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Ground News and the War on Reality — Transcript

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0:00[music]
0:06Hi. Do you have a problem with getting
0:08your news from only one side of the
0:10political spectrum? Are you being fed a
0:12never-ending doom scroll of media that
0:14only serves to reinforce your existing
0:16biases and may even push you into more
0:18extreme views? Well, have I got a
0:21solution for you. That's right. It's my
0:24sponsor. Not actually my sponsor. Ground
0:27News. Ground News will show you news
0:30stories like you've never seen them
0:31before. The same story presented from
0:33multiple news sources at once,
0:35conveniently categorized by political
0:37bias, as well as showing you news
0:39stories that might be getting covered by
0:40news organizations of one political
0:42leaning but not another to help you get
0:44out of your filter bubble. Sounds great,
0:46right?
0:48Right. Chapter one. So, what's the
0:52problem with ground news anyway?
0:54There's this video by Ben Jordan about
0:57how capitalism is dying. Something I was
0:59researching for a certain other episode,
1:02and his video is pretty good. However,
1:04there was one part that made me do a
1:06double take. At one point in the video,
1:08he says there's a problem that every
1:10piece of news that the average voter
1:12sees is manipulated by a third party
1:14aggregator.
1:15>> Yeah, true. But then at the very end of
1:18the video, he turns around and says, "I
1:20suppose you want some advice on how to
1:22educate yourself about current events
1:24when an exceeding amount of news
1:26organizations are owned by billionaires
1:28and sometimes even governments." Well,
1:31Ground News, come here, I'll show you.
1:33And I'm like, wait a minute. Now, you
1:37might have heard of Ground News because
1:38they've been buying ads on popular
1:40YouTube channels faster than Raycons and
1:42Rage Shadow Legends. But Ground News is
1:44also a corporate news aggregator.
1:46serving up stories via an opaque
1:48algorithm. Right? And it's not only
1:50that, but it's a news aggregator whose
1:52chief feature is that it classifies the
1:54entirety of news output along a simple
1:56one-dimensional left-right political
1:58axis.
2:00Now, Benon Jordan says that ground news
2:03is independently owned and funded by
2:04subscribers, but this is at best a
2:07half-truth. According to their own
2:09website, in addition to subscribers,
2:11Ground News is funded by an unidentified
2:13handful of missionaligned independent
2:15investors. And if you look in Pitchbook,
2:18you'll find a number of venture capital
2:20firms in the mix, including Tech Stars,
2:22which was also one of the early
2:23investors in Uber. But even if we accept
2:26ground news independence at face value,
2:29how do they even determine the political
2:31bias of a news organization? According
2:33to them, it's based on the work of three
2:35other independent organizations. All
2:37Sides, Alfantis Media, and Media Bias
2:40Fact Check. I could deep dive into these
2:42three orgs, the opaque nature of those
2:44involved in creating their ratings, and
2:46none of them actually tell you the names
2:48of the people doing the ratings or what
2:50their credentials are, and the fact that
2:52they're all like Ground News itself,
2:54for-profit businesses. But I think it's
2:56more telling to look at the results of
2:58their work as represented by Ground
3:00News. One could of course take issue
3:02with Ground News identifying the New
3:04York Times as a publication that leans
3:06left, considering the many efforts it's
3:09made under Nepoaby owner AG.
3:10Saltzberger's ideals of neutrality and
3:12objectivity to buck that perception by
3:15hiring openly anti-woke journalists,
3:18giving voice to right-wing columnists,
3:20not to mention the famous 2020 editorial
3:22by Republican Senator Tom Cotton to send
3:25in the troops to put down the George
3:27Floyd protests and causing longtime
3:29liberal economist and Nobel Prize winner
3:31Paul Krugman to quit through editing
3:34that he said toned down his voice and
3:36forced false equivalences on him. But a
3:38more concerning case, I think, is the
3:40Wall Street Journal, a publication owned
3:42by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation,
3:44which also owns Fox News, and which
3:46Ground News tells us is politically in
3:48the center, but which, as far as I can
3:51tell, has never had an opinion piece to
3:52the left of Federico Franco. As I wrote
3:55this, the Wall Street Journal opinion
3:56pages had such absolute center takes as
3:59Mamani's Socialist Supermarket may put
4:01little grocerers out of business,
4:03despite the fact that they're
4:04specifically aimed at food deserts. a
4:06piece called the justices are finally
4:08colorblind celebrating the destruction
4:10of the civil rights act by the Supreme
4:12Court and Obama's legacy is the Trump
4:15presidency with the lead line his
4:18foreign policy was one of retrenchment
4:20and his signature health insurance law
4:22made things worse. Does them implicitly
4:26criticizing Trump by blaming him on
4:28Obama make the Wall Street Journal
4:30centrist? What kind of a bad joke is
4:32this exactly? Or consider The Economist,
4:35another publication marked as center by
4:38ground news and which for example
4:40recently had a cover story about how
4:41best to fight Gen Z socialism, which it
4:44portrayed as a me first doctrine and a
4:46threat to prosperity. or Forbes
4:49magazine, which literally has a
4:51billionaire section and whose articles
4:53include such nuance takes as one in June
4:56by the magazine's billionaire founder
4:58about how California's wealth tax is
5:00quote part of a tyrannical scheme for
5:02global economic control by people who
5:06don't understand that economic growth is
5:08limitless. Something I debunked in
5:10another video. That's definitely center
5:12according to ground news. What do you
5:15think center is supposed to mean here
5:16exactly? and who benefits from defining
5:19it this way. And while there's long been
5:20a distinction between the news and
5:22opinion sections of newspapers and even
5:24news related television programs, this
5:27isn't a distinction that ground news
5:28makes. And while the writers and
5:30newscasters of the two sections might be
5:32kept separate, they're still under the
5:34same upper management and editorial
5:36policies. The Wall Street Journal
5:38leading a story about ICE traffic stops
5:40with quotes from Trump about their
5:42importance is a more subtle form of
5:44conservative bias than an opinion piece
5:46attacking ICE protesters in New Jersey.
5:49But both go out under the same editorial
5:51opices.
5:52In fact, it sure seems like the Times
5:55feels compelled to respond to constant
5:57allegations of liberalism by
5:59self-consciously giving voice to the
6:01right, while papers like the Wall Street
6:03Journal don't bother with any such thing
6:05for the left, which creates a media
6:07environment designed to lurch steadily
6:09rightward. It's worth noting that the
6:12notion that mainstream news
6:13organizations like the Times, ABC News,
6:15or CNN are liberal media was once highly
6:19controversial. In the 90s, for example,
6:21longtime ABC news anchor Sam Donaldson
6:24remarked, "People on the right say we're
6:26too liberal, and people on the left say
6:27we're in league with the status quo,
6:29which means we're right where we should
6:31be, right in the middle." At that time,
6:34the idea that mainstream news was
6:35liberal was an accusation from the
6:37right. But that didn't mean it was
6:38accepted by the public at large, much
6:41less the newscasters themselves. Indeed,
6:43the nonpartisan nature of the news was
6:46not only believed in by those reporting
6:48it, but was and remains something
6:50actively enforced by mainstream news
6:52outlets and journalism schools. Even
6:54opinion writers, who are obviously
6:56permitted to have political opinions,
6:58are not supposed to have political
6:59affiliations or be political activists.
