March 31, 2023 • 27 mins
The Mainstream Media and the Democrat Party have been working together for decades, but how corrupt have things really gotten? Where is the truth coming from, who is lying, how do Americans know who to trust? In this episode of the Tudor Dixon Podcast, Tudor breaks it all down with Steve Krakauer. Steve is a journalist and media critic who has worked at CNN, Fox News, NBC and TheBlaze. He authors the Fourth Watch media newsletter, hosts the Fourth Watch Podcast, is the executive producer of The Megyn Kelly Show and is author of a new book "Uncovered." From COVID-19 to George Floyd...they cover it all. Subscribe now to the Tudor Dixon Podcast part of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Podcast Network...new episodes debut every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday and find out more at TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast in the Clay
and Book Podcast Network. Hello, and welcome to the Tutor
Dixon Podcast. I'm Tutor Dixon and I'm excited to have
you join me today. We've got an interesting show for
you because it's something that affects all of you, no
matter who you are or how you live. Today we're
(00:21):
covering the media itself. My guest considers the media the
fourth estate of government. So yes, if you weren't aware,
there is a group operating as a fourth branch of
our government, the media. Well, it's criticized by both sides
of the aisle, but it takes someone who's been actually
on the inside and both sides of the inside for
that matter, to really break it down for us. Let's
(00:43):
get right to it because there is certainly a lot
to cover here. My guest today is journalist and media
critic who has been working at while He's worked at CNN,
Fox News, NBC, and The Blaze, so this is quite
an array of media. He authors the Fourth Watch media
News this letter, hosts the Fourth Watch podcast, and is
the executive producer of The Megan Kelly Show. Steve krak Our,
(01:06):
author of Uncovered. Welcome to the podcast. Hey jude A,
great to be here. It is great to have you.
Now this new book that you have uncovered, You're not
trying to burn down the media. You're just telling us
what's really going on behind the scenes, right absolutely. Yeah. Look,
I'm someone who believes that, as you mentioned the Fourth
of State, we need a strong press, an institutional press.
(01:27):
I think we have lots of strong independent media out there,
which is great, and the rise of podcasts and substack
and YouTube, there's a lot of opportunities and I'm glad
for that. I think that more choice is better for
the American people. But in a perfect world, we have
really strong institutional press as well, that speaks truth to power,
that holds power accountable and is in cozy with power
(01:49):
instead is really a check on power. We don't have that.
And I can say, you know, you mentioned CNN. I
was at CNN twenty ten to twenty thirteen. It was
not that long ago, but it feels like ages ago
because really in the subsequent years twenty fourteen twenty fifteen,
it just completely went off the rails, not just CNN
but the entire corporate media over the last seven years
(02:10):
and there was valid criticism before, but something fundamental has changed,
and so I think it was really important to document
what happened, why did it happen, and really trying to
tell the readers and to tell the audience and potential
news consumers in the future, here's the red flags, here's
what you need to look for, because this is what happened,
and now you know what to look for down the
(02:31):
road when it happens again, because it will. I've heard
the news kind of described as infotainment, and I want
to get to that because we now have a twenty
four hour news cycle. So that was just something that
sort of started in the last twenty years, I'd say.
I mean when I was a kid, I remember my
parents watching the evening news and that was where they
got their news. When you have twenty four hours of news,
(02:52):
doesn't there have to be some just kind of shows
and commentation and not necessarily journalism going on all of
the time in those twenty four hour news cycles. Absolutely,
I think the incentive structure has changed also, So yes,
I think even when I was there, you know, ten
fifteen years ago, there was there's this twenty four hour
news cycle, and yes, things move fast get something wrong,
(03:14):
Oh it's gone. By the next day, We're onto the
next story. You know, lots of more entertainment. Whether were
the incentives that are driving it, Oh you know, this
is fun, this will get ratings, this will get clicks.
There's a lot of that happening. But but now, with
the introduction of social media and particularly Twitter, these things
move within hours. You know what, something that's bubbling up
for an hour can be gone, you know, a little
(03:36):
bit later, and that really leaves room for what I
call glance journalism. We get an initial story about lots
of different things, whether it's political or cultural, or just
some random story that you find out in the news,
and then it's gone and the way it was originally covered,
which oftentimes whether it's a mistake, whether it's intentional, is wrong,
something has left the audience with a bad impression, and
(03:58):
then maybe down the road it gets corrected. We see
it on a big scale, like with the Hunter Biden laptop.
We see it on small scale with so many stories
that I lay out and uncovered, and that really really
hurts the audience because they are not served by a
media that is so interested in getting that initial coverage,
that initial burst and then moving on to the next thing,
it really harms this, Well, can't this really impact the
(04:21):
entire country? Because I mean, you bring up the Hunter
Biden laptop and I kind of want to go through
that for just a second, because this comes up. This
is the October we call this the October Surprise, right,
this comes out, this is potentially going to change the election.
The October Surprise gets gobbled up and pulled off of
(04:42):
all of the media lines. Everybody says, you can't talk
about it. Not only does it get removed. If you
talk about it, you are demonized. This is bad. You
can't talk about this. But now fast forward two two
and a half years later, we see President g meeting
with Putin talking about what they're going to do to
(05:04):
make peace. And I have to use air quotes when
I say that in the world because this is really
looking like world domination. And you have a president in
the United States that, according to this laptop is quite
possibly compromised by the Chinese government. What does that mean?
When you see media take a turn like that, it's
(05:26):
a really important moment. I think it was a bit
of a turning point. I write a lot in the
book about the Trump era, and a lot of the
mistakes that were made, a lot of the problems why
they happened twenty fifteen to twenty twenty. But I really
do think that that Hunter Biden laptop story was the
end of that era and the beginning of an even
worse era that we've seen since then, which I think
(05:46):
is really built around anti speech activism, censorship, and the press,
the media, the ones that should be about free speech
and about free expression being part of the collusion racket
that goes between tech platforms, the censors at the center
of this, government agencies, intel agencies, and the media themselves
(06:07):
that worked together for Because yes, as you say, there
was a time it was it was unprecedented. You could
not share a link to the New York Post and
that was completely ridiculous. We now know thanks to the
Twitter files why that happened. But as I detail in
the in the book, I really went back and looked
at exactly what happened. Journalists would share this story, you know,
to the New York Post and say, oh, I questioned
(06:28):
the sourcing about this, or Hi, I wonder if the
Biden campaign will respond to this, and they were locked
out of their Twitter accounts because they shared it. And
then they rather than saying this is completely ridiculous The
New York Post are our colleagues. No, they deleted their tweet.
