The Big Money Behind the Narrative—Sharyl Attkisson on Media Bias & Spin | American Thought Leaders — Transcript

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1. 0:00There are all kinds of people  paying a lot of money to pull
2. 0:02strings behind the scenes to make sure we  see certain things on TV and on the news
3. 0:07and read things on the news, and that we  do not see certain things on the news.
4. 0:11Much of media today seeks to advance narratives  to the exclusion of facts, fairness, and accuracy,
5. 0:17says Sharyl Attkisson, a five-time Emmy  Award-winning investigative journalist.
6. 0:22In many cases, there are big  interests and big money involved.
7. 0:26At the same time, big tech curates  what people are allowed to see
8. 0:30and applies third-party “fact-checkers”  to dictate what is accepted truth.
9. 0:34Attkisson’s forthcoming book, slated  to be released on November 24,
10. 0:38is titled “Slanted: How the News Media Taught  Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism.”
11. 0:44This is American Thought  Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
12. 0:49Sharyl Attkisson, such a pleasure to  have you on American Thought Leaders.
13. 0:54Thank you for having me.
14. 0:55Cheryl, you start your book "Slanted" with a  quote; "In a time of deceit, telling the truth
15. 1:01is a revolutionary act." This is something that  I've actually had on my Facebook page for over
16. 1:07a decade. I'm very familiar with the quote.  I always thought it was from George Orwell,
17. 1:11turns out it's not. Tell me why is it that you  started the book off with this particular quote?
18. 1:18I think for reporters and people who  provide information from any source,
19. 1:24actually providing truthful,  factual information has become
20. 1:28something that is looked at as something to  control by other people. It's looked at as
21. 1:33something to controversialize, depending  on what it says and what the facts say.
22. 1:38And it's becoming harder and harder  for people interested in accuracy,
23. 1:43fairness and facts to simply do the job of  telling these stories or these facts without
24. 1:49censors and curations and interruptions  from propagandists and special interests.
25. 1:58I told you this earlier that reading your book  I felt increasingly, chapter by chapter, "Okay,
26. 2:05I'm not crazy. Someone else is seeing  these things that I'm seeing as well."
27. 2:11Namely, one of the themes in there,  for example, is this idea that,
28. 2:17in some cases, if you simply do report  the facts straight up, you're perceived
29. 2:21as partisan. This is a bizarre phenomenon  to me. Can you speak to that a little bit?
30. 2:27As I talk about in "Slanted,"  the act of simply being
31. 2:32down the middle and fair has become such an  anomaly in the managed information landscape.
32. 2:37If you do that now you are branded as  conservative simply because, for whatever reason,
33. 2:42you're not following the liberal party  line, which is now considered the default.
34. 2:47So as you stay in the center, that is a  position that is viewed by the propagandists
35. 2:51or at least portrayed as farther and  farther to the right when it's not.
36. 2:56But it's all a part of trying to  controversialize facts that are uncomfortable
37. 3:00to try to keep stories and information  that certain interests don't want
38. 3:04told from getting told, and then by personally  attacking and controversializing the outlets,
39. 3:09or the reporters who are not following the party  line in such a way that there is hope on the part
40. 3:15of propagandists that a large section of the  public will not believe or will not listen to
41. 3:20the accurate facts. Instead, they'll just  chew on the propaganda and the spun facts.
42. 3:28It's incredible. You call this "the  narrative." And this is something of course,
43. 3:31I've heard many people refer to over past  years. So tell me what is the narrative?
44. 3:39And when did you first become  aware of the narrative?
45. 3:44It's a word that when I first  heard it used in the news industry,
46. 3:47I didn't really understand what it meant. Now I  say it all the time to myself, and I write about
47. 3:53it. But I realized that a lot of people when  they hear "narrative," that's not necessarily
48. 3:57the word they may apply to [the news], or  the phrase that they may associate with it.
49. 4:01A narrative, I say, is a storyline  that certain interests want to be told
50. 4:07to accomplish a different goal. So they may  make sure that a common thread of a story,
51. 4:13a narrative, runs through most any factual context  until it even changes the story or plays fast
52. 4:22and loose with the facts or even changes the  facts to accomplish an overarching storyline
53. 4:28that they're trying to advance to the general  public or certain audience. That's a narrative.
54. 4:34In the book I give examples such as  climate change, which may be a perfectly
55. 4:39valid discussion to have in certain contexts.  But then you see on the news that every event
56. 4:46somebody ties to climate change to the exclusion  of counterpoints, and other scientific views.