7:02Consider that in 2017, journalist Lewis
7:05Raven Wallace was fired from his job on
7:08the American public media radio show
7:10Marketplace because of a post on his
7:12private blog avering that objectivity in
7:14journalism was dead. While firing him,
7:17his boss, veteran journalist Deborah
7:19Clark, told him a story about how she'd
7:21been scolded by a journalism professor
7:23at university for protesting apartheid
7:26in South Africa. A journalist should be
7:28so dedicated to appearing unbiased that
7:31they can't even be seen protesting
7:33something as horrific as apartheid.
7:35Which isn't to say that mainstream media
7:37actually is or was unbiased and neutral.
7:40As I'll explore, there's all sorts of
7:41ways bias appears in news reports. But
7:44this stance of ostensible neutrality has
7:47long been used as a lever by a
7:48conservative media that seeks to portray
7:50anything to the left of far-right
7:52reaction as liberal and then to frame
7:55media bias strictly in terms of a simple
7:57left-right political axis such that the
8:00neutral mainstream is forced to present
8:02both reality and far-right reaction in
8:05terms of equal weight with facts
8:07themselves becoming mere ammunition in
8:10an ongoing culture war. And this once
8:12contentious framing gets presented as
8:14established fact by ground news or worse
8:18served up by AI as fact based on
8:20information scraped from ground news or
8:22its sources to a credulous public.
8:26This rot begins, however, not with
8:28ground news or even with the well-funded
8:30right-wing assault on the mainstream
8:31media, but rather with the whole notion
8:33of journalistic independence itself, and
8:36particularly with the redoubling of open
8:38efforts by the Epstein class to gobble
8:40up media for its own purposes. It's
8:42worth taking a look at how we got here
8:44and what this all actually means. And I
8:47promise by the end, I'll give you a
8:49better way to understand bias in media
8:51and where I think you should get your
8:52news. But first, I'll take a moment to
8:55tell you about my actual sponsor, my
8:57Patreon, at patreon.com/ericrosenfield,
9:01where you can get early adree episodes,
9:03exclusive author's notes, and more for
9:05only $1. And please do consider
9:08supporting me because I'm definitely not
9:09getting that sweet ground news money
9:11now. Also, I now have a public Discord
9:14server you can check out. Link in the
9:15description. And don't forget to like
9:17and subscribe. Chapter 2, the birth of
9:20the news.
9:22Broad sheets of various kinds go back
9:24essentially to the beginning of the
9:25printing press. But it was in the United
9:27States in the 1830s that a number of
9:30things collided to create what we would
9:32commonly recognize today as the news.
9:35Newspapers existed before this point.
9:37True, but they'd essentially fallen into
9:39two categories. Businessman's journals
9:42carrying things like what ships had come
9:43and gone from a given city, stock
9:46prices, sales and availability of
9:48various assets, and so on with little in
9:50the way of major current events that
9:52weren't directly related to business or
9:55papers published by political parties or
9:57political candidates to explicitly
9:59advance their views and agenda,
10:01essentially acting as a form of
10:02propaganda. And these papers were
10:05relatively expensive at 6 cents each,
10:07reflecting the fact that they primarily
10:09targeted an educated elite audience.
10:12Indeed, at the creation of the United
10:13States, only white male property owners
10:15could vote. So, there wasn't really a
10:17point in aiming political content at
10:19people who didn't have much money.
10:21However, with the beginnings of
10:23industrialism and the commercial boom in
10:25the US following the end of the War of
10:271812, there emerged a new urban
10:29population, and with them a new populism
10:32that kicked against the elite order of
10:34the day and expanded voting rights to
10:36non-propyowning white men. Into this
10:38environment was birthed the penny press,
10:41cheap papers that overtly targeted the
10:43working class. Funded primarily by
10:46advertising rather than political
10:48parties, these papers often proudly
10:50proclaimed their political independence
10:52and nonpartisanship.
10:54In practice, this didn't mean the facts
10:56first objectivism that would come later.
10:59News stories in these papers were often
11:00highly sensationalized and the authors
11:03happy to interject personal opinions. It
11:06only meant they weren't beholden to
11:08particular parties. And indeed, this
11:10independence allowed them to publish
11:11things that never would have been
11:13permitted by the party presses at the
11:15time. African-Americans, for example,
11:17could start their own papers and speak
11:19for themselves, as physician Martin
11:21Delaney and former slave turned or
11:23journalist Frederick Douglas did with
11:25their paper, The North Star, beginning
11:27in 1847.
11:29It was there Douglas published his
11:30famous Fifth of July speech in which he
11:33wrote, "What to the American slave is
11:35your fourth of July? I answer, a day
11:37that reveals to him more than all other
11:39days in the year the gross injustice and
11:42cruelty to which he is the constant
11:43victim. There is not a nation on earth
11:46guilty of practices more shocking and
11:47bloody than are the people of these
11:49United States at this very hour. Because
11:52of its independence, the penny press
11:54could say things no major political
11:56party of the time would have dared, with
11:58voices no political party at the time
12:00would have empowered. Likewise, between
12:031852 and 1862, articles by Karl Marx
12:06himself were regularly published in the
12:09New York Tribune, including his
12:10extensive thoughts on the American Civil
12:12War as it began, in which he ridiculed
12:15the Confederate cause as a fight for the
12:16liberty of enslaving other people, and
12:19while supporting the North also
12:20portrayed it as fundamentally a struggle
12:22between rival social systems. Thus,
12:25while the Tribune at the time prided
12:27itself on its independence and
12:28nonpartisanship, that didn't mean it had
12:31any pretense of neutrality. The notion
12:33that the news should not only be
12:35independent, but neutral or balanced,
12:37developed slowly, aided, ironically, by
12:39the rise of the ultra sensationalist
12:41yellow journalism of the New York World
12:43and the New York Herald in the late 19th
12:46century, which caused the remaining
12:48papers to try and further define
12:49themselves, in contrast, as impartially
12:51reporting the facts. It was also in this
12:54period that the separation of the news
12:56and opinion sections of newspapers began
12:59as well as the creation of the so-called
13:01inverted pyramid structure of news
13:03stories where instead of reporting
13:05events in chronological order, facts
13:07would be stated in the order of
13:08importance so that the reader could
13:10grasp the critical things right away.
13:13This inverted pyramid though
13:15inadvertently gave the journalist more
13:17opportunity to effectively bias the
13:19story than the chronological versions of
13:22events that come before because the
13:23journalist has to decide which facts are
13:26the most important and can emit facts
13:28without disrupting the narrative flow.