They apologized for daring to link to this story. They
were they were pillary. They were trending on Twitter as
as maga. You know journalists, these New York Times reporters
(06:52):
just sharing a link to it. That was an embarrassing
moment and it really began this this drift towards censorship
and whether it's political, whether it's related to COVID and
this kind of consensus. We can't go against the science consensus,
which obviously we now know is completely wrong. They were
in on it, and that hurts Americans. I mean, we
need to press that cares about the free exchange of ideas.
(07:15):
There are people who would say part of this is
Trump's fault because he went after the media is so hard.
But on the flip side of that, I think most
people had this overwhelming trust for the media regardless before
Trump was president, and then he started to say, hey, wait,
this is happening, This is happening, and everybody said, no,
he's nuts, he's nuts, And then all of a sudden,
(07:36):
that really actually started to come true. Yes, they were
spying on him. Remember that when they said, oh, he's crazy,
he thinks they're spying on him. Yes they are. I mean,
going through a campaign myself, I saw similar things. They
would put something out like to your point, you said, well,
a story can go out and then the next day
it disappears, or it can be wrong and there's nobody
(07:58):
correcting it. I mean, we had that happened multiple times,
and it really shaped the entire campaign in the state
of Michigan. I had an interview where I was asked,
what do you think about if a fourteen year old
ended up getting pregnant, And I said, that's the perfect
example of why it would be so dangerous to eliminate
parental consent. That journalist cut that, took out why I
(08:21):
said that, and put together that's the perfect example. A
life is a life. She has to have that baby,
and this was a total lie. It framed the entire
campaign in Michigan, and ultimately I believe that is what
allowed her to win the state back. And look at
the state of Michigan today. We have no businesses coming here.
(08:42):
We're giving money to the Chinese Communist Party. We've just
found out that giving money to this company, they are
going to have a grassroots organization in the state of
Michigan that will be beholden to the Chinese Communist Party
and helping the Chinese Communist Party in the state of Michigan.
This is really shocking discoveries that we're having. And this
(09:02):
is all because, really, I believe the media is able
to create a story that's not there and burn people down.
What's your take on that. Yeah, I think that's a
great example because it is this sign of in the
old days, and I mean the old days, like fifteen
twenty years ago, I can tell you a lot of
the media leaned left. They were they when they voted,
they voted for democrats that existed. But there was also
(09:24):
this sense of, unlike any other occupation, you are supposed
to essentially hide your personal feelings for the good of
the job that you're doing. Be objective. That's the goal.
And so yes, you're they're fighting against their own personal biases,
but they know that that be telling the story the
right way, telling it correctly was the only thing that mattered.
You get it right, you're doing a good job. You
(09:45):
get it wrong, you're doing a bad job. That was
all that mattered, But that has completely changed now it
is it is no longer about right and wrong and
getting it correct or not getting it correct. It's about narrative,
and it's about what's acceptable versus what's unacceptable. Because you
just give that sample of the journalist. If they gave
it the full context, if they actually told what actually
happened in that quote, they might get attacked by their
(10:08):
peers on Twitter, for example, for daring to give a
nuanced take on what your answer was. They the incentives
of that, and it I can tell you getting yelled
at by fifty people on Twitter if you if you're
not really self aware that this is just a small
bubble of people, can feel like a lot. And so
in Uncovered, I actually talked to one of the founders
(10:28):
or the founder of the Rap, a media outlet, who
says she has seen her own reporters move away from
a story, or cover story in a different way, or
not cover it at all because of the fear of
the backlash they might get on Twitter. I mean, that
is a really scary time right now, and that means
that yes, we now get narrative, we now get what's
acceptable over what's actually correct and what's actually right. That
(10:50):
is bizarre to me, the power of Twitter, and I
think that we've seen that change over time as well.
You talk about influencers in your book. We have this
now we're seeing this on the de santist Trump side,
these influencers coming in. This is a very small world.
I think the majority of my friends who want nothing
to do with politics or just simply don't pay attention
(11:12):
to it, have no idea what's happening on Twitter. But
that Twitter narrative can influence the media, and so I
think that it seems like a bigger space than it
is because there can be things that happen on Twitter
that become news. So how do you break through the
influencers because they're clearly they are biased, but they are
(11:33):
creating news. So how does that How do you break
through that and make sure that the news you're receiving
is actual news. Yeah, it's a challenge because, yeah, as
you mentioned, first of all, the journalists are sort of
the influencers themselves. They treat Twitter like it's their personal diary.
And yet it's one of the reasons I actually like
Twitter and appreciate it because we can now see for
(11:53):
the first time behind the curtain. We can see what
they're really thinking. Even if some of their journalism is good,
We actually know what they're really thinking, even not necessarily
even about these topics that they're covering, but just in general.
And it's embarrassing. I mean, if if any other occupation,
I mean, if if you're an accountant who does your
taxes was tweeting constantly about January sixth being in the
next nine to eleven, you would be like, this is
(12:15):
something's wrong with this person. But now the journalists, it's
just like game for what they do. Now it's part
of their whole m. And that is really that that's
really embarrassing. But I do think so we can't rely
on the media outlets themselves to self correct here. You know,
the gatekeepers are not going to get better anytime soon.
So I think what you have to know is be
self aware of what's happening where these things are bubbling
(12:37):
up and all and know that I have a stat
in the book two percent of all Americans account for
ninety percent of the tweets when it relates to politics
and news. I mean, that is a minor, minor figure,
and so that's not important. What's important is finding outlets
that you trust, probably at this point on the independent side,
finding people that you trust and relying on them to
(12:58):
give it to you straight. Because yeah, the influencers on Twitter,
the people that are that are making so much the
amplifying just the small voices there that is not going
to move the needle and that's not reflective of the
country either. You talk about not wanting to eliminate people
from the conversation, you want to add folks because legacy
media seems to be going in a certain direction. Sometimes
(13:21):
it's hard to tell. We certainly saw that during COVID.
