Part One: Who Can You Trust In 2020?

In Episode One, Cody, Katy and Robert discuss the media: who is a reliable source and who has an agenda?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Everything, so don't Hey everyone, welcome to the very

(00:23):
first episode of Worst Year Ever. My name is Katie Stole.
Who are you, guys? My name's I'm I'm Robert of
the Evans from the Bastards, Robert of the Evans from
the Bastards, al right, full title. I'm Cody Johnston from
not that from other stuff, from the other thing that

(00:44):
we do together, some more news also sometimes from the Bastards,
frequently from the Bastards, Yeah, frequently, And I have I
have occasionally been from the news. That's right. There's been
a lot of cross pollination here, and this is our
very first official joint Yeah, yeah, finally mixed together. It's

(01:04):
kind of like how the outrageously like grifting but more
or less a religious wing of of of the Republican
Party melded with via the Christian dominionist wing of the
Republican Party to make our current administration. And things are
going great, just like they will in this podcast. Yeah,
it is quite like that. We are the Republican Party now.

(01:26):
We we named our show the Worst Year Ever, both
in the literal sense that is going to be the
worst year ever for everybody. That's mainly for everybody for us,
And it's going to be a weekly podcast in it's
going to be a less than weekly podcast in twenty

(01:46):
nineteen as we sort of ramp up and get everyone
prepared for the worst year ever. Um. And today I
think we we all kind of we're looking at like
what we could do to provide something of value to
listeners rather than just uh, shooting out hot takes about
what's happening on the belt Way. Uh. And I think
we landed on spending hours reading about major news sources

(02:10):
and prominent reporters and analyzing them for their biases and
flaws in order to give people more context so they
can critically review the news that they talk about or
that they they they ingest over the next year. So
I think that that's what we're gonna do today. That's right.
We are better be because that's what I've been doing
whole week. We're not doing a different thing than that, No, absolutely, Now, Yeah,

(02:33):
we we've talked a lot about like what we wanted
this show to be, and I think the goal is
to provide something of value outside of just our own opinions.
So this seems like a good way to do it.
Maybe we'll suck it up. That's part of the charm
of the worst year ever is learning whether or not
this all collapses in on itself like a dying star. Yeah.
I would love to be the first one to suck

(02:53):
it up and just get it out of the way,
you know, So I'm not worried and waiting for it.
But I don't mean like I have to go first,
but just in general, all like you're excited, you're excited
to suck up, Yeah, because then then I won't be
worried about sucking up. I just want to tear the
band aid off because everyone knows well everyone's gonna suk
up even though we're all trying our best. That is
about trying your best and failing miserably. Yeah, absolutely did

(03:15):
my best, and that's okay. Yeah. I would say if
we cut off trying your best and from trying your
best and failing miserably, we would have a pretty good
slogan for the Democratic Party. Failing miserably. Yes, absolutely existing
and failing miserably. You know, it's not bad slogan for
this podcast either, just putting that out there. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,

(03:35):
that's that's a good slogan for all of us. So, um, Cody,
why don't you take us in? Because you have a
mandolin and that seems to qualify you to start first.
I do. That's why I carried it around wherever. That
is that part of your your presentation today. It's my outfit,
it's my it's my whole deal. It's certainly an accessory. Yeah,

(03:56):
it gets me in at the front of the line.
It's Cody trying to be like Jeff Annuals on the
last episode in the Newsroom where they have an im
for no reason. By the way, four minutes of a
song in a garage. Actually John Lemmitt wrote for and
that's something the Newsroom, Yeah, where they're on the plane

(04:16):
like we don't know we reported the news do not know?
Is after his uh sitcom sixteen? Is that what it
was called? Failed? Uh? Then he worked on the Newsroom
before going to comedy legend Bill Pullman. Anyway, that's from
hold On listeners should know. There was a TV show

(04:37):
by Aaron Sorkin of the West Wing called The Newsroom,
which was about an idealized, dumb person's idea of what
a very centrist news network would look like. And there's
a scene in it where several of the characters are
on a plane and people on the plane start getting
weird text messages because it's the day that Bin Laden
got shot, and they start worrying that, like the news
trickling in about how the President's going to address the

(04:58):
nation means there's been a big arorist attack, and the
brave journalists and the plane decide that they need to
essentially hijack the flight to tell everybody that there hasn't
been a terrorist attack and been lad instead, and all
of the plane people get angry at them until they
hear that been Laud instead, and then they all start hugging. There.
He's like really mad at the captain and the crew

(05:21):
of the plane until he sees like the Delta rights
like the Delta insignia and the fifth branch of the
Armed for I think it's very self important and serious.
He's like, captain, I'm here to inform you that you
and they're yeah, they all hug and like there the
handshake and oh, it's amazing. It's it's amazing, really self

(05:44):
important and really my goal, my goal for this podcast
is that at some point in when the three of
us are on a plane headed to a convention of
some sort or you know, a major political event or rally. Uh,
we have a chance to do that. But rather than
it being about a terrorist being shot, it's us informing

(06:05):
the plane that one of our elderly candidates has soiled
himself on a national That is my dream. Yeah, I
wanted you to know first, Captain that at fourteen minutes
past noon, Joseph Biden soiled himself while arguing with Bernie Sanders. Yeah,
you better get on a plane soon, because that's happening tonight. Okay,

(06:32):
let's let's actually get into this episode. So, yeah, we've
picked various organizations. Um and I've I so we're gonna
talk about MPR briefly. Um And because it's it's NPR,
we all are aware of it. Uh. And brief just
a brief history of NPR. UM. It seems simple enough.
NPR it began being a thing that exists in after