13:30Further, the appearance of objectivity
13:32can help portray false narratives as
13:34factual, particularly when the
13:36journalist accepts reports from those in
13:38authority at face value. Perhaps no
13:40better example of this is the case of
13:42how the endless lynching of
13:43African-Americans in the American South
13:46was reported by the mainstream press in
13:47the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
13:50White southerners and their police of
13:52course reported to journalists that
13:53these lynchings were a response to the
13:55supposed beastlike urges of black
13:57people, particularly black men who are
14:00most frequently accused of raping white
14:01women. And the newspapers duly reported
14:04them as such. the events perhaps
14:06lamentable lapses in the law but ones
14:08that were ultimately the fault of the
14:10victims and the just the facts tone of
14:12the papers helped to reinforce the sense
14:14of dispassionate truthfulness. In 1892,
14:18three African-American men were murdered
14:20in Memphis, Tennessee, which the New
14:21York Times reported per the murderer's
14:24claims as retribution for the men
14:26shooting four sheriff's deputies.
14:28African-American journalist Ida B.
14:31Wells, who had been born into slavery
14:33during the Civil War, had been friends
14:35with the murder victims, and she knew
14:36what had actually happened. As she
14:38reported in her paper, The Free Speech,
14:41what the three men had actually been
14:43guilty of was opening up a grocery store
14:45that competed with a white-owned store
14:47in a predominantly black area. Whites
14:50had fired into the store, and the men
14:51working there had fired back, wounding
14:53three, the supposed deputies of the
14:56Times report. Following this incident,
14:59more than a hundred African-American men
15:01were rounded up and arrested, and the
15:03three victims had been taken from their
15:04cells by a mob and lynched. Their
15:07grocery store, meanwhile, was looted and
15:09destroyed. And as Wells investigated
15:11more lynchings, she discovered time and
15:13again that the accusations against those
15:15lynched had no merit. Charges of rape
15:18were often made after the lynchings had
15:20become public. And when there had
15:22actually been relations between black
15:24men and white women, they were
15:26inevitably consensual. The lynchings, in
15:28other words, had nothing to do with the
15:30misbehavior of African-Americans and
15:32everything to do with African-Americans
15:34threatening white power and white
15:36supremacy.
15:37As a result of such investigations, the
15:40offices of the free speech were
15:41destroyed and Wells and the other
15:43editors were driven out of Memphis. And
15:45how did the Times, safely sconced in the
15:48supposedly more enlightened north,
15:49respond to these revelations? and to
15:51Wells work. In an editorial in 1894, the
15:55paper appined that rape was quote a
15:57crime to which Negroes are particularly
15:59prone and suggested that the solution to
16:02lynching should be to make rape a
16:03capital offense again and speed up the
16:06judicial process to make lynching less
16:07appealing. As for Wells, she was termed
16:11a slanderous and nasty-minded mulatess
16:14who does not scruple to represent the
16:16victims of black brutes in the South as
16:18willing victims. Thus, it's clear that
16:21just reporting the so-called facts does
16:23not actually mean reporting truth and
16:26indeed can often obscure it. But it's
16:28also important to note that framing this
16:30bias in terms of a left-right political
16:32spectrum doesn't actually tell you
16:34anything about its factuality. Indeed,
16:36the idea that African-American men were
16:38more prone to rape than white men was
16:41something that had been so inculcated at
16:43this point that even Frederick Douglas
16:45admitted to Wells that until he read her
16:47reporting, he too had been troubled by
16:50the quote lasciviousness of negroes.
16:52This wasn't about people of one
16:54political faction having different
16:55interpretations of events than another.
16:58This was about those in power using that
17:00power to spread lies that helped them
17:03maintain that power. And it was also
17:04about how a type of journalism that
17:06positioned itself as impartial actually
17:09served only to spread those lies while
17:11another type of journalism actively
17:13motivated by the cause of social justice
17:15was able to uncover the truth. And it
17:18was about how bllidly and
17:19unquestioningly reporting what the
17:21authorities tell you often only serves
17:23to reinforce their power. And to
17:25illustrate how little has changed, in
17:272014, an African-American father named
17:30John Crawford III picked up a BB gun at
17:32a Walmart while talking on the phone and
17:35was shot by police and handcuffed while
17:37bleeding out in the aisle with his
17:38mother still on the phone listening. The
17:40initial news story drawing from their
17:42police report read, "A man in a
17:44Southwest Ohio Walmart store waved a
17:47rifle at customers, including children,
17:49and was fatally shot by police when he
17:51wouldn't drop the weapon." And it was
17:53only because the Black Lives Matter
17:55movement was in progress that the story
17:57got any additional attention and the
17:59surveillance footage from the store got
18:01released that showed what had actually
18:03happened. Though a grand jury still
18:05decided not to indict the officers
18:06responsible, the Black Lives Matter
18:08movement was a response precisely to the
18:10same kind of phenomenon of the
18:12disposability of blacks by whites that
18:15had fueled IDB Wells more than a century
18:17earlier. But in modern newsrooms, the
18:20restriction against journalists being
18:21involved in activism means that
18:23non-white male, straight, and/or cis
18:26journalists often have to choose between
18:28their careers and fighting for their own
18:30civil rights. For example, after
18:32columnist Desmond Cole protested at a
18:34Toronto Police Services Board meeting,
18:36he was told by his employer, the Toronto
18:39Star, that there was a policy against
18:41activism, he resigned in protest.
18:44Transgender journalist Lewis Raven
18:46Wallace was told when he got his job in
18:48public radio that he had to stop his
18:50activities doing workshops about
18:52transgender issues and white privilege
18:54and told to steer clear of stories about
18:56LGBT issues. As if having someone who
18:59knew about a subject from direct lived
19:01experience made them untrustworthy on
19:04that subject. And perhaps the most
19:06brazen example of where this line of
19:08thought takes you is a headline in the
19:10LA Times in 1990 that asked, "Can women
19:13reporters write objectively on the
19:15abortion issue?" The notion of
19:17journalistic objectivity thus reinforces
19:20the perspective of the dominant status
19:22quo, which is to say, white, male,
19:24straight, and cisgender, and actively
19:26suppresses the voices of those in the
19:28minority to discuss their own lives and
19:30experiences or advocate for their own
19:33rights. They're forced to choose between
19:35fighting for their own liberation and
19:37their jobs.
19:39Chapter 3. A vast right-wing conspiracy.
19:44But in fact, it's much worse than that.
