California, thinks that people were duped often into voting for donald trump. Guest there is that view out there but as i talk about in the smear if you actually watched the rallies of Hillary Clinton and donald trump issue tried to watch almost every one. You talk to people outside the big cities, which i did a lot of, thats what led me to predict in advance that donald trump would be president when so many others cooperate see that. Think you get a different picture than the stereotype that it bandied about. Host tie the spear into into election 2016. Were there campaigns going on sub rosa . Guest totally. 2016 was the emit my of all the factors, whether its emotional media, smear industry in washington, dc, thats grown to this huge level, all the tack tactics. Everything claim into play in 2016. More money was spent gazillions more by Hillary Clinton and her supporters than on donald trump, far more, and i guess the lesson is even though, as i say in the book, the liberal side and the Hillary Clinton side tented to permeate the press, and the narrative against trump was upick questionout and yet he won. The commentary is disease spit me money and the democrats and media against donald trump he defied the smear and thats why i called them the wild card candidate in the book. Host what is the smear industry . Guest the smear industry is a collection of groups that ive defined and some of them are paid groups, nonprofits. Ill give examples. Pr firms that have Crisis Management functions. Llcs, global law firms. Theyre nonprofits, charities in some cases. Theyre web sites. They all work together, they all have components that are designed to take down ideas that they oppose, often by personally attacking the people most eloquent at expressing the ideas they oppose. What differentiates a smear from the truth, because there are often elements of trouble within the smear, but its purpose its rooted in annihilation and those who are directing the smear, often hidden from the public, want to remain inindividualible and want it to look like theres an organic grassroots effort going on when theyre actually pulling the strings, often in a very organized and wellfinanced way to smear an idea or people or group. Host can you put a dollar figure on what the industry has grown into . I think its multibillions but because its not broken down that way, lets say every p. R. Firm has a come opinion next of Crisis Management but its not broken down that way. How much they spend on that. But its big money. Everybody node when the call goes in, when someone has to defend themselves or deflect or wants to attack and a call goes into the Crisis Management folks 0 their Strategic Communications people, these are often elements of smears at the most basic level. And there are also many hidden ways that smear goes on, whether theyre paid people making comments on the federal register, whether there are people that are paid to rent the use of their anytime to sign opeds. I would say huge number of opeds if not the majority are now orchestrated and written by somebody else but signed by someone su. The newspapers know this and the publications onknow this. Its an open secret. Thats part of how ideas are sometimes either forwarded or stopped and or people are smeared. Host we have also been hearing recently about Opposition Research firms and their role in smearing. Is this also a growing industry . Guest absolutely. Opposition research is key to nearly every serious campaign, unfortunately. If youre just an average american that doesnt want to think that there is i guess candidates have to do due diligence. This want to find out what sometimes they offer research themselves to find about out whats findable about themselves and that is a big industry and those people are paid a lot of my. Host we want to take calls in case youre interested in talking about this topic. 2027488200 east and central time zone. 2027488201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zone. So whats your day job these day snooze my time is largely consumed producing my weekly show called full measure and its on sinclair stations nationwide. Were expanding to more spaces. We in 43 million households. And its basically a straight news show that is going to do stories that have not been done to death all week. For example, my lead story this week, i visit a three countries, the philippines, singapore, and korea to talk about chinas bun belt, one road economic policy, which threatens to put the United States in a back seat. In southeast asia. Why should we care . Aspent a lot of time trying have people explain that and explained in fairly simple terms so people can grasp these concepts they dont have time to research for themselves. Host is there a tiein between your first book, stone wail possessed and your second book the smear. In consider the smear a seek squall. Stonewalled covered the time when i was as cnbc and saw the moms to control the news and groups becoming very good at getting their nose under the tent of News Organization to influence what we do and dont put on tv. I left cbs and this book takes it further and looks deeply in the industry, inside the industry in a way i dont thing has been done before that has developed largely unseen by the American Public but a multibillion dollar industry that hat the smear its roots. What i call the smear. Host i dont think you have publicly discussed your personal politics, but in many levels youre presumed to be a conservative. Guest i think now thats definitely the propaganda that has been put out, which is fine if people want to think that. I used to be call largely liberal. The think you can pick peeks of what i have done and make the argue. Im anticorporate, pro corporate, liberal, whatever you want to cherry pick. Try to look at stories that are underserved, maybe others arent doing to death, or angles underserved on stories and just take common sense look at it and ask questions. I have many devote liberal and conservative fans of the program. Have served investigative