A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
The Media and the Fight for Democracy
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For a while now, the A Nazi on Wall Street podcast has been building toward a conversation about the role of the US media in the existential battle between democracy and fascism. This episode, EJ Russo and Dr. Jay Weixelbaum are blessed not with one expert, but three! Dr. Weixelbaum interviews Mark Jacob, Cliff Schecter, and John Stoehr in an entertaining and nuanced discussion about our current media landscape and how we might all help improve it to protect our democracy. You don’t want to miss this one! Also, make sure to check out the work of our excellent guests here:
Mark Jacob: https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/people/mark-jacob/
Cliff Schecter: https://www.youtube.com/user/cschecter
John Stoehr: https://www.editorialboard.com/
Hey Jay, I'm curious, why do we call this podcast a Nazi on Wall Street?
Speaker 2I'm glad you asked ej. You know, I study history. The Nazi on Wall Street podcast is part of elusive films, a Nazi on Wall Street project, which tells the true story of how the Nazi sent a pair of Des spies, a German lawyer, and a beautiful diabolical bareness to recruit American corporations for the fascist cause. And only a Jewish FBI agent stood in their way.
Speaker 1<laugh>. Wow. How are you going to make this story come to
Speaker 2Life? We are raising funds to produce a short film highlighting just one part of the Nazi and Wall Street pilot script, which showcases our team's talents and writing and production. Awesome.
Speaker 1Where can someone go to learn more and help contribute to the
Speaker 2Cause? Chances are, we're running a fundraiser right now, but regardless of when you hear this episode, you can go to elusive hyphen film slash donate to contribute to putting this highly relevant history on screen.
Speaker 1Great. I hear there's some cool donation incentives too, like mugs, totes, shirts, and more for yourself, or to give us a gift.
Speaker 2That's right. Go to elusive hyphen film slash donate to learn more. Now on to today's show.
Speaker 3Welcome
Speaker 1To a Nazi on Wall Street podcast, because every time history repeats, the price goes up. I'm your host, EJ Russo, and today we have something really special for you. That historian, Dr. Jay Wexel bound, my friend and co-host, worked really hard to put together Jay. And I wanted to discuss the current state of the mainstream media and it's role in protecting or possibly destroying American democracy. You see, contrary to what you may hear nowadays, Democrats have been using your tax dollars to well govern. For starters, the infrastructure package. A punchline in the Trump era is now a reality. They also pass the American Rescue Plan, the First Gun bill in decades. The CHIPS Act, which funds the semiconductor chip industry right here in the US of A, they pass the PAC Act funding Veteran Healthcare. They pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the biggest climate investment in the history of the world. It is a bill that finally allows the government to negotiate lower drug prices. It enforces billion dollar companies that pay zero in taxes to pay at least a 15% corporate minimum tax. And it beefs up IRS enforcement to catch wealthy tax sheets. They added 10 million jobs the the most ever at this point in the presidential term. And now the unemployment rate is at a 50 year low. NATO is stronger than ever. The leader of Al-Qaeda is dead. Again,<laugh>. Thanks Obama. And 43 million American borrowers will benefit from student loan debt relief, and all without a clear majority in the Senate. I don't care if you're left, right or center. That is objectively one of the most effective presidencies in modern American history. That is what it looks like when Democrats use their majorities to govern in a way that will help the most people humanly possible. But according to many in the media, Biden in the Democrats are out of touch, corporate elitist who are trying to force woke agendas into the classroom, or to allow legals to cross the border and take your jobs, or to discredit Trump and bring down America. These aren't just the talking points of right wing rags like News Max Brightbart, or even Fox News. But there seems to be messaging like this coming from more established sources like cnn. For instance, not too long ago CNN abruptly canceled Brian Statler's left Leaning Sunday show, and effectively fired STTR and his staff. Surprising many in the industry, although down a bit in the ratings, the show was reasonably commercially successful, doing better than several of CNN's prime time shows. Regardless, the call to cancel the show came down from Chris Licked, CNN's new chairman and ceo, who reportedly was not a fan of stutter's opinionated style as reported by the Guardian Lick. Also told CNN staff that they should stop referring to Trump's big lie because the phrase sounded like a Democratic party talking Point licked also wants more straight news reporting along with adding more conservative guests on the air. Now, keep in mind, Time Warner, the parent company of CNN was acquired in the big Warner Brothers discovery merger last April. The CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery is David Zla. Since the deal, Zla has been openly prodding, licked to reposition CNN to the center and be a network preferred by quote everybody, Republicans and Democrats. End quote. Interestingly, the leading shareholder in Warner Brothers discovery and Chief architect of the entire merger just so happens to be John Malone, a multi billionaire cable magnate Malone describes himself as a libertarian, although he travels in right wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch. He's on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. And in 2017, he donated a quarter of a million dollars to Trump's inauguration. Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because in his view, Fox News has quote actual journalism. Last season, we had a Nazi on Wall Street Podcast discussed Robert Murdoch impetus for creating Fox News as a reaction to not being able to win the bid to buy CNN to change its liberal messaging. Well, it seems that in a long and roundabout way, Murdoch's goal appears to be moving closer to being accomplished. If we've learned anything, anything from Trump and his loyalists at Fox News, it's that facts, data, and logic are no longer relevant to the Republican base. Straight news reporting depends on what stories are featured, which facts are highlighted, and the context surrounding the news. This requires two things, judgment and values. The anti-democracy movement in America and and around the world is among the biggest issues confronting us today. Will people like LinkedIn Malone consider it actual journalism? Or will covering the rise of right wing autocracy be considered opinion? If democracy is at risk, wouldn't it be a front against journalistic integrity? If no one sounded the alarm, how would it be possible to report on Trump or Rudy Giuliani or any number of today's Republican leaders if journalists cannot even speak about the big lie? Or at the very least say they've broken norms, if not laws. On his last show, Sttr said, quote, It's not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It's not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It's required. It's patriotic. We must make sure we don't give platforms to those who are lying to our faces. End quote, We and a Nazi on Wall Street Podcast wanted to pull at this thread a bit to see if there were any honest members of the media who were willing to share as our guest what they see is going on in how the news is produced and reported today. So Jay put out some feelers to see if anyone out there would be brave enough to talk with us. Well, he didn't just find one guest, he found three. So when we return from break, you will hear the outstanding panel discussion Jay had with our amazing trio of guests. Mark Jacob, the former editor at the Chicago Tribune and Sunday editor of the Chicago, Sometimes John store, editor and publisher of the editorial board. And Cliff Shector, bestselling political author, consultant, and commentator who has contributed to the New York Times, New Republic Daily Beast, and San Francisco Chronicle, as well as many others and the mind behind the take down YouTube channel. We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did.
