BIG News | Is media driving political polarization?

all right they're shooting guys put your helmets on when the coronavirus came along you desperately needed to know the truth I disagree you can have your thoughts this is science they're simply incapable of reporting on the country in ways a lot of people in the country would understand [Music] people were feeling alienated from what they saw as powerful Elites that were not responsive to them and did not have their best interests at heart they were also feeling distrustful of the media who had not like corrected the record or found out and told them the truth

and so they were feeling cynical and disaffected and it was potentially kind of dangerous [Music] people came out of the first world war in the United Kingdom feeling super critical of the media they felt that the media had lied to them during the war it had repeated propaganda it had under counted death and pain of various kinds and in that context they created the BBC Broadcasting Company they felt the people needed something that would be informing to them in a way that was straightforward and honest and direct and useful to those people [Music] polarized alienated

cynical disaffected in need of something that is directly speaking to them it's like oh my God this is now trust in mass media has been falling for decades in the U.S and last year the percentage of people with no trust at all hit a record high according to a recent Gallup survey only nine percent of Americans now say they trust the mass media a great deal 31 still trusted a fair amount but a full 60 percent have little to no trust at all the question is why take it please the basic landscape of commercial news

media in the United States was a system that was dominated by three networks ABC CBS and NBC with a little bit of PBS mixed in the six o'clock report in color as television shows there's news stories that ran at the same time we're very much down the middle uh you know neutral trying to be as neutral as they can accounts of what was happening in the world any decision that's made in this room Bears directly on how eleven and a half million people are going to be informed or not informed it was designed to be

something that people could take in sort of passively without objecting that resulted in three channels that we're trying to get Mass audiences with the least objectionable possible programming they were limited in many ways Chief among them very little diversity but the point is it knit together a common understanding and that common understanding drove politics good evening Dr the archetypal anchor was somebody like Walter Cronkite who was not only one of the most trusted people in America but he was thought of as a father figure by a huge portion of the population President Kennedy died at

1pm Central Standard Time two o'clock Eastern Standard Time some 38 minutes ago there was high trust in the people who were delivering to us the news and information and so that's part of why um a lot of uh restrictions and sort of um guidelines were put in place for broadcasters precisely because they were felt to hold a kind of a public Trust the fairness Doctrine in the United States had two important tenets to it one was that companies that lease the public Airwaves they had to do some content in the public interest the second prong

of the fairness Doctrine was that when reporting on controversial topics news companies were required to present multiple views on a topic what our government did is it attempted to put in the law and has put in the law an obligation on broadcasters to for checks imbalances that the big and the powerful will not dominate the dialogue in our society the fairness Doctrine had been a bug bearer of the conservative right for a long time it was revoked in 1987 in the waning years of the Reagan Administration and that was a key thing that enabled some

of part of this growth of like Rush Limbaugh Fox News that kind of thing ladies and gentlemen because you no longer had an obligation to be balanced um it was perfectly okay at that point to push a particular point of view just look at the homeless and the homeless we all know 75 percent of them have an alcoholic problem or a drug addiction problem or something but they're all viewed with such revered virtue the homeless wives there but for the grace of God go I it used political slant as a strategy to bring people in

and around that time period is when we saw Fox appear [Music] Roger Ailes was being brought in as the head of fox and Roger Ailes uh listened to a pitch about how they were going to develop Fox News and the pitch was basically a a sexier version of Walter Cronkite and Roger L said no that's that's not right he said we should be focusing on a segment of America the conservative segment and we should be giving the news to them that they want to hear and that'll be a much more profitable business model no time

number one for 90 months gays be allowed to bring their overseas Partners to live in this country very sympathetic article in the struggling Los Angeles Times yesterday makes that case but because the federal opinion TV was the next phase of what people wanted for their news diet because you already knew the news now you want to hear what people thought about it welcome to Hannity and combs on the Fox News Channel I'm Sean Hannity each week night at 9 00 PM Eastern Alan and I will bring you an intelligent and passionate discussion of the major

news issues of the day you know what they just can't handle this you know why because it's killing them because this shows how far extreme to the Socialists left the Democratic party has moved you know what what it did was it started this unconscious sorting process that had never happened before so the conservatives all drifted towards Fox and that meant that all the people who were politically liberal or more left-leaning they just started to gravitate towards those other channels we're making a little news of our own today with the launch of MSNBC news and information

