01:00 Dan Rather, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather
07:00 Did the press uncover watergate? https://www.commentary.org/articles/edward-epstein-3/did-the-press-uncover-watergate/
09:00 Netflix documentary on civil rights, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=148976
11:00 The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties–A Conversation with Author Christopher Caldwell, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36-nBl5uBmc
20:00 Women, mediocrity and excellence, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=129132
25:00 The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=148976
39:00 Most news is unimportant, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=131296
50:00 Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression: The Nature and Origins of Conservaphobia, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144168
52:00 We all have hero systems, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146534
1:01:50 Sailer’s First Law Of Female Journalism, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=121714
1:02:50 What should you expect from the news? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146911
1:04:00 The craft of interviewing, https://lukeford.net/essays/contents/interviewing.htm
1:10:00 The News Is What Bureaucracies Report, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144534
1:15:00 What should you expect from the news? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146911
1:25:00 Where do journalists come from? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137084
1:37:00 Watergate as democratic ritual, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143174
1:48:00 NYT: Why Antiwar Protests Haven’t Flared Up at Black Colleges Like Morehouse, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/us/politics/biden-morehouse-black-colleges.html
1:54:00 HBO’s Small Town News & That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141668
2:06:00 Dan Rather’s sweater period
2:08:30 The Liberal Liturgy, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=138045
2:12:40 The News Is What Bureaucracies Report, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144534
2:16:00 Former USC medical school dean blames sickness for bad behavior
2:20:00 When Did Intellectuals Stop Supporting The Free Market Of Ideas? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143526
2:25:00 Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression: The Nature and Origins of Conservaphobia, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144168
2:29:30 The Politics of Expertise, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143550
2:32:30 What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
2:48:00 How The News Differs From Reality, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144347
2:53:00 The “Objective Facts” of Journalism, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140236
2:55:40 Christopher Caldwell: The Age of Entitlement
3:08:45 The Case Against The News, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141853
3:26:00 Reporter Seymour Hersh, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=138924
3:30:00 Journalistic Ethics (12-9-20), https://rumble.com/vbv08f-journalistic-ethics-12-9-20.html
3:40:00 All the News That’s Fit to Click: How Metrics Are Transforming the Work of Journalists, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=154027
Podnotes transcript:
Speaker 0: Good day, Mate 40 here, so when out as a kid, I initially wanted to be a Christian missionary, then we moved to the United States in 19 77, and it was May and I had about 4 months to occupy myself before I began sixth grade, so I immersed myself in the Pacific Union College library, And initially, I was just reading books or day, but that proved to be a little too taxing. I was 11 years of age, and so I transitioned to reading peter’s digest. Alright. That was… That was easier going and I could just comfortably happily read or day about topics that interested me, so I went through decades of reader digest.
And then I turned to life magazine, and I went through all of Life Magazine from its inception to the present, then I turned to Eye Magazine, life magazine, news week magazine, and sports illustrated, and that’s how I began to get a a grasp above American popular culture. We did not own a Tv at home. So it was not until the fall of 19 79 when my father got into trouble with his employer the sem adventist church. Which shifted him to Washington Dc to present a defense of his theoretical views. And I stayed behind So I could finish eighth grade with my friends.
And I finally got to live in a home where there was a Tv, and I became, , quite interested in Tv even though was limited. And when I finally moved back to live with my parent. In June of 19 80, they had also bought a Tv because my father needed something to distract himself, from all the intents intellectual labor. He was doing preparing defense as radical views, then we got moved out of the sep adventist church. And my father said we now built to the invisible church of Jesus christ.
Well the invisible Church of Jesus Christ did not have a vibrant youth program. Alright? So we were more isolated along and Tv took up a lot of the slack. I began to understand more and more about how the world around me, , operated it from the Tv. Right?
And I think we get… We tend to use the news as our primary tour for understanding the world beyond our own Course, it’s a flawed tour. And we started watching the evening news, and my father had the philosophy. I’d rather have rather. So Dan rather succeeded Water Cro.
As the anchor command of Cbs evening news in 19 80. And for many years until about 19 85. So from 19 80 to 19 85, I wanted to be Dan Rather when I grew up. And I just saw that as the ultimate. And that it was a little bit socially awkward.
I felt that the journalism was my all access pass to what was happening in the world. So I decided to become a journalist in late 19 79 19 80, probably inspired by all the news periodic articles that I’ve been reading for years. So and then finally having an app… Having access to Tv and seeing that you could go live, , anywhere in the world and you could report the news and you could… Interview people, and you could be at the very center of what’s happening.
I think we all wanna live in the center. Most of us are tired of being on the periphery. We want to be where things are really happening. So Stormy Daniels was hitting the news again, over the past week, and it made be like, oh, yeah. I interviewed stormy many times between 2003 2007.
Like, I should say something about it I know her. And she was always highly impressive. She was always intelligent. Right, She was always point. So the stormy Daniels you saw understand this past week.
There’s stormy Daniels that I knew 21 years ago. She was poised in all our interviews. It’s She did not have a reputation for for lying. Right? She was lisa’s as intelligent as I was, and she new and that same person you saw in in the news.
Right? Where was coming across. She was already fully formed at age 21 22 when she entered the the point industry. So we get a lot of what we understand about the world beyond their own experience from the news and there’s a new documentary out on Netflix about Dan or rather. So he began his career with Cbs news in 19 62.
Speaker 1: The ne grows who live in this rural area have been told for years that that moss covered oak back there. Was a hanging tree during the time of the civil war. Be…
Speaker 2: I think my…
Speaker 0: So ever since we’ve been keeping murder statistics. In the United States. Right? In America even before the formation in of the United States of America. Alright.
There there have been groups who’ve have committed disproportionate amounts of murder. And it hasn’t in matters of, , criminal killing. Right? It hasn’t usually been white to are disproportionately killing blacks. Right?
And these kind of inconvenient statistics don’t tend to occupy much space in the news because the news. Reflects very much an enlightenment. People are basically good, people therefore corrupted by society when they do bad, and that the greatest evils are ignorance and bigotry. And so this is the center left. Liberal left perspective that dominates the news media an enlightenment perspective that we we can create our own meaning and and our own reality and it’s our own morality within our own heads and that people are primarily individuals to a born with certain ina rights as opposed to a traditional view a tribal view.
A religious perspective, a national perspective that we are primarily members of a tribe an extended family, a a nation, a religious community and that’s how we all experience life. Alright? We don’t have enough cognitive processing power to slot everyone we meet as primarily individuals instead we see them as representatives of groups. Right? That person’s gay, that person’s Jewish.
That person’s black, that person’s Australian. Right? That person’s a surgeon That’s how we process life.
Speaker 2: And dad had a certain destiny that he listened to. He had a calling to do what he does. My dad is a deeply deeply religious person.
Speaker 1: Walking Right.
Speaker 2: My dad reads survival off.
Speaker 0: So 1 thing I’ve noticed from the hundreds of people that I’ve interviewed that whatever someone is described as deeply religious or someone who described himself as deeply religious. To take these claims with some skepticism, because the people I know, for example, in Jewish life, who are raised as orthodox jews, which is a highly demanding. Way way of life. Alright? They almost never describe themselves as deeply religious.
Right? The more orthodox the jew, the less likely he is just to describe himself as religious instead, he someone who who follows Uni guy, someone who follows the the ways of the tour, the ways of his people. So Show claims are something to be highly skeptical about.
Speaker 2: It’s a source of comfort to him, his faith. That you love your fellow man in his particular way
Speaker 0: Right. So we develop much of who we are and the claims that we make about ourselves and self presentation, to try to counter the most painful and damaging accusations against us, and so the most damaging accusation against Dan rather is that he has a liberal bias. And you see it in his tweets. Alright. His he’s finally on social media last few years, and this is someone with it with, overwhelmingly a center left perspective and his daughter here is trying to counter this notion that, Dan rather is some liberal because We generally can conceive of liberals, liberals and people on the left as less religious than traditional people, conservatives.
Speaker 2: Of showing love is reporting.
Speaker 1: The albany movement depends on these people. They are the heart of it. This is Dan Rat in Albany, Georgia.
Speaker 0: So lots of footage here, but Dan rather covering civil rights
Speaker 3: violence against us, the destruction of any little sense of progress and prosperity that we had just to keep people down.
Speaker 0: Alright. This is Andrew Young, be civil rights activist and politicians. So no voice skeptical of civil rights. Right? No voice is pointing out while the downsides of civil rights are getting to appear in a documentary like this.
Alright? It’s simply outside of permitted discourse.
Speaker 3: Wasn’t not known until television came.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of violence
Speaker 0: up
Speaker 1: children. Older men, threatened, bait, dogs turned loose on them, burrows has turned moose on, clan rallies at night, terrible plan rallies.
Speaker 0: And so there’s no mention also in this documentary on dan rather about the exploit ocean of criminal violence that occurred after the civil rights legislation. Alright? Prior to civil rights and after civil rights, there was a dramatic difference in the amount of criminal violence in this country. So if you wanna talk about violence, with regard to civil rights, you would think that a dis perspective would note the enormous increase in criminal violence that followed civil rights legislation, but no, instead, there is a focus on the minority of violence that occurred by the establishment against lack civil rights activists. But if you want to account and get a total picture of civil rights violence Right?
There was a massive explosion following civil rights legislation, and not by opponents of civil rights. Right? The the people who are committing a disproportionate amount of the violence, for the people for whom the civil rights legislation was primarily passed.
Speaker 4: You got a bunch of people with Standing over here with the cameras and they’re you saying the hey bubble. Ain’t got enough backbone to get them a job and go to work. They’ll print hateful for the story. They don’t enough backbone to tell the truth, so anybody the alive or the day when you’re gonna die go hell without god.
Speaker 1: The sights? Sounds smells. I don’t remember even the smell of the wouldn’t cross burning. And I
Speaker 0: So the people who came across supporting segregation, alright, come across very poorly, and this is in large part designed. Right? The the news media were not unbiased when it came to civil rights, and you hear this in Dan Rat reporting. Right? And his recollection.
Right? He’s very much in favor of civil rights legislation. Remember whenever you increase civil rights for 1 group, you take away civil rights from another group. So civil rights legislation effectively mean that we replaced our original constitution of the United States with a new constitution, that did away with many of our traditional values.
Speaker 5: Alright. This is the… I’m I’m glad that we spoke about , hem lines and and the jewelry and, and popular music. First, because this is a central theme of the book and it is the book. It it it it is the 1 that has, I think garnered the most attention, positive and negative.
I think when people seek to sort of like sum up, let’s say the import of the book as simply as possible, they say, this is a book about the unintended consequences, of the Civil Rights Act of 19 64. And I don’t necessarily dispute that. I do , I do think it’s it it does make it necessary for me to make plain that, because I’m describing, the unintended consequences of the Civil Rights Act of 19 64. Does not mean that I don’t think the Civil Rights Act addressed a very serious problem. And it does not mean that I that I question in any way, the desire for equality from from people who are.
Who are are left out of it. But I do believe that the that that that act because it was so powerful became very attractive to policymakers in other fields. I think that Americans that the public opinion about the Civil Rights act of 19 64 is very is very hard to gauge. It’s very pro. And it’s very hard to see what people wanted.
But the the country came around, a consensus that because this was a serious problem, this was a worthwhile thing to do. But I think that Americans thought it was limited by that problem, and it turned out not to be. The remedies for segregation turned out to be much, much more intrusive than people had anticipated when they began debating the civil rights act. I’m talking about lots of things from affirmative action to bus. And something else happened, and that’s what brings the the the sweep of this story forward between the seventies and the nineties, which is that the tools of des segregation started to be used to fix almost every problem of exclusion.
It it came to fix the problem of a woman not feeling she was advancing fast enough in a corporate hierarchy, of or of a gay man feeling left out because people are making jokes about homosexuality at his at his office. And it pretty soon turned into a second constitution by which the constitution we think of as the constitution could be overrule. I’ve I I think this background is a little bit necessary before we start talking about about Bak. But that was indeed a waters shit.
Speaker 6: Well, I think 1 of the the you have a series of Arresting quotes throughout the book, and 1 that gets to to part of this question is, , there’s been this this discussion on the right that , the the Civil rights Act was necessary to deal with the problem segregation, but it quickly morph into something that was not intended to be. The the original intent was to do away with segregation. And then once we got beyond that problem, to reinstate as it were, the color blind constitution of the declarations principle.
Speaker 0: Okay. Let’s have a look at the chat. And Duane says you have the eyes of associate path. My dollars and cents that you are associate path, read the definition of Soc path. So…
Definition of soc path is a person with a personality, disorder manifesting itself in extreme anti social attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. So what is the anti social attitudes and behaviors and lack of conscience? How was that demonstrated in my life? And you have a meta analysis for the accuracy reading whether or not someone is a soc path just by looking in their eyes.
Speaker 1: By anyone to go to a Clan rally, and not be deeply affected by what it really represented deep hate.
Speaker 7: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: For the first time, I began to understand what this emerging civil will
Speaker 0: So remember, when we talk about deep paid, that is the flip side of deep love. So the KKK exhibits deep hatred, when it fights to preserve its way of life. Right? When it fights to preserve, it’s conception of how its community should operate. So in order to protect a certain way of life or to reclaim a certain way of life, it hate that.
It hates that which damages it. Right? Every form of life strive to create an environment around it, which maximizes its own flourishing, whether that’s the KKK or the nazis or gay rights activists or feminists or orthodox Jews or Norwegian or the Japanese, right or or, right? Every form of life strive to create the type of environment best suited for its own flourishing. And if you love something.
If you love your family, if you love your wife, you are going to hate that which most threatens its survival. Right? When a group rises into prominence, as a major threat to the very survival of your people. Right, you would be m not to hate that group which becomes effectively the enemy, that threatens the survival of your people.
Speaker 1: The life’s movement what’s about. And I began to see a close personal bear witness to the violence of institutional nice racism.
Speaker 0: Okay. The violence of institutional racism. Right? Institutional racism has committed violence, but not nearly as much as violence committed by those, for whom the civil rights acts were initially designed as Right? We…
Not all groups commit equal amounts of of violence. Right? Some groups commit far more violence than other groups, and we all know this. Right? And we all live by this in spending a great deal of money to live in certain areas, right?
That a better police, and have different demographics than other areas, which have astronomical rates of crime and other demographics different demographics than say in Beverly Hills or in Manhattan.
Speaker 8: If the bombers do not stop. Someone is going to be confronted with the full scale race ride here because…
Speaker 0: Well, you… He did have an end to the the bombing and and incidentally, most fires committed against black churches to the… The best of knowledge in the United States in the past 20 years are primarily being committed by blacks. And the violence that this young African American talks about was committed the following the pot passage of civil rights legislation.
Speaker 8: Because I know if people personally and that’s not going to be tolerated with bombing in their sleeping and…
Speaker 0: So I don’t know about you, but when I walk around in a big city, I tried to take care that I then accidentally rush up against. Members of certain groups who appear to commit disproportionate amounts of violence. And there are certain groups of white people who commit disproportionate. Amounts of violence. Right?
The the much of the south, right, The the Scott, the descendants of the Scott’s Irish, Right, have a strong honor code. And if you even look at their woman in a wrong way, they’re much more likely to physically confront you, then say the descendants of the p.
Speaker 8: Shooting them on the street.
Speaker 1: Cbs was called the colored broadcasting system. The communist broadcasting system. Station station wouldn’t feed Armored. Material some stations wouldn’t carry the Cbs even can use.
Speaker 9: We were often accused of being liberal in the news of the media. That’s what a journalist is at seeker of causes. But we I believe presented the truth.
Speaker 0: Right. This is how it’s string. So… He says, we presented the truth. Alright?
We tend to see the world as we are, not as it is. And the people who go into journalism are overwhelmingly on the left.
Speaker 1: The entanglement you must be aware that at least 1 northern newspaper has. Termed you a big and a racist. What’s your reaction to that? They can call me anything they want just as long as they don’t call me too late for dinner.
Speaker 0: Here’s a a telling anecdote from the age of entitlement by Christopher Caldwell. At New York Times or correspondent David Hal dam in 19 72, explained the high quality work that he and his fellow journalist did in Vietnam was due to there’d been no women in their lives to mess things up. Right? So women meant compromise an intellectual mediocrity. That was a dominant point of view in America before the rise of feminine.
There’s only 1 of us was married. He wrote of his colleagues. There was no wife poor to become part of the Sai social war to get along with the nor or the Parkinson’s. Kind of insidious pressure which works against journalist excellence in Washington. So it ties bind and blind.
And this is true of journalists as well. Right? That ties to other journalists, bind them to other journalists, but also then blind them to the The blind spots of journalism.
Speaker 3: We always had our demonstrations in the morning. We had to be through about 12:00 because they’d have to take off and fly the news back to New York every day.
Speaker 1: I was very impressed doctor King from the moment I met him. Now I had never seen anyone up close. And personally that hero ruling. Now move
Speaker 0: And there there are things that that Martin Luther King did that highly impressive and just as many things he did highly uni unemployed, including pla his Phd thesis his reckless personal life. So it it depends on what you want want to concentrate on. Right? If you wanna find reasons to find Martin Luther King uni unproductive. Right?
There are many reasons to do. So if you wanna find reasons to find Martin Luther King impressive, You can find those as well. And the news media chose to concentrate are those things that made Martin Luther king impressive and to overwhelmingly ignore, those things that made him appear dangerous and diluted.
Speaker 1: Hot, Oh, you under rich. Either 1 not. A moment to moment. On the razor edge of lethal danger. The fear that I felt seeing this deep hate.
Change me as a person and changed me as professionally.
Speaker 3: The press was hated almost as much as we were, so it required a lot of courage just to tell the story. Because the same people that were beating us started beating them up.
Speaker 1: Then there was guilt. Something nobody really likes to talk about. I have the job I dreamed of doing. But I did have those moments ones, and I said, easy for you dan? Should you just quit this work and become part of the active effort to change?
This.
Speaker 10: As a journalist, you’re not saying damn it, I want this to be fixed or damn it, I’m noticed to cause the change. Yours…
Speaker 0: You are. Alright You may not admit this. Alright, Dan Riley was seriously considering becoming civil rights activist. And he was a civil rights activist. He just use the guise of journalists.
Right? You can’t take people at face values. Someone won’t presents himself as a journalist. Alright. Someone works for the New York Times or Cbs news.
That doesn’t mean the most important identity that they have is journalist. Right? That doesn’t… Mean that what they’re actually doing is reporting. Alright, Many journalists are social activists who simply use the guise of journalists.
And Dan rather has at times just used the guys, the clothing of journalism. But the reality of what he’s doing is social activism.
Speaker 10: Showing people, what happens? They decide what to do with that information.
Speaker 1: Savannah, Georgia, which has had more racial violence the past few weeks than any other city in the deep south.
Speaker 0: Okay. So do you hear? Descriptions in the mainstream media of racial violence when it is primarily blacks against whites. I I don’t recall that or Right? When the news media talks about racial violence, it’s those those minority exceptions when it is primarily whites against blacks.
So this is just 1 way that the news media tries to distort our sense of reality. Now, it’s not effective because people still have to make choices about where they live where they socialize, and the way people live their lives indicates that they have realistic attitudes about race. We did not evolve to be gullible. Alright? We’re extremely good at decoding and overcoming when other people are trying to manipulate us against our own advantage.
Speaker 1: He not. And the role In is being a chronic of this being a… An eye witnessed… To it and bringing the people’s screened is important work. This is Dan Rat in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 0: Do It’s important work and it’s well paid work and it’s highly prestigious work and it’s work that provides you with a community. And just it’s octane fuel for the ego. And it’s working that I…
Speaker 1: Difficult as reporters. During this period coming dark king and the movement. On the 1 hand, you wanna be an honest broker of information On the other hand, some of the things were so outrageous.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So… Where do you think went out wanting to be an honest broker of information or trying to support 1 side in this
Speaker 1: no disturbing. There was a constant struggle within yourself, say, remember what your role is here. You wanna be the witness.
Speaker 0: Remember what your role is here. Remember what your uniform is here. Remember what you are presenting yourself to the world as. Right? Remember yourself presentation.
Remember, the self presentation that guarantees you a good income and a prestigious position in society, and that is to pose as a reporter, while in effect, you are promoting a political agenda
Speaker 1: job. And you’re trained as a journalist to do it. And for me, that all started in Houston. Please. I began working at the radio station, kt TRH 50000 watt voice of the golden and Gulf of Coast Houston.
I’ve gotten a job there beginning in late 19 54. I was on the air. I was doing play by play work. Again. Then to say the least.
Speaker 0: And dan rather eventually gets transferred to cover Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Used to come in sometime it night after to he work. He would
Speaker 0: say not a
Speaker 1: steady, steady, steady. So that word sergeant my my head of this well.
Speaker 11: Har.
Speaker 1: Don’t don’t lose your comp.
Speaker 0: What’s the frequency, Kenneth.
Speaker 2: The light because he thinks that’s what’s best for the country.
Speaker 0: So his daughter is very keen to that Dan Rad is a great patriot, and why is there so much presentation here of Dan That being a great patriot because 1 of the sharpest most pay criticism he’s received is that as a liberal, not such a American. Right? He’s not such a a great patriot that in fact, he is undercut the social cohesion of the country. 19 65, Vietnam, Dan rather. So I worked with Vietnam Vet, and he told me that he encountered Dan rather in Vietnam and he told him.
I get out of my face.
Speaker 1: We’ve been in 1 company strength. In But now the other company is moving in by helicopter. We’re now getting the second company. The Vietnam war was becoming a big story. I wanted to go.
