also just like SEO
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: and and algorithm considerations. When it comes to these things,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: you know, you have to drive traffic, and so you're
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: going for the most attention grabbing title for a video
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: or a post that you can think of, and you're
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: you're you're going for the most attention grabbing graphic. There's
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: that you know, stereotype about YouTube videos and content creators
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: on YouTube where every you know, this one's for the patrons,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: I guess, but every video has this.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: Right wide open.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Pointing at something looking like you've just seen the most
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: amazing thing in your entire life and then you click
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: on the video it's.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: It's you know, runt of the milts, something you've seen.
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: A bunch of times, right, Yeah, but everything gets sensationalized
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: or they tend to. There are responsible people out here,
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: for sure, there are, I've seen them, true, But you know,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: there's there's been so many like medical misinformation trends on
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: TikTok that I've heard about people just saying things that
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: are half true, completely untrue. It doesn't really matter because
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: they're just trying to get attention.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Well, and I would imagine like to some degree that's
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: like it's like a misinterpretation too. And that goes back
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: to like your conversation about credibility and experts is like
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: like and maybe we have to have a conversation around
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: around like media literacy, right because as a journalist you
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: probably have to account for that to some level, because
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: people are just gonna misinterpret something or they're gonna take
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: some bit of information or some SoundBite or some some
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: moment from your article or some publication and they're gonna
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: run with that. Like that happens in science, that happens
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: in every other space. Like they're gonna hear one thing
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: and go, oh, this is what they said. It's like, actually,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: there's several other parts of this that you might have missed.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: And that probably goes back to like what you're saying
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: about being really concise and clear, because people will take
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: that and misinterpret it some level.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, and there's no avoiding that, honestly.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: There's a there was a review for Oh, what was
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: that Tom Hardy movie where he played the twins who
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: were like British gangsters.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't I can't remember what.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: The name was, but yeah, I know what you're talking about.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: It was a hilarious story.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: The the there was a review of that movie that
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: gave it gave it two out of five stars, or
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: like two out of ten stars.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: It was a bad review.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: And the way they designed the poster for this movie,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: they put all these reviews on it, and then they
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: did something really clever. They put the two stars in
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: between letters. So visually you look at it and you
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: can't really tell because there's stars over here, stars over here,
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: stars over here. You see two stars between letters, your
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: mind kind of fills in the blanks. It's like, oh,
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: that's there. There's like hidden stars or something, or like
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: it like there's another star over here, another star over here. No,
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: it was a two star review and they got away
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: with putting it on this post or a really bad
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: review on their poster because they came up with that
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: clever visual trick. And that's that's not the fault of
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: the person who gave it a bad review that they that,
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: you know, they kind of misrepresented it on the poster.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: But it happens.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: People will always find a way to do that. You know,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: political ads take a lot of headlines from newspapers and
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: run with them.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: They'll take a snippet a quote.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: Maybe they chop up the quote a little bit and
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: introduce parentheses to denote that a segment is missing. But
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: if it's taken out of context, it's very easy to
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: just present something like it's saying something that it's not
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: or is missing critical context that would change how you
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: think about it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they just like put pen ellipsis instead of like
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a negation. Yes, yeah, like this was not effective, Like
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: this was dot dot dot effective exactly right?
