Nearly half of Americans say that they avoid reading the news, it's a problem both for citizens
and the, and journalists. This is, these are startling kinds of numbers that I read. This was
in the Guardian. And, well first of all, give me your take on that story where they say 42% of the,
of the public now avoids the news totally. And I wanna go through the list of reasons.
Yeah. I, I, I think it's obviously a very bad thing for this country. We're already
so misinformed and uninformed as it is. So for almost half the country to say, you know what?
I'm just done with the news. It is really bad for our, our public education. But then again, if you
are a regular news consumer, you're still probably not getting real actual factual news. So I don't
know if it's bad that people aren't watching the news or if it's good that people aren't
watching the news. I just know we've got some big problems and I, I don't even know where to begin.
Here, here's the list of things that the writers say that the reason that there, the news is in
the hole right now. Loss of confidence in the news. Hate agendas, they say there's too much hate
agenda by the news. The, that it's untrustworthy. These are words that come out of these polls.
That the bias is such that they can't believe what they're being told. That it's inaccurate,
most of the time it's gonna be inaccurate when they do their own look and they find out well,
was this true? It's self-serving. Now you and I have talked about this. Self-serving in the
fact that they're gonna let an advertiser get away with a hell of a lot. For example, the
pharmaceutical industry advertising on all the media, every, every four seconds,
you have an ad. Well, it's very difficult to break through and have the news actually report that,
that pharmaceutical, that they're advertising is killing people. Or how about the weapons
industry that you like to talk about? Yeah, they, they're sitting there Boeing,
you know, advertising. Oh, look at our, our wonderful jet engines. GE is another one. Look at,
we're making these wonderful jet engines here on this commercial. What are you
even selling? I mean, we're not. Are you gonna buy a jet engine?
I, I have no plans for it in the future. But what are they really doing?
They're buying their influence. They're making sure that, hey, you can't go after us because we
just spent 40 million this quarter. Yeah.
Making sure that we running ads on your network. Yeah.
So you gotta be nice to us. That's one of the things that people
are recognizing right now. And it's about time.
That's self-serving advertising agendas. The fact, this is startling to me, that they felt like the,
the media is trying to engage in social engineering that offended, that's offensive
to them. Their point being, just give me the news. Another point was that it's being driven,
that all the media is being driven by the top 1% elite. But I, I don't think
you can put it all on the media, do you? No, I, I think a lot of it has to do with,
you know, people just in general seeking out information that just reaffirms what they
already believe. Mm-hmm.
You know, the stuff they want to hear. And, and we, we do see that all the time, you know, we see
it on the left, we see it on the right. People only want to know what they think they already
know or something, of course, as you pointed out that the hate agenda that's gonna make 'em angry,
or that's gonna show that, hey, this person you dislike did another bad thing. I mean that,
that's what most of all online media is today. Yeah. Well, they're, microfocused on their
agenda. It's almost childlike. You and I joke all the time, we can put up a story
that this, the headlines can be cancer, I mean, is cured. Cancer is, is cured, cured
last Wednesday. And we can put that story up and then right underneath the story with our, I guess,
with our group of folks that follow it, we can put Trump hatred. We can put Republican hatred.
We can put anything that, that, that, that falls on Trump hatred. That sh, that story will get more
or as many as cured cancer. Now, why is that? Well, again, people seek out the information
that they think is gonna make them feel better. You know, that reaffirms whatever it
is they already believe. And again, you know, it's, it's not just us. It's, it's everybody.
Yeah. With any kind of, you know, political YouTube
channel. We, we see it all the time on the left, on the right. The right is saying, oh, the left is
terrible. Watch this horrible thing. Oh, the right is terrible. Watch this horrible thing. And in
between that, you know, we, we always try to give real news, real factual things. We're not afraid
to go after both sides when they deserve it. But what, watch what happens when we do that.
You see, if I stand up here and even talk about the middle, here, here's the middle position,
the outrage is ridic. You know, Farron why are you doing the show with Pap? Pap, you know,
you've turned into right. It, it's, the problem is it's almost a childlike analysis. I only want
to eat the ice cream. I don't want to eat the vegetables. And so, so the news is no longer
the vegetables, the news is all ice cream. Here, you're a right-winger, here's your news. You're
a left wing progressive. We know this is all you want to listen to because apparently it's
too painful to listen to anything else. So here it is. It's a dangerous place that we are right now.
It, it really is. And you know, one of the things too that came out of this report was the,
the young people. The young people and I found this was really interesting, because it kind
of goes back to the olden days, the young people say we want long form information from podcasts.
Mm-hmm. That is interesting. But what that reminds me of is, you know, way
back in, you know, my young days in the eighties, it was 60 minutes. That's your long form news.
Mm-hmm. Go all the way back, you know,
to your Ed Murrows and your Cronkites. They couldn't.
That's what it was. They couldn't exist.
Right. But it almost seems like this young generation wants to go back to that a little bit.
Yeah. They actually say, well, let's
just, let's let me hear people explain things. We think that it's the millennials that are doing
this polarized kind of listening. It's not. It's not.
As much as it is, is the baby boomers. It really is.
Which is a big surprise. It's the baby boomers that I swear, you know, people miss the fact,
for example, that our law firm owns all of Ring of Fire and in your stories, our stories run
progressive about 10 to one. But even that one story, oh God, don't tell me something
I don't want to hear. I think it's dangerous. It, it really is. People have to understand,
you know, you have to get all sides of it. Otherwise you're getting propaganda.
Yeah, exactly. You know, we, it's not our job to be
a cheerleader for one side or the other. Right.
And most of the media has gone to the cheerleading role.
Yeah. You know, it's either
our side is better, your side sucks or everything is okay, everything is fine. These corporations,
no, no, no. They're not doing anything bad to you. Yeah. Even when you do your stories that are beat
the hell outta Trump, or beat the hell out of the Republicans. Again,
that's a Ring of Fire product that we, we engage in. I mean, we own, we own this.
So we want 10 to one, but we want that middle story to at least get
somebody's attention to say my God, I've never thought about that. Very tough to do nowadays.