There are a lot of books out there, critical of the performance of the media in the journalism industry. Why do we need another one and what is different about yours . Guest well hopefully its got some jokes in it. Hopefully it is an engaging read. I is a journalist do not have much interest in media criticism. I have a about it which is that its like an abatement. Its hazardous and you need specialized equipment. I think there is lots of good media criticism and most media criticism is indicative of the problem i talk about in this book which is that its a refuge for partisan. We dont want to talk about the ideas of us talk about the coverage. This is not my happy place. I have a experience professionally and we are having a experience professionally which the stuff, the changes that have gone through our industry in the past 20 years its been a lot. There has been a lot going on and its a time where people are really hungry for the learning curve to deepen and for us to get better lets go you talk about at great length in the book what happens at fox news when you were let go after being part of the team that called arizona for joe biden in 2020 earlier and other networks. He said it was part of the motivation for your writing the book could explain what happened there and how that fits into the problem. I won to the 2020 election cycle. I didnt understand the way that the world had changed. I have been part of calling races that made republicans unhappy before. Trust me when fox calls ohio for barack obama in 2012 i was not getting any love notes from the romney campaign. Nobody said thanks for that. I had assumed we were insisting on the consensus that grew out of the 1990s but the world changed dramatically in the 1990s. Also of course the internet and we were still in the same state. What i failed to apprehend was that after so many years where viewers readers listeners whomever could be so effectively flattering and protect it. In a highly segmented media marketplace theres a lot of incentive for outlets to treat these viewers like faberge eggs. Dont tell them the things they dont want to hear and you dont want to hinge on the climate controlled reality that news conservatives are able to maintain for themselves. If you want to America Today you can rise in the morning and from that moment until you go to bed you could process information that reinforced your worldview. You were smart and they were dom and you were patriotic and they were trying to destroy the country. If i show up in your email as say hey the guy who you believe is the only thing standing between the United States and oblivion is going to be replaced by the communist party of china if i tell you that and thats what you fear its going to have effect and thats what made me understand that request for a media model that is profitable and also responsible we are in need read the rights of trump coverage of the pandemic and coverage of january 6 and the january 6 itself or at all of that stuff points to that we have a problem that is a problem of abundance, right . Its a problem related to too much. We are serious as journalist and as citizens to do our patriotic duty which is if you love this country have to have the journalism that honors the freedoms that we enjoy here. Its a fine broad assessment of the industry and encapsulation of your book but what happened to you . You got canned for doing your work . What happened over there at fox news . Guest fox news can have anybody they want because its their news and im very grateful for the time that i had at fox. In the building where im recording this i a very happy, most of mostly happy decade in this building with my dear colleagues people like my boss Chris Wallace bret baier a great group of journalists in the Washington Bureau is a wonderful place to be. We were substantially left alone to do our thing. Ive heard a bunch about why i got fired. I can tell you ive definitely was. Thats okay because i know nobody owes me a job number one and number two this is not, i know this business. Ive been working in this business since i was 17 years old. It is remarkable to me that i have been able to spend load these many years since i was a professional journalist in 1997, 1998. In all of those years i have been able to make a living and support children and to be adapted to be a working journalist all of those years. To me it feels like ive gotten away with the greatest caper. People would pay me for what i would write in my analysis which is totally awesome so im not complaining. Host you talk about accelerating sense of people of news outlets and telling consumers what they want to hear but can you explain briefly as we are still talking about the cable news aspect which i think we all Pay Attention to because its the most active consumers of certain types gather. At the height its 4 Million Viewers on the most popular show. Can you talk about what used to be the division between the news desk at msnbc, cnn or fox and the bayside as they call it a programming with the evening opinion. That division seems to be disappearing over time. For people who are not familiar can you spell that out . Guest the way it works when i started at fox and i think this was the concept across cable news was that you have the News Division and youve got the opinion division. There are two separate things. The news pages of the newspaper in the editorial section. This outlook versus that outlet but it supposed to be basically