19:46It was in the early 20th century with
19:48the rise of the professionalism of
19:50journalists, including the creation of
19:52dedicated journalism schools, an
19:54influence by the professionalism of
19:55science and its ideal of the
19:57dispassionate researcher. that
19:59objectivity in news media cemented its
20:01dominance of the form. But at this
20:04point, it's notable that mainstream
20:06media was not typically seen as liberal,
20:08but as conservative. In 1919, for
20:11example, socialist writer Upton
20:12Sinclair, whose exposing of unsanitary
20:15and dangerous practices in the meat
20:17industry had led to widespread reforms
20:19and regulations, wrote the book The
20:21Brass Check, in which he stated that
20:23whatever their ostensible political
20:25neutrality, the mainstream newspapers
20:27were organized along capitalist lines
20:29and inherently prejudiced against
20:31workers and socialism. For evidence, he
20:34cited case after case where newspapers
20:36had unflatteringly portrayed strikers,
20:39unions, and socialists. Following the
20:41end of World War I, Sinclair wrote, "All
20:43the energies which were directed against
20:45the Kaiser had been turned against the
20:47radicals."
20:49And indeed, the smattering of small
20:50circulation socialist papers were
20:52essentially crushed in the 1920s during
20:54the first US Red Scare, which had
20:56followed the Bolevik Revolution in
20:58Russia and anarchist bombings in 1919
21:01and 1920. inspiring widespread
21:04crackdowns on leftist organizations,
21:06unions, and immigrants. Indeed, the
21:08first reporter fired for a supposed lack
21:10of objectivity was Morris Watson in 1934
21:15after he joined a union, showing how
21:17almost as soon as the notion of
21:19objectivity had appeared, it was used to
21:21further the class interests of the
21:23papers wealthy owners. During the social
21:25democratic reforms of Franklin
21:27Roosevelt's New Deal, Roosevelt
21:29repeatedly criticized the press lords
21:31who owned mainstream newspapers and made
21:34no secret of their Republican sympathies
21:36and antipathy for the New Deal.
21:38Meanwhile, journalist Walter Litman had
21:41been in the intelligence service during
21:43World War I and had been shocked to
21:45discover how easy it was to sway public
21:47opinion. He coined the term stereotype
21:49in its modern usage to explain how
21:52journalists and people in general could
21:54be relied on to know about things in
21:55their direct experience, but for
21:57anything outside of it would fill in
22:00context based on their own prejudices
22:02and presumptions. He also coined the
22:04term the manufacturer of consent to
22:07describe the way in which those in power
22:09could mold public opinion to their own
22:11ends. As a solution, Libman said the
22:14public needed objective facts. as he
22:17wrote, "There is no prospect in any time
22:19which we can conceive that the whole
22:21invisible environment will be so clear
22:23to all men that they will spontaneously
22:25arrive at sound public opinions on the
22:28whole business of government. But we can
22:30steadily increase our real control over
22:32these acts by insisting that all of them
22:34shall be plainly recorded and their
22:36results objectively measured." These
22:38conclusions also led him to a low
22:40opinion of the public at large and a
22:42high opinion of educated experts to make
22:44decisions and advise leaders. But as the
22:47second world war came to an end and the
22:49welfare state, regulations and high
22:51taxes on the rich of the New Deal
22:53solidified as a status quo challenged by
22:55neither major US political party, many
22:58outside of them saw the hand of
23:00outofouch technocrats at work
23:01manufacturing consent and they desired
23:04to manufacture a consent of their own.
23:07In the year 1953, wealthy textile air
23:11turned publisher Henry Regnnery gathered
23:13a group of like-minded publishers,
23:15editors, and writers in a room,
23:17including William F. Buckley Jr., Frank
23:19Hanigan, Raymond Moly, and John
23:21Chamberlain. Regny told them, "The side
23:24we represent controls most of the wealth
23:26in this country. The ideas and
23:28traditions we believe in are those which
23:29most Americans instinctively believe
23:31in." Also, why then? He wondered. was
23:34FDR style liberalism ascendant even with
23:36the election of Republican President
23:38Dwight Eisenhower. It was because Regnar
23:41said the left controlled the
23:43institutions, the media, the
23:45universities, the foreign policy
23:47establishment.
23:48Therefore, what was needed was a
23:50counterintelligence unit to fight back
23:52against these elites doineering a system
23:54that they felt they should rightly
23:56control. Of course, what Regenary saw as
23:59the left was not what Sinclair had seen
24:01as the left. Indeed, America was now
24:04deep in the Cold War and at that very
24:06moment in the throws of McCarthyism and
24:08the Second Red Scare, where people were
24:10being blacklisted for having ever been
24:12involved with any socialist
24:13organization. And the tide was already
24:16turning against unions with the Taft
24:18Hartley Act of 1947, which limited
24:20strikes and outlawed closed shops that
24:22only hired unionized workers,
24:24fundamentally undercutting worker power.
24:27And while McCarthy would be ultimately
24:29denounced, the idea that America was
24:31devoted to capitalism and anti-communism
24:34along with the New Deal and Keynesian
24:36policies had become a fundamental part
24:38of what historian Arthur Slesinger Jr.
24:41in 1949 called the vital center. Regny
24:45though drew on a fierce and highly
24:47moneyed group that had long chafed at
24:48the taxes, regulations, and public
24:51projects of the New Deal. Among his
24:53donors and supporters were textile
24:54magnet Roger Milikin, mining company
24:57owner Walter Harish Feger, Sun Oil
25:00President Jay Howard Pew, Herbert Kler
25:03of the Coler Company, oil entrepreneur
25:05Fred Ko, Roberty Wood of Sears Robuck,
25:08and many others. And what they would do
25:10with their money was craft an entirely
25:12new media ecosystem more sympathetic to
25:15their interests. The network of
25:17publications and broadcasting operations
25:19that would blossom would include Human
25:21Events, Regary Publishing, the Manion
25:24Forum, The National Review, Analysis,
25:27American Mercury, American Opinion, The
25:30Dan Smoot Report, The Free Man, among
25:32many others, as well as existing
25:34publications that turned hard right like
25:37Robert R. McCormick's Chicago Tribune.
25:40And this network would take for itself
25:41the mantle of conservative and label
25:44most everything else liberal in some
25:46cases to the horror of more traditional
25:48moderate conservatives. As I explored in
25:51how conservatives become fascists,
25:53historically the conservative movement
25:55going back to Edmund Burke 1729 to 1797
25:59had defined itself as defending the
26:01status quo and thinking change should
26:04happen slowly and carefully. While by
26:06contrast, this new conservatism was more
26:08properly described as reactionism, an
26:11effort to actively and swiftly move
26:13things backward to the state they were
26:15before the New Deal, if not in some
26:17cases before the Civil War or even
26:19before the Enlightenment.
26:21Richard Hofster would dub this the
26:23pseudoconservative revolt in 1954.
26:27But it was no use. Conservative is the
26:29label these reactionaries would be known
26:31by and continue to be known by today.
26:33The mainstream met this new media
26:35ecosystem at first with mockery. For
26:38example, William F.B. Buckley's first
26:40book, God and Men at Yale, 1951,
26:42published by Regnar with help from a
26:44generous grant by Buckley's rich father,
26:47was written of in the Sunday Review with
26:49the words, "This book is one which has
26:51the glow and appeal of a fiery cross on
26:53a hillside at night."