57. 4:52Well, that's furthering a narrative, to  the exclusion of the facts and fairness and
58. 4:57accuracy. We see that now we've seen the narrative  largely take over the news as we know it today,
59. 5:03compared to what it was,  really just about 15 years ago,
60. 5:07Sharryl, you're making me think of these giant  fires that we've had in California that have
61. 5:13affected communities, and of course the forest  themselves. Many people and prominent politicians
62. 5:19are ascribing these to climate change as if it's  the obvious cause. I'm thinking there's at least
63. 5:26one other very significant variable that I'm aware  of, namely, the buildup of brush in the forests
64. 5:32and improper forest management, which a few  people have pointed out. What are your thoughts?
65. 5:40The narrative demands in this current environment  that you not say those things, that's the
66. 5:45frightening thing. It's the idea that there are  now thoughts and science and views and facts that
67. 5:50are deemed to be unacceptable in the information  landscape on social media or in the news.
68. 5:56I can think of three other factors. We've  reported on all of those on my Sunday TV show
69. 6:01"Full Measure." There is the lack of properly  clearing the brush, which is a known factor.
70. 6:07They haven't done a good job, and  they've complained they haven't
71. 6:09had the money to do it. We've talked  about the financial battles over that.
72. 6:13Secondly, there are arsonists, as you know,  that have been caught setting fires. That's
73. 6:17certainly not climate change. And thirdly which  we reported on this extensively last season,
74. 6:22the power company, PG, has paid  billions of dollars to victims of
75. 6:27some of the worst wildfires in California,  because their power lines started the fire.
76. 6:34A number of fires started because  they did not properly maintain
77. 6:37the aging power lines and they would  spark during certain weather events.
78. 6:41And with the brush not properly cut away, this  would lead to these catastrophic wildfires that
79. 6:47a lot of people are improperly  attributing to climate change.
80. 6:52This is fascinating, because I didn't even  know that last one. I didn't see the most
81. 6:56recent episode of "Full Measure" clearly  or I would have known that. By the way,
82. 7:00it's an excellent program that I'll  recommend to everyone watching today.
83. 7:06Thank you. You can look that up  at fullmeasure.news. If you search
84. 7:10“PG&E,” you'll find that segment.  I find a lot of people don't know.
85. 7:14When we did this story, we had  no agenda. We just set out to go
86. 7:18look at the California wildfires, and  we've done quite a bit of reporting.
87. 7:21Then we learned that there was this huge court  case. There's been a settlement with this giant
88. 7:26power company that's been ordered by the court  to pay the victims of some of these horrible
89. 7:31fires. And that's why, by the way, there are the  blackouts, and the power goes out in California
90. 7:36during certain times when they're afraid  that the power lines may spark more fires.
91. 7:41I don't know why that isn't more commonly known  and reported, because it's well established and
92. 7:45documented in these court cases. But again, it's  because it has to do with a narrative driving the
93. 7:52news in such a way that when you turn on the TV,  or read your information, unless a certain special
94. 7:57interest has put that information in front of  the reporters or on the news, a lot of times,
95. 8:03you're not likely to see it if it's  off-narrative facts and science and information.
96. 8:09I don't know if we can put percentages on this  here. But how dominant is this narrative- focused
97. 8:17or narrative-leaning reporting today across  the whole media landscape, in your view?
98. 8:27I'd say 90 percent to 95 percent. Reporters  used to take great pride, and there's still some
99. 8:34who do and would if they could, take  great pride in digging up original stories
100. 8:39that the interests do not want us to report. The  PR firms and political figures and super PACs and
101. 8:47nonprofits that actually work for special  interests, they're always bringing these
102. 8:51story ideas to the table, trying to get them to  float to the top by sending out talking points,
103. 8:56planting them with the analysts that  they've hired to be on the news.
104. 8:59But our job, I believe, is to find those other  stories that they're trying to push off the
105. 9:04air that the special interests and the powerful  money interests don't want told and the angles
106. 9:09that they don't want us to know about. That  used to be how we approached our industry,
107. 9:13particularly investigative reporting. In general  with news reporting, when I was in local news,
108. 9:18my goal was to try to bring something new  and different to the table other than what
109. 9:21was being put out there by the people  trying to manage public opinion.
110. 9:26Now, it's as if we in the media  and the news have almost totally
111. 9:31acceded ourselves to the special interests. I  argue in "Slanted" that we've allowed ourselves
112. 9:37and the news to be used as a tool of the  propagandists, even inviting them to use
113. 9:42us to put out their talking points on each side  every day, as if we're learning anything from it.
