Latest / Question Everything / Are We Captured Yet? Now Trump’s Pals Are Taking Over CNN

Transcript

Are We Captured Yet? Now Trump’s Pals Are Taking Over CNN · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A few months ago, I told you I was absolutely
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: freaking out after Skydance Media took over Paramount. The reason?
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: The owners are buddy-buddy with Donald Trump.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: They're friends of mine, they're big supporters of mine, and.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: They'll do the right thing. Now, those same friends of
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Trump's are buying another media empire, Warner Brothers Discovery, which
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: includes the iconic movie studio Warner Brothers, HBO, and the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: News Network. that Donald Trump just can't stand, CNN. We've
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: got a Brian Reid freakout 2.0. So in the last
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: couple months, there's been this dramatic bidding war going on
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: between Netflix and Paramount to gain control of Warner Brothers Discovery.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: For a while, it looked like Netflix was going to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: come out on top. Warner Brothers accepted their offer. But then,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Paramount kept throwing more money at Warner Brothers until finally,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a couple weeks ago, Netflix backed out and Paramount won.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Economic reporter Robin Farzad told PBS NewsHour it wasn't even
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: necessarily the cash that sealed the deal for the owner
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of Paramount, David Ellison, and his dad, Larry Ellison. Netflix
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: just came to realize it probably couldn't win, no matter
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: how high it bid.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Netflix got every signal from this White House and the
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: FCC and Donald Trump being explicit in both with kind
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: of background suasion that by far he prefers Paramount and
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: the Ellisons taking this over. He'd like to see CNN
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: under new ownership, ideally friendly to the persuasions of Donald Trump.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: founder of Oracle, is a big donor of Donald Trump's.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: We've already seen what happened after the Ellisons took control
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of CBS News. One of David Ellison's first moves was
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to install a new editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss. who before this
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: had never worked in broadcast news or even been a
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: news reporter. She's an opinion journalist with very clear political
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: alignments and views that often skew rightward. In her first
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: months on the job, she caused a huge controversy when
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: she pulled a 60-minute story that was critical of the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Trump administration. It was about immigrants being sent to El Salvador,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and she claimed it needed an interview with a member
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: of the administration before it could run. The reporter on
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the story accused the network of pulling her piece for
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: political reasons. Then there was a whole scandal when Barry
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Weiss reportedly kissed Donald Trump on the cheek after an interview.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: And then just a few weeks ago, a CBS news
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: producer quit, saying journalists are being forced to self-censor and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: claiming their stories are being evaluated on a shifting set
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: of ideological expectations. So what can we expect when the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Ellisons take over Warner Brothers and CNN? Just the latest
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of many threats against the media since Trump took office.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: The Pentagon's press office trying to bring in MAGA media influencers.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: There's a name for what's happening.
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: It's called media capture.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: It's when a government or authoritarian leader effectively controls the
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: media and gets it to.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: Serve as a megaphone.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: For their agenda. For a long time, U.S. journalists have
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: looked to other countries to try and measure. Are we
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: there yet? Is the American media captured? Are we as
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: bad as Hungary, as Russia, as Turkey? Researchers have come
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: up with models for media capture. Some break it down
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: into four stages. Stage one, taking over the broadcast regulator. Here,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: that's the FCC. Stage two, going after public media. Stage three,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: using government money to influence the press in other ways.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And then stage four, having rich allies of the leader
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: buy up private media companies. This is normally the hardest
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and most complicated step. But the fact that it's already
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: happening pretty rapidly, this is why I'm freaking the fuck
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: out over the Ellisons taking over all of these media
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: companies and news organizations, now CBS and CNN. And it's why...
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: We're going to bring you this episode that first ran
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: back in October about media capture. Because back then I
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: was trying to figure out, are we there yet? Are
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: we in media capture? And again, back in October, I
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: got a pretty unsettling answer.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: It creeps up on you. And I have watched it
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: creep up on people, brave, principled people, because you slowly
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: make choices that you can live with.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: From KCRW and Placement Theory, I'm Brian Reed. This is
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Question Everything. Today, my conversation with someone who's reported in
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: countries around the world whose media has been captured. She's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: actually from one. And now she's here in the U.S.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: She's come here to cover this topic. And I was surprised,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: though I guess I shouldn't have been, that the place
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: she wanted to station herself to understand media capture wasn't Washington,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't New York, but Silicon Valley. Stick around. Can you
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: list all the countries that you've worked in whose media
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: was captured?
