Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From hot air dot com comment on the show to
talk about his latest column, the column that I mentioned
at the very beginning of the show about why we
don't distrust the news media enough. And I have a
very healthy dose of distrust for most major news media outlets.
But boy howdy, the BBC has done it to themselves.
(00:21):
And joining me now to talk about it is David
Strong from hot air dot com. How you doing, my friend?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well? As always when I'm I'm with you, my life
is perfect.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
See this is just shameless flattery. So I invite him
back and it works every single time. That and the
fact that I enjoy his writing so much at hot
air dot com. So what did BBC do initially? And
then we'll talk about what they did in their own
investigation into their own failures from the initial thing that
I want you to talk about right now.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well, the BBC, which has a long and glorious history
of anti semity, commission a documentary about what it's like
to survive the war in Gaza and they followed around
I think a twelve or thirteen year old boy and
(01:16):
they're showing you how life is so difficult for this
young man, but how he is gamely following through and
then and they air this documentary. They push it relentlessly.
They air the documentary and along comes someone who looked
into it and they discovered, well, the little boy is
(01:39):
the son of an official in Hamas. This turned out
to be just one big propaganda campaign. And of course
the people who did the documentary knew all about this,
and they try to argue, well, it doesn't really matter
that he's the son of a homosophis. Oh he's you know,
(02:01):
he's a young man and he's in Gaza. And the
DBC at first was going to push this out worldwide,
but they got so much pushback that they eventually had
to pull it and then do an investigation into how
it happened.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, and this is the thing. First of all, the
DBC when this was brought to their attention, how do
you know how it was brought to their attention? Because
that's I would have loved to see that email.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I used to know how, But but this the original
story I wrote maybe two months ago or something like that,
but it was you know, there there's a lot of
attention on the propaganda coming.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Out of Gaza.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
There's this entire infrastructure called Pellywood, which is, you know,
sort of the Palestinian Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And people have.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Figured this out, so they start looking at who the
people are, and they're actors who show up in videos
on a regular basis. One day they're a dead body,
the next day they're a doctor, the next day they're
a journalist. And the problem is is that any actual
(03:25):
journalist or anyone employed by a media organization has to
be approved by Hamas. They're often actually Hamas operatives themselves.
And I mean, you can understand why this is. I mean,
Hamas is a terrorist organization. You're not going to send
(03:45):
you're ace reporter in there to get shot if he
says the wrong thing. But the alternative that they have
chosen is essentially to report whatever Hamas tells them.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And without that, the thing that gets me, David is
that they report it unquestionably right. They just they regurgitate
the facts that Hamas gives them the Hamas Health Ministry
without Unfortunately, a lot of people in the West don't
have a clear understanding that Hamas is entrenched in every
aspect of the Gaza strip. They are a political system,
(04:22):
they're a military arm they're an economic wing. They do
everything So when Hamas they say that the Hamas Ministry
of Health that is simply another arm of the Hamas
military wing.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Oh yeah, every doctor, everyone who works in any capacity,
and whether they're working for the government directly or not.
And Hamas is the government. So the gods a health
ministry is Hamas, but everyone who works in the hospitals
is Hamas. In fact, hostages were kept in the hospitals
(05:00):
a lot of times. You've got the tunnel entrances for
the fighters buried in schools, buried in hospitals. Uh, they
are you know, all the civilian infrastructure, which is by
the way of war crime.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
That that that is uh one of the definitions of
a war crime, because you're supposed to avoid uh civilian casualties.
As soon as you've got soldiers there, it's a legitimate
target of war. So there's let's just add one thing here,
because it's not it's it's not just the BBC as
(05:38):
bad as the BBC is, uh, but the New York Times,
one of their key reporters there is an actual Nazi.