24 hours a day good evening I'm David Walker and I'm Lois Hart now here's the news President Carter has arrived in Fort Wayne they've figured out that one of the easiest ways to keep people glued to a screen was just to put two people on the set and have them argue with each other tonight we'll try to get to the heart of this explosive issue the combined sex race and class into one big social dilemma CNN was the first station to really figure out let's just openly turn this into a sports program the top news

makers go head to head with Michael Kinsley on the left and John sunoodle on the right there was a conservative and there was a liberal it was from the right and from the left crossfired on CNN where great minds come together implied from the start of the show that there were no other kinds of people on earth [Applause] [Music] I'm on the show today because I have uh privately amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows mentioned this show as being bad and and I wanted to I felt that that wasn't fair

and I should come here and tell you that I don't it's not so much that it's bad as it's hurting America Jon Stewart sort of styled himself as someone who's going to call out hypocrisy and and call a spade a spade you're doing theater when you should be doing debate which would be great I'm honest what you do is partisan hackery his position was essentially that Crossfire did not Advance viewers understanding of the issues and sort of propelled an idea of Politics as sport that was that was ultimately corrosive here's just what I wanted to

tell you guys yeah just stop stop stop stop stop hurting America okay now and and come work for us because we as the people how do you pay the people not not well but you can sleep at night Crossfire was then the original version of a template that's become uh institutionalized in American Media Christopher I'm not going to let you Bogart me let me just say this that it I'm just gonna keep talking put down the face that's ridiculous the way I do my interview I'm not going anywhere I'm staying right here there's the finger

and it had a huge impact on the way we understand politics basically the country's divided into two sides they argue all the time they can't agree and it's all a matter of which side wins and which side loses it makes plenty of difference it does not he doesn't have it right he didn't commit a felony this guy couldn't have been who are your jets that has nothing to do with illegal aliens has to do with drunk driving suddenly there was this moment in time where they started to argue that uh liberals were could be equated

with terrorists you didn't support the action against Afghanistan to remove the Taliban you were against it why would I want to brutalize and further punish the people and who killed your father you saw this rapid progression of rhetoric um on both sides really I think we know what we're up against in late 2016 Hillary Clinton said this thing you could put half of trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables right the races Sexes homophobic xenophobic islamophobic you name it that was considered a very inflammatory statement and there were some there was some

controversy over whether or not she had gone too far by the time Trump got elected it became conventional wisdom for people in the news media they were all deplorables I don't have much respect for for misogynist uh for for xenophobes and for bigots Dana Milbank opinion writer for the Washington Post who just penned a piece yes half of trump supporters are racist I'll go way more than Hillary Clinton yes they're bigoted yes the races xenophobe you said you name it but also they're detached from reality the correct number secretary Clinton is not 50 it's a

hundred [Music] foreign [Music] news against right now part of the problem is everyone in the media is really of a different class than everybody outside of it there is a culture divide that reflects a class divide between journalists and the people they serve their audiences and probably the guy who hosts Nightly News NBC Nightly News should make more than the guy who watches NBC Nightly News but perhaps it should not be so much more that they effectively live in different worlds and have taken on different values the elite journalist congregated massively and overwhelmingly in these

big cities and they became they became so full of themselves and you could see it in events like the White House Correspondents Dinner they became celebrities they became super rich and then turned around and tell those white working-class people you're all a bunch of deplorables these Rubes these plebs these morons these stupid people no Trump's a smart one in there oh y'all y'all will lead us for them disdain for people of faith disdain for people in small towns in rural areas you will lead us with your geography and your maps and your spelling we talk

about them as if that this other species of of you know Cletus the slack Jordan Yokel from The Simpsons you're reading yeah you're reading you know your geography knowing other countries and you don't expect a reaction we are deplorable oh my God I'm a de parvo I am a deplorable running for president are you kidding nobody took that guy serious well they forgot about us deplorables here in the Midwest they totally forgot about us they were hungry for somebody to acknowledge them and you just stir all that up and it's a perfect storm [Music] most