(06:52):
the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of seven. The
first broadcast is actually coverage of the Congressional hearings on
Vietnam and they people, Yeah, they launched their flagship show
All Things Considered, which you know, I mean kind of
an impossible claim a consider all of the things, and
then they added morning a diction eight years later. Um.
They actually almost went bankrupt in the early eighties and

(07:13):
they sort of restructured how things work. They got like
thousands of members stations throughout the country, and they sort
of pay a fee to them to get their content. Recently,
as of two thousand nine, of their budget comes from
corporate sponsors, which I think sets off a little bit.
But you know, um, but how else are you gonna
know they're going to consider all things exactly right. Right,

(07:35):
If it's only publicly funded, then you're not considering the
big corporate interests, so you know, fair exactly balanced. Consider
PEPSI consider Coca Cola. That's both of them. Those are
the two you have. Those are the options. Are the options,
There is nothing else. Um. They also they actually also
have to adhere to the truth and advertising rules, So

(07:55):
like you'll notice on NPR, they never it's never it's
never promote outing a product. It's just describing it, um,
which is not you know, that significant, but it's a
thing that a lot of people should do on their ads. UM.
And we'll get to their bias and stuff. We don't
need to talk about their many scandals, of which there

(08:16):
are not many. But so, during the in the midst
of the me too movement, the head of News Senior
VP and editorial Director, Michael or escus I was accused
by two women who said that he unexpectedly kissed them
wait for it, and stuck his tongue in their mouths.
There's more during job interviews. Well, okay, that's pretty egregious.

(08:39):
But also if he hadn't done that, then they couldn't
have considered it. And you have to consider all things exactly,
which they actually did consider because later, like less of
a week later, on all things considered, they reported another
woman who had reported his behavior to HR, so they
considered everything. Well, good for them, no longer that sounds considerate. Yeah,

(09:03):
he's no no longer with them, but so so in
terms of bias do they have it? How much of it? Um?
They're actually the most trusted news source in America, which
isn't surprising, although that only means that of them, of
American things, they're trustworthy, so that I don't know, our
institutions are crumbling and our trust and our institutions is
also crumbling, and that seems like a problem, right, Yeah,

(09:25):
you are. You are considered trustworthy if only thirty nine
percent of America thinks you are literal lizard people. Exactly. Yeah,
So congratulations to NPR on probably not being lizard people.
I'm not convinced. Well, we'll work on that, all right,
we can. I can convince you you are. I guess yeah,
you would be the third of the people who who don't. Okay,

(09:46):
you're you're you're on board with them not being lizard people. Ah, yeah,
I'm on board of that. Okay, me too. Okay, perfect,
that math works out. Um. So they've also been accused
of bias from everybody. Um, like most people, I don't know,
you don't you get escape without being accused of biases, right,
The Right's gonna accuse you bias, less can accuse you
of bias. That's just how it is. They do have
an interesting relationship with the Pentagon that like, one of

(10:10):
the main criticism I think of them is often when
they get like a press release from the Pentagon where
they will simply read it at face value and like
no analysis, no sort of questioning the intent behind it
or the truth behind it. Sort Of a similar thing
with interviews they do, which again I think this is
going to be a theme of just sort of these
big institutions not necessarily questioning the government or militaryzations, less

(10:35):
of a right left bias and more a governmental sort
of thing. Yeah. They also notably were very pro word
Iraq as again we'll see many people. Um well, I
mean I think that worked out pretty well. We we
knocked that statue down and now Iraq is doing pretty good. Right.

(10:55):
I don't want to pause the show, but maybe you
should Google for a while. You want to spend some
little time on Google. Oh no, oh no, yeah, oh boy.
All you had to do is typeod Iraq. I don't
know one other thing I think that of note, they
made a point to refuse to refer to the Bush
administration's torture GITMO as torture. Um. They would along with

(11:20):
the sort of the enhanced interrogation language. Um one they
get that from the Pentagon. Um. Yeah, I mean that's
what That's what they wanted us, wanted everybody to call it.
So they called it enhanced interrogation. Um. This sort of
like new speak. One might refer to it. I think
it's reminiscent of something we're also seeing now UM with
the current situation regarding concentration camps from migrants, which the

(11:43):
government enjoys referring to as temporary Emergency influx shelters UM,
which I don't think NPR is referring to them as.
But so they just sort of have this relationship that
is a little not questioning of ssations like that, UM
in terms of bias. And we'll get in more of
this with the New York Times Watchington Post. Uh, it's
less left or right, more about the military. But whenever

(12:05):
I think about nprs possible bias, I actually think of
a specific interview conducted by David Reuben. God, who I
we're probably a little too familiar with. UM. We're not
here to talk about Reuben in terms of like a
source of news. That would be silly. We're not gonna
talk about like the grifters or anything like that. But
in David Reuben interviewed Ken Stern. He's a former CEO

(12:27):
of NPR who had written a book called How I
Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right. Uh,
if you're familiar with the Reuben, you can guess that
the majority of his interview tried to steer Stern into
complaining about the left and praising the right, despite his
book actually being more about like the importance of conversation
and not like the left is bad and I'm leaving it,

(12:48):
you know. During the interview, Rube kept coming back to
the idea of like liberals saying like conservatives with the
real heroes saying the NPR is useless, saying the NPR
is incredibly biased and that the government just shouldn't do
anything about it, especially like when it comes to thing
like NPR. Basically, he continued to bring up the idea
that like what if a private company did NPR instead,

(13:08):
why don't Why does the government do any of this
at all? Um, that that familiar dance were to start
credit he was very polite in vehemently disagreeing with all
of Dave's horse shit, repeatedly pointing out that one of
the important things about NPR isn't like the fancy, like
the liberal elite with their gender queer lattes, but rather
it's for the small towns across the country that without

(13:32):
NPR they wouldn't have like local news and the kinds
of access that they do to this information. That's what
NPR does, which is a big problem with the news
organization that news at large right now is that people
don't have access to right, they don't have local news.
Um and not having access to local news actually makes
people more polarized. UM. So he kept pointing this out.