114. 9:46Then we're paying these pundits and  analysts to use us as a propaganda vehicle
115. 9:54to present their information to  the public every day. It's a really
116. 9:57topsy-turvy and baffling environment we've  allowed. If you look up the term propaganda
117. 10:03in a dictionary, that's the pure definition of  what much of the news is doing today—inviting
118. 10:09a political supporter on each side, even if  you do it fairly, to spew forth whatever they
119. 10:17want the public to believe about something.  That used to not be considered news and not
120. 10:21what we devoted much of our news time to. And  now it's wholly dominated the news landscape.
121. 10:29You use this term, "the propagandists."  I'll say that in quotes. Obviously we're
122. 10:37talking about pundits and obviously  we're talking about special interests
123. 10:42who are looking to forward their own narratives.  But it almost sounds like there's sort of this
124. 10:48ominous, unseen group of people. What do you mean  exactly when you're saying, "the propagandists?"
125. 10:54I really covered this thoroughly in my last  book, "The Smear." There is a multi- billion
126. 10:59dollar industry that has grown largely unseen  by much of the American public, but they see
127. 11:04the effects of it. The whole point of these  propagandists, or I call them smear artists,
128. 11:09is to have the result impact the public,  but have their fingerprints not be
129. 11:14seen on the product. In other words,  they're operating behind the scenes.
130. 11:17I interviewed many smear artists, both  Democrats and Republicans for the book.
131. 11:21You might be surprised that they're happy to talk  about what they do, and how successful they are
132. 11:26at manipulating public opinion. But as one of  them told me—and I've spoken of this; it gave
133. 11:32me chills when he said it—he said virtually every  image that crosses your path on a daily basis, not
134. 11:38just the news, but in movies and comedy channels,  and billboards and things nonprofits put out,
135. 11:44was put there for a reason by somebody who paid  a lot of money to put that in the public view.
136. 11:49And once you start understanding [this], I call  it sort of "The Truman Show," an old movie,
137. 11:53if some people have seen it. But you  start understanding we're sort of
138. 11:56in a Truman Show. We're a product, we the public.  And there are all kinds of people paying a lot of
139. 12:01money to pull strings behind the scenes to make  sure we see certain things on TV and on the news
140. 12:06and read things on the news, and that we  do not see certain things on the news.
141. 12:12This has expanded particularly  since 2016 with President Trump
142. 12:17entering office to social media, because  those who are largely successful controlling
143. 12:25what was on the news saw that on the  internet, they lacked that same control.
144. 12:30So starting in 2016, they created the perception  among us that we needed our information online
145. 12:38curated and fact checked and  culled through by third parties.
146. 12:42Now we're seeing the fruits of  that, the poisonous fruit whereby
147. 12:46we've acceded our control to the special interests  that control us through the big tech companies.
148. 12:52Now they're telling us we can access certain  facts, certain studies, certain information,
149. 12:57certain viewpoints in a way that is very  Orwellian. And I think it is dangerous.
150. 13:03I definitely want to get back to this idea  that the public has been a willing participant
151. 13:10in being censored. That something very  interesting that you discuss in the book.
152. 13:17Before we do that, as you were describing the  situation, it appears to be almost like a kind of
153. 13:21extreme product placement. Then you mentioned "The  Truman Show," which is precisely that. He lives
154. 13:28in a manufactured world. Another excellent film,  by the way, if our viewers want to have a couple
155. 13:34of hours of a really remarkable piece of cinema.  "The Truman Show" is highly recommended. But it's
156. 13:42almost as if we've become this, as you describe  it, a product. Now what does that mean exactly?
157. 13:53The ability to impact our opinions, our  thoughts, what we purchase, how we vote,
158. 13:59what we believe, is a very valuable commodity. And  this smear industry, which is dark money groups,
159. 14:06and nonprofits and super PACs and charities and  all kinds of things you don't even think about
160. 14:11on a daily basis, plus government and people who  revolving-door their way between corporate and
161. 14:16government. This is how they pay and train each  other to appear in these forums, where they can
162. 14:25slant or change our thoughts to  make us think certain things.
163. 14:29The internet and social media has opened  up an entirely new opportunity for them.
164. 14:34And they're really good at it, because it's  easier than ever before with the internet,
165. 14:39and even fairly inexpensive to control social  media accounts and opinion as I talked about
166. 14:46in my last book, "The Smear." Everything  from robotics to placing fake tweets that
167. 14:52then become a tweet campaign that impacts how  the New York Times makes its decisions on news.
168. 14:59Wikipedia is manipulated. Snopes  is manipulated. I think a lot of
169. 15:03smart people know something's going on, but  they only think one layer deep. They think,
170. 15:08"Well, I'll go to Snopes, and see if it's true."  But you have to go to three layers past that
171. 15:13and understand that Snopes is conflicted as  well, because anything that can be bought,
172. 15:18purchased or impacted is being bought, purchased,  and impacted to influence our opinions.