stump speeches in America are excruciatingly boring [Applause] Trump would enter the hall and he had the Swagger to him that was very much like what a lot of wrestlers do and he turned this lifeless commercial into a menacing event where the villain was literally in the room the villain was us in the media they can make anything bad because they are the fake fake disgusting news [Applause] for anybody's ever been to an American political event the media is always roped off in a separate section we stand out in most crowds and Trump basically turned us

into class villains I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I've ever met I have to tell you that okay he used us to get around his own accessibility problem he was a billionaire trying to present himself as an ordinary person and he accomplished that by saying look at those elitists over there and it worked it was brilliant back man [Applause] after his long career at NBC Jeff Zucker was a logical choice to be president of CNN worldwide so it was hardly a complete shock when he got the job this week

Jeff sucker as the head of NBC entertainment he created Donald Trump as a reality star and so when Zucker transformed into the role of the head of CNN he embraced the idea of CNN as Donald Trump's villain right there [Applause] the camera right there with the light that just went off CNN is fake news I don't take questions from him John Roberts a fox in the old days the news director would have would have balked at that and would have wanted to maintain this idea of neutrality but Zucker Dove head first into this idea that

we want to be the focus of Donald Trump's negative attention I think the one thing you can say for sure about Donald Trump is that he's made American journalism great again well uh uh one of the statements that you made in the talent of the campaign uh in in the midterms here we go that well if you don't mind Mr President honestly I think you should let me run the country you run CNN and if you did it well your ratings let me ask you if I may ask one of the questions Mr President if

I may ask are you worried that's enough that's it was great television uh totally so sociopathic but but great TV [Music] before the interview I met with him at one point he started to attack the press and I said you know that is getting tired why do you keep hammering at this and he said you know why I do it I do it to discredit you all and to mean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you unfortunately a huge swath of the American public they were getting a

daily diet of being told that the news wasn't real and being told uh you know that no news could be trusted and and that's very dangerous the fake news right the fake news that creates the conditions where someone like Donald Trump can do what they want and they can't be held to account right because a key part of the media's job is holding people to account it is time for you to get your groove back media because let's face facts you kind of Let Yourself Go a little bit for these past few years the media

makes lots of mistakes uh despite employing smart and good-looking people but I think he I think Stewart was right to point out those mistakes instead of worrying about whether Trump is Un-American or if he thinks you're the enemy or if he's being mean to you or if he's gonna let you go back into the briefings do something for yourself self-improvement take up a hobby I recommend journalism so how much did the media help inform U.S voters ahead of the 2016 election while Harvard researchers analyze the campaign coverage and here's what they found only 10 percent

of election coverage touched on policy ideas or platforms such as what the candidates would do if elected twice that amount was spent on controversies almost half the election coverage was focused on polls and predictions while just three percent focused on a candidate's leadership and experience thank you this is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for I promise you that I will not let you down we will do a great show we will do a great job in the beginning stages of the Trump Administration I had just moved to MSNBC and I

anchored variously a one o'clock show and a three o'clock show so actually most of Donald Trump's press conferences fell in that period and and I was uh the anchor on TV when most of them were on this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period both in person and around the globe you know Donald Trump had some Artful people working for him as as press secretaries and spokespeople Sean Spicer our press secretary gave alternative facts to that good afternoon and you'd see that the Press people would come into the room with these massive

binders and no matter what the question was they'd have a tab and they would repeat some line that would then become viral I know it's hard for you to understand um even short sentences I guess but please don't take my words out of context and then he himself would lead the combat they would lead the charge we had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country you know what uranium is right this thing called nuclear weapons and other things he can say these outrageous things feeling not personally constrained at all it's

not obvious that fact checking is enough especially if you have somebody who's not constrained by the facts a few questions have divided the Press more than the L word whether or not to call the president liar or characterize his words as lies media organizations were tying themselves into knots you know making up whole new languages writing very long headlines right to avoid using the word lies you can't just call people Liars because lie implies intent and if you can't tell that he intends to be lying is it a lie with me now to fact check

the president's speech from last night I'm joined by Daniel Dale he's the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star it was pretty early when I came across Daniel Dale and it was like a breath of fresh air it was thrilling I started doing the fact checking in September 2016 quite informally the filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted something like every day on Twitter this Canadian journalist fact checks uh all the false things Donald Trump says he shames the US media and I think first reason I was faster to point out Trump's false claims than much of the American