We saw these reporters coming out and really, I mean
they were demonizing people. If you decided you didn't want
the vaccine and if you didn't want to wear a mask,
you were not It wasn't just that you had a
different medical opinion for yourself, you were a murderer. I
mean they were out there saying things that were just horrendous.
(13:42):
And it's interesting to me because recently my daughter had
COVID and I and she'd never had it before. So
she's thirteen and we tested her and I said you've
got it, and she burst into hysterical tears. I can't
have this. I can't have this, and I you know,
I hadn't thought about what the narrative over the last
two years has done to kids, because she immediately felt
(14:05):
like there's something wrong with me and I can't let
anybody know, and I can't be this person that could
do this to other people. And I said, you know,
calm down, this is You're gonna be fine. You just
have to stay home for a few days and you'll
get through this and we'll be fine. But the fear
that this created, and really, I feel like that goes
directly back to the way the media talked about it
(14:27):
and the discourse that was created amongst parents and schools
and just communities of people who said, I'm hearing this
from a trusted source. But then, you know, two years
down the road, we find out, wow, actually we're not
really sure if masks did anything. The vaccines weren't as
effective as we thought they were going to be, staying
home wasn't effective for kids because they they didn't end
(14:51):
up learning anything. What is your advice to people when
they're looking at these situations and going, I really, I
don't know. I want more people in this conversation, but
are some of the new people coming in and clouding
it too, because the anger is so I mean, it's
become a lot of rage. When you look at the
new voices that come in, they're mad and the clickbait
(15:14):
because they matter you are. The more radical you are,
the more people are like, Yeah, that's affirming what I'm saying,
So I'm going to follow that person. Yeah, it's really
I spent a lot of time on COVID in Uncovered
because I do think it was this crucial moment where
you would think certain stories I write about are kind
of funny and silly in the book, but this was
something that really mattered to people's lives. And I understand
(15:35):
March April May twenty twenty the media getting certain things wrong,
not understanding it. This was the totally new situation. I
understand that there were some mistakes that were made, but
the problem was a they were never corrected. But also,
as you mentioned, they completely excluded certain people and voices
from the conversation. And not just yours are mine, but
doctor j Boicharia I talked to in the book. This
(15:57):
is someone a Stanford medical doctor who was one of
the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration that's simply argued
that we should have some focused protection of the elderly,
we shouldn't lock down everyone, and that we should focus
on that. It was an alternate opinion, and he was
demonized not just by doctor Fauci's of the world, which
we've learned now in elite emails, but by the press themselves,
(16:18):
who were treating him as if he was this quack
and it was this dangerous person who's going to get
everybody killed. And we see this, as you mentioned, every
single story, and it doesn't even matter that yes, lockdowns, masks, vaccines.
The people that were called the crazy conspiracy theorists have
essentially become right. It doesn't even matter even if they
were still wrong. This is a time when we need
to have conversation. This is a time when we need
(16:40):
debate and dialogue and nuance. And there was this sense
of almost paternalism, like we can't tell you the nuance
of this because we don't know if you'll do the
right thing with that information. That's really dangerous. And I
quote in the book Nate Silver from ABC was one
of the mainstream journalists I actually really respect, particularly on
COVID who said he was to refer to the lab leak.
(17:01):
But I think this relates to all of these COVID
stories lockdowns schools, where he says, if there's two sides
of an argument, and there's information on both sides, and
there's evidence on both sides, and there's experts on both sides,
but only one side wants to lock down the conversation,
wants to police the discourse, that side is usually wrong.
So that's what usually look for. If there's two an
(17:23):
argument going on and you're saying, let's shut the other
side up, that side is something you should be very
very cautious about. Obviously, we look at COVID and we think, well,
I think that you saw the breakdown and the lack
of trust in the media once you started to have
the president come out and say fake news and all
of these things, and people started to get very very concerned.
(17:44):
But that was really only one side. The other side
was like, no, no, no, we're right, we're right. But
then you did see people start to peel off during COVID,
and on both sides. I think people started to peel off.
But what about the violence that has ensued, And I
really do believe that there is some culpability on the
(18:04):
part of the media when they are saying, yeah, go
out and protest, and then on the flip side there, well,
if you're part of this group and you're protesting, then
you should be you know, attacked, and you should be
pushed aside and you should be put in jail. And
this has created this this real I guess. I would say,
(18:25):
you see a breakdown in the country, you see breakdown
in relations among people, whether you're conservative or liberal, or
where you live. How do you think that the media
should be handling those situations. Yeah, there's certainly not doing
a good job right now. I think I think that
this is one of those areas where you see the
hypocrisy so vast. I mean, I don't spend a lot
(18:47):
of time on January sixth in the book, but I frankly,
I think there's a whole book to be written about this.
The media and how they cover what happened on January sixth,
and what's happened in the years since. Their obsession with it,
and not just with an event, and not just in
how it relates to President Trump, but in how the
media themselves, the corporate press, has turned a bad riot
(19:08):
into an attack on half the country. They have successfully
done that, and I think it is so obvious and
so wrong. And yes, you compare that to the way
that they covered like the social justice protests and the
riot offshoots, which I do write about in chapter one,
because I actually think this is where it all started.
I go back to twenty fourteen and Ferguson and the
(19:29):
way that that story we learned about. You know, hands up,
don't shoot, and that was what Michael Brown said to
Darren Wilson before he was shot and murdered. That was
all untrue. I mean, not just the fact that he
was shot and murdered, because he was Darren Wilson was
completely cleared. No racial atomis from that person. This was
all happened a year later by the Obama Justice Department.
But the words hands up, don't shoot were never even said.
(19:51):
That was confirmed by multiple witnesses, and yet the media
never went back and corrected their coverage about it. No,
instead they said hands up, don't shoot. It doesn't matter
really if it was said or not. It became this
rallying cry for a new movement. I mean, their deference
to the narrative over the facts. That's where I think
it all began, and we see it with the social
justice protests of twenty twenty and beyond. It's that's a
(20:15):
real problem. And that's also why I think that as
I lay out and uncovered, here's what happened, but here's
what to look for the future, because this is going
to continue to happen. Let's take a quick commercial break.