usda minimum standards for journalism. Its always been a little different for msnbc because they have nbc news. Abc news doesnt arrange itself around msnbc or at least happen in my experience. It is focused on the 6 00 news. They are thinking about last year hold. They are thinking about feeding the of cable news. So its always worked a little differently for nbc to their advantage in terms of the resources they have have but it also pits its been a limiting agent. Watching cnn now go through a dramatic remaking of itself because cnn had tried to own the model of just the news and for a long time when there was a big national or International News cnn with move to everybody doesnt normally watch 24hour news would turn it on as a reliable source. Then as soon as a crisis or whatever would be over cnns ratings with plummet. In the trump era they really leaned in, really trump coverage. It got really sick over there and they leaned all the way in. Well now they have a new president and new ownership and the objective is to get back the balance and the aspirational fairness. They are trying to unwind a commercial decision and i quote in the book les moonves the former head of viacoms cbs who set up donald trump it may be bad for the country but its great for viacom cbs so keep going donald. I think a lot of networks and fox is included in that people were either thrilled or terrified of either it was a limbic response from American News consumers either delight or real fear and anger. Those forces created incentives for these networks to go heavy on trump. Its time to clean up. You talk about the essay writing of George Orwell in the 1920s and 1930s. We lost faith in liberal democracy and truth seeking for its own sake and its against the backdrop of fascism. There a lot of people in the media who see the rise of trump is being incipient way fascist or authoritarian and they think what the media needs to do is to abandon what they call both sides is some end to call out as Margaret Sullivan who is a former public editor at the New York Times and the Washington Post column for several years in her final column in august and the Washington Post she said a journalists job is to tell their readers electing donald trump is a threat to democracy itself. Do they share some of your foreboding about the populist authoritarian wins and why do you think they are wrong in their approach about how to respond . Guest i will let Margaret Sullivan and im a little something. The readership of the Washington Post she is already the loyal subscriber to the Washington Post and i dont know this is not research in the book. Lets say its at least 70 democratic. Its the hometown paper for a very democratic to recall washington a medium, bigcity . The Washington Post readership skews democratic. And i think the post is a good example of this. A scholar said the post was optimizing for anger better of her failing to cash in on this trump bonanza. Thats where the post goes to democracy and thats when these headlines for offline consumption go. I monitor in the book out on the day of the fall of kabul which to that point was the biggest foreignpolicy story in a long time. The number one story at the Washington Post was press releases and archive stories about a Roman Catholic cardinal who was in the hospital with coronavirus and he was against the vaccine which is a patchy story. That is the journalist who believe that we have the power to tell people what to think should remember when it is more likely our audience will tell us what to think that lead to them. We dont have the power, look republicans spend a lot of time complaining about the media oh my gosh. We often hear it because it may be condemnatory. We have the summer ms. Power to shape these things. We dont and what many journalists have sacrificed in the air of trump i hearken back to a great speech of Chris Wallace and the well deserved honor that he was receiving but he gave a stern talking to a to a group of very would we say now legacy our elite Media Outlets a stern talking to about the fact that while we have to do our work is object to betty. We know that we wont be objective and fairness is aspirational and something we are really going to obtain. Its all removed from the game that gives us whatever power we do have and it can be true that donald trump represented a unique threat to the First Amendment and the free press in the United States. That can be churned at the same time it can be true that the press sadly, sadly botched its response to it. Instead of elevating and going back back to the first principals and of basics many got down in the mud with him and that was a big mistake. Pliskova response back from the criticism establishment we can call it that brian felter who is a reliable was canceled by cnn in august is that we are living through an asymmetry right now between the two major parties and the people who support them and one side is uniquely to truth. The republicans are out there electing people who flat disagree with your call of the air is going to vote even today and they are campaigning on it and winning in arizona. Because of that the normal both sides public and say this and democrats say that is actually a way to allow people who are wrong. Liberal in the classical sense who are wrong about the truth and who have authoritarian aims giving them equal weight to the side of truth, what is your response to that is in the port as an approach . Guest his work