(13:52):
They're like, well, actually, the NPR is really good. It
brings all this information to people across the country. And
one thing he didn't mention, NPR runs the public Rade
your satellite system, which is not just used by NPRS,
used by everybody. So way to go space. On my
point though, in bringing up David Reuben is so like
the former CEO of NPR who wrote a book about
leaving the liberal bubble. Face to face with Dave Ruben,

(14:14):
asked over and over again about nprs bias for more
than an hour, still disagrees with him. The closest he
came to saying that like, maybe maybe there's some sort
of unconscious bias, but there's nobody there who's just sort
of deciding to tell one side of the story, to
which Dave says, I don't believe you, uh, and that well,
don't you think maybe there's like an unconscious sort of

(14:36):
thing going on, which is like, yeah, he literally just
said that day. It's it's very very funny interview. Um,
I'm getting off track. I didn't want to talk about
Dave Ruban, but here we are, with the point being that, like, uh,
in terms of like their bias, even this guy won't
say like, oh yeah, they're like a bunch of lefties
who were like pushing out conservatives. They do give more

(14:56):
often than not, like both sides of the story equal weight.
Would you say at they try to make sure that
all things are considered. Um no, No, that's a little clunky,
Like that phrase a little clunky. I wouldn't. I wouldn't
tm that like considering most of every of the things.
I think. Okay, okay, that's much. That's much keener. Okay,

(15:18):
sorry continue. Yeah, I can say, for like when I
my my father, who's very conservative in a Trump voter,
when we talk about political bias and where he gets
his news, his go to for I listened to left
wing news is NPR, Like that's that is to him,
the left wing take on things. And yeah, I've had

(15:39):
some very I've had actually some pretty productive discussions with
him where I'm like, there's actually really no voice for
like an actual left wing in the American media, Like
liberals obviously dominate the media there, I would say more
than sixt but like Hillary Clinton's a liberal, uh, she's
not a leftist, um like Bernie Sanders isn't like is
bare early like by most nations standards would be like

(16:02):
kind of in the center left. Like there's no like
in there. It's reasonably fair. And I do think and
I think like kind of the core of of what
your your essay is getting at, Cody, is that like
they're certainly valuable and it's good that they exist, but
they're like kind of a centrist voice, UM that doesn't
really challenge the status quo outside of like kind of

(16:24):
in very specific instances, like every now and then you'll
get a piece like um, I actually found Serial season
two had some really good sort of critiques about a
chunk of the country that I came from, UM and
about like the way that the media covers them. But
like you know, for the most part, they're trying to
present sort of the things are more or less fine.
The system just seeds fine tuning. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah,

(16:47):
I think that as we go through all of this,
we're going to see that the theme throughout is like, yeah,
these networks. I'm going to talk about MSNBC. We perceive
it as a liberal network, but the reality is is
that it's really pretty centrist. It's really pretty moderate, except
for like some people that they have on like a
show is maybe a bit more left leaning, but in

(17:09):
general it is. And like there's just such a polarization
in our country that the just trying to stick to
the facts has now become liberal. You're super liberal when
it's like actually not, And they're so towing the line
trying not to become come across as being biased. So
it's a bit of um a clusterfuck. Yeah. Yeah. I

(17:31):
sort of get into that too with the New York Times,
uh in Washington Post because uh and but like is
a pet people of mind this like the term liberal media,
like the left wing media, what they always mean almost
always is corporate media. Yeah. Um, and we should bring
that back and start saying that, because that is really
what it is. It's not like, oh yeah, all the

(17:51):
those MSNBC folks wanting to you know, eat the rich
or whatever. Uh I don't, I don't. I don't recall
that happen. So that's that's NPR in a nutshell, I
think that they're a fine source for like what's happening,
not necessarily like an analysis of what's going on or
what could happen or what needs to be done, and honestly, like, yeah,

(18:11):
if Robert's dad is listening to NPR, even though he
thinks it's liberal, I think that's good. Yeah, it's just
good to keep in mind. Yeah, it's good that he's
he's he's getting exposed to something besides Fox News. Um. Yeah, yeah,
it's unfortunately that those are the options. But yeah, all right,
before we continue, though, I'm sorry, you both need to

(18:32):
shut up because it's time for advertisements. Okay, that was
a bit aggressive, Okay, okay, alright, fine, I'm fine with
this because I hate all of our opinions, but I
love products. Yes, well together, and we're back again. Still

(19:01):
we're back against ill speaking of not Fox News. Should
I talk about Jake Tapper now, Jay Taps? Sure, I'm
gonna call him Jay Taps regularly. So. Jake Tapper is
the chief DC correspondent for CNN. Uh. He headlines a
show called The Lead, which is a weekday TV news show.

(19:21):
He also has a Sunday show uh. And according to
a lot of people, he's basically the closest thing that
we in two thousand nineteen have to a guy like
Walter Cronkite. In March, The New Republic published an article
titled why almost in parentheses, everyone likes Jake Tapper um.
And that's basically the theme of the article is that,

(19:42):
like Jay taps is, uh is our our best shot
at a new Walter Cronkite. And since like nobody listening
to the show was alive when Walter Cronkite was on
the air, um, he was this anchorman for CBS Evening
News throughout like the entirety of the sixties and the
seventies pretty much, and he was considered the most trusted
man in America for about twenty years. UM. And so

(20:04):
you know, because we're in this post truth era where
where nothing is real and nobody can agree on even
basic facts about science, a lot of people are desperate
for a voice of reason who can get Americans united
behind some sort of like basic minimal understanding of the facts,
Which is an impulse I understand. I get wanting that. Um, well,
I think we all would like that to happen. Keeping. Yeah,

(20:28):
it would be nice if we could just all agree
that the climates changing as the largest hurricanes in history
continue to batter our shorts, that it's changing and why
it's changing, and that we could do something about it.
You know what, Cody all start with that it's changing, alright, alright, Um,

(20:49):
So that New Republic article basically made the case, yeah,
that Jake Tapper was like our our our new most
trusted man in America, and it included quotes for a
bunch of left and right wing pundits, all these guys,
it include all these people with different views like expressing
respect for Jake Tapper. One example is this quote from
Nick Gillespie, an editor at Reason magazine, which is like
the libertarianist large magazine or news source in the country.

