Latest / 775 Alive / Ep022: FCC Says FAFO

Transcript

Ep022: FCC Says FAFO · 775 Alive

• 0:03
  [Music] Welcome to the 775 Alive podcast, your rural Nevada headquarters for decoding politics, economics, and general global shenanigans. I'm Crystal Newton, your business strategist, breaking down why Nevada's hustle is stronger than a sagebrush root in a windstorm. Here with my trusty co-host, Scott Gavorsky, PhD historian, here to explain the smart lessons of history, even if we are likely to ignore them. Grab your boots for a wild ride through today's most important news.
• 0:31
  Scott: Okay, so welcome back here again 775 yet again cuz uh Crystal's still down there in Vegas been particularly interesting uh through this sort of sequence of the last few episodes we've done uh because we have so much going on about this issue of speech and communicating across divides which is of course one of the focuses of 775 Alive and here we have to do it remotely.
• 1:02
  Crystal: Yeah, there are lots of different ways that we're covering the topic of freedom of speech and in this country is going through, especially with the memorial service that just took place. Charlie Kirk, I don't even know how many people wound up attending. Was do was it right that like 300,000 people showed up for . . .
• 1:16
  Crystal: Scott: Well, there might, there might have been that much. There certainly weren't 300,000. That stadium only said about 100, 100,000 maybe 120 if they used the playing surface. Uh but there was quite a crowd gathered outside as well.
• 1:30
  Crystal: a stadium next door as well. Yeah. So that was about freedom of speech. And then of course we have this big blow up in the last week. But the news says that Trump is using the FCC to bully networks to the point of where Jimmy Kimmel got fired, which is a complete miscontextualization of what happened or what could happen. So, we're going to kind of dive into all the different pieces of that story and and try to explain what actually happened.
• 2:02
  Crystal: tying these two tying this together, the freedom of speech and then of course uh the assassination of Charlie Kirk on on September 10th. Uh of course we had the big candlelight vigil up here in Elko had about 800 people which was surprising considering you know that 800 showed up about 32 hours after we started uh posting about it. So just over a day. Um but you know there's also other stuff before you go on. I have kudos to you. You got less than two days to set that up. It's not just a Facebook post. You had to have conversations with firefighters, police officers, and you pulled it off. 800 people showed up. That is awesome. So thank you. Yeah, we ran out of candles and you know the the police chief was there with a team and you know uh but it went peaceful and that's one of the things I think that's been interesting um about this is then immediately after that we had the Constitution event where we had the the Democratic Party and the Independent American Party of Nevada and myself do this presentation and again that went off without a hitch. In fact, that went so well we're talking about making that a yearly event, the three parties. That's awesome. That is so good to hear. Yeah. county in the country where that could happen. Well, I'm sure there's others and you know, one of the things that's been coming out to me is people have been asking, you know, how how did you get this together? Just ask. I mean, it was that simple. Um, but um yeah, and that that sort of puts us in sort of an odd u contrast to what we're hearing um in the rest of the country. And actually, I don't even think it's the rest of the country, but I think we're hearing it out of the media. Yeah. Yeah. And that really gets the heart of the conversation today. Is is there really a problem in this country or is it the representation of a problem visa v the national media just getting together to put out a narrative of democracy's dying, everything's going to hell and our president's a fascist and a dictator. It's it really starts to make you wonder if um if these media outlets are really operating their license according to the terms and conditions, which part of the terms and conditions of an SEC license is that you're not putting out content that is not for the best public interest. And so we're having this conversation again, but we had this four years ago, only it was coming from the Democratic side trying to bully the the social media platform executives, right, to banning conservative content. So, I thought we might start off with one of those clips. But before we do, did you have anything to add? No, no, no. Let's let's start off because I I want to back up because I think this goes on much uh much longer, but uh yeah, we've got actually I think we've got two clips. So, we have one in the it was the congressional testimony back in 2021 about social media, right? Mhm. Okay. So, let's go ahead and play that little clip. It's about what a little over 2 minutes. Let's play that first. Um and then we can chat about it a bit because this actually goes against what you're saying because this is actually new media more so than traditional media. So, let's go ahead and play it. Yeah. It was a day of reckoning for the CEOs of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, called to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. We have to decide how we want to handle speech that is legal but harmful and who should be responsible for what people say. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have had it for different reasons. Democrats blame social media giants for disseminating voter fraud claims that led to the deadly attack on the capital. Facebook has family and friends neighborhood, but it is right next to the one where there is a white nationalist rally every day. YouTube is a place where people share quirky videos, but down the street, antivaxers, co deniers, QAnon supporters, and flat-earthers are sharing videos. Republicans have had it with the censoring of conservative views. We are all aware of big tech's everinccreasing censorship of conservative voices and their commitment to serve the radical progressive agenda by influencing a generation of children and removing shutting down or handling any news books and even now toys that aren't considered woke. This is fundamentally unamerican. In a recent interview with a New York Times columnist, even Senator Bernie Sanders expressed concerns over President Trump being banned from Twitter. This is a bad news guy, he said. But if you're asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the then president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter? I do not feel comfortable about that. The CEOs address the struggle to find balance. We believe in free expression. We believe in free debate and conversation to find the truth. At the same time, we must balance that with our desire to for our service not to be used to sow confusion, division, or destruction. I don't think anyone wants a world where you can only say things that private companies judge to be true. Currently, a 25-year-old telecommunications law shields internet companies from liability for what users post. Your business model itself has become the problem. And the time for self-regulation is over. It's time we legislate to hold you accountable. That's what we're going to do. Still, this isn't the first time big tech CEOs have been called to the capital for a scolding. So the big question is, will lawmakers actually take action to rein in their power? Jennifer Wishon, CBN News. Okay, so we're back here in 2021. So this is after a lot of the censorship in the 2020 election when when then President Trump was kicked off a lot of platforms. you had the censorship of of views at at variance with CDC guidance on COVID um and a whole range of other issues that sort of opened this up on the political right on this question of regulation um of freedom of speech. Mhm. And um you know what's interesting is we also had in that same thing particularly after January 6th um the same sort of approach used um or same sort of sets of arguments used uh against traditional broadcast uh media as well. So here's a discussion an interview that uh Alexandria Okasiocortez AOC uh did with Jen Saki on her show back in uh 2023. Do you think media organizations or social media platforms should be accountable for the role for being platforms for incitement? I believe that when it comes to broadcast television like Fox News, these are subject to to federal law, federal regulation in terms of what's allowed on air and what isn't. And when you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very very clearly incitement of violence. Very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that I think we have to uh be willing to contend with. So what's interesting I think in in both of these d both of these clips is you're basically hearing from calls across the board that there needs to be more regulation, right? Uh that that somehow there's there's a role for the government in the interaction of speech and that's what has a lot of people up in arms right now following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Yeah. And a lot of this is what you've you've introduced the term to me, political theater. And I've heard that term my whole life, but it I'm starting to understand exactly what that is. But what we're dancing around here is there is a license that has been granted and it has terms and conditions. And one of those terms and conditions is that the stuff that you broadcast cannot be something that is not in the public interest. So it it really is kind of a subjective thing which it you know you toss it back to the politicians and they'll talk back and forth of you know himming and hawing on where the government is or isn't supposed to go in. But at the end of the day, I you have a board at the FCC that can at any time decide that you're you're violating that clause and it's a largely subjective decision. Well, let's let's back up because that's I'm going to disagree with you. I don't think that's totally what the dynamic is. So, um the the FCC regulations, again, this is something that's devised in the 1930s. So, it's another New Deal era program, right? It's been refined over the years, but its original intent was to address a very real physical limitation, and that is there's only a certain amount of bandwidth available for people to use, right? And so what they're trying to avoid in the 30s is one group basically going in there and buying all the bandwidth, all the radio bandwidth, although television operates the same same way. Um, and how they did that was by, you know, effectively the government stepping in, holding auctions for this bandwidth to ensure there's a a broad series of ownerships. Uh, but most importantly, where that public interest thing comes in is not so much that you can't say anything that's against the public interest. I mean, geez, look at all the crap that's on TV. It's it's hard to argue Ninja Warrior is somehow serving the public interest. I mean it's but um you know the the bigger issue in all that is the fact that um you had to devote sometime to public interest but it's also a question of if you're doing stuff that's destructive of the public interest the implication or the threat is always they could pull that license. Yes. Right. Um now that's changed recently of course since the early 2000s and the shift to digital uh there's far more bandwidth space opening up because of the technology changing. Um but at the same time we also have new media and that gets back to the first clip where new media in order to encourage people to get into it you