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How Trump is Capturing America’s Media – Without a Coup · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today, some new details right now about Paramount's offer to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: buy Warner Brothers Discovery.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: It first offered $ 19, then raised that to $ 22.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Why this seemingly boring business story from last week is
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: freaking me the fuck out. I know some of you
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: listening to this show are deep in media news, but
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: others are not, less you. And for that group, Let
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: me fill you in quickly on one of the big
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: media industry controversies of the last few weeks, which is
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Barry Weiss being put in charge of CBS News. Barry
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Weiss was an opinion writer at The New York Times
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: who quit dramatically in 2020. She felt the paper was
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: too lefty, the staff too enamored with social justice. She
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: then founded an outlet called The Free Press, which would
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: take on the left. It's very pro-Israel, very anti-identity politics, anti-woke,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: as people put it. Then, a couple weeks ago, David Ellison,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, one of the two
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: richest men on earth, bought the free press for $ 150
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: million and installed Barry Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: David Ellison was able to do this because he just
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: bought CBS News' parent company, Paramount, this summer with his
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  Speaker 1: dad's money. Barry Weiss has never worked in broadcast news
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: or even been a news reporter before. She's an opinion
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: journalist with very clear political alignments and views. Now she's
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: in charge of not only the nightly news at CBS,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: but also 60 Minutes, Face the Nation. So people at
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the network are panicking. Plus, yesterday, Paramount started laying off
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: 1,000 workers. John Oliver devoted an entire episode to Barry
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Weiss's CBS takeover.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: It is pretty hard to claim you've got punk energy
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: when you essentially spout conservative talking points while dressed like
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: the front desk manager at a Courtyard Marriott's.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: But I think the conniption over Barry Weiss distracts from
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the bigger concern. Weiss's new gig is a symptom, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: far from the worst symptom, I think, of a much
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: deeper problem. The Trump administration is co-opting the media fast.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: The Ellison family now controls one of the most powerful
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: legacy news organizations in the country, not to mention all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of other TV, movie, and streaming companies that are
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: under the Paramount umbrella. Larry Ellison is a big donor
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: and friend of Donald Trump's.
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  Speaker 3: It's got great potential. CBS has great potential. Larry Ellison
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: is great, and his son David is great. They're friends
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: of mine, they're big supporters of mine, and they'll do
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: the right thing.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Sure, Donald Trump or his family don't run Paramount or
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: CBS News, but maybe they don't have to to get
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: CBS to do things they want. There's stuff like this
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: going on across the media industry every week now, where
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: the administration is gaining power over the levers of U.S.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: media and squeezing out independent and dissenting voices.
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: The Pentagon's press office trying to bring in MAGA media influencers.
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: For a second day, the White House has barred the
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: Associated Press from entering the Oval Office.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: There's a name for what's happening. It's called media capture.
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  Speaker 1: It's when a government or authoritarian leader effectively controls the media.
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  Speaker 1: and gets it to serve as a megaphone for their agenda.
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  Speaker 1: For a long time, U.S. journalists have looked to other
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  Speaker 1: countries to try and measure. Are we there yet? Is
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the American media captured? Are we as bad as Hungary,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: as Russia, as Turkey? Researchers have come up with models
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: for media capture. Some break it down into four stages.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Stage one, taking over the broadcast regulator. Here, that's the FCC.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Stage two, going after public media. Stage three, using government
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: money to influence the press in other ways. And then
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: stage four, having rich allies of the leader buy up
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: private media companies. This is normally the hardest and most
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: complicated step. But the fact that it's already happening pretty rapidly,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: not even 10 months into Trump's second term, this is
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: why I'm freaking the fuck out over this Ellison takeover
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: of CBS and Paramount, And now, just weeks later, the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Ellisons have been putting in offers to snatch up another
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: huge media conglomerate, Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns HBO, a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: big movie studio, and CNN. If the Ellisons make this happen,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: this one family, these big supporters and friends of the president,
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  Speaker 1: as he himself puts it, will control a huge share
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: of the U.S. media and news coverage. All year I've
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: been asking, are we there yet? What does this latest
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: media news mean? Are we captured or are we still okay?