Speaker 2We have a very special panel discussion today on, uh, the role of the US media, specifically in an era when democracies under attack by fascists. The a Nazi and Wall Street Podcast is invited three experts on media and media bias and how they intersect with US politics. Uh, we have, uh, Mark Jacob. Mark Jacob is a former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune and Sunday editor of the Chicago Sun Times. Jacob was the first website editor of the Mei Local News Initiative. He is, uh, the co-author of eight books on history and photography. We also have John Storer, who is the editor and publisher of the editorial Board, a daily newsletter about politics in plain English for normal people and the common good. And last but not least, we have Cliff Shecter. Cliff Shecter is a consultant, commentator, and writer who has worked at the nexus of liberal and democratic party politics. He's written ads for Joe Biden and Several Are Prominent Leaders, is a bestselling book about John McCain and his written op-eds and columns for New York Times, New Republic, Daily Beasts, San Francisco Chronicle and others. Cliff also has, uh, a popular and quickly growing YouTube channel called The Takedown, where he addresses the ity of the right wing and media with both humor and righteous anger. And you can find him and subscribe on YouTube at C S C H E C T E R. That's YouTube slash C s c h e c t e r. And thank you so much, uh, Mark, John and Cliff for being here on BSU was Street Podcast. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 4Thank
Speaker 2You very much. We appreciate it. Uh, so let's, let's dig right into this. Uh, you know, um, all three of you are active on Twitter, uh, and write a lot about this kinda moment that we're in, in US politics, uh, democracy under threat. The Nazi on Wall Street Podcast has really, uh, been building up to this discussion about the role of the media for quite some time. We speak, uh, a lot to experts and to each other, EJ and I, um, about right wing populism. Um, but the media is always kind of there in the background as this, uh, important institution. You know, historians often use anecdotes to characterize eras, uh, in the discussion of the role US media and existential battle against us democracy and fascism. The Clinton email saga looms large in my mind, is something that I think people can grab onto. A 2017 paper published in, uh, the Columbia Journalism Review noted quote, in just six days, New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton's emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the 2016 election. As we know, many other mainstream outlets, of course, followed the paper of records suit. I'm using air quotes I guess these days. This first question is for Mark. Uh, what do you think happened behind the scenes at the New York Times and how critical do you think this editorial decision was historically,
Speaker 4You know, not having been there? I'm gonna have to just speculate, but I I've been in a similar situation, uh, many times where you're covering a political campaign and you find out something about one of the candidates that's damaging and you, you know, you're, you're writing a lot of damaging stories about one candidate, and you do look for damaging stories about the other candidate. You look for things that you can say that will make you look more objective. And this is, I think part of the problem these days is that, is this media desperation to a peer objective? Because it makes you, it makes the reporters and editors overplay certain stories in order order to kind of achieve this, this, uh, equality thisno and, and to try to appear fair. And frankly, no news outlet is really fair. In fact, the very idea of objectivity, I've pretty much given up on, because it just doesn't exist. The very act of assigning a story or covering a story and deciding which story to cover is a value judgment. And so, so nobody's truly objective, but there's this desperation of political news media to appear objective. And therefore, if one candidate is a, is a train wreck, like, you know, Trump was in 2016, I mean, every day there was something just outrageously bad. They were, I, I understand the impulse of media to look for something that they could say bad about Clint and that, and by God they did. And I think it was, I think it was really damaging. And, and the, and one more thing about that. I think that it was wrong the way Hillary handled the emails, but it was not anywhere close to the way it was covered. It just wasn't. And, and it was just way overblown. And, and I mean, you look at the way, you know, the whole Trump family when they were in the White House did way worse, way worse things as far as how they handled communications. So obviously it was just a, a bs issue that was blown up by the right wing and the New York Times just bought into it in order to appear objective.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, we hear the importance of the 60 days before the election a lot these days, uh, for other reasons, obviously,
Speaker 5If I can just say quickly Yeah, I know. I'll talk to John. You know, I have a lot more to say on this. I mean, obviously when people would, would do writeups and look at what stories were covered, most know they do those sort of blowups and then, and the, the size of the word would be bigger based. I don't know what that's called. Or I'd say it based upon how often it was covered. Like emails would be this big. It would be like, you know, all these things that, you know, Trump, Russia would be like that big
Speaker 4Word cloud.
Speaker 5I'm sorry. So
Speaker 4Word cloud.
Speaker 5There you go. See Marks are I told you he's smarter than I'm, I mean, you know, the thing that Mark, the thing that he was saying that's so right, is that it, it's so much more important than, you know, uh, what stories are we covering when you choose 11 days before an election to splash across the cover of the New York Times, the email story, because of Comey's idiotic decision to get up and mention it. You're making a news and a value judgment, and you're harming a candidate when you decide that there has to be equal coverage in terms of proportion. Instead of saying, you know, we're gonna cover the world as it is. So if one side is 98% awful and the other side is 2% awful, we're gonna do it that way. I mean, as Mark said, what she could with the emails was wrong. There really was a security breakdown at Benghazi. These are things that should have been covered and hopefully covered in a way where we would learn something and we, you know, we'd get better. Instead, we, what we allowed the right to do is turn them into these political issues of, uh, you know, where, where we had both sides. So the way, you know, everything is, he said, she said, the way I would finish it off, and the metaphor I like to use is it would be like if you covered other policy, politics is the only, you know, the only area where we actually ask reporters to become dumber and not report the things they know to hide what they know. The perspective, the context. So it's sort of like, if you were to, the equivalent would be, Hey, a man went to the moon. Um, one side says that that was a huge accomplishment. The other side says the moons made of Swiss cheese. That's the equivalent of our political reporting. The other one that I love to do is the Dodgers played, you know, the Giants today, the, the Dodgers had four runs that Giants had three. Some people say that means the Dodgers won. Others say though, that that means the Giants won. I mean, that's the way we cover politics, you know, and anything that gets pulled into the realm of politics, like when sports does, like when it's kneeling at a game or when health issues due like covid, they, they fall into that same realm of suddenly they've lost all, We can't tell the truth about them anymore. So I'll just finish with that. I saw Mark nodding so clearly he agrees on that one, which is, it's the only area I'm aware of where they say to you, Forget everything, you know, forget all the context, you know, forget everything you can bring to this story and act like you're a kindergartner when you write it and you don't know anything.