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: Russia, Georgia, Syria, Lebanon. Thinking whether Iraq fits the bill.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: Like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Burma. I can keep going, actually.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Natalia Antilova has spent 15-plus years as a foreign correspondent.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: She's reported for the BBC, CNN, The New Yorker, from
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: all the countries she listed, and more. She's from Georgia,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: the country, as she's constantly clarifying, which was part of
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union when she was growing up. Now Natalia
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: runs a newsroom called Coda Story, which covers the erosion
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of democracy around the world and the corruption of the
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: free press. This is Natalia's beat, which is why I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: went to her to find out. Has it happened yet?
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Is the U.S.
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: Captured?
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: How would we know if the U.S. media is captured?
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: I think one of the signs is self-censorship.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: But from the start, Natalia didn't talk about it that way.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: She kept gently but firmly trying to redirect my framing.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: She was describing something slipperier and, frankly, scarier than that.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: I think when you find yourself in a situation when
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: journalists question themselves and what they're willing and not willing
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: to say, where your editorial decisions become part of the
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: bigger calculation of, like, how is that going to affect
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: my life? Am I going to get fired or am
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: I going to get deported or am I going to
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: go to prison? And the stakes get higher and higher,
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: but it can start with a very simple, am I
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: going to get in trouble? Like, is this a story
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: that's worth doing? And I think that's part of the
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: reason why the threshold is so difficult to identify, because
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: I think it happens on an individual level for many,
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: many people in silence. It's almost internal. I mean, then
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: there are much more obvious signs, takeovers of businesses, suspicious mergers,
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: departures of big stars from television shows, that sort of
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: silencing of voices that has business excuse that looks completely legitimate.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: CBS is interesting. We genuinely don't know what's going to
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: happen with the CBS takeover, but the ducks align, right?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: This is what's so tricky and insidious about media capture.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: There always seems to be an excuse or a reason
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to explain something away. Like when CBS canceled Stephen Colbert
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: as they were trying to get the Trump administration to
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: approve their merger with David Ellison's company. Did that mean
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: we're captured or did it just mean late night shows
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: are losing money? Probably both. But the money thing muddies
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the claim of capture. How about Jeff Bezos overhauling his
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Washington Post's opinion section to be more conservative? Is that
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: capture creeping in or just the personal political preferences of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a billionaire businessman? How about the editor at a national
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: magazine I was chatting with telling me he's noticed them
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: assigning fewer stories about people of color or about women
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: or conservation, how they're reorganizing their story list to delay
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: pieces that deal with identity? Capture or just a publication
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: reflecting the zeitgeist?
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: It's subtle shifts in the environment that are very easy
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: to justify as the water in which you're boiling gets
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: hotter and hotter.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: But do you feel there is a threshold when a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: country goes from the media is not captured to we
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: are in capture?
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: I think it's very easy to see it in hindsight
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: rather than when it's happening in real life. I remember
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: in 2014 covering the annexation of Crimea. And we were
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: seeing all these Russian troops coming in and taking over.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: This was in February of 2014. Russia invaded this part
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of Ukraine, Crimea, and ultimately annexed it, made it part
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: of Russia. Natalia was there, on the ground, watching as
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: troops streamed in.