don't have a limited bandwidth resource right so in cases of new media this is actually much more damaging um but you did have a law that was passed in the 90s to encourage companies to um sort of set up these forms of communication by removing them from liability for something their users post on their platform right now there's always been the acceptance that if they're doing something like, you know, sharing kitty porn and and they don't stop it, they're still liable because that's just illegal. Uh but, you know, if somebody defames somebody um in the definition of of knowingly saying a false statement, you know, the the billet board or BBS or Facebook or whatnot isn't going to be held responsible for that statement. And a lot of people thinking we should get rid of that as well, right? Um but I think part of the question here that's fundamental is, you know, what should be the role of the government here in regulating speech. Yeah. And and I think to get to the heart of the question though, I mean, we really have to talk about like what you're talking about, what is the regulator's role and and social media really doesn't have it's not under the FCC, but the govern the government still has a way to get to them through the SEC, which governs their publicly traded companies. So really the question is is I mean government has been coming in and bullying big companies for a long time because the truth of the matter is it's really hard to pass legislation and trade and and change code. It's much easier to try to bully the corporation first and see if he can get your way. But now that we're here with the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco, we really have to look at what happened there. And you had Donald Trump making a statement that could be considered bullying. You had the Fed chair that made a statement that could be considered bullying. And again, he was being interviewed on a podcast. It wasn't like he was announcing a new policy from the White House uh press corps, right? It was on a podcast that he was like, "Hey, we can take action. We can do this the easy way or the hard way again to lend lend to what I said earlier. There's there's a legislative way and a way to go through the court system that's hard or you can just straighten up and do what you know you're supposed to do." Um, the fact is is these people are very very vested in Charlie Kirk and there's a big portion of this country that just suffered and and are mourning a loss and this this news outlet with this license use this license to go out and say something that was knowingly really upsetting and and a point of national mourning. So I think we do get into the realms of those like did you violate the public interest here, you know? Right. Well, yeah. I mean, but again, and of course, you know, just to review, so so we had the the assassination on September 10th of Charlie Kirk and you know, you and I have talked about this that one of the the push back and the reaction to it was just how visceral it was, right? He had a lot of comparisons to the Melissa Horman case up in Minnesota, but you know, this is something that most people Well, most people probably weren't familiar with Melissa Horman, and that's nothing against hers, but she was a state legislator, right? uh not like Charlie Kirk going across the country. But more importantly, her death gets reported as sort of a a news item in the morning. You know, you don't see the crime scene photos. You know, you had the tidbit her husband and dog are also shot. Um yeah, see the graphic video of her dying. Yeah, it's not the graphic video. Um but I think part of the push back and where the public interest is coming in and where some of this is because I I think I think there is some mourning issues going on and I I don't mean to belittle anybody. Um, but I think part of it is also there's there's push back to what was conceived to be sort of this initial uh I don't want to say cheering, but there was a celebration from some segments of the the political left, right? And some of that was coming out of people in positions that are school teachers, their leaders in the community. Uh, that a lot of people I think were shocked at the unsemingness of it. Right. And what it seems might have happened is Jimmy Kimmel in his role as comedian um or political leaning, whatever, was going to lean into that even further than he did, right? He he posted something that was um or or said something in the show. Um and we're still not clear what happened because again, this is a private individual in a private contract with a company. So that's issue number one, right? So we don't know what the discussions are. We've got two stories is that um ABC just suspends him and his show's coming back on, you know, tonight while we're recording this. Um but you know, either he said something that was knowingly false and that's why they pulled him out under pressure here from the administration or the other story that's coming out is basically ABC said, "Okay, you know, you might have crossed the line. Why don't we just back up and apologize and go on?" because some of their subsidiary stations pulled the broadcast um and and he refused and actually wanted to go further and then it sort of blew up. So in that case, are we talking about a suspension cause of speech or a suspension for sort of disciplinary actions here within the with ABC, right? So this is this is just confused on a whole range of levels anyway. Yeah. And there there are a lot of levels. So the FCC when they give out licenses, they give them out to individual stations across the country. So there is no license that covers a big swath of the country, right? What winds up happening is these individual license holders wind up becoming affiliated with people who produce content and distribute it. So ABC is the owner of the Jimmy