Speaker 4But real quick clip. It's exactly right. Can you mention somebody covering a beat for 20 years who has reached no conclusions about what's going on on their beat? What kind of reporter is that? Yeah. Yet they, they, there's this two step, there's this, there's this masquerade, there's this tense that, well, we don't know what's the truth. We're just telling both sides. That's not journalism. It's just not, That's bad journalism. If it's any kind of journalism,
Speaker 6You know, with respect specifically to the times, the times has a voice of God approach to towards society, as if times reporters were not human beings covering human affairs with that ad. It's an attitude, really a psychological posture from which to do journalism. Like Mark said, there's a pretense, but I would, I would go farther and say it's a kind of pretending and it's kind of this make believe attitude that is more harmful than it is helpful to democracy. It's not helpful because it gives the impression that both sides are equal, Right? It gives the impression that there are no stakes. It gives the impression that decisions that are made don't have consequences. If times reporters just engaged politicians with the insistence that both of them are human beings, and then we're all, we all have a stake in this, I think we'd have a different kind of journalism coming from the top. The reason they have a voice of God approach to the world is because they are so very high up in society. Almost everybody of any consequence who reads the Times is an affluent white person whose connections to the margins of society are slim to none. And even if there was a fascist takeover the country, they would probably be okay, at least for the time being. You know, they're not, they're not the ones being pushed, punched down on, right? They are already up and nobody's punching up. So the times is, Times is what the times is, and it's an elite paper, and it suffers from its own eliteness. And there's, if you've noticed, I've noticed, anyway, there's a kind of homogenous to the times. Like every columnist kind of sounds like the same person, just with a little different degrees of irritation and insight or insight. Elites only recognize other elites, and so therefore you have a closed circuit, circuit of mediocrity. Sometimes there's also a kind a built in nihilism into this. This will be my last point. Uh, there's a built in sense of nihilism. Like nothing really matters because we're, we'd have no stakes. We're not human beings. We don't, nothing's going to affect us. So in, in the run up to the 2016 election, there was this kind of, this, especially from the times, there's this kind of like, well, what are Americans going to do with two bad choices? Nobody's happy with anything, Let's just see what happens. Right? And it was a sense of like, we're just gonna watch this car wreck happen, even though we could do something about it.
Speaker 5The other thing about the times it's so important is I not, look, I grew up in New York City, so I know the influence at times has there, but you know, I settled in, you know, in Cincinnati, and I will tell you that the other outsized importance it has is as local newspapers die, as they become thinner, and, you know, and there's fewer journalists, all these papers look up to the New York Times, like it is died, the word of God. And so their impact is so much more deleterious when they do things like what they do with the emails. And you can imagine, because then it, it saturates markets like Cincinnati because they're like, if the New York Times is saying this, it must be right. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4<affirmative>, no question. It affects story play. I mean, uh, I know just from working at the Chicago Tribune, that, that the New York Times used to say what it's planned, page one story play was at about three 30 or so in the afternoon, and we would pull it off the wire. We would run it into the nation and world editors to, so that they would know what to pitch for page one. It was, it was that influential.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I can predict when I'm listening to, well, when my wife's listening to NPR in the morning and I'm trying to not get angry. I know what, uh, the Times is gonna print<laugh> because it's kind of this, this story and it's, we've already kind of covered this a little bit, this kind of both sides of them, which was my next, uh, question for John. But like, kind of the, the, the end of that question really, uh, in, in these observations, uh, that you've just made, uh, John and what you're all making is that, is there any evidence the status quo is changing, or are we still we still in it? None.
Speaker 6Yeah, I call it regime change. Other people call it politics. The cycles of political time or, uh, political orders kind of flipping. And I, I certainly think there are signs of it. I mean, you know, you can be looking for things. Conspiracy theorists do this too. They see signs<laugh>, but I try to root as much as I can or root things in history, in reality and so on. In fact, I think things like, I wrote a piece about David Brooks the other day, David Brooks, George Will, Tom Friedman, you know, these are, these are people who really are, don't influence the debate much anymore, as far as I can tell. They're certainly not influencing the left meaning center to the left. They're just ignored. And I think in Brooks' case, the, the Republicans ignore him too. I mean, what kind of pun, what's the point of being a pundit if nobody's listening to you? If you have no influence, If you go back 20 years, um, ago David Brooks was the center of politics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, uh, certainly Tom Friedman was, George Will has been probably in the nineties years, the senator of politics. He's, whatever he stood for, whatever he said was what you could pretty much believe that that's what the conventional wisdom was among the elites, right? But the elites are just not even paying attention to these guys anymore. So that's a sign to me that something is changing. Maybe it's just technology that's changing the way we communicate, that kind of thing. But I just, I, I think it's just what they say doesn't matter anymore. George Rule, I think was last week, he said something to the effect of that Biden should reach out to more Republicans. It's like, that's something that people like him been saying for 30 plus years. And Democrats used to listen to it, and we know this because they would reach out to Republicans<laugh>, right? But that's not happening now.