Media is because I had had the experience of covering Toronto mayor Rob Ford I appreciate the support who is very different from Trump in in many ways but who was similar in many ways as well there has been a serious accusation from the Toronto Star that I use crack cocaine I do not use crack cocaine nor am I an addict have I tried it um probably in one of my drunken stupors probably approximately about a year ago I was a city hall reporter at the Toronto Star and I got a tip that Rob Ford was

trying to purchase the Parkland adjacent to his own private house and so I went out to the park to to see what just what it was that he was trying to buy and he confronted me uh with his fist raised uh kind of charged me it demanded that I dropped my phone in my voice recorder and then accused me uh on on television and elsewhere of uh of being in his backyard of standing on cinder blocks of spying on his children taking pictures of his children I have little kids when a guy's taking pictures of

little kids I don't want to say that word but you start thinking you know what's this guy all about the most egregious false claim he made was strongly suggesting that I was a pedophile and I and again by every word I said with Mr Black in my interview the mayor's comments concerned Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale who the mayor alleged was trespassing on Ford's property last year Dale wasn't charged and police backed up his side of the story what happened was that star let me write a column about what had happened that was headlight Mayor

Ford is lying about me and it's vile and that was kind of a a crucial moment but I wish arm can we use the word lie can we write a whole story about uh this politician's lying uh is it fair to point out that one of the candidates is lying much more than all the other candidates and I think that that's been one of the one of the difficult things about the Trump era particularly I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate Breakout I neither took part in nor knew about any of the subsequent cover-up

activities we're operating on these old assumptions like if it's a rare event I did not have sexual relations with that woman serious accusation to accuse the president of lying because if the president lied that would be a huge story an enormous Scandal and the public would be outraged well I've been told very recently Anderson that the birth certificate is missing I've been told that it's not there and it doesn't exist and if that's they told you that that's a big problem I just heard that two days ago from somebody foreign made a decision before he

even got elected that they were going to start using that word in headlines with him I have a little bit of a different take on using that language because once you take that step into becoming kind of a political actor instead of a journalist the problem is it's you you can't go back why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you have to say it's a terrible question and in fact their public editor Liz Spade wrote a column saying that that was a word that we can use but we

should probably use rarely when you start using language like lie and you're comfortable saying that over again and there any number of words that have a cast to them I think that starts to pull you more toward MSNBC than it does obviously to Fox and I don't think that the time's got to be looking like either one of those sides [Music] my job as a fact Checker is to make the electorate more informed Trump said Joe Biden is quote talking about taking down the border wall Biden has specifically explicitly rejected that idea Trump claimed as

always that he is the one who passed the veterans Choice Law Barack Obama signed that into law in 2014. Trump said I have done more for the African-American Community than any president since Abraham Lincoln that is ludicrous Lyndon Johnson for one signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and he said that Biden's plan would eliminate America's borders no just no it's wrong oh that's it there's more yeah I mean wow there's a hunger among much of the electorate though clearly not all of the electorate for this information for these facts uh and

for people to hold Trump uh accountable for his lying these are largely false claims the president has made before these weren't one-time slips or gas or errors these have been fact checked and he keeps saying them and they're still wrong to the extent you've got a fact Checker who says that your candidate is lying um there's a complicated psychological question about what effect that has the hopeful effect is that it convinces you maybe your candidates not telling the truth it's not clear that's the effect at all though could just as well be it just shows