on economics ive gotten a lot from. He wrote a newsletter for the New York Times in a row one after the Dobbs Decision overturning roe vs. Wade and he said the Supreme Court is out of hand. The Supreme Court is superseding the appropriate role of congress and the Supreme Court and i had to laugh because it was like nag you know its been with conservative stuff in the previous 50 years but a lot of whats going on around the things that you describe is again is true that the authoritarian bent inside the Republican Party is very intense the yearning for a strong man or authoritarianism among many disconcertingly large numbers of republicans is something that should be concerning to everybody. Theres that piece and its true but i think part of the problem in the media world the existence of this i dont think most conservatives and here im talking about these authoritarian yearnings, people of the mainstream traditional Ronald Reagan friday conservatism in america. Those people dont think, those people tho t was authoritarian for those people thought the left and still do think progressivism is authoritarian and crushing the hopes and dreams of humanity and its a socialist the third authoritarian state. They believe that the people on the left in the Dystopian Nightmare that they have been warning for a long time, take for example who would have had on their bingo card venerating the cheney family. Who would have said you know liberals are really going to dig the cheneys. They want to put the cheneys in prison. What are you talking about. Because donald trump represents what many liberals or many progressives 20 or 15 years ago thought was under neoconservatism or whatever else i think we have category errors that are going on people thinking about how this stuff works. You have a quote near the end of the book saying the percentage of News Coverage that is explicitly or implicitly political is so unhelpful in large part because it creates a false impression that politics itself is a worthwhile passion. Take it from a man who has devoted his professional life to politics and elections, it is not. This is hostage Suicide Attempt . Guest political coverage is awesome. Its great. Im supposed to be the weatherman. Im not supposed to be believed except for when its election time. Im supposed to be like lets check in with chris and see what stuff is going on in the world of politics. Thats good. What do the polls say and what is all that stuff and thats fine. What has happened over the past 20 years is politics a shortcut to strong emotional connection. Politics is the shortest way especially in the national media. Partisanship of the intense toxic negative partisanship we are experiencing in America Today is theres not enough National News that affects all americans to talk about all day. There just isnt. If you live and think about how much of the National News narrative is about dragging or not picking. If youre conservative and you live in alabama or lets say florida you are conservative or republican and you live in florida you are being told about story hour taking place in Washington State as far away from you as possible. It has no consequence on your Childs School but it can be a big, big story. If you live in Washington State you could hear endlessly about ron desantis what they called the dont say bill in florida. It well have more effect on your life and it doesnt affect your kids or their education but you can hear about in the outraged about it if you wanted if you choose and news providers who are trying to provide too much National News, a big part of all of this is local should come first. We should think about news in concentric circles and there just isnt that much National News that a person needs to consume in a day and Politics News is one of the only places where National News outlets know they can reliable reliably go where it will have meaning and relevance across the country and also by the way its. Its real in the thing and tv news is talk is it is expensive to send crews to interview people and get their story. Investigative journalism is really hard to cause most of the leads dont deliver a blockbuster stories that you want. Its expensive and timeconsuming and hard to do well to gain a top notch people to do it. You know what is not hard . To in the studio and have them yaketyyak to other. You are to have the crew so why not do that . Theres so much of what is on tv and its version on line is just that. That is a low nutritive quality food. That is junk food compared to what we should be doing. Host do you talk a lot in the book about half of it is aimed towards the media itself and that is aimed at the consumer. Theres a demandside problem or issue here as well which often does not give fully explored. Can you talk about what are the mechanics and why did we get to this National Versus local conception of politics deliberative political coverage and covering policies as politics . I will get these numbers a little wrong. Just to give you the idea the newspaper industry did not reach peak profits until 2005. And by the way interestingly viewership for television on average for american households we heard a lot about Court Cutting and all of that it didnt hit its peak until 2011 at nine hours a day. Anyway those industries were really making tons of money in the beginning of the 21st century and when the newspaper industry started to collapse in 2005 it felt totally apart. Something like 50 billion, 55 