Jeff McCall - Media Studies Professor, DePauw University Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Who paid for the import five fifty two start time
here in Houston's Morning A News. So tariffs obviously been
the big story. Wall Street has not reacted to Tariff's well,
big loss day on Friday, looks like another big loss
day is coming today. And of course the mainstream media
has kind of gotten into a frenzy over tariffs, and
I think they're part of whipping up, you know, this reaction.

(00:22):
You know, when you start to get the scare tactics
going all here, now, now we got a sixty percent
chance of recession, you know, they're breathlessly reporting. Sometimes these
things can become self fulfilling prophecies if you report that
negatively all the time. Jeff McCall joins US media studies
professor at To Paul University. I'm going to ask you
about student protesting about this kind of stuff, and a

(00:43):
second Jeff, but but i want to get your reaction
to how the mainstream media is handling this story.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well, it's been interesting to observe and it's really not
surprising that the establishment media or the mainstream media as
we call them, sometimes they want to look at virtually
every issue from an anti Trump standpoint, and they're looking
at this tariff story in the same way. And it's
really interesting because I don't think that the media is
necessarily reflecting the interest of the citizenry or the public

(01:12):
that they're trying to take an activist approach to this.
They're trying to push their own agendas. And it's not surprising,
of course, when you hear that there are zero Republicans
in the entire NPR newsroom. But the American people have
agendas and interests of their own, but those are not
necessarily reflected in the activism of the establishment media. And

(01:34):
I think the establishment media figures that they can report
on the Trump tariffs in kind of their own activist
way and not ever reflect on the fact that Biden, Schumer, Obama,
and Pelosi have all come out in favor of tariffs
over the years, with the idea to protect American workers,

(01:55):
but there is no hair on fire kind of reporting
at that time. And one of these is that Obama
and Biden never really had the nerve to follow through
with all the tariffs like Trump is doing. So we're
not really getting a broad perspective on this tariff story.
We're getting only the perspective of the hair on fire media,
and that's really not that helpful in understanding it. And

(02:16):
as you alluded to the national news agenda, the reporting
that we see from the establishment media can kind of
help direct the psychology of the market. And I'm not
an economist, but I think we all know that markets
operate a lot on psychology and operate a lot on emotion.
And when the establishment media is going crazy and trying

(02:38):
to serve this narrative that Trump has lost his mind
and the American economy is falling apart, it's not surprising
that a lot of investors, particularly those on Main Street,
are going to get skittish and try to dump out
on the market.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, no doubt. If after a while it becomes a
self fulfilling prophecy, we'll see if he gets that bad.
I'm kind of curious from your purchase to Paul, what
sort of reaction are you seeing from from your students
and from other students at the university. Are we're seeing
protesting going on over the doge cuts. What sort of
reaction is all this having on campus.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, it's hard to generalize too far, but most students,
of course this time of year, are more interested in
getting their final papers done and headed toward the end
of the semester. So I don't think that most of
them really are all that aware of the DOGE cuts
and what all that might mean for them. I think
they are interested to a certain extent in the stock
market tanking because tuish going up pretty much across the

(03:30):
board colleges across the country. But I think most college
students are probably still most interested in things like what's
going on over at Gaza and the Perhaps they're interested
in the fact that the DOGE cuts are going to
target DEI programs at a lot of colleges and university.
But I've actually been surprised that that colleges have not

(03:51):
erupted more yet in terms of elon Musk and the
DOGE cuts that might still be coming. I mean, it's
still April, we have a few weeks left in the semester.
They might get stirred up at some point, and again,
a lot of times it's not the college students necessarily
getting stirred up so much as their faculty in student
affairs officials who get stirred up and then the students

(04:12):
follow them.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, yep, I think you're absolutely right about that. Jeff
always a pleasure. Thank you, Sir, Jeff McCall, media Studies
professor at De Paul University. It's five fifty seven