Speaker 5And God know more. I mean, and, and not even, I shouldn't even say that. They, the, the point is, is you reach out to Republicans when it makes sense to reach out to Republicans. I mean, Joe Biden worked with them on an infrastructure bill. You know, it was the other guy who gave, who caught about infrastructure week every freaking week. And then when Biden came in, he worked with people because it's finding things that are in your mutual interests on a bill that is not nearly strong enough on an issue I've done a lot of work on, which is gun safety. But still, I can tell you, you know, when they created a national, uh, gun trafficking system to try to stop it, instead of, which is something we've been trying to do forever, and a few of the other things that, that Bill did, it will save lives. And in the end, that's what we're looking at here, right? Like, it's not just, well, we can't save everybody's life, so we're not gonna do it. So those are two instances right there where Biden worked with Republicans in a way that, you know, did Donald Trump ever, ever get, get more than a, a Republican, a Democrat or two? Do you ever get anybody else besides Joe Mansion on a bill? I mean, you know, it's, it's, it was, it was always ridiculous. It was always this expectation that Democrats had to, to, to do something that Republicans, Republicans were the mean daddy who slapped us around. And Democrats were supposed to just come back and say, Thank you, sir. May I have another? And can we work with you? And that's why they were so horrified and shocked when Joe Biden went out and issued the semi fascist, which the only bad part of that was the semi, and started saying who they really were, cuz they couldn't believe it. Like I was sitting there recording and sending out to people, you know, I remember, I'm old enough to remember the nineties. I'm old enough to remember Newt Gingrich putting out the list from Go Pack is a little pack of here's how we should refer to Democrats, traders scum, you know, evil, uh, you know, anti-American. I mean, and you know, the number of times the lies have been told that Democrats are killing live babies. The number of lies have been told about, about Democrats are coming to take your Bibles from your house. Democrats are coming to take your go. I mean, just all of that stuff. They're socialists, they're communists there, Islam mo fascists, they're, and he says, one semi fascist and like ka boom, because they weren't used to it. They couldn't believe that. Now, you know, and you're seeing some of the finish up by saying, I think he was pushed there by a lot of folks like us, but some of the younger next generation that, that didn't know, they were supposed to just sit there and take it. The Eric Swalwell, the Corey Bookers, the Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke and people like that are finally, you know, Ruben Gago comes to mind. Like, they're just like, No, you know, they're just like, enough of this stuff, enough of this. We're gonna message about them and say who they truly are in the same way that they lie about us. And that's one of the reasons I'm much more sang about where things are for the midterms.
Speaker 4Well, and also the fact is that bipartisanship makes no sense when one party is just trying to bring down the system has, has absolutely no interest in getting anything done. I mean, what is compromise with that kind of group? Is it like, is it like, uh, half the number of people attacking the capital? Is it, you know, I mean, I mean, is it stealing half of the nuclear secrets? Right? I mean, what is compromised with people like this? And, and you gotta know your enemy, part of a government is protecting people and protecting people is identifying enemies. And, and so it was way overdue. I mean, I'm about lost my mind when Biden described Mitch McConnells his friend. I mean, I just, I just couldn't take him. I mean, it was like, it was like, I guess I, I told myself, okay, so I guess he, he's, it's a ploy. He's just trying to woo the moderates, however few of those are, and trying to get them aboard. But it, but it's just, that was just not reality. That's not reality. A a responsible politician trying to protect his citizens has got to identify enemies and confront them. It's that simple.
Speaker 6Yep. Do I agree? I mean, this Go, sorry, go ahead. As I was jumping off with Cliff's point about the semi fascist, is that one, one thing is that the press is not used to that. There, the, the press is just used to assuming that the Democrats are the responsible party that the Republicans are, are the, uh, pyrotechnics. And one of them is going to restrain the other. And it's a little bit frightening if, if you buy into all of this when the Democrats start calling people out because who's going to restrain the other party, right? Uh, we can't have them both being like this, um, which is nonsense, but it's, that's the curse of both size of,
Speaker 2Uh, Cliff. You, uh, you evoke nude Gingrich, which is the perfect segue into my next question that I had for you, uh, which is, uh, you know, we've, we've talked about on, on a Nazi, on, um, Nazi on Wall Street. We've talked about, um, the fairness doctrine in the past, the history of that. Um, you know, and, uh, of course, Republicans, uh, I if I'm not mistaken, got board members elected back in the mid eighties, uh, essentially to gut the fairness doctrine. And then, you know, you don't need a conspiracy theory to see that, you know, you have the rise of Rush Limba and Fox News coming directly after that. Um, do you think it's possible to reverse this process? Should we, should we be talking about a new fairness doctrine, um, and use those policy levers? Or what are, what are the roadblocks to doing that? Are there reasons why we shouldn't?
Speaker 5Now you've asked me about something where I'm gonna try to not take too long, but I've pun I've been very loud about a whole bunch of this. First of all, um, it's interesting to me. I was studying, I was a senior in college at the University of Pennsylvania, and I'm sure most of you're familiar with Kathleen Hall Jameson, who's a brilliant writer about communications and media. And she was my professor. And we were looking at, I'll never forget this new phenomenon on Rush limbo was in 19, you know, I graduated in 94, right? And how he was growing and the, and the, you know, the, the danger, you know, the danger, she wouldn't say it that way, although she's been more honest about it since. But back then, you know, what, what that was posing, um, fairness, doctrine, you know, I don't know if the one we had back then would, would, you know, be exactly the same thing, but something of that nature of where there needs to be equal sides. Absolutely. Now, we need to remember that only applied to those that had federal licenses. It only applied. But even if you look within that, there's a lot of bad local talk radio on terrestrial local radio. And there's a lot. And Sinclair, uh, who I worked for, I mentioned before we went on here, I was the liberal guy arguing with basically the host, the right wing guests. Anybody else they felt like inviting along in 2004 owns a lot of local TV stations, uh, where they pass on propaganda. Fox News has its Fox Sunday show on, on the regular station. So there, first of all, it would help. And again, you can't fix everything. Everything would help to a certain degree. But, and you know, and I'd love to hear Mark's thoughts and John's thoughts on this, but to me, the, the, the big danger here, you know, beyond that, that is one thing we could do. Another thing is, you know, we, I don't want to get to a point where nobody can say anything. We need freedom, freedom of speech. But, but what the founders realized and believed, you know, we are in this sort of post enlightenment society where we could make value judgements and, and compare and contrast logically<laugh> isn't