26:55But as the movement proceeded, the
26:57mockery quickly turned to alarm. In a
27:001962 speech, John F. Kennedy warned
27:02against extremists looking for
27:04scapegoats who would find treason in our
27:06churches, in our highest court, and even
27:09in the treatment of our water. This last
27:11was a particular reference to the John
27:13Burch Society, which published American
27:15opinion and which gleefully spread
27:17conspiracy theories, including the idea
27:19that fluoridated water was a communist
27:21plot, a notion also later parodyied in
27:24the dark comedy film Dr. Strange Love.
27:27Do you realize
27:29that fluidation
27:31is the most monstrously conceived
27:34and dangerous communist plot we have
27:36ever had to face?
27:38The John Burch Society's founder, Candy
27:41Mogul Robert Welch, owned substantial
27:43shares of Regny Publishing. And Regary
27:46had published Welch's The Life of John
27:48Burch, 1954, the book from which his
27:51society got its name. Indeed, Welch and
27:53his society's writings were so
27:55outrageous they became a source of
27:57controversy within the movement with
27:59William F.B. Buckley in particular
28:00hating Welch, though they were both
28:02connected to Regnary. However, these
28:04conservatives were already moving into
28:06the mainstream. The first hint of how
28:08far they'd come was the nomination of
28:10one of their own as Republican candidate
28:12for president in 1964. Senator Barry
28:15Goldwater, author of the smash hit The
28:17Conscience of a Conservative, 1960.
28:20Walter Litman wrote in shock of the
28:22candidates's unworldly divorce from
28:24reality and worried that his victory
28:26would quote rupture the cohesiveness
28:28around the moderate center, which is the
28:31special genius of the American party
28:32system. And while Goldwater lost in a
28:35landslide, his slogan, in your heart,
28:37you know he's right, was lampuned by the
28:39opposing Johnson campaign as in your
28:42guts you know he's nuts. His nomination
28:44augured things to come, particularly as
28:46actor Ronald Reagan first entered the
28:48political stage by campaigning for
28:50Goldwater. Reagan would soon after pen
28:53his own book for the conservative media
28:54ecosystem, The Creative Society, 1968.
28:58Meanwhile, Australian Rupert Murdoch
29:00inherited a newspaper company from his
29:02father in the 1950s and began buying up
29:05other papers in Australia and soon New
29:07Zealand and using them to influence
29:09local politics. He expanded to the UK in
29:12the 1960s, culminating in his purchase
29:14of the Story Times of London, the
29:16British Paper of Record. And in the 70s,
29:19he expanded to the United States, where
29:21he bought the tabloid, The New York
29:23Post, and changed it from a left-leaning
29:25to an extremely right-wing paper. In
29:281971, soon to be US Supreme Court
29:31Justice Lewis F. Powell wrote what's
29:33known as the Powell memo, reacting to
29:35the social movements of the 1960s by
29:38complaining about attacks on the free
29:39market from the college campus, the
29:42pulpit, the media, the intellectual and
29:44literary journals, the arts and
29:46sciences, and from politicians, and
29:49especially from the media, which is to
29:51say the liberal media. Powell complained
29:54of biased textbooks that had been
29:56rewritten by the civil rights movement,
29:58labor unions, and other interested
30:00citizens groups, and recommended the
30:03balancing of faculties on campus and
30:05monitoring of the media, especially
30:07television, and that news stands should
30:09have attractive, well-written paperbacks
30:11and pamphlets representing, as he said,
30:14our side. The Powell memo helped inspire
30:17a new generation of the wealthy to
30:19become involved in the movement. The
30:21owners of the Hehheart and Smith
30:23Richardson foundations were moved by the
30:25memorandum to merge their orgs with the
30:27conservative Carthage Foundation which
30:29had been founded in 1966.
30:32and existing conservative organizations
30:34and think tanks like the Mont Pellerin
30:36Society, the American Enterprise
30:38Institute, and the Center for Strategic
30:40and International Studies were joined by
30:42a bewildering number of others including
30:44the Manhattan Institute, the Kato
30:47Institute, the Federalist Society, the
30:49Reason Foundation, the Business Roundt,
30:52the American Legislative Exchange
30:54Council, and most successful of all, the
30:56Heritage Foundation. almost all
30:58registered as nonprofits and thus able
31:00to suck up the money of the rich as tax
31:03write-offs while serving to lobby for
31:04the rich's tax breaks. And these
31:07organizations would attract many times
31:09more money than similar liberal
31:11organizations. Between 1992 and 1994
31:14alone, for example, conservative
31:16institutions attracted $210 million,
31:19while comparable liberal institutions
31:21drumed up a mere $18.6 million. As for
31:24actual socialist organizations, there
31:27were hardly any left. As should be
31:30obvious, for the most part, the really
31:31wealthy are just dramatically more
31:33conservative than everyone else. The
31:35movement finally arrived at the White
31:37House with Reagan on the back of slogans
31:39like, "Government is not the solution to
31:42our problem. Government is the problem."
31:46Reagan told crowds that the National
31:48Review is to the offices of the West
31:50Wing of the White House what People
31:51magazine is to your dentist waiting
31:53room. Human Events was built in turn as
31:56the president's favorite newspaper. And
31:58Reagan had immediately gone to work
32:00implementing the conservative movement
32:02program, slashing taxes on the rich to
32:04levels not seen since before the New
32:06Deal, eliminating regulations and
32:08permitting media conglomeration,
32:10destroying unions, and attacking
32:12anything which wasn't in line with
32:14conservative, which is to say
32:15reactionary notions of tradition and
32:18morals. He also eliminated the fairness
32:21doctrine, which essentially had
32:22specified that broadcast media needed to
32:24present both sides of controversial
32:26issues. And this paved the way for an
32:28explosion of right-wing radio. The
32:31fairness doctrine had never covered
32:33cable TV, so it's not accurate to credit
32:35its elimination for the creation of Fox
32:37News and the like. And the conservative
32:39movement was just getting started.
32:42Chapter 4. Objectivity as a weapon.
32:46When the right accuses the mainstream of
32:48being liberal, the accusation stings
32:50precisely because the mainstream media
32:52takes pains to establish its own
32:54neutrality and independence as a sign of
32:56legitimacy. And when those accusing the
32:59media of being biased are the same
33:00magazines, newspapers, radio shows, and
33:03television favored by the president of
33:05the United States, you start thinking
33:07maybe you're not as neutral as you think
33:09you are. On top of this, most
33:11journalists are of a certain background,
33:13college educated and tending to come
33:15from wealthier upbringings, working in
33:17the urban centers where most news
33:19organizations are based. A problem
33:21that's only gotten worse over the past
33:22few decades with the mass shutterings of
33:24local newspapers. They also, as pointed
33:27out in chapter 2, tend to be
33:28predominantly white and male, but
33:31obviously that wasn't an issue for the
33:32right. And so it was easy for the right
33:34to portray the mainstream media as rich
33:36elites from liberal cities who saw
33:38everything through a liberal lens. This
33:41of course despite the fact that most of
33:43the people in the conservative media had
33:45similar backgrounds such as William F.