(21:13):
Tapper is the only person who when I see him
on TV, I stopped to listen. No matter what, he
forces people who think Sheriff Scott Israel is a good
guy to face up to the fact that Israel is
kind of full of ship. And he pushes Dana Lotion
the n r A to really explain their contradictions when
it comes to recently stated ideas about gun policy. I mean,
I'm a libertarian. So I hesitate to say anything as
a public service, but that's kind of a great public

(21:34):
service he's doing. So that's that's that's that's yeah. Now,
uh yeah, the exact public service. Yeah, I hesitate to
say anything as a public service, but here's a public
service being provided by this guy who's works for a private,
corporate media company. Um. Yeah, Libertarians are consistent above all else. Um. Now,

(21:58):
the exact coverage that Lspie was referencing there is kind
of part of the reason I questioned Tapper's value as
an impartial voice. Scott Israel was the Broward County sheriff
when the Parkland shooting happened. His department was rightfully criticized
for its pisport response to the massacre, which some characterized
as basically waiting while kids died out of you know, cowardice. Uh.

(22:18):
Tapper gained mass approval from the right wing when he
conducted a penetrating and deeply critical interview of Israel, saying
things like, just so people watching at home understand, even
after the shooter left the school, there was a period
of time where nobody was going into the school, no
law enforcement officers. People were bleeding out now. For this,
Glennbeck declared Jake Tapper the number one journalist in the nation.
Ben Shapiro called it a perfect interview. But days later,

(22:42):
when Tapper held a special scene in town hall on
gun violence uh and held Republican feat to the fire
on gun control, the right wing reaction was much less positive.
Ben Shapiro called it a show trial on behalf of
full gun bands. So I don't the New Republic articles
shows this as like an example of how he's he's
widely respected by all sides. Um. This just seems like

(23:03):
an example of the fact that when Jake Tapper reinforces
people's beliefs, they like him, and when his coverage doesn't,
they hate him. I don't know, he did he did
something they liked, and so they're like, oh, he's perfect,
and then days later they changed their mind because because
he did something else, like that's not it's Twitter culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(23:25):
it's Twitter culture. Um. So some people, like the writer
at the New Republic who wrote that piece, consider this
as evidence that he's universally respected. Like I said, I
don't know that I really agree with that, and I
don't see any evidence that like any of these pundits
who have praised him for specific things he's done have
like seriously reconsidered their views because of anything he's reported

(23:46):
on UM And I may just be a pessimist here,
but I kind of worry a little bit about Tapper's
reputation for fairness. I think it matters a lot to him,
and I think the word fairness should set your hackles
arise whenever it's used to apply to a journalist. Journalism
is not about fairness. It's about the truth, and the
truth is often not fair. Journalists should be capable of
looking at issues from an objective point of view, but

(24:07):
that doesn't mean they need to present both sides of
every issue as equally valid. It just means they need
to be able to evaluate the evidence before presenting their
audience with the truth. And I'm not gonna say Tapper
is inherently bad at this. He's actually done pretty well sometimes,
at least compared to the rest of the media. And
this brings me to how J. Tapps first became a
national name. Are you guys aware of what his first

(24:27):
big story was? I don't believe that, I am I
can't wait to find out. Okay, So he wrote a
very widely read article for Washington City Paper for the
Washington City Paper about Monica Lewinsky right after that scandal broke,
And the article was probably the most sympathetic piece written
about miss Lewinsky by a mainstream journalist, like at the

(24:49):
time when she was under attack by every reporter and
hat comedian in the country. So, like, you know, Monica
Lewinsky becomes public enemy number one for Democrats and a
lot of liberals. Uh, And Jake Apper writes a very
sympathetic piece like making her out as like a full
and complete human being who's like not a monster and
like not doing this to try to like scam some
money out of Bill Clinton or whatever. Um. So that's good, right,

(25:12):
Like that's a positive thing to do. There's there's some
problematic aspect, Like I'll say this in fairness to Jake,
his article was probably the fairest article about Monica Lewinsky
that came out through like a really mainstream site or
like a news source at the time, But that doesn't

(25:33):
mean it wasn't also problematic. It's title was I Dated
Monica Lewinsky. Yeah, yeah, so Jake Tapper had gone on
a date with Monica Lewinsky before the scandal Brook. The
framing of the piece is that our man j Taps
is out on a diving trip in the Cayman Islands
and as he's like at an airport, the scandal breaks

(25:53):
and he reads about it in a local newspaper. Um
and the fact that he had just been diving does
not really direct the interface with any aspect of the story,
but he brings it up constantly throughout the piece, and
I'm a diver in like three time. It takes a
lot of long capacity. He talks about Barracuda's and how

(26:13):
like you you know, when you're comparing her to a Barracuda. No,
But he talks about how like disorienting it is to
like get reacclimated to the twenty four hour news cycle
after being away from it, and how it's like diving
more than two atmospheres down and how you have to
slowly like sting. That's gonna stick forever. Now, Jake Tap,