that funny? And decide, you know, what was best for us? When people don't have honest information, they can't do that. And we treat our, our communications today and our first amendment the way you would've a hundred years ago, where you may have one crazy guy standing at the edge of the street saying, Doom is coming and can maybe reach 10 or 20 people now that one guy can have a million, 10 million followers, can reach cross countries, can do all sorts of things, and can create a cult, if you will. Of which there are a few out there right now, q being among them and others. Our policies have not been updated to reflect the age we're in. And I'm sorry, but, but you know, whether you talk about yelling fire in a crowded theater, whether you talk about the fact that we have limits, you can't threaten the president's life. We consider that to be too dangerous. You know, child pornography rightly is something we decided is not freedom of expression, pictures of naked children. It is too dangerous. And so we decided that that is a form of free expression. We are not going to allow, Well, what about terroristic threats? What about inciting violence? What about all the things we allow people to knowingly go on Fox News, which has been taken down in other countries, in other democracies, we allow them to go on and lie and incite violence. And, and I'm sorry, we need laws that don't allow Tucker Carlson to just go. I mean, the, if you show Nazi paraphernalia, if you display it in Germany, you go to prison. Now, we could argue whether you think Germany is a, is a democracy or not, they seem to be, to me, you know, in this country, we have to get to an understanding of, yes, we support free speech, but we've determined in certain areas that certain speech is too dangerous and can harm us. And I mean, you don't get to go at a government job and sexually harass a woman because that's your freedom of speech, Okay? And this sharing of, of conspiracies, particularly by news, those call themselves news outlets, you know, and across the internet on, on cable to large audiences, things they, they demonstrably know to be false. Cause they've testified. They know that, that they're false. We know, they know they're false, and then they're able to go out and lie about covid and lie about guns and lie about things that get people killed. We're not representing the times, um, United Kingdom, Canada. Others have grappled with this, and they've done a better job than us. Nobody. It's not easy. But when it comes to liable laws and certain other things, they, they've tried to do something at least to stop this. And, and of course, the final thing I'll say on this is of course, you know, in, in echoes of the movie network, which predicted our future, you know, we've got what, six entities that control our media. Now, in the 1980s, there were 60 something. I mean, the Telecommunications Act, which Bill Clinton signed was abhorrent. Some of the other stuff that wrote under Reagan. And so, I'm not gonna say it was all Republican's faults, but we took everything for granted and allowed these conglomerates to take over our media. We need non-profit media to be funded in cities and around the country, places that do not worry about profit, but worry about getting the truth out. It's not one thing, The fairness doctrine alone for, you know, those that have federal licenses isn't gonna do it. But an updated fairness doctrine, and a lot of these other things I'm talking about combined are, are necessary as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 4I, I'm, I'm skeptical that a return of the fairness doctrine would be a good thing. Um, I feel like number one, it's, it's doesn't require equal time. It just requires some mention or some allowance of alternate views. And I think it would just become this battlefield that, you know, all the Republican lawyers in America would be fighting over. Uh, to me that the answer is different. I, I think that, um, I love the lawsuits being filed against Fox News. I think that's super important. And I'd love to see them go out of business because they lied in damaging ways. Man, that's free enterprise. That's a, that's a legal system. That's America. And I hope it happens. And I'd like to see more lawsuits against people who utter damaging lies on tv. You know, Tucker Carlson, I would like to see somebody whose family member died of Covid because they listened to Tucker Carlson lie about vaccines, Sue Fox News, that I like to see that kind of thing. Yep. I also think that a more concerted effort to pressure cable systems to not to make a Fox News and Optout where they wouldn't get the money. Because right now, if you get cable, basic cable, you're paying Fox News whether you want to or not. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that's big bad.
Speaker 5The close to money. Yeah.
Speaker 4And, but then I would rather see the kind of free expression, the free, free enterprise system handle that. It's not doing a very good job of it now, but, but man, if we could put more pressure on cable companies to do that, that would be really important. Um, so I, I mean, I, I think that people say fairest doctrine, but I think we're beyond that. I, to me, I'm very skeptical of that as an answer.
Speaker 6So the way I would respond is that, um, about fairness doctrine, I've kind of been, I'm in, you know what? I'm just gonna say, I don't know<laugh>, I don't know about that. I don't know about regulating and stuff like that, but I do, I do think that we are going in the direction in which a majority is just going to start tuning out what Fox is putting out, um, is going to, the more, the crazier they get, the less traction they will have, I think, on the public's consciousness. And I think one way to keep going in that direction is to have more voices in the public sphere. Not just, you know, by, um, hacks like us, but like actual profitable enterprises who are competing with each other. So I, I tend to believe that government's number one mandate in, in addition to defense and so on, is to maximize opportunity in minimize suffering in the realm of media. I think it's the government has a, has a responsibility to break up these little, these big enterprises and have them compete with each other. You know, And in that competition, you will probably find some kind of mitigating something or other, some kind of mitigation, uh, where, uh, to be too much this way or too much that way is not profitable. Right? Another thing is that, you know, all respect to my elders, but the primary audience of Fox and right wing Wade Radio is the over 65 set. They grew up with radio, they grew up with tv. They're not gonna get, they're not gonna stop those habits. They'll die with those habits, but their children and their grandchildren certainly don't have those habits. I was just at a piece, the, the same piece about David Brooks where, um, I quoted a former CNN executive saying that, um, back in wasn't too long ago, where they realized that the number of people over under 50 who were subscribing or watching CNN had plummeted it just like, to the point where they couldn't make any money, right? So we are going in the, you know, whether we have a fairness doctor or not, or, you know, I think there's good and bad to be said about that, but I think creating more competition, more free enterprise as Mark points out, more voices, more competition, those things, I think will create conditions in which, um, we could return sort of to 1968 when George Wallace was running for president. I mean, he had a, he had a constituency, right? But most everybody else was like, I'm not here in that<laugh>, I just don't, I'm not even gonna bother thinking about it. And that was, that was partly why the people didn't worry about him too much because he, they knew the mainstream was just tuning him out. So we, I think we're going in that direction. I, and I hope I'm right.