We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon podcast. There does
seem to be a defense of certain I guess when
(20:37):
people have been accused of crimes, there's been a defense.
I would even pick on the Brianna Taylor's story because
nobody really gave the backstory of what that was. Here.
She was she was the financial operator in a drug organization.
They had been selling drugs all through Louisville, Kentucky. She
(20:59):
had had a body found in her vehicle. There were
probably multiple overdose desks that had been connected to her organization,
and they were trying to bust these people who were
actually incredibly dangerous folks in the city of Louisville, Kentucky.
That was another one where really we never heard the
backstory and how dangerous that group really was. Why do
(21:23):
you think it is that we're not hearing the full
story in certain cases. I think there's a couple of reasons.
I think that on one level, there's there's a general
laziness with a lot of the media and a competence.
I think that there they would rather tell a story
in the easiest way possible and not tell a nuanced
and complicated story that requires more work. So I do
(21:43):
think that there's an element of that, but that one
is an example Brianna Taylor, or a lot of these cases.
I do think that there is a sense of distrust
in the public. You know, we talk a lot about
the trust that the public has in the media, and
as you mentioned, every poll shows it at all time lows,
not just on the right, but among independence. I saw
a stat only a couple months ago of the TV
(22:04):
News trust and TV news. Eight percent of Republicans trust
TV news and eight percent of independence trust TV News.
I mean, that's where we are right now in the country.
But it's part of it is a reaction to the
trust that the media has in the public. Because, yes,
if the media trust their own audience more, if the
corporate press said I believe my audience is smart and
can understand that these stories are complicated and nuanced and
(22:27):
not so cut and dry and black and white. They
would give a lot more credence to telling the full picture,
but instead they don't. They just say, we need to
just tell it in the easiest way possible, in a
way that's not going to get us Twitter backlash, and
they move on to the next thing. I'd say it's
hard on both sides because you see one side is saying, well,
we believe this, one side is saying we believe that,
(22:49):
and there's misinformation that comes out regardless. There's always going
to be because you learn. I mean, part of journalism
is learning the story as you go, and so that's
the part where I think that a lot of us
have said, well, once you've learned the story, you haven't
come back and said there's more to this, we want
to expand on it. That's the part that I think
that we've been missing, and honestly, campaigning for a year
(23:10):
and a half of my life, I saw this on
the Republican side. I was a Republican candidate, so I
saw this where people would come up to me, they all,
what about this and this, and I would have to say, no,
you know that didn't actually happen. Let me kind of
break this down for you. And some people would you know,
understand or would say they're going to go research it.
And some people were so bought into that story that
(23:33):
wasn't affirmed in their heart, you know, they believed this,
it was affirmed and they went forward with it. And
I mean, I think that's human nature. But obviously it's
always nice to have folks like you who have been
behind the scenes and been on both sides to say, yeah,
this is hard. But I think part of it is
hard because you are human and these like you said,
(23:54):
these people have always had some bias, but they've been
trained to try to keep that out. But really, at
the end of the day, you're asking humans to report
on stories and that happens, right, it does. Yeah, And
I do think so two things I play. First of all,
I understand the inclination of people on both sides right
now to say to be so distrustful, but particularly I
think on the right distrustful of the supposed objective media
(24:17):
that they dig their heels in even more. I think
it's a natural reaction that comes when when they're they've
been spun for so much but I write that misinformation
is the tax we pay for freedom, you know. There,
I think it's become this dirty word. But yeah, if
we have the freedom of the exchange of ideas, we're
not going to we don't need only the true information
(24:38):
that's been back checked by thousands of people, because first
of all, that's probably gonna be wrong anyway. But second
of all, like that, this is part of the discourse.
It's part of just being an American is we get
to have these kinds of conversations and sometimes it's right.
Usually it is, hopefully it is, but sometimes it's not,
and that's okay, we'll correct it. That's that's how it
should be. But that's not obviously the way the media
treats it now. But the other thing about it is
(24:59):
objectivity is no longer the goal in a lot of
these situations. I quote a New York Times reporter very
candid with me. Everyone is on the record in the
book and uncovered, and she tells me that for some people,
the young journalists, objectivity is akin to white supremacy. And
so when you have that in newsrooms now, that is
a huge problem, and that's going to pretend a lot
(25:19):
of issues down the road. If we let the people
that believe objectivity is white supremacy win out and get
jobs and start to control these newsrooms, that's where we're
going to get. But I think I love what you
said about misinformation can be demonized, because that is really
what America is. That you can go out and you
can speak, and that you can have that discourse and conversation.
(25:42):
And we've gotten so far away from conversation, and I
think that initially, I believe that social media was created
for conversation, and it sort of has destroyed the ability
to talk to one another. That's why I love the
fact that I get to do this podcast, and I
feel really honored that I get to be a part
of the clay Book Network so that I can get
out there and talk to folks like you who can say, look,
(26:04):
it's not perfect, it's never going to be perfect, but
it is American and that is as perfect as you
can get. I believe in this world. So I appreciate
what you had to say. Tell people where they can
get uncovered thanks to Yeah, I agree with you one
hundred percent. You can find uncovered. Read uncovered dot com,
Read uncovered dot com. You can find the book the audiobook,
you can hear from the people themselves, lots of people,
(26:25):
Tucker Carlson, others at Fox, other mainstream journalists actually say
their quotes in their words as well. That's what I
love too, because you're talking, like you said, you have
New York Times reporters in there. You're talking to both sides.
This is not one sided. People get to see what
the behind the scenes of the media really is. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah,
that was that was the goal. Two dozen people all
(26:47):
across the industry. There are some good ones. Even at
these outlets. They often get overshadowed by the loudest, most
annoying voices on Twitter that in their organizations. But there
are some good ones and they've got some good ideas
on how we can fix this, so the messages. Even
though we get frustrated with the media, we are blessed
to have a free press in the United States. Steve Krakour,
(27:07):
thank you so much, author of Uncovered. Go out and
get the book because you're going to learn a lot
and you might be a little less angry after you
read it, or maybe you're a little more angry. I
don't know, but thank you so much for being here today.