I asked to go and was eventually sent to Vietnam and spent almost a year there. What about these rocket launchers? Kinda I don’t believe have seen these before? We’ve actually captured these rocket launcher on several occasions when operating against the north vietnamese. It’s a Chinese rocket launcher.
Speaker 0: So every member of the real school of foreign policy oppose American intervention in the the Vietnam war. Troops on the ground, style intervention So realist realized that this was a disaster that it was not conducive to America’s best interest. And even if the News media had not reported on the Vietnam, war as it did, even if War Cro had not turned against the Vietnam War, right, even if the Pentagon had acted more honestly with regard to the American people and with regard to the news media, we still would have come a crop in Vietnam. Right? None of None of the things that the news media did with regard to the Vietnam War, sunk America’s opportunities.
It was a disaster. From the beginning of our armed intervention there. It was… They were going to work, and it was not aligned with America’s best interest. And instead, it came at a substantial cost to America’s best interest.
We just kept feeding troops into a meat grinder for nothing that supported our vital national interest.
Speaker 1: And key to this victory was this particular company of the hundred and first airborne under the command of Captain Hank Lu of Clark, Tennessee. And I first went to be vietnam, Combat units. Were disproportionately made up of young black men out places like watts in Harlem and white country boy in out places like east. You asked them what about race in the ranks? There’s the in saying was, same mud, when same blood.
Speaker 0: And he he tee up as he said that. And his commentary is absolutely nothing to do with reality. Right, the Vietnam war draft poured in all sorts of low Iq Americans. It was just a monumental catastrophe because the United States Army in the 19 sixties wasn’t using Iq tests correctly to weed people out. So due to the disaster bringing in so many low iq Americans and feeding them into the the meat grinder and finding how dangerous it was to have low Iq troops.
The United States armed forces started using Iq tests to weed people out there were tremendous racial divisions in the United States army in Vietnam, and there were disproportionate. Incidents with regard to race. Right? Some racial groups committed, , astronomical numbers of errors, sabotage that their own team, like, injured and killed members of their own team, And the the more cohesive, an army unit, right? The more effective it’s going to be, and the more diverse an army unit the less effective it’s going to be.
1 reason that German fighting truce were so effective is that they came from the same part of the country. Right? Unlike America, which will bring in people from all over the country and throw them together. Right, in Germany, that the troops would grow up together would know each other would have a a bond coming from the same place. And so they were much more effective.
American troops lacked that cohesion. And so they’re fighting effectiveness, was frequently marred by the very diversity that Dan Ra was just claiming did not exist. That were racially disproportionate results in the Vietnam War. For 1 thing he’s absolutely right. A disproportionate number of blocks for for a large time were drafted into the armed forces because they they weren’t getting the college exemption.
So from the number of troops who are serving the number of incidents of in ina stupid, , horrific self destructive behavior. Right? It was not equal. Between groups in the our bosses and the more diverse army unit, the less they had in common with each other, meaning the less effective they tended to be.
Speaker 6: Close. But you you offer the more provocative thesis which is that political correctness, and I’m quoting you here now. Sorry.
Speaker 0: So what Dan Reilly, was just giving us his political correctness. He was saying the type of thing that gets your applause among his elite group. Giving This is a conversation at the claire Institute with the author, Christopher Cord. Who wrote the Great book the age of entitlement America since the 60.
Speaker 6: Affirmative action and political correctness were the twin pillars of the second constitution that is the post 64 constitution. They were what civil rights was. And I I think , it’s always easy in hindsight, of course, to say that to to to say that it went off the rails at some point. But I think it’s very interesting. That given the constitutional cultural and moral logic of the project, you say it was in a way inevitable, affirmative of action and at local correctness yeah?
Speaker 5: Yes. I think I think that you mentioned that I used the word that I used the word compelling. Another word, which I think has had an interesting rise over the last 50 years is iconic. People now use iconic instead of it just where they used to just say famous. Alright?
But but it… But in fact, In fact, the Civil Rights Act of 19 64 is iconic. And we don’t want to we don’t want to say anything negative about it, because we treasure the, it’s… We treasure its achievement of the main thing it’s set out to achieve. But I do believe that there was a a tragic flaw in it.
It worked because it was supposed to overthrow, certain democratic your irregularities in the south. Or let’s just say some bad risk…
Speaker 0: So we talk about democracy. In terms of human rights when really, that’s liberal ism. Right? Liberal wisdom is the idea that we are primarily individuals born with certain alien abort rights. In a pure democracy or in any type of democracy, the majority can take away rights.
Right? Liberal and democracy are frequently opposed but we we talk about democracy as though it is just inherently liberal democracy. So… In United States prior to the civil rights acts starting in in 19 65, you had democracy used to dis millions of black potential voters.
Speaker 5: Results that were being produced by southern democracy, and it did that by short circuit the American constitutional process. I think we can now see. There were there was little… There were few checks and balances on it. And the way it tended to work.
And I think this is 1 of the things that was attractive about it at the federal level is that you’d get You’d get a judgment, a rule made by an office of civil rights in 1 of the cabinet departments. And then it would be okay and elevated into a principal by the Supreme court. And then the office of civil rights would then, elaborate on the that rule, and you get a kind of a ratchet back and forth without without the legislative branch ever being brought into this. So it was…
Speaker 0: So, effectively, civil rights is done in the name of democracy and there are certain democratic aspects to civil rights. But it also substantially sub supports democracy and sub supports the original constitution and replaces it with a new constitution that makes American life, Less cohesive, reduces social trust, encourages litigation that that fractures workplaces and and communities and individual lives, and tears, Americans apart.
Speaker 5: It’s a very efficient way to make law, but it left people it left people out. Now, there’s something I has to add when I talk this way, which is that this is not a work of legal theory or legal history. It’s it’s not a constitutional… It it is not a j prudential sort of sort of, like, puzzle solving. I’m discussing basically, the culture, the political culture of these, of this new of this new system.
Yep?
Speaker 0: Alright, Christopher Caldwell talking about his great book the age of entitlement. Back to this terrific Netflix documentary. Well, I shouldn’t say terrific. It’s very 1 sided documentary, but I I still found it interesting on Dan Rather, the former Cbs News anchor command. And he was set off to Vietnam in 19 65.
Speaker 1: Of the… 100 first airborne Brigade, we’re engaged against north the Vietnamese troops in this extremely thick jungle near the Cambodia border. You can see how thick this bamboo is. Reporters couldn’t get in here and neither could helicopters of any kind and only today, the is the full extent of the battle being known. Number of bodies the wounded already have been taken
Speaker 4: out. You them.
Speaker 0: People don’t understand how deeply patriotic my dad is. My dad is old school to the bone patriotic. Right. I mean just hitting us over the head. With my dad, Dan, so patriotic, very religious and a deeply patriotic.
Alright? When you have to go to this excess to try to claim tremendous patriotism. Right, there there must be some, deep winning criticism that you’re trying to cover up against.
Speaker 1: I didn’t go with any agenda. I had no agenda while I was there.
Speaker 0: Okay. He may not have had a conscious agenda, but what journalists most want is the respect and admiration. And good opinion of their peers just as what professors most want, accountants most want, dentists most want is the a claim of their peers. And to get the acclaim of your peers as a journalist, you have to produce narratives, generally speaking that conform with the liberal left. Enlightenment perspective.
Speaker 1: Except to put on American television screens, the war as it was.
Speaker 0: To put it onto American Tv screens the war as it was. Well, you have to make decision. So you’re getting a highly selective presentation of the war as it was, and I’m thinking of this burst in the tour. Do not go after your eyes after which you prostitute yourselves. And as Dennis Sp notes, the eye is the most superficial organ.
So you would have a much clearer understanding of the war in Vietnam if you simply read a few paragraphs from a realist thinker, instead of watching hundreds of hours of Tv news documentaries and news shows. Shows Dan rather Hoping to take care of a wounded American soldier. Because he’s a great patriot.
Speaker 2: When my dad was away for months at a time, he sent a lot of postcards. And he wrote the exact same thing on every postcard. He wrote ore is hell. Love debt.
Speaker 1: The rebels during the night extended their perimeter at least 4 blocks in 1 direction, and now the marines are trying to recapture those 4…
Speaker 0: So my father also was constantly traveling. He was doing it as a Christian evangelist, and he would regularly ride home to us, but his handwriting was so bad. That, I didn’t even, try to dis his letters. I my my stepmother had much more success and so she’d read me excerpts. Blocked.
Speaker 2: , as a young girl, you understand that’s dangerous, but at the same time, he always did that, I didn’t… I never knew a time when he wasn’t doing that as a young girl.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of civilians up and down these streets. In the distance, someone is screaming in Vietnamese My father is wounded. A grenade came through an open window in the next room.
Speaker 0: So you often see news reporters going out into very dangerous. Places, and they say they’re doing that for you so that you can have a more profound understanding what’s going on. But they’re also doing it for the sake of the esteem of their peers and for their own egos, it’s a form of self presentation to show how courageous they are. And so where ego begins and genuine public service, ends right open question.
Speaker 1: For a sniper was believed titan. And for the first time an all out attack by Premier key sky.
Speaker 2: My mother didn’t shield us from what he was doing. I have a lot of memories of my dad with with him cro down and bullets everywhere.
Speaker 0: And so here’s rather, , crashing down during live firefight, and this is a married man with kids. Is this really a proper use of his resources. Right? Is this type of footage providing some profound understanding of what’s happening Vienna. No.
What is providing is compelling footage. Right, it attracts eyeballs it’s good for ratings. But it doesn’t give people a more, profound understanding of what’s going on in Vietnam. You’d would get that from, a real expert in international relations. But what counts for success in journalism is attracting attention.
And so journalism is primarily funded as a business. And to the extent it’s not funded as a business, it is funded by some profit. Right. Usually, the the government of a nation will fund a substantial amount of journalism, and it… It will then present journalism in alignment with its fund just as private corporations generally present journalism that’s aligned with how it gets funded.
And what’s gonna get funding in normal for profit journalism is that which is compelling. Not that which is important. So the news was dominated between 20 16 and 20 19 by allegations that Donald Trump was effectively a Stu of the Kremlin completely false. But it was a compelling narrative for those Americans who hated Donald Trump. And it was a way to bring it in, viewers and subscribers.
Alright, It was a good business strategy. Alright? The New York Times found that it could make money, by publishing ever more outraged columns about how awful Donald Trump was and by providing journalism that further the narrative that Donald Trump was a unique threat to the American republic.
Speaker 1: The newest troops in at vietnam the United States. This is 1 of their first heaviest attack
Speaker 2: I really, really missed him. I didn’t really have a perspective on his work.
Speaker 1: We tried our best to tell it as it was. Here’s your more. For better of a worse, know what it is. 5 hours after the Buddhist non burned herself in way, Sai Buddhist, March downtown and what they hope will be, their biggest demonstration in more than 2 years. I saw a good deal of vietnam.
And increasingly, more the Saw, what was being said in Washington about what was happening in the war did not match the facts on the ground So there became a clash between those who knew what the war was.
Speaker 0: So this is a self presentation of of journalists as truth seekers. But they’re true seekers within their own particular narrative. You do you think that they would be public skeptical critiques of the civil rights movement no matter how profound how truthful? No. They’re they’re not gonna go against the consensus narrative in their profession.
Right? Most news is not important. Right? Most news is is about that, which will garner attention garner subscribers. Right?
Because news is a business. Right? On social media and in the news when you engage you engage. Right? In raging posts on social media and in news media, Alright, promote engagement.
Alright, Dennis P talks about America being in a non shooting civil war. This is tremendously exciting rhetoric. It makes you wanted to turn into his show because he is presenting parts of reality that you. Paul and Creature just don’t see. So it elevate his importance when you buy into his analysis and you want more of it because he talks about all thoughts of things in life.
That you cannot see. Now, his analysis is bogus. We are nowhere close to a civil war shooting or non shooting. People of different politics yet along about as well as they ever have. And to the extent that there is a significant deterioration, with getting along with people who have a different politics.
It’s nowhere near civil war. Right? And number 1, there’s no such thing as a non shooting civil war That’s not a civil war. So the formula for success in many fields, including journalism is often to do things that are socially destructive. That are against the social interest.
Right? By promoting that, which is and compelling and not promoting that which is important and clarifying.
Speaker 1: As what it really was. And those who are trying to convince the american people, but don’t listen to those guys.
Speaker 12: We will see this through.
Speaker 0: So I’ve read all of the books that Dan rather published. Alright? He had a he had an author who would do most the writing for him. So Dan Ra was hero of mine between 19 80 and 19 85. I wanted to be, Dan Rad.
Speaker 12: We shall persist. We shall succeed.
Speaker 13: When officials began to make representations about the war that were demonstrated to be false untrue. For example, that know, we were winning the war. And journalists began pointing that out, they used…
Speaker 0: Right. This is Rick Paul, who’s a, You left wing historian in journalists. So this is a kind of a self serving narrative. We all give self serving narratives. Right?
Journalists give them politicians give them Alright? We we all engage in tremendous effort to try to shape our reputation in other people’s minds. But my reputation does not belong to me. My reputation exists in your mind, and no matter how much effort I go to shape my reputation in your mind. Right, you are the final auditor.
Right? Because my reputation does not belong to me. And you can trust almost nothing at face value.
Speaker 13: The phrase credibility gap. It was a eu. They were talking about the government lying. Lyndon Jones would actually pick the phone when he was president and call you. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes. As well as other reporters. It was fairly common him to call reporters and say, what the hell you doing to me boy? The Yeah. I when you were Tu.
Yeah.
Speaker 14: And we
Speaker 1: have to stick together and. What pope so on television was increasingly at variance with what they were being told. That dichotomy would eventually call the whole Us commitment into question.
Speaker 0: So my ears as a reporter, this is 1 of the most effective techniques of manipulation. Hey. Aren’t we all on the same side. Right then you wanna protect Jews or then you wanna protect this industry or this profession, Well, this community or we have friends in common. We’re in this together.
Speaker 1: That ancient nemesis rain has watched out the hopes of 15000 Americans troops
Speaker 12: You want us to stop our bombing. You have to ask them to stop their bombing.
Speaker 1: He’s green to trying to move in on the Pa, which is the rebel headquarters.
Speaker 15: The bombs in Vietnam exploded home. They destroy the dream and possibility for a decent americans.
Speaker 16: And Lyndon Johnson.
Speaker 0: So Martin Luther King and Barack Obama both have ways of speaking that are common. Among successful guru. Alright? It sounds profound. When you listen to Barack Obama, it it feels good.
When you read what he’s saying then much of the effect dissipate, but, Barack obama Mount Luther King that there are certain people who are just historically gifted. Alright? Most secular guru are rhetoric gifted dead p is rhetoric gifted. But underneath the rhetoric, right, much of what they’re arguing just falls apart.
Speaker 16: Had no idea what was going on? Why is Cbs showing American troops at war in a grim faction. Because we did not do that in world war 2. We were all in it together, the press worked as a propaganda arm of the Us military. This was something new.
Gan rather was
Speaker 17: part of all that.
Speaker 0: And the press also works as a propaganda out for itself. And usually, unconsciously for enlightenment values for the liberal left enlightenment buffett itself consensus that The individual can find morality and meaning himself, and there were primarily individuals who were born certain in ina rights.
Speaker 1: Diane rather, Cbs news Dana denying. Many in the upper restaurants of government and in the military, absolutely failed and they stated that television incite much of the anti war movement.
Speaker 18: As a matter of fact it’s not a Vietnamese war now is it’s snowing.
Speaker 0: So we’re all looking to blame. Right? If if you feel anxiety building building building. Right? You wanna offload load it.
And so you wanna blame someone else, and so the the news media is often a a target. And for the people who are running an unsuccessful war war that’s absolutely doomed such as the American Intervention in Vietnam. Right, they want to offload their anxiety, and so they blame the news media, or they blame communist ag agitated. They don’t wanna to face up to the reality that they are engaged in a ridiculous useless, highly destructive and to American interest operation in Vietnam. But they don’t wanna take responsibility, for their own stupidity instead, they wanna offload their anxiety and blame communists and journalists.
But communists and journalists and student ag agitated and protesters did not cost us success in the Vietnam war. Right, That American intervention was doomed from the beginning.
Speaker 18: More in Asia, but everybody’s been worried about for 20 years, and we’re in, and we wanted out now.
Speaker 1: Yep we may just continue to wrap here for a moment. Another point Them, the press was the real enemy.
Speaker 12: We don’t let… People influences and pressure and force us to divide our nation in a time of national peril. The hour is here.
Speaker 13: There’s an old saying that the first casualty of war is truth. And the stakes are so high when you’re asking people to… Surrender their very lives for their country, you have to en enable the enterprise and not in the way that enterprise en know by lies and the
Speaker 0: Yeah. Guess what? All countries, all communities have hero systems. Right? It…
It’s not just those supporting the the Vietnam War, those who are drafting people for the Vietnam War who come up with a hero system. But ae system is essentially a biological necessity. People have to have it here a system. Some way deciding what type of behavior is heroic and will transcend their own lives so that they are partly something that is eternal.
Speaker 13: Greatest threat to that is journalism. There’s
Speaker 17: For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.
Speaker 9: When Walter K said the wall in Vietnam couldn’t be 1. It was over.
Speaker 1: When should an anchor person an anchor man become a comment.
Speaker 19: Maybe once in the lifetime.
Speaker 20: When the most trusted man in America tells you, something pretty stunning about your government. And its role in a foreign war, people listened, and it was very consequential, Right.
Speaker 0: That’s margaret Sullivan, and she’s long time, John list. She’s been an editor, I believe at the Boston. Globe. She’s a comment on the the news media. And the news media have an exaggerated sense of their own importance just like I have an exaggerated sense of my own importance it’s adaptive your large degree, have an exaggerated a sense of your own importance like it gets you up in the morning.
Right? Why would I be spending by Sunday morning. Right? Talking to 10 people about Dan Rather, if I didn’t have an exaggerated sense of my own importance. But this idea that Ultra Pronounce, , changed America’s attitude towards Vietnam is a delusion.
It happened to coincide with a dawning realization on behalf of Americans that the intervention in Vietnam was pointless. 19 68.
Speaker 1: The Cbs news campaigns? 68 convention special. What’s going to happen in Chicago? Here is Cbs news correspondent, Walter K kite,
Speaker 17: 60 Good evening from Chicago or the 30 fifth, the National Democratic convention opens tomorrow, but the promise of turmoil inside this hall. And a threat of violence without. By the end of the week, Hub Humphrey probably will emerge as the party’s nominee. Inside the hall, we can expect flu fight over the rules over credentials, a better 1 over the Vietnam plank in the platform.
Speaker 0: So Cbs coverage of the 19 68 rise the Democratic convention or just went back and forth in, , wildly uneven swings as they tried to make peace with the mayor as they try to report on on the riots, and so they’re constantly trying to swag different interest groups. Ed by experience with reporting is the same thing. And I always wanted to give people a sense that it was to their advantage to talk to me. And it’s no fun getting beaten up, either verbally or physically. And so you’re always trying to maneuver between conflicting interested individuals and groups and you see this in Cbs is wildly uneven coverage of these riots in 19 68 Democratic convention.
Speaker 17: But throughout the political process continues.
Speaker 0: But the the journalists that Cbs would, , rather understand themselves and present themselves as fearless of truth, but Cbs news quickly became a business. So in the 19 sixties, still, it was not expected to earn a profit. Right? The idea that a news division could earn a substantial profit. Began only after the success of 60 minutes in the early 19 seventies, so it was primarily a prestige arm of the net works.
It was part of their public service.
Speaker 16: The counter culture was there in Chicago and it was a vape. Sick a war in the city between mayor daily and protesters, tear gas flew every which way, and it was almost impossibly
Speaker 0: Alright. That’s Douglas Brink, historian and author son of the longtime Tv an man. Brink. David Brink. So who funds the news?
Right? It’s usually a for profit enterprise and that means there are certain interest that that wanna see a certain presentation of the news. Journalist Ethics doesn’t have a great deal of meaning because it’s so diffuse. Right? To whom, do journalists owe, their primary ethical obligations.
A meaningful ethical code is primarily with regard to whom, so doctors have an ethic code, primarily with regard to patients. Well But journalists owe an ethical obligation to their advertisers to their subscribers, to their bosses, to their profession, to the people they write about to the people who who read them. Right? The ethical obligations of the journalists are so diffuse that reduces the intense specific meaning of a normal ethics code for a profession.
Speaker 16: Possible to hold the same democratic convention soon.
Speaker 21: Mister Chairman, Most delegates to this convention do not know that thou of young people are being beaten, and the streets of Chicago. Thousands And for that reason, I request the suspension of the rules for the purpose of a german for 2 weeks.
Speaker 17: Looks like a couple of these sergeant at arms security people have 1 of the members under both arm bits and forcing him out. Dan Rather.
Speaker 1: Rob your And what is your name sir Take your hands off him me? Dan You intend to arrest me. Don’t don’t push me please. You Don’t push me take your
Speaker 4: hands off, maybe you plan the arrest. You
Speaker 0: So Dan rather, list this as I think the most dangerous thing that he ever faced. Alright? And he gets punched in the stomach. And he he, , regards as a , potential murder.
Speaker 1: What you can see.
Speaker 17: I don’t know what’s going on with this These are security people are apparently around Dan. Obviously getting rough up.
Speaker 1: Tried to talk to the man, and we got bodily pushed out of the way. This is the kind of thing thing going on. Outside the hole. This is the first time we’ve had it happen inside the home. We I’m sorry to be out of breath that somebody belt me in
Speaker 17: his stomach doing that. I think we’ve got a bunch of thugs here, Dan. I may be permitted to say so.