billion in lost revenue. It was a 90 declined. If you look at the chart you just see ad revenue for newspapers is doubling every 10 or 15 years going back to the war that this was working. It fell off the cliff not because of social media. Fell off the cliff because there is great survey research on this or Market Research on this. Do you remember what is the name where you can post something you are trying to sell, craigslist. They documented when craigslist came to town newspapers took a beating. They were living off of classified ads and the newspaper industry was badly overleveraged because you could always borrow money to buy a newspaper because newspapers are making no 30 profits. Profits in the low 20 range were expected. You had all of the conglomeration and all of these newspaper chains that bought up newspaper after newspaper after newspaper but they were heavily leveraged. When the profits dream started to shift what did the newspaper industry do . They did exactly the wrong thing which is they cut content. They cut the content at a time when they should have muscled up also it was corporate thinking which is okay revenues are down we have to cut where are we going to cut . We will cut in the newsroom and i ducked when in the book the bloodbath of newspaper and News Reporters as a category in the American Workforce over this. Not. My heartaches for so many friends. I had a newspaper basically closed out from underneath me in West Virginia. Part of the reason the im so sanguine about disruption to my career in the past few years is this is an industry where you can get fired a lot. Newspapers close things change whatever but the newspaper industry responded to these pressures by cutting content. The thing that gives them a competitive advantage. They have the newsroom and they have local knowledge to do that. This giant boy opens up and the consequences for communities across the country have been dire. There is Persuasive Research that says in communities where newspapers closed the cost of our wing money for a bond issuance goes up dramatically. They can document the rise because nobody is watching. Theres nobody at your county Commission Meeting meaningless and you prattle on that you are going to be as good as your county and corruption is like the ring of tai chi. If nobodys watching im going to try to do good and help my friends. You are running the county as well and prices go up. This hollowing out and the devastation that rolled through the local news industry what came in to fill that . Well Political National blabbermouth. We turn that telescope around. Instead of being focused on whats around us and what matters in our lives as would happen in the 1990s what else was going on . The local news industry is sinking to the bottom of the ocean whats happening nationally . Cable news segmentation and the rise of social media. Would fill the boy was not healthy and i think we are only just now coming out of the stupor. Theres a lot of good news on the local news front of a lot of good things happening but but ts is a long painful rebuilding process. Lets go speaking of its a competition between the journalism industry and congress for having the lowest public Approval Rating in the country. It might be counterintuitive to some people watching to hear that you think there is a relationship between the abdication, the willing abdication of response ability by congress and our politics. Can you talk about that . Guest lord, yes. I did not ever think id a quoting florida congressman matt gaetz in my book but i did read he wrote a book and he said in his book that the real people who won the country are Cable News Network and they are the ones who do the stuff that he was sneering about as theater from high school. I dont know what matt gaetz was in high school but it was cool, it was cool. These people are really running the country but they ate. They are 27 years old and they are trying to afford their apartment in a sketchy part of hoboken. They arent running. The people who are running things my friend and colleague joe goldberg uses the phrase parliament of pundits and we have a congress that wants my job. I dont want to do their job. Im not interested in being a member of congress, lord hear my prayer for my own good and the good of the nation. Im not interested in being in politics. I am interested in analyzing politics and talking about Political Trends because im fascinated by it. But they dont want to do their work. They want to get reelected in the way they want to get reelected despite being famous and being viral and being on television. To do those things you cant do your job well. The way it used to work in Congress Long ago when the chips were made of wood men were made of iron. The way Congress Worked people werent paying that much attention to congress. Washington was and every newspaper every major newspaper that appear on washington at the newspaper chain had bros that would provide coverage of what they would say is senator corren swagel gave an exclusive interview here and talked about how whats in the bill will bring a new dam or a road. This military base is going to be shut down but that one will be reopened. A lot of that news had a local effacing feeling because the press communicated to the folks at home. Thats not necessary anymore and the weight, but that ron desantis. Ron desantis wrote broke every rule for running in a republican primary in florida. Adam putnam had done everything