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  Speaker 1: And then about three weeks ago, I met someone who
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  Speaker 1: helped me realize that I've been thinking about this all wrong.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: She makes the best argument I've heard, that are we
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: there yet is not the right question. Maybe the best
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: indicator of whether our media is captured is how often
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  Speaker 1: you find yourself asking the question in the first place.
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  Speaker 5: It creeps up on you, and I have watched it
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  Speaker 5: creep up on people bravely. principled people because you slowly
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: make choices that you can live with.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: From KCRW and Placement Theory, I'm Brian Reed. This is
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Question Everything. Today, I talked to somebody who's reported in
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  Speaker 1: countries around the world whose media has been captured. She's
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: actually from one. Now she's come here to the U.S.
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  Speaker 1: to cover this topic. And I was surprised, though I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: should not have been, that the place she wanted to
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  Speaker 1: station herself to understand media capture was Wasn't Washington, wasn't
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: New York, but Silicon Valley. Stick around. Can you list
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: all the countries that you've worked in whose media was captured?
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  Speaker 5: Russia, Georgia, Syria, Lebanon. Thinking whether Iraq fits the bill.
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: Like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Burma. I can keep going, actually.
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  Speaker 1: Natalia Antolova has spent 15-plus years as a foreign correspondent.
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  Speaker 1: She's reported for the BBC, CNN, The New Yorker, from
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  Speaker 1: all the countries she listed, and more. She's from Georgia,
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  Speaker 1: the country, as she's constantly clarifying, which was part of
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union when she was growing up. Now Natalia
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  Speaker 1: runs a newsroom called Coda Story, which covers the erosion
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  Speaker 1: of democracy around the world and the corruption of the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: free press. This is Natalia's beat, which is why I
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: went to her to find out. Has it happened yet?
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  Speaker 1: Is the U.S.
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  Speaker 2: Captured?
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  Speaker 1: How would we know if the U.S. media is captured?
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  Speaker 5: I think one of the signs is self-censorship.
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  Speaker 1: But from the start, Natalia didn't talk about it that way.
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  Speaker 1: She kept gently but firmly trying to redirect my framing.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: She was describing something slipperier and, frankly, scarier than that.
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  Speaker 5: I think when you find yourself in a situation when
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  Speaker 5: journalists question themselves and what they're willing and not willing
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  Speaker 5: to say... where your editorial decisions become part of the
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  Speaker 5: bigger calculation of like, how is that going to affect
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  Speaker 5: my life? Am I going to get fired or am
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  Speaker 5: I going to get deported or am I going to
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  Speaker 5: go to prison? And the stakes get higher and higher,
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: but it can start with a very simple, am I
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  Speaker 5: going to get in trouble? Like, is this a story
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  Speaker 5: that's worth doing? And I think that's part of the
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: reason why the threshold is so difficult to identify, because
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  Speaker 5: I think it happens individual level for many, many people
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  Speaker 5: in silence.
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  Speaker 1: It's almost internal.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, then there are like much more obvious signs,
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  Speaker 5: takeovers of businesses, suspicious mergers, departures of big stars from
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  Speaker 5: television shows, that sort of like silencing of voices that
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: has You know, business excuse that looks completely legitimate. You know,
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: CBS is interesting. Like, we genuinely don't know what's going
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: to happen with the CBS takeover. But, like, the ducks align, right?
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  Speaker 1: This is what's so tricky and insidious about media capture.