(26:36):
that's all I think of it now. He loves his diving,
or at least he did at one point in nine.
It also might be the only time he went diving,
and he just had to get some words out, like
I don't know, I got to do a metaphor what
am I gonna? Where was I? Okay? Yeah, perfect, perfect fish.
So the core of the article is that, yeah, he
went on a dinner date with Monica Lewinsky before the

(26:57):
scandal broke and he thought she was a nice girl.
He repeatedly talks about how she's different from other DC
career oriented women. Um. He makes two separate references to
her weight, calling her zaft, dig and chubby at different points.
He makes a third reference to how she eats appetizers
and not salad, which he does present as positive, but
it's really weird and context Yeah, he does repeatedly. Also,

(27:22):
one date doesn't when you dated? Now? Now, now, Katie,
do you want to do you think? Jake Tapper talked
about whether or not he fucked Monica Lewinsky in this
article he wrote for a mainstream news source. Oh no,
he didn't, did he? He so did? He didn't. He
didn't fuck her, but he talked about how she didn't
fuck him. Um, I'm gonna quote a selection from that

(27:44):
that selection from the piece, because it really says a
lot about Jake Tapper. Quote, and to be brutally honest,
I got with her because I figured that behind her
initial aggressiveness looked an easy, perhaps winning, bit of no
frills hook up. Nothing of the kind happened. So either
I am imminently resisted, which is certainly within the realm
of possibility, or Monica is not the tart she's being

(28:04):
made out to be. Yeah, and nauseated. There's more. Oh yeah,
there's more. Yeah. Maybe if I had the Marines under
by command, things would have been different, But I'm not
so sure. All right, okay, I mean he sounds like
you inside. I would have gotten the military to force

(28:27):
her to Oh my god. Uh. Power does weird things
to people. More than once, I have found myself laughing
my ass off and nodding in agreement while some fading
star has held forth on something I could care less
about offended me. Even does that make me a knitwit
a himbo waiting to happen? I think it just makes
me toweringly average in Washington, just another creature who is

(28:49):
here because that is where the national vat of power
lies and I'm sitting here waiting for my bowl full.
Uh so he knows, he knows who he is is,
why he is there, and what he's doing. What he wants,
all right. Also props for the term himbo. Yeah, that's
um clever himbo. I've never heard that term before. It's

(29:13):
super nineties. Was bimbo but him Yeah, yeah, mail bimbo
or whatever. I would go with membo or just neither
knowing where like news budgets were before the internet really
took hold of my imagination of that. The like the
day that he came up with that frame as he
sat down at his computer for about four minutes, like

(29:36):
staring at that paragraph, wrote bimbo and then deleted the
word be and added an h and said that's enough
for the day. I'm going to collect my four thousand dollars.
And he's like, go out to dinner. Yeah, I'm an
award for this. They can't send ye before your approval America. Yeah. Now,

(30:01):
in more recent days, Jake's commitment to fairness and to
listening to voices on all sides of the political aisle
has led to him getting played by right wing grifters.
Regular listeners Behind the Bastards my other podcast will have
heard the episode I did on Andy no, a Portland
area news grifter. He was famously attacked by Antifa. This
was presented in the mainstream media as an unprovoked assault
by anti fascists against a journalist just doing his job. Now,

(30:24):
video was later released that showed Andy participating in a
right wing mob as it armed itself, planned and carried
out an unprovoked assault on a left wing cider bar
on May Day. A young woman was struck from behind
and had her spine broken as part of that assault.
This was one of the major inciting incidents of the attack.
On no a month later, he wasn't hit for being
a journalist. He was hit for being part of a
violent right wing street gang. Now that doesn't make it right,

(30:45):
but time and context has shown that presenting his assault
as Antifa attacks a journalist for no reason was deeply inaccurate. Nonetheless,
Andy was able to grift like two hundred thousand dollars
and provided fuel for the government to declare Antifa domestic
terrorist group in the weeks before that video drop up.
He was able to do all of this in large
part thanks to Jake Tapper. Within minutes of the assault,

(31:05):
Jay Tapps retweeted Andy's video of himself you know after
he got hit, saying and Jake said quote Antifa regularly
attacks journalists. It's reprehensible. They do not. They just do not.
I've been around them dozens of times. I I know
dozens of journalists who have. I have watched them shove
cameras a couple of times. There are isolated incidents where

(31:26):
individuals have punched like One of the most famous ones
is um Taylor Lawrence, who wrote recently for The Atlantic.
I think now is with the New York Times. She
got punched by an anti fascist during the two seventeen
Charlottesville rally. Um she was punched because immediately after the
terrorist attack that killed Heather Higher, she was filming and
this person, in a very emotionally charged time, hit her.
It doesn't make it right. Obviously, there's some defensible cases

(31:49):
as a journalist for filming in the wake of something
like that, but declaring that a guy who has just
watched someone get murdered in a terrorist attack, having an
extreme emotional reaction and punching a journalist does not equate
to Antifa regularly purchased journalists. They just don't like and
that he that he should know that I don't. I
don't know that he does. I don't know that he does.

(32:10):
I think Jake Tapper is addicted to this reputation he
has of like showing both sides, and this video with
no context, looked like a clear case of how he
could like attack a left wing group and get a
win with the right. And I think that's more important
to Jake than actually and also having a take on
this thing that had happened and became the biggest news

(32:30):
story of the day was more important to him than
doing any sort of research, digging into the issue and
figuring out what was going on like a journalist. Um.
I do think Jake Tapper probably was a journalist at
one point, Like one of the things I can respect
about him, as he actually had got his start doing
a lot of like freelancing and stuff, so you know,
he had to work his way up to an extent um.