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: Trapped in the middle of a battle between Kremlin-backed rebels
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: and Ukrainian troops. I was doing a live for the BBC,
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: and Next to me was a Russian television correspondent who
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: was going on air. And the dynamic on the ground
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: was that there were all these Russian troops, but they
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: had no insignia. So you kind of couldn't tell whose
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: troops they were. And Putin kept insisting day after day
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: after day that there were no Russian troops in Crimea.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Putin was insisting these soldiers were local Ukrainian militias. Not true.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: They were Russian troops, as the Ukrainians were claiming from
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the start.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: And I'm standing on the ground in Crimea. I'm about
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: to do a live hit. I'm standing next to it.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: And we had like a little patch and a Russian
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: television correspondent was next to me and I'm listening in.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: And he talks about the fact that these troops are
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: self-defense battalions who are, you know, in Crimea and they're
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: like local Ukrainian Crimeans who are defending it. And then
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: the line cuts, like he's done, and then he starts
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: shouting and screaming into the microphone because he's gone back
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: to his producer, swearing and saying, like, I can't do
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: this anymore. This is a total lie. You know it's
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: a lie. You're making me say these things. This is
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: such bullshit. They're our boys. They're our boys. When are
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: we going to say that they're our boys?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: And I remember... going up to him later that night.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: We were in the same hotel and we ended up,
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: you know, chatting for quite a while. He was, you know,
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: a nice, intelligent man who was basically saying, I don't
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: know what to do. I can't quit. I have no
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: other skill. I have a family to support. I can't
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: get out of Russia. I spent my whole career working
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: for this station. Like, what do I do? But I
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: also can't do that. You know, and he was dealing
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: with this, like, enormous, like, personal dilemma. But everyone working
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: for Russian TV knew that the official line was, these
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: are self-defense battalions, indigenous to Crimea. These are not Russian troops.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: And this is what we're doubling down on. And that's
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: what he had. He knew he had to double down.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Or what? Had he not?
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, he'd be fired. He said he'd be fired. He
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: was told that he'd be fired. We know that the
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: core messaging is decided in the Kremlin. and then passed
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: out to the editors-in-chief of the main stations in Russia.
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: And then things can be massaged around the core messaging.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: But there's some messages that they have to stick to,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: that they absolutely have to stick to. And the order
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: was to stick to the line that this were not
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: Russian troops.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Stick to it or what? And I understand the consequence
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: for that individual journalist if he had on live TV
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: said the truth, said something different, he would have been fired.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: But in terms of the kind of top-down chain of
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: command you're describing?
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: Well, in Putin's Russia, stick to it or you're going
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: to fall out of a window. Because that's the kind
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: of regime it is, right? They kill you.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I'm generally wary of comparing Russia's treatment of the press
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: to the U.S. I've always worried about overblowing it. The
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: real threat of violence seemed to put Russia in another category.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: But it is true that more and more journalists in
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: America are getting tear-gassed by law enforcement... assaulted, locked up.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: One was just deported after covering ice. And Natalia, who
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: has reported in Russia, who grew up in the Soviet Union,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: she is not hesitant to compare there to here.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: I don't know how helpful it is to make a
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: distinction between capture and repression, because repression is capture. Obviously,
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: it's a completely different environment. The power dynamics are different.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: I see the pattern that is the same. One of
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: the things that I've noticed is the centralization of the message.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: I think this administration is very disciplined and very good at, like,
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: putting certain messages out and making sure that they're widely
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: picked up in, like, slightly different iterations by so many
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: actors that it, you know, it just becomes the narrative.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: When it comes to narratives, I think there are so
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: many that have become embraced in the U.S.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: What's an example of that?
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: As, you know, librarians are the enemy. Like the war
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: on librarians in the U.S.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: The president fired the Librarian of Congress. Why did he
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: choose to do that?
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: We felt she did not fit the needs of the
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: American people. There were quite concerning things that she had
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI. Well, like,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: slavery wasn't really a thing in the U.S., that backtracking. Like,
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: it happens in a very similar way in other authoritarian countries.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: environments as well.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Listening to Natalia, I started thinking about Donald Trump's big lie,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the lie about him having won the 2020 election and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: how that proliferated, how an autocrat doesn't need to use
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: actual state violence against journalists to get what he wants.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: The big guy starts shouting the message from the top.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: This is a fraud on the American public. This is
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: That message shoots out, like from a splatter gun, into
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the media ecosystem. Boosted along by podcasters and weird fake
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: news Facebook pages and memes, audiences start buying it. The
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: big right-wing broadcasters take it up. Talk radio, Fox News.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: We don't know how many votes were stolen on Tuesday night.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: We don't know anything about the software that many say
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: was rigged.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: We don't know. We ought to find out.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: I love these legal challenges because we have to get
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: to the bottom.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: Of all this and expose fraud where it occurred.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: They concoct all sorts of tall tales that support this
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: fake narrative. about phony ballots on planes and corrupted voting machines.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Right now, Joe Biden is pretending to be the president-elect.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: They know they haven't won this thing fair and square.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: A third of the country comes to believe this damaging
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: fake story that the election wasn't legitimate. The lie inspires
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: an insurrection attempt. And when Trump comes back into office,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: he makes denying the results of the 2020 election a
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: cornerstone of his administration. It becomes a loyalty test for
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: people in the MAGA world. Here's Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: last month trying to get Trump's nominee for the Federal
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Reserve Board, Stephen Myron, to crack and simply state the truth.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Easy yes or no. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: presidential election? Joe Biden was certified by Congress as the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: president of the United States.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So did Donald Trump lose that election? As I just said,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden was certified.