Speaker 1: Well, mag walter I’m alright. I… It’s it’s all in days work.
Speaker 17: Well, thank you, Dan for staying in there. Pitching despite every handicap they can possibly putting in our way from free flow of information at this Democratic National convention.
Speaker 20: Nowadays, there’s a tremendous amount of anti towards the press, But it was pretty startling to see that happen in 19 68.
Speaker 16: Rather at that moment.
Speaker 0: Why would there not be anti typically towards the press? Alright. The the news media has an effect. Some people’s lives are damage, other people’s lives are enhanced, but if your ox is getting god. Right, You’re incentivized to have hostility against that which is gore your ox.
So why would Journalists be exempt from the normal rules of life. The way the way the world works. Alright. Let’s hey. We got conservative here.
So need to fix yourself. Yourself. So it doesn’t feedback.
Speaker 14: Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Yeah.
This like real quick. You so I couldn’t get through in the shaft for some reason. Or all I wanted to say is, I’m pretty sure that that guy wasn’t saying Kenneth. The what… What’s the frequency Kenneth?
Yeah. Yeah. I think he was saying, what’s the frequency? And Is yi for thief. And that guy had was, like, sc and believed that Dan Rat along with other news anchors were, like, feeling his thoughts.
And so he was saying what’s the frequency?
Speaker 0: Oh like that not
Speaker 14: of like the theory for years. So…
Speaker 0: That’s interesting because what’s the frequency Can doesn’t make sense.
Speaker 14: Nope. It does not.
Speaker 0: Oh, that’s that’s a great inside.
Speaker 14: Thanks. I can love it.
Speaker 0: Okay. Thanks, Bro. Alright. Talk you later. Take care.
Thanks Bye What’s what’s the frequency Ga Ga is Yi word for or thief?
Speaker 16: It became a heroic figure. Yeah. For standing up for reporters to do their work without fear of violence or or death. And at that point rather really becomes part of the history of 19 68.
Speaker 11: That’s stood Alright.
Speaker 0: He got, yeah know, great deal of personal advancement out of getting belt on live Tv. So comment to see if sailors has made each sharp observations about journalism, and 1 of them is his sailors law female journalism. The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in that, in order that come the revolution, the journalist herself will be considered harder looking.
Speaker 1: Couldn’t watch Tub Humphrey tonight to stand where he has wanted to for so long at the very top of the democratic party heap. My first thought was some heap.
Speaker 0: Alright. This is an Netflix. Documentary. I’m playing some extras
Speaker 17: for Nixon in a stunning political, come back almost denied him in the closing days, perhaps even the closing hours of the campaign. Has been elected the 30 seventh president of the United States with an electro majority vice president Cuba Humphrey upgrade.
Speaker 13: Richard Nixon despise, pressed as this sort of une elected cast of aristocrats who didn’t report the news but created the news, and decided what Americans should think.
Speaker 0: And the press despise Richard Nixon. Alright? People whose interests are anti empathetic to the interests of the news media are likely to despise, , that which is constantly causing them pain an embarrassment. Or we all a strongly motivated to diminish humiliation and to enhance our own opportunities for status, and being continually be littered in the news media. Alright.
Well, understandably, infuriated people.
Speaker 16: Nixon guts. Screwed in the 19 60 presidential election because the media was all Jfk crazy.
Speaker 13: In 19 66 7, , are preparing this run for president. This young producer whose name was Roger Ai, responded, if you had taken Tv more seriously in 19 60, maybe you would be president right now. Nixon hired him.
Speaker 1: The president is said by age to be especially anxious now to improve his image.
Speaker 16: There’s always something the press corps that’s gonna stand up and ask this sort of in your face question.
Speaker 0: Alright. That’s doug, brink. Alright. So in American news media, journalists are asking in your face, , hostile questions because that is what gets them status us among their peers. But hostile questions Right?
Don’t elicit useful answers. Right? When a journalist asks a hostile question, he’s doing something to advance his own status. That reduces any benefit that you might get from the interview aside from a sadistic or emotional payoff. Right?
You learn less when journalists engage in hostile questioning. You don’t want to include moral judgments in your questions, because then you restrict how people will answer them. People then become defensive, and they disclose less.
Speaker 16: And rather assume that role.
Speaker 1: This president, I wanna state this question with due respect to your office, but also as directly. That would be unusual. I’d like to thank not.
Speaker 16: There became a counter offensive to start trying to even the playing field.
Speaker 17: President rad.
Speaker 1: The background of this president I remember you
Speaker 13: it is important to reflect on history and all the moments in which the downfall of democracy, has been preceded and accompanied and has by rhetoric.
Speaker 0: Right. This is Rune. Far making a hyper, , flamboyant statement about democracy. He is the the gay son of, the actress Mia far, along with his mother, alleges without evidence that woody Allen mole molested his sisters, the he’s, , frequently been highly inaccurate, but he’s also landed some big stories,
Speaker 13: trying to turn the press into the enemy of the people.
Speaker 17: At first, it was called the water gate cape.
Speaker 0: Well, the press is always going to be the enemy of some people, and it’s always gonna be on the side of other people. Right? The American people. Are a hole in 1 respect, but in another respect, there are many different peoples. So, of course, the interest of the news media not going to perfect aligned with the interests of all peoples in the United States.
At Donald Trump is a threat. Right, here’s a threat to some people in the United States, and for other people, he is a protector. Joe Biden is a threat to some people in the United States and to other people he’s on their side.
Speaker 17: 5 men. Apparently caught in the act of burglar rising and bugging democratic headquarters in Washington.
Speaker 20: Nixon didn’t like it. When there were leaks given to the press. You hire a plumber to stop a leak.
Speaker 1: This called plumbers were a highly skilled group in the political dark arts, while tapping, home break ins. Against snow personal enemies and beyond. The president’s been also claimed that Cbs news in passing along the allegations of others. Is being politically unfair to mister Nixon by spreading this mayor.
Speaker 9: Hated the press and he thought the press hated him. But in the end, water gate was not the press fault. They did invade water gate. He did.
Speaker 1: Strong America that I wanna build. People who do not want these things naturally would exploit any issue. If a word water gate anything else in order to keep the president from doing his job.
Speaker 0: So 1 common theme in this documentary is the highest esteem that then whose media has for itself. And and the number of myths that they try to perpetuate about themselves. So they they tell us that they are just, , selfless servants of the truth, but they’re also trying to exaggerate their own importance. So all professions try to increase their own importance, their own status and their own abilities to make money. 1 of the biggest miss that the news media perpetuate is that the press uncovered water gate.
And Edward j, I’ve seen right a terrific. About this in commentary magazine back in July 19 74 issue. Did the press uncover water gate, the staining myth of journalism holds at every great article government scandal is revealed through the work of enter enterprise reporters who, by 1 means or another Ps the official veil of secrecy. Government but the role that government institutions themselves play in exposing official misconduct and corruption tends to be seriously neglected if not wholly ignored in the press. Right?
So it wasn’t the news media that uncovered water again. Right? It was primarily the Fbi. And 1 of his leading officials mark felt then leaked that information for his own self serving reasons to… Couple of journalists the Washington Post Karl Bernstein and Bob Wood.
So the natural tendency of journalists to mag the role of the press in great scandals, best illustrated by Carl bernstein above Wood auto account of how they reveal the water gate scandal. And you see this in advertisements for the book. While American knows about Water gate here for the first time the story of how we know. In the most devastating political detective story of the century, the 2 young Washington first reporters whose brilliant investigative journalism smashed the water gate scared wide open tell the whole behind the scenes drama, the way it happened. But the book never describes it behind the scenes investigation that actually smashed the water gate scandal wide open Namely, the investigations conducted by the Fbi, federal prosecutors the Grand Jury and congressional committee.
Right? The work of almost all these institutions, which une earth, and develop all the actual evidence and disclosures of Water gate is systematically ignored or minimized by Wood and Bernstein. Right? Instead, they focus on those parts of the prosecutor case, and those parts of the grand jury investigation, and those parts of the Fbi report that were leaked to them. At most of my biggest stories were given to me.
My only merit was that I pursued them, and I pursued similar so that people knew that if they they gave me something it was highly likely to see see, print effectively online print. Sorry So now 1 interested in how we know about Water gate will find out from Wood and Bernstein book or any other way cert journalist myth about Water gate. Right? But the non version of how Water gate was uncovered is not a secret. The government prosecutors more than willing to give a documented account of the investigation to anyone who desires it.
According to 1 of the prosecutors, however, no 1 really wants to know. So the government’s investigation of itself has become a missing link in the story of the Water gate scandal, and the role at journalists play remains ill understood. So journalists primarily rely upon being given things by interested members of geographies who have their own agenda. Right, Journalism is a business that depends upon getting official documents. And official sources revealing things to them.
Because news is primarily what bureaucracy decide or oversee and produce. And then journalists get that, and then they public size it to the world. Now I operated for years out where the buses don’t run no more, not primarily relying on bureaucratic documents. Because I wasn’t a major business. I was just me an individual who got sued 5 times for libel.
Right? My… Method for reporting the news is not a sustainable business model. Right? You need to rely on official bureaucratic documents to have a sustainable business model because those documents shield you from being sued for libel, which is real expensive.
Speaker 22: Politicians are there. Deliver their message, and the media is there to tell people if this message should be believed or not.
Speaker 1: What we’re talking about here is possible criminal acts. To by the highest ranking White House officials.
Speaker 23: While there was tension in the newsroom room because we knew we were under attack but, , all that did was force us to hone our product.
Speaker 1: The president’s popularity rating continued to drop. The House Judiciary committee began to consider impeachment.
Speaker 23: And Dan more than anyone else was the brunt of the pressure that was being brought.
Speaker 1: The possibility of resigning or being impeached and being tagged historically as the man led, perhaps the most corrupt administration in our history.
Speaker 24: Rather is just as son of a or you thing. He’s gonna always be out of a. He’s doing the bastard period. Be sure rather get a few nasty notes on reporting I what the helps or not gives us goes. He’s very sensitive to.
Well, Have you if you arranged that? Yes sir. And I’d hear him hard.
Speaker 16: I’m quite confident that Nixon plumbers group went after Dan.
Speaker 2: Our house got bur. My main memory of it is my dad standing with a a shotgun on the landing of the stairs.
Speaker 0: At tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans have sabine burglar rise as a result of America’s civil rights revolution, which kicked off the enormous up tech in the amount of crime.
Speaker 2: Cock the rifle to try to scare these burglar away, which which he did They weren’t stealing. They were opening safe. They were looking for papers. They were looking for stuff to burn my dad with, and they didn’t get it. But to me it was just a really scary thing.
Speaker 1: I can mister President Dan Rather with Cbs News.
Speaker 0: Alright. So who’s cheering on Dan rather here? Alright people whose incentives are aligned with bringing down Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: I didn’t. Are you running for something? No mister President, are you?
Speaker 0: So 1 mark of high intelligence is being quick, and Dennis P is highly intelligent and , quick on his feet, and that that was a a pretty, powerful rap repo. So what what should we really expect from the news. Right? The the news is the passage bureaucratic recognized events through administrative procedures. That’s is a terrific definition.
Alright? It’s bureaucratic recognized events through administrative procedures. So the Simpson criminal trial resulted in not guilty verdict, that was the passage of bureaucratic recognize recognized to administrative procedures. The verdict had nothing to do with the truth and the morality of Simpsons murders. So much of the news really doesn’t have much to do with the truth and and the reality of what’s going on.
And what the heck is reality, you may ask, reality is that which cannot be wished away, which still exists despite the most powerful forces, arguing that it does not exist. So what should we expect from the news? Because if we get our expectations right, we’ll be happier and we’ll operate more effectively in life, Right, most people are not enhanced by feeling enraged at the news. Right? So if you place people and institutions into their correct genre.
Then you’re going to be happier and more effective. You shouldn’t expect politicians and salesman to tell you the truth. You should expect everybody to pursue their own status and money. Should expect professions to continually seek to expand their own power and to reduce that of their competitors. So in his 17 76 classic book, inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and as smith wrote, people of the same trade seldom meet together even for Mer and diversion, but the conversation ends up in a conspiracy against the public for in some con try to raise prices.
Ban shapiro is a conservative pun, Expect ban period to issue a torrent of words taking the most conservative position possible. I don’t expect him to know what he’s talking about and don’t expect Scholarship, I do expect him to fulfill his audiences need for what feels like a profound conservative opinion. Right? I expect Crystal Light classic orange to taste a certain way, and it never lets me down. Right people are more complicated than drinks, but once I put people in their correct genre, Right, Then they are less likely to let me down.
I don’t expect Rabbi to be physicists or biologists. I don’t expect accountants to be public stand up comics. And I don’t expect the homeless to be Shakespeare scholars. But on occasion, they might be, but I don’t expect this and so Don’t get needlessly disappointed. Right, I expect a talk show host for a a journalism operation to optimize for that which is interesting to its audience.
I don’t expect them to optimize for truth. At sports talk show host Colin coward said there’s no money in being right. All the money isn’t being interesting. But I don’t expect rabbi to be more moral. Than plumbers with their average level of iq.
And then expect orthodox jews to be more moral than secular and then expect conservatives to be more moral than liberals because I believe these these theories fairly aligned with reality, it makes me happier more effective in life. So what should I expect from the news? I expect to learn about the passage of bureaucratic recognize events through the administrative procedures. So Right. When we look at weather reports, that is news that is filtered down from government bureaucracy.
Now, the better the quality of the news, the more it bets the reports of bureaucracy. So during the run up to the Iraqi invasion in 2003, the bush administration administration pushed the narrative of that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the mainstream news media largely went along with this, aside from Knight ritter overwhelmingly journalists did not do their due diligence with regard to these claims. Why not? Because it was hard to vet these claims, and it was unpopular. Now, just because powerful bureaucracy is push narrative, it doesn’t mean that narrative as true.
So after George Floyd death in 05/25/2020, various bureaucracy, including journalist ones pushed the false narrative that a police was systematically racist against blacks. Though all institutions or people push stories that deserve critical analysis, meaning placing the narrative in its time and place an understanding the incentives of the people pushing it. Most people most of the time don’t say what they mean, nor do they mean what they say. So all remarks and reports have to be placed in context, the better the journalists, the better they put things in context and the more they lane the interest at play. That when I read the news, I expect to get information that primarily comes from bureau, playing And members of those who have clashing interest.
Sometimes the information is true, sometimes it is entirely false. And we can’t expect journalists to adequately vent this information on the fly. Right? Most of the time journalists get used by those with an agenda, There sometimes, your bureaucratic information filter through a journalist is more important than what I can learn informally from my own eyes and ears and sometimes it is not. So the better a topic.
Right? The more you realize that the news on that topic is deeply flawed. So the news is akin to the employee handbook book you get once you start up. So when you’re… Trying to decide whether or not to take a job, you don’t have the employee handbook.
Right? You only get that once you commit to taking the job, then you take the job, and then you learn the rules that you’ll have to operate under. Now if you rely, on this hair to guide your actions to the workplace, you’ll be less effective, and if you primarily rely on what you see and here. So 2 of the news if you primarily rely on the news for your understanding of the world, will be less effective in navigating lives than if you primarily rely on your census. There a handful list stereotypes about group differences will usually be more helpful to you in discerning reality than northern news and academic articles claiming to smash or those stereotypes.
Back to this new Netflix documentary on Dan Rather, This section focuses on his clashes with president Richard Nixon.
Speaker 25: It was kind of just a moment. It was a a funny r, but people really held on to that as Dan taking on the president.
Speaker 0: People just generically howard onto that is Dan taking on the president. No. Those people whose interests were by large aligned with those of the Republican party and Richard Nixon took exception to what Dan rather did, because he engaged in a social interaction that reduced the status and prestige of their Protector. Their representative Richard Nixon. People who hated Richard Nixon loved what Dan Rather did.
So if you act in ways that are aligned against the interest of particular group, they’re likely to dispose you.
Speaker 1: How can the house? Meet its constitutional responsibilities. While you, the person under investigation are allowed to limit their access, potential evidence. And I am suggesting that the house follow the constitution if they do, I will.
Speaker 2: The But people don’t understand about that exchange is actually the aftermath because Cbs got a ton of heat from their affiliates. And so my main memory from that time is actually hoping it didn’t get fired for it.
Speaker 25: But Dan re the role. You could feel it. He did gain respect notoriety and quite frankly…
Speaker 0: He gained respect from some people. Right? Any alienate others, depending on people’s interests and depending on people’s hero systems.
Speaker 25: The I of the Nixon White House.
Speaker 1: The president’s remark that payment would be wrong seems to be Not during a discussion of hush money, but during 1 about cl instead. He simply is never going to look the same again to anyone who reads these pages of private conversation.
Speaker 10: In the…
Speaker 0: So is that true? What Richard Nixon never looked the same again to people who read those private conversations. No. Because most of us make up mi minds about people. Right?
If we have people we admire, if we have friends, We will interpret anything they say or do in alignment with how we already conceive of them. So not many people are open to evidence. And all of us say things in private that would withstand other people who think they know us. Right? All of us have a profound difference between out public and out private presentation.
Speaker 10: Founding fathers minds, the reason they thought that forth the state that the press was such an important institution to be part of the building blocks of democracy is that they knew that there needed to be an independent watchdog of government
Speaker 1: In the past few days, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress. Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective that noon tomorrow, this must
Speaker 17: be something of emotional moment for you. You have covered the entire.
Speaker 0: And what made it so emotional because this was part of dead rather stepping stones to power. And to prestige and to wealth, and this was high octane fuel for his ego
Speaker 17: in presidency and have been in the forefront of some of the conflict between the press and
Speaker 1: the president My own feelings are those of sadness, no bitterness and some ex exuberance about…
Speaker 0: And and you think there’s there’s a really his feeling sad. Alright. This is a a public presentation. Alright. It he wouldn’t he wouldn’t confess that…
Oh, this is just awesome. For this is just awesome for my career. So where do journalists come from? Tom Wolfe wrote in his 20 12 novel back to blood. People have such a colorful of newspaper reporters don’t they all these daring types who break stories and uncover corruption and put themselves in risky situations to get a scoop.
Robert Red in all the president’s man. But Lancaster the sweet smell of success, You asked me, newspaper reporters are created at age sex when they first go to school. In the school, boys immediately divide into 2 types immediately. If There are those who have the will to be daring and dominate and those who don’t have it. Those who don’t have it.
It’s spent half their early years trying to work out Mod Vi with those who do. And anything shorter subs servants will be okay. But there are boys from the weaker side of the divide who grew up with the same dreams as the stronger. This is true for me. I was bullied as a kid, I’ve never won a physical fight in my life.
Right? Boys who get dominated when their kids, they to dream of power. And money and fame beautiful lovers. Boys like this grew up instinctively realizing that language is a sword a gun, Used sc, it has the power to achieve greatness. This is what Liberals are.
Ideology, economic social justice. There’s are nothing but their own prom outfits. Right? The outfits people wear are not necessarily who they really are. And the…
Professional guys that they operate under such as journalists may not be really what’s happening. They may be political activists using the the skies of journalism. Right, their politics were set for life in the school at age 6. I think it’d be more accurate to say that their politics, were predisposed by their biology before they’re were even born. They were the weak and forever after they resent the wrong.
That’s why so many journalists Liberals Very same school events that push them toward the written word, push them towards liberal. You want power through words and journalism and rhetoric genius is not enough, You need content you need new material. You need news. And you have to find it yourself, so you develop such a craving for new information. You end up doing things that were tariff any strong man from the other side of the divide.
You will put yourself in dangerous situations, amid dangerous people with Re, you will go alone without any form of backup eagerly you with your weak man manner. By and up approaching the virus of the vial with the demand, you have some information, and I need it, and I deserve it, and I will have it.
Speaker 1: The Great American experiment showing that it’s still strong and healthy and viable Walter. Many people in the Republican party held the Washington Post and Cbs News, as primarily responsible for what happened to the nixon presidency scene When you cover a store like it.
Speaker 0: So, of course, the news media was not responsible for what happened to that Nixon Presidency, Alright. The the Nixon presidency was sunk by the mis mismanagement of Richard Nixon. He thought that he could take on, , all entrenched. Powers and overcome them, but in the process, eventually, it was he who was overcome Right? Donald Trump tried to take on the the powers that b, and they largely succeeded in containing him.
So there’s was a terrific essay about Water gate as democratic ritual, published by a soc. Professor, Jeffrey Alexander. I believe he’s at Yale. Wrote? About it in an essay in his 2003 book the meanings of social life for cultural Sociology.
So you had a break in in June of 19 72, employees the Republican party made an illegal entry in Burglary into a Democratic party headquarters in the Water gate hotel in wash to Dc. Right, you don’t think that things like this have been done all over the political spectrum in the United States and elsewhere. Right? Republicans described the break in as a third rate burglary. Can Democrats said it was a major act political political espionage.
Right? Because Democrats were incentivized to mag importance to the break in and Republicans were incentivized to minimize the importance of the break in. Americans were not persuaded at first by the more extreme really action, the incident received little coverage and had generated no sense of outrage at the time. There were no cries of outrage. There was in the main difference to the president, respect for his authority and belief that his explanation of this event was correct.
Despite the strong evidence the contrary. So the mass news media decided after a short time to play down the story. Not because they were c prevented from doing otherwise, but because they genuinely felt it to be an unimportant event. Water gate remained part of the profane world. Even after the national election in November of 19 72, 80 percent of the american people found it hard to believe that there was a water gate crisis.