I mean he puts up on his uh social media
all about how he loved Hitler. And when the New
York Times was confronted with this, they said, well, we
had a conversation with him, and he's got to keep
(05:59):
his politics out of the report it.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I mean, really, oh my, we we earlier in the show,
I talked about it, and I don't know if you saw
this the report from the UN Human Rights Council, which
is like joke where they did a whole report on
the quote Israel Gaza conflict that did not mention Hamas
(06:24):
one time, David.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Were October seventh.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That they just talked about October twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
They just glossed over it.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I just got back from Japan, a long trip in Japan,
and I went on all these tours in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and all of our Japanese tour guides.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
They were very.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Dedicated to the proposition of showing the horrors of atomic
war so it never happens again. They are one hundred
percent piece nicks. It is genuine. I believe them. But
boy howdy, they glossed over why we dropped those bombs
in the first place, right, I mean, it's it's their history.
But it started to annoy me and I was like,
wait a minute, and now we have the un literally
(07:03):
just glossing over the atrocities that were committed on October
seventh in order to justify more hatred at Israel. BBC
is complicit in this. Their coverage is almost some of
the worst. I think. I look at them every day,
every day, and every day I'm disgusted by what I see.
But what did they discover in their own report on
(07:25):
their own documentary, what did they what did they cop
to in their report?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well, not enough, but even they admitted that this violated
their journalistic standards, that it was deceptive, although they claimed
it was not intentionally deceptive, but it did leave the
wrong impression. And you know, they are tap danswering around
(07:55):
the fact that they are a propaganda outlet for Hamas
and they they happen they are among the worst.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
But you can go back and in twenty fourteen, Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
There's a former Associated Press reporter who quit the Associated Press.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
He was there for five years.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
He was based in Gaza for part of it, and
he wrote an article in the Atlantic about how their
offices they co office with Hamas.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Oh one, does you know, I mean office based in
Gaza is so expensive, David. They probably got a screaming
good deal on the rent in Hamas's offices, and I
mean then they have access to the tunnels right there
and any weapons they might need. So there's a lot
of benefits to partnering up with Hamas for your reporting. So,
I you know, no big deal, nothing to see here.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, and this is something you know, it really is
the equivalent of you know, having someone based in Berlin
during World War Two and telling you about, you know,
the wonders of the Nazi government and how mean the
Allies are. The New York Times during the Lamador in Ukraine,
(09:17):
one of their reporters was a Stalinist who reported from.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
The Soviet Union and he just.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Flat out lied about whether there was starvation going on.
I mean it was intentional starvation where millions of people died.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
It was a famine caused by the government.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
And he got not a Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer Prize
for that, and the New York Times refused to give
it back.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And you know, so there is a long history.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
You know, journalists not just injecting their own politics and
the we I mean, let's face it, all, all of us,
even when we try to be objective, have a hard
time separating out our opinions from how we spend stories
consciously or unconsciously. But there's a difference between that and
(10:18):
pure propaganda. And the New York Times is a long
history going back nearly one hundred years of being a
propaganda organization. The BBC is a government mouthpiece, as is PBS,
and it's always the most left wing parts of the
(10:42):
government that go into communications.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, let me ask you this. Did you see the
news that the New York excuse me, the Washington Post
is sent out an email that said, Hey, we're looking
to to you know, basically go.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Right down the middle.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
We're looking to win back the trust of the American people,
and we're looking to do it in a way that
focuses on real journalism. And if if you're not comfortable
with this, you should probably take an employee buyout, is
their hope. Because obviously Jeff Bezos is looking at the
Washington Post and saying, we're still shedding, you know, subscribers,
(11:20):
because I subscribed to the Post for probably, i don't know,
probably fifteen years until a few years ago where I
was like, what am I paying for? I'm literally paying
to be insulted my intelligence, my value system. Every single
day is their hope? You know, when Jeff Katz took
over at CNN, I was hopeful. I thought, okay, maybe,
(11:40):
well we all know how that did not end well
for him. So what about the Washington Post? Is there
hope that the ownership of this paper of the La Times,
which is doing a very similar thing with their editorial page,
are they going to be able to turn this thing around?
Or is the profession of journalism hopelessly corrupted by J
(12:00):
schools that are all left wing, by organizations that are
all left wing. They all operate in a bubble. Can
we save this entire thing?
