Latest / The Bill Handel Show / History of the Press | Moderate Dems

Transcript

History of the Press | Moderate Dems · The Bill Handel Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handel on demand from KFI AM 640.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Don't tell me what to do. Oh no. KFI AM
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: 640 live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Good Friday morning
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: to you. Neil Saavedra and the morning crew here. Bill
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Handel's on vacation for a couple of weeks. A lot
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: of hubbub. around journalism and who gets into the White
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: House press corps and all that stuff. And I was
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: thinking about this last night and, you know, Ann and
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I go back and forth and Kono as well with
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: stories that are going on in the evening, things we
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: want to talk about. And there was a story by
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: CNN about the intricacies of press credentials. And As I
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: started reading it, I went down this deep dive of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: fascination about journalism because it's much different than anything else. Now,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I tell people, people get confused because I work in
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: news talk, that I'm a journalist and I'm not. I
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: could be considered a food journalist, I suppose, because I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: have reported on certain stories and Enterprise stories gone after
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: certain bits of information and so on. But I never
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: refer to myself as that because that's not who I am.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And I have a great respect for journalists, the good ones.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: And I've had the honor and pleasure of working with
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: some great journalists. But then you go and you think
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: about it and it's like, well, what makes them a journalist?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: What's official? If you're an attorney, you have to be licensed.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: You either have to pass the bar or you have
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to be an apprentice and put in a certain amount
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: of hours. Meaning you either go to school or you
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: can be an apprentice and then you still have to
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: pass the bar. But a doctor, you have to go
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: through the schooling. You have to do these things. Matter
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: of fact, back in the day, Kono's job, behind the board,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: you had to be licensed. You had to understand, gosh,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Morse code, I think. You had to get tested for
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Morse code and all kinds of things. You had to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: understand a lot of different things, and it's changed. But journalism,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: since the founding of this country, has always been more
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: about the people than it has about an organization. And
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: now when you think of news, you think of Fox
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: News or NBC. You think of corporate news. But that's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: not the way it started. The first, the press, when
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the First Amendment was ratified on December 15th, 1791, the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: words the press is ratified. what was used and what
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it meant was pretty different than what we think of
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the press today. Back then, the press was literally a press,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: a printing press. That was the press. And anybody that
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: had the ability to make a pamphlet, a leaflet, a booklet,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a newspaper, something that could get these bits of information out,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that was the press. if you had this big hand
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: operated machine, uh, you had movable type either out of
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: wood or lead. And strangely enough, that's what I was
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: trained in. I studied, uh, production press and, uh, so,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and what, and I was tested on doing the letter press.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I was tested on doing the, uh, I think it was,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: I think it was the preamble to the, to the constitution,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, I had to hand set that
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: type for my grade, for one of my grades. And
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you literally would put these pieces of lead or wood
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: in there shaped like letters. They were all backwards and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you'd hand put them. So you'd have to, then you'd
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: put spacers, leading what they call leading or kerning, depending
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: on if you're spreading out the type or from each other,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: or you're spreading out the lines from each other. And
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: it's a process. And they would do this and write
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the entirety of something, put it into a flywheel press
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: or something, and they'd press it out and they would
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: hand it to people. That was the Internet. That was television.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: That was everything. To me, it is so much more
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: important than a president that's annoyed by a group. Having
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a free press is so important to the very core
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of the United States that all of us should fight
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: against this. I don't care if you wear a red
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: hat or not. I don't care about any of that.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: The press must have access. We talked a little bit
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: about the fact that there is no, yeah, you can
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: go into communications, you can study journalism, but there is
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: no specific, anybody can be a journalist. And I know
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: we don't like that sometimes because we see it misused
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: by independent journalists or people that are influencers that call
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: themselves journalists or something. But citizen journalism is important. There's,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you know, locally we have a lot of, you know,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: smaller papers or groups. There's one that I follow, LA Taco,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: which actually started as, you know, food, food blog. But
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: they actually do some great reporting. Now, do I always
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: agree with a perspective that they have? No. But you
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: know what? I give money to them every month because
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: it's imperative to have as much free press as you can.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: So in the early days, as I said, back December 15th,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: 1791 is when the First Amendment was ratified. And press
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: meant something very different than what we see now. But
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: it was... Things that were produced on presses, newspapers, pamphlets, books,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: political essays. And the press was just people. People that
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: had printers, publishers, editors, all rolled into one. And it
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't always somebody writing under their own name. You know,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: you had ordinary citizens. You had newspapers regularly printing letters
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: and essays written by people who weren't professional journalism by
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: any stretch. Some writers even used fake names. You had
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton. You had James Madison. You had John Jay
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: famously writing the Federalist Papers under the name Publius. So
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: the idea of the press wasn't limited to a special
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: group of professionals like we think now. It certainly wasn't
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: corporations that we see now with their own agendas and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: their own interests beyond just getting the news out. People