Right. 2 years later, the same incident, still called Water had initiated most serious peace time political crisis in American history. Why? It had become a riveting moral symbol. 1 initiated a long passage through sacred time and space and a wrench conflict.
Between pure and imp? So how and why did this perception of what get changed Right. How did we go from the actual event of Water gate which in and of itself was inc to water gate. Now, new facts did emerge over these 2 years, but it’s extraordinary how many of these revelations were already leaked and published back in 19 72. Water gate could not tell itself.
Right? Water gate was not inherently intrinsically a big deal. It had to be told by society, it had to become a social fact, so the context of water gate change, not so much the raw empirical data. So public life occurs most of the time in mundane levels of goals power and interest. But above this is a higher level of general are norms.
Are an overwhelming hero system that a society holds. You’ve got conventions, customs and laws that regulate the political process And then above that are values a hero system. Right? These parts of culture that inform the moral codes that regulate our lives. Though politics operates routinely, the conscious attention of political participants is on uncles and interests.
Right. Profane politics means that you got clashing interests. Non routine politics begin when tensions between these levels is felt. As sacred. Right?
When when politics is moved from the Mu mundane to the sacred. So you get a tension between goals and higher levels of morality. So public attention shifts from profane political goals. To sacred values. So this is how we should understand the telling of water get.
It was initially viewed as something on the level of goals of just Politics by 75 percent of the American people. 2 years later, at summer of 19 74 public opinion had sharply changed. Right? And what happened is that society’s elites successfully presented a narrative that caught on. That this event was not just a mere, no polluted profane action, but that society itself was damaged because it was just so immoral.
Right? Water gate was presented as not only devi, but it threatens to poll the entire American system. So social controls had to be brought into play. And social control mechanisms, were accompanied by the mobilization and the struggle of elites and of the public. And there had to be an effective process of symbolic interpretation.
You had to have ritual, and purifying processes that continue the labeling process and enforce the strength of the symbolic sacred center of society at the expense of a center that is increasingly seen as merely structural, profane and imp. So Water gate initially was just a sign a den, a single event. But in the months that followed, the sign Water gate became more and more complex started referring to a series of inter related events touched off by the break in. Until you got charges of political corruption, presidential denials, legal suits and arrests. So by August 19 72, Water gate had been transformed from a mere sign to a symbol.
The word that rather than den actual events, pun multiple moral meanings. So Water gate move from the profane world into the world of morality and Water gate became a symbol of evil. It became a symbol of pollution and imp. And all those associated with imp with evil. Alright?
We’re placed on a negative side of a system of symbolic classification where you have good and evil. And those persons and institutions responsible for exposing the evil were placed on the good side. So we had this model of pollution and imp that was then imposed on the traditional good evil structure of American Civil discourse. So in the 19 sixties, the left continually invert critical universal and rationality in their social movements for equality and against the ruling institutional authority that they did not yet control. The right, evo particular tradition and the defense of authority and hierarchy in state, In the post election period of after November 19 72, right, critical universal could now be articulated by centrist forces.
Without being liken to the ideological goals of the left. So now you had this criticism of the Republicans raise in defense of American national patriotism. So you had an emerging consensus that, America’s most important morals had been violated in the country polluted by Water gate. And so you had a movement towards a general of pollution and morality. And so you have this anxiety about the center of the country of an in vacation of institutional social control.
And after the election, this movement to prosecute water gate was deemed less politicized. Right? Was after the election, no longer political, it was just bureaucracy doing what they should. The courts Justice department, various bureaucratic agencies such as the Fbi, special congressional committees, would now issue statements, that were cast as non political. And so these social institutions legitimate the news media efforts to spread water gate pollution closer and closer to the central American institutions such as the presidency.
And so Water gate was no longer regarded as limited crime, and this forced more facts to surface. So you had this increasing fear the Water gate posed a threat to the very center of American society. And elites were overwhelmingly on the side of this position and against the richard Nixon administration. So senator Baker articulated this anxiety, how much did the president know and when did he know it? Right.
So you have a threat to the very core of America. And this intensified the growing sense of norma violation, meaning moral violation. Increased consensus that we have pollution with Water gate and it generalized the pollution to the entire Nixon administration. So it began to realign the good and bad signs of water gate symbols. So which side of the classification of good evil when Nixon any staff on they’re increasingly painted as being on the side of evil.
And then the televised hearings constituted a lim experience. Right? Lim means bordered. Right? 1 that was radically separated from the profane issues and the Mundane concerns of everyday life.
So we had a ritual created for Americans to share. And it was a ritual that elevated itself above the polarizing issues that generated the water gate crisis and the historical justification that motivated it. And these concerns were removed from the. So the hearings were a civic lesson, in which the democratic conception of proper behavior were shown as being violated by supporters of Richard Nixon, So the hearing succeeded in becoming a war unto themselves. They were sue generic.
They were award without history. Right? Its characters did not have memorable pass. Right? The water gate hearings existed out of time.
So a proper way to understand the renegade a gate hearings is to understand the people involved, what their incentives are, , what what’s going on at this particular time of place and where do they come from, But that’s that type of literary analysis was not used for the water gate hearings. Right? Instead you had the framing device of Tv, which literary poured the hearings out of their historical and realistic situation. So you then had in camera editing, and you had repetition j position simplification other techniques that allowed the story to increasingly appear mythical and a battle of good versus evil. You had the hush voices of the announcer.
You had the pump and ceremony of the event, and you have a recipe for constructing within the medium of television, A sacred time in a sacred space. And through Tv, tens of millions of Americans participated symbolically and emotionally in the deliberations of the Water gate committee. And viewers felt morally obligated to recognize that this was a great moral drama, so old routines were broken, new ones were formed. So viewers saw a highly simplified drama. They were presented with heroes and villains through the use of symbols, barely depicting which side was good which side was evil.
So administration witnesses appeal to loyalty is the ultimate standard that should govern, relationship between subordinates and authorities. This is a traditional right wing, believe. Now each witness brought his wife and children if he had them, so to see them lined up behind them, p and proper. Now provided symbolic links to the traditional authority and personal loyalty. That represented the right wing perspective.
But what was the symbolic work in which the senate is engaged. Right? They denied the validity of particular sentiments motives. Right? They bracket the political realities of everyday life.
And the critical realities of life in the complicated 19 sixties. Right they do not refer to the polarized struggles of the day, so they made these struggles invisible so they denied any moral context for the actions of the witnesses before them. But this strategy of isolating backlash values were supported by the only positive explanations that the senators allowed. The conspirators were just plain stupid. They poked fun of them as utterly devoid of common sense implying that no normal person could ever conceive for doing such things when in reality, everything that they’d been doing had been done in the political game in America before.
So it had this strategic denial of reality, you had the elevation of the Water gate hearings from reality and from history, and presented with a ringing an affirmation of the myth that formed the backbone of American Civic culture, So through their presentation, their questions, their statements, their references, their gestures and their metaphors, the senators maintained that every American high or low ritual poor black and white. Should act virtuous in terms of the pure universal of civil society. Nobody should be selfish or in inhumane, No American is concerned with money or power at the expensive fair play. No team loyalty is so strong that it should violate common good or make criticism to our authority unnecessary. So truth and justice are presented as the basis of American political society, every citizen is rational, supposed to act in accordance with justice if he knows the truth.
Law is the perfect embodiment of justice and what they’re doing consists of the application of just law to power and enforce that has been misused by the forces of darkness because power corrupt. Right? These elected officials must enforce imp obligations in the name of the people’s justice and reason they must uphold the American hero system. And they evo all sorts of narrative myths Yes
Speaker 1: and we you have emotional feeling on all sides of the store. Simply those who felt that they have lost. They’re gonna blame somebody. Cbs, and myself as the Chief White House correspondent had been under tremendous pressure in that moment, what I was feeling was we’ve been through a lot, it’s finally over now what?
Speaker 0: So I I’m playing excerpts from this new Netflix documentary on Water gate. So what are the that main myths about Water gate is that the press uncovered water gate but it’s really government institutions such as the Fbi and congressional committees Now we’re talking about Water gate as a democratic ritual, reading from an essay by soc psychologist, Jeffrey Alexander from Yale. So we have the elevation of Water gate from an event to a myth. So John Dean was the most compelling of the anti nixon witnesses because he embodied the American detective myth. This figure of authority is derived from the P and tradition, or portrayed as ruthless pursuing truth and justice, , without emotion and without vanity.
Of course, nobody is that pure. And then you have other narratives. Right? You have the committee’s priests, the senators. Granting forgiveness for administration witnesses who accord with what they want.
Right And you have administration witnesses who confess and convert to the cause of righteousness. The senators question centered on 3 principal themes all sent to America’s democratic hero system. They emphasize the absolute priority of office obligations over personal ones This is a nation of laws, not man was a constant refrain. Second, they emphasized the embedded of such office obligations in a higher transcend authority. Laws of men must give way to the laws of god, the Sam Urban put it, which is more important to you’re not violating laws or not violating ethics.
And the senators insisted that this transcend dental anchoring of interest conflict allowed America to be truly solid, a concrete universal. So senator it a Wack, or Republican put it, Republicans do not cover up. Republicans do not go ahead and threaten. And God knows, Republicans don’t view their fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed, but as human beings to be loved and won. Now, Normally, these statements would be greeted with the vision with hoo cy.
Most of these statements were lies in terms of the specific. Empirical reality of everyday political life, especially terms the political reality of the 19 sixties and the early 19 seventies. Yet, they were not laughed at nor they who down. Because this was no longer ordinary life. This had become a ritual, a lim event, a bounded event, a period.
Of intense general that had powerful claims to America’s heroes system. It was a sacred time. The hearing chambers became a sacred place The committee was evo lu transcend values, who was not trying to describe empirical fact. And on this mythical level, the statements, could be seen and understood as morally true, and is embody the heroic aspirations of the American people and that’s how American people. By and large, understood them, which made Richard Nixon time in office un, Right back to 19 75
Speaker 1: pretty quickly.
Speaker 0: New York
Speaker 1: Nixon resigned, Cbs. Said they wanted me to move from the White House. Mike Wallace asked me to come to 60 minutes.
Speaker 8: I’m Mike Wallace.
Speaker 19: I’m More safer.
Speaker 1: I’m Diane Rad. A moment, those stories and more tonight on 60 minutes.
Speaker 25: Moving to 60 minutes was a waters moment.
Speaker 1: The pace at 60 minutes. Was immediately really rapid and I love that it took off and became a talk about program. 1. Whatever happened in the hippie. There’s nothing new about prostitution and Rock Springs, indeed, it’s an old tradition here.
I’m ask you degrade yourself. A through f foreign policy. Then this is a little bit embarrassing. Will there be other elections soon. Until then, This is the scene outside of New York Called studio 54.
Speaker 25: Oftentimes, Dan was the 1 calling with, should we be doing
Speaker 1: this? Little or nothing in the way of news comes out of Afghanistan. So the only way to find out what goes on there is to go in and see for yourself. I’m standing on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A border that is now closed to most everyone except refugees, fleeing the Soviet invasion.
Speaker 9: How many he was told not to go to have Afghanistan because it was dangerous, but he wanted to do it with the possibility of never coming back. I mean, they knew he was coming.
Speaker 2: I was in college then, and I literally thought he wasn’t gonna make it back. I went home to basically say goodbye.
Speaker 1: These Afghan clothes I’m wearing were part of an operation to sneak me and a Cbs news film crew into Afghanistan.
Speaker 26: If there’s a story to be gotten Dan’s gonna get it. And if somebody thinks that he’s dressed up in a way that looks ridiculous, not gonna stop him.
Speaker 25: People made fun of Gun. In the clothing. But, what? He went, and he rewarded.
Speaker 1: This is a training session for new recruits. Afghan who have settled their families in Pakistan and are now ready to go back home and fight.
Speaker 16: Televisions about ratings. And money. It’s an industry and 60 minutes was dominant.
Speaker 27: There is a theory at Cbs. That the worst thing that happened to Cvs news was 60 minutes. Because it proved you can make money from news.
Speaker 25: Oh shit. I think 60 minutes is the best thing that happened to enhance the value of Cbs.
Speaker 28: Television journalism as you well know, has become show business. To a certain extent.
Speaker 1: The the most important thing in news, I think for the long run is the believe ability of the person who’s giving you the news. That’s Walter crockett has going for is tremendous be ability.
Speaker 0: New York Times hasn’t not a call. Not white anti… War protests haven’t fled up at black colleges. And New York times says for complex reasons, such campuses have had fault less visible gaza tensions. I to think it’s terribly complex.
I just to think they’re interested in any anything beyond… I don’t think they’re intensely interested in anything beyond themselves. Right So to me, it’s simple, but to the New York times, it’s complex, and this is how they describe it. The reason stem from political, cultural and soc economic differences, with other institutions of high learning. While historical, black colleges host, range of political views, Domestic concerns tend to outweigh foreign policy in the minds of most students.
Many started on lower on the economic ladder, and I’m more intently focused on their education. And their job prospects after graduation. Yeah. They’re they’re primarily interested in themselves. I don’t beg graduating and that, I don’t criticize them for that, but you’re not gonna find protests at black colleges about , any cause beyond themselves.
Speaker 11: They’re
Speaker 9: ratings… Cro could read the phone book and have an audience.
Speaker 17: Cbs presents this program in color. This is my last broadcast as the anchor man of the Cbs Evening news. For me, it’s a moment for which I long a planned, but which…
Speaker 10: He was by far the number 1 news san television, but
Speaker 7: he was also getting up in here, so he accepted. Through retirement. Walter Cro was probably the biggest shoes that you could ever fill in Tv news.
Speaker 16: Cro kent knew what a great reporter rather was and was very comfortable having him be a successor.
Speaker 0: So the the English and the Australians have a much more accurate time for en command. They call them news readers. Right? And it called them news readers in America. Alright.
Americans have, , much more pre potential titles. Alright? And command. Well, there really are as a news reader.
Speaker 1: When I came to the anchor share, I wouldn’t try to mislead anybody, and I wouldn’t be believable if I did try to pursue them. It felt terrific. I felt in some ways I’ve been preparing for this moment. Most of my adult life.
Speaker 4: Were 2 questions probably
Speaker 1: 3 an open question question question. Total is 01:30.
Speaker 2: Cro sign off was and that’s the way it is.
Speaker 17: And that’s the way it is. Friday, 03/06/1981.
Speaker 9: So Dan had to do a different kind of show that played his strengths.
Speaker 2: And he wanted to sign off by saying, courage. Courage to everybody who’s… Length pipeline working on a railroad.
Speaker 1: 48 hours on Crack Street until then then rather. Curt.
Speaker 2: And the network exec just absolutely not having it.
Speaker 10: The guy walks into Dan’s office and says Dan, rather Why are you signing off with courage? And dan said to him because my favorite word? And it means something to me. And the guy sent to Dan. Dan.
My favorite word is bullshit, and he can’t say it on Tv. Okay.
Speaker 0: Do you remember an Hbo reality series that came out back in 20 21? Small town news. Right? It’s about these modestly talented Tv personalities, have to work at a small town session in Nevada if they wanna be on Tv. And I’ve felt highly uncomfortable watching this series because it hit a little too close to home.
Right. It made me think, , I’m never going to be a bright shiny star, and it maybe be my talents assembly only small town. And to the extent that this makes me uncomfortable. Alright? It means that I have not come to terms with my my own reality.
And Alright? We we we sometimes get uncomfortable. Trying to come to terms with our own limits and watching small town news was was painful for me. Alright. We we tend to filter reality through our moves, moods, and then we pro it as objective truth.
So… Understanding ourselves. Right? Helps us to understand the payoffs that we get for signing on with certain theories, helps us to see why we deceive reality in a particular way. He didn’t Nov said that Ad h, an argument from authority first entered the English language in the seventeenth century.
Right. John Lock also gave us modern notions of facts. Right? Facts a statement of statements of simple ideas expressed in language. So this formulation made me rethink my assumption that only honorable forms of debate.
Are over facts and logic. So when people discuss the news and events like Covid and public policies. Alright? Are we primarily working out logical philosophical s or are we warlock like witnesses to a be ordering array of events, out that are just completely con founding us. And I’m also live on kick.
Where there is a, , very very very lively type of discourse. So If we’re primarily working out logical s when we discuss the news, alright, then we should only talk about facts of logic. But if we are witnesses to be well, be wielding array of events that are beyond our can, then… At h, perhaps has a place. Right?
Given the way life works, it’d be weird, not to use ad h in arguments from authority, and these type of analyses and trying to better understand reality because we’re we’re all filtering reality through our own lord humanity. Almost everything we know in the world depends upon referencing some type of authority. Right? So we are all we’re all vulnerable. Right?
Because reality is much more complicated than what we can possibly digest.
Speaker 11: So I was just watching the first 2 episodes of the new Hbo documentary, small town news. So have you seen that? It’s a documentary series on this small town news operation in Nevada. And here we go. So it’s called small town News, call k v Rum.
So it’s a reality Tv show, but it said in a real workplace. In this small town, 27000 people town in Nevada, per Nevada, and it’s maybe focused around the the news department. Of k m. And I’m I’m watching this show, and I read some reviews on it, and they talked about how lovable the characters are and there’s not so much this shows not locking at people that’s laughing with people. So unless they’re friend of humor, and the show has an opportunity to mock as characters, but it doesn’t there’s a judgment coming on the soundtrack or the editing that…
The show enables us to laugh alongside the cost. Now I watched the show. I just found really depressing. Like and now why the heck did I I find this depressing. I mean, there’s no objective reason why I should find small town news, K Trump they’re depressing.
But, I mean, the whole idea of living in Rum. It just… It seems depressing to me. So Per is a town in the state of Nevada. Alright?
And It’s on the southern most tip of 9 County. So it’s the most southern part of the state of Nevada it’s 60 miles West of Las Vegas. Is adjacent to the california border. And the town has a population of 36000 people. But this small town Tv station, can’t reminded me what Doing here.
What I’m doing here is essentially, , operating small Tv station, And it’s not watching it and thinking. Like, would I’d be so desperate for attention or to get on Tv I’d moved to a town like Rum. To try to do the weather or news reporting or even anchoring the news from trump Nevada. And so just maybe me think about, oh, how how desperate have I been? Yeah.
I’m I’m operating the traveling salvation show So surely you’ve had the experience you’re watching a live stream, and they… The the operators really want your attention, and the more they want your the more uncomfortable you feel. Like the more cringey. It it it feels. But there’s so desperate for your approval and for your super chats and for your subscribing.
Like, please like and subscribe. , hit that like button. Punch that subscribe button that it just makes you uncomfortable. And so I’m watching this Hbo documentary series on this small town in Nevada, like this small town news operation, And I think you like to what lengths will people go to to get on Tv. And then how true was that for me?
And how was that say distorted my life? And then… I came to the realization, like, when I’m doing a show that I think is useful. Like, when I’m doing a show that I think is contributing, then it doesn’t feel cringey. Like, if I go on here and I just like, yeah.
Look at me. Now just , weird attention hoarding or I I stumbled on a shit like that It it makes me feel uncomfortable. Like, the hotter people strive to to grab my attention on on Youtube the more uncomfortable like get. On the other hand, some people really has something to offer. I mean, Professor Casey.
I was just watching his his latest video on on poultry. And it was good. It’s like he seemed like he’s coming from Good place. Something go offer have something to give. And it’s not depressing.
Right? When you encounter someone here on Youtube, and the the disturbing feeling you get is that they just really want your attention so that they can call things together for another day. That’s that’s depressing. Alright? That’s that’s cringe making.
So so when… If you wanna be on Tv or you be on Youtube or you wanna be on the radio or you wanna do a podcast or you wanna write a blog or you wanna write a a Twitter account. As long as you have reason to believe that you’re contributing. Alright? As long as it’s just not, hey, look at me, we I think you can feel good about what you’re doing.
And 1 1 thing that’s tracking to me in this new show. Is that there are people in the show who seem At with who they are. There’s this couple from fair banks Alaska. Who who moved to Per rum during the winter. Right?
They flee Nebraska in the winter moved to Per rum. And they seem generally at ease and happy. So their ego is not depressed that they’re doing small town local notes. Like they they just convince this ethos that they just wanna help. They just wanna contribute.
How would they can? And if they can contribute by doing the editing or by doing the weather or by reporting or helping to anchor a show, they’re just happy to contribute and they seem to be, like, genuinely At ease and and happy with and have this attitude of, like, what can Do? How can I contribute? How can Be helpful here? So they’re fun to watch.
And then then the owner of the station is really pleasant Cringey. He talks about. He set up his antenna in Las Vegas, and he talks about. We’ve got, now, 3000000 potential viewers. But that they they’re lucky to get, you, 50 or a hundred or 200 viewers.
So I mean, I’ve got 3000000 potential viewers right now. I’ve got 3 actual viewers and 3000000 potential viewers. So it’s it’s painful when you see someone living in delusion about, oh, you, I’ve got these millions potential viewers, and then they set up the channel. They set up 7 different digital channels and they’re trying to figure out how to fill up that space. So they think about all, maybe we do a Marijuana themed channel.
And so I’m just thinking, like, how depressing would it be to be working on a marijuana theme channel. Like, I I don’t think I’d be into that. Or let’s do an Lgbt channel. And so there’s nothing inherently wrong about doing a Youtube livestream or being on Tv. But if you’re just pumping out content that is perhaps destructive to people.
Then how earth are you gonna feel feel good about that? So, like, sometimes this is desperate for to come up with content? And that’s fine. But if it skips the question of, how does this contribute? How does this help how do I feel good about this?