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, And we had we had the conversation before too,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: because we've talked about politics on here a couple of times,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: and like we talked about that with Howard Dean when
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: like in his two thousand and four election campaign, and
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: how it was totally like shot because of one sound
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: clip of him yelling with a and it was taken
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: out and it was like the way that it was
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: reported out over and over and over again was that
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Howard Dean yell and it made him sound like a
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: lunatic and at the end of the day it was
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: just like, no, he was celebrating with a rowdy crowd,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: a raucous crowd, but out of context with that and
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: how it was reported out over and over and over again,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: totally bombed is his entire campaign.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: They had some jokes about that on the TV show
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Parks and rec where the main character is running for
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: city council and like she'd say something and they would
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: grab just like one word or phrase that she said.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: They'd like spend all their time on that decontextualized to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: make her look really bad.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: I think it was the Scooby Doo movie or something
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: back in the day where Fred is being interviewed by
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: a journalist and he's like, I'm not He says into
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: the camera, I'm not talking to you because I know
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: that you'll chop up my quote to make it sound
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: like I hate the city, and then they just run
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: with the clip I hate this city.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. That's a really good gag. Also makes
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: me think a little bit of anchor. Man. I don't
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: know if they did as much with the jokes and
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the actual reporting, aside from like the stories themselves being
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: pretty funny and obviously the vocal warm ups at this
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: point are infamous. Yeah, but anyway, okay, cool, I think
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: there's more to say on this. Yeah, we'll probably though,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: take a quick break for ads. All right, so we
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: are back. What did you have in mind to go
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: next on this? On this discussion here? Thinking about sort
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: of one is what is reporting and who's doing it
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: and what that means for the consumer that pulled up.
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: This morning a couple things from the New York Times.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: So I kind of wanted to just read you a
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: couple of sentences here and see I wanted to ask
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: you which was a news story and which was opinion?
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: Okay, sorry, sorry you ready?
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Yep, let's do it.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: First off, a number of my fellow retiree travelers exhausted
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: mentally from challenging work roles often seek purposely to retreat
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: for them, constant golf, tennis and the like are just fine.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Okay, So that was the first one. Second one, okay.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Both HBO shows skewer the rich and premiered to low
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: expectations before catching fire, delighting viewers, critics, emmy voters, and
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: anyone capable of creating and packaging a meme the creators.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: Both shows, Mike White with the White Lotus and Jesse
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: Armstrong with Succession, are hailed as bona fide at tours
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: because of the success Okay, So, which which one would
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: you say is the opinion piece and which is the
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: news piece?
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: For me, the use of first person pronouns in the
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: first one really stuck out to me as being the opinion.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: But I'm curious and your thoughts, Chane.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I think the first person pronouns in the first one
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: tells me that that's opinion and that's just based on
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: the verbal rule that you kind of mentioned before at
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: the beginning of this. But the second one has I
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: feel like adjectives like makes that opinion. Yeah, so I
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: feel like both of them are opinion pieces.
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: Yes, okay, so very good. You are correct. Well, you're
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: half correct. The first one was opinion. The second one
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: is a news story, and I left out your critical
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: context from this news story that I want to go
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: go on and read now, so I'll continue reading. So
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: this was about the White Lotus in succession. It was
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: talking about audience numbers for the both of them. There's
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: one significant difference between them. The White Lotus has developed
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: a much bigger audience. The third season, which concludes Sunday Night,
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: is the series most popular yet according to internal HBO
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: statistics and Nielsen, the research firm. The final viewership totals
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: for the season appear pois the catapult the White Lotus
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: into the upper tier of HBO's most popular shows, and
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: then they go on to get into some numbers. So
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: there were adjectives, there were opinions that were presented there,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: but they're all attributed to other people. Sure, they were
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: saying it delighted viewers and critics.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: That's getting into like some.