right. He. All of his dues in serving congress and he got elected as agriculture commissioner. He had all the correct supporters jeb bush everything lined up for adam putnam to be the governor of florida in 2018. What did ron desantis do . He went on fox news every day it seems like that he was there and he just went under the old thinking this was a big mistake because people want it to be in their community and they want to see you as the gator wrestling or whatever floridas version of the West Virginia being dinner is thats what they want to see and its all that stuff. Ron desantis didnt do any of that and he crushed that primary. The high saturation of fox among the Republican Base particularly in florida where fox does very well beats the local news. Fox beats the local news in the National News in the markets in florida. That saturation that they went for. Off. Thats a different thing. Thats a different kind of thing. People talk about the fox primary on the republican side and i dont think its what its cracked up to be proud of think its is powerful as foxs supporters and detractors said that you cant deny its potency and how much of a part of any republican strategy fox has to be. Host i want you to the hand that is currently feeding you. Tell us why you think its a bad idea for cspan to put cameras in congress and wheat he bad for the Supreme Court and if you want to dodge that maybe just the difference between transparency and accountability. First let me say that i admire brian lamb and id love his project and what cspan set out to do and by the way i love the other content on cspan. Such a privilege for me to get to be on this broadcast because i watch it and i think its cool. This is a nice treat for me. Brian lamb is an american hero. Guest i think we can say and you can read about this and look at the book though read and the blue. Newt gingrich and the one minute speeches in the house where no one is listening and they go down to the floor. But you go down to give a thunderous denunciation of whatever and because of the rules that contra congress set for cspan you cant tell that they are alone. You cant tell its an empty changer chamber and they are talking to anybody. There looking like they are saying something important and they are on the floor of the house. It must be potent but its not. In social psychology Something Like this local social psychological principle from the hard sciences. We change it or in social psychology we talk about the hawthorne effect which came from a think it was a mccormick electric plant. The hawthorne works and they were doing a study for efficiency. I think this was in the 20s. They are doing an efficiency study that how this lighting affect worker productivity and what they found was regardless of the change in light productivity went up everywhere and they realize what it was. The workers knew that they were being observed and simply because they were being observed they change their behavior and work harder and were more efficient because they knew the bosses were watching. Cspan had a similar effect in congress. I dont want to take all the cameras out of congress for not saying that. Get the cameras out of his Committee Rooms. Theres a reason the Senate Intelligence committee is widely regarded as the best one in the most bipartisan most effective. Also there are no cameras and theres no one to perform for. You put that red light on and they see that camera out there they know if they get caught being an effective legislator and by the way we have heard a lot about how this 2022 republican primaries about trump, no denying that but it was a referendum on do you want a legislator or do you want an entertainer quakes do want someone who will get things done and help your district or your state or do you want someone whos going to be a celebrity kind of politician and her formative junk one out in my former home district the First District of West Virginia. Two republican members of Congress David mckinley and alex money. Alex money to my knowledge this had a single legislative accomplishing it but hes a firebreathing maga. Mckinnie whose been effective legislator for his district is quite conservative. Because he voted for and think about this David Mckinley voted for the transportation infrastructure bill that i guarantee you would be popular in West Virginia. In memory of robert c. Byrd West Virginians are cool with spending. They like it but in that primary that would have been popular with the general elect rick and they went with money over mckinley. The cameras and those Committee Rooms guaranteed and by the way i want to give special acknowledged that here to the discipline the january 6 committee was able to muster. I was expecting an atom schiff disaster. Performative, histrionic because these guys are mugging for the camera. They dont care whether the hearing is good. They want to create the clip that they can fund raise off of. They want the story so it can say ted cruz destroyed soandso whoever it is mazie hirono. They want that stuff and they dont care whether or not the hearing is effective. We are deprived of the ability of these individuals to reason together. We want them to reason together and we want the committees to do their work. Instead what we get is no regular order hearings and markups are performative and not reasoning together so we have a congress that wont he congress. Host of thereve been periods in populism associated with new Media