emmy awards my recent one for investigating republicans and not liberal bud at follows investigating liberals. Most of my reporting, im not very interested in politics. Dont like it. Seems to come into my and people want to pigeon hole what you do but most of what i do is nonpolitical, just watchdogging whatever the powers may be. Host in the smear, thetivebrock plays a large hole. Guest dave brock is a fascinating character. The people i interviewed, both the conservative smear artists and the liberal smear artists alike name him as someone who is uniquely successful at what he has done with his network of nonprofits, llcs, web sites, under many different names to appear that though theyre neutral sometimes authorities, to appear as those theres many people behind him and its really a small group. Theyve been successful in campaigns who got against Hillary Clinton or other idea that david brock supports and this billionaire donor is fascinating because he began as a conservative shire artest going after the clintons and then switched sides and became someone who work nor clintons, smearing people on the other side. Host sharyl is attkisson is our gust. Es per ran a is calling in locally. Caller thank you for taking my call if dont consider miss either a republican or depcrat or independent. I have vote for both parties accordingly. I do any own research and go with who i think is the best for this great country that i love, and i arrived being [inaudible] in 1967. I find this great country i strongly love so much. After i finish my time here i went to europe, went around europe and Different Countries because my major is languages so i could see the big difference between those countries and the United States of america. Host thank you for calling in. We appreciate hearing your voice and your view. Let hit the other coast and lets hear from guillermo in los angeles. Caller good morning, sir. Thank you. For this enlightened program. Im a yellow dog democrat, and ive voted straight democrat since jimmy carter, and when donald trump came down the elevator the escalator im sorry i knew he was going to win. He touched something in me i never voted for him, would never vote for him. I despise the man. But he touch a nerve. I knew he was going to win. I predicted it. Used to have a show on the spanish radio. Even told people, im hispanic, immigrant, but he so im quite disagree with the author. I dont think its so much the smear, is that people did not realize that donald trump represented he was touching a nerve the immigration issue was organic. Knew somebody who would touch the immigration issue will win, and host all right. Guillermo, thank you very much. Does the smear cover the 2016 campaign and whether or not there were forces working for either Hillary Clinton or donald trump . Guest thats a big part of the book in the end. We planned to just sort of wrap it up after the election with the results, and then that happened and the fake news trend happened and i dug into the origin of fake news and the phrase, which i considered propaganda, and i wanted to say, yellow dog democrat means he has maybe some left liberal tendencies. Trying to remember, maybe fiscally conservative host no, yellow dog democrat is somebody who will vote for the democrat even if its a yell dough dog. The blue dog democrat is the more moderate democrat. Guest when it was the other caller. We asked people about their political leanings and the gentleman that just spoke said he would vote for trump even though he is a yellow dog. Host he would not vote for him unless the touched a nerve but he touched a nerve. Guest Many Americans are not in a box. If you say are you liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, Many Americans are on a sliding scale. May feel one way on some issues and another at other issues and are in a bit of a frustration depending on in a state of flux depending on their experience, and people are booked in and i talk to a lot of people who dont feel comfortable in those boxes. You talked about looking for the origin of fake news. Guest when it rolled out felt look the rollout of a pop began da campaign. When from i googled this, almost never in use as a phrase to suddenly every headline every day and i remember when president obama first introduced this, not by chance exspoke at carnegie melon and he said there was a need for people to curate the news. Said no one is clamoring for curating the news. So i did some investigation and learned i create the origins of the efforts in september 13, 2016, when a nonprofit called first draft came up with the idea to go after news hopes and fake news and then the rollout. President obama got on were the news every day was talking about it, Hillary Clinton got on order and initiated as a liberal effort to steer panel away from stories they didnt like and some were blatantly false. Some conservative misinformation web sites for example. But at the heart feel like it was possibly an effort to reiner to information, the last place where its free, and people can go on the internet and the Immediate Use doesnt control and it the democrats or republicans dont control. I looked into who funded first draft because i like to follow the money, and theyre tax filings were not filed even though theyre a nonprofit. They told me their funding came from google, and googles Parent Company is run by eric smitted who started this first Draft Initiative around the beginning of the election cycle, and eric i eric smitted smitted was a top hillary donor and looked like a coordinated effort to folk accuse people on fake news. Host could take a phrase and it would reach president obama. I mean, there had to be a line there, and you see that line as going through google and eric schmidt, correct . Guest yes. I see that there was an effort on a broad scale among the people that shape narratives every day in the news the put fake news on the plate of americans. There was a plan, there was a rollout of this campaign. But it got out of their hands, and i