Kimmel show. They produce it and they distribute it alongside many many other shows. And so there that ABC actually does not hold a license and they're actually owned by the Disney Corporation who also doesn't own a license. they just they use licenses and license holders. So what was happening during this Jimmy Kimmel debacle was there was a merger going on that had yet to be approved by the FCC. And one side of the merger saw what happened with Jimmy Kimmel and was obviously a Charlie Kirk mourner and and was like this is a line for me. This merger will not go forward unless you pull this person or he apologizes. So really it came down to the merger entities. It really had nothing. I think Trump and the FCC board chair definitely was there was an assist there to get the ball in the hoop, but um we just saw some job boning from them. But what you did not see was the federal government coming in and firing Jimmy Kimmel. Like very clear. Well, and and you know that's that's part of where this gets into and I think people are having a a lot of problems with this is no, the government didn't act directly. Uh but does that threat constitute a big enough impact where it's censored speech? And this gets back to that first clip we played uh a lot of the reaction and a lot of the push back here uh against uh these social media companies o over the COVID stuff. And in fact, uh Jim Jordan uh there in the house just released that statement from Google where where Google said, "Yeah, under the B administration, you know, we were pressured a lot to censor stuff and we went along with it and we were wrong for that." Right? um that just has broken out in this. So um and there's a long history of government doing this type of stuff. We can go all the way back to to John Adams administration, right? The alien and sedition acts. The sedition acts were used uh against political rivals. So you had a regulatory environment uh for old media, newspapers even, you know, it used to be an old joke that's been around oh geez since long before any of us were born. um that that you know uh journalists, newspaper reporters could always tell um um who had complained about their uh about their piece uh by who they got chewed out by. And and the joke goes, "Docrats always complain to the editor. Republicans always complained to the publisher of the newspaper. So if one of the other was yelling at you, you know which side you had made mad." I mean that that's become sort of a standard joke. I'm not even sure anybody knows who who originated that, but that's been circulating for decades. Yeah. So I think this government regulation uh issue is um important and again part of my argument is is why do we even have regulatory bodies that have the power to do this right and I I mean I you know it's tough to own a business that falls under a regulatory agency and honestly your goal if you are one of those businesses is to never see your regulator that's the best scenario right so we I mean but um they're often in industries where if you give an inch people will take a mile. So, they are actually very effective and good things to have because only the most ambitious of us try to own a regulated business and so they do need tampering or tempering a little bit and and that's fine. Um, but I did want to speak to like a little bit of a nuanced um way to approach what hap or to to look at what happened here. To me, when when we elected Donald Trump president, there was a lot of things that we really wanted to see tackled. And from day one, from 2015, um the number one thing that this whole thing started with was fake news. And the reason why it's been the anthem of conservatives is because we have repeatedly over and over and over seen things like Democratic outlets telling us that Trump's a fascist. He's a dictator. If he gets elected, it's going to be the end of the country. It's the end of the world. Blah blah blah. And we've watched the Democratic side ratchet up in violence and we've been very concerned about the rhetoric that's been coming through these media outlets. And there's not a lot you can do about it because there is freedom of speech and we all honor and respect that. But what you can do, and some people may or may not agree with how ethical or moral this is, is you can jawbone and you can startle and scare the industry into being a little bit more reformed. And to me, again, that's the easier thing to do than to try to go in and legislate speech, which in the end is going to shoot us in the foot under the next Democratic administration. Right. Yeah. And I think I think there's some truth to that. The question is, how do you how do you do that? How do we ratchet back? I mean, yeah. Um, we we have Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who I am very comfortable saying was totally caught, as we all were, offguard with this Charlie Kirk situation. And he spent some time identifying some real problems with social media. Um but in some ways there's also this issue with traditional broadcast media. So you know um again in that in that interview with AOC the interview she does with Jensen Saki we listen to right she's talking about Fox News and a national public figure accusing them of incitement uh for violence and that that calls for government uh regulation. Now, one of the problems with this is, of course, nobody necessarily I I don't think anybody has a problem when there's a direct action, right? If somebody's in a crowd and says, "Okay, grab that guy and beat the living daylights out of him." And then people do it, right? So, there's there's a direct connection, direct causal connection, uh, with a call for violence and an expectation that it's going to be carried out. And then if it does carry it out, that's just a trifecta. You're guilty. No longer a speech. Now you're guilty of instigating an action that's