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: had the right to print, to distribute their ideas, their opinions,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: without first getting permission from the government. That was at
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the core. That is the key. Now, here's where it
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: gets a little sticky. Press passes are different. Credentials are different.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So you can't just get what the White House refers
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: to as a hard pass and not like, Do you
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: want to go over to Kono's house and cuddle? That's
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: not the type of hard pass I'm talking about. This
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: is like a credential that you have to get from
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the White House. And this is given to reporters that
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: meet a criteria or requirements, undergo background check, all those
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: things for the White House press office. They're the ones
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that do the credentialing. But they have to allow access. Now,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: here in L.A., Amy, you've probably known this. In L.A.,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: who gives out press credentials in Los Angeles? The city. Yeah,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: through the LAPD. So the LAPD is in charge of
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it for the city. So back when I had a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: press credential, I used to have a press credential for
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: KFI because I was often out at events and had
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: to cross police lines or fire lines for things as
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: support for our journalists or our hosts. So I had one.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: CHP has one. There are others that get you other
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: things maybe, but the LAPD one is respected by everyone.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't make you a journalist. That just gives
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: you the right to cross certain lines, both fire and
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: police within reason. So there is no, I remember back
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in the day in like a, I don't know, soldier,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a fortune or a gun magazine or something in the back.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, get your press credentials. And it was just
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a thing that said press, LA press or something. I've
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: seen those in the wild every now and again, but people,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I used to make some for the station here.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I was in charge of making the press passes that were,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: that identified our press people as press in addition to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the whatever they got. So the whole point of this,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: this simple plastic ID hanging from a lanyard doesn't make
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you press. It just credentials you as someone who's allowed
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to be in the premises of whatever that building is.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: is and that might be for an event that may
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: be for the white house press corps that may be
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: for the lapd whatever it is but if you think
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: yay my boy trump is knocking these weasels out of
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: there and they deserve it because they give fake news. Boy,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: do you have it wrong? We have to all, regardless,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I'm an independent. I am not a Democrat. I'm not
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a Republican. We all have to protect the sanctity of people,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: not just the press that we think of today, because
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: that is not what they were dealing with. When back
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: in 1791, that's not what they were dealing. It was
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: people with a press. It wasn't a corporation. It wasn't
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: these things. People have the right to know and have
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: a clear idea. And if somebody is putting out fake news,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the more news people we have out gathering, the better
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the picture is, the bigger the bird's eye view. So
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: be be weary. Of going, oh, yeah, they kick these
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: out and I don't like those people and, you know,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: MS now or whatever it is, they're dirtbags, whatever it is.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: There's eventually going to be a different side than your
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: side in that office. And you're going to get pissed
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: off when you don't have the point of view that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you need, that you believe you need. So keep that
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: in mind. All right. Thanks to those of you giving
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the talk backs in response to journalism. Listen, it's not perfect.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: The system is never going to be perfect. My whole
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: point about that is the more journalism you have from
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: different angles, the better the picture you get. And yes,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: there's going to be times when there might be some
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: purpose to leave a particular journalist out or something like that.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: But be careful. It is imperative that we have freedom
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of the press. And you don't want your guns taken away.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Worry about having your voice and a, you know, Nixon
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: tried to do all that garbage. All right, so I'm
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: not a conspiracy guy at all, which usually is what
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: people say right before they say their conspiracy. I'm not
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: going to say a conspiracy. What I'm going to tell
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you is my belief, and this comes from, a long
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: time ago. I was a Republican for many years, but
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I was just left or just right of center. And
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I vote both. I've always voted both. And there was
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: a time where I was very hardcore Republican, and then
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: that drifted away to even a point of embarrassment. That
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: got worse when Trump came into the mix. He humored
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: me at first, and I thought he's kind of funny
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: to watch. And some of the things he's saying, I
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: was like, I agree with. But his execution, I find
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: him ham-fisted. He's not my guy. He's the president of
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: my country, and I respect that, but he's not my guy.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Didn't vote for him, wouldn't vote for him. Just not
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: my guy. And again, I noticed how much I vote
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: back and forth. I vote for Democrats and I vote
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: for Republicans, and I've always done that. So as far
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: as who I'm talking about right now, I'm talking about
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of us. I don't even care if
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you say Republican or Democrat. You probably are more of
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a centrist when you look through things individually. And that's
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the majority of America. We have the coasts, which we
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: happen to live on one of them, that is very
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: rooted in the left and very democratic-laden in both the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: east and the west coast. So what you saw is
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: an upheaval of the center of America. For the vast
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: majority rising up and saying, we're done with this. We
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: want to put someone in there that's going to fight
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: for us. Maybe not pretty, maybe not soft-spoken, maybe not
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: elegant in the execution. But we're going to vote this
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: guy in. And so Trump got in. And then, of course,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: we got Biden and then Trump again. And the MAGA