Right? How would this how would this play out? If different sectors of my life happen to stumble across what I’m doing? Then I think get into trouble. If you if you don’t if you don’t go to that contributing question.
So I’ve been reading a wonderful book. Alright. So talking to you about yesterday that noble dream, the objectivity question the American historical profession is by by Peter Novak. And just wonderful book, and it talks about various trends in the history profession. And so after I cannot be be a respectable community member with the Marijuana General mind.
Yeah. Alright. Who who, like, why would you feel good about say, oh, let’s do a stripper channel. Right? So this this multi town Tv news station they report under the closing or the opening of a local broth, and and the big, like, Bd Dungeon room for people to play in.
Mean, that’s fine. Like, you do the do the odd report. But but what what kind of toll would it take on your soul if you’re… You gotta be just focused like, oh, let’s just do a channel on Bd app? I I agree with Rabbi my judith what he’s said Someday that anyone whose identity is focused around sexuality that that’s disturbing.
Right? So whether you’re gay or straight. Whether you’re, know, into vanilla or whether you’re into Bd, if that’s your identity. Right, By your sexual preferences. It is, if someone disturbing.
So after 1 war 2, in the history profession, it it kinda coalesce around this idea of being objective. Their objective truth about history and that that we’re all kind of in it together. There was this feeling of comedy meaning, common benefit. Right? And professional demeanor.
So we’re not gonna tear each other to shreds. We’re gonna work together. We we’re gonna objectively seek out the truth. And that was the that was the consensus in the history profession, and they they generally stayed away from stating right and wrong. They generally stayed away, , these huge overarching narratives, with some exceptions, Guess what those exceptions are.
It was like, universally agreed that international is good. Global is good. The United States should except… The responsibilities of power and foreign policy, but this is good. And that we should have complete racial egalitarian, particularly with regard to Black white, relations.
Alright? So those were the areas where totally call to have opinions, right, These weren’t even regarded his opinions they’re regarded as objective truths. So any other demonstration of values, like, your you’re look to stands upon. But pushing for racial egalitarian. And for the United States to accept the responsibilities of power.
Right? Those those were objective truths that the that the history profession is kind of united around after world war 2. So there there were these various pains to the liberal tradition Right, racial egalitarian global. Right? That was cool as historians.
But aside from that, any overt acknowledgement that you’re writing history from, some sort of overarching perspective that was completely shunned restricted to just a handful of valid Christian Historians. All they medically that is their faith that they found the resolution of v vaccine problems with historical objectivity. So I a good show on Sunday with the with Rabbi j, Mac going up against David, I was some intense times. Do you suppose to do it was interesting long times I what you wish blood sports says Ricardo dangerous with Nun unused to participate in and around it. I’ve been thinking a lot about.
Yeah. So well, here, all these pains to free speech, so there was a… Think there’s an either… I think in New York Times, by Susan which Nick which nick Nikki, the Ceo of Youtube about. Youtube is dedicated free speech they’re dedicated having a variety of voices.
But, of course, any Not jew it says anything remotely critical of jews in a public setting, like, not gonna rebound you well on them. But on the other hand, for Jews to critique, non jewish society, that’s a wonderful thing. But for members of non jewish society to critique jews. Oh, that’s off the table. Right?
You’ll get your video removed from Youtube for that. You’ll be you’ll be driven out of polite society if you do that. So… Yeah, it’s wonderful when blacks critique white society. But when weights, critique negatively society.
That’s imp imp. We cannot have that. It’s wonderful. When homosexual critique, heterosexual. Yeah call them breeder.
Like, that’s en enlighten. That’s that’s vibrant. But if heterosexual say anything negative about homosexual, well, we kinda have that on Youtube. That’s out of bounds. So it’s great when when Jews could critique nudge, when Nun jews could critique jews, that’s permissible We can’t allow that.
So, yeah, Jury blood sports are quite dangerous with the well beating of Nun jews to participate in. So… But it was 19 79 when I decided to become a journalist, and this is in the aftermath of water went to be a journalist with somebody had some social prestige a lot of people when they go into the journalist and profession. And there’s a lot of talk in the journalist profession that we should try to be objective. And what objectivity is usually meant for people is that you just simply report the things that you’re told by.
The mayor, by the members of City Council by the public health officer, by doctors by people in authority by what the Bureau say if you simply report, what people in authority say, the heads of various bureaucratic agencies declare, then then you’re being objective. And there’s there was a terrific Essay in 19 84, talking about the facts of el salvador according to objective, versus new journalism. So new journalism. Carlos, Think I was naive when I waited into the Internet debates. Yeah.
Because it is a hot button issue and And it’s a lot easier for me to get away with it because I’m not I’m not
Speaker 0: married with kids. And so I’m
Speaker 11: not as vulnerable as people who say married with kids established it in a profession. Have to have to end a on a living. And the more prestigious you’re a professional, the move vulnerable where you have to get canceled. So if you’re a university professor, you’re a news comment container, if if you’re some kind of politician. If you have some kind of authority.
If you’re a professor, mentioned that. Yeah. Then you’re much more vulnerable to to can cancel. For saying something where if you’re a plumber or an electrician, it wouldn’t have any negative consequences. So in in journalism, and in the history profession, we have a lot of discussion about objectivity versus subject and can we ever a be objective?
So objective journalists, attack, new journalists colleagues for distort facts refusing to adhere to normal journalist protocols and the participants in new journalism where you can even call them bloggers or live streamers say that the quote quite an objective journalists are inevitably skew facts because of bias built into very procedures that objective. Journalists you. So I don’t think any of us right now have any doubt that forward objective journalists in washington post your times Street journal, inevitably skew things according to some predictable biases. And Ro regina says, dude it is right about Adam Green, the negative reaction to inquiry creates hatred. Well, III don’t see I don’t see Adam Greene is simply inquiry.
I mean, the guy is predictably reflex anti Jewish.
Speaker 0: Okay. Let’s get back to this Netflix documentary that just came out on Dan Rather.
Speaker 1: Mike tuning is the Cbs used.
Speaker 9: We had to get through a transition damn was so attractive and sharp in the suit and so forth and following Walter, who was much more a cr star in a way.
Speaker 0: So if you watch someone every day whether it’s Luke Ford or… Some actor on Tv or a Tv news reader, you’re very likely to develop an emotional attachment to that person, and that’s called a para social relationship.
Speaker 9: There was an idea that we should put him in a sweater.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the ratings lately? No. I haven’t.
Speaker 0: Saturday night I live.
Speaker 14: Feeling okay. I mean,
Speaker 1: they like the sweater, but it still doesn’t quite say Cbs news to me. I don’t know. So…
Speaker 2: He had ski like that between what upper management thought he should be as an anchor and what he really was as an anchor, which was really a reporter.
Speaker 9: Petroleum refining.
Speaker 1: Don’t believe Just… Alright.
Speaker 9: I’m trying to it. Please.
Speaker 7: I was a 22 year old desk assistant he would always say hello to everyone? Hello? Hello? How are you? Hello.
How are you? , very intense and is…
Speaker 0: Alright. That’s Andy Cohen. So, yeah, Dan relative did come across as the most intense of the 3 major network An. Right, not nearly as Obeying as Peter Jennings or Tom Bro. So there was a weird off putting intensity to rather, which created all these discussions about optics.
Right? So the alright had, well, these discussions about optics. And for years, there were all these discussions about Dan Optics. Because there was just something that millions of Americans found off putting about both of these entities.
Speaker 7: Broadcaster voice. He’s a big man. He’s larger than life. He’s got a huge head.
Speaker 0: Right. This is Andy Cohen of reality Tv.
Speaker 1: Big face, quadruple checking. Is not.
Speaker 0: And big head goes with big brain and high intelligence. So people like ben rather Tom or Peter Jennings who rise at the top of their profession. They’re they’re usually in the top 5 percent of Iq levels.
Speaker 1: How matters but… Sure, , keep you up, trust you mother but check it out.
Speaker 29: My grandmother out Dan rather was Just
Speaker 2: perfection.
Speaker 15: Keep it warm and friendly. Think warm and friendly.
Speaker 8: I believe I can manage that without any problem at all.
Speaker 15: Alright, Quiet. Can you do it dark sport.
Speaker 1: Nobody can be another world to Prom. It would be mistake too. Try to be walter crockett and I better be the best I’d rather I could be. Good evening. This is the Cbs evening news.
Dan rattle.
Speaker 30: Good evening the fate of Korean Airlines flight 7 continues gl. I’m Tom Bro with Nbc Nightly news.
Speaker 7: President That was the age of the anchor man. It was, like Mount Rushmore. And Dan Rather was in front, and then there was Broke and Jennings.
Speaker 26: Wow Peter Jennings, Tom Bro and Dan Rather. Existed at a time when 3 broadcasts dominated the air waves at a time when that
Speaker 0: So much of the corporate news media is presenting a a liberal lit. They’re essentially trying to reinforce what the the the liberal left enlightenment, hero system considers sacred.
Speaker 26: The nation could agree on the facts.
Speaker 1: We It was
Speaker 19: 45000000 people a night for Abc b, Cbs and Nbc. Not super bowl, but it’s damn close.
Speaker 1: You’re constantly inhaling. Nasa grade rocket fuel for the eagle. How do? How do we make hours better than either 1 of the other 2?
Speaker 2: He really respected them. They really respected him back. But it was a game of who Scoop and Who.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Alright. But let’s go.
Speaker 0: So I I converted to orthodox judaism and converting from a non ritual religion to a ritual religion is highly challenging. I came from… Seventh advent, which is a modern form of p, but they keep the seventh sabbath and the vegetarians, and protestantism by large has a few rituals. And in orthodox judaism, there are hundreds of rituals. And you have a prayer book.
Alright? It in protestantism, you just pray to god in your heart. But in Orthodox studios you’re working out of a prayer book and saying the same words over and over again every day every week. Not everyone’s cut out for that. I…
I’m not cut out for that. That’s why I developed the habit of, like, studying some sacred texts didn’t synagogue a. So there was a time going reform temple, and during the governing, I was reading the bell curve. And I was like sway back and forth. Everyone else during the Army da, but I was reading the bell curve.
1 1 person that called me out for that. Like, I what the heck. Why you why are you dove to the… Del. So here is some good comments on steve Sailors website back in 20 21.
There is a market for liberal lit. Many people as they get order, especially find the repetition of familiar words comforting. Now, obviously, it’s better if the words are true in the first place. Alright, Heather Cox Richardson, a wasp. Alright.
Her her writing creates the the most popular subs. And she’s every day. She’s philosophically grounded. She’s temperate, and absolutely convinced that a superior liberal moral values will inevitably prevail, and she’s blind to how she is opening the door to her own destruction. She reminds me of my new England Liberal Republican grandparents and their friends and the whole wasp A gemini that were swept aside in the 19 sixties.
Alright. Sober and boring is what a functional democracy requires. The sensational outrage and radical post on both the left and right is damaging. Every rider has to get attention and clicks in a crowded market. United States that its stayed majority was would not have sunk to the deaths of America is at today.
So many of us particularly as we get older, like repetition of of words.
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. I’ll meet sure. Has got… Coming with my bag.
We may be delayed just a second or so while we get it. Wanna I meet your bag down here.
Speaker 26: Dan’s instinct. Every time there’s a story. It’s… Let’s get on a plane and go there and let’s do the broadcast from the place of the story. And jennings and broke all all…
Speaker 0: So news is primarily what bureaucracy report. Right? If you can’t base your news on some bureaucratic reports some piece of paper, you’re swimming outside the normal news business and you’re much more vulnerable to getting sued. Right you can’t normally get sued to reporting what a bureaucracy issue. So I was reading back in 20 22, Poor Pringles excellent book, bad city, Peril and power in the city of Angels, and he criticize all these people went speak to him, but when I reached out to Paul P twice.
Right? He he didn’t do anything. He sent my request on his public and that’s where they died. So Paul P, is no different in this respect from the people he criticize. Right?
Paul P wants his subjects to speak to him, but Paul P won’t speak to me. Paul Pringles book has turned controversy and there are no deep interviews with Paul P following its publication to get his responses to the criticism. And I reached out to the major characters in this book. They also did not respond. But here are some key excerpts from this book on corruption in Los Angeles.
There’s is a key line in the pasadena police report that was not red redacted the 1 listing witnesses to the overdose. So this is the Dean of the Usc medical score who was feeding methamphetamine to to women or 1 woman in particular to keep her hooked and keep her as his sex slave. And this report issued the name of a single witness and it was the the taint of the Usc medical score, Carmen Julio Fit. And his relationship with the victim was described as friend. It was a 65 year old white male.
Finally. I now had an official record that placed the dean at the scene of the overdose. Right? And now the pressure on Usc to tell the truth about the dean was about to become crushing. Right.
And it’s all because he finally had a piece of paper that that confirmed what you already knew, but he couldn’t publish what he already knew until he got some piece of paper from a Bureaucracy
Speaker 26: filled. That we were too quick to move out that we went to stories that weren’t that important. George Bush at that time is gonna make a quick trip to Beijing on the weekend. Bro car and jennings said no way. And we walked with with a big smile on our face and said, this is going to be
Speaker 24: big. Way
Speaker 1: yours. K. Ready? Day 4 the student strike, day 4 for the 3000 and so. Hunger
Speaker 26: spring while were there and became patent clear that the Chinese students were going to try and uprising.
Speaker 1: In the middle of all of this is the hospital channel, which handles the worst cases. This is day 4 of the students sit in, day 4 the Hunger strike The sound of ambulance ambulances this is almost everywhere because they do… Lose
Speaker 26: as soon as the uprising began, the Chinese shut the doors, broke caught and jennings at that point could not get in, and we have the story completely to ourselves.
Speaker 19: There was this new fantastic device called video camera.
Speaker 1: It’s just past midnight beijing time now under a full
Speaker 0: Alright. This is the Dean, of, Usc Medical school.
Speaker 31: Michelle, Former Dean of a K school of Medicine, Doctor Carmen Was apparently living a double life, and Times investigation revealed he was seeing patients by day. And doing drugs with a prostitute and her criminal friends my night. Doctor P took the stand in his own defense today in a high stakes hearing that will determine if he will lose his medical license. The 67 year old op epidemiologist blames his bad behavior on his bipolar disease testifying that he was in a, quote, hypo state, a mental illness that he says took hold of him in 20 15. Quote, I was sick.
I’ve come to learn how sick I was, and part of my illness was to deny what was going on and even to deny the diagnosis. Po says he for met the then 20 year old woman in early 20 15 through an escort website, A website he’d used before. The harvard trained eye surgeon says that first encounter at a hotel room in Ontario was the first time he ever did meth. The La times obtained these photos of P doing drugs. Po says he lavish money on the young woman, putting her up in hotels apartments and taking her on trips to Las Vegas, Miami, Boston and even Switzerland.
Po says he spent at least 100000 dollars on clothing alone for the woman. Quote, I never looked at her A prostitute except the first time I met her, I would help her and occasionally we would have…
Speaker 0: So think about all the stories in the news about horrible behavior. As by men in in pursuit of sex and how few stories comparatively, you see about prominent women engaging in rev behavior in in pursuit of sex. It tells you about the intensity of the male sex drive when compared to the female sex drive, Right? The conventional wisdom, which will find backed up in the New York Times are just a myth that men and women have different intensity and sex drive, but in reality, They’re about 100 stories of prominent men behaving badly in pursuit of Sex for every 1 story you find out of some prominent woman behaving badly in pursuit.
Speaker 31: Yes. I didn’t spend 100000 dollars and clothes to have sex with her. I did that because…
Speaker 0: And and if you ask people who subscribe to the conventional perspective that men and women have equal sex drives. You get the explanation that women have more self control that women simply superior creatures.
Speaker 31: I was madly in love with her and lack judgment about how much money I was… Spending. Turmoil was the norm. Po Claims she dragged him in Las Vegas, putting Xanax in his drink. They were also threes.
Sexual encounters that would at times include illicit drugs, and yet Po viewed himself as a arrest were saving her from a life of prostitution and drugs. Police…
Speaker 0: So the desire to rescue and the desire to be rescue. I remember from 1. You 12 hour program I went to Sex and love addiction. The program said it comes from the same sick place. And there is an instinct in many man including him myself to be a captain save hook.
It’s just absolutely into to try to save an attractive fallen woman who you are having sex with the hope to have sex with.
Speaker 31: F secret life was spiraling out of control when she overdosed at the hotel constance in Pasadena in 20 16. Po had paid for the room. He told police he was a family friend, denying any romantic relationship.
Speaker 11: You guys have a romantic relationship change? No. No. Just friends.
Speaker 32: Just friends.
Speaker 0: Right. Back to this Netflix documentary on Dan. Rather. The point of that exit was that it it early became a story. And Paul P the New York Times was able to tie it in to a piece of paper least by the Pasadena police department.
Speaker 19: A television network if they were willing to spend the money could cover the world.
Speaker 1: The hunger striker had had what may be their last meeting before the army moved.
Speaker 19: There’s instantaneous news.
Speaker 26: Eventually, our live broadcast from Beijing or getting so much attention that Chinese government made the decision we will not allow you to use our satellites to broadcast.
Speaker 1: Shortly before midnight eastern time rather made 1 last effort to keep broadcasting. I do protest in the most respectful manner. But the Chinese had finally had enough. There would be no more live coverage the satellite was being shut off.
Speaker 26: It was a huge moment both for us. And a black guy from the Chinese government.
Speaker 25: It was amazing to be with Dan. At moments of historic significance.
Speaker 1: They berlin Wall once it divided east from West.
Speaker 25: Because he understood the value of it, and he also understood the responsibility of it.
Speaker 1: If you were here the feeling that you would feel is a he fourth through July and thanksgiving day.
Speaker 9: He was so open to to doing what was required.
Speaker 25: He was as much of producer as the producer traveling with him.
Speaker 9: He say, what do we have to do? Whether do we have to go?
Speaker 25: How far we could push it,
Speaker 9: and he’d be the first out of the door.
Speaker 10: , how he’d travel with some gold sewn into his clothes. We had emergency funds, He looked at his work like you were in a battle.
Speaker 1: Scattered gunshots were hurt as the marines moved and secured the sequel. Airport terminal building Mo issue out there in the darkness, Us navy seals at
Speaker 26: There is a bond that comes. On people working on a broadcast, not unlike soldiers, fighting in the field together. You depend upon 1 another.
Speaker 19: He truly believe that he could tell the story better than anyone else.
Speaker 0: So there was an ethos in in journalism up through the 19 sixties into the seventies that, free expression is good. And that controversial is good. It it’s brave. And that’s 1 of the 1 of the ways that journalism has has change used to be that intellectual were just universally in favor of the free market of ideas. But now we increasingly hear about all sorts of ideas that should not be allowed to be publicly discussed.
So Ronald Cursed, the economist, wrote in 19 74 essay asking why do intellectual support the free market of ideas, but opposed the free market for goods and services. And I was just thinking when did this d facto their intellectual support for the free market of ideas stop. So probably during the 19 nineties during the rise of political correctness, their and also with the rise of the internet when many intellectual had the unpleasant experience are being critique by those who they regarded as their inferior. So the press were off for freedom of expression when they dominated the market. Right?
When they control the means of production. Of news they were off for their own freedom. But the print media resent the radio news, business, and the Tv news business and try to restrict it. Right? So groups such as intellectual and print journalists and Tv journalists, they all tend to be for their own freedom, but not so much for other groups.
Right? As long as intellectual are fighting their way to the top of the cultural high ground against the establishment, They needed and wanted free speech. Once they arrived at the summit, pre speech became something that created more danger for their status than protection for it. Though when you don’t have power, it makes sense to ostensibly put your principles first, so people know that you’re not a threat to anyone with power you just believe in these abstract doctrines. But when you do have power, it makes sense to put your interest first and to re your principles.
So it seems like the default position of elite intellectual today that we need more censorship. And I did define an intellectual as anyone who makes his living from his ideas, and this almost always requires subsidies. Right? Almost nobody has ideas so compelling, they will provide a living on their own from in the market. So it’s always worth asking you, how does this public position coincide with somebody’s personal interest?
But in the sentence,
Speaker 23: his preparation gave us the grunt who worked with him a lot of confidence.
Speaker 1: reporters get paid to be skeptics. Here
Speaker 19: It didn’t matter what Dan were at reported on. He was going to be labeled a liberty. And oftentimes, it came from people who just didn’t want to hear the truth.
Speaker 17: The real threat to freedom, the real threat to freedom of speech and the real
Speaker 0: So why was dan rather critique as a liberal? Because he was?
Speaker 17: All threat to our constitutional system is own our Tv screens every evening and only f painted of our newspaper every day.
Speaker 10: The press always had a bit of an that for serial. Relationship with the government that’s part of their job. That’s part of what the founding fathers wanted.
Speaker 1: When asked this This as strong as we thought it was gonna to be in terms of his father.
Speaker 6: Yes. It because
Speaker 16: everything started coming un glued with the rise of Ronald Reagan. Reagan is all about der regulating and the cable turns
Speaker 0: So Ronald Reagan represents a a counter to the dominant. Liberal left enlightenment ethos that dominated America’s institutions, so Reagan was seen as a threat. And the the best philosophical explanation for this that I’ve seen is a work in progress by philosopher Runner Goodman. Conservative claims of cultural oppression, the nature and origins of conservative, very early on in this book he quest from Joel Cochran, writing in 20 14 in ways that nuts seen since at least the Mccarthy era. Americans are finding themselves increasingly constrained by a rising class what I call the progressive Cla that accepts no dissent from its basic tenants.