criminal, right? Yeah. Uh the the problem we're having is that a lot of this is based on sort of blurring those distinctions, right? Just speech actually can't be regulated that much. We've had a string of Supreme Court decisions. Uh Brandenburg v. Ohio is probably the one everybody opposed now going back to the late60s. You know, you can say incredibly vile things and the government can't do anything against you, right? unless it directly leads to violence or um you know certainly a third party can sue you if it's defamation and you know you can prove that it's false and whatnot, right? Um that's not the problem. The problem is how do we make these causal links uh to violence and a lot of these issues that are coming out. Yeah. And it really doesn't come down to one person speaking hatefully. We're talking about platforms of distributing communication. And if you're going to use the government's platform to distribute your information, you're going to have to go according to how they're viewing you. And I think what the Trump administration has done here is put all the media outlets that use the federal licenses on notice that says, "Hey, we're taking a look and we're taking very seriously how your content is adding or subtracting from the high level of division in this country." And I and it and you're right. You're so right to point out this can be abused and it has been abused in the past, but this is kind of um and I think everybody probably thinks they're in unique times. So I I hope I don't sound naive to say this, but we've gotten to a really kind of unique time where I think we need to take some unique measures to try to ratchet things down. And really the federal government's paws are only on the FCC. They really can't do much with the the streaming services. That's going to have to go to Congress, who's famously not doing anything. So, well, that that's true on Congress, but I actually I actually disagree because one of the things we've seen that was super cynical. Please prove me wrong. No, no, no. Well, I don't want to I it's probably not going to prove you wrong. It's actually going to be more horrifying. Oh, no. Is one of the things we see is other regulatory um regulatory facets being deployed against free speech. And probably the clearest example of this is uh uh under the Biden administration, there was an effort um out of the Consumer Protection Bureau, I think it was, um to basically or New York State's consumer protection to basically lean regulatory on on New York banks um to basically defund de demonetize the National Rifle Association. that if you did any business with the National Rifle Association, you're going sort of to the top of the audit list. And uh 2024, the Supreme Court in in uh NRA vers Volo, right? Uh voted unanimously, I mean unanimous Supreme Court decision that no, this is an improper use of regulatory power, right? Um, I would actually expect that if something like the Jimmy Kimmel case, and again, I don't actually think the Jimmy Kimmel case, um, I don't think ABC took that decision based on anything the Trump administration said. I think they were much more concerned that some of their lences that carrying their program refused to carry it. Again, that's not anything new. This was a huge problem in the 1960s uh, in the civil rights era with southern stations not carrying content. Um, and most of the stations didn't care at that time, you know, and kudos to them. Um, but I think part of it is also, I mean, you know, Jimmy Kimmel is one of these guys. First of all, we've already seen with the Steven Cobear, right, which is another late night talk show that seems, at least for some on the left, to be cancelled because the Trump administration um, criticized his content. But in that case, you have a you have a program that, you know, is costing something like $100 million a year to produce and only bringing in like $60 million in revenue. So, it's a it's a losing proposition. Uh, and Nate Silver, who I think we can say is is um no conservative, right? Um, even he said he said, I don't I don't think that Steven Cobear's removal was a political action. I think what happened is the political dynamic became sort of this to use another adage, the straa broke the camel's back, right? You already have a show that you're having trouble justifying and and now it's just causing waves that aren't worth it. We're going to cancel in 10 months. in Steven Cobear's case, right? And Jimmy Kimmel, remember, has been caught up in a huge range of controversies over the last six or eight years, right? That doesn't justify taking away his freedom of speech, but you have ABC that's after the blackface issues, after some of the the allegations of of um you know, sexual assaults during the Me Too movement. Uh that if I remember correctly also got his show removed for a couple nights, right? Um or maybe it was Jimmy 10 years. Don't forget the 10 years of just drinking beers and watching women jump on trampolines, right? Well, and again, this this back Jimmy Kimmel that is problematic according to his and and you know ABC is in a problem that at some point they're just going to say, you know, this isn't worth the headache to try to defend somebody, right? You know, I've heard a lot of conservative outlets also talk about, hey, he's got terrible ratings. That's a real reason he's being fired. And it isn't. I I don't necessarily want to call that out so much as it's an interesting thing going on on that side. Um how good the content is really doesn't matter to ABC. What matters to ABC is selling commercial space and most of their income comes from pharmaceutical comm uh companies. Um and so really what they want to do is just put on any kind of show, but they just need to keep those marketing dollars coming in and that's that's all they really care about. And the pharmaceutical companies