Appreciate it, and thank you all for joining me on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go
to tutor Dixon podcast dot com. You can subscribe right
(27:27):
there and make sure you join me next time on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a great thing.
You're listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast in the Clay
and Book Podcast Network. Hello, and welcome to the Tutor
Dixon Podcast. I'm Tutor Dixon and I'm excited to have
you join me today. We've got an interesting show for
you because it's something that affects all of you, no
matter who you are or how you live. Today we're
(00:21):
covering the media itself. My guest considers the media the
fourth estate of government. So yes, if you weren't aware,
there is a group operating as a fourth branch of
our government, the media. Well, it's criticized by both sides
of the aisle, but it takes someone who's been actually
on the inside and both sides of the inside for
that matter, to really break it down for us. Let's
(00:43):
get right to it because there is certainly a lot
to cover here. My guest today is journalist and media
critic who has been working at while He's worked at CNN,
Fox News, NBC, and The Blaze, so this is quite
an array of media. He authors the Fourth Watch media
News this letter, hosts the Fourth Watch podcast, and is
the executive producer of The Megan Kelly Show. Steve krak Our,
(01:06):
author of Uncovered. Welcome to the podcast. Hey jude A,
great to be here. It is great to have you.
Now this new book that you have uncovered, You're not
trying to burn down the media. You're just telling us
what's really going on behind the scenes, right absolutely. Yeah. Look,
I'm someone who believes that, as you mentioned the Fourth
of State, we need a strong press, an institutional press.
(01:27):
I think we have lots of strong independent media out there,
which is great, and the rise of podcasts and substack
and YouTube, there's a lot of opportunities and I'm glad
for that. I think that more choice is better for
the American people. But in a perfect world, we have
really strong institutional press as well, that speaks truth to power,
that holds power accountable and is in cozy with power
(01:49):
instead is really a check on power. We don't have that.
And I can say, you know, you mentioned CNN. I
was at CNN twenty ten to twenty thirteen. It was
not that long ago, but it feels like ages ago
because really in the subsequent years twenty fourteen twenty fifteen,
it just completely went off the rails, not just CNN
but the entire corporate media over the last seven years
(02:10):
and there was valid criticism before, but something fundamental has changed,
and so I think it was really important to document
what happened, why did it happen, and really trying to
tell the readers and to tell the audience and potential
news consumers in the future, here's the red flags, here's
what you need to look for, because this is what happened,
and now you know what to look for down the
(02:31):
road when it happens again, because it will. I've heard
the news kind of described as infotainment, and I want
to get to that because we now have a twenty
four hour news cycle. So that was just something that
sort of started in the last twenty years, I'd say.
I mean when I was a kid, I remember my
parents watching the evening news and that was where they
got their news. When you have twenty four hours of news,
(02:52):
doesn't there have to be some just kind of shows
and commentation and not necessarily journalism going on all of
the time in those twenty four hour news cycles. Absolutely,
I think the incentive structure has changed also, So yes,
I think even when I was there, you know, ten
fifteen years ago, there was there's this twenty four hour
news cycle, and yes, things move fast get something wrong,
(03:14):
Oh it's gone. By the next day, We're onto the
next story. You know, lots of more entertainment. Whether were
the incentives that are driving it, Oh you know, this
is fun, this will get ratings, this will get clicks.
There's a lot of that happening. But but now, with
the introduction of social media and particularly Twitter, these things
move within hours. You know what, something that's bubbling up
for an hour can be gone, you know, a little
(03:36):
bit later, and that really leaves room for what I
call glance journalism. We get an initial story about lots
of different things, whether it's political or cultural, or just
some random story that you find out in the news,
and then it's gone and the way it was originally covered,
which oftentimes whether it's a mistake, whether it's intentional, is wrong,
something has left the audience with a bad impression, and
(03:58):
then maybe down the road it gets corrected. We see
it on a big scale, like with the Hunter Biden laptop.
We see it on small scale with so many stories
that I lay out and uncovered, and that really really
hurts the audience because they are not served by a
media that is so interested in getting that initial coverage,
that initial burst and then moving on to the next thing,
it really harms this, Well, can't this really impact the
(04:21):
entire country? Because I mean, you bring up the Hunter
Biden laptop and I kind of want to go through
that for just a second, because this comes up. This
is the October we call this the October Surprise, right,
this comes out, this is potentially going to change the election.
The October Surprise gets gobbled up and pulled off of
(04:42):
all of the media lines. Everybody says, you can't talk
about it. Not only does it get removed. If you
talk about it, you are demonized. This is bad. You
can't talk about this. But now fast forward two two
and a half years later, we see President g meeting
with Putin talking about what they're going to do to
(05:04):
make peace. And I have to use air quotes when
I say that in the world because this is really
looking like world domination. And you have a president in
the United States that, according to this laptop is quite
possibly compromised by the Chinese government. What does that mean?
When you see media take a turn like that, it's
(05:26):
a really important moment. I think it was a bit
of a turning point. I write a lot in the
book about the Trump era, and a lot of the
mistakes that were made, a lot of the problems why
they happened twenty fifteen to twenty twenty. But I really
do think that that Hunter Biden laptop story was the
end of that era and the beginning of an even
worse era that we've seen since then, which I think
(05:46):
is really built around anti speech activism, censorship, and the press,
the media, the ones that should be about free speech
and about free expression being part of the collusion racket
that goes between tech platforms, the censors at the center
of this, government agencies, intel agencies, and the media themselves
(06:07):
that worked together for Because yes, as you say, there
was a time it was it was unprecedented. You could
not share a link to the New York Post and
that was completely ridiculous. We now know thanks to the
Twitter files why that happened. But as I detail in
the in the book, I really went back and looked
at exactly what happened. Journalists would share this story, you know,
to the New York Post and say, oh, I questioned
(06:28):
the sourcing about this, or Hi, I wonder if the
Biden campaign will respond to this, and they were locked
out of their Twitter accounts because they shared it. And
then they rather than saying this is completely ridiculous The
New York Post are our colleagues. No, they deleted their tweet.