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: Sketchy territory, right, because you're talking about opinions, you're using adjectives,
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: But these are all verifiable things that we're talking about
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: delighting viewers. Yes, you can go and find posts from
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: viewers of these shows who are delighted the Lighting critics. Yes,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: there are reviews out there from critics the Lighting Emmy voters. Yeah,
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: that's a parent in the voting for the Mby Awards.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: So you're absolutely correct, though the use of my was
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: the giveaway that one was actually a letter to the
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: editor that I was reading from on the subject of
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: the retirement. So that's the difference is, you know, they
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: both contain opinions, but they're presented in very different ways,
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: and they're presented with different language.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Fair. Yeah. The also it felt like the vocabulary of
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the second one was higher than more complex than the
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: vocabulary of the first one, which is more or less
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: what I expect from I guess what I would think
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: of as people who are not necessarily trained professional writers.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: And again not to disparage that, like there's not value there,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: but I do sort of I think that some of
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: the technical language that they use is a little bit
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: of a giveaway to their training. Yeah, And I think
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: that like that does speak to I know that there's
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: some kind of edict to like never write above a
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: fourth or fifth grade level or something in journalism, and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: I think that's to assume to capture the broadest sort
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: of range of your audience while still using a vocabulary
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: that's sophisticated enough to get your ideas across. Yes, I've
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: always been of the opinion myself that, like, in this show,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: like we try and minimize jargon, Like we try to
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: avoid specific technical terms that only a professional would know
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and like know how to understand and use them correctly.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: But I do not try and titrate the complexity of
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: our language and vocabulary down that are like anybody could
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: know this if they're well read, or they are just
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: happen to like know a lot of vocab woords, or
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: maybe they like trivia or something. And because I sort
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: of think like these are words that anybody could like,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: they're accessible to anyone, And I always think like, if
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: our standard is always to cater to the lowest common denominator,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: then we're just always going to be titrating ourselves downward.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: And I know that you and I have discussed this
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: in the past, but just thinking about how much we
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: trust our audience to be able to follow up us
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: in our writing and what we should expect, And I
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: do think like there is merit to the fact of
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: considering like right for an audience to ensure that they're
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: likely to read and understand it, because I think one
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: thing that can come from complex, high level vocabulary is
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: people are like, I'm not going to look that up,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and now I don't understand what they're saying, and now
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to read anymore or listen anymore. Anyway,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: thoughts on.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: That it's not necessarily pandering or ty trading downward, like
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: you said, to simplify language. I think I'm going to
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: pull out a weird example here, but it's Ernest Hemingway.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Ernest Hemingway was known for being very blunt and writing
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: kind of simply. It's not that he didn't use big words,
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: but he was trying to be. He had a style
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: to him that made him famous, and it was to
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: say things in a way that was artful and compelling,
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: but also very very blunt, very very simple and clear.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: And I think that that's kind of the school of
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: thought of journalism. It's not that we don't use big words,
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: it's that we have to have a real good.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Justification for them.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: You know, we need to know that there's a compelling
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: reason to use this word that everybody might not know,
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: because it really is the best way of getting the
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: information across, and I want people to know that, like
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: the words are very deliberate in what we do, like
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: every word. So a story traditionally goes through at least
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: two reads. So the journalist writes it and then ideally,
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: if they're not, you know, completely rushed, they're also rereading
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: it before they file it, so that would be the
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: first read. But after that it goes through their editor,
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: it goes through their copy editor, and then depending on
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: the organization, it might go through another editor and the
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: editor in chief. It goes through several reads before it
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: gets to you, and every single one of them is
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: questioning every single word that is being used and just
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: making tweaks here and there. It's a collaborative effort these
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: stories that you're seeing. It's not just one person, and
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: all these people are trying to make it so that
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: the story is getting the point across fairly. So it's
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: better to use more simple language because then you're not
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: risking people's personal associations with that word. But you know,
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: connotation is important and it's a very good tool for
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: journalists to use. And you know, speaking behaviorally in your
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: guys wheelhouse, you forb relationships with specific words over the
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: course of your life.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: That's how language works.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: You hear a word used in a certain context, and
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: that informs how you're going to think about that word
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: going forward, and it informs the interpretation of that word
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: to you. The more complex the word, the more likely
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: you are to, I think, have different connotations between people
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: with how they're going to interpret that word. And then
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: it gets a little bit risky of you know, how
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: are you coming across this person, what message are you
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: sending them? And is it the same message you were
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: trying to send.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: That's a fair point, and I do think there are
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: times when it seems like one is using a complex,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: like sort of high level vocabor just to use it,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and there's not necessarily a good reason. I do think
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of those words that people think of as
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: being complex vocabulary are. They have a specific use case
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and it's like they are the most efficient way to
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: say a thing. But it reminds me. There was a
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: thing on the news recently regarding this whole text thread
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: thing with the communicating more plans to a journalist with
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: a journalist said something about verisimilitude and some news I
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: don't call them news reporter a person who says things
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: into a camera on a platform that is famously aggressively
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: biased and are very upfront about their bias, and he
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: was like, I don't even know what that word means.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: I had to look it up, because like, who even
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: uses a word like that. I'm like, people who know
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: what words mean use words like that. I was like,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: that's not even that highlightilitude. You can even derive from
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the basic I think it's Latin on that one, Like
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: what the root is there to figure it out?