Like the first estate in pre revolutionary France, the cla increasingly exercises is power to constrain the dissent views, whether on politics social attitudes or science. The rise of today’s lara stems from the growing power and influence of its 3 main cons parts, the creative elite of media and entertainment, the academic community and high level government bureaucracy. So the power of the knowledge elite does not stand primarily from money, but in persuading in instructing and regulating the rest of society. Our contemporary clarity increasingly promotes a single, increasingly ideology and has the power to marginal or ex communicate. Mis from the public square.
Speaker 16: Out to be the friend of the right because… They’re able to create constituency television.
Speaker 17: The only way to really stop what we see as a slide. Towards liberal in this country is to bring an in to the bias, the liberal bias that exists in a major media
Speaker 1: today, Helm spoke of journalists who he said have, quote, forgotten the god that the rest of us believed blessed us and, quote, if they do not hate America, have sm contempt for American ideals end of quote.
Speaker 17: This 1 is dan rather.
Speaker 19: If it looked like the right wing was out to get down rather. You were right. They were, and they still are.
Speaker 33: Republican senator Jesse Helm wants to take over Cbs. He says if 1000000 conservatives each buys 20 shares in the broadcast network. They can take it over and, quote, become Dan Rat boss. It seems Jesse Helm feel Cbs is the most anti reagan network. By taking it over conservatives can end what they feel is biased reporting.
Speaker 13: The fact that Dan rather is located by. Some people as a uniquely a malevolent figure is merely evidence that he’s done his job.
Speaker 0: Some Right. People are not usually argue out of pursuing their interests. Right? People did not to be gullible. People are pretty good.
At detecting when other groups are moving against their interests.
Speaker 1: 0 percent 0 percent. Said they thought that you care a great deal about the needs and problems of the poor. Now, let’s set aside what you’ve done or not done. Do you think that you need to do something that blacks will perceive as being positive for them.
Speaker 24: I don’t know whether they would hear about it. I think we have been doing things that are positive for them.
Speaker 29: A good journalist to me is willing to be very unlike and unpopular in the moment and willing to be hated.
Speaker 1: You’re gonna be in journalism, you wanna be loved, you better get a dog.
Speaker 0: Journalists wanna be loved. By their own peer group. Alright. Journalists what be loved just like anybody else. Right?
It’s… Who do they want to love them? So in many ways, journalists the lap dogs of experts and who are the experts? Experts are those who other experts say are experts. Right?
The people who grant Phds. Right. They they have the power to determine expertise. So her doctors and lawyers. Alright?
They have ethical codes where they’re supposed to act on behalf of the interests of the client. But really only those with equivalent levels of expertise to the attorney or to the doctor can can properly judge whether or not they’re actually acting on behalf of the client. So the client trusts the lawyer to exert himself on behalf of the client. This is plus for Stephen Turner writing in his great 20 13 book the politics of expertise. However, client not being a lawyer is not in a position to effectively judge where the lawyer is probably a representing the client or giving the client adequate legal counsel and advice.
So this relationship requires trust. The client suffers from a deficiency in information, or an inability to make judgments, but the lawyer has his own interests, which he can advance potentially by cheating the client Also think about clients and stock brokers. Alright? The stock broker benefits is the lawyer might by doing commission work for the client. The stock worker advises the client at what work needs to be done.
The lawyer advises the client about what legal steps to take. And also benefits from the client’s decision to take those legal steps because that means that they get to bill a lot of money, so many divorce lawyers will effectively have some kind of informal conference with the other side and they effectively agree that they’ll each burn up, thousands of dollars in retainer fees, sending merchants back and forth before they they reach a settlement. Even lawyers when they hire other lawyers want the shark to be an entirely. Altruistic shark, who puts their interest before the shark own interest in every respect. But Right?
When an academic program awards a degree or a journal accepts an article, the program or Journal assumes a risk that Its assurances of adequacy will found out to be true, and they’ll will be aware of any error to their reputation. So this is a bond. Scientists get recognition, they get achievements, by accumulating status among their peers. Alright? The scientists to go to the right schools, publishers in the right journals wins the right prices prizes is more likely to have his achievement cited.
Right? He therefore creates more value and his status is an expert. Is on the rise. Right? Experts are those who other experts deem as experts.
And then jealous depend upon their favored experts to decode the nature of reality for them.
Speaker 34: Kenneth. What’s the frequency? Those strange unexplained words may hold the clue to the identities of 2 well dressed men who attack Cbs news cast Dan Rather.
Speaker 35: As Rad began walking south down Park avenue, he said 2 well dressed men in dark suits and white shirts approached him. According to police, 1 of the men said, Kenneth, what is the frequency? When rather replied, you have the wrong guy, rather said, 1 of the men punched him in the head, knocked him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly.
Speaker 9: Everybody who disliked dan for whatever reason, particularly apologies politicians. Dim didn’t believe the story.
Speaker 35: The motive remains a mystery. It doesn’t appear to have been a robbery attempt and police say it may have been just a case of mistaken and identity. Meanwhile, they’re still searching for Dan rat attackers.
Speaker 29: People thought that he faked his own assault. Dan Rather, straight arrow Dan Rather.
Speaker 0: The… Right. The the dominant reaction to this story was mocking. Right. People did have dan rather, and they thought he was losing it that he was nuts.
Right. I I remember this that the late… 19 eighties, Dan rather had a reputation of it being nuts.
Speaker 7: What’s the frequency guy got caught? He was a real person, and he was a real dangerous person and killed someone at the Show.
Speaker 17: Ta is charged with pumping the bullets into The body outside of the today show studios went. Day.
Speaker 2: People thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny. He he nearly died. He has injuries to this day from that assault. My dad could have easily lost his life and god beat within an inch of it.
But a couple of years later, Rem made a a really great song out of it.
Speaker 0: Wait. I I can’t play that. Oh, no. I’m gonna get… Gonna get some copyright notice if we’re just playing allowing those 3 record.
Speaker 34: Media Psychology newsletter says at exactly what is troubling him. Only he knows.
Speaker 7: There was a school of people who thought Dan was a little nuts that he was gonna crack on the air. He was considered to be intense, maybe divisive, and maybe frankly a little off.
Speaker 0: Come on? No. No no no stop that.
Speaker 9: And you’re talking to the nation. So in some ways these a chain tiger. And the get into trouble for it.
Speaker 25: It was Occasionally sports overrun in Miami that would push the evening news maybe even off the air in the east Coast.
Speaker 36: Rather was told the S Graf Laurie Mc tennis match would run late. Delaying the start of his news cast. Rather reported to be angry about the late start called New York and when the tennis match finally ended instead of rather news, Affiliates received nothing. Black.
Speaker 25: Dan was not in the chair. And That was the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 36: Some network affiliate executives say that rather was trying to make a point that the news should have gone on on time. That he was acting like a p donna.
Speaker 19: I think he was angry.
Speaker 36: Do you see this as a general drift of entertainment versus the news of course,
Speaker 19: I do because that’s where the money is.
Speaker 25: You can have a stellar career, but there can be mistakes.
Speaker 4: Of
Speaker 1: Okay. I do. We need to raise the audio just a little low.
Speaker 4: 10 seconds open up there full mine.
Speaker 1: The climax of this convention comes tomorrow night. George Bush will deliver his acceptance speech to ville goes here and to a national Tv audience. His political career on the line.
Speaker 26: Early on, 1 of the senior producers had written a letter. Asking for a general interview that we asked all
Speaker 1: of the candidates to do. Many felt rightly wrongly, that vice president bush is hiding information that the public ought to know.
Speaker 26: The Iran contra scandal was very much into the air. We really like what we’ve got. Saying arms have been traded for hostage jersey. To these mediterranean. To the Iranians and the White House sink.
Absolutely no way. It’s not… The question was what was bush role this, which at that point his saying, I didn’t have anything to do with it.
Speaker 37: The question about arms for hostages has been answered over and over again.
Speaker 26: Roger Ai who was an adviser. Too bush agreed to a live interview and the problem in a live interview is that the clock is running out on you.
Speaker 1: This device president.
Speaker 0: Right. So people want to hold power. Right. We’re all wired to reach for status and more power. And notice how the journalists resent not having the power of doing a recorded interview and then choosing those selections that fulfill their own narrative.
Speaker 1: Didn’t thank you for being with us tonight. Donald Greg still serves as you trusted adviser. He was deeply involved in running arms to the contra and he didn’t inform you. Why is mister Greg still inside the White House is still a trusted adviser?
Speaker 37: Because I have confidence in him and because this matter, Dan, you well know. And your editors know has been looked at by the 10000000 dollar study by the senate and the house.
Speaker 26: Add Roger Ai then and advising a bush saw an opening in which Bush could be the tough guy by saying you asked me for a general interview.
Speaker 37: Now, if this is a political profile for an election. I have a very different opinion as to what… 1 should be.
Speaker 1: You said these if you had known this was an arms for hostages swap that you would have posted. You also said That you didn’t not know that answer that. That was the question. It was
Speaker 28: just state was a statement
Speaker 19: m may question. Nobody saw it home was that Roger.
Speaker 0: So it’s very common when you’re in some kind of public dialogue that the host or the moderator will try to limit what you can say. And so often a host or a question will make some inflammatory statement, but we’ll do everything they can’t not allow you to address it. Or They’ll said, no. No. We don’t wanna to talk about that.
But they’ll say something inflammatory, but then they’ll try to do everything they can to not allow you to address it, and you can’t put up with that.
Speaker 19: Holding up cue cars. For George Bush and giving him the
Speaker 37: answers. Very, very forced.
Speaker 25: Roger Ai was a master at manipulation and creating scenes. To dan phones into the trap? Yeah.
Speaker 1: You set the… You set the rooms for this this talk. I didn’t mean to step on your line there, but you insisted that this be live, and they have a limited amount of time. That’s.
Speaker 26: I am in the control room when it gets that.
Speaker 0: So the situation is the boss. Right, Dan Rat is a big boss at Cbs News. He normally has the ability to edit interviews to conform to his narrative, but now he’s in a new situation, and he doesn’t handle it well.
Speaker 26: Can’t. Dan can’t listen to me. So all I’m doing it is saying 3 minutes.
Speaker 37: You explain out of the loop. Nope. Operational role. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Now, you’ve said that if n it was an arms armstrong hostage you swap you would have post it. You said the first union it was an arms
Speaker 26: 4 a minute.
Speaker 0: I I remember this time. It was about the only news story that National public radio would cover. I listened to a lot of public radio at this time. I was working in construction and I didn’t like putting up with the commercials So I’ve kinda alternate between talk radio and national public radio and every night, it seemed like 90 percent of the news was on the around Ko. On the Iran contra event, which was used by the news media to damage the reagan administration, but the Iran contra event didn’t have much significance.
Right. There’s there’s as absolutely no connection between the news and significance. Just because something dominates the news such as allegations that Donald Trump was including with Russia, dominated the news between 20 16 and 20 19, that doesn’t mean it’s true, doesn’t mean it’s important.
Speaker 26: Within a broad broadcast…
Speaker 0: So to the extent that the United States was able to keep… I iraq and Iran occupied fighting each other. You could make it a k that that was good for the world. That these are 2 countries who would otherwise, Be be bent on, , creating havoc elsewhere if they weren’t so busy fighting each other to death.
Speaker 26: Yes. That has only 22 minutes of Time. We can’t go any further than 6 minutes.
Speaker 37: What Have we’re doing how
Speaker 1: can you reconcile that you would there mister near understood 3 separate occasions?
Speaker 9: I wasn’t in the studio that day. And I came back, and I knew the impact it was gonna have.
Speaker 37: I expressed my concerns and explain.
Speaker 1: You can’t remember if the other people the meeting that he was wasn’t
Speaker 37: there at that point.
Speaker 25: Leslie Saul and I in Iowa for the primary. We’re in the back room and we’re sitting there watching it and we’re like, holding off to each other, like we were watching a horror film because we thought it was really bad.
Speaker 37: It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on iran. How would you like it? If I judge your career by those 7 minutes when you walked off the set in New York. Miss fu president good for you, but I don’t have… Respect for what you’re doing here tonight.
Speaker 26: 6 minutes I’m saying, cut.
Speaker 1: Iran was officially a terrorist state.
Speaker 26: You’ve gotta stop. You’ve gotta stop.
Speaker 1: Are you willing to go to a news topic. Who are the have caucus is? Answer question all all conference
Speaker 37: just since March. I gather there… Is no.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for being with this Mister Vice President. We’ll be back with more news in a moment. That’s We don’t mis. We come straight at before. That’s my…
Speaker 0: So when you get angry, alright? It often gives you the power energy and enthusiasm to do what you need to do in the immediate moment to take care of your own best interest. But the angry you are, right, the more power you have in 1 sense, the more energy you have, but it also tends to cloud your judgment. And in this instance, Dan rather got angry and his judgment and D demeanor was negatively affected.
Speaker 1: I have record in my history and that Cbs news record this history. Clearly understand.
Speaker 9: And that’s stand shane. And I knew Dan was gonna get into trouble for it. As a fl executive this I knew I was have to deal with the consequences. It was an important very important issue, which Dan rather pursued characteristic. With energy, that’s what Dan does for living.
That’s what a great reporter does for a living.
Speaker 25: I called a couple people in New york.
Speaker 0: So the the news media and president Reagan’s enemies tried to create a sacred event out of Iran contra and succeeded to a small degree? They wanted to replicate the success of Water gate, and that was was kind of the prism through what much of the Iran contra. Controversy played out. Alright. People thought what will this bring down Ronald Reagan.
This has the potential to be a new water gate, but they weren’t finally able to elevate it into that kind of sacred morality play of good versus evil, which the enemies of Richard Nixon were able to ins, and turn water gate an event into a good versus evil morality play. And looking back at Iran contra, 30 30 years later, it clearly was an event of any limited importance.
Speaker 25: Bill Mark. And they were thrilled with it, and I was horrified.
Speaker 26: We promoted all weekend long on our air that it would be an interview with device president on the Iran country there. It was in the morning papers and why the vice president didn’t understand that. We don’t know. The headlines is president the next day were exactly what Roger ai and Bush wanted were that rather bush wax the vice president.
Speaker 17: The bush people say he was bush whacked,
Speaker 9: or maybe they were interested in the more than the reality,
Speaker 26: it made dan rather a central character than that election.
Speaker 30: Good evening. I heated… Change between vice president George Bush and Cbs Anchor dan rather about the vice president.
Speaker 1: Flooding Matters
Speaker 38: your lady thinks Dan Rad ear should be pinned back. And if the vice president can stand up to him, he can stand up to anybody.
Speaker 5: I
Speaker 1: think George Bush has decided that press bashing is a blood sport. He picked out dan rather last night had
Speaker 24: a shot in.
Speaker 1: My job is to ask honest questions and try to get honest answers, and I’m comfortable with that. It’s not always and comfortable for everybody involved, but I’m comfortable being reporter. So I’m to have this job, and I like it a lot. I wanna get to it. Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 9: People say why is he always in the news and so forth? Is the dangers.
Speaker 0: So a lot of news media organizations will say, we we don’t comment on internal affairs. And, yet, they’re they’re very happy to comment and investigate and to seek comment for the internal affairs of other institutions.
Speaker 9: Thing about publicity, the spotlight burns as much as it illuminate. And when you’re in the spotlight all the time, you’ll get into trouble. Because there are people looking to get you. Ella.
Speaker 0: So there are ways to behave that to reduce the the downside of the spotlight. And 1 principle that I think is more effective than any other principle of which I’m aware is to act as though everybody knows everything. So instead of trying to get away with stuff, it just act as though everybody knows everything. You considerably reduce your opportunities for self destruction.
Speaker 13: Vince never forget. Republicans never forget.
Speaker 0: Oh, as opposed to Democrats. Right? This is lefty historian and journalist Rick mole.
Speaker 13: They’re shrewd, but more importantly, their long term strategist.
Speaker 0: Fox news channel, fair, and balance. We’re… Right. There there’s no big difference between the left and the right here. Right?
We we all try to use events. In our own interest, every living thing tries to create an environment around itself that is most conducive to its flourishing. This is going where news shoot.
Speaker 12: What I recognize recognized was, the American people didn’t wanna be told what to think about the information they were receiving. So we came up with we report you decide. Fair and balanced.
Speaker 10: There is a master prop at work.
Speaker 28: If you look at the 3 networks, Abc, Cbs and Nbc and Cnn, but take the 3 commercial not cable networks. Any difference you think in those news cast?
Speaker 12: I think by and large Abc and Nbc come out at pretty straight.
Speaker 0: Do you really?
Speaker 28: Yeah. And it’s only Cbs that you think is biased.
Speaker 12: Well Dan rather who hates George Bush and wants the nail him every night. Dan rather is upset George Bush Knocked von fannie in 19 88 in that debate.
Speaker 20: I don’t think that Dan was trying to… As make something happen politically.
Speaker 28: You don’t think he’s out to dang.
Speaker 12: Oh, absolutely. What.
Speaker 16: Alright alright. Let’s not get
Speaker 12: ourselves Of course he is.
Speaker 20: But it was useful for ale to act like this is a representative of the Democrats. This is a lefty, and we need to take them down. It’s useful to have a demon to vi verify, it’s 1 of the ways that this effort works.
Speaker 25: When Ai came in, he said, I have a vision to serve part of the country that it don’t think has been served in the Right.
Speaker 0: We all have a narrative about how the world works. We all have a hero system, and we all want our own stories reinforced. So there’s no inherent connection between what hits the news and what is real? And in reality is that which exists no matter how intensely. People try to say it doesn’t exist.
And news is the passage of bureaucratic recognized events or administrative procedures. So I read a blog post 07/28/2022 and noted at the top of the Wall street Journal right now because here’s the headline recession fears Loom as Us economy contracts again. So according to the comments department that day, the Gross national product fell 0.9 percent in the second quarter. Right? This was the second straight quarter of Gross national product decline.
And that is the traditional and the technical and the literal measure of a recession that is generally used in the news media. Now I wonder if we had a Republican president in 20 22 with the media have an easier time declaring that we are in a recession. A And stripper in Manhattan, particularly were noticing in February that we were in a recession because their clientele stopped tipping. So news is a consumer product like orange juice. You make money in the news business.
By providing a product that meets people’s needs and telling the truth is incidental to making money in news or in succeeding in a bureaucracy Right. Bureaucratic procedures are they more likely to arrive at the truth than individual insights, but they will get more play in the news because you’re less likely to get sued. If you reference bureaucratic procedures and paperwork. So when a bureaucracy declares something, news merchants aren’t going to get sued for reporting it straight. On the other hand they might get sued if they rely upon the inside of individuals.
So inside of sea sailor on all sorts of issues are far more. Realistic than those of our dominant news media. Though the news tends to be dominated by official sources, Reality is frequently unofficial, but it is always more true than the pronounce of bureau. So every individual, every institution, every piece of writing and every bit of news needs to be understood in his context. Right, who wrote this?
Who delivered this for whom was it written? What’s the ideology of the writer? What’s his agenda? What are the incentives he faces what his life experiences? How does he make a living?
What’s his social circle from whom does he most want respect? From whom does he most want love? Right? And pretty much every profession primarily wants respect and love from members of their own profession.
Speaker 25: News in a more conservative approach.
Speaker 28: How did you do it? I mean, tell me what the formula is, whatever the conversation Has led Fox. News channel to be considered. Here to stay.
Speaker 12: I I think it all comes down to people and a vision and to what’s the vision
Speaker 10: Roger El is a man with a very strongly held set of views about how he wants the world to work. Okay? And what he did was he took all of his brain power and energy and rupert…
Speaker 0: Right. Everybody has a very strong opinion about. How the world works?
Speaker 10: Orthodox money to establish a system, an information processing system that delivers to an audience, Roger El worldview.
Speaker 13: The culture of cable News partisan partnership is not limited to Fox. I think…
Speaker 0: Alright. This is Ronan far.
Speaker 11: From the New Yorker york.
Speaker 13: Think that it’s a pit fall on both sides of the aisle. But Fox has been uniquely significant in pioneering a model that in ent show ship and person rank her.
Speaker 28: But the philosophy is to get in prime time you have to create personalities. Is that the idea?
Speaker 12: Yeah, You have to create ratings. I mean in the end, it’s about ratings.
Speaker 13: Roger Ai really was a ka and talented inventor of that model. Certainly a popular of it. Not only do today’s liberals, many of them hate our American traditions.
Speaker 39: Nothing will get better in this country until the culture change. Right now, it’s really easy to monetize crap.
Speaker 19: Learn late. You can make up your own truth. And enough people will believe it.
Speaker 39: We have to tell the truth to our viewers.
Speaker 0: You can make a strong argument that Eventually Tv news is crap. It’s a very. Superficial and shallow way of understanding reality. So we all want status and prestige and power, And when something news threatens our status prestige, people react negatively, you have the rise of the muslim movement in orthodox judaism in the nineteenth century. And other orthodox rabbi who we ordered a considerable power at the time resent this new movement for reducing their own status and power.
And Fox News comes along and becomes the dominant source of news for millions of Americans, and Fox competitors resent this. At this is this is how the world works. Right? At and the the news media reacted by… Oh, , they they don’t do this to me.
Like, how dare they do this to me? And they said, I’m coming back here a million times if I have
Speaker 15: to. I am so mad. Fucking humiliate them. I am coming back here every fucking weekend way out to. Like this never over.
I went. They fucking those. That’s how the world fucking works. Fucking types. Bigger get rules I can like me.
Go fucking rooms. I fucking fucking of fucking shit the I rule the fucking. Those of shit at your rule by people like me. They look up your face like mine looking down at them. That’s an fucking world worse.