don't care about the ratings, which is an interesting dynamic. It's not a typical business situation, but they're just interested in keeping their footprint in the budget of ABC. So, you can see that like it really doesn't matter. They could swap out Jimmy Kimmel for anybody. And it's just it's important to keep that in mind. It's not really about how good he is. You know, this is that that brings up actually an interesting point that I'm not I'm not really sure I have an answer to, but I just I want to throw it out because I think it's interesting. So again, we've got a problem where we have an old media and and again a lot of my perspective on what we see now is we have systems that are 50 70 80 100 years old that are starting to collapse, right? They're all collapsing at the same time because they're not doing what they originally intended to do. Um and that's as far as any type of human change is natural. That's sort of natural change. Um but you have an old media that operates just like you were talking about. Um that is dying. I mean, you know, television and radio both are not the market share they were 30, 40 years ago, right? Let alone if we go back to the 1930s when the FCC is created, right? Um, so you you have uh a set of institutions that might actually be on their last legs, right? Um you have groups that are interested in propping them up, which includes a large number of the people, right? because the people who are screaming the most about the treatment of Jimmy Kimmel happen to be the people who are so tightly involved in protecting those old institutions whether that's Hollywood whether that's modern jour or other journalists u although you did have some legitimate critics on the other side Ted Cruz uh notably come up and stood up for for Jimmy Kimmels at least write the speech right um not what he said um but you also have this new media which is operating differently what my question is to you is do you think that old media looking at new media which frankly since it isn't tied to both story tradition and isn't tied to this public interest requirement are a lot more free and seems to be doing some well that this is encouraging sort of old media to be more um aggressive to try to be edgier for lack of a better term in order to capture back some of that advertising dollars. Oh gosh. Well, again like it's it's a really weird thing to think about. So, a lot of people don't fully understand this, but that those those old media dollars are set in place. It's it's more of a political expenditure than it is anything. Um, this new media is is I there's massive warehouses of people reselling marketing and for different levels of viewership and followership and there's like a massive distribution going on. But I imagine it's only going to be a while. It's not going to take long for the establishment media to figure out how to reinccorporate the most successful podcasts and and ancillary um media outlets into their own programs cuz they're going to do everything they want to do. Like they're going to try to survive, right? They're just not going to fade off or they're going to start investing into podcasts and other news media outlets. So, it could go either way. But either way, those political dollars are going to find their way to the most prominent voices, if that makes sense. Well, yeah. And and I I mean, I get that and I actually like if like a pharmaceutical company came to us and offered us $5 million, that'd be really hard to turn down, right? Well, it would and and you know, go to 775alive.com if you're one of those pharmaceut and and you know there's what's going to happen. They're just going to make offers until they've got their own conglomerate of of outlets. So that the dollars will find their way in either way. Well, but but what I'm worried about is the connection not so much directly with the dollars, but with the content. So, um you know, it's not unusual to see old media systems adopting uh new sort of models, right? Uh probably biggest example is, you know, television doesn't look like television in the 70s when it was what sometimes called the monster of the week, the one hour story line that has a beginning, middle, end, and then you move on to do something else the next week, right? um that that took a generation basically uh to change as as you know new media started streaming out these much more complicated storylines that were syndicated and people really uh like this idea of these sort of ongoing arcs and now that's a standard part of old television programming. But what I'm worrying about is that adaptive process. I'm wondering if part of what's going on is that there's some debate going on within the uh editorial suites or programming departments or what have you of old media that's saying we need to look more like podcast and podcast are edgier they're screaming um you know they're pushing all this sort of radical stuff they're getting in your face and that's what we need to have on our traditional platform right um I'm wondering how much of that is going on yeah and I mean that's That is a typical thing is to try to put out the most sensational news media. And that is kind of a chicken and egg question, too, because you have a population of people that are highly addicted. They're not very healthy. They're chasing dopamine hits and for a multitude of reasons for from the way that our food's been chemically engineered to give us more dopamine to the way that the media content is engineered to give us more dopamine. And it's almost like, can you really blame them? Because if they put out logical, center, well-balanced news media, would anyone watch it? And the truth is is we probably wouldn't. So, I mean, it's it's it's a whole system problem, right? We kind of got ourselves into a dopamine hole a little bit, but um it's hard to predict because at some