that the fact Checkers are biased as well the fact Checkers are just so many of these factors are just liars open Liars it's not even a fact check Katie it's spin could fact checking have the opposite effect it's supposed to could it actually polarize us even more researchers tried to find out in 2020 Twitter started putting warning labels on tweets that might be misleading including president Trump's tweets that alleged the election results were fraudulent researchers found that when Democrats saw those warning labels they were 10 percent less likely to believe Trump's claims but it had

the opposite effect on Republicans who were 13 percent more likely to believe Trump's claims when there was a warning label on it leaving the two groups even further apart the truth will ultimately be the thing that that solves this but we have to work harder to do it and it doesn't start just with the big stories about whether the president's lying it means telling all the stories that are out there uh telling real people stories so that they believe that you actually are listening to them that you're not some sort of weird Elite that's removed

from their experiences I believe it's an uphill battle I believe there are lots of forces working against anything that feels like the truth but we have the power to do it foreign [Music] in the country no matter what that's where we are but news for profit just amps that up so much more their concern is not the well-being of the nation and you know having an informed citizenry they are concerned every day is really what is going to rate the best and cling to every audience member they can a producer at MSNBC who worked on

Lawrence O'Donnell's show her name is Ariana bakari she just resigned and not only did she resign she penned a scathing letter criticizing the network because she thinks that what they're doing is bad for democracy when she did that it was very brave and my first thought was this person is never going to work in media again right because she's penetrated the fourth wall and told everybody our secrets the senior members of the team the the anchors and a senior producers I'm the executive producers they get ratings bonuses this is part of the poison to what

happened to cable news like cable news you know commentators immediately after their show is over they can go and get the metrics they can learn what did I say that actually got people to be excited and what did I say that got people to be upset and they begin whether consciously or not to bend themselves to that feedback [Music] foreign ER say you know if I ever push back on a topic that you think won't rate just remind me about the boat that I have I do think that Caitlin news is a cancer [Music] the

U.S itself has overtaken China now as the country with the most cases of the virus I am officially declaring a National Emergency two very big words the New York has seen reminiscent of 9 11 a makeshift morgue set up outside a hospital ready for an influx of bodies if you had asked me imagine we had a National Health crisis which would threaten the lives of a half a million Americans if that happens would the same dynamics of polarization apply I would have said no the U.S approaching another Dreadful Milestone nearly 500 000 American lives lost

since the first reported death in this country just a little over a year ago I would have said at that point the owners of the cable stations the owners of the internet platforms would have stepped back and said look our business model is not worth the lives of a half a million Americans yet I would have been wrong for the most part you don't really need the news right but for the first time in a really long time when the coronavirus came along you desperately needed to know the truth now some in the Public Health

Community are wondering if the general public should also be wearing face masks right now people should not be worked there's no reason to be walking around with a mask top health officials and experts say masks often don't provide adequate protection against something like coronavirus I think the journalists we were disoriented at the beginning and we probably didn't ask quite as many tough questions and say why wouldn't masks work it seems like five minutes ago we were told they weren't necessary at all and now there is commonplace of sweatpants I think people took the idea anytime

they saw a scientists disagreeing or anytime they felt that the information coming at them wasn't certain it gave space for conspiracy theories to flourish and it's unfortunate because that is the nature of science we just don't have the kind of certainty that people were looking for what it did was it muddied the waters and it gave Credence to the idea that journalists weren't telling you the truth that you could not rely on journalists and honestly it gave Credence to the idea that you couldn't rely on science experts either it's nine minutes after six now and

there's new video of a raging masturbate this is a sign of our times we are so polarized that we will polarize around absolutely anything I will never forget when when all my memory is gone and I have just a little bit left I will remember the politicization of masks as being the dumbest thing I ever covered this morning as covet cases Mount across the country the mass debate is intensifying people are very passionate on both sides of the great masturbate the partisan masturbate is heating up masturbates growing the president is trying to have us cover

the mass debate I was pushing back and saying you know we should be covering XY or zine and we aren't but we should be and that's when the senior producer said um for that they come to us for comfort and and that's absolutely abdicating your role as a as a journalist they might frame it as though we're going to talk about the pandemic but what happened was it would be a you know Trump tweeted something at a Democratic governor or um you know is Trump wearing a mask or is he not wearing a mask the