We were gonna destroy this fucking cow.
Speaker 0: Right. That’s very human reaction, and that’s essentially the the the reaction of Fox competitors simply phrase in more elevated language. The I’m playing some excerpts from this documentary on Netflix about Den Rather.
Speaker 39: That’s a minimum. We can all be confused from time to time based on circumstances, but the sky is blue and the water is wet, and anybody who begins with something.
Speaker 0: Right. We all think that we’re riding a, a white knight. Right? We all our heroes within our own hero system. Shepard Smith, and the people of Fox.
Speaker 39: Think other than those kinds of truth doesn’t deserve our time, and you watched Dan rather for a while. who he is. He’s a truth teller. He’s a truth seeker. Dan doesn’t take sides.
Speaker 0: He pulls do you you really think that, Dan rather would tell Truth would have told truth when he had, , so much power and influence and money. Think he would have been willing to tell truth that would cost him that power and influence and status, of course, not. Right? Very much. You more important truths that you get from, say, Christopher caldwell, than from, Dan rather.
Speaker 32: Altruistic. To want America’s women to all get married and have children because they’ll lose a lot of votes.
Speaker 38: That’s right. In the same way that a Republican has to be. Altruistic to favor high immigration. It’s from a strictly electoral viewpoint. But But so I think you get an idea of some of the things that I’m doing in the book.
I mean you noticed this divergence. I mean, women used to be unified around a certain idea of what woman is and what life is, but and sometime in the sixties, they diver as if they were living in 2 different countries as if they were living under 2 different constitution And the idea that we have 2 constitution is really the central 1 in this book.
Speaker 32: Mh. Let’s so to talk to me don’t know if you cover this. I will be reading your book, incidentally. That’s how important. I think it is.
And I wanna… I I love analysis of the sixties to the present. But let’s talk about men. I don’t know if, again, I don’t know if you do. Masculine when I grew up and masculine today, next it’s toxic masculinity.
When I grew up, it was the best thing a man could be is masculine.
Speaker 38: Hey Yeah. Now that is something I look at quite a lot. And 1 of the things that I think form the backdrop. To the sixties, was this idea of masculinity that you’re talking about and it was basically it was basically the ideal of masculinity that came out of the out of the military in World War 2. And you need to think about where the country was at the time.
We just we’ve come out of a great depression the leadership class of the United States had not exactly been on a winning streak. When we went into World War 2, okay? Then we go into World war 2, we defeat totalitarian on 2 continents We invent the most powerful weapon in the world has ever seen. We come out of World war 2 and we for a while we’re making. 50 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.
And it seems like the military really knows how to get things done. Now there are good things and bad things about that. Among the bad things are, there’s a certain kind of uniformity in the way people build high schools and that sort of thing. I think that along with the good of the Gi bill, I think it wound up probably pushing a number of women out of universities, and I think that’s part of what that’s a lot of what Betty fried dan was complaining about.
Speaker 0: Alright. More here from, wait. Christopher Caldwell.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Damn. , it’s it’s interesting the first. , you’re right. I don’t I don’t tend to look at roads not taken, but the first level of change that you It’s a very a puzzle about the year 19 64, and I don’t like to to get stuck in 19 64 and talking about this book because the book leaves 19 64 and, , by about page 15.
But but a puzzle about 19 64 is that first level, in which you banned government discrimination, but but left the private sector mostly intact is roughly what the Kennedy civil rights bill was, which he found impossible to get out of committee. , in this Far.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 5: No. No. I don’t know that that it was because in didn’t Far
Speaker 37: I at time.
Speaker 5: I think so. Yes. And I mean, it was the chairman who were keeping it bottled up. And yet, Johnson came up with something that was much much more far reaching, and he got it through, Congress. I think that that a lot of the explanation is the the effect of the Kennedy assassination on the national psyche.
And and actually, Johnson’s skill in producing in in presenting this as something as the president’s most passionate wish, ? So… But once you got to, once you had it in this form. As I say, it was not apparent that that that it would be expanded as it was. But I repeat, I think that the tragic flaw of the bill was the prerogative, that I would say in terms of of of of of checks and balances.
The the the constitutional flaw was was that whenever the question arose of whether the powers, of that dis compensation should be expanded. That that question was addressed to the people whose authority would be expanded thereby that is and asked bureau whether the bureau should have more say over determining whether this was right or wrong. And Asked judges whether the judges should have more say. And I think that the answers that got were in retrospect, predictable, although it has taken a half a century for them to play up.
Speaker 6: I wanted to turn to Reagan.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Everyone wants more more power and authority and more status. And in in the 19 sixties and seventies, you had the rise of new journalism. Right? And the Old god, the traditional journalists who regarded themselves objective, Right?
They’d attack the new journalists who became increasingly the popular. They’d say all these new journalists, they don’t care about facts. They don’t abide by journalist protocol, and the new journalists say the old journalists would skew the facts because of their own biases built into the very procedures that objective journalists use. And both types of narratives , fall within a single fact fiction matrix, this dominated English language discourse for the past 400 years reading from something professor Sandra Rama, published in 19 84, the facts el Salvador according to objective and new journalism. Alright.
Where they differ in the methods used to decide what is fact and the relationship of fact and reality. So journalists primarily rely upon the pronounce of bureau. While the new journalist would talk to people outside of bureaucracy. Right? So facts for public consciousness are usually determined by procedures that depend upon organizational or descriptions of reality.
Right? Something becomes a fact because of bureaucracy has declared it so. Right These facts are very sharp, they’re categorizing. They’re easily processed and they are valid because they based on the bureaucratic manifestations of the dominant policy decisions of a community. Right?
And if you follow what bureaucracy release for us, you’re gonna be out to steer clear of label laws. And you’ll be after to produce a product that you’re gonna be off this round with advertising and make money. So reporters aren’t allowed to know what their sources will not or do not tell them. This is traditional journalism. Now the new journalism would be more idiosyncratic.
It would rely more on detail. So Susan Son tag noted to under stand is to interpret and to interpret is to restate to find an equivalent. So procedures used to record and interpret the daily sensory experiences of the writer, and events become news worthy when they have an impact upon the rider. So new journalists work out of the human need to make sense out of their experience. And to describe the world that they encounter.
So Joan Did would go to El Salvador and she would rely on her first firsthand experience. She’d rely on her lying eyes. My contrast the report of the New York Times, would primarily rely on the pronounce of government bureaucracy. He would collect official statements and translate them for his audience Alright. Almost all of his informational sources are from former bureaucratic sources.
This is what dominates traditional journalism. John Did the new journalists embodied. Methods of reporter who writes from her own experience. And she put herself in as many different situations as possible, and tried to receive as many backs via her sensors in any direction. She would use some official sources but they were not considered the most reliable.
So comments at the corner drugstore were considered as valuable as government pronounce. So sometimes, Comments that the corner drugstore will be more accurate and more important, more clarifying than government pronounce and sometimes they won’t. So Joan Did wrote solely from her own individual experience about a wider society, El salvador that would not resolve into a sensible pattern. And so new journalists and objective journalists would, , whole accusations back and forth against each other. Because the old god resent the new guard that was becoming increasingly successful.
Speaker 39: Every lever he can to get every ounce of truth. Out of every person he interviews.
Speaker 1: Could you describe him what you believed to be the responsibilities of a husband of the United States senator?
Speaker 0: This is a question to president Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: I don’t know, but I’m willing to fulfill him.
Speaker 39: It didn’t matter if he was at the White House or at a flood or at a hurricane.
Speaker 4: The wind doesn’t get much worse. Than it is right here.
Speaker 39: When you wanna know what it feels like. Dan rather brings you there.
Speaker 1: Showdown with Sedan. The deadline for war. Commando mission set up inside iraq as huge force prepares to invade on a moment note At the height of the iraq warm, I was a frequent flyer to back, are you afraid of being killed or captured?
Speaker 0: This saddam his hussein.
Speaker 22: I get a phone call, and it was the depressed person, and he said, boy do I have the mother of all. Stories for you. And I said, what? And he goes, there are pictures of American soldiers, treating prisoners. Disrespectful
Speaker 0: So why earth is Abu grave considered this this major story. Right? It it… Why does it have such huge significance? Right?
Of course, any forces, that engaged in a battle and take prisoners are sometimes going treat prisoners disrespectful. Alright. There’s nothing inherent in the Abu graves story that makes it major But it became a tool that the news media used to beat up on the bush administration. It was a way for the news media to cut compensate for their failure to investigate the Bush administration’s claims prior to launching the 2003 Iraq war. So the news media felt great deal of anxiety, compensate about their own terrible performance in the run up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, and this was a way of displacing their own anxiety onto the Bush administration.
Speaker 22: Borderline torturing them and no one’s talking about it. And so we started tracking and hunting that story.
Speaker 24: Asking. A chain of command for certain things like rules and regulations, and it just… It just wasn’t happening.
Speaker 1: You’ll see some of the pictures that led to the Army investigation. We want to warn you, the pictures are difficult to look at. Americans did this to an Iraqi prisoner. According to the Us army, the man was told to stand on a box with his head covered with wires attached to his hands. He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electro electrification.
Speaker 22: When it comes to…
Speaker 0: Right. This is obviously a not nice thing to do. But but in a war, right? And you’re taking prisoners, why would anyone be surprised? So…
I spend about 200 dollars a month in subscriptions to to newspapers. I spend hundred and 80 dollars a year subscribing to the financial times. Right? I I love… Reading the best newspapers in the world.
But on the other hand, I recognize you can make a really strong case that the news is bad for you. And an delinquent man did just this. Back 2 years ago. 1 of the greatest thinkers.
Speaker 11: 40 here. So have you read that last of Tom Wolf Novels back to blood it said in Miami, it’s about immigration. And 1 of the main characters is a news reporter for Miami Harold, John Smith, and Tom Wolfe writes about type people who become news reporters. He says news reporters and Noah Smith confirms this view. He’s an economics columnist for Bloomberg.
And he tweets getting picked down by Redneck as a kid suck. Yeah. I got I got picked down a little bit at school, but I didn’t enter a public school till your tenth grade. So there wasn’t. Wasn’t so much bullying in the private schools I went to.
So what did Liberal Gen access and millennials do? We moved out didn’t state and work to build a real nation out of the people gave us a hard time. We’ve got college degrees allowed us to escape to better places. So a little overview of the type of people who become journalists, and then interesting op ed in the guardian. Today.
It’s an excerpt from a new book. That’s called the art of thinking clearly better thinking better decisions by Ro Devil. And he says news is bad for you and giving up reading it, we’ll make you happier. So you’ve heard of the term evolutionary in mismatch. So we were…
We did not evolve in circumstances where there are there are supermarkets around. Like, we evolved where where food was scarce and so that when you could get food, you ate food. Now we live with an abundance of food. And so our evolutionary tendencies to seafood eat food, consume food, , stuff food down because we never know where hopefully food will come next and to, , consume food with, carbohydrates and, , things that excite. Our taste buds just eat as much as we want.
Obviously, that’s not so good for us now. But the news told me that everyone should get back. Or they’re bad people isn’t that good for me. Interesting. Maybe I I do think that pretty much everyone should get.
Vaccinated, and that’s that’s my thought, but they really no enough to to get also just about. So this Essay says news is bad for your yourself health. So maybe it’s an evolutionary mismatch, like the the vast abundance of, , cheap carbs, and in junk food and how it just excites our taste buds, but it’s really bad for us. So And then maybe like, the serotonin hits that we get when we check twitter or social media. Maybe that’s that’s bad for us too or picking up our phone.
So I think I pick up my phone about 40 times a day. Based I respect the acknowledgment of relative ignorance. So news is bad for your health, at least to fear and aggression and hinder your creativity and your ability to think deeply the solution, top stop consuming it altogether. So I admit that some of the time, I think, , what the hell am I doing here? I’m not I’m not saying anything that that people can’t get elsewhere, I’m wasting my time.
And then I got a comment on a just throw away video. I think I’m made on Friday. Thing I just made a 5 minute video. Less than 5 minutes on the advantages just trying to understand how the world works versus being in a state of and they’re absolutely times to being a state judgment. It is been scalable.
We can’t help judge in. Right? That is inherent to who we are as human beings, but it’s all about the percentages. Judgment do you walk around outraged and and judging, 90 percent of the time, You walk around outrage judging, , maybe 5 percent of the time. So I think I’ve shifted over the past year or 2 or 3 spending more time to trying to understand how the world works trying to understand how power works understand why people act the way they do why people think the way they do rather than trying to be an activist.
Negative self talk about what you’re not good enough is the root of paralysis and d motivation. Paul, I I did an earlier video about the the benefits of depression, and I don’t think I’m depressed, but I just realized I was expanding a lot of energy in a way that wasn’t productive. On my, like, 3 hour daily live streams. And so I took a step back, and I’m just… I’m no longer making that expenditure, and I’m doing many fewer streams, brief streams, and just just thinking about what will be my my path ahead.
So recognizing what’s not working, I think it’s valuable. Also recognizing what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are in coming to terms with endeavors that are not productive, and and taking a pause from end endeavors that are not productive to maybe direct yourself in a more productive way I think is is useful. So I got a And Iron woods says incoming hurricane will not hit me because I do not watch the news. So there’s an essay in the guardian. So good on the guardian for publishing this.
Ask you decades, decades a fortunate of magnus have this hazards of living with an over abundance of flu Obesity diabetes when you started to change our diet. Yet. This is product of evolutionary mismatch. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind while sugar is to the body. So, yeah.
I’m sure struck by a number of smart people told me they can no longer concentrate on reading a book. Because their mind has been programmed from social media to just get things in bite sized doses. And because I continue to enjoy reading books, this isn’t my experience, but I’m I’m surprised how many people tell me that they can no longer read books. The news is easy to digest. I remember from my journalist training, we were taught to present the news as if to an eighth grader to a typical eighth grader that’s kind of the level that you’re you’re aiming at.
So the news media feed to small bites a trivial matter, true? Tidbits bits that that really concern allies lives and don’t require thinking, generally true. And Curtis says, I can’t wait for paragraph where we’re right wing news is more harmful than normal as well. You can you can know that there’s is no such paragraph in this essay. So the media feed to small buys trivial matter tidbits that don’t concern allies don’t require thinking.
That’s why we experience no saturation. That’s a good point sir. You can eat carbs and not be full. But if you eat a steak, you’ll feel full. If you eat meat, you feel full.
If you eat food, heavy and fat, and protein generally speaking, you’ll feel for. So I think news generally speaking is like cheap carbs, and a bulk is like eating a steak. It’s To unlike reading books along magazine articles, which require thinking, we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which a bright colored candies for the mine. I think there’s something to that. Today, we reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food.
You’re beginning to to recognize how toxic news can be. If you eat properly cooked lentils you will not full. So I grew up on lentils, I think I can get 4 on lentils, but I do think being vegetarian sucks. I I regret that I’m a vegetarian. And I’m a self hating vegetarian.
News. And so this is an example borrowed from Nicolas Na Tal, a car drives over a bridge and the bridge collapses. But what does the news focus on it focuses on the car and the person in the car where he came from where he planned to go, how we experienced the crash if he survived, but that’s particularly important. What’s what’s relevant is the structural stability of the bridge. The That’s the underlying risk that has been lurking there and in other bridges, but the car falling out the bridge.
That is flashy. That is traumatic. It it’s a person so it’s not abstract, and its news, it’s cheap to produce. So need news leads us to walk around with this completely wrong risk map in our heads. That terrorism is overrated as a it is a threat to your life.
Chronic stress is probably underrated. The collapse of Le brothers is overrated, Fiscal irr responsibility is underrated. Astronauts are overrated, nurses are underrated. So we’re not rational enough to be exposed to the noose. Watching an airplane crash on Tv is gonna change your attitude toward that risk regardless of its real probability.
If you think you can compensate the strength of your own contemplation. You are wrong bankers and economists, but powerful incentives to compensate news hazards are shown that they cannot with So the only solution cut yourself off from news consumption entirely. Wow. So every day I start off with the dr report, and then go to the at times, then the New York times in the Washington post then Steve Sailor than the Wall Street Journal there.
Speaker 0: And that that remains my my pattern.
Speaker 11: Also read the website outside the Bell several times a week. News is irrelevant out of the approximately 10000 new stories you’ve have read in the last 12 months name 1. That allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. I think this is overstated. I think I frequently find insightful for articles that enable me to make better decisions.
Yeah. I need to learn to eat meet. That’s a failing. The consumption of news is irrelevant to your life. But people find it difficult to recognize what’s it’s relevant, much easier to recognize what’s new.
The relevant versus the new, to the fundamental battle of our current age. In organizations want you to believe that news offers is some sort of competitive advantage that’s true. They do program. Like, get informed. So you make better decisions.
Many people fall for that. We’re.
Speaker 0: Right. So the news media… Thinks that it is morality free to exaggerate the importance of what they’re talking about because their incentives are all about hype. But when you exaggerate and you hype, right, you are committing a form of lying. And therefore, much of the news is deliberately lying to you.
Speaker 11: We’re anxious when we cut off from the news. In reality, news consumption places us at a complete competitive disadvantage, the less news you consume the bigger advantage you have. I think there’s bad
Speaker 0: Yeah. I know a lot of highly impressive people who say they paid no attention to the news.
Speaker 11: Darren been watching news on tv. Or just getting news Facebook or Twitter, versus is reading lengthy the articles. There… If more information leads to higher economic success we would expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. I think there’s a fallacy there.
So just because journalists are producing news and and news, create create some sort of advantage It doesn’t mean that the people create advantage you’re gonna be at the top of the the pyramid. News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. So panic stories spur the release of cortisol. That’s the stress hormone.
This der regulates your immune system and and inhibits the release of
Speaker 0: Well, you can choose what type of news you can consume. Right? So some news is probably better for you than other news. For example, on Twitter, I tend to avoid people pe outrage porn.
Speaker 11: With hormones, so your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. When you follow the news. So high cortisol levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth, cell hair bone. Nervous and susceptibility to infection. And other side effects include fear, aggression, tunnel vision and des.
News increases cognitive errors, news feeds the mother All cognitive errors confirmation bias. So what the human being does best as warren buffett is interpreting all new information. So that prior conclusion remains intact. I just heard don’t know if it’s true, but 80 percent of reality, we either distort or ignore so that we can continue feeling safe. So news exacerbate our tendency towards confirmation bias we become prone to over competency we take stupid risks, we mis opportunities.
Our brains creep.
Speaker 0: And the chart from this livestream stream 2 years ago. It says with news you lose.
Speaker 11: Stories that make sense. Even if they don’t correspond to reality. Any story that makes sense is 1 that corresponds to our world view. Or any journalists who writes the market move because of acts is an idiot. Have fed up with this cheap way of explaining the world.
Livestream stream here returned to me consumption look huge ratings. More stipulation, please. And This inhibits thinking, thinking requires concentration, concentration requires uninterrupted time. News is designed to interrupt you. News stories like viruses that steal attention to their own purpose.
News makes us shallow thinkers, news severely affects the memory. There are 2 times of memory, long term, memory, and our capacity for that is nearly infinite working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data, the path from short term to long term memory is a choke point in the brain.
Speaker 0: Ugly badly notes is when I stopped reading papers that I lost interest in sports. Certain Yeah. If you want to maintain an interest in sports, alright, it it helps if you’re you’re reading the best sports writers like a a Rick Riley. Just read 1 of his columns about the the Serbian player for the the Denver nuggets, and it was just such an ent and ent. Column about how awesome this guy is, how how down to earth he is that it it it makes you, , wanna pay more attention to him jo itch.
Job. Something like that.
Speaker 11: Anything you want to understand must pass through that choke point. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through because news, disrupts concentration weakens comprehension online news hasn’t an even worse impact, and comprehension declines as a number of hyperlinks in a story increases because whenever hyperlink appears, brain has to make the choice not to click, which is in a self distracting. So news is an intentional interruption system. News works like a drug. I know this If I start watching a little bit of a game.
Your becomes really important to me to know how the game turns out. So that was new stories develop. We wanna know how they continue. We’ve got hundreds of arbitrary stories in our head. So this craving becomes increasingly compelling and hard to ignore.
I I watching a game, I have to know how it no doubt. And it’s it’s hard to stop watching it. So the more news we concern the more we exercise the neural circuits in our brain devoted the skimming to multitasking. While we ignore those neural circuits used for reading deeply, thinking deeply with profound focus. So most news consumers, even if they used to be avid book readers have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books.
After 4 or 5 pages, they get tired, their concentration finishes, they become restless. It’s not because their old because their schedules become more demanding because the physical structure of their brains has changed. Everything we do affects the structure of our brains. So neurons that wire together fire together.
Speaker 0: Sir Gl med says when he stopped paying attention to sports, he recovered his ability to read books.
Speaker 11: A news waste time. So if you spend, say, an hour day, watching the news, that’s half a day a week wasted, news makes us passive, new stories are overwhelmingly about things that we cannot influence. The daily repetition about things we can’t act upon makes us passive, but grinds us down until we accept a worldview that is pessimistic, des, suck sarcastic and fatal. Scientific term is learned hopelessness. So maybe news consumption is contributed to depression and news kills creativity.
Alright People tend to produce the much creative works at a young age, when their brains enjoy a wide uninhabited space and the burdensome come up with novel ideas. Then her a single truly created mine who was a news junkie. On a right?
Speaker 0: Yeah. So news junkie usually means someone who watches a lot of Tv news. It doesn’t mean someone who’s who’s reading a lot of high brow, no newspapers. Right. Back to this Netflix documentary on Dan Roth career talking about other grave in Sa 2004.