They apologized for daring to link to this story. They
were they were pillary. They were trending on Twitter as
as maga. You know journalists, these New York Times reporters
(06:52):
just sharing a link to it. That was an embarrassing
moment and it really began this this drift towards censorship
and whether it's political, whether it's related to COVID and
this kind of consensus. We can't go against the science consensus,
which obviously we now know is completely wrong. They were
in on it, and that hurts Americans. I mean, we
need to press that cares about the free exchange of ideas.
(07:15):
There are people who would say part of this is
Trump's fault because he went after the media is so hard.
But on the flip side of that, I think most
people had this overwhelming trust for the media regardless before
Trump was president, and then he started to say, hey, wait,
this is happening, This is happening, and everybody said, no,
he's nuts, he's nuts, And then all of a sudden,
(07:36):
that really actually started to come true. Yes, they were
spying on him. Remember that when they said, oh, he's crazy,
he thinks they're spying on him. Yes they are. I mean,
going through a campaign myself, I saw similar things. They
would put something out like to your point, you said, well,
a story can go out and then the next day
it disappears, or it can be wrong and there's nobody
(07:58):
correcting it. I mean, we had that happened multiple times,
and it really shaped the entire campaign in the state
of Michigan. I had an interview where I was asked,
what do you think about if a fourteen year old
ended up getting pregnant, And I said, that's the perfect
example of why it would be so dangerous to eliminate
parental consent. That journalist cut that, took out why I
(08:21):
said that, and put together that's the perfect example. A
life is a life. She has to have that baby,
and this was a total lie. It framed the entire
campaign in Michigan, and ultimately I believe that is what
allowed her to win the state back. And look at
the state of Michigan today. We have no businesses coming here.
(08:42):
We're giving money to the Chinese Communist Party. We've just
found out that giving money to this company, they are
going to have a grassroots organization in the state of
Michigan that will be beholden to the Chinese Communist Party
and helping the Chinese Communist Party in the state of Michigan.
This is really shocking discoveries that we're having. And this
(09:02):
is all because, really, I believe the media is able
to create a story that's not there and burn people down.
What's your take on that. Yeah, I think that's a
great example because it is this sign of in the
old days, and I mean the old days, like fifteen
twenty years ago, I can tell you a lot of
the media leaned left. They were they when they voted,
they voted for democrats that existed. But there was also
(09:24):
this sense of, unlike any other occupation, you are supposed
to essentially hide your personal feelings for the good of
the job that you're doing. Be objective. That's the goal.
And so yes, you're they're fighting against their own personal biases,
but they know that that be telling the story the
right way, telling it correctly was the only thing that mattered.
You get it right, you're doing a good job. You
(09:45):
get it wrong, you're doing a bad job. That was
all that mattered, But that has completely changed now it
is it is no longer about right and wrong and
getting it correct or not getting it correct. It's about narrative,
and it's about what's acceptable versus what's unacceptable. Because you
just give that sample of the journalist. If they gave
it the full context, if they actually told what actually
happened in that quote, they might get attacked by their
(10:08):
peers on Twitter, for example, for daring to give a
nuanced take on what your answer was. They the incentives
of that, and it I can tell you getting yelled
at by fifty people on Twitter if you if you're
not really self aware that this is just a small
bubble of people, can feel like a lot. And so
in Uncovered, I actually talked to one of the founders
(10:28):
or the founder of the Rap, a media outlet, who
says she has seen her own reporters move away from
a story, or cover story in a different way, or
not cover it at all because of the fear of
the backlash they might get on Twitter. I mean, that
is a really scary time right now, and that means
that yes, we now get narrative, we now get what's
acceptable over what's actually correct and what's actually right. That
(10:50):
is bizarre to me, the power of Twitter, and I
think that we've seen that change over time as well.
You talk about influencers in your book. We have this
now we're seeing this on the de santist Trump side,
these influencers coming in. This is a very small world.
I think the majority of my friends who want nothing
to do with politics or just simply don't pay attention
(11:12):
to it, have no idea what's happening on Twitter. But
that Twitter narrative can influence the media, and so I
think that it seems like a bigger space than it
is because there can be things that happen on Twitter
that become news. So how do you break through the
influencers because they're clearly they are biased, but they are
(11:33):
creating news. So how does that How do you break
through that and make sure that the news you're receiving
is actual news. Yeah, it's a challenge because, yeah, as
you mentioned, first of all, the journalists are sort of
the influencers themselves. They treat Twitter like it's their personal diary.
And yet it's one of the reasons I actually like
Twitter and appreciate it because we can now see for
(11:53):
the first time behind the curtain. We can see what
they're really thinking. Even if some of their journalism is good,
We actually know what they're really thinking, even not necessarily
even about these topics that they're covering, but just in general.
And it's embarrassing. I mean, if if any other occupation,
I mean, if if you're an accountant who does your
taxes was tweeting constantly about January sixth being in the
next nine to eleven, you would be like, this is
(12:15):
something's wrong with this person. But now the journalists, it's
just like game for what they do. Now it's part
of their whole m. And that is really that that's
really embarrassing. But I do think so we can't rely
on the media outlets themselves to self correct here. You know,
the gatekeepers are not going to get better anytime soon.
So I think what you have to know is be
self aware of what's happening where these things are bubbling
(12:37):
up and all and know that I have a stat
in the book two percent of all Americans account for
ninety percent of the tweets when it relates to politics
and news. I mean, that is a minor, minor figure,
and so that's not important. What's important is finding outlets
that you trust, probably at this point on the independent side,
finding people that you trust and relying on them to
(12:58):
give it to you straight. Because yeah, the influencers on Twitter,
the people that are that are making so much the
amplifying just the small voices there that is not going
to move the needle and that's not reflective of the
country either. You talk about not wanting to eliminate people
from the conversation, you want to add folks because legacy
media seems to be going in a certain direction. Sometimes
(13:21):
it's hard to tell. We certainly saw that during COVID.