33:47Buckley who went to Yale and lived in
33:49New York City with a second house in
33:51Stamford, Connecticut after marrying a
33:53wealthy aerys. Not exactly a man of the
33:56people. And of course as mentioned the
33:58conservative movement is heavily funded
34:00by the ultra wealthy. But this is how it
34:02always is with the right. They position
34:04themselves as champions of the common
34:06man against the elites while
34:08simultaneously pursuing policies to
34:10undermine, disempower, and impoverish
34:12that same working class at every turn.
34:15And part of the right-wing program is to
34:17actively undermine the basic facts that
34:19are supposed to form the core of the
34:21objective neutral approach to the news
34:23whenever those facts contradict the aims
34:26of the wealthy and powerful and have
34:27established social hierarchies. For
34:30example, man-made climate change is an
34:32established fact advanced by an almost
34:33unanimous scientific consensus. But it
34:36jeopardizes the business interests of
34:38oil companies who've undergone a
34:39strategy known as the tobacco industry
34:42playbook for how it was pioneered by
34:43tobacco companies of funding fraudulent
34:46studies saying climate change was a
34:48hoax, spreading disinformation and doubt
34:51and lobbying the government to prevent
34:52any legislation that might limit oil
34:54production or favor renewable energy.
34:57And so man-made climate change and a
34:59host of other things transition from
35:01facts to politicized points of
35:04contention. And when the mainstream
35:05reports facts as facts, it merely
35:07becomes evidence of their supposed
35:09liberal bias. And this is also why the
35:12saying reality has a well-known liberal
35:14bias makes sense. And thus, mainstream
35:17news organizations, in order to maintain
35:19their carefully honed appearance of
35:20neutrality, start to refer to
35:22well-established facts in ways that
35:24frame them as debatable, to teach the
35:27controversy, as creationists are fond of
35:29saying. But if you present both sides of
35:31an issue where one side is factual and
35:33the other side is fraudulent, if you try
35:35to be even-handed and fair, all it does
35:38is legitimize the fraudulent position.
35:41And this is even more true when the lie
35:43comes from someone in a position of
35:44authority. and you report it in a
35:46neutral way in deference to that
35:48authority. As Gonzo journalist Hunter S.
35:50Thompson once remarked, "How can you be
35:52objective about Nixon?" Indeed,
35:55journalists bend over backwards to make
35:56the idiot ramblings of Donald Trump seem
35:59like normal, rational statements in a
36:01desperate effort to preserve the
36:03impression of unbiased nonpartisanship.
36:06Meanwhile, per messengers of the right,
36:08conservative media and the
36:09transformation of American politics by
36:11Nicole Hemer, even when, say, the New
36:14York Times criticizes a liberal policy,
36:17quote, conservative media activists
36:18presented it not as evidence of the
36:20paper's even-handedness, but as evidence
36:23of the policy's failure. Even the
36:25liberal New York Times had to admit.
36:28Thus, evidence that seemed to undermine
36:30the charge of liberal bias could be
36:32reinterpreted to support it. And the end
36:35result is that the news media lurches
36:37self-consciously rightward in order to
36:39avoid being called liberal, gets called
36:42liberal anyway, and makes another lurch
36:44rightward. For conservative media,
36:46though, facts aren't facts at all, but
36:48signifiers of alignment, which side of
36:51the culture war you're on. Is it our
36:53side that's good, or the side which is
36:56evil, or even for the fundamentalist
36:58set, satanic?
37:00An interesting example of how this works
37:02is the case of David Brock.
37:05The confirmation hearings of
37:06conservative Supreme Court Justice
37:08Clarence Thomas in 1991 were riven with
37:11controversy when Anita Hill, who' worked
37:14under him at the Department of
37:15Education, accused him of sexual
37:17harassment. Conservative writer David
37:19Brock wrote an article called The Real
37:21Anita Hill that became a best-selling
37:23book in which he made a parade of lies
37:26and mischaracterizations of her that
37:28played upon racist and sexist
37:29stereotypes about black women. When the
37:32article in the magazine American
37:34Spectator was featured on the Rush
37:36Limbaugh Show, circulation of the
37:38magazine tripled, leading to the editor
37:40asking Brock if he could find some more
37:42women to attack. Brock later had a face
37:45turned away from conservatism and
37:47disavowed his earlier work, saying he'd
37:50been a witting cog in the Republican
37:52sleas machine. As he describes, there
37:55were no efforts at all by the American
37:56spectator or his book publisher, The
37:58Free Press, to factcheck any of the
38:01things he said about Hill. In his later
38:04book, Blinded by the Right, 2002, he
38:07calls the article and book almost the
38:09precise opposite of the truth, and
38:11discusses how in 12 years of
38:13conservative journalism, he'd never once
38:15been fact checked. As conservative
38:18writer Matt Labash later said in an
38:19interview, "We've created this cottage
38:21industry in which it pays to be
38:23unobjective. It's a great way to have
38:25your cake and eat it, too. Criticize
38:27other people for not being objective. Be
38:29as subjective as you want. It's a great
38:31little racket." The point, after all,
38:34isn't to tell the truth. The point is to
38:36win a war. And the battlefields of the
38:39war were only expanding. In 1984, Rupert
38:42Murdoch purchased the media conglomerate
38:4420th Century Fox. The following decade,
38:47the success of Ted Turner's 24-hour news
38:49network, CNN, gave him the idea for a
38:52competitor.
38:54It's perhaps forgotten now how Fox News
38:56marketed itself following its founding
38:58in 1996.
39:00Fox News loudly declared itself to be
39:03fair and balanced. "We report. You
39:06decide," said the advertisements. Unlike
39:08those other news organizations, Fox was
39:11going to deliver just the facts,
39:13unmuddied by that pesky liberal bias.
39:15Except, of course, this was an obvious
39:17lie. Fox News gleefully rammed and
39:20continues to ram right-wing talking
39:22points and opinion shows down the
39:24throats of every viewer 24 hours a day.
39:27But it was just the most obvious example
39:29of the methodology of portraying
39:31conservatism as neutral and everything
39:33else as liberal.
39:35There was actually one show that
39:36attempted a kind of crossfire thing with
39:38a conservative and liberal discussing
39:40current events called Hannity and
39:42Combmes. Except the liberal Alan Combmes
39:45seemed to have been handpicked to be a
39:47meek and unconvincing punching bag for
39:49the boisterous conservative Shan
39:50Hannity. Moreover, as shown on similar
39:53shows of the period, like ABC's This
39:55Week with Liberal George Stephanopoulos
39:57and conservative George Will, the
39:59liberal figure's desire to come off as
40:01fundamentally fair-minded and
40:03reasonable, led him to simply grant more
40:05territory to the conservative figure,
40:07which the conservative felt absolutely
40:10no compunction to reciprocate.