(32:51):
But what he's doing now and what he did with
Andy No was not journalism. It was punditry, and it
was wildly irresponsible and dangerous pundit tree. So when Jake
Tapper does something like arrange a discussion between people like
Marco Rubio and like some of the Parkland kids about
gun control, that's a good thing. I'm glad that existed.
I'm glad he was a part of that. Um. I'm

(33:14):
not going to say he's always bad or you should
never trust him on anything. He clearly has his skills.
That said, you should be wary about trusting him or
his coverage when he comments on something he has not
personally investigated at any depth. Um, because he seems to
have an addiction to being seen as a fair and
balanced reporter of both sides, and that can be taken
advantage of power. Yeah, he wants his bowl full of power.

(33:39):
We had to take a quick break for an ad. God,
I love ads. Are we going to consider this? We
are considering all things. Yeah, it's one of the things.
So let's all just take a moment to consider this
well together everything. Wow, were as ill of them already?

(34:07):
I am. I am as hard as a pipe, real gate, y'all.
Thanks to those ads. Oh good, that's exactly where I
need you to be to talk about MSNBC and Rachel Maddow.
So that's perfect. I'm trying to make this show accessible
to my fellow Southerners. So I compared my penis to
something that would appear on a farm, and you know what,
we all appreciated it and learned something about you and

(34:30):
about farms, cool and your friends and your dick and
just learning a lot of stuff right now. All right,
let's learn some stuff about MSNBC. Al Right, Okay. MSNBC
is one of the farthest reaching channels in the country,
reaching about a one percent of households with cable. That's
a lot. MSNBC was launched as a partnership between NBC

(34:51):
and Microsoft, but no NBC at that time was owned
by General Electric. By and large, it is considered to
be a liberal network, you know, like we talked about
just a few minutes before this, but I would actually
say that it's just more liberal leaning. A lot of
people out there consider MSNBC to be the Fox News
or the left, and Rachel matt Out to be the

(35:12):
left Sean Hannity, which is ultimately not fair. But there
are some strands of truth to that, which we're going
to get to in a minute. But yeah, in reality,
it is very much a moderate network with predominantly moderate
hosts and shows like Morning Joe and Chris Matthews, and
in general, MSNBC is very much in line with the
Democratic establishment. Um. Actually, a Pew Research poll found that

(35:36):
MSNBC was the number two choice for people who backed
Hillary Clinton. And another interesting little tidbit that I found
is that apparently Fox News viewers are more likely to
back Bernie Sanders than people who watch MSNBC. Uh. This
is according to a Morning Consult poll, which of Fox

(35:57):
News viewers who also identified as potential Democratic primary voters
back Standers compared to just thirt of MSNBC viewers. So
you know, that kind of sends a lot. Says a
lot about the demographics of m MSNBC and how they
tend to skew um. But all of that said, MSNBC
does also tracked a lot of progressives and Bernie voters,

(36:19):
specifically to the Rachel Maddow Show. Now, I like to
talk a little bit about Rachel. Uh. She was born
Catholic family Castro Valley, California. She got her b A
at Stanford was the first openly gay Rhodes scholar in
American history. Uh. Yeah, you know that's pretty cool. She
also got outed by her school newspaper at Stanford for

(36:42):
being gay. She hadn't told her parents yet, but they
like yeah. She did her graduate and doctoral work at
Lincoln College, Oxford, and has a PhD in politics. As
I mentioned, she's openly gay. She's been with her partner season.
This doesn't have much to do with the news, but
I just wanted to share this. One little fact is
that they never got married, which is no big deal,

(37:04):
but she's openly commented a few times that she actually
thinks gay marriage denigrades gay culture, that it like detracts
from how they recognize long term relationships. And that's gotten
a lot of flak from other people. I mean, I'm
I don't identify as gay, but I've heard, you know,
seeing comments and read it threads about that people being

(37:26):
pretty disappointed with it. But anyway, Rachel started her career
in radio in Massachusetts after she want to contest to
be a morning co host for Dave in the Morning.
She then eventually joined Air America in two thousand four
and then got her own two hour Rachel Matto radio program.
Uh and that's when her star began to rise and

(37:47):
she started becoming a frequent guest on MSNBC, specifically on
the long forgotten Tucker Carlson Show. Remember when yeah, MSNBC
s Tuck her Carlson. Uh yeah, she I guess she
was invited on to regularly get his goat. You know,
back then, Tucker was still a conservative, but you know,

(38:09):
he had some sort of morals still, I guess. But
then you know, he left for Fox News and turned
into a cockroach, and she was given her own hour
long show on MSNBC. Surprisingly, Rachel has said about herself
in interviews that she has never and still don't think
of myself as an Obama supporter, either professionally or actually.

(38:30):
And she feels liberated by having a professional role in
which is probably better for me to not take sides.
And I concluded that because that was pre Trump um,
so it's maybe a little less hypocritical than it sounds
and more like, no, it's kind of hypocritical, but it
is foreshadowing for how how much she would change in

(38:52):
the near future. Like I said, Rachel is MSNBC's probably
their most liberal host. And yeah, she is pretty biased.
She's been beating this Russia drum, the entirety of this
administration um every night, although according to interviews, she apparently
sees herself as not a partisan and calls herself a

(39:15):
national security liberal And I'm not what do you guys
think that means? I don't know, that's a liberal who gets,
if you'll pardon the term hard, whenever we shoot missiles
at somebody like a national security liberal is like the
mainstream of TV guys. When we launched those cruise missiles
at one of the Charlasad's air bases, talked about the

(39:36):
beauty of our weapons security. I thought that might be
but it was very confusing to me because she was
also very against the Iraq war. She wrote a lot
about it, did a lot of reporting about that, So
that was a bit confusing to me. But that's how
she identifies. And so anyway, let's talk about post Rachel,
like I said, kind of lost her mind over this

(39:56):
Russia investigation. And look on an emotional level, I do
get it. Uh, this was this huge mystery. We have
no trust in the government that they would conduct and
effect an effective investigation. And we understand that journalists do
a lot of work breaking stories. However, what she's done
is different. She's meandered into conspiracy theories. You know, night