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: By the Congress.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Did Donald Trump lose that election? Can you say the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: words Donald Trump lost that election? Are you independent enough
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to say that? The Congress certified Joe Biden as president
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of the United States.
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So that was one.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: Let's try another. Obviously, the White House is not sending
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: directives to, you know, heads of ABC and so on.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: But yet, do we now live in the world where
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: they don't need to? Because They create the mood music
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: so effectively with that centralized messaging. They push it out
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: to their sympathizers, the movements, and they just create this
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: mood music. And that mood music is very much part
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: of it. And that's what creates the narrative. And then
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: with just a little bit of fear and a little
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: bit of self-censorship, it's easier and it's safer in the
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: time of great uncertainty just to be on the safe side,
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: to just follow the mood music. And that's how everyone
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: gets co-opted into it. Capture works in much more subtle
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: ways than we imagine. It creeps up on you, and
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: I have watched it creep up on people, brave, principled people,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: because you slowly make choices that you can live with.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: After a quick break, Natalia explains a grand unified theory
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: she's come up with for how censorship works in the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: modern age And she points at an important culprit. Welcome back.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: If you've been listening to our show recently, you know
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I'm wrestling with the question of what can be done
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: about lies that are overwhelming us online. And how to
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: hold tech companies more accountable for their role in this.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I've honed in on this policy change. reforming a law
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: called Section 230 to allow people to sue internet companies
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: when they algorithmically boost posts that are defamatory. As Natalia
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: has studied the way that repressive regimes are operating in
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: recent years, including regimes she's reported under, as she's documented
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the methods they've devised to stamp out narratives they don't like,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: she's come up with a theory, one that's specifically about
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: what I've gotten focused on too, the internet and social media,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: and the way strongman leaders are using it.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: Instead of censorship, what authoritarian regimes use the world over
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: is noise. And I think noise has become the new censorship.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: As a child, I was born in the Soviet Union.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: And I remember my early childhood memories as, you know,
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: my mom listening to shortwave radio to the Voice of
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: America or the BBC because she knew that all the
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: information we got at home was fake. And you had
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: to find a signal that came from the outside to
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: give yourself understanding of what really was happening, right? And
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: you had to like interpret it. And that's how you
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: try to make sense of the world and figured out
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: how to navigate it. I think what has happened since
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: is that we no longer have censorship the way we
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: had it. Like, that doesn't exist anymore. And I don't
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: think it's coming back on a big scale. I don't
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: think it's going to come to America in the way
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: that it happened in the Soviet Union. You no longer
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: need to censor a single voice. You put out so
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: much noise. that truth gets lost and it becomes impossible
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: to figure out who is saying what. Endless theories and
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: rumors and fake news and pieces of information, you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: and some of it is truthful information too. But if
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: it's all going into the same pipe and if that
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: pipe is full of sewage, you know, a little bit
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: of clean drinking water is not going to make any difference.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: And that architecture.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not drinking that water.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: You're right. But you are. We're all drinking that water.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: That's the thing. We're all drinking that water.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: This made me think back to my trip this summer
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: to the Iowa State Fair, where I asked people how
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: they were feeling about the state of things in the
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: country and with the media and just the exhaustion they expressed.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Personally, I feel like it's hard to know who to
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: trust in the press to get a straight answer on things.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: It's exhausting.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Every time you turn around, nobody knows what's true.