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Well? I mean the personnel is policy, right, you know
who you hire matters quite a bit. And if you
go back to the golden age of journalism, journalists were
essentially the sort of high end, blue collar job.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know, nobody went to a j school.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
You know, these are people who many of them never
went to college. They're just they're just good at writing
and cynical.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Unfortunately, the.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Current crop of journalists have all gone through these indoctrination centers.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And I think it's going to be very hard.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
For the credential obsess elite institutions to reform even when
their leadership knows it's got to happen. And so I
think that the center of gravity, certainly of journalism, is
going to keep moving towards independent journalism. Places like the
(13:17):
Free Press, Washington Examiner, and you know, the Free Press
is great because they have, you know, spans from center
left to center right right, you know, the the you know,
(13:38):
Washington Examiner, and you know, a few other organizations tend
to lean a little bit right.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Right, and I don't want that. I don't want an overcorrection.
I don't want a bunch of hardcore right leaning. I
don't want that either. That's one of the reasons that
I became a subscriber to the Free Press almost immediately
for exactly what you said. They've got viewpoints from both
of the aisle, but they don't have the fringe on
either side, and it is refreshing to read robust discussions
(14:07):
about things and both sides of the issue. So I
don't know, you know, I kind of hope they get
it together.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I'm not sure they can pull it off. But maybe
the BBC learned a lesson, But somehow I doubt it.
What I know, oh, go ahead, did no I.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Doubt it as well.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I don't think that organizations like the New York Times,
the BBC, PBS. We saw with CNN, they tried and
they tried, and it just didn't work. And some of
it's the economics. People want to be told what they
(14:45):
believe already, which is why you're seeing this increasing divide
between the right and left wing media sphere. The market
for news that's just news is a lot smaller than
what we would like, and so the reason why CNN
(15:08):
had the tack back laughed is they kept on losing
their core audience.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And they're tired. Yeah, their tiny audience. David Strom writes
every day at hot air dot com. He is prolific
and I'd urge you to go check out his work. David,
it's good to see you again, and thanks for continuing
to do what you do. I'm there every day on
the other side of the computer screen reading what you wrote,
so just know that.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Hey, that's exciting. I like being in the same room
with you. Metaphors.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
David will talk again soon, my friend.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
All right bye, all right.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
That is David Strong from hotair dot com.
From hot air dot com comment on the show to
talk about his latest column, the column that I mentioned
at the very beginning of the show about why we
don't distrust the news media enough. And I have a
very healthy dose of distrust for most major news media outlets.
But boy howdy, the BBC has done it to themselves.
(00:21):
And joining me now to talk about it is David
Strong from hot air dot com. How you doing, my friend?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well? As always when I'm I'm with you, my life
is perfect.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
See this is just shameless flattery. So I invite him
back and it works every single time. That and the
fact that I enjoy his writing so much at hot
air dot com. So what did BBC do initially? And
then we'll talk about what they did in their own
investigation into their own failures from the initial thing that
I want you to talk about right now.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well, the BBC, which has a long and glorious history
of anti semity, commission a documentary about what it's like
to survive the war in Gaza and they followed around
I think a twelve or thirteen year old boy and
(01:16):
they're showing you how life is so difficult for this
young man, but how he is gamely following through and
then and they air this documentary. They push it relentlessly.
They air the documentary and along comes someone who looked
into it and they discovered, well, the little boy is
(01:39):
the son of an official in Hamas. This turned out
to be just one big propaganda campaign. And of course
the people who did the documentary knew all about this,
and they try to argue, well, it doesn't really matter
that he's the son of a homosophis. Oh he's you know,
(02:01):
he's a young man and he's in Gaza. And the
DBC at first was going to push this out worldwide,
but they got so much pushback that they eventually had
to pull it and then do an investigation into how
it happened.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, and this is the thing. First of all, the
DBC when this was brought to their attention, how do
you know how it was brought to their attention? Because
that's I would have loved to see that email.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I used to know how, But but this the original
story I wrote maybe two months ago or something like that,
but it was you know, there there's a lot of
attention on the propaganda coming.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Out of Gaza.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
There's this entire infrastructure called Pellywood, which is, you know,
sort of the Palestinian Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And people have.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Figured this out, so they start looking at who the
people are, and they're actors who show up in videos
on a regular basis. One day they're a dead body,
the next day they're a doctor, the next day they're
a journalist. And the problem is is that any actual
(03:25):
journalist or anyone employed by a media organization has to
be approved by Hamas. They're often actually Hamas operatives themselves.
