People can no longer trust what they hear on the news. “Fake” news has dominated pretty much every single media outlet. But why do they do this and what can the people do about it?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

iTunesStitcherSpotifyTuneInGoogle Podcasts

Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Connor.

Connor: Hey, Brittany.

Brittany: So I thank you and I can probably both agree that the media, which is just kind of a fancy way of saying the news, is just off the rails these days.

Connor: Such a thing.

Brittany: I know. but we’ve talked about, you know, how hard it is to find objective news sources. And of course, objective means something that is true. Emma and I talked about the saying, Ayn Rand said, which is A equals A, that no matter what happens, A is gonna equal A and there are true and never changing facts in this world that the media seems to not wanna pay any attention to. So I wanted to talk today about a few of the instances lately, especially because over the last two years I think it’s gotten, it’s always been bad, but I think we are seeing with COVID things happen in real-time that are so misleading that I, I feel like once a week I have a little bit of like a breakdown in my head where I just like, like, how are people believing this? Like, do you not see? And I think you and I both probably listen to a lot of like, more independent journalists,  people who are out there really trying to find what the facts are. And so every time I go and I watch CNN, which unfortunately sometimes I do, or so I follow CNN, which is a big news, what would you call it? Network. I follow them on social media to see their headlines. And it’s so laughable to me now these things that they’re putting out there or what they choose to report that it’s just, it’s been driving me nuts. So I thought we would talk about that today. And, we’ve also talked a little bit in the past about propaganda, which is a big word. And so I wanna talk about that later too. And that’ll tie into why they do the things they do. So, Connor, I wanna ask you, do you actually watch the news anymore? And do you believe what you hear?

Connor: Oh boy. I mean, it’s hard to even call it news, right? Yes. Like, there’s another, I’ve heard the name infotainment before and it’s this, oh, this, fusion of the words information and entertainment and so infotainment. And that’s kind of stuck with me a little bit where I don’t know that that word will catch on, but, to me, it’s a better example that so much of the quote-unquote news, it’s theater, right? It’s trying to rile people up and get them to click on stories and view, you know, their programs and so that they can sell more advertising and they want to fuel people’s emotion of anger and, you know, whatever fear. And, so maybe entertainment quite isn’t even the right word, cuz we usually like to be entertained with like, you know, happy, silly, fun stuff. But it’s almost like this weird addiction to this bad drug that people just have to go back for and feel like they need to get their fix. So, I like watching news. I just have a hard time finding where in the world it is because it’s so rare to like, find, you know, as you pointed out earlier, objective news, unbiased news, right? And, that’s hard because humans kind of are all biased. Like, it’s hard to say, oh, unbiased journalism, we only report the facts. It’s like, well, how can we trust that? Because, you know, look at, look at all the examples now and through history, how, you know, we’re humans. Like we’re, if we don’t, I mean, oh, what was it a few months ago? Katie Couric, I think was her name. She came out with this book. She was in charge of this big news show you could call it, every morning. And, she.

Brittany: Not, she’s still doing the news show.

Connor: I don’t remember, I think she retired, but she wrote a book and she revealed that she modified an interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So here she was interviewing this woman on the Supreme Court, and she had this whole interview and there was something, I’m trying to remember even what the subject was, but.

Brittany: It was Ruth, RBG.

Connor: Yeah, that’s who it was. I, don’t remember what she said though, that she omitted.

Brittany: Oh, she had some views on a very controversial topic, I believe it was, the topic of abortion. And I think she was not, I think that’s what it was. And she was not as far left on it as people thought she was. Yeah. Or she had some critiques of it and that Katie Couric like cut the interview, I think it was Yeah, like edited the interview.

Connor: Right? And so you can say, oh, but you know, they, they cut all kinds of stuff, right? They, you know, they’ll do a half an hour interview and only five minutes of it. So of course they’re always cutting stuff, but then it’s like, well, wait a minute. Like, as Katie herself confessed in her book, she was doing that to help Justice Ginsburg. She was trying to protect her image. She didn’t want to release something that would be unflattering because Katie, you know, kind of agreed with her, supported her and didn’t want, and so then it’s like, well wait a minute. Like, what is actual journalism and what’s news and how can you trust him? Which I think is your key question, Brittany. Yes. In terms of like what I watch for news and stuff. So here’s what I do,  or try to do, like, I, I haven’t owned a TV in like, I don’t know, 15. Really. 15 years or something. And so we don’t have tv. I don’t watch news channel.

Brittany: Your kids. Are they allowed to live stream or anything? Yeah, we’re not live streaming.