president wearing a mask in public for the first time at Walter Reed on Saturday faces a leadership crisis of his own making even if there was other news they would always find a way to frame it in a way that made Donald Trump the center of the focus Joe Biden there striking the rawest of trump nerves calling him a fool and he has certainly filled in that narrative by talking about injecting bleach into people's bodies to clean their lungs taking hydroxychloroquine we produced a side where we think we're right and the other side is insane

and that's what the other side thinks of us too I disagree you can have your thoughts and I can have money to wear them science I'm sorry it's science you're doing a disservice to the viewer because the viewers need to understand the viewer you are you are how well do the news media cover covid-19 well one study shows it's political a Pew survey for May of 2020 shows Americans were very polarized on pandemic coverage while 66 percent of Democrats said news media coverage was mostly accurate only 31 percent of Republicans agreed and they were similarly

divided on whether covid-19 news coverage was helping or hurting the country 63 percent of Democrats said it's helping and only 27 percent of Republicans agreed I think it had a a profoundly negative effect on the way people perceive media because they they felt that you know we had politicized something that wasn't political and and the idea that this happened in the middle of a national crisis is terrifying CNN and MSNBC are not bringing you science and data they're peddling panic and Reckless moral judgment there's no covet it's a it's a fake pandemic created to destroy

the United States of America it was really hard to believe that people so many people believed that the entire thing was a hoax it was really mind-boggling the scale of misinformation and disinformation he and other globalists are definitely using it in a drive for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people so we can tell quote unquote whether you've been tested you know what I say Over My Dead Body in the face of overwhelming data it's a conspiracy and it's a hoax there was a recognition that the more they could gin up this sense of conspiracy or extremism

or craziness around the response the more loyal and attentive their followers would become and that was that means more money for them growing concern over potential super spreading events which may be fueling a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases tensions boiling over outside a church in Ventura County California I will always be in favor of of the freest of speech but at some juncture the reason they say you can't yell fire in a crowded theater is because you might be lying and people might die so if you're lying and people die that doesn't count and with

climate and with cigarettes and with coronavirus they lied and people died [Music] I was working in Kenosha when George Floyd was killed right now let me see your other hand it's interesting because though that situation was far away from us uh geographically it felt horribly close the violence I'm addressing is how a man could hold a man down with a knee on his neck for nine minutes [Applause] don't you [Music] it was kind of a watershed moment we had never seen those numbers of people all around the world turning out for something and larger numbers

of white people turning out for racial Justice and those numbers were really unusual for this moment the whole world told this story as a kind of coming together around the commitment to these common ideals thousands of protesters Gathering across the country including in Washington D.C right now people are Marching against police brutality with some calling for the defunding of police departments I'm surprised at my own emotions on on TV with you but I've just as a white woman aware of my own privilege in this country I am so angry but then they just set up

the uh the incentive for the counter narrative most of the protests were largely peaceful and Multicultural and very diverse [Music] and as long as it was peaceful they thought nothing was happening it's boring there's no need to show it as soon as something does happen it's you know someone's throwing a Molly hot cocktail or what have you that's excitement or you know there's a clash with the police that's excitement they're gonna show that and in my mind if MSNBC is doing this CNN is doing the same thing right they just threw something on fire Chris

a firecracker got fired Nick and certainly Fox if there's something violent you know in a protest they're gonna show that to make the protesters look bad [Music] I can you may be thinking that didn't look like a political rally those people look like looters they were smashing cash registers with hammers to steal other people's money and so this common story then became the feed for this polarizing story our communities are constitutional rights and frankly our national Soul are all at stake here yet as we've seen time and again what began as peaceful protesting ended up

in a very counterproductive and even criminal place the U.S Department of Homeland Security called it a hundred days of violence and destruction in cities Across America but one study shows otherwise researchers at the University of Connecticut looked at more than seven thousand separate protest events in the spring of 2020. they found the overwhelming majority were peaceful only two percent involved reports of injuries and less than five percent involved property damage the lead author says the findings show quote how politicians and the media want to treat protests isn't always what's happening on the ground I knew