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: Nobody knows what to believe.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: How do you know what's real and what's fake sometimes,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: you know? Because sometimes you get these fake news articles
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: that report this, and people will go, oh, yeah, that's real,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: so let's all believe it and spread it out there.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Natalia says what I was hearing people say in Iowa,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that's evidence of media capture.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: I think that's the big picture to media capture. Because
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: media capture is happening in that bigger environment that is
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: so noisy, that is so overwhelming, that is so hard
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: to punch through, that it becomes much easier for those
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: with resources and power to manipulate certain narratives and to
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: make sure that they go the way they want. Silicon
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: Valley has become the perfect accomplice to people like Vladimir
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: Putin because they're the ones who created the information architecture
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: that allows for this. The zone is being flooded constantly
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: all the time.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Flood the zone is the Trump team's actual strategy. Trump
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: advisor Steve Bannon brags about it.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Keep driving it, flood the zone, overwhelm them.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: It gets to be a psychological thing. They're overwhelmed.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: They don't know where to turn.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: But Bannon and Trump, they copied this From Putin.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: You know, he was really good at putting out, you know,
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: another scandal. He puts out, Kremlin puts out like 100
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: conflicting contradictory theories. You know, when I covered the downing
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: of MH17, the Boeing over Ukraine. Okay. That was shot
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: down by the Russian troops.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: The Malaysian flight.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: The Malaysian flight. It was shot down by the Russian
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: missile over Ukraine. And it was incredible to see, like,
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: You were standing there in those fields surrounded by bodies
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: that have fallen out from this plane. Everyone had died.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: 298 passengers.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: You were in the field.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: 80 children. I was there. Yeah. And I arrived early.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: And Moscow pumping the propaganda and conflicting theories on a
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: contradictory hypothesis on who shut down the plane. And you
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: could see them spreading across the internet. It was the
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: Ukrainian jet. It was a Western conspiracy. It was the CIA.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: It was this. It was that. It was like endless,
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: endless conspiracy theories.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: You're like scrolling online seeing this?
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: And then the local people right in those fields are
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: repeating these things back to you. And that environment is
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: created where people, like the agency is taken away because
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: it feels like it's impossible to find the truth.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: What I hear you saying is that I kind of
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: maybe came to this conversation with like a more simplistic
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: view of capture or a cruder view of it. Like
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: why capture matters is that the public can't access reliable
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: information to stay informed and to connect with what's happening.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And so whether it's happening through this process of the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: government co-opting the independent press or some other more diffuse
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: means in our information ecosystem. It doesn't matter.
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Ultimately, the result of media capture is people not getting
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: the information they need or the understanding that they need
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: to navigate the world. Instead, they're getting the narrative that
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: serves someone else's agenda. People are being caught. People have elected...
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: governments that are taking over things that people value, like
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: their independent media. And all of that happens through manipulation
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: of narratives, basically. And the Silicon Valley has built a
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: business model on, you know, they essentially profit from the
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: abundance of information. And I think the news industry in
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: particular is very guilty and has a lot of responsibility
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: for the world that we live in, because I think
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: we failed at our pretty basic function, which is to
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: hold powerful to account when it comes to Silicon Valley
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: and when it comes to tech bros who are now
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: pretty much running the world and are shaping the world
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: to their liking.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Natalia moved to Silicon Valley for a year to do
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: a fellowship at Stanford where she worked on this theory
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: about noise being the new censorship. Largely because she wanted
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: to be in that world, developing sources, seeing how people
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: who work in tech think.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: You know, these are a handful of men whose fortunes
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: make them bigger than sovereign nation states. And they're a
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: handful of men who don't believe in sovereignty of nation states.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: It was all there for reporters to cover and raise
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the alarm on for years.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: And we failed to tell the story. And I think
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: part of the reason we failed to tell the story
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: is because we drank the Kool-Aid, because Silicon Valley was
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: very good. They made fantastic, shiny products that made our
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: lives easier. And they were also kind of cool. You know,
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: everyone wanted to be part of it. And I think
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: when it comes to just pure accountability reporting, you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: it didn't happen. I went to my first journalist conference,
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know, 2016, 2015, maybe when I was setting
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: up Coda. And I remember Facebook was like a tiny booth, right,
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: on the vendor floor. Within two years, Facebook was the
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: keynote speech. Facebook was a keynote speaker at all journalism conferences.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: They bankrolled the journalist conferences along with Google, along with,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: you know, other tech companies. They ran labs and gave
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: out grants and then They told the newsrooms that everyone
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: should pivot to doing instant articles. Facebook would pivot to
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: doing more video. And then all the newsrooms would be like,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: now we need to do more video. We kind of
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: adopted as an industry, we adopted their business model, which
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: is all around clicks and traffic. And in that adoption
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: and in taking money from them and- And.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Building our distribution.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: To be so very reliant on them.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: That's right. And just simply in drinking their Kool-Aid, we
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: kind of forgot what we are for. We got ourselves
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: into a giant mess. Sadly, I see the pattern totally
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: repeating itself now with AI. You know, Facebook has long
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: pulled out. Google is not that interested anymore. But, you know,
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: Microsoft is now at the journalism conferences serving champagne at receptions. Absolutely. Champagne?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: What conferences are you going to?