point people are going to burn out. And so, you don't know which direction they're going to go. You would think the ship would ride itself and we get back to centered and balanced because long term human beings can't be dopamine stressed for years on end. It's got they're going to seek a balance again. So hopefully they're going to follow that as we we got to start doing it as people. But they're a business. So if all we're craving is cheap sugar and and we can't be mad for for them not giving us protein and vegetables, we're demanding sugar. Well, and I really like that that whole system approach because again, um I I think this is a whole series of complex issues sort of compiling at once. It's not just freedom of speech, but the dopamine's interesting because that's exactly what Spencer Cox has been focused on, right? that that social media is built in and and you know recently I went on a radio show uh here locally to talk about this and and mention uh I hope you don't mind you know some of the conversations we've had um that you know in advertising and you know the truth is modern marketing you talk about how to you know get those dopamine hits to keep people from coming back right that's just part of the lingo now um but I think you're I think you're right in the sense that you know you can't keep societies running on that dopamine just the same way you can't keep them running on anger or rage for years at a time. It just doesn't work. Um, part of what I'm wondering is if you know if this is a turning point if that's it. If if people have just gotten so upset that that dopamine spike from watching this sort of high-end rhetoric isn't going to work anymore. Yeah. And I I think what happened last week was exactly what needed to happen because with all of us, the corporations are going to have to chase the dopamine so long as we are chasing the dopamine. And really the captain of our ship is really the only one that can try to bring each person back from the brink. Charlie Kirk's death brought conservatives back to a place where we we remembered that we need to speak and we need to defend that and we need to keep doing that. And then Trump's chilling effect and and message to all news media that hey, we're watching you. You need to tone it down with the rhetoric. If you if you participate in continuing to divi divide this country, we will look at pulling your license. And so I think the right thing happened for both sides and is set up for the best that it can for for both sides to maybe come a little bit closer back to center, you know, potentially. I don't think we've seen it yet. I mean, of course, one of the things as a lot of people have pointed out is is not only the the argument from political rhetoric, and again, this is exactly what gets Kimmel in the trouble, is this this allegation that the Trump administration has used Kirk's assassination uh to ratchet up anti-free speech rhetoric and reg I think that's still a real concern, right? Um I think it's interesting that again, Kemel's coming back on TV. There seems to be no nothing else coming out of Washington. Um, but I do think there's also the what happened at the memorial service where Trump gets up there after um another of other speakers and he says, you know, I'm not as forgiving as as some of these others. I hate my opponents and people are like, there it is. He's inciting violence. Well, is hating somebody as a violent expression as some of the other stuff we've had, right? Where we've had, you know, they're they're wanting to put you back in chains. Republicans want people to die. Um, they're fascists. They're overthrowing democracy. I mean, that type of rhetoric to me seems far more likely to incite violence and putting the hearer in the mindset that yes, these are the things that should trigger the ultimate decision to actively go against the other side. I'm not I'm not sure hating somebody. Is it unpreential? Probably. I mean, I'm not I'm not going to argue that, but I don't think it's inciting violence in and of itself. Well, I I think what we're really have to look at is where the speech was held and why the speech was being made. He was there to speak about someone's death that he knew and how it impacted him. And so I think it was appropriate. Now, if he said he hated the other side and he was talking from the White House press conference room, I would be thinking a little bit differently about it because that's a national platform meant to address that. Whereas at the funeral, he was talking to talking about his friend to a bunch of people who he was also friends with. And it's like he should be able in his grief to say that he's he's feeling hate right now. H that's an interesting take. I haven't heard anybody Yeah. freedom of speech. It's it's ugly, right? Well, and I think I think assign value to it if you want, but like if that's how you feel, that's how you feel, right? Um that's that is an interesting take and that's I mean that's one of the things that gets into a lot of this. I mean, I'm not I'm not going to say the president is suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress or something, but um yeah, no, there is there is some truth to that that, you know, is it heated at the moment? Probably not. Should he have taken more care? Maybe. Um but again, that to be a public address, that memorial. Yeah. Oh, I do. No, I think it was very publicly meant to be a public address. And that's part of the problem. Uh, of course, we we can also talk about the fact that one of the expectations of the modern presidency is that they're they're supposed to be on a stage performing political theater 247, right? Uh, and maybe that's a destructive model. Um, destructive model in and of itself. Um but I do think I do think there's a real problem when we have an environment where um you know you can say a whole