And I mean, you can understand why this is. I mean,
Hamas is a terrorist organization. You're not going to send
(03:45):
you're ace reporter in there to get shot if he
says the wrong thing. But the alternative that they have
chosen is essentially to report whatever Hamas tells them.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And without that, the thing that gets me, David is
that they report it unquestionably right. They just they regurgitate
the facts that Hamas gives them the Hamas Health Ministry
without Unfortunately, a lot of people in the West don't
have a clear understanding that Hamas is entrenched in every
aspect of the Gaza strip. They are a political system,
(04:22):
they're a military arm they're an economic wing. They do
everything So when Hamas they say that the Hamas Ministry
of Health that is simply another arm of the Hamas
military wing.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Oh yeah, every doctor, everyone who works in any capacity,
and whether they're working for the government directly or not.
And Hamas is the government. So the gods a health
ministry is Hamas, but everyone who works in the hospitals
is Hamas. In fact, hostages were kept in the hospitals
(05:00):
a lot of times. You've got the tunnel entrances for
the fighters buried in schools, buried in hospitals. Uh, they
are you know, all the civilian infrastructure, which is by
the way of war crime.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
That that that is uh one of the definitions of
a war crime, because you're supposed to avoid uh civilian casualties.
As soon as you've got soldiers there, it's a legitimate
target of war. So there's let's just add one thing here,
because it's not it's it's not just the BBC as
(05:38):
bad as the BBC is, uh, but the New York Times,
one of their key reporters there is an actual Nazi.
I mean he puts up on his uh social media
all about how he loved Hitler. And when the New
York Times was confronted with this, they said, well, we
had a conversation with him, and he's got to keep
(05:59):
his politics out of the report it.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I mean, really, oh my, we we earlier in the show,
I talked about it, and I don't know if you saw
this the report from the UN Human Rights Council, which
is like joke where they did a whole report on
the quote Israel Gaza conflict that did not mention Hamas
(06:24):
one time, David.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Were October seventh.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That they just talked about October twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
They just glossed over it.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I just got back from Japan, a long trip in Japan,
and I went on all these tours in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and all of our Japanese tour guides.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
They were very.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Dedicated to the proposition of showing the horrors of atomic
war so it never happens again. They are one hundred
percent piece nicks. It is genuine. I believe them. But
boy howdy, they glossed over why we dropped those bombs
in the first place, right, I mean, it's it's their history.
But it started to annoy me and I was like,
wait a minute, and now we have the un literally
(07:03):
just glossing over the atrocities that were committed on October
seventh in order to justify more hatred at Israel. BBC
is complicit in this. Their coverage is almost some of
the worst. I think. I look at them every day,
every day, and every day I'm disgusted by what I see.
But what did they discover in their own report on
(07:25):
their own documentary, what did they what did they cop
to in their report?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well, not enough, but even they admitted that this violated
their journalistic standards, that it was deceptive, although they claimed
it was not intentionally deceptive, but it did leave the
wrong impression. And you know, they are tap danswering around
(07:55):
the fact that they are a propaganda outlet for Hamas
and they they happen they are among the worst.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
But you can go back and in twenty fourteen, Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
There's a former Associated Press reporter who quit the Associated Press.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
He was there for five years.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
He was based in Gaza for part of it, and
he wrote an article in the Atlantic about how their
offices they co office with Hamas.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Oh one, does you know, I mean office based in
Gaza is so expensive, David. They probably got a screaming
good deal on the rent in Hamas's offices, and I
mean then they have access to the tunnels right there
and any weapons they might need. So there's a lot
of benefits to partnering up with Hamas for your reporting. So,
I you know, no big deal, nothing to see here.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, and this is something you know, it really is
the equivalent of you know, having someone based in Berlin
during World War Two and telling you about, you know,
the wonders of the Nazi government and how mean the
Allies are. The New York Times during the Lamador in Ukraine,
(09:17):
one of their reporters was a Stalinist who reported from.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
The Soviet Union and he just.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Flat out lied about whether there was starvation going on.