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: But okay, yeah, people who don't ban dictionaries can look
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: it up very easily.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But it's like, if you're criticizing
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a journalism because you're don't understand the words they're using
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a journalist's writing, I'm like, I think that's an indictment
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: on you, not the journalist it is.
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: But at the same time, you know, we're here for everybody.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: That's fair.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: We're trying to make it as simple as possible.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: And young people, I'll add, that's a good point, aren't
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: aren't as educated?
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, and sometimes when we introduce vocab words will
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: specifically do a whole vocab breakdown where where it will
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: then define the word if we think it's sort of
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: a particularly esoteric, if you will word, just to do
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: that to myself, should we define esoteric?
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: I think, I mean, I think we're okay right now,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: we've probably defined it before.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: We probably have. I think that one comes up a
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: decent amount. For those of you who don't know, I
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: guess justin roll the music without looking it up directly,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: I would say esoteric essentially means known to a very few.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: It is like a limited sort of scope of access
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: to that. If something is esoteric, then like it's it's
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: sort of niche. It's not something that's well known. Would
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: you agree with that, Ben or Chain, Yes, I.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Think that's yeah, I was I would agree. I would say,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: if you're not familiar, an example would be like all
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: of the magics that Aleister Crowley are. Crowley reported this right,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: so like very very esoteric and very protected under those spaces.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: There you go, There you go, We're back. Let's let's
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: actually I think try and end on this. This to
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: me is again burying the lead. But I do think
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: that what I'd like to get really quick from you
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: before we let you go is sort of why journalism
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: is important. And I think you know, we've sort of
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: broadly covered there are a lot of ways that journalism
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: can exist, and the sense of if journalism is disseminating
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: information to an audience, then that happens in a pretty
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: broad range of context, including just like people posting on
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: social media, and I know, I saw, I've seen some
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: people say that like most of their news consumption is
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: now on social media. That's like a lot of people.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons is it happens basically in
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: real time as an event unfolds. The people there are
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: like on the ground reporting now. They are not choosing
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: their words carefully, they're not going through editors, and god knows,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: they're barely forming coherent sentences a lot of the time.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: But why does the journalism side of this matter for
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the world, or for our country, or for people just generally.
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll use it politically as my core example, but
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: you know, know that that journalism and media extends to
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: all We cover everything, all all facets of life, so
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: it just works as kind of social as well. But imagine,
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: you know, imagine politics with no neutral ground, imagine government
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: without anybody trying to be.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: In the middle.
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: This is why I say that news is crucial to democracy.
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: We have a vote, we have a voice and opinion,
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: but how do you know how to use that. If
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: you're making decisions based off of how somebody looks, based
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: off simply the words that they're using, whether or not
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: they are are eloquent and well presented, you can be
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: misled very easily and vote for somebody who has interests
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: that are against your own interests. If there are people
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: out there who are just trying to inform you, people
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: people who are neutral and neutral ground between parties, that
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: is just trying to advance understanding, then you'll be able
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: to put context behind those words. You'll be able to
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: have an informed vote and informed decision. And again this
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: extends outside of politics, but this is why I think
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: journalism is important. It's about informing you neutrally. It's about
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: nothing but trying to advance your understanding of the world.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: That's why we have all these rules that I talked
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: about before. That's why we have this discipline, in this
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: way of doing things, being very careful about the words
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: that we choose, trying to give you the most important
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: information up front, sourcing everything, seeking credible sources, keeping ourselves
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: out of it.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: These are all.