(40:18):
after night she presents this ever building sense of anticipation.
She spins stories and theorized and planted seeds of conspiracy
that absolutely ratcheted up the hysteria. You know, again, of
households watch, you know, like get MSNBC um while also
ignoring actually important things that were happening on a day

(40:40):
to day basis. I would call her like one side,
like there's two different ways in which liberal or left
wing journalists fucked up coverage of Russia Gate. On one side,
you've got Rachel Maddow, who makes it into this gigantic
like and and really like clear conspiracy, which it wasn't,
and so like by getting people to expect that, she
did huge damage alike getting people to take seriously the

(41:02):
actual crimes that were committed. And then on the other side,
you've got Glenn Greenwald who insisted like nothing really wrong
was done and like there was nothing to focus on
in there, which is also untrue because there was a
lot of shady exactly, but it like it really was
at a detriment to the actual findings of the investigation
and to what we expect, you know, and and you know,
when she kept promises the way she built it up,

(41:22):
it always met. It always felt like the hammer is
about to fall. And so not all the Campones vaulted, Yeah,
al Capones vaulted. It's like and it's so not only
is it deflating what we actually find, but I think
it contributes a lot to people's burnout throughout those those years,

(41:44):
these years, and like yeah, like just building up expectations
and dashing them. She did the similar thing with his
tax returns. Yes, exactly right when she says we've got them. Yeah,
Like there's a whole thing everyone's like on Twitter, like, oh,
we gotta everyone tune into Rachel maddout for the tax
returns and it was not really anything. Why didn't you
look into that before you did this whole thing? Yeah?

(42:06):
Or you knowing Lee, you knew that pumped it up?
So anyway, you know, I just think it's important to
note all of that because if we're going to going
to criticize Fox News, let's say, for being irresponsible with
their reporting, you really have to do the same thing
for Rachel Mattow And interesting Lee, she was just hit

(42:27):
with a ten million dollar defamation lawsuit from the O
a N Network. What is the O a N Network? Well,
that stands for One American News, which is a small,
family owned conservative network based in San Diego that's currently
been a challenging Fox News for you conservative cable viewers.
You may also remember them for receiving a lot of

(42:49):
favorable attention recently from Donald Trump. Obviously he loves you've
got some programming on that show. They did, like it's
a film on the greens. It's so very bad. Anyway,
they're suing Rachel for calling them paid Russia propaganda on air.
I guess Comcast, which owns MSNBC, had refused to carry

(43:12):
the own network. And then a couple of weeks later,
Rachel discussed a story that was first broke by The
Daily Beast about an own employee who also worked for
spot Nick News. Um, and she built to the point
that in this case, the most obsequiously pro Trump right
wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda.

(43:33):
And also they're on air US politics reporter is paid
by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.
But this isn't actually accurate, Um, the reporter uh Ukrainian.
I believe Christian Ruse was a freelancer for spot Nick News,
not a staff employee, and according to the lawsuit, his

(43:54):
work there has nothing to do with his work at own.
And yeah, I just poked around a little there. If
he worked for Sputnik, it is literally accurate to say
that he is a paid employee of the Russian intelligence apparatus,
because that's who runs sput Nick News. That said, that
doesn't make her claim that O. A. N is like
literally Russian propaga accurate. But if this guy wrote thousands

(44:16):
of articles for sput Nick, he absolutely is paid was
paid by the Russian security establishment, right, but anything that
he did, But like what he's doing on the own network,
he doesn't talk about anything Russia, is what I'm getting to, Like, yes,
he has worked for them in the past. There's like
this grain and like, yes, that's something interesting to know.

(44:38):
Like talking about it on you know, this highly popular
uh program that she has and framing it as he's
literally being paid by the Russian government to put propaganda
in the American news stream isn't accurate. Uh, it's hard
to prove based on it's hard to prove and like map,

(44:58):
I mean, maybe maybe there's a world where it is,
but that's not a provable thing based on what she
has and it was. It's an irresponsible thing in my opinion,
to put out there. It's a kind of Louise Menci
Yesua sort of like everyone is uh, everyone's a Russian
troll or a Russian pot or a Russian asset, no

(45:18):
matter what you say. Yeah, anyway, that's that's my little
bit about Rachel Maddow. And like I have enjoyed her
at times. I think that she's incredibly intelligent, and I
think she asks good questions, like she has done some
great interviews. Um, she does follow up consistently with people.
But I've stopped watching her program personally because I can't.

(45:40):
I don't like to have to sift through what is
you know, not necessarily true? What's her theorizing? It's frequently
like you know, could this be a plant? Could you know,
have they taken over our government? She says things like
that regularly. Yeah, she's got a lot of that uh
Charlie Day energy with the strings on the wall and stuff,

(46:03):
and like some of it is true like that she says,
because she's a reporter, she like, like you said, she's intelligent,
she researches stuff, but a lot of it is just
like putting strings, uh, connecting them to other photos and stuff. Yeah.
I think she's a perfect example of how toxic TV
news is because you've got this person who is an intelligent,

(46:24):
thoughtful person, and if she if she had limited her
journalism career to heavily researching and putting out a limited
number of articles or or videos on subject she'd investigated thoroughly, Um,
she'd probably have done some great work. But because she
was putting out like what was it the nightly show? Um,
you've got to like drive up viewership and do this,

(46:46):
do this style components vault bullshit where you like you
have to you have to hype it up and get
people listening, which means that like you're constantly you do,
there's no way to responsibly get that much useful news
out to people on that kind of a schedule, So
you're going to essentially wind up lying to them about
what you have on a regular basis, which like is
part of why nobody trusts or believes in anything even anymore.