We saw these reporters coming out and really, I mean
they were demonizing people. If you decided you didn't want
the vaccine and if you didn't want to wear a mask,
you were not It wasn't just that you had a
different medical opinion for yourself, you were a murderer. I
mean they were out there saying things that were just horrendous.
(13:42):
And it's interesting to me because recently my daughter had
COVID and I and she'd never had it before. So
she's thirteen and we tested her and I said you've
got it, and she burst into hysterical tears. I can't
have this. I can't have this, and I you know,
I hadn't thought about what the narrative over the last
two years has done to kids, because she immediately felt
(14:05):
like there's something wrong with me and I can't let
anybody know, and I can't be this person that could
do this to other people. And I said, you know,
calm down, this is You're gonna be fine. You just
have to stay home for a few days and you'll
get through this and we'll be fine. But the fear
that this created, and really, I feel like that goes
directly back to the way the media talked about it
(14:27):
and the discourse that was created amongst parents and schools
and just communities of people who said, I'm hearing this
from a trusted source. But then, you know, two years
down the road, we find out, wow, actually we're not
really sure if masks did anything. The vaccines weren't as
effective as we thought they were going to be, staying
home wasn't effective for kids because they they didn't end
(14:51):
up learning anything. What is your advice to people when
they're looking at these situations and going, I really, I
don't know. I want more people in this conversation, but
are some of the new people coming in and clouding
it too, because the anger is so I mean, it's
become a lot of rage. When you look at the
new voices that come in, they're mad and the clickbait
(15:14):
because they matter you are. The more radical you are,
the more people are like, Yeah, that's affirming what I'm saying,
So I'm going to follow that person. Yeah, it's really
I spent a lot of time on COVID in Uncovered
because I do think it was this crucial moment where
you would think certain stories I write about are kind
of funny and silly in the book, but this was
something that really mattered to people's lives. And I understand
(15:35):
March April May twenty twenty the media getting certain things wrong,
not understanding it. This was the totally new situation. I
understand that there were some mistakes that were made, but
the problem was a they were never corrected. But also,
as you mentioned, they completely excluded certain people and voices
from the conversation. And not just yours are mine, but
doctor j Boicharia I talked to in the book. This
(15:57):
is someone a Stanford medical doctor who was one of
the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration that's simply argued
that we should have some focused protection of the elderly,
we shouldn't lock down everyone, and that we should focus
on that. It was an alternate opinion, and he was
demonized not just by doctor Fauci's of the world, which
we've learned now in elite emails, but by the press themselves,
(16:18):
who were treating him as if he was this quack
and it was this dangerous person who's going to get
everybody killed. And we see this, as you mentioned, every
single story, and it doesn't even matter that yes, lockdowns, masks, vaccines.
The people that were called the crazy conspiracy theorists have
essentially become right. It doesn't even matter even if they
were still wrong. This is a time when we need
to have conversation. This is a time when we need
(16:40):
debate and dialogue and nuance. And there was this sense
of almost paternalism, like we can't tell you the nuance
of this because we don't know if you'll do the
right thing with that information. That's really dangerous. And I
quote in the book Nate Silver from ABC was one
of the mainstream journalists I actually really respect, particularly on
COVID who said he was to refer to the lab leak.
(17:01):
But I think this relates to all of these COVID
stories lockdowns schools, where he says, if there's two sides
of an argument, and there's information on both sides, and
there's evidence on both sides, and there's experts on both sides,
but only one side wants to lock down the conversation,
wants to police the discourse, that side is usually wrong.
So that's what usually look for. If there's two an
(17:23):
argument going on and you're saying, let's shut the other
side up, that side is something you should be very
very cautious about. Obviously, we look at COVID and we think, well,
I think that you saw the breakdown and the lack
of trust in the media once you started to have
the president come out and say fake news and all
of these things, and people started to get very very concerned.
(17:44):
But that was really only one side. The other side
was like, no, no, no, we're right, we're right. But
then you did see people start to peel off during COVID,
and on both sides. I think people started to peel off.
But what about the violence that has ensued, And I
really do believe that there is some culpability on the
(18:04):
part of the media when they are saying, yeah, go
out and protest, and then on the flip side there, well,
if you're part of this group and you're protesting, then
you should be you know, attacked, and you should be
pushed aside and you should be put in jail. And
this has created this this real I guess. I would say,
(18:25):
you see a breakdown in the country, you see breakdown
in relations among people, whether you're conservative or liberal, or
where you live. How do you think that the media
should be handling those situations. Yeah, there's certainly not doing
a good job right now. I think I think that
this is one of those areas where you see the
hypocrisy so vast. I mean, I don't spend a lot
(18:47):
of time on January sixth in the book, but I frankly,
I think there's a whole book to be written about this.
The media and how they cover what happened on January sixth,
and what's happened in the years since. Their obsession with it,
and not just with an event, and not just in
how it relates to President Trump, but in how the
media themselves, the corporate press, has turned a bad riot
(19:08):
into an attack on half the country. They have successfully
done that, and I think it is so obvious and
so wrong. And yes, you compare that to the way
that they covered like the social justice protests and the
riot offshoots, which I do write about in chapter one,
because I actually think this is where it all started.
I go back to twenty fourteen and Ferguson and the
(19:29):
way that that story we learned about. You know, hands up,
don't shoot, and that was what Michael Brown said to
Darren Wilson before he was shot and murdered. That was
all untrue. I mean, not just the fact that he
was shot and murdered, because he was Darren Wilson was
completely cleared. No racial atomis from that person. This was
all happened a year later by the Obama Justice Department.
But the words hands up, don't shoot were never even said.
(19:51):
That was confirmed by multiple witnesses, and yet the media
never went back and corrected their coverage about it. No,
instead they said hands up, don't shoot. It doesn't matter
really if it was said or not. It became this
rallying cry for a new movement. I mean, their deference
to the narrative over the facts. That's where I think
it all began, and we see it with the social
justice protests of twenty twenty and beyond. It's that's a
(20:15):
real problem. And that's also why I think that as
I lay out and uncovered, here's what happened, but here's
what to look for the future, because this is going
to continue to happen. Let's take a quick commercial break.
We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon podcast. There does
seem to be a defense of certain I guess when
(20:37):
people have been accused of crimes, there's been a defense.