40:12And in 2009, Fox finally dropped the
40:14pretense of offering a liberal
40:16counterpoint and sent Coling. And the
40:19strategy of the right to say, "Meet me
40:20in the middle and then take a step
40:22back," paid enormous dividends. Even
40:25before the rise of Fox News, the Reagan
40:27revolution had already poisoned the well
40:29to the point that the Democratic
40:31candidate in 1992 ran on such left-wing
40:34positions as private school vouchers,
40:36opposition to illegal immigration,
40:38limiting welfare, and limiting
40:40government spending. And indeed, as Eric
40:42Alterman points out in what liberal
40:44media 2003, Clinton's policies were
40:47actually largely to the right of most
40:49Western European conservative
40:51politicians at the time. But when
40:53Clinton won the election, the
40:54conservative media went to work
40:56portraying him as a radical leftist and
40:58pounced on the slightest missteps to
41:00transform them into news stories in the
41:02supposedly liberal media that would burn
41:04for months. And the conspiracism that
41:07had characterized the John Burch wing of
41:08the movement fully matured into a tool
41:11for spreading mass doubt and
41:12misinformation. For example, whipping a
41:14bad business deal Clinton had made in
41:161979 into an elaborate and entirely
41:19fabricated tale of murder and mayhem
41:22that resulted in congressional
41:23investigations.
41:25This, of course, was the vast right-wing
41:27conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton
41:29was ridiculed for accurately describing.
41:31And all this culminated with the
41:33transformation of a genuine infidelity
41:35into an elaborate circus and impeachment
41:37trial. During Senator John K's
41:39presidential bid against George W. Bush
41:41in 2004, the phenomenon of the right
41:44manufacturing these sorts of
41:45controversies during an election got a
41:47name, swift boating, based on political
41:50ads that brazingly lied about K's
41:52performance on swift boats during his
41:54service in Vietnam. and the strategy of
41:57sacrificing all semblance of factuality,
41:59policymaking or governance for the sake
42:01of political power blossomed during the
42:03Obama years, particularly following the
42:06astroturf tea party movement driven by
42:08Fox News hosts like Glenn Beck since
42:11conservative media imposed none of the
42:12mainstream media's restrictions on
42:14activism and massively funded by
42:16billionaires like the Koch brothers and
42:18that succeeded in largely drumming out
42:20moderate Republicans and those willing
42:22to compromise across the aisle. Mitch
42:24McConnell stated openly that their main
42:26priority as a party should not be
42:28governing well, but merely ensuring
42:30Obama did not get a second term. And
42:32thus, apart from a brief moment when the
42:34Democrats clung to a bare supermajority
42:36in the Senate, Congress essentially
42:38ground to a halt, refusing to pass any
42:41bill that might make it look like the
42:42administration was accomplishing
42:44anything at all. And all the while
42:46portraying Obama as a radical Marxist
42:48and even the actual antichrist on 24/7
42:52blast. a figure in reality so extreme
42:55that he personally shot down the option
42:57of universal public health care in a
42:59deal with the for-profit hospital
43:01industry. Something most developed
43:03countries take for granted and which a
43:05majority of Americans support in favor
43:07of a market-based compromise first
43:09pioneered by his future Republican
43:11opponent Mitt Romney. And I know I focus
43:14on the US here, but obviously this is
43:16not only a US phenomenon. For example,
43:18in Italy, you have Burleskone owning all
43:20the TV stations, helping to propel him
43:23to power. And in Russia, the idea that
43:25the truth is whatever those in power say
43:27it is, is practically state doctrine,
43:30and so on.
43:32Meanwhile, the conservative media
43:33ecosystem continued to grow with the
43:35right-wing Sinclair broadcast group
43:37taking advantage of deregulation to buy
43:39up television and radio stations across
43:41the country. websites like the Drudge
43:44Report and Breitbart being joined by
43:46media organizations like the Daily Wire
43:48and Blaze Media and television channels
43:50popping up that made Fox News look
43:52positively liberal like the One America
43:54News Network and Newsmax. And the
43:57billionaires funding these conservative
43:59efforts were revealed in 2024 to have
44:01been joined by massive amounts of money
44:03from Russia. I mean, when you look at
44:05all those conspiracies about George
44:07Soros secretly funding everything on the
44:09left, what you're actually seeing is
44:11projection. Part of the cliche that
44:14every accusation from the right is a
44:15confession. Because everyone, I think,
44:17knows that all the supposedly grassroots
44:20right-wing activism is astroturfed by
44:22billionaires and that Russia and others
44:24have an army of internet monkeys and
44:26bots pimping right-wingers and
44:28right-wing ideas throughout Western
44:30media. and they just can't believe that
44:32this isn't the case for the other side.
44:35But of course, as Upton Sinclair pointed
44:37out a century ago, mainstream media is
44:39also owned by and large by rich people,
44:42which of course is another thing that
44:43makes them susceptible to right-wing
44:45drift and to belittling unions and
44:47socialists. Ag Sberger of the New York
44:50Times has a lot more in common in terms
44:52of class interests with Rupert Murdoch
44:55than he does with you or me. Trump, in
44:57fact, understands perhaps better than
44:59anyone how to use the media to his
45:01advantage. He spent his political career
45:04painting the news media as the enemy,
45:06throwing their accusations of fake news
45:08back at them, and framing himself as a
45:10font of truth while compulsively lying
45:12about almost everything. Meanwhile, his
45:15every outrageous action only creates
45:17more coverage, more attention for him
45:19and his ideas. While the constant
45:20accusations of bias force the media
45:23doing the coverage to frame his every
45:25outrageousness in the cloak of
45:26normality. Much as with Nazi
45:29anti-semitism, the truth of the matter
45:31is always beside the point. You espouse
45:34the lies not because you believe they're
45:35true, but because the lie is a signifier
45:38of ideological identification. It's part
45:41of the team you're on. And to contradict
45:43it is to empower the enemy. For him and
45:46conservatives, what matters isn't truth.
45:49It's power. And in particular, the power
45:51of the Epstein class to drum out any
45:53last vests of both democratic and
45:56technocratic oversight in order to
45:58enhance the vast concentrations of
46:00wealth enabled by the private ownership
46:02of capital. And the result is that now
46:05we're witnessing the conservative
46:06ecosystem swallowing up the mainstream
46:09one altogether. Most obviously exhibited
46:11by billionaire Larry Ellison buying
46:13Paramount and putting Barry Weiss, the
46:15head of the conservative, The Free
46:17Press, in charge of CBS News and now
46:20also finalizing the purchase of Warner
46:22Brothers and with it CNN.
46:25Chapter five, ground news as a tool of
46:28the ruling class.
46:30Which brings us finally back to ground
46:32news and what it actually signifies and
46:34where you should actually be getting
46:36your news.