(47:07):
And I'm saying, like Rachel matt I was responsible for
the death of truth. Her career is an example of
a piece of the death of truth. And like how toxic.
Don't listen to TV news, don't watch TV news. It's bad.
It's killing everything. I've stopped, you know, I used to
trying to get every different perspectives. But yeah, you weren't
really getting different perspectives. You pad, you pad everything, and

(47:29):
then you sensationalized everything, and then it's yeah, yeah, yeah,
it takes like no really like like the best journalists
in the world right now getting maybe a dozen really
good scoops a year. Yeah. Time. Also like when you
take a long time, Yeah, you put work into it,
you know, outside of like reporting, Yeah, you want to

(47:51):
take like, Okay, the thing happened. I could have a
take like a Jake Tapper. I could have a take
right now, or I could wait, because but you can't wait.
It has to be immediate. Everything's immediate with and Twitter now.
So it's just it's all poisoned. It's all poisoned. Stop watching.
That's the thing. Like I have We've I've talked, like
my parents are both Trump voters, and so I talked
to them regularly about what they what they consume news wise,

(48:15):
and we have a lot of arguments, some friendly, some
not so friendly about like you know, my attempting to
get them to like pay attention to stuff that's not
Fox News, and they do, but it's always other TV news,
And like they finally asked, like, well, what else should
we be watching? Like don't watch it like reported articles
like like like like like that's that's what's important. Don't

(48:37):
don't fill your brain with like this daily flood of
we have to get something out, you know, by five
this afternoon. So like we're not going to look into
it at all. We're just going to shoot out like
whatever story we have, Like it's the same thing that
with like Jake Tapper and the ship having in Portland.
You've got this story that's been going on for three
years and it's very complicated and a bunch of journalists
have devoted thousands of hours to like reporting it and

(48:58):
studying it. And then Jake just bulges in and was like,
you're gonna get something out today. It's nine words, like
like it's the same. Yeah, I don't know that we're
gonna have time to talk about the daily I also
looked into that there's not much to say about it,
but that's a pretty thoughtful podcast and the antithesis of

(49:18):
what we're just talking about. Because they don't do things
right away. They'll still make it topical, but they're going
to take a beat to craft something, you know, and
to interview people and get a couple of different people
to talk about So The Daily is a good podcast
you can check out. It's every day between twenty and
thirty minutes. They're preparing these topics and then like if
it has to do with the news, they'll talk. It's

(49:38):
thoughtful yeah, um, and not sensationalist, but honest, you know,
I haven't listened to all of them. I'm sure they've
made miss But you can't have a good reporting and
honest reporting on a daily basis. You just have to
take the time. It has to be varied because like
what they do on the daily, they're not just having
like a stable of pundits being like what do you
think about this thing that's happened, But they can't possibly

(49:59):
have researched, their having like a specific person who spent
probably months or weeks at least studying that story and
like reporting it, like to talk about it. Yeah, people
together yelling at each other about their modern Yeah, Like
the modern state of cable news, especially as it like
applies to politics, is like if you went to a

(50:21):
It's like if you hired six really good looking people
to diagnose cars, uh, and like had them run a
mechanic shop, and it's like, well, but they don't they
don't know anything about like cars. They're they're just good
looking people who are good at talking. Uh, it's it's
it's it's dumb. It's bad. It's killing us all. Speaking
of stills, I'm going to start operating an illegal whiskey

(50:46):
still in order to keep myself saying throughout the election
that's going to be the worst year of all of
our lives. Would you guys like to do an episode
where we drink my homemade moonshine and possibly go blind
live on the air. We can live stream it. Can
I do that without going blind? All? Right? We can
only live once? Right, you only live once, and I'm

(51:09):
well informed you only go blind once. Well, that's good,
just getting out of the way, kind of like me
sharing my first section here on our new show, and
we've kind of run out of time, so we have
to wrap this one up and continue sharing all of
our research on another episode. Yeah, we're gonna have a
part two. It'll be on the day that this comes out, too,

(51:31):
So if you're listening to it, don't worry, you don't
have to wait, Just go get the second one. Now, guys,
isn't this just a shameless attempt to get more downloads.
Um okay. I would say it's an attempt to make
not a two and a half hour podcast. But also
I feel no shame about it. Oh no shame, no shame,
no shame. No. The beauty of the post truth era

(51:54):
is that shame is dead, because no matter how shameful
we act, there's always been Shapiro exactly. Speaking of which,
I have some brain pills to sell. Thank god I
could use them. They do, they work well, they're not
commercial people blind. Some people say they're just sila cybin

(52:17):
mushrooms that I ground up, uh and and and poured
into a cup with my morning coffee. Yes, not the
magical Is that the magical guy? Because I'm looking for
a place to buy mushrooms? So great, well, Katie, I
think that's a conversation for our nextcast. I'm looking for
a place to buy mushrooms, which catchy. All right, we

(52:41):
have to tonight, all right, we have to wrap this
up now, but we're going to be back immediately. So
you're welcome to say goodbye, and we're gonna say hello.
We're gonna say goodbye, and we're all going to be
played out by our theme song, which, if my notes
are correct was written and performed by the inimitable Bob Dylan.

(53:03):
So it's true. Let's roll it, um, what's wrong? Real quick?
If you want to find us, you can check out
our website Worst Year Pod dot com. You can check
us on Twitter, Worst Year Pod or on Instagram. Worst
Year Pod on Instagram. That did I do all those right?
I was reading, I was reading off of Sophie screen

(53:26):
across the table, and I've got bad eyes, so I
got I love professionalism, professionalism. Yeah, I'm just wadding. Just
pull again, pull, pull off the band aid. Speaking of
band aids, here's Bob Dylan again. Lovely. Worst Year Ever

(53:52):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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