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  Speaker 1: There always seems to be an excuse or a reason
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  Speaker 1: to explain something away. Like when CBS canceled Stephen Colbert
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  Speaker 1: as they were trying to get the Trump administration to
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: approve their merger with David Ellison's company. Did that mean
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: we're captured? Or did it just mean late night shows
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: are losing money? Probably both, but the money thing muddies
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the claim of capture. How about Jeff Bezos overhauling his
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Washington Post's opinion section to be more conservative? Is that
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  Speaker 1: capture creeping in or just the personal political preferences of
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  Speaker 1: a billionaire businessman? How about the editor at a national
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: magazine I was chatting with telling me he's noticed them
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  Speaker 1: assigning fewer stories about people of color or about women
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  Speaker 1: or conservation? How they're reorganizing their story list to delay
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  Speaker 1: pieces that deal with identity. Capture? Or just a publication
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  Speaker 1: reflecting the zeitgeist?
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  Speaker 5: It's subtle shifts in the environment that are very easy
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  Speaker 5: to justify as the water in which you're boiling gets
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: hotter and hotter.
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  Speaker 1: But do you feel there is a threshold when a
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  Speaker 1: country goes from the media is not captured to we
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: are in capture?
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: I think it's very easy to see it in hindsight
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: rather than when it's happening in real life. I remember
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: in 2014 covering the annexation of Crimea and we were
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: seeing all this Russian troops coming in and taking over.
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  Speaker 1: This was in February of 2014. Russia invaded this part
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  Speaker 1: of Ukraine, Crimea, and ultimately annexed it, made it part
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  Speaker 1: of Russia. Natalia was there on the ground watching as
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  Speaker 1: troops streamed in.
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  Speaker 5: Trapped in the middle of a battle between Kremlin-backed rebels
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  Speaker 5: and Ukrainian troops. I was doing a live for the
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  Speaker 5: BBC and Next to me was a Russian television correspondent
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  Speaker 5: who was going on air. And the dynamic on the
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  Speaker 5: ground was that there were all these Russian troops, but
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  Speaker 5: they had no insignia. So you kind of couldn't tell
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  Speaker 5: whose troops they were. And Putin kept insisting day after
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: day after day that there were no Russian troops in Crimea.
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  Speaker 1: Putin was insisting these soldiers were local Ukrainian militias. Not true.
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  Speaker 1: They were Russian troops, as the Ukrainians were claiming from
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  Speaker 1: the start.
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  Speaker 5: And I'm standing on the ground in Crimea. I'm about
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  Speaker 5: to do a live hit. I'm standing next to the,
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  Speaker 5: and we had like a little patch and a Russian
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  Speaker 5: television correspondent was next to me and I'm listening in.
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  Speaker 5: And he talks about the fact that these troops are
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  Speaker 5: self-defense battalions who are, you know, in Crimea and they're
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: like local Ukrainian Crimeans who are defending. And then The
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: line cuts, like he's done, and then he starts shouting
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  Speaker 5: and screaming into the microphone because he's gone back to
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  Speaker 5: his producer, swearing and saying, like, I can't do this anymore.
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  Speaker 5: This is a total lie. You know it's a lie.
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  Speaker 5: You're making me say these things. This is such bullshit.
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  Speaker 5: They're our boys. They're our boys. When are we going
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  Speaker 5: to say that they're our boys?
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  Speaker 6: Whoa.
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  Speaker 2: And I remember.
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  Speaker 5: going up to him later that night. We were in
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  Speaker 5: the same hotel and we ended up, you know, chatting
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  Speaker 5: for quite a while. He was, you know, a nice,
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  Speaker 5: intelligent man who was basically saying, I don't know what
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  Speaker 5: to do. I can't quit. I have no other skill.
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  Speaker 5: I have a family to support. I can't get out
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  Speaker 5: of Russia. I spent my whole career working for this station.
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  Speaker 1: Like, what do I do?
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: But I also can't do that. And he was dealing
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: with this enormous personal dilemma. But everyone working for Russian
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: TV knew that the official line was, these are self-defense battalions,
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  Speaker 5: indigenous to Crimea. These are not Russian troops. And this
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: is what we're doubling down on. And that's what he had.
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  Speaker 5: He knew he had to double down.
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  Speaker 4: Or what?
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  Speaker 1: Had he not?
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  Speaker 5: Oh, he'd be fired. He said he'd be fired. He
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: was told that he'd be fired. We know that the
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: core messaging is decided in the Kremlin. and then passed
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  Speaker 5: out to the editors-in-chief of the main stations in Russia.