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: Ways that we try to advance your understanding without stepping
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: outside of this neutral space where we can advance your
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: understanding with trust.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I think it's the same reason it's important.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Is the same reason that it doesn't exist, like there
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: is no free press in places like North Korea or
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Russia or really China and many many countries around the
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: world where you have dictators. Is that because they can
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: then control the flow of information.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: They have no interest in advancing the understanding of their people.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: They have interest in your loyalty to them. Yeah, and
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: like controlling people's behavior.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, very good. I think that that was great. I
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I appreciate your time. So I'll lets
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: you get out of here. Thank you so much for
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: joining us.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Ben, This is great. Thank you.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: All right, take it easy, all right. So yeah, thanks
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: again to Ben for joining us in that discussion. I
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: feel like, as someone who depends a lot on journalism
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to be able to do this show because we are
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: constantly looking around for sources, we're trying to also find
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: primary sources. We're trying to also track down I mean,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: I think we depend a lot on research articles, and
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: like that's maybe where a slightly greater focus on the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: empirical research when we can find it. But we do
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: depend a lot on being able to find good reporting
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: on this so that we can then convey that. And
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: I think we know what we do is we wrap
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: it into a whole narrative. And part of that is
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: because the this is long form content, to try and
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: have a big topic be digestible, it's useful to have examples,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: it's useful to I think speak somewhat off the cuff
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: about it, understanding that that creates an opportunity to and
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: like we're not really particularly shy about our bias here.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I think we've made it known sort of how we
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: try to lean politically, and also that like we've tried
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to espouse very clearly that like our primary allegiance to anything,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: if it is to anything, is to the scientific process.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: It is to science because that is the best process
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: by which we have to evaluate the quality of information
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: that has been gathered. It is a self correcting process
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: that when it gets things wrong, it will then fix
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: those things and make them less wrong. Right, We've never
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: encountered a better way to get to like learn and
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: get information out that's the best one. It has been
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the best one for centuries a millennia. So like what
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: that tends to mean though, politically, is that like there
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: is a side of politics that tends to embrace that,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: and a side of politics that tends to reject that
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: and authoritarian like dictatorship. And I think you can even
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: say communist, although it's not really communism as described by
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: like Karl Marx, but communist in the way that it
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: has resulted in actual practice in governments is anti that.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: It is like don't control for quality of information. It
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: is don't let people know what's actually happening. It's lie,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: it's obfuse, skate, it's filter and all of that. And
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: so that's that we struggle and I think fight against that,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: and that tends to align us politically with one particular
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: side of things who is not perfect, but does tend
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: to at least be less rejecting of and more embracing
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: of science, although their audio ideology can also get in
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the way there too. So like that's why I think
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just trying to make very clear I think where
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: our positions are and why.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think part of the reason we even want
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: to talk about this topic, about about journalism in general,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: is like we're running we're in a crisis right now,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Like we're in a crisis where people don't believe journalists.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, it's really valuable to understand
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: that I don't know that you know, like, while while
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: everybody has some level of bias and personal interest in
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: what they do, I think it's important to remember that
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: it's I mean, most training for journalists does not include, hey,
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: make sure your opinion goes out there. It's hey, how
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: do you do this responsibly?