Speaker 5Well, I mean, it wasn't the, you know, due to Wallace, but, you know, it was due to Watergate where Roger Haes sat there and said, This can never happen again. And I'm gonna, you know, not allow mainstream media as he sort liberal media, whatever, to have complete control. We need alternatives, uh, to make sure that our side of the story out as if there were more sides mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, and, and I get totally what, what Mark's saying about the fair massager. I was saying if there was one, it wouldn't be like the one in the past, like you were saying, Mark, it would have to be an updated version of it to, to, to deal with our reality. And maybe it's not the answer. I certainly love the lawsuits and think that, that, I don't know why we don't organize more of them, but I don't know why we don't do a lot of things on the left. I think, you know, why we have certain billionaires on our side and why we have to sit here and watch right wing billionaires, you know, buy up Politico, Newsweek, the hill, places like that, that have brands so that people think they're reading objective information and they're getting propaganda. Why nobody on our side does anything like that. I think Warren Buffet at one point bought like the Omaha News Herald, you know, and then sold it six years later,<laugh>, you know, like, we just don't, And, and it's frustrating as hell because we could, we have people with the means to do the same thing. But I do like the lawsuit. I, I think maybe the combination of lawsuits and then also what John is saying that, I mean, monopolies are just never good. I don't care if you're talking about media, you're talking about anything else. Monopolies stifle competition. They raise prices. The product, he gets crappier. It's, we know this. So in media, we need to go more back to the model we had in the past, and they need to be broken up. And I would also say the one thing we always understood in the past is there shouldn't be one voice dominating any one area. And so it used to be that you couldn't own a TV property in a newspaper property or whatever it was in the same city. Now you've got Rupert Murdoch owning the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal. He owns Fox News, which is, you know, based in New York. Like, that's stuff that, that we could use the government that should not be allowed to happen,
Speaker 2Even without getting too much into spoilers. You know, this is, this is obviously the Nazi on Wall Street podcast. Um, it was born out of the Nazi and Wall Street Project, which is a project to turn my, uh, PhD research into a dramatized mini series. Uh, in that research is about American companies that did business with Nazi Germany back in the forties. And I came across this incredible, um, it's really dramatic true spy story, essentially, where there's a Nazi spy running around New York City, There's a Jewish FBI agent chasing him, which is already very dramatic. But the, one of the ways this, this FBI agent basically takes down his man is through the use of the media. Um, you know, he's, he's running around, he's, he, uh, the SPS got a fake name, uh, but he is dealing with all these, uh, very prominent businessmen. And so one day, a story leaks that, uh, a uh, a, a CEO from a very prominent, um, oil company was working with a Nazi spy, and it becomes, this giant scandal brings down the head of this oil company. It's like an example where the media's a tool. It's used to take down a fasc. Let's not promote fascism as we're seeing so much today. And of course, you know, today, you know, the media's weaponized all the time to destroy political enemies. Seems like it's mostly used by Republicans who attack Democrats. We talked about, you know, we remember the Access Hollywood tape. There's, there's maybe an example going the other way. But I realize, Mark, this question's for you. I realize when I wrote this maybe is a little naive, I said, Do you think this kind of warfare's inevitable? Well, probably, but, um, and are, are the Democrats that bad at it? And then, uh, EJ added, is this more to say about the state of mind, the American right wing, they're ready to clutch their portals over Hillary's emails and not about top secret nuclear documents using the media as a tool in this way. Is this all destructive, or can it be used in ways that can, that can help us as the Nazi and Wall Street story, uh, suggests?
Speaker 4Well, let me say, let me just, uh, start with just one example of how the right wing really plays the media, you know, like a violin. And that's that they, they will bring up some. The right wing is super good at coming up with bogus storylines. They're very good. They don't just say no, what the left said was wrong. They come up with some alternative narrative, very rich, very colorful, very, you know, very kind of intriguing. And they push it, push it, push it, push it. And then what they can count on Jake Tapper at CNN or somebody else doing is the next time a a a Democrats on the air, they will ask them that very question. And that, and not only is that, is that them legitimizing a, you know, a bunch of crap. It is, it's coming out of the mouth of somebody who is supposedly objective. So it's conferring this legitimacy to something that is ridiculous. And, and that's very effective. And they, and then the right wing has been super good at it because they, I mean, the right wing is, let's just say that lesson number one for the last 20 years is that propaganda works. And, and, and the right wing is very good at it. And I do think that the, I think the la the Democrats are, are, uh, getting better at it. I mean, you see someone like Federman really kind of, you know, owning Twitter and figuring out how to, how to use humor. See, that's the thing about Rush Limba. It's not just that he was spouting all this hate speech, this anti-woman stuff, and, and, you know, mocking, you know, black people and all this other crap that he did. It's not just that he was doing that, which was an early sign that that would play with the large segment of America. But he used humor. He was funny to some segment. At least he was funny. Right? And
Speaker 5I'd say Donald Trump too is done.
Speaker 4Yes, exactly. So, so the, the really sad thing is that the Americans are willing to buy fascism that fits entertaining. And, uh, and, and, and you know, that's a sad truth. And so if you, if you wanna fight fa you better be entertaining too. And that's why, you know, on my Twitter account, uh, you know, I try to, I try to be funny sometimes because I think that if we're, if we're all just really dull and always policy oriented and always just kind of ponderous, nobody's gonna pay attention to us. We, we've got to, we have to be entertaining as well. And I think the more the Democratic party can be entertaining and be sharp and funny, the more effective it'll be.