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  Speaker 5: And then things can be massaged around the core messaging.
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  Speaker 5: But there's some messages that they have to stick to,
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  Speaker 5: that they absolutely have to stick to. And the order
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: was to stick to the line that this were not
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  Speaker 5: Russian troops.
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  Speaker 1: Stick to it or what? And I understand the consequence
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  Speaker 1: for that individual journalist if he had on live TV
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  Speaker 1: said the truth, said something different, he would have been fired.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: But in terms of the kind of top-down chain of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: command you're describing?
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: Well, in Putin's Russia, stick to it or you're going
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: to fall out of a window. Because that's the kind
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: of regime it is, right?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: They kill you.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: I'm generally wary of comparing Russia's treatment of the press
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to the U.S. I've always worried about overblowing it. The
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: real threat of violence seemed to put Russia in another category.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: But it is true that more and more journalists in
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: America are getting tear-gassed by law enforcement... assaulted, locked up.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: One was just deported after covering ice. And Natalia, who
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: has reported in Russia, who grew up in the Soviet Union,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: she is not hesitant to compare there to here.
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: I don't know how helpful it is to make a
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: distinction between capture and repression, because repression is capture. Obviously,
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: it's a completely different environment. The power dynamics are different.
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: I see the pattern that is the same. One of
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: the things that I've is the centralization of the message.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: I think this administration is very disciplined and very good at, like,
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: putting certain messages out and making sure that they're widely
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: picked up in, like, slightly different iterations by so many
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: actors that it, you know, it just becomes the narrative.
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: When it comes to narratives, I think there are so
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: many that have become embraced in the U.S.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: What's an example of that?
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: As, you know, librarians are the enemy. Like the war
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: on librarians in the U.S.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: The president fired the Librarian of Congress. Why did he
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: choose to do that? We felt she did not fit
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the needs of the American people.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: There were quite concerning things that she had done at
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI.
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: Well, like, slavery wasn't really a thing in the U.S.
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: That backtracking, like, it happens in a very similar way
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: in other authoritarian countries. environments as well.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Listening to Natalia, I started thinking about Donald Trump's big lie,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the lie about him having won the 2020 election and
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: how that proliferated, how an autocrat doesn't need to use
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: actual state violence against journalists to get what he wants.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The big guy starts shouting the message from the top.
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: This is a fraud on the American public. This is
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to
• 15:40
  Speaker 6: win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: That message shoots out like from a splatter gun into
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the media ecosystem. Boosted along by podcasters and weird fake
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: news Facebook pages and memes, audiences start buying it. The
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: big right-wing broadcasters take it up. Talk radio, Fox News.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: We don't know how many votes were stolen on Tuesday night.
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: We don't know anything about the software that many say
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: was rigged.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: We don't know. We ought to find out. I love
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: these legal challenges because we have to get to the
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: bottom of all this and expose fraud where it occurred.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: They concoct all sorts of tall tales that support this
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: fake narrative. about phony ballots on planes and corrupted voting machines.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: Right now, Joe Biden is pretending to be the president-elect.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: They know they haven't won this thing fair and square.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: A third of the country comes to believe this damaging
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: fake story that the election wasn't legitimate. The lie inspires
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: an insurrection attempt. And when Trump comes back into office,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: he makes denying the results of the 2020 election a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: cornerstone of his administration. It becomes a loyalty test for
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: people in the MAGA world. Here's Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: last month trying to get Trump's nominee for the Federal
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Reserve Board, Stephen Myron, to crack and simply state the truth.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Easy yes or no. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: presidential election? Joe Biden was certified by Congress as the
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: president of the United States.
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: So did Donald Trump lose that election? As I just said,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden was certified by the Congress. Did Donald Trump
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: lose that election?