think donald trump may be the only politician that could have done what he did. Every time they called him that, he called them that. And pretty soon, the Washington Post who loved that phrase for a while was crying uncle and saying we need to stop using that phrase. So, you know, part of the mastery of donald trump in his own ability to turn around propaganda or initiate his own propaganda. Host sheryl atkinsons most recent book is called the smear, and martha is calling in from wichita, kansas. Caller hello, ms. Attkisson. Im calling because i recently saw a program on hbo called last week tonight with john oliver, and on that program he was giving a story of the onesided kind of National Feed that was sent through sinclair stations to their local networks on their local news programs and showing that the story was not changed in any way and read exactly the same on each station. And i dont remember the story, but it was rather onesided. And i dont know if youre familiar with that program. But my question, i think, is relationed to sinclair related to Sinclair Broadcasting. And you may not know their politics too much, but do you think that Sinclair Broadcasting is supporting a bill to release various companies in local markets in the control of multilocal stations and newspapers . If you understand that question. [laughter] it was, again host martha, i think youre referring to the media ownership changes that the fcc is looking at currently. Caller exactly. Host sinclair is looking at a merger with the Tribune Broadcasting company. Sheryl attkisson, anything there that you can or will address. Guest yes. I cant tell you about corporate policy. My program is done under sinclair, and theres been a large propaganda movement, people who normally wouldnt hear about owners, now comedy shows that are part of the Propaganda Campaign to attack sinclair which is seen as a threat by the people who dominate the media landscape and people of certain political affiliations. Sinclairs owner is a conservative wealthy, i think, billionaire, just as i worked for liberal billionaires when i worked at cnn and cbs, there are people connected politically who work at the top of these organizations who contribute money to democrats and republicans. I dont remember everybody questioning it when i worked for the liberal people for 30 years. It didnt really impact, as i saw, our news on a daily basis. Those corporate bosses did not get intertwined with our daily news coverage. Now, there were other issues that did happen that i write about, but its not as though Sumner Redstone or ted turner came into the newsroom and influence ared our coverage. In fact, i think ted turner worked really hard at cnn to make us stay factual at the time. Likewise, sinclair at the top, the conservative who does head sinclair has not interfered with my program. Ive had no interference compared to cnns im sorry, cbs toward the end had a great deal of interference. Its been a freshness that i cant describe to be able to go into another independent program that doesnt try to shape the news and put out narratives. These are legitimate questions to be asked. I certainly dont blame people for saying, gosh, sinclair is own by a conservative guy, what does that do for your news, but i would say in fairness, liberal networks send out onesided information that are seen by more people than the sinclair station. You have to dig in and wonder why only one station owner is getting all this press on comedy talk shows and on capitol hill when the others have existed in that same bailiwick for so long kind of unquestioningly, at least by the same people. Host who is the owner of sinclair . Whats his name . Guest david smith. Hes probably not the owner, hes just the one i dealt with when i was being hired. We discussed about my program being independent, and i said, you know, i wasnt really planning to work again in the business necessarily. And when they propossessed an idea for me proposed an idea for me just like a program i used to do at cbs, i said it cannot be conservative. It cannot be any more conservative than any stories at cbs were conservative or liberal. And he said you dont worry about that. He goes if you just tell people the truth, theyll probably be conservative. [laughter] i said, well, we can tell the truth and havent had really a bit of interference. So, again, less interference working for the conservative billionaires than i certainly had at cbs the last two years working for the liberal billionaires. Host thus the book, stonewalled, your first book. You alluded to this, but the power of the internet when it comes to the Smear Campaign. Guest you know, i almost got chills when i was speaking with one operator whos a military guy who said, you know, we can start a whole movement in 140 characters and a handful of fake twitter accounts. And you look at the solicitations the government has put online, were soliciting software for people to maintain social media accounts, fake social media accounts, but it looks like they each have individual ip addresses that rotate. They do it with connections where if you look up these people, theyll have friends that look real, and theyll be friends with people you know. They look like they do things and go places. Why are the government, Political Forces maintaining these fake accounts . Well, they know social medias the number one way to influence opinion right now whether its votes or whatever ideas they may want to go out. And they virtually control that dynamic in many ways. When he talked about that, it kind of gave me chills. I also say that, you know, a rumor or innuendo or fake news if you want to call it that, that would have been seen by relatively few people and died quickly before the internet can now develop a global following overnight and manipulating images in photography and video to make it look like something happened that didnt, this stuff has just been, you know, kind of vomited out there on our landscape and is, you know, hard to separate fact from fiction. Very