it was coming the second that I heard about Jacob Blake Jacob Blake he is the 29 year old black man who was shot multiple times by police in Kenosha Wisconsin on Sunday he's now paralyzed Kenosha police officer shoots seven times hitting Jacob Blake as he walked away from the second that those seven shots went in the back of Jacob Blake I think the dam broke flash spoken fire officers and riot gear protesters at the ready tonight Wisconsin there was absolutely no de-escalation used and instead they tear gased a whole bunch of citizens Kenosha a city

of about 100 000 has become the latest flashpoint of racial unrest the coverage of the protests really fell into the template that media have always used for protests which typically is Media frame it as a clash between Order and Chaos right and the police represent the side of order trying to bring order to chaos that has been created by protesters in recent days our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists violent mobs arsonists looters criminals writers antifa and others as he spoke police were moving demonstrators away from the White House area where Trump would soon

walk over to that church Bible in hand tear gas lingering in the air Donald Trump really worked hard to drive a wedge between people who see and Witness danger and threat at the hands of police and the justice system and people who just don't and he kept on saying they're going to come to your neighborhoods it's the idea that Law and Order means I'm going to protect you he said it in the campaign by the way I'm going to protect you suburbs from people coming in and wrecking your neighborhoods That's the Law and Order message

and so that's what the problem is that we we don't send the message of the fundamental Injustice we send the message of something that can allow you to get into the fight the reports were true there are militia and uh they are patrolling to keep people safe in the local community safe the car ridden house a teenager from Antioch was among the militia that came to Kenosha after a call out to protect local businesses which led to the night of August 25th one person appears to try to grab the weapon before a shot is fired

at least one other person was shot before the shooter fled the scene Kyle Rittenhouse is exactly the example of the split that occurred not just in society but in the media how shocked are we that 17 year olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would making Heroes out of people who are pointing guns at unarmed protesters was Reckless and it was wrong so Kenosha is known now for two people getting shot down by a boy that people either see as a hero or as the greatest villain of this whole

Saga I think we're beginning to spiral away from each other in this country I think Kenosha is not a unique case at all not at all it's it's America nobody was doing anything they pulled in they opened the Open Fire look at them there this was the Saturday night after the Monday in which uh George Floyd was killed and and the the demonstrations really hit a fever pitch all right they are now moving toward us they are now moving to and suddenly at the intersection in front of me police pulled in supported by the National

Guard and they started shooting in both directions get back get back get back your head your head suddenly I felt what uh seemed to be a a hockey stick a hockey puck hit me my team and I put our hands up and said we're media and they said we don't care and they shot again yeah let's go let's go Donald Trump subsequently referred to that as a beautiful thing I remember this guy welchy he got hit on the knee with a canister of tear gas and he went down he didn't he was down my knee

my knee depending on what rally he was at because this became common fodder for him he would say it was a beautiful thing or a beautiful sight I'm a reporter I'm a reporter get out of here they threw him aside like he was a little bag of popcorn he actually said it was Law and Order and suggested to his his people that the attacks on journalists are valid I mean honestly when you watch the crap that we've all had to take so long when you see that it's actually you don't want to do that but

when you see it it's actually a beautiful sight it's a beautiful sight [Applause] [Music] it became clear that what we'd done is we had swapped out the Walter Cronkite Gatekeepers not for no Gatekeepers right but for a new set of Gatekeepers and the new set of Gatekeepers is typically the social media companies those are the people who are determining what gets highlighted what get Amplified what gets buried what gets taken down what gets a notice put against it Etc right and they can measure how you respond and how often you engage and re-engage and the

best way to get people to engage constantly is to inflame their emotions we're all feeling paranoid and all feeling angry and no one's actually talking to each other face to face and covert has just made this worse if you support Robert E Lee you hate this country he literally attacked us you got to come in here you gotta Embrace American culture and people say well you're just being an ethno nationalist okay whatever the constant um theme is that the other side is not just wrong but there are treasonous um that there are counter to the