46:38Ground news promises to be the antidote
46:40to news bias and the influence of the
46:42powerful. But all it actually does is
46:44reinforce it by framing every news story
46:46as a battle between left and right
46:48points of view, which encourages the
46:50notion that reality itself is just a
46:53matter of political affiliation. And it
46:55makes this determination based on
46:57supposedly impartial sources that have
46:59already been co-opted to the point where
47:01they'll tell you the Wall Street
47:02Journal, The Economist, and Forbes are
47:05in the political center. And consider
47:07for a moment who this service is aimed
47:09at. Who are their potential customers?
47:12This seems to be aimed at people who
47:14want to see themselves as cleareyed and
47:17rational and who've bought into the
47:18notion that being cleareyed and rational
47:21means examining both sides of an issue
47:23with equal circumspection. Maybe even
47:25people who consider themselves leaning
47:27conservative or liberal, but probably
47:29liberal, but who are still concerned
47:31about the effects of filter bubbles on
47:33their news diet and are thus susceptible
47:35to the notion that news media slots well
47:38into a one-dimensional political scale.
47:40And so they'll come to ground news,
47:42which will reinforce the idea of news
47:43being defined by political allegiance
47:46and thus age the larger campaign of
47:48legitimizing right-wing framing and
47:50pushing the Overton window rightward. If
47:52I were conspiratorally minded, I'd say
47:54ground news itself is a right-wing SCOP,
47:57but it really doesn't have to be. There
47:59doesn't need to be a secret conspiracy
48:01to achieve what's been done out in
48:03public for all to see. The people who
48:05make ground news may genuinely believe
48:07they're doing a service for their
48:08customers, even as they're actually just
48:10more useful idiots for the ruling class.
48:13Because here's the thing, the
48:15fundamental lie undergirling all of
48:17this. News that tries to be neutral and
48:19objective, is actually bad. An
48:22appearance of neutrality and
48:23objectivity, as I think I've shown at
48:25length here, serves primarily to
48:27reinforce the status quo, making it
48:29easier for political actors to
48:31manipulate what the truth means. But the
48:34filter bubble isn't the real problem.
48:36It's the mainstream media ecosystem
48:38itself. What you actually want, what you
48:41actually need isn't ground news. No,
48:43what you actually want is a news media
48:45that isn't in the service of the Epstein
48:47class and their objectives. That isn't
48:49vulnerable or at least less vulnerable
48:51to the pernitious influence of wealthy
48:53business owners and their predilictions.
48:55No, I don't mean nonprofits. At least
48:58the way those are typically organized,
48:59their boards and funding come from the
49:01same rich people who own all the
49:03businesses. And I don't mean public
49:05media, which anyway hardly exists in the
49:07US anymore, and which we've seen all too
49:09well can easily be co-opted by
49:11conservative politicians, as with the
49:13BBC in Britain. Hey, remember when I
49:16said in all those videos that socialism
49:17doesn't mean government control, it
49:19means worker control. Well, this is why.
49:22And that's right. If you've seen my
49:23other videos, you probably know where
49:24this is going. It's worker cooperatives,
49:27media companies owned by journalists
49:29themselves and answerable to no one
49:31else. And while the journalistic
49:33apocalypse that's unfolded over the
49:35decades since the arrival of the
49:36commercial internet and the rise of
49:38private equity has been terrible for
49:40journalists as a whole, those laid off
49:42by corporate media have now formed a
49:44large number of excellent news
49:45cooperatives, including 404 media,
49:48Defector, Aftermath, Range Media,
49:51Hellgate, Flaming Hydra, and many, many
49:54others. Find some that speak to you and
49:56subscribe. That's the only place you're
49:58going to be able to find news that isn't
50:00suborn to the desires of the wealthy
50:02few, that isn't pretending that news
50:04stories have no moral weight, or that
50:06it's acceptable to objectify the
50:07horrific. As I've explained at some
50:10length before, worker cooperatives are a
50:12form of market socialism that actually
50:14empowers workers. And in addition to
50:16being good businesses, they are a key
50:18part of a larger strategy to build
50:20economic power outside the forces of
50:22capital. And this really is the only way
50:25around the whole manufacturer of consent
50:27thing. Because for all the undemocratic
50:29conclusions Litman draws from his
50:31observations about how public opinion
50:33can be swayed, he's not wrong that
50:35public opinion can be swayed. Still,
50:38this doesn't mean that, as some Marxists
50:39would have it, the moneyed interests
50:41have absolute control within the
50:42framework of liberal democracy. Despite
50:45all the propaganda of moneyed interests
50:47arrayed against them, the majority of
50:49the American public actually supports
50:51progressive policies when asked about
50:53them. Likewise, the rise in the
50:55popularity of socialism in the United
50:57States over the past decade, despite
50:59capitalism practically being on holy
51:01ground here shows just how hard it is
51:04for the Epstein class to get people to
51:06fight against their own interests when
51:08it feels like everything is collapsing
51:10around our ears. In fact, in some ways,
51:12conservative media has inadvertently
51:14been good at promoting socialism by
51:17constantly portraying things that people
51:18desperately want, like public health
51:21care and child care and so on, as
51:23socialist.
51:25You have to literally be delusional to
51:28keep running this, not realizing that
51:30this is you're going to accidentally
51:32convert Fox News watchers to democratic
51:35socialism. Your voters want this. The
51:38way we fight isn't with tools that grade
51:40news bias according to a scale actively
51:42used to manipulate and mislead us. The
51:45way we fight is by supporting
51:46organizations that don't exist for the
51:48profits and propaganda of the ownership
51:50class. Now, it's certainly nice for the
51:53various YouTube channels that have
51:55Ground News pouring VC money on them in
51:57exchange for sponsorships. And I want to
51:59be clear, I don't blame those channels
52:01for not understanding why they shouldn't
52:02take ground news premises at face value.
52:05I'm definitely not calling out any
52:07particular channels here for accepting
52:09sponsorships, especially since I know
52:11how hard it is to make any money doing
52:12this nonsense. But ground news is
52:15ultimately a pernicious force that
52:17intentionally or not serves the
52:18interests of the ruling class. And
52:20especially since alternatives are
52:22available, we should grab them with both
52:24hands.
52:26And that's it. It's funny. I said I was
52:28going to make shorter videos with maybe
52:29less research and ha
52:32uh apparently I can't help myself. And
52:34since I'm not getting any of that sweet
52:35sweet ground news money, please feel
52:38free to support me at
52:39patreon.com/ericrosenfield
52:41where you can get early adree episodes,
52:43exclusive author's notes, and more for
52:45only $1. Actually, man, I wrote a whole
52:48chapter about Walter Litman that I took
52:50out because I thought it was too much of
52:52a degression. But that guy, the more I
52:54learn about him, the more I feel like
52:56he's one of the secret figures who
52:58shaped the 20th century. I mean, the
53:00conference where the term neoliberalism
53:02was coined was the Walter Litman
53:04colloquium. So, I'm putting that chapter
53:07up on Patreon with this video. Sign up
53:09and check it out. And thanks to all my
53:12patrons who help make this work
53:13possible. Thank you.

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