Connor: Yeah, We have like, you know, Netflix and Disney Plus and you know, we get media in other ways, but, but we don’t, I don’t wanna be like glued to a TV for like, whatever. So, we don’t watch any of the news channels. What I typically do, and this isn’t for everyone, but this is just what I do, is I let other people beat my filter. And what I mean by that is when I see on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram that several people are talking about a story, then I’ll be like, okay, I guess this is worth looking into now, right? Because I don’t wanna just sit there and like read news pages and get depressed and, you know, waste my time or whatever. And so I kind of let other people see what are the most important stories and what should I pay attention to. And when that happens, I usually try and, do two things. The, well, three things actually. If the story is international, like if there’s a, it’s a significant thing. I’ll go read international news sources.

Brittany: That’s a good idea.

Connor: Right? Because here in America you can see things are so, these journalists are so biased. I remember a few months ago, Nancy Pelosi was criticizing the press, the media and the journalists for not being supportive enough of the 3.5 trillion plan. She said that you’re not selling it to the public well enough. She literally said that the leader of the House of Representatives blaming the media for not helping them advance their agenda. And it’s like, well, wait a minute, that’s not their true role. I understand that many of them do that type of thing. So, I like to read international media to get away from all this like American, weird, corrupt quote unquote media. The second thing, I like to do is I like to look at alternative, sources. So this is where I get like the Glen Greenwald.

Brittany: Yeah, I was just gonna mention him. Yep. Yeah.

Connor: And we should talk more about that. But like, these people who have gone independent, they no longer work for a big company that might censor their views. They’re more freely spoken. So Substack is a place where I was gonna find.

Brittany: That’s the best place to get news these days.

Connor: Right? So it’s these independent writers who feel like they can be accountable just to their readers and supporters and no longer have to like, you know, write in a way that will please advertisers, right? Or their editors. And so I like reading, Substock stuff. And then, what was the third one? So international and unbiased. I don’t remember the third. Maybe it’ll come to me. How to do, you kind of navigate this whole news thing?

Brittany: So substack has been great. That’s a new one I look at. I also start sometimes with the CNN headline and then go try to find out like what really happened or have that send me on a whole other journey. I have three journalists that are my go-to people. Glen Greenwald is one of them. Tim Pool and Matt Taibbi. Taibbi, Yeah. His name, who are her really good. They have all kind of been shunned by the mainstream media and most of them had some sort of role in the main distributor. They were part of, they were regular journalists, to begin with. And then.

Connor: Which in my Mind means they’re worth listening to if they were shone like that, right?

Brittany: Yes. And you know what’s funny, one of my, there’s, I hate to say I get my news from Joe Rogan, but I do sometimes because he has people on, he disagrees with. And so I always get different perspectives. And there’s also some comedians that I listen to just because it’s interesting to hear a fresh take and almost a humorous take on things that are happening. So I’ve got my little, you know, my little bits and pieces of where I find out what’s going on, and that really, that got more prominent for me. Meaning I was doing that more when the pandemic happened because I just wasn’t buying a lot of what were being told all the time. And I think that turned out to be a fair thing because, I mean, masks work, masks don’t work. You’re not gonna get sick if you get the vaccination, oh wait, you are gonna get sick of the vaccination. Oh, and wear a mask and get vaccinated.

Connor: Mexicans work 100% effectively. Oh, 95, oh, 90, 85, 80.

Brittany: Get more boosters and it’s becoming to the point where it’s just insane. In fact, I saw, you know, we talked about this a couple of episodes ago, and this is a couple of months ago, but I’m sure we’re still dealing with it now. Inflation is really bad right now. And there are several articles going around. I think one of ’em was in the New York Times, it said, actually inflation’s great for the economy. Gosh. And like, it’s, these are not true. So it’s been, I think COVID really changed a lot of people’s perspectives on what news is and what it isn’t. Because none of the information we’re getting from places like CNN or even the New York Times, it’s not real. Like, I have to ask myself, what reality are you living in? Remember? So it’s really scary.

Connor: You’ve mentioned Joe Rogan and CNN and COVID. So there’s a story that happened,  a few weeks or months ago, dealing with all three of those. Yes. You remember this when Joe Rogan on his podcast, a very popular podcast, I don’t think a child-friendly podcast.

Brittany: No, I don’t think it’s child friendly.

Connor: But, very popular one nonetheless. And he interviewed Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Yes. Who is the resident, physician doctor on CNN, who is kind of the, covers all their medical stories and so forth. And, this was a fascinating interview. The clip that went viral well, okay, I have to back up. Joe Rogan was heavily attacked by all these people on CNN and other places, but heavily CNN for using Ivermectin, which is one of the medications that a lot of people have been using to try and beat COVID. And Ivermectin is, used by humans, by many, many, many humans. It’s also apparently used by livestock. There’s different uses for it.