Speaker 5Yeah. You can't just give five point plans. I mean, that's literally on the YouTube channel I started, that's sort of, it's raised on Detra, right? Is to try to be funny along. I mean, there's times where, where I just, there's righteous anger and I'm just apoplectic about something. But it's passion and it's mockery. They learned how to use mockery so well, And so, I mean, o obviously in many cases, so offensively you may remember, you know, in 2004 with them wearing the fake, they, you said that John Kerry was a fake hero, and they wore their fake Purple Heart badges. Or when Barack Obama made the, the, the remark, you know, about pumping air into your tires, helping the, the environment, they all walked around with tire pumps. You know, they're so good at that. And that's where, again, I bring it up again and again. Now their big media apparatus helps them, but we have to be at a point where we pick the few things about these guys, you know, that we know bother them and we can mock them with and get them off message with and repeat and repeat. And that's why it's funny that, not funny, but makes sense that Mark brought up Federman because he's done it. So it hasn't just been on Twitter, he's been creative about it. He's got like, you know, Snooky from Jersey Shore doing a cameo. And if I were to say to you, what's the one thing that, that, you know, that Federman has said about, uh, you know, I said about Oz, ar everybody I asked that question, who pays attention would know what it is,
Speaker 4Right? That's because they've, as you say, they've repeated it. Yep. And, and, and I
Speaker 5Think signal to us to repeat it when they do it exactly. It, it trickles down to use a phrase, unlike some things, it to where you, with your large account Mark, and you, John, yours and me with mine, we start repeating it because they've given us a signal that this is the thing that we should be talking about. And this is what the right does all the time. And this is where I feel like Biden, hopefully he's gotten better when he is, you know, even if it's just, it's maga, Republicans are doing this and that needs some more help on the humor side, but at least he's labeling them repeating the message constantly and, you know, and, and not enough, you know, not enough Democrats do that kind of thing. And that's our
Speaker 4Problem. I, I do think that there, the big problem in democratic messaging in the last couple decades has been just going, having one message and then going to a completely different message two days later, and then another one two days later and another one. And, you know, it was just, nobody knew what they stood for. And this time I do think it's remarkably better because they're pounded in Roe versus Wade pounding and pounding it, pounding it. Because, you know, you see what happened in Kansas and that's Kansas. Yeah. You, you better draw a lesson from it. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so they're pounding that pounding and pounding it. And, and the more they say Dr. Oza New Jersey, the, you know, the more it's just gonna sink in. And that's all. And, and Oz, I don't think is gonna get, be able to get beyond it. I mean, it's just, I think it's, it's just been, you know, kind of, it's been, it's been sewn into his scalp.
Speaker 5Um, and the reason why I would say to you the race here in a, in a state that if we're being honest in Ohio, you know, Trump maxed out here because his message was tailor made for Northern Ohio. Free trade and anti anti-trade, anti-immigration, these kinds of things lies about bringing back plants. But, you know, we are a 47 to 53 state democratic to Republican. And the reason why Tim Ryan is doing as well as he's doing right now, is he's constantly using, he's going to the small towns. He's not just talking to democratic voters. He's going to these places where you can win working glass voters. And he's reading them stuff from, from, uh, JD Vance's own book, basically talking about how, you know, white working class people are lazy and they're drug addicts and they're stupid and they don't try. And so he's labeled J Vass as sort of elitist who hates his own people. And he hasn't been blown up as much nationally as the Federman thing. But here in Ohio it's taken root and it's gotten coverage cuz he's done it so much. So that's what successful candidates do. And you know, and that's, I mean, it's not, Ryan won't definitely win, but he's somewhere between tied and up to points right now. You know, and that's, he wouldn't be, he would be down if it weren't me. And it helps that JD Vance is an awful candidate, but I'm just saying, you know, like, these are the things that candidates need to do. They need to understand how to do this. And, and so often we just don't.
Speaker 6There's two things I wanna say. I guess one is that I think, um, all of us are guilty of making a fetish of messaging.<laugh><laugh>. Yeah. Uh, messaging is this kind of, uh, it's an easy game to play, you know? Um, it's not, not, doesn't take much effort or commitment or investment. And then the other thing is that propaganda, I, I don't think propaganda makes people be certain something, it just allows them to be what they already thought they were. This is a country in which we call it fascism, but uh, fascism is just one of the mushrooms of the larger entity that we be called that I would call white power. And white power has been the, we inhabit white power. I mean, it is our political reality whether we want to see it or not. And either if we want to see it, we're participating in that reality. If we don't wanna see it, we're still participating in that reality. And so what does that have to do with humor and, and weaponizing the media? I think if you make that kind of context clear that this, this is, this is our baseline, white power is our baseline, like for all of us, then who's the bad guy becomes much clearer too. Let me come at it a different way. The Republican party for the past 40 years has succeeded because they've convinced people, or allowed people to believe that they were the populist party. They were the party of the, of normal people, Right? And they're not the party of normal people. They're the, they're the party of the car dealerships, you know, the local insurance firm, the lawyers, the and the billionaires, right? I mean they're, this is the, uh, petite b oi we're talking about, right? And so these are the people who have utter contempt basically for anybody who has to work because working means you didn't, you didn't deserve the, the power and so on that they have. And if you don't deserve these things, you must not be worth much. So there's, there's a kind of contempt into that, built into that. And sometimes that's revealed. And I think in the case of JD Vance, it's revealed, right? Tim Ryan's making a lot of, hey, by revealing it, he's like, Hey, this guy's a fraud, right? He's telling you something now. That's the whole campaign, That's all he's gotta do. He say, This guy's a fraud. Same thing with settlement and Oz. I mean,
Speaker 1That's the beauty of it,
Speaker 6Right? Right. Same thing with Federman and Oz. He's like, this guy is a fraud. Right? I'm the, I'm the real normal person, right? I really care about you. Yeah. Even if you vote against me, I'm still gonna care about you. Right. He's the normal person. And so, so what's different now versus 30 years ago? Well, respectable white people, as I call them, which is what other people call swing voters, they decided that they didn't really, like what happened after this, after Vietnam and after the victories of the civil rights movement, suddenly the, the federal government became black, uh, or, or a representative of black power and so therefore in intruding on their rights, right? And so when some, when Republican said state's rights that only rang for them, they, they were already there. And so all you gotta do is just keep pushing in that direction. Talk about tax cuts, uh, budgets, all that stuff became code for what they already believed it was flipping. Yeah. And forced busting. Oh yeah. Well that one, you know, that's interesting cuz it's an example of how that doesn't really ring anymore. Right? That's gone.
Speaker 4Right. But that was, that was an early southern strategy.
Speaker 6That was another one. Early one. Yeah. But now, but now I think respectable white people are starting to catch on like, ah, these guys we thought were on our side are kind of dangerous and scary and they're idiots. They can't run anything. Right. They don't, they can't govern, they can't do so on. And you know, these democrats aren't so bad, you know, and they elected Biden, you know, they didn't elect somebody like Bernie Sanders. They took Biden. He's, he's not so bad, right? He's a normal guy. And so I think the, this, this thick middle, this globular, mushy middle of, of respectability white respectability is starting to say to themselves, ah, you know, let's decenter these, the previous center and bring in a different center. So that's a kind of goes back to my, to Jay's previous question about regime change and the paradigm shifting, right? I think all of this has how effective propaganda is, depends on the point at which we are changing regimes.