I mean it was intentional starvation where millions of people died.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
It was a famine caused by the government.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
And he got not a Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer Prize
for that, and the New York Times refused to give
it back.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And you know, so there is a long history.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
You know, journalists not just injecting their own politics and
the we I mean, let's face it, all, all of us,
even when we try to be objective, have a hard
time separating out our opinions from how we spend stories
consciously or unconsciously. But there's a difference between that and
(10:18):
pure propaganda. And the New York Times is a long
history going back nearly one hundred years of being a
propaganda organization. The BBC is a government mouthpiece, as is PBS,
and it's always the most left wing parts of the
(10:42):
government that go into communications.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, let me ask you this. Did you see the
news that the New York excuse me, the Washington Post
is sent out an email that said, Hey, we're looking
to to you know, basically go.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Right down the middle.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
We're looking to win back the trust of the American people,
and we're looking to do it in a way that
focuses on real journalism. And if if you're not comfortable
with this, you should probably take an employee buyout, is
their hope. Because obviously Jeff Bezos is looking at the
Washington Post and saying, we're still shedding, you know, subscribers,
(11:20):
because I subscribed to the Post for probably, i don't know,
probably fifteen years until a few years ago where I
was like, what am I paying for? I'm literally paying
to be insulted my intelligence, my value system. Every single
day is their hope? You know, when Jeff Katz took
over at CNN, I was hopeful. I thought, okay, maybe,
(11:40):
well we all know how that did not end well
for him. So what about the Washington Post? Is there
hope that the ownership of this paper of the La Times,
which is doing a very similar thing with their editorial page,
are they going to be able to turn this thing around?
Or is the profession of journalism hopelessly corrupted by J
(12:00):
schools that are all left wing, by organizations that are
all left wing. They all operate in a bubble. Can
we save this entire thing?
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Well? I mean the personnel is policy, right, you know
who you hire matters quite a bit. And if you
go back to the golden age of journalism, journalists were
essentially the sort of high end, blue collar job.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know, nobody went to a j school.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
You know, these are people who many of them never
went to college. They're just they're just good at writing
and cynical.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Unfortunately, the.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Current crop of journalists have all gone through these indoctrination centers.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And I think it's going to be very hard.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
For the credential obsess elite institutions to reform even when
their leadership knows it's got to happen. And so I
think that the center of gravity, certainly of journalism, is
going to keep moving towards independent journalism. Places like the
(13:17):
Free Press, Washington Examiner, and you know, the Free Press
is great because they have, you know, spans from center
left to center right right, you know, the the you know,
(13:38):
Washington Examiner, and you know, a few other organizations tend
to lean a little bit right.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Right, and I don't want that. I don't want an overcorrection.
I don't want a bunch of hardcore right leaning. I
don't want that either. That's one of the reasons that
I became a subscriber to the Free Press almost immediately
for exactly what you said. They've got viewpoints from both
of the aisle, but they don't have the fringe on
either side, and it is refreshing to read robust discussions
(14:07):
about things and both sides of the issue. So I
don't know, you know, I kind of hope they get
it together.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I'm not sure they can pull it off. But maybe
the BBC learned a lesson, But somehow I doubt it.
What I know, oh, go ahead, did no I.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Doubt it as well.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I don't think that organizations like the New York Times,
the BBC, PBS. We saw with CNN, they tried and
they tried, and it just didn't work. And some of
it's the economics. People want to be told what they
(14:45):
believe already, which is why you're seeing this increasing divide
between the right and left wing media sphere. The market
for news that's just news is a lot smaller than
what we would like, and so the reason why CNN
(15:08):
had the tack back laughed is they kept on losing
their core audience.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And they're tired. Yeah, their tiny audience. David Strom writes
every day at hot air dot com. He is prolific
and I'd urge you to go check out his work. David,
it's good to see you again, and thanks for continuing
to do what you do. I'm there every day on
the other side of the computer screen reading what you wrote,
so just know that.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Hey, that's exciting. I like being in the same room
with you. Metaphors.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
David will talk again soon, my friend.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
All right bye, all right.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
That is David Strong from hotair dot com.
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