Technology and you write in the book the dawn of the republic the mudslinging back and forth and the video about the election of 1800 how that was that you talk a pretty good link about the 1930s and father coughlin. Tell us how those were broken and is there anything to be gleaned from the way that those populist media fueled moments have that might give us some in 2022 when we are still snap to smack dab in the middle. Guest radio was really good for bad people. Adolf was and are mostly by the rise of radio so his speeches could be broadcast around germany and around the world. Radio was great for dirtbags like you a long and racists like charles coughlin. It was really effective because it allowed them you a long claim to have 7 million members in his well society and nbc was giving him a pot farm each and every week on the radio to basically say we are going to the confiscate and people accused him of being a dictator and he darned near was a tater in louisiana. Heres a guy who tried to hold the governorship in the senate seed at the same time. Q. We long somebody said pupil call you a dictator and hed say ive heard the wishes of the people and wouldnt that look like a dictatorship and in the 1930s a lot of americans Joseph Kennedy the future president s father and ambassador to the court of st. James Charles Limburg henry ford, a lot of people were of the mind that the american concept americanism was finished. It was an archaic system that would not work anymore. We needed modern effective efficient government. Progressivism promise these things the United States at the time but there was also on the right lets get over these niceties and lets go for strongmen. In that time radio was hugely disruptive. It created a space for demagoguery in an emotionally connected way which wasnt possible before. You could read a William Jennings speech and you might find it thrilling to the people who read he would not be crucified on a cross of gold in the newspaper later clearly had a magnetic effect because democrats nominated him by acclamation. Its effect would have been minimized around the country. By the 1930s and go from zero radio in america in 1924 when the first Radio Station broadcast the results of the 1924 election so coolidge no one in the radius of the broadcast to hear it because nobody would have had a setto tune in to listen but they were still broadcasting it. By the time you get to 1930 you have radios in 80 or 90 of homes. The disruption these computers we carry around with more power than apollo the computers that took apollo astronauts to the moon we carry these things around and we are rightly aware now of the huge disruptions that have followed. But we have to remember is radio itself was probably an even greater disruption because from the dawn of history the written work our language was the way we understood one another primarily in the written word was how we organized ourselves as a society. That was how we could understand the continental republic like ours it had to be words, written words to get it done. The arrival of the possibility that you could hear adolf and screaming throngs around him and the incredible passion or she belongs under as adaptation or when you listen to deal tapes that you can find up long its scary. Its effective. You get goosebumps because they are effective in that way and no one in the world, this was totally new in the disruptions from television were just intensification of that at the rail recorder comes with radio and it took us a long time to think about this. By the time i forget which year orson wells did work the world, 38 or 39 i forget. By the time or some wells did work the world people were hiding under the cracks in their doors so the martians do not enter their house. More than a decade and we were still not sophisticated consumers of radio. Its taken us a long time to get good at these hand computers that we are carrying around in this new way of consuming news media but i do believe we are at least through the first part and the first part is acknowledging we are up here and that corrections are necessary. People have different ideas about what corrections are necessary and what are the right steps to take what i feel we have gotten to a point at the acknowledgment of the depths of the disruption. But so you dont get it to it much in your book. Your reaction. You did talk about posttrump and postelection a lot of ratings and audience creators in need Institutions Bank got got back to other pursuits in their lives. There has been a brain drain in a way from a lot of institutions a lot of people felt like they were about to. You see a rise in podcasts. Do you see something that is encouraging their or at least analytically interesting as people go away from our childhood model of you subscribe to the newspaper if not two or three because its part of your sense of duty your prescription model has now withered away and we have much more. I trust this person even though i disagree with him or her it would be happy to give them 10 bucks a month. Guest well the media scholar called the postjournalism and in postjournalism its about a strong emotional connection with your audience that they feel in the old days its top down. We have information we are going to deliver it to you and we will either pay us to sell to advertisers or pay for subscription. Now the energy goes in the other direction which is the audience has feelings and people have so many feelings oh