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: I remember having a conversation with a guy at Google.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: It was just like friendly drinks. And we were talking
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: about some of these things. And I was talking to
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: him about, you know, trying to connect these dots between...
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: some of the decisions made in the valley and how
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: they play out like in faraway places and of how
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: a certain like tweak to an algorithm enables Russians to
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: go down and hunt down a Ukrainian or makes it
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: impossible for like an Afghan exiled journalist to reach his
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: community back in Afghanistan. And his reaction was basically it's
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: collateral damage. Like he's like, yeah, we know this happens.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: It's not that we don't know. But it's collateral damage.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Collateral damage in service of what?
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: In service of the bright, beautiful future that many of
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: the people I met really believe in. And everything that
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: happens in the meantime, you know, like that stands in
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: the way will, you know, that's too bad. But like
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: the cause is fantastic and great. And that's where we're headed.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: And we just have to put up to me. That's
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: how like Joseph Stalin treated, you know, people he sent
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: to the gulags. Or Machiavelli. Or Machiavelli or any tyrant,
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: you know, and that's why I think of the valley
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: as like a place of this like authoritarian kind of
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: ethos in some way because they are so sure in
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: what they're building and what they're creating.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: When you think back to the last 10, 15 years,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: is there a story? or a moment where you're like, oh,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that's where we as reporters and journalists should have done
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: something different, covered it differently, positioned ourselves differently?
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: You know, like, for example, like we, one of the
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: most underreported stories in the West, the West, there was
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: plenty of coverage of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: who was killed in prison by Putin. But what didn't
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: get any coverage was that Navalny came up with an absolutely, like,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: fascinating way of going around really, really harsh restrictions around
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: elections in Russia. And if it had worked... and we're
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: talking 2018, 2019. If it had worked, it could have
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: become a really interesting blueprint for any opposition party fighting
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: in elections anywhere in the world. So he comes up
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: with a way of participating in the democratic process, even
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: though he's technically banned from it. And it's basically an
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: app where any Russian using their zip equivalent of a
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: zip code can look up Navalny's recommendation for who to
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: vote for. Super simple, but could have been incredibly effective
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: and brought about the upset of Putin's party. What happened
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: was that the Russian government requested that Apple, Google, take
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: down the app from their stores, take down the instructions
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: that were on Google Docs, and take down all the
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: videos about it from YouTube. And they obliged.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And that killed it, basically.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: It killed it. It killed it, and I think eventually
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: it killed Navalny. Well, Putin killed Navalny, but he didn't
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: have a fair chance of a fight to begin with,
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: and Silicon Valley very much aligned itself with the Russian
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: government in that case, as they have with many others.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: These dots all connect.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: In the last few weeks, The Trump administration told Apple
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: to take down apps from its store that allow people
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: to document and share videos of ICE doing public raids.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Apple did it. The administration asked Meta to get rid
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: of a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: track ICE agents in Chicago. Meta did it. Also, Donald
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Trump sued YouTube for suspending his account after the January
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: 6th riot. And instead of using Section 230, the special
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: immunity internet platforms get, To block the lawsuit, which YouTube
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: totally could have used and they have used in many
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: other cases where non-presidents were suing them, YouTube instead settled
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, agreeing to pay the president $ 22 million,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: which will go towards building the new White House ballroom.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: The company also reinstated Trump's account and a bunch of
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: other accounts supporting the president that they had previously deemed
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: harmful enough to ban. Now the president's buddy, Larry Ellison...