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: movement came from that. Now, if you remember back, if
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you push yourself way back, the massive group of Republicans
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: in the early days weren't keen on Trump at all.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Even if they liked some of the things he said,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: he was brash, all those things, they weren't keen on it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: The MAGA movement has made such a massive wave That
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the pendulum will swing the other way. And I said
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: this from day one. Be careful what you wish for.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: There will be unintended consequences at the end of all this.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: All right. So back to Democratic Socialists of America. The
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: pendulum will swing, my people. It will swing. And just
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: know what's there. I think it's a Trojan horse. I
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: think the D means nothing in DSA. It is not democratic.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: They are socialists and, in some cases, straight out communist.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: My belief is that what we have here with capitalism
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: is the best scalable option. There are about 33 plus
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: options in the world of government philosophy. Socialism is great.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Communism is great on paper. They don't scale. I'm a
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: socialist at home, and I'm a communist with my greater family,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: but I'm a capitalist at heart. The problem is the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: socialism and communism do not scale well. They don't. They
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: don't work. Capitalism scales great, but we are at the peak.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Once you start going out of your system to run
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the system– i.e. going to China to have things made
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to make them cheaper, you have passed capitalism and you've
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: gone into greed. Greed is the problem. And for those
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that were asking, no, Jesus was not a socialist. That's
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: an anachronistic question. for one, because it wasn't until the
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: 19th century, but also there's a problem because the separation
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: of government and the peoples was big. Give unto Caesar
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: what is Caesar's, give unto God what is God's. He
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: spoke mostly about God and theology, not about politics. So
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the DSA, this is their platform from their website. You
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: work as much as you are able and no more
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: than needed. Now, if you ever read 1875 book by
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Karl Marx that was pretty popular, pretty, pretty popular, he says,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: from each according to his ability to each according to
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: his need. Famous political slogan, and people think he wrote it.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: He did not. It had been around. He made it
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: very popular. DSAUSA.org, it's been said that it's easier to
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: imagine the end of a world than it is to
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: imagine the end of capitalism. But just because it isn't
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: easy to imagine now doesn't mean we shouldn't try to
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: make it happen. The end of capitalism is their goal.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: The platform calls for reducing police budgets annually toward zero.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: On their website, ending reliance on incarceration and seeking freedom
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: for incarcerated people. No prisons, no borders, no police. Democratic
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Socialists of America released a political program titled Workers Deserve More,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: proposes a major overhaul of the U.S. constitutional structure. Rather
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: than keeping a traditional system of three equal independent branches,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the branches of government that are checks and balances are
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Rather than keeping that traditional system of three equal independent
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: branches with checks and balances on each other, the platform
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: outlines a transition towards a parliamentary-style system. Critics obviously have
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: characterized the platform as an assault on American democracy and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the Constitution. The checks and balances designed by the founders
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to protect minority rights from majority overreach. It's not climate
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: change we have to worry about. It's political change to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the degree that it will break apart the very system.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Has the current administration pushed that system to its limits
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and to see where it will break? Absolutely. But dismantling
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: it systematically is a bigger cringe and fear for me.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Mayor of New York, Saran Mamdani. In 2020, posted on
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: X while campaigning, he wrote, each according to their need,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: each according to their ability. That's Marx again. His appointed
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: staff member, Sia Weaver, she was appointed in January of
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: this year. She said that the sacred right to seize
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: property It's imperative for the government to be able to
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: take your property. She also wrote on X back when
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: it was Twitter in December of 2017, elect more communists.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Hassan Piker, look this wonderful man's name up. He's a
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: friend of Mom Donnie. He's a leftist political streamer. They
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: have a relationship. They've been seeing places together, going, doing things.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: He self-identifies as a socialist, though he frequently uses Marxist
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: theory and expresses alignment with far-left or communist ideas. He
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: referred to the Chinese leader Chairman Mao as a great
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: man of history, despite presiding over millions of deaths from
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: state-mandated policies, forced labor, and mass famines during his rule.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: He also went on to say, made a very famous
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: declaration that America deserved 9-11. He said, Piker went on
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to say, allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons would make
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the Middle East more stable. He often describes communism as
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the ultimate honorable goal of socialism. And I could go on.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I can go on. And the last thing I'll leave
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: you with is the promise to America. This was by Democrats,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: House Democrats and candidates that put together a pledge, a
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: promise to America. Says we are capitalists, not socialists. We
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: want safety, not lawlessness. We are mainstream, not extreme. We
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: are proud, not ashamed of America. That was the pledge, basically.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Out of 212 House Democrats, 15 signed that pledge. If
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you don't think that the Democratic Socialists of America are
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: trying to pierce in and step in and crush the Democrats,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the mainstream centrist Democrats, you're wrong. I'll ring that bell
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a thousand times out of a thousand. And they're trying
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to do it on the coasts. with Nithya Raman, with Mamdami,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and it is happening right now. Look this stuff up
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: for yourself. We'll be back with more. A great interview
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: that you have to hear when we come back. So
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: go nowhere. This is KFI Heard Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to The Bill Handel Show. Catch my
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: show Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.