my gosh and they have strong feelings and they want to see their feelings reflected back at them from the outlets are providers that they choose and in these podcasts and ive a podcast. I work for the dispatch so im certainly not exempt from this. This is even narrower where it is sort of like when you get together a group of libertarians okay we are going to get a group of libertarians together and this guy says no, no, im actually a social welfare libertarian whos okay with a universal basic, what . I thought you guys were libertarians. This is the niche of the niche of the niche that i meant what he claimed he could say progressives are for anybody. We define ourselves narrowly when we are highly engaged in politics. I think in the long run well all be dead. No, in the long run things go to periods of consolidation and then atomization. During a longterm highly consolidated News Business from basically the end of the Second World War 21996 or 1997. The war that the baby boomers grew up in they were highly consolidated and then it all fell apart. Its been going on now for 25 years or so and its falling apart. What will come out on the other side will be another consolidation. You are seeing it already and local news if you look at whats going on the local News Business people are buying up the refuse. They are purchasing the shattered remains of newspapers. Sometimes they are investing in Good Journalism and other times they are just using it for you a url to pump out paytoplay junk but the consolidation is happening nonetheless and you can see it and youll see it i read an interview with one of the founders who was talking about how we are looking at having bundles where you can pay one. And get to subscribe to multiple different points of view. Like a newspaper is that what you mean . You will curating collective group of information for me. Concern consume . How thoughtful. I think theres a falling apart phenomenon. Host let me take one acre quote pyramid of context. We have become a nation of moral imbeciles. What are you talking about and how does morality fit in to the way we participate consume policy politics and news . Guest the most important moral judgment that we make are not about our enemies. Most important moral judgments that we make are about her friends. The most important moral judgments that we make are not about, how about this. Im pretty comfortable about what i think about vladimir putin. I have strong and clear feelings about vladimir putin. Got it. Words important no is to please yourself and your side, your orientation the people who you agree with and what we have because of the silent media. Lets say you only watch fox or you only watch msnbc. The events at Donald Trumps florida home are happening in two totally different worlds. On one side it is a raid by a lot of Us Justice Department bent on destroying donald trump and the scandal of the century. If youre watching the other feed you are being told that virtue is heroic Justice Department and the eminently good Merrick Garland is dared to do only the work of the people and by the way its much bigger than this. Its been interesting and it was interesting to watch how much of the left facing media made the same mistakes with trump that they did throughout the mall or investigation. My friend and one of my idols Charles Krauthammer and allegations of delusion with russia and the trump tower meeting and the russian operative for the express purpose of getting on Hillary Clinton called it botched collusion is still collision. It was evident and obvious for trumps first impeachment. Sorry i get them all mixed up trumps first impeachment it was there on its face. We had the transcripts of donald trump using his office and using the power of the presidency to get on his rivals. He was using his office saying and you could say the republican ich and many republicans did see it. I see it i disapprove of it but i dont think it rises to the level of impeachment. Im going to pass. Thats fine but a lot would need to get to that point ticos we dont get the correct input. Too many of us are not hearing views that respectfully disagree with our own. We have a lot the two sides and this is true. Its to have criticism shows where they is essentially criticize each other in cnn has canceled their show but the idea that youll have two Cable Networks as rivals this just and we think the other guy. Well okay, fine but what cnn says about fox and what fox is about cnn has no effect on the other side because nobodys hearing it. We have become morally for a lot of reasons and part of it has to do with the mob mentality that social media connectedness allowed in the power of that its also in our media diets we are hearing respectful earnest criticism in the way that we should. We should be hearing from voices that make us a little uncomfortable unless i tell people if the news that you consume in the media that you consume in your life doesnt make you a little bit uncomfortable from time to time then you need to bear vary your diet because you should walk away every day and say all of my fire are correct in everything i think is true and im good and they are bad. The mac the book is broken news why the media rage machine divides america, and how to fight back by chris stirewalt. Thank you very much and thank you reverend for watching and for cspan. I am matt welch. Welcome to the National Press club the worlds leading professional organization of journalists. Unlike