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Can you say the words Donald Trump lost that election?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Are you independent enough to say that?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: The Congress certified Joe Biden as president of the United States.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: All right. So that was one. Let's try another.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: Obviously, the White House is not sending directives to, you know,
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: heads of ABC and so on. But yet, do we
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: now live in the world where they don't need to?
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: Because They create the mood music so effectively with that
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: centralized messaging. They push it out to their sympathizers, the movements,
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: and they just create this mood music. And that mood
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: music is very much part of it. And that's what
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: creates the narrative. And then with just a little bit
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: of fear and a little bit of self-censorship, it's easier
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: and it's safer in the time of great uncertainty just
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: to be on the safe side, to just follow the
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: mood music. And that's how everyone gets caught into it.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: Capture works in much more subtle ways than we imagine.
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: It creeps up on you, and I have watched it
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: creep up on people, brave, principled people, because you slowly
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: make choices that you can live with.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: After a quick break, Natalia explains a grand unified theory
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: she's come up with for how censorship works in the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: modern age and she points at an important culprit. Welcome back.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: If you've been listening to our show recently, you know
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I'm wrestling with the question of what can be done
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: about lies that are overwhelming us online, and how to
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: hold tech companies more accountable for their role in this.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I've honed in on this policy change, reforming a law
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: called Section 230, to allow people to sue internet companies
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: when they algorithmically boost posts that are defamatory. As Natalia
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: has studied the way that repressive regimes are operating in
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: recent years, including regimes she's reported under, as she's documented
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the methods they've devised to stamp out narratives they don't like,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: she's come up with a theory, one that's specifically about
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: what I've gotten focused on too, the internet and social media,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and the way strongman leaders are using it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: Instead of censorship, what authoritarian regimes use the world over
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: is noise. And I think noise has become the new censorship.
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: As a child, I was born in the Soviet Union.
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: And I remember my early childhood memories as, you know,
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: my mom listening to shortwave radio to the Voice of
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: America or the BBC because she knew that all the
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: information we got at home was fake. and you had
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: to find a signal that came from the outside to
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: give yourself understanding of what really was happening right and
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: you had to like interpret it and that's how you
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: try to make sense of the world and figured out
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: how to navigate it. I think what has happened since
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: is that we don't we no longer have censorship the
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: way we had it like that doesn't exist anymore and
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: I don't think It's coming back on a big scale.
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: I don't think it's going to come to America in
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: the way that it happened in the Soviet Union. You
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: no longer need to censor a single voice. You put
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: out so much noise that truth gets lost and it
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: becomes impossible to figure out who is saying what. Endless
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: theories and rumors and fake news and pieces of information,
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: you know, and some of it is truthful information too.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: But if it's all going into the same pipe and
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: if that pipe is full of sewage, you know, a
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: little bit of clean drinking water is not going to
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: make any difference. And that architecture.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not drinking that water.
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: You're right. But you are. We're all drinking that water.
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: That's the thing. We're all drinking that water.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: This made me think back to my trip this summer
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: to the Iowa State Fair. where I asked people how
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: they were feeling about the state of things in the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: country and with the media, and just the exhaustion they expressed. Personally,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's hard to know who to trust
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: in the press to get a straight answer on things.
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: It's exhausting.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Every time you turn around, nobody knows what's true.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Nobody knows what to believe.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: How do you know what's real and what's fake sometimes,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: you know? Because sometimes... You get these fake news articles
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: that will report this. And people will go, oh, yeah,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: that's real. So let's all believe it and spread it
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: out there.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Natalia says what I was hearing people say in Iowa,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that's evidence of media capture.
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: I think that's the big picture to media capture. Because
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: media capture is happening in that bigger environment that is
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: so noisy, that is so overwhelming. That is so hard
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: to punch through that it becomes much easier for those
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: with resources and power to manipulate certain narratives and to
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: make sure that they go the way they want. Silicon
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: Valley has become the perfect accomplice to people like Vladimir
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: Putin because they're the ones who created the information architecture
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: that allows for this, the zone is being flooded constantly
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: all the time.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Flood the zone is the Trump team's actual strategy. Trump
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: advisor Steve Bannon brags about it.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Keep driving it, flood the zone, overwhelm them.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: It gets to be a psychological thing.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: They're overwhelmed.