Speaker 22: The people, American. Soldiers risking their lives for our country versus a few bad eggs, I guess you could say. And how much weight you give that story. It doesn’t feel good to do that, but it’s still an important story.
Speaker 36: There there are bodies
Speaker 39: that were eaten by dogs, torture, , elected roads coming out of walls, scratches on the way it was awful place.
Speaker 27: We went into iraq to stop things like this from happening. And indeed her they are happening under our
Speaker 0: No. We we didn’t go iraq to up things like this happening. We didn’t go into iraq with 8 human rights agenda. Right? We thought that we would help to solve the the Anarchy of the Middle East so that it would better align with our own interests.
Or totally
Speaker 1: When we got the story, our strange things began to happen. We’re not gonna put it on the year this week. We want another week to work on it. We think you think you can improve it. And said, wait a minute.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Because public sizing the historic. Cost countless American lives. Alright? It increased anger at America, and it incentivize people to commit attacks against Americans, cost So who knows how many dozens, how many hundreds of American troops died as a result of public the story.
Now, I don’t believe that means that the story should never have been published. But I I fail to see ways a particularly important story and yet it would occupy the front page of the New York Times for just countless days.
Speaker 1: We’ve got we’ve got the story.
Speaker 0: Right. The interest of America and the interest of American journalists who have the story here different dramatically. So these journalists get to advance their own status and prestige, and their own feeling of righteousness by doing something that in all likelihood cost dozens if not hundreds of American lives.
Speaker 1: So 1 week led to 2 weeks led to 3 weeks. They held it off the air until we came to them and said some of the sources on this story who have helped us do it. Have become convinced you’re not going to run it, and they’re talking to sign, 1 of the great investigative reporters of our time. That got their attention because now they’re in a box. Very big business is in bed with very big government.
They don’t want reporters digging around in stories that embarrass them. 2 weeks ago, we received an appeal to delay this broadcast, given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq. This week with the photos beginning to circulate elsewhere and with other journalists about to publish their versions of the story the defense department agreed to cooperate in our report.
Speaker 19: 60 minutes 2 was on overall. They just part of the Ab Grave story. I mean, they were they were rocking.
Speaker 1: Accepting the People peabody award, Dan Rather correspondent for 60 minutes. When it comes to striving to meet the responsibilities of the public trust that is the practice of journalism in this country,
Speaker 22: everyone was flying high. We’ve done an award winning story that everyone’s talking about
Speaker 13: Us officials are making changes at Abu Great prison.
Speaker 1: Today the Us Terry set free more than 300 inmates.
Speaker 24: That what took place in that prison, does not America that I know.
Speaker 22: There’s a little bit of a teflon that goes up, , okay, Don’t don’t mess with them. They on a roll. Let them keep going.
Speaker 24: Yeah. Come this election.
Speaker 0: So, yeah, it’s true. The more power and prestige you get. Alright, The more reluctant people are to tackle you. For And, Gl med says the timeline reveals that when I quit biking and went back to the subway, that’s when I resumed more of my reading. I just think biking through a busy city is just incredibly risky thing to do.
So Side hi was there. Name check by Dan Rad, S mo Hush. He published a memoir called reporter in the New York review of books reviewed it. In early 20 21. A merit of this book reporter is the way it d s more Hers trade secrets be a book worm, read before you write work the graveyard shift.
Right? You get more access. Late it at night. Sc the retirement notices of government and military officials, some of whom will sing. Be alert when meeting sources in restaurants, they may leave secret manila envelopes sanchez shares.
Behave though journalism is a bizarre. When Cia director William Ko, meaning be willing to make deals. Right. Cia director William Colby in 19 73 asked person out to publish a story. I’ll told him I would do what you wished, but I needed something on water gate and Cia in return, lastly, assumed that your job is precarious.
Editors tired of difficult stories and difficult reporters. So the Mila massacre and hush a pull surprised in 19 70, it gave him the recognition that he created. He began lecturing college campuses. And he’s been giving lucrative speeches ever since, so a That’s 1 of the best ways and easiest ways for writers to make a living, giving lucrative speeches. But to do that, you have to be a lot.
With the liberal left hero system. Right the New York Times had no tradition of Mock and So Hi long to work for the New York Times that when he arrived as Washington Bureau at 19 72. It was not a logical destination. But the Washington post was so consistently winning the water gate story that the New York Times executive editor Am R thought needed a master reporter to try to match Bob Wood and Carl Bernstein. Keep thinking about all the money that Wood would bernstein got Hush told Lena Downey.
And that’s what helped to create the my mistake about investigative reporting. Can’t complain and put money in my pocket too. So there developed this mistake about journalists bringing down president Richard Nixon when in reality, it was government agencies like the Fbi and investigative committees in congress. So the press became more restrained in centrist. And so by 19 79, S Hush moved on from the New York Times hush told Vanity Fair 19 97.
You think I wouldn’t sell my brother for a story like that me Massacre. And let’s report it c more hush. Alright back to this Netflix documentary on Dan Rather.
Speaker 24: Will set the direction of the war against terror.
Speaker 1: The prospect of doing a piece on George w Bush, highly irregular military career was something that producer Mary Mates had first mentioned to me in 2000.
Speaker 0: Till 3 85 86. And this proved to be the undoing of Dan rather at Cbs News. Now very ways, man, a few years ago, made a a video on journalists. 09:40 here. So…
You’re gonna hear stories that I’ve been over boundary. But I’ve abused my my power is this… Livestream streamer who who corrupt the souls of the youth. Alright. This is my video journalist ethics back.
12/09/2020. Images people’s souls that like, I may have held onto a hug a little too long. You need to understand. I’m just a very warm person. Alright?
So I’m no longer the… What’s stiff up a lip. Remote repressed, , Anglo Saxon adventist that I was raised that. And now I’ve joined a different culture. Now I’m Jewish.
I’m I’m very warm. I’m just very expressive. I just love people. I’m I’m a touch. I’d love to celebrate people.
I just can’t stand back and and yeah, just let let the world spin on its axis. I’m I’m demons. I’m faction. I’m just a very warm person. So some people are gonna say, oh, that’s an inappropriate.
Oh, 40 you went too far there. I oh, 40 you shouldn’t have laid your hands on there, but I think most people tell you that my my touch much more than exploratory? Like, how can I just stand back and be on uni unavailable and I see all the suffering in the world? Like I moved. I’m a I’m a very warm person.
I see pain and and I wanna yell it. I he’s suffering, and I wanna ease it. I see distress and I wanna comment. I see unnecessary muscular compression, and I wanna ease it. I see people pulling down, and they should be…
Letting up and going up. I see people con taunting, and I’d love to see them expanding. I see people with these weird interfering tension patterns. And like, how how can I as a man so att to hell the physiology of the human being works? How can I just stand by?
Alright. I wanna lay on hands. I wanna bring the healing bro. And so you’re gonna say oh, 40. Hey, you brought healing in a little too intensely there.
You’re doing a little too much healing. You that person didn’t solicit the healing. Though, I’ve made some mistakes, but came from place of love bro. His mistakes here from place of love. I’m just a very warm person.
Okay. So I was watching this Mike Fisher video. It was he was ranting about Skip Bayless. Saying what a horrible man bayless is, and Troy Ai, Fox football analyst and, former Dallas Cowboy championship check quarterback, also said how very disappointed he was that Fox hired skip bayless to do the morning show undisputed. And they both both made the Burg accusation that Skip Bayless in his book on the 19 95, championship cowboys team that falsely accused Troy of being gay.
And it’s not true. There’s a chapter in it where Skip simply mentions how widespread the rumors were around the Dallas Cowboys that Troy was gay. But he made very clear in the book that he that he know no evidence that this was true. He was just shocked that Barry Sw of the coach seemed to believe that Troy was gay, or at least was hearing those there’s rumors. So there comes a point where the the accurate reporting of rumors is as good journalism is is necessary to to understand what’s going on.
She leaves should put the rumors in context. Say, I don’t have no factual evidence for them, but all these people in the Dallas Cowboys organization seem to believe that Trey was gay. So there’s a night and day difference between the accurate reporting of a rumor and pointing out that there’s no factual actual evidence for it. And making the allegation of the rumor. So I just thought this Mike Fresh video blasting skip bayless was was bogus on that account.
So that that led me to getting into a discussion with a friend, what what our journalist ethics journalist ethics not like the ethics for doctors, the ethics were lawyers because the ethical obligations to whom do you owe your obligations? They’re so varied for journalists. So as a journalist, do you primarily owe ethical obligations to your readers? You primarily owe ethical obligations to your sources of information. You primarily owe ethical obligations, to the people you write about?
Do you primarily owe, ethical obligations to your profession? Because journalists depend very heavily on cooperation from general public. Do you primarily owe ethical obligations to your employer to your advertisers? Right? There’s so many competing ethical obligations and it’s not at all clear to whom journalists owe their primary obligation.
So that makes journalist ethics quite unlike the ethical codes of other professions. So for example, pretty clear that the doctor’s primary ethical obligation is to his patients. And an attorneys primary ethical the obligation is to his client, and to to the legal system, but primarily to the client. And an accountants primary ethical obligation is to the general public, particularly, say, investors, potential investors, those who might be affected by who are relying on the the accountant doing an honest job. And dentist, obviously, their primary ethical obligation is to the patient.
But dentist, that’s interesting. So many dentists, push things that are bogus. Right? There’s so many dentists abusing the the trust of their their patients. Is there any is there any medical from fashion profession that So often abuses their clients, their patience is dentists.
Thanks so much of what Dentists recommend is bogus. They’re just doing it to get money from their patients, for example, It’s now empirical evidence the floss does does any good. Semi dental procedures are know, unnecessary. All they do is line line the the dentist pockets. So so there’s was a great article in the Atlantic about how off the hook dangerous dentists with their this lack of ethical behavior, , getting people to have unnecessary root canals, all sorts of painful, expensive surgeries that line the dentist pockets, but, do the patient no good.
So really watch out for your dentist, and mechanics, car mechanics. So I don’t I don’t know I’ve had just didn’t know anything about the workings of the automobiles are often fear. Comma mechanics. I don’t know how often they’ve taken advantage of them Yeah. And, frequently, doctors recommend unnecessary procedures.
I mean, chiropractors are, know, charging lot of money and solicit listening patients for for a service that a does does not provide much benefit and provides, , far more danger, often than than benefit. Right. Back to this Netflix documentary on Dan Rather.
Speaker 1: If you have a commander in chief, who is commanding 2 overseas war. What he did and didn’t do when it was his time to serve, that’s a story. And if it turns out that he avoided going to combat.
Speaker 0: That that is a story, but it’s not necessarily important. Right? There’s no inherent connection between an individual’s individual performance as a soldier. And his wisdom as a commander in chief.
Speaker 1: Area through the influence of his father and then disappeared while he supposed to be in duty for. Or a year, whether he was a democrat or a republican, that’s a story.
Speaker 25: Sometimes you can be blinded. By a story that you think points out in an equity and a special treatment. The bottom line is You gotta have the goods.
Speaker 1: Did then lieutenant bush fulfill all of his military commitments?
Speaker 0: Cbs showed what it said? Are exclusively obtained memos supposedly proving the 3 decades ago, who did not follow orders.
Speaker 30: Memos have come under with criticism with several experts saying their fate.
Speaker 1: We had a document which I believe then was what it reported to be.
Speaker 25: Was the information coming from a flawed source. That was really the crux of the problem.
Speaker 1: The story was true because it was true, those who wanted to discredit the story had to attack the process by which we got to the truth.
Speaker 16: The Republican party had become very adept at the going on the offensive by coming up with schemes.
Speaker 0: Yeah. How how nefarious for the Republican party to find ways of fighting back. Against almost all our societies dominant institutions which are controlled by their political. So earlier this year, I read a book all the news that’s fit to collect how metrics are transforming the work of journalists. So journalism is judgment about what matters and it’s the primary thing that we use to see the world beyond our own experience.
Right? So this judgment will always bring from a particular hero system. Alright. Is this hero assistant that made Russia gate the most important news story in America from 20 16 to 20 19, and George Floyd death, the most important. Story for the summer months of 20 20 along with with Covid.
Right. Journalism is unique it’s got first amendment protection in the United States, and it’s unique in that it’s a type of cultural production, which is practitioners operate according to a set of norma rather than autistic commitments. Right? So unlike other, producers in the cultural realm, the news media supposed to pursue its autonomy to advance public interests. And you can’t measure something publicly or measure someone publicly without changing them.
So when you have metrics, it changes responses and it changes organizations. So all forms of Culture from music to television to books are carriers of meaning. They influence how we see the world, and journalism is among the most powerful cultural industries. It is for many, the primary sense making practice of modern redundancy. It’s mainly through news consumption that we encounter political leaders and other powerful figures that we…
Cultivate a sense of empathy or anti ent empathy toward people in different life circumstances that we learned about contemporary events that are outside of our immediate environments, and we develop a sense of the crucial issues, animating public life,
Speaker 16: And rather was the bane of the bush family. They despise it.
Speaker 19: Was it planned? Will never know. Did the phone start ringing off the hook 30 seconds after it aired? Yes. Coincidence?
I don’t know. Not likely.
Speaker 16: Rather now became a story. It was that rather had bought a bad bill of goods.
Speaker 23: That’s a quick question about these memos
Speaker 17: here. No.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, Joe.
Speaker 0: Even my dog do these documents.
Speaker 24: Right.
Speaker 0: We’re forged Dan rather still telling the Chicago tribune. They’re not for. I would think so.
Speaker 34: Cbs news said today was misled about documents that questioned in the president’s National guard service, and it was a mistake to broadcast their contents.
Speaker 26: Oh, Cbs has… Taking steps to hold people accountable, and we appreciate those steps. We also hope that Cbs will take steps to prevent something like this from happening again.
Speaker 0: Alright. That was Bush’s spokesman Scott Mc.
Speaker 25: That he should never have gone on the air and it cost a lot of people their careers. He suffered sort of Cbs, there was a substantial lawsuit against them.
Speaker 0: And this is where the British and Australian. Method for designating and command as news readers is it’s important. Right? Dan Rad was primarily a news reader. Right he would read news that other people would prepare.
Right? It’s na to expect an to be great journalists. That he was let down by his team by his producer Mary M in particular.
Speaker 1: I never thought it would happen.
Speaker 0: But if he admitted that Mary May led him down that his team let him down, then he would be removing the illusion that he was a reporter. That he was the 1 directing the production of news. So he didn’t wanna blame Mary Me, not necessarily just purely out of altruistic and honorable intentions, but to blame his team to blame produce Mary M, would remove the pretense that he was a significant journalist as opposed to being someone who reads words and read stories that other people dig up.
Speaker 1: I had to convince myself that somehow some way. I would stay on with Cvs. It was my wife gene who provided the perspective that I needed to hear. She said, you got into a fight with the president of the United States. During a reelection campaign.
What did you think was going to happen?
Speaker 0: And that’s the reason that Dan Rat career at Cbs news ended because he got into a fight with the president of the United States. And the reason that his career ended is because his team produced a botched report, and he didn’t want to dis associate himself from his team. Right, he wanted to maintain the illusion that he was the reporter and not just someone who reads words that other people prepare for him. But that’s not how he tells the story.
Speaker 1: It was a mistake. Cbs news deeply regret it. Also, I want to say personally and indirectly. I’m sorry.
Speaker 10: The saddest thing about the story is that it’s true. George Bush had a checkered record with some real problems in it, all of which was covered in that report.
Speaker 0: And that’s true. I mean, George W Bush was a lazy man, a terrible president in the United States, and his track record, And it revealed him to to be this lazy entitled person who never would have been president of the United States. If H w Bush, his father had not blaze the way for him.
Speaker 25: Dan is a really good human. He appreciated loyalty and people. He appreciated the work. I think the the mistake was that he so trusted the people around him that they had done the deeper dive.
Speaker 0: Alright. And this is superficial analysis. He had no choice but to trust the people around him. He was primarily someone who read other people’s words. That’s the nature of his job.
Speaker 25: But that dan’s responsibility also.
Speaker 2: When Cbs said…
Speaker 0: Yeah. It’s his responsibility if you’ve viewed that. Rather as the ultimate author of his stories. Is the ultimate reporter of his stories. But that’s not the reality.
It he has been primarily a news reader.
Speaker 2: Well, we’ll let you keep your job if you make it very clear that it’s Mary’s fault that memo happened.
Speaker 0: Right. This is his daughter, like, costing dan rather choice in in the most heroic matter if possible. But He didn’t wanna avail himself as a news reader who wanted to maintain the illusion that he was the reporter.
Speaker 2: He wasn’t having that. He said, absolutely not. And Some people have said, well, what a dumb thing to do. You had The greatest job in the world, all you had to do is throw mary under the bus, and that’s just not him.
Speaker 22: When it was announced that Dan was leaving, I was really heartbroken. He had had this long esteem career. It was a dream job to have that drug pulled out from under you in the way that it was, was hard for him. It was hard for all of us.
Speaker 0: Right. This is the most powerful force us that drives us most of the time, after we’ve secured our basic physical needs. We try to avoid humiliation and to advance in social status.
Speaker 1: We’ve shared a lot in the 24 years, we’ve been meeting here each evening. And before I say good night, this night. I need to say thank you. Thank you to the thousands of wonderful professionals at Cbs News past and present with whom has been my honor to work over these years. The final sign off up my time at the Cbs use, was going to be an emotional time for me and for my family.
And my daughter Robin, who is almost mystical in tune with my moods. She knew I was having trouble.
Speaker 2: That was a very emotional time for him. He was going out, not the way he wanted to go out, but because he really had to, and he wanted to go out with strength, and he wanted to go out his way. Wow
Speaker 1: Not long after I first came to the anchor chair, I briefly signed off using the word courage. I want to return to it now in a different way. To my fellow journalists, in places where reporting the truth means risking all. I’m sure he knows And to each of you, courage. For the Cbs, if he use, Dan rat reporting.
Speaker 0: So, Dan Rather, once he laughed Cbs news, he largely left public life. I I can’t recall anything significant that he did after he left Cbs news. So Dan rather was successful to the extent that he was able to align himself with his employer’s interest. And when he made a choice that broke against his employer’s interest, he was gone. And that’s how it is for most of us.
Right? If we don’t keep in mind, our employees interest. Don’t keep in mind, our friends, communities, families interests. Alright? We get out of alignment with the people most important to us.
And we lose those relationships and often without them. Right? Who we think we are has changed. Right, Dan rather, was 1 of America’s most important men, and that ended right here.
Speaker 1: Good night.
Speaker 0: And he he kept working, but his work didn’t have much resonance. He got his own Tv show but, almost nobody watched. Yeah. Is
Speaker 16: if you’re on the air of that much, doing cutting edge journalism that you’re going to have moments, that don’t work.
Speaker 0: Hi. This is Douglas Brink, the historian.
Speaker 16: And rather fell into a sand trap with this showdown over the Texas air guard And so from that point on, when Dan rather leaves Cbs in a fit of anger and lawsuits that don’t work. It really is the start of a different kind of journalist world.
Speaker 0: I know. A lot of people whose lies have being ruined. By suing their employer. And so other people have made millions of dollars. Right, Of course, it depends on the the situation, But Dan Ra made himself look like a fool suing Cbs news over this.
Speaker 40: I think a lot of people in his position would have just sort of packed in at that point and what would have said, , I had a great career…
Speaker 0: Right. This is his grandson speaking. So Dan Row, needed to keep going. Out of, , his own out of his own soul. But what was the work that he he did after this important to America,
Speaker 40: kinda rest on my laurel and in some ways. I think he could have become 1 of the world’s great oc engineering fly fishermen. I really do. But I just think that’s so anti empathetic to who he is.
Speaker 1: Anybody who knows me knows. That, , I wanna work.
Speaker 0: That’s a nicer way of saying. I wanna feel important. Alright. We all wanna feel important. Some people…
Right. Leslie men get that through work.
Speaker 1: I’d much rather wear out than rushed out.
Speaker 17: This
Speaker 18: American loves a second ad. I don’t take any credit because… He’s Dan Rather. He would have come back 1 way or the other just through the quality of his.
Speaker 0: Right. This is Mark Cuban who gave Dan his own Tv show.
Speaker 1: Work. Haiti is and will remain, but disasters seemingly without end. Is it like this every day?
Speaker 14: Yeah every day that we that we have this food give out. It’s always like this.
Speaker 40: The most devastating impact to my grandfather surrounding the bush story. Was that people thought that he was retired. People thought that he was done.
Speaker 18: I looked at it as Dan
Speaker 0: So I remember when I was writing on the pornography industry, and I I’d quit or so my website walked away and then when I’d come back. Right, My my status, my my my influence, my my readers ship had to be regained, and it would… It never be fully regained to what it was before. So it’s very difficult to step away from a position at which you have have status and and influence in a large leadership and then try to regain it as you Almost never regain it.
Speaker 18: What’s interest to you? What what do you see is happening in the world that you wanna convey, and that’s exactly what he did?
Speaker 1: How does anybody living like this have even a shredded museum?
Speaker 2: North bad hailey called Wayne, he said let’s say. Put together a crack production team and let’s go get it.
Speaker 19: Probably the hardest time of my life. That is the unbelievable to put together. An hour of investigative journalism every week, and we were doing 40 episodes a year.
Speaker 11: The flood water… Yeah.
Speaker 0: Did you watch any of them? Did any of them, like, ripple through United States? I mean, did they capture the attention of millions of people. I don’t think so. Alright.
That’ll do it for me. Take care. Bye bye.