I would even pick on the Brianna Taylor's story because
nobody really gave the backstory of what that was. Here.
She was she was the financial operator in a drug organization.
They had been selling drugs all through Louisville, Kentucky. She
(20:59):
had had a body found in her vehicle. There were
probably multiple overdose desks that had been connected to her organization,
and they were trying to bust these people who were
actually incredibly dangerous folks in the city of Louisville, Kentucky.
That was another one where really we never heard the
backstory and how dangerous that group really was. Why do
(21:23):
you think it is that we're not hearing the full
story in certain cases. I think there's a couple of reasons.
I think that on one level, there's there's a general
laziness with a lot of the media and a competence.
I think that there they would rather tell a story
in the easiest way possible and not tell a nuanced
and complicated story that requires more work. So I do
(21:43):
think that there's an element of that, but that one
is an example Brianna Taylor, or a lot of these cases.
I do think that there is a sense of distrust
in the public. You know, we talk a lot about
the trust that the public has in the media, and
as you mentioned, every poll shows it at all time lows,
not just on the right, but among independence. I saw
a stat only a couple months ago of the TV
(22:04):
News trust and TV news. Eight percent of Republicans trust
TV news and eight percent of independence trust TV News.
I mean, that's where we are right now in the country.
But it's part of it is a reaction to the
trust that the media has in the public. Because, yes,
if the media trust their own audience more, if the
corporate press said I believe my audience is smart and
can understand that these stories are complicated and nuanced and
(22:27):
not so cut and dry and black and white. They
would give a lot more credence to telling the full picture,
but instead they don't. They just say, we need to
just tell it in the easiest way possible, in a
way that's not going to get us Twitter backlash, and
they move on to the next thing. I'd say it's
hard on both sides because you see one side is saying, well,
we believe this, one side is saying we believe that,
(22:49):
and there's misinformation that comes out regardless. There's always going
to be because you learn. I mean, part of journalism
is learning the story as you go, and so that's
the part where I think that a lot of us
have said, well, once you've learned the story, you haven't
come back and said there's more to this, we want
to expand on it. That's the part that I think
that we've been missing, and honestly, campaigning for a year
(23:10):
and a half of my life, I saw this on
the Republican side. I was a Republican candidate, so I
saw this where people would come up to me, they all,
what about this and this, and I would have to say, no,
you know that didn't actually happen. Let me kind of
break this down for you. And some people would you know,
understand or would say they're going to go research it.
And some people were so bought into that story that
(23:33):
wasn't affirmed in their heart, you know, they believed this,
it was affirmed and they went forward with it. And
I mean, I think that's human nature. But obviously it's
always nice to have folks like you who have been
behind the scenes and been on both sides to say, yeah,
this is hard. But I think part of it is
hard because you are human and these like you said,
(23:54):
these people have always had some bias, but they've been
trained to try to keep that out. But really, at
the end of the day, you're asking humans to report
on stories and that happens, right, it does. Yeah, And
I do think so two things I play. First of all,
I understand the inclination of people on both sides right
now to say to be so distrustful, but particularly I
think on the right distrustful of the supposed objective media
(24:17):
that they dig their heels in even more. I think
it's a natural reaction that comes when when they're they've
been spun for so much but I write that misinformation
is the tax we pay for freedom, you know. There,
I think it's become this dirty word. But yeah, if
we have the freedom of the exchange of ideas, we're
not going to we don't need only the true information
(24:38):
that's been back checked by thousands of people, because first
of all, that's probably gonna be wrong anyway. But second
of all, like that, this is part of the discourse.
It's part of just being an American is we get
to have these kinds of conversations and sometimes it's right.
Usually it is, hopefully it is, but sometimes it's not,
and that's okay, we'll correct it. That's that's how it
should be. But that's not obviously the way the media
treats it now. But the other thing about it is
(24:59):
objectivity is no longer the goal in a lot of
these situations. I quote a New York Times reporter very
candid with me. Everyone is on the record in the
book and uncovered, and she tells me that for some people,
the young journalists, objectivity is akin to white supremacy. And
so when you have that in newsrooms now, that is
a huge problem, and that's going to pretend a lot
(25:19):
of issues down the road. If we let the people
that believe objectivity is white supremacy win out and get
jobs and start to control these newsrooms, that's where we're
going to get. But I think I love what you
said about misinformation can be demonized, because that is really
what America is. That you can go out and you
can speak, and that you can have that discourse and conversation.
(25:42):
And we've gotten so far away from conversation, and I
think that initially, I believe that social media was created
for conversation, and it sort of has destroyed the ability
to talk to one another. That's why I love the
fact that I get to do this podcast, and I
feel really honored that I get to be a part
of the clay Book Network so that I can get
out there and talk to folks like you who can say, look,
(26:04):
it's not perfect, it's never going to be perfect, but
it is American and that is as perfect as you
can get. I believe in this world. So I appreciate
what you had to say. Tell people where they can
get uncovered thanks to Yeah, I agree with you one
hundred percent. You can find uncovered. Read uncovered dot com,
Read uncovered dot com. You can find the book the audiobook,
you can hear from the people themselves, lots of people,
(26:25):
Tucker Carlson, others at Fox, other mainstream journalists actually say
their quotes in their words as well. That's what I
love too, because you're talking, like you said, you have
New York Times reporters in there. You're talking to both sides.
This is not one sided. People get to see what
the behind the scenes of the media really is. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah,
that was that was the goal. Two dozen people all
(26:47):
across the industry. There are some good ones. Even at
these outlets. They often get overshadowed by the loudest, most
annoying voices on Twitter that in their organizations. But there
are some good ones and they've got some good ideas
on how we can fix this, so the messages. Even
though we get frustrated with the media, we are blessed
to have a free press in the United States. Steve Krakour,
(27:07):
thank you so much, author of Uncovered. Go out and
get the book because you're going to learn a lot
and you might be a little less angry after you
read it, or maybe you're a little more angry. I
don't know, but thank you so much for being here today.
Appreciate it, and thank you all for joining me on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go
to tutor Dixon podcast dot com. You can subscribe right
(27:27):
there and make sure you join me next time on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a great thing.
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