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: They don't know where to turn.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: But Bannon and Trump, they copied this from Putin.
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: You know, he was really good at putting out, you know,
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: another scandal. He puts out, Kremlin puts out, like, hundred
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: conflicting contradictory theories. You know, when I covered the downing
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: of MH17, the Boeing over Ukraine, that was shot down
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: by the Russian troops.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: The Malaysian flight.
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: The Malaysian flight. It was shot down by the Russian
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: missile over Ukraine. And it was incredible to see, like,
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: you were standing there in those fields, surrounded by bodies
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: that have fallen out from this plane. Everyone had died.
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: 298 passengers, 80 children. I was there.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: And I arrived early. And Moscow pumping the propaganda and
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: conflicting theories on a contradictory hypothesis on who shut down
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: the plane. And you could see them spreading across the internet.
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: It was the Ukrainian jet. It was a Western conspiracy.
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: It was the CIA. It was this. It was that.
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: It was like Endless, endless conspiracy theories.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: You're like scrolling online seeing this?
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: And then the local people right in those fields are
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: repeating these things back to you. And that's, you know,
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: that environment is created where people like the agency is
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: taken away because it feels like it's impossible to find
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: the truth.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: What I hear you saying is that I kind of
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: maybe came to this conversation with like a more simplistic
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: view of capture or a cruder view of it. Like
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: why capture matters is that the public can't access reliable
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: information to stay informed and to connect with what's happening.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And so whether it's happening through this process of the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: government co-opting the independent press or some other more diffuse
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: means in our information ecosystem, it doesn't matter.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: Ultimately, the result of media capture is people not getting
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: the information they need or the understanding that they need
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: to navigate the world. Instead, they're getting the narrative that
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: serves someone else's agenda. People are being copped. People have
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: elected governments that are taking over things that people value,
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: like their independent media. And all of that happens through
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: manipulation of narratives, basically. And the Silicon Valley has built
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: a business model on, you know, they essentially profit from
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: the abundance of information. And I think the news industry
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: in particular is very guilty and has a lot of
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: responsibility for the world that we live in because I
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: think we failed at our pretty basic function, which is
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: to hold powerful to account when it comes to Silicon
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: Valley and when it comes to tech bros who are
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: now pretty much running the world and are shaping the world.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Natalia moved to Silicon Valley for a year to do
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: a fellowship at Stanford where she worked on this theory
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: about noise being the new censorship, largely because she wanted
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to be in that world, developing sources, seeing how people
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: who work in tech think.
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: You know, these are a handful of men whose fortunes
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: make them bigger than sovereign nation-states. And there are a
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: handful of men who don't believe in sovereignty of nation-states.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: It was all there for reporters to cover and raise
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the alarm on for years.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: And we failed to tell the story. And I think
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: part of the reason we failed to tell the story
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: is because we drank the Kool-Aid, because Silicon Valley was
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: very good. They made fantastic, shiny products that made our
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: lives easier, and they were also kind of cool. You know,
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: everyone wanted to be part of it. And I think
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: when it comes to just pure accountability reporting, you know,
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: it didn't happen. I went to my first journalist conference,
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: I don't know, 2016, 2015, maybe when I was setting
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: up Coda. And I remember Facebook was like a tiny booth, right,
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: on the vendor floor. Within two years, Facebook was the
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: keynote speech. Facebook was a keynote speaker at all journalism conferences.
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: They bankrolled the journalist conferences along with Google, along with
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: other tech companies. They ran labs and gave out grants.
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: And then they told the newsrooms that everyone should pivot
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: to doing instant articles. Facebook would pivot to doing more video.
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: And then all the newsrooms would be like, now we
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: need to do more video. We kind of adopted as
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: an industry, we adopted their business model, which is all
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: around clicks and traffic. And in that adoption and in
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: taking money from them.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: And building our distribution to be so very reliant on them.