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: And And I would imagine that the majority of journalists
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: that are out there are people who want to do
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: a good job, and they want to do a neutral job,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: and they want to report the news, and they're in
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: a space where they're having to report news in a
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: world full of noise, and so like you know, there
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: is there are the contingencies in place that require somebody
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: to do the job in a way that will get
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: through and that I would imagine is kind of a
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: unique challenge as well. So I think it's just really
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: important maybe and maybe this is something to think about, is
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: like being a journalist right now is probably very difficult, Like.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: A professional one. Yeah.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: What we've seen definitely is there are a lot of
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: these people who have come on the scene, and you know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: we talked about like, it's not that there is no
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: value in this sort of off the cuff influencer type
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: or sort of or YouTuber or whatever reporting that can happen.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: There can be some great, great content there and people
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: who do a really good job of it. I think
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the problem is is that a huge amount of people
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: who were even professionals in some of these spaces have
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: made it a mission to just erode trust in journalism right.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: And the reason is is because if they get enough
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: people believing that you can't trust journalists, then that means
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: that they get to control the narrative. Because what people
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: will do is they'll find someone that they think they
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: can trust. They're probably going to choose someone that aligns
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: with them politically, and they're just going to say, like,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: I guess there's no way to get access to any
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: information that is believable. I'm just going to believe this
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: source moving forward, and then that source can tell you
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: anything and you'll just eat it up. That's I think
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: been a really sad trend that we've observed is this
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the eroding of trust and journalism by people who are
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: doing it badly because they want to erode trust in journalism, right,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: And I'll willingly expose to where some of our biases
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: and that like Fox News, newsmax, o an, these are
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: people who are just trying to destroy journalism. And the
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: problem is like it's almost a common cause mission in
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: a way, because it's sort of like I'm just going
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to burn the whole thing to the ground and like
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: then let chaos rain, but not so much because like
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: they don't necessarily lose by making everyone distrust journalism as
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, in a space where there's journalistic integrity,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: they cannot thrive, they cannot succeed, right, And so they
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: need to destroy actual discourse and facts in order to
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: be able to survive and to succeed. Because they're not
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: doing news, they're not reporting confirmation. They are doing is
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: they're they are simply trying to control the narrative in
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: a way that they want it to be controlled. And
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: so I don't know that that Ben would have said this,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: but I would say they're not doing news, They're doing propaganda.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: They're sort of their whole reason to exist is they're
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: they're just a propaganda Like if you hook up a machine, yeah,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: they're a business, yes. And if you were to hook
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: up a machine to like the President taking a dump,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: he's gonna dump into that machine whatever he wants to
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: have happened, and they're going to churn out of that
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: machine what they want people to hear. Right, Not only
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: does it not matter if it's not right, like, it
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: almost is worse if it is right for them, right,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: they want this to be far from the truth.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Actually, info Wars is another good example of this, Like,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: this is not information, this is lies. It is they
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: know that it's untrue, right, and they are deliberately expressing
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that because it's good for their bottom line and because
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: it allows them to get a faithful audience, not a
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: knowledgeable audience. Right, And that's sort of their whole reason
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: to exist. So I have a incredible amount of respect
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: for journalism. I think that it's very important, and I
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: think that we desperately need it. Yes, if we want
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: human beings to survive, I think we need journalism. What
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: we don't need is ads. I guess we do kind
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: of need ads. Nah, we don't need them, like a
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: hole in the head. I mean, we wouldn't run them
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: if we didn't need them in some capacity, right, right, right,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: But spiritually we don't need them.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Morally we don't need them.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Morally, we don't need them. Oh my goodness. All right, Well,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: I spoke a lot in this one. Do you have
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: more you'd like to add or anything I forgot you
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: before we get to some recommendations?