Speaker 2Uh, I wanna make sure people are listening, are thinking about solutions. Uh, these are big problems. What can we do? What if somebody who's listening to this, what can they do to help fix our broken media system to make it better equipped to deal with a fascist threat? Uh, if, if we're gonna make it past 2022 and 2024, we're gonna need as much help as we can get, right? So, um, what, what is, what's actionable here that we can do to make things better in this situation?
Speaker 4There's tons to be done. There are some kind of new, new startups that are on the progressive side of, you know, news outfits like Courier Newsroom, which I consult for, you know, which is fact based and clearly transparently progressive and has, and has reporters in the markets that it serves. And so it's a legitimate news outfit, but it's, it's left to center. You'd have to say it believes in women's rights and things like that. Controversial things like Right.
Speaker 570% of the country believes in. Yeah.
Speaker 4Right. Yeah. And so, um, so I think startups like that are important and subscribing to local news is important. Did a bunch of work for the Northwestern Universities, Mei local news initiative. And the funny thing was, me being in the news industry for four decades didn't teach me much about the business of news. I was too busy sending reporters to go cover, uh, murders and fires. And when I got out of the news business and went to Northwestern and started studying news, I, you know, I learned a whole lot about it. And, and this whole thing about clicks on, uh, on news websites, that's really passe. That doesn't matter much. I mean, cuz you, you can't measure whether it's a click from, there's a difference between a click from Brisbane and a click from, uh, you know, next door. And so that's an advertising advertising model, which is, cares about the clicks is going out by the boards also. It's just not very effective subscriptions and, you know, reader revenue are what's going to save local news. And so it's really important for people who find a good news outlet to support it with the subscription, with, uh, if it's nonprofit as increasingly many of them are, uh, with, uh, donations, um, with memberships, uh, that there are ways, and also I think it's actually a constructive exercise. Would we criticize news media? Uh, when I ask why is CNN putting Kelly Ann Conway on the air to lie, I don't think that, that's not me being negative, That's me being positive. That's me giving them an alternative, which is to not put liars on the air. Right? And I mean, proven liars too. People who lied the last 10 times, they on your air and you knew it, and you, and you know, later
Speaker 5In their books that they lied, right?
Speaker 4Have
Speaker 5Said they're liars. They
Speaker 4Bragged about lying. And so you're gonna put'em on. And when you put them on the air, who you serving? Are you, are you serving the audience? No. You, maybe you're serving your own perceptions of being objective or something, I don't know. But my point is that public criticism of news media is a positive thing that can make things better. And giving money to news media is important. If they're doing a good job and talking'em up, give a subscription to your, uh, your aunt for Christmas, stuff like that. I mean, there, there are a lot of positive ways. What's really dangerous is people who don't really want, they don't differentiate between media. They're not really assessing based on that, based on accuracy then. And they letting news media get away with all kinds of terrible stuff and they don't vote with their feet. Now, when Kelly an con, they went on CNN to lie again. I said, No, I'm, I'm giving CNN a timeout. You know, like a parent with a bad child. I gave them a time out and then I, I never picked them back up because of the scary things that are happening for them now. So I think encouraging good behavior and, uh, and calling out bad behavior is a very constructive social act, and more people ought to do it.
Speaker 5Yeah, I mean, I'm very, if you read my tweets or whatever else, I'm very critical of mainstream media constantly. But one thing I try to do often is to positively call out the good ones. The ones who get it. The ones who said, We're not doing this both sides thing anymore. We're gonna, you know, I mean, ironically, of course one of the ones who I did that the most for was John Harwood, who has, you know, for a couple of years now, has been one of the good ones who's been willing to just sort of say it like it is, you know? But when Dana Millbank started writing pieces like that and pointing out the, the fact of the matter is, is that you need to be a partisan for democracy. There are different sort of folks in different places that you can speak out for and say, not just demagogue and be like, mainstream medias awful. Say most, you know, most of our media is absolutely failing us, sadly. But, you know, make sure to point out the good ones when they do good things too. This is that they're the model that we need to follow.
Speaker 6The question was, what can we do? Just keep raising, hell really just keep raising hell. And you know, I think related to that is that just concede that you are a political animal in a political context. And once you concede that, that's the truth, then you have to ask, Well, what kind of political animal do you want to be? And what politic, what kind of political context do you want to be in? That question leads to another, which is, are you going to be a passive participant or an active participant? Right? And I think the word politics is really interesting that, that we kind of segregated away from other things. And it's like, if you get two people in a room negotiating over resources or fighting over resources, that's politics.<laugh> war is politics. Uh, negotiations are politics, conversations are, are everything is politics then. I don't mean to suggest that nothing matters. What I am pointing out though is that politics is a good thing. And those who invoke things that are supposedly the truth or some kind of voice of God or some tradition that supersedes humanity, those are the people who are actually depoliticizing a political context. I know that sounds strange, but they're not, They're choosing not to engage politically because if they engage politically, they'll probably lose. So they, they will not engage politically. They'll instead launch a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2We have a saying here at the a Nazi on Wall Street podcast, uh, courtesy of ej, who again, really wishes he could be here. Uh, he said, uh, every time history repeats, the price goes up. And, uh, all, all that we've seen that's led to this, uh, this moment, this existential battle with obviously a lot of work to do, but also as Mark pointed out, a lot of things we can do. And as John pointed out, including raising hell,
Speaker 5We should be as forceful about getting the truth out there as they are about getting lies out there.
Speaker 4And, and Cliff, it's not just arguing against their lies, it's pushing our own truths. Cause the more cause the more we're responding to their lives, the more we're not telling our truths. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 5<affirmative>, No, you're absolutely right. All this stuff, Biden's got a hell of a record and he's finally starting to talk about it, and now people are getting it. So you need to talk about you're good and you need to respond to their bad. And you need to be as forceful and aggressive about the truth as they are about lying.
Speaker 2A platforming, fascist starts at home.
Speaker 1A Nazi on Wall Street is brought to you by elusive films maker of the a Nazi on Wall Street's film and television series. It was recorded and edited by EJ Russo. Original music was written and performed by Joseph Maholin. We can't bring these stories to life on screen without your support. So please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign@elusive-films.com. That's elusive hyphen films.com. For Jason Wexel, I'm EJ Russo. Thank you, and we will see you next episode.