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: That's right. And in just simply in drinking their Kool-Aid,
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: we kind of forgot what we are for. We got
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: ourselves into a giant mess. Sadly, I see the pattern
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: totally repeating itself now with AI. You know, Facebook has
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: long pulled out. Google is not that interested anymore. But,
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: you know, Microsoft is now at the journalism conferences serving
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: champagne at receptions. Absolutely.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Champagne?
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: What conferences are you going to?
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: I remember having a conversation with a guy at Google.
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: It was just like friendly drinks. And we were talking
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: about some of these things. And I was talking to
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: him about, you know, trying to connect these dots between...
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: some of the decisions made in the valley and how
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: they play out like in faraway places and of how
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: a certain like tweak to an algorithm enables Russians to
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: go down and hunt down a Ukrainian or makes it
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: impossible for like an Afghan exiled journalist to reach his
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: community back in Afghanistan. And his reaction was basically it's
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: collateral damage. Like he's like, yeah, we know this happened.
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: So it's not that we don't know. But it's collateral damage.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Collateral damage in service of what?
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: In service of the bright, beautiful future that many of
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: the people I met. really believe in and everything that
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: happens in the meantime, you know, like that stands in
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: the way will, you know, that's too bad, but like
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: the cause is fantastic and great and that's where we're
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: headed and we just have to put up. To me,
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: that's how like Joseph Stalin treated you know, people he
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: sent to the gulags.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Or Machiavelli.
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: Or Machiavelli or any tyrant, you know, and that's why
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: I think of the Valley as like a place of
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: this like authoritarian kind of ethos in some way, because
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: they're so sure in what they're building and what they're creating.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Is there, when you think back to the last 10,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: 15 years, is there a story or a moment where
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that's where we as reporters and journalists
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: should have done something different, covered it differently, positioned ourselves differently?
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: You know, like, for example, like we, one of the
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: most underreported stories in the West, the West, there was
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: plenty of coverage of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: who was killed in prison by Putin. But what didn't
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: get any coverage was that Navalny came up with an absolutely, like,
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: fascinating way of going around really, really harsh restrictions around
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: elections in Russia. And if it had worked... and we're
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: talking 2018, 2019. If it had worked, it could have
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: become a really interesting blueprint for any opposition party fighting
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: in elections anywhere in the world. So he comes up
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: with a way of participating in the democratic process, even
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: though he's technically banned from it. And it's basically an
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: app where any Russian using their zip equivalent of a
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: zip code can look up Navalny's recommendation for who to
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: vote for. Super simple, but could have been incredibly effective
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: and brought about the upset of Putin's party. What happened
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: was that the Russian government requested that Apple, Google, take
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: down the app from their stores, take down the instructions
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: that were on Google Docs, and take down all the
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: videos about it from YouTube. And they obliged.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And that killed it, basically.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: It killed it.
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: It killed it, and I think eventually it killed Navalny. Well,
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: Putin killed Navalny, but he didn't have a fair chance
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: of a fight to begin with, and Silicon Valley very
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: much aligned itself with the Russian government in that case,
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: as they have with many others. These dots all connect.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: In the last few weeks, the Trump administration told Apple...
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: take down apps from its store that allow people to
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: document and share videos of ICE doing public raids. Apple
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: did it. The administration asked Meta to get rid of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to track
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: ICE agents in Chicago. Meta did it. Also, Donald Trump
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: sued YouTube for suspending his account after the January 6th riot.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Instead of using Section 230, the special immunity internet platforms get,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: to block the lawsuit... which YouTube totally could have used
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and they have used in many other cases where non-presidents
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: were suing them, YouTube instead settled with Donald Trump, agreeing
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: to pay the president $ 22 million, which will go towards
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: building the new White House ballroom. The company also reinstated
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Trump's account and a bunch of other accounts supporting the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: president that they had previously deemed harmful enough to ban.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And now, the president's buddy, Larry Ellison... whose son owns
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Paramount and CBS and is trying to buy Warner Brothers
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and CNN, along with Trump's other buddy, Rupert Murdoch, they
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: are part of a group of investors purchasing the fastest-growing
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: social app in America, TikTok, a deal the Trump administration arranged.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Before I left Natalia, she had one more turn of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the screw for me, one more facet of media capture
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: that I truly never considered, something she says has taken
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: place in my own mind. Natalia was talking about how
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: she thinks we need more straight-up regulation of social media
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: and tech companies. These platforms are products, she says, like
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: cars or planes or cement. We require safety measures for those,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and we need the same for social media. The idea
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: of active regulation, that's not something I've been so into.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: My knee-jerk reaction is, that's the government regulating speech, and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I feel allergic to that. But Natalia believes I only
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: feel that way because the tech industry has exploited my
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and other journalists' weakness, our love of the First Amendment.