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: No, I feel good.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Cool. I'm sad we don't have Ben to give his recommendations.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: It's always fun when a guest can chime in with those,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: but he had to go, and we're here doing our recommendations,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: so we're going to do it.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Recommendations.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: So my recommendation is a book. I've not finished this
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: book yet, but I have been really having a good
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: time with it, and I am so impressed with how
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: well this is done. I'm not surprised by how well
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: it's done, but I am impressed with how well it's done.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: And that is Doctor Sleep by Stephen King.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: More recently, there was a movie twenty nineteen. There was
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: a movie that apparently was really great and I haven't
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: watched it yet, but if you don't know, Doctor Sleep
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: is the sequel to The Shining, and you might be going, well,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: that sounds a little bit absurd, and I think one
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: of the things they do, and it is a little
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: bit absurd. But the beautiful thing about this is that
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: sometimes sequels will carry on a similar ish story, and
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: this does this really great thing where it doesn't do
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: that at all. It takes an entirely different pathway to
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: the story of Dan Torrence. Dan Torrence being Danny from
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: The Shining, the little boy with the Shining, so it's
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: him as an adult and him kind of going through
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: this unique story of his own. And the best part
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: is that you can read this and not have ever
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: read The Shining. It's made better by having read The Shining,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: so you have an idea of kind of like some
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: of the characters and some of the references and in
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: some of the locale that play a role. And I
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: won't spoil it for anybody who wants to read it,
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: but you know, it's done really well in this way
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: that just feels like a fresh new story that is
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: completely unrelated to The Shining, but is also directly related
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: to The Shining. I don't know how Stephen King did it,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: but it rules. Wow, And I've got about like maybe
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: eighty pages left in it, and I have loved every
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: single minute of it. It is so good.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Did you see that movie? No?
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't. I'm waiting to see the movie. I wanted
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: to hold off on seeing the movie until I read
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: the book, but I heard the movie was actually done
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: really well, and the cast is incredible. For the movie,
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, Rose the Hat. The main villain is Rebecca Ferguson,
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: and she is incredible in everything that she's in. Yeah,
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: and you and McGregor is Dan Torrents, which is just beautiful.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I very I've very much enjoyed the movie. I
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: have not read The Shining or Doctor Sleep, but I
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: do like Stephen King, and I know that I'm sure
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that I would enjoy those books. So I just need
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: to sit down with them and prioritize them because that
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: sounds awesome.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty great.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: But to be clear, you are recommending the book here, Yes.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: I'm recommending the book because I have not seen the
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: movie and I haven't finished the book. Just to everybody's
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: got that caveat, But I do. I did really enjoy it.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Is it fair like? I feel like The Shining was
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: fairly long? Is is Doctor Sleep fairly long.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: It's about the same length. It feels about the same length, Okay,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: But I feel like the pacing in Doctor Sleep is
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: a little bit different, like because he's not they're not
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: stuck at a hotel, so they're not like going store
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: crazy and having cabin fever, right, like there's I mean,
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: not that the Shining Belt like that, but the pacing
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: was just a little bit different in Doctor Sleep. But
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: it feels like it's it's a little bit more up,
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: like you know, it's faster.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Paced, more of a clipped pace. Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha. Okay, cool,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: all right, Doctor Sleep. Did I didn't know it was
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: separated enough that it was a standalone story. I thought
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: you really needed the Shining to be able to read it.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: So that's that's useful to hear.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not quite as necessary. It's kind
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: of like how I feel like, like you don't need
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: Salem's Lot to read Dark Tower, but like it's nice
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: to have that too, like a separate like they kind
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: of operate a separate stories, but they do tie together
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: very nicely.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: I got you, I got you. Okay, Yeah, I'm recommending
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: the movie. This came out in twenty twenty four. It
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: is called a Complete Unknown. This is a biopic about
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan. Yeah, and biopics. I have watched a lot
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: of them, and all of them I've been like, eh,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: that was fine, and very few of them have I loved.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I thought Bohemian Rhapsody was probably my favorite, okay, and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: then there's like Rocket Man and a Winston Churchill one,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and like there's been a whole bunch of of different
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: I would even argue the movie Lincoln is kind of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: in a way a biopic sort of right, but it's
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: you know, there are these movies that profile a real
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: person and they sort of go through a particular point
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: in that person's life that was relevant to them. This