Brittany: And there’s different kinds of ivermectin as well.

Connor: Right? And as a result of him announcing that he was using Ivermectin, when he caught COVID, he being Joe Rogan, CNN started just criticizing the guy, all their hosts and all these people saying that he was using Horse deWormer and they had Fauci on all these people criticizing Joe Rogan. I, remember seeing a little clip where Joe Rogan is talking to like his co-host or someone else. He’s like, should I sue CNN? Like, he was.

Brittany: Yeah, he was thinking about suing them.

Connor: They’re being so misleading. Like it, like sure, okay, there’s a version or whatever that, you know, is used for livestock, but he’s like, I got this from my doctor. Humans use it. The guy who invented or discovered it got a Nobel Prize for how it can help humans like, you guys are trying to pretend that this can’t be used by humans and call, you know, me, someone who is using horse dewormer. So anyways, fast forward, he’s interviewing Dr. Sanjay Gupta from CNN and they’re having a long interview, but the clip that goes viral, he gets Dr. Gupta to admit on his podcast that what CNN n did was wrong. Yeah. That they should not have said those things. Joe asked him and he was like, why did they do that? And Dr. Gupta says, I don’t know, they shouldn’t have. Yeah. And then what, was it Britney, like a day later.

Brittany: The next day he went on, cuz he works for CNN and Sanjay Gupta, right? Yeah. He went on, was it Don Lemon? Is that his name?

Connor: Yes. Don Lemon’s show.

Brittany: And they just completely just blasted Rogan saying, yeah, you know, I told him Ivermectin wasn’t approved for that use and just skewing the facts and trying to reclaim their narrative. What they have decided is the correct story of what’s going on. It was just.

Connor: Yeah, like, he admits to Joe, they shouldn’t have done that. And then literally the next day he’s back on CNN saying, because Don LeMans, like, we’re, we’re not wrong, are we? Like he, this is used for deworming horses. And Dr. Gupta did not defend Joe. He didn’t confirm or agree with what he said. You know, the day prior on this podcast totally walked it back and it shows what happens when you work for these large corporations and all this bureaucracy. You don’t wanna lose your job. You have to kind of toe the line and you gotta feel almost a little bad for people in that shoes cuz like, you gotta think his conscience is being wounded by, like saying things that he doesn’t really believe. Like it seemed to me that what he was saying on Joe’s podcast was authentic.

Brittany: It was very authentic. Yeah.

Connor: Yeah, He was more sincere. It was more like a natural conversation. And then here he is kind of, you know, back saying these same talking points. So, to the broader question, Brittany, that you had for this topic, as we wind up, why does the media keep lying? My quick take, and then I want yours as we wrap up, my quick take is the media lies because the media is not in the journalism business. People who, especially in the past decade, who become part of the media, they have an agenda, they have a bias, they want to advance a narrative. They see the media as a platform through which they can advance their viewpoint. They want to change society in a preferred political agenda. And the media so-called is a way to shape the narrative, influence people’s opinions and alter what they believe so that you can advance an agenda. I think that’s why the media lies. It’s because it’s all in service of that agenda. Whatever is needed to move that agenda forward. If it requires lying or bending the truth, so be it. What do you say, Brittany?

Brittany: I think it goes back to propaganda. You know, there’s this saying that the media is the fourth branch of the government and I tend to believe that, that they’re sometimes working in cahoots with usually the left to further this agenda. And, you know, there’s a lot of economic fallacies that go along with that and COVID things that we were being told. So yeah, that’s what I think. I think a lot of them are just trying to push a narrative that tends to be from the left.

Connor: Well, guys, we got a lot of work cut out for us. There are independent journalists that are out there trying to, you know, speak the truth and to me it’s like speaking truth to power. When you see the, the journalists who are willing to, you know, call out powerful people rather than just, you know, support them. Like Nancy Pelosi wanted everyone to do for the 3.5 trillion proposals. You know, those are the voices to follow and support, right? It’s like who’s trying to challenge those in power? Who’s trying to hold them accountable? Those, to me, are the people that we should be following, listening to, and supporting in whatever way we can. Because, you know, when the masses are getting their information from the media, we’re being led astray and we’re being fed propaganda. And if we wanna save our country, if we wanna restore these, you know, ideas of freedom, we gotta be very careful about who we’re listening to. So, great topic, Brittany. Thanks as always for chatting. And until next time, we’ll talk to you later.

Brittany: Talk to you later.