range of stuff that you know again um you know they want to destroy democracy, they want to destroy this company. Now of course the right says that quite a bit about the left right that's part um is that justifying is that justifiable under freedom of speech? Uh what happens if you say they're going to put you back in the chains or something and somebody goes out six months later and quotes that in an act of political violence? Yeah. Right. Um that I think is is some of the issues we're going to we're going to be able to resol or going to have to resolve. Right. I think we're going to be able to. But yeah, I think a lot of great things happened in the last week and um I am interested. I I am always fascinated by watching Trump's strategies because I mean he's just he's a person that's formulating a strategy just like any of us would and just watching him trying to because freedom of speech is so precious and you don't want to box it in with legislation and you don't want to infringe on it. But we are in a weird place in this country where there's a lot of rhetoric and it's very dangerous for the future of the country. How do you address that and leave freedom of speech intact? Unfortunately, it does look like bullying. That's about his only option. What else can you do? Right. Well, and that's and that's an interesting emission on its right because that's always been the weak point that's emerged out of this idea of speeches violence. It's the bullying dynamic, right? Um and and you're right, it is it is damaging, right? It's it's some it's somehow it's somehow more violent um to call a member of a left a communist than to consistently call a member of the right Nazis. Um, I think I think one of the things that's come out of this has been uh or is going to come out of this, right? I might be wrong, but I'm thinking one of the things this whole episode around Charlie Kirk did is convinced a lot of people in the country that this sort of extremist talk wasn't just rhetoric is now I think they have an inkling that, you know, some of these people that said this stuff actually mean it. And I think we're going to see some push back. And I think that push back is going to be um in some cases very nasty. I think there I think we're going to see more teachers fired out of schools, more people uh in positions of authority pushed back against. I think there's going to be a lot less appetite to just shrug one's shoulders. Um well, good example is what happened in Dearbornne, right, where you had a um the the mayor of Dearbornne who is Muslim. um somebody that was opposed to renaming a street off of somebody who was supposedly associated with Hamas and the mayor calls him and goes, "Get out of here. We don't want Islamophobes in our city." Right. So, you can't even, you know, is that public discourse coming from a public official? Right. Yeah. And I think there's going to be a lot less appetite on both sides for that type of stuff. And that in the end might start ratching a lot of this down. Yeah. Yeah. Um on a another quick note, um Trump addressed the United Nations Assembly. Did you want Oh, yeah. coverage. He had no holds bar. He did not hold back. He said, "You guys are promoting illegal immigration. It's destroying our countries." Like, well, do anything like And I I would actually wouldn't mind doing an entire episode on that because I I think that was a very interesting speech outside and climate change is a scam and watching all like all these people in the UN, they're like, "Oh god, what do we do?" Right. Well, and well, and I think I think this is I think this is something that's interesting because a lot of this has been coming on and I'll put down and I'm not I'm not actually anti-UN per se, right? I think it's actually a great idea. It hasn't it hasn't worked in 50 or 60 years, right? It I mean it has increasingly become one of these institutions that's I don't want to say it's outlived its usefulness, but its current form is not adapted to the world. I'll put it that way. uh that what it looks like, I don't know. We'll have to see. But uh yeah, I think we had to do an entire episode on that speech here. Give it give it some time to percolate because I I think that was interesting across the board. I definitely learned a lot. I was shocked to hear um some of the things that UN was funding and Trump called out, but mostly it just if you're if you're listening, you got to go check it out because he just no holds barred. It was like a Trump. He's like scam scam scam. I'm like, oh my gosh. Well, and then there was these, you know, best case scenario, some very poor maintenance at the UN building. So, the escalator shuts off as soon as he gets on it. The teleprompter shuts off and he continues with the speech, not needing the teleprompter. Damn. Yeah. I mean, it's just it it it is very interesting, but I actually thought it was actually one of the the most uh interesting speeches that's been delivered at the UN for a long time. So, I kind of I didn't even go out of my way to listen to it. It just popped out on one of the regular podcasts I listen to and I was like, "Oh, this is great speech. I hope everyone's listening to this." Right. And it well, it was a great speech and and also the fact that it was actually, you know, we could disagree on the language and his approach, but the the talk itself was actually well structured and well delivered. It was not just sort of one of his off-the- cuff um sort of rambling things uh which I thought was the more interesting part of it. I think this was very consciously chosen to to to get under some people's skin and cause people to to start thinking about some stuff. So.
• 44:26
  Crystal: Crystal: Quite a week. or comments, uh go ahead and reach out to us at info@775alive.com. Until then, I'm Scott Gavorsky.
• 44:39
  Crystal: Crystal: And I'm Crystal Newton.