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: is my favorite biopick. Now.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a huge Bob Dylan fan going into this,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: and not for any reason, like I didn't have anything
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: against Bob Dylan. I just it was one of those
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: where I just didn't really make space for it in
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: my music listening selections. It's so ubiquitous. I think in
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: pop culture a lot of his songs are that like,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: you'll know some of them even if you never really
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: picked up an album or anything. Man, the movie was
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: just Timothy Shallamey plays Bob Dylan in this, and he
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: is unbelievable that he can really do anything. He is
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: so so good. And other than that, there's like the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: cast is absolutely fantastic. The director James Mangold, he is
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: just he is definitely on fire with this one is
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: really working and I just loved it. And I think
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: that one of the things that works for this as
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: a biopick about a musician is it is I would say,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: like a full fifty percent of this movie is music
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: that is happening, right. It is like more music than narrative.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: And so like right right.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: The narrative happens between the songs and like you are
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: paying attention to that, but there was a crazy amount
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: of music happening and it really works, like really works.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I hear a biopic and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I'm worried that it's going to be boring, and this
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: is definitely not boring. It moves at a very fast pace.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: It does not like let anything really linger except parts
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: of the music. Really yeah, and I just loved it.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I thought it was so good. So I know this
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: is currently streaming on Hulu at the time that we're
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: recording this. You can probably find it other places. I'm
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: sure it's for sale or for rent. But yeah, a
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: complete unknown the story of Bob Dylan, specifically the point
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: in his career when he started playing electric guitar, this
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: sort of Oh.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Bob Dylan goes electric. That's a big deal.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was, and that was the book that
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: this was based on. I think it's what called when
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan Goes Electric.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: So yeah, very cool.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I think that's what you have to
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: say about journalism and Bob Dylan and Stephen King specifically
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: doctor Sleep. I think I mentioned this or maybe not,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: but if I haven't, If you would like to tell
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: us your thoughts on journalism, influencers, podcasters, social media personalities, whatever,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: then you can email us directly at info at WWDWWD
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: podcast dot com. We're also on social media. You can
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: find us on blue Sky, Facebook and Instagram and reach
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: out to us there and you'll connect with somebody. I've
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: been posting a lot of things on blue Sky over here.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, if you would like to support us,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: one thing that you can do is join us on Patreon,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: and if you do, then you get access to behind
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: the scenes content, ad free content, all kinds of bonus
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: goodies like that, and I will read your name, and
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: I think that's why most people do this. If you
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: want your name read, then this is the way to
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: do it. These are people that are are Patreon supporters
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: and we appreciate them for what they do, and that
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: is Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Brian Ashley, and Kiara. Thank you all again and just
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: forever for all of your continued, lovely support.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: We love you so so so much.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: And if you do not want to support us financially,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: you can of course leave us a rating and a
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: review like subscribe, and then go ahead and tell a
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: friend be like, there's this really great podcast everyone should
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: listen to. And I would agree with that sentiment generally speaking,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: and that might get a few more people listening to us,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: which is wonderful.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: Awesome. I was about to close out, but I've got
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to say thank you to my team, because without these people,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: I can't make a podcast. So writing and fact checking
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: from Shane and myself. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: and the guy who does all the sound editing and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: makes episodes sound good is justin. Thank you so much
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: for all of your work on that, and thank you
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: for recording with me today, Shane.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, and huge thank you to Ben for joining us
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: today because we certainly values time in his work, so
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: super happy to have him.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, definitely, huge thank you to Ben, and a
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: huge thank you to all the journalists out who are
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: doing good journalists work. And no, thank you to the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: journalists who are out there sewing discord.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: By the way, I know a few people listen that
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: I've been meaning to shout out, so I'm a quick
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: shout out to one person I know who listens, who
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: is Sean, So shout out to Sean for listener. Yes,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: and I'll leave it ambiguous like that. Okay, I think
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: that that's all that I have. Is there anything that
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: I forgot or anything that you would like to add
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: before we wrap this up?
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: No, I think that covers it all.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Right, then let's get out of here. This is Abraham
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: and this is Shane. We're out.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: See. Yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do what
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.