very values of America and if you don't worry in a way that screams it or makes you feel about it it just won't spread so that's how the story is told and to the extent that's the way we understand politics we've destroyed the capacity to to solve or to deal with politics the mainstream media knows that it will only get Real ratings if it plays into that and the cycle reproduces itself until you end up with something like January the 6th if you count the legal votes I easily win if you count the illegal votes

they can try to steal the election from us okay here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States from the point of view of the protest is what they were doing was completely rational if it's true that the entire electoral system has been rigged that Trump won in a landslide [Music] I've been told this by most of the media they access and then told it explicitly by the president himself it's your duty stop this theft of the Republic a

mob of trump supporters rioters went over to where the media was stationed let's roll video they were chased out of their area where they were doing their live shots and I have to tell you this was an attack on the First Amendment the whole media background May January the 6th inevitable and I've never seen this before many of the people there were streaming the media is the enemy of the people something that President Trump frequently says it was rational logical if you accept the premises that these people believed in which had nothing to do with

objective reality and that's the danger that we are facing and it does not go away with Donald Trump [Music] the New York Times subscriptions skyrocketed The Washington Post did better financially it was endless fuel for exactly the cable TV shows endless op-eds endless hand-wringing about the decline of democracy you can't do without Donald Trump you would be lost without Donald Trump what he says Ted you know that's not true CNN's ratings would be in the toilet without Donald Trump you know that's not true you're you're playing for Laughs what were the ratings before Trump and

what are the readings now I would say we might be up 20 we might be up 30 percent we might be up 40 if we go back down 40 that's okay too well it may not be of course it is as readings went up as people consumed TV more um the surveys were also showing that they believed us less [Music] so that meant that we were gaining audience but losing trust which probably meant that people were consuming the news as entertainment now like we were moving into the entertainment space Donald Trump's presidency changed media and

I know some Outlets are nervous that their ratings will go down significantly now because they won't be covering president Trump which is one way to look at it the other way to look at it is that maybe will return to journalism in the way that I would like to see us return to it and the way that the old school approach is which is to just get back to the facts [Music] it may have been one of the biggest news years on record but one estimate suggests more than 16 000 jobs were cut in 2020

that's the highest number since they started keeping track in 2003. if recent Trends or any indication there is still an appetite for news and alternative sources are growing a survey by the infinite dial suggests nearly a quarter of Americans now listen to podcasts weekly and according to Nielsen news is one of the top three most popular podcast genres another Trend newsletters this past year dozens of high-profile writers left top mainstream Outlets to start their own independent newsletters using a service called sub stack it's become so popular the top 10 newsletters now bring in millions of

dollars per year in subscriptions and both Twitter and Facebook are planning to roll out similar newsletter services so I don't really answer to bosses anymore but you know I do try to make a point of kind of going after Targets on all sides [Music] if those of us who've gone to sub stack can present a more nuanced or more interesting or more diverse discussion or debate I think we're going to gain more and more readers as we are I now have 90 000 people subscribing to my newsletter my salary has quadrupled [Music] I think I

was stuck in a system that I could never change and I think about a state in it it would have driven me insane [Music] the action that I got from people was really heartening because people sense that something is wrong [Music] foreign garbage there's no need for that in life there are a lot of liars out there social media is not a trusted source and your friends who post on social media are also not trusted sources never trust just foreign Source pick one from the middle pick one from either side and read all three and

that way do you tell which details are consistent and repeated in all of them those are the facts go to a place that really is trustworthy and is doing it for the right reasons make sure that if you are consuming news that it comes from a source where the reporters do their research go to the best experts watch something you don't agree with I mean I never would have had to have said that 10 15 years ago right but in my mind that is the only way that we are going to come back together it

not only helps you see a broader perspective every now and again they might have a point there's a beauty to living in a pluralistic society and that is you can live next to and amongst and marry and be best friends with and have dinner with people who don't share your political opinions or your religion or your your views Embrace that [Music] I think the job in the media is to actually like live in the world with us right and host the conversations with us so we can grapple with real things so that's the potential that

I see right like that's that's the opportunity I think if the news media took that opportunity it would be like the BBC after the first world war you'd be giving the people what at a deep level they really want and need and are asking for [Music] foreign