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: is about to add Warner Brothers and CNN to his portfolio,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: which already includes Paramount and CBS News through his son.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Not to mention, Larry Ellison led a group of investors
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: in buying TikTok, which means that the news you hear
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: on broadcast and cable, the TV shows and movies you stream,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and also the content you watch on TikTok, so much
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: of it is now under control of this one incredibly
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: powerful and wealthy family, the Ellisons, because of deals that
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: were anointed by Donald Trump. Before I left Natalia, she
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: had one more turn of the screw for me. One
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: more facet of media capture that I truly never considered.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Something she says has taken place in my own mind.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Natalia was talking about how she thinks we need more
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: straight-up regulation of social media and tech companies. These platforms
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: are products, she says, like cars or planes or cement.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: We require safety measures for those, and we need the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: same for social media. The idea of active regulation, that's
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: not something I've been so into. My knee-jerk reaction is,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that's the government regulating speech, and I feel allergic to that.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: But Natalia believes I only feel that way because the
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: tech industry has exploited my and other journalists' weakness, our
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: love of the First Amendment.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, I always think of the way that the
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: big tech, weaponized the First Amendment is very similar to
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: the way the gun lobby weaponized the Second Amendment.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like all the industries you're mentioning where they have
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: been subjected over time to regulations and safety measures to
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: rein in the harms of their products. So auto industry
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: with seatbelts, cement with certain regulations. They're not tied up
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: with a constitutional amendment. It does feel like social media
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: is a speech product in a lot of ways, and
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: so it's been tied up in the First Amendment, and
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: that's why it's avoided this.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: But broadcasters are regulated, and publishers are regulated. That's also
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: tied with the First Amendment. So there are ways. There
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: hasn't been a political will, and the tech lobby has
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: very successfully made sure, through incredible lobbying efforts, to contain
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: all the conversations about regulation around... the publication free speech arguments.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: Conversations that we aren't having are the safety conversations.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: To reframe it around, this is a product and it's
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: dangerous and it's harming people. To reframe the counter-narrative to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: these products to not make it about whether or not
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: you're regulating speech.
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely, because it suits them just fine
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: for us to be engaged in the endless debate on
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: whether or not we're regulating speech. I know.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: It makes me tough. It's made it tough for me
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: to engage in it just as a journalist because, you know,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: it's interesting for you to put it this way. I
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: never thought that they were setting the terms of that
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: debate in such a way that it made it hard
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: for me and other journalists, I think, to come out
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: on an adversarial side.
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: That's part of the capture.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: That's part of the capture?
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: I got to sit with this one. I think social
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: media regulations are tricky in practice, but also politically tricky.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: They're divisive. That's why I like reforming Section 230, making
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: it so people can sue tech companies and hold them
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: accountable in at least certain cases. There's bipartisan political will
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: to do it. And the way I look at it,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: it's the opposite of regulation. We would be rolling back
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: a law about speech rather than adding in a bunch more.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: But there are lots of people who hate that idea too,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: people who I respect and have been yelling at me
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: online since I came out as an advocate for it.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: So the next time we pick up this thread, that's
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: what we'll get into, the reason Section 230 exists, and
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: the bad things that could happen if we change or
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: get rid of it. Though, I still think we should.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Seems like a good time to point out that Question Everything,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: we are independent media. We're funded by listener-supported public radio.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: We're not trying to do a big merger, not donating
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: money to anyone's ballroom project. We call things like we
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: see them. And right now, if you're looking for that
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: kind of voice, a great way to support us is
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: just by sharing the show with a friend or with
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: five friends. Text this episode along. Spread the word. Today's
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: episode was produced by our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan, with
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: help from associate producer Kevin Shepard. Robin Semyon and I
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team includes
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis and contributing editors
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney. This episode was fact-checked by
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Annika Robbins and mixed and sound designed by Brendan Baker.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Our music is by Matt McGinley. Our partners at KCRW
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Jamera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.