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, I always think of the way that the
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: big tech weaponized the First Amendment is very similar to
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: the way the gun lobby weaponized the Second Amendment.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like all the industries you're mentioning, where they have
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: been subjected over time to regulations and safety measures. Yeah.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to rein in the harms of their products, so auto
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: industry with seatbelts, cement with certain regulations, they're not tied
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: up with a constitutional amendment. It does feel like social
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: media is a speech product in a lot of ways,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: and so it's been tied up in the First Amendment,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: and that's why it's avoided this.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: But broadcasters are regulated, and publishers are regulated. That's also
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: tied with the First Amendment. So there are ways. There
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: hasn't been a political will. And the tech lobby has
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: very successfully made sure, through incredible lobbying efforts, to contain
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: all the conversations about regulation around the publication free speech arguments.
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: Conversations that we aren't having are the safety conversations.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: To reframe it around... This is a product and it's
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: dangerous and it's harming people to reframe the counter narrative
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: to these products, to not make it about whether or
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: not you're regulating speech.
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely because it suits them just fine
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: for us to be engaged in the endless debate on
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: whether or not we're regulating speech.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: So I know it makes me tough. It's made it
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: tough for me to engage in it just as a journalist, because,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: you know, like if you're if you're It's interesting for
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: you to put it this way. I never thought that
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: they were setting the terms of that debate in such
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: a way that it made it hard for me and
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: other journalists, I think, to come out on an adversarial side.
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: It's part of the capture.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: That's part of the capture?
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I got to sit with this one. I think social
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: media regulations are tricky in practice, but also politically tricky.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: They're divisive. That's why I like reforming Section 230, making
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: it so people can sue tech companies and hold them
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: accountable in at least certain cases. There's bipartisan political will
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: to do it. And the way I look at it,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: it's the opposite of regulation. We would be rolling back
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: a law about speech rather than adding in a bunch more.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: But there are lots of people who hate that idea, too.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: People who I respect and have been yelling at me
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: online since I came out as an advocate for it.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: So the next time we pick up this thread, that's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: what we'll get into. The reason Section 230 exists and
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the bad things that could happen if we change or
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: get rid of it. Though I still think we should.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: It seems like a good time to point out that
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: question everything. We are independent media. We're funded by listener-supported
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: public radio. We're not trying to do a big merger,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: not donating money to anyone's ballroom project. We call things
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: like we see them. And right now, if you're looking
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: for that kind of voice, a great way to support
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: us is just by sharing the show with a friend
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: or with five friends. Text this episode along. Spread the word.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Today's episode was produced by our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: with help from associate producer Kevin Shepard. Robin Semien and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: includes producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis and contributing
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney. This episode was fact-checked
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: by Annika Robbins and mixed and sound designed by Brendan Baker.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Our music is by Matt McGinley. Our partners at KCRW
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Jamera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Next week on Question Everything, Ira Glass sits down with
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: a whistleblower who spent years in prison for leaking documents
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: to a news outlet. More time than any other source
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the government's ever gone after. And one of the things
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't know, Toby, in your book is just how
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: many people see classified documents.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: It's like over a million people have access, right? A
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: million of us saw that document and like a million
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: of us were waiting for that one to get leaked.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.