173. 15:24The Federal Register is an unlikely example that  you probably wouldn't even think of, which I cover
174. 15:28in my last book, "The Smear."
175. 15:33One of the smear artists explained that they are  paid, these propagandists, by special interest to
176. 15:39post comments on the Federal Register  before certain federal rules go into effect.
177. 15:44And those comments, you've probably never  posted one, maybe you have. I don't know
178. 15:49anybody who's ever posted a comment before a  policy change online on the Federal Register.
179. 15:54Who's doing all of that activity? Well,  these are corporate and special interests,
180. 15:58who hire people to pretend they're ordinary  people, to make comments about things to
181. 16:03try to influence whether policies are  implemented and how it's implemented.
182. 16:08Anything that you can co-opt  they have found a way to do so.
183. 16:16I have an example here at the Epoch Times, where  there's something that simply has completely no
184. 16:23basis in fact. It's easily disprovable, if someone  were to just go look. But it somehow has become,
185. 16:29at least in certain circles, an idea  that keeps being forwarded. Notably,
186. 16:34this was in an NBC piece, maybe  a year and a half ago now,
187. 16:39that we're some sort of dark money  operation, election-focused, basically.
188. 16:46You can look at the ads, you can see the  subscription ads, you can see that the
189. 16:51funding is pretty transparent. You can look  at our filings and so forth. Yet, somehow,
190. 16:59it becomes this kind of thing that simply has  no basis in reality. You have a lot of examples
191. 17:05of this in "Slanted," which were extremely  fascinating for me to see play out. How is it that
192. 17:13something that actually is just an idea that  someone cooked up, a convenient narrative, can
193. 17:20be promulgated over time and become accepted fact,  even though it's not fact? How does that work?
194. 17:29That's the goal. It's perfect, isn't it, from  their viewpoint when they finally have gotten this
195. 17:35false narrative to be so ubiquitous that  people just sort of accept it and respond
196. 17:39to it. Sometimes even the people who are being  smeared sort of accept that "That's how people
197. 17:44view us," and they've moved into this space where  they've been totally shaped by the narrative.
198. 17:50Well, I'll give you one example of how it happens.  Let's say a big money interest doesn't like Epoch
199. 17:56Times reporting because it's factual a lot. Maybe  it's dual-sided on a climate change issue. There's
200. 18:01a ton of money, as you know, being put out there  to control people's thoughts on climate change,
201. 18:06so they need to controversialize you rather  than just argue the points in the story.
202. 18:10They need to make it where people won't read  your publication, or they automatically think
203. 18:14it's discredited, right. So that's the goal  off the top. How to accomplish that? They go,
204. 18:20big money—this is a hypothetical example—these  big donors send their money through a fundraiser,
205. 18:26so you can't trace it, to a group like  Media Matters, which is run by the
206. 18:31conservative-smear-artist-turned-liberal-smear-artist  David Brock, who runs this network of Super
207. 18:38PACs and nonprofits, names that you  may know and thought were independent
208. 18:42groups but they're all under this umbrella—I  diagrammed it in my last book, "The Smear."
209. 18:47And all he has to do is write a blog about  it, and the unquestioning media is either on
210. 18:51board with the same thing, because we've hired  these propagandists in our newsrooms, or they're
211. 18:55unaware, and sometimes reporters are lazy. They  take this information sent to them about what
212. 19:00a big story this is, look what we found out about  Epoch Times, and they don't do their own checking.
213. 19:05And then they have it put out through their  nonprofits and their watchdog groups so it
214. 19:09looks like to the media that all these different  groups have discovered things about Epoch Times.
215. 19:13It's really just one group and a guy and  some funders that started this, but it's
216. 19:18to give the appearance that there's widespread  support for or against somebody or something.
217. 19:25And pretty soon the news is reporting it.  Media Matters, word for word, lockstep,
218. 19:29you talk about—first sometimes it goes with a  quasi-news like Salon and Vox and Huffington
219. 19:33Post and all the people that march to the same  tune when Media Matters says go. And it's really
220. 19:39hard to stop that momentum of opinion when it's  been put down and become so pervasive like that.
221. 19:46And I think that's what's happened to Epoch  Times. I think it started, with your publication,
222. 19:52when you came to be more and more noticed for  doing fair, off-narrative reporting on really
223. 19:58important topics that the mainstream media  was not itself attacking and investigating.
224. 20:04Instead, when you started doing important work,  that's when I saw all of this bubbling to the top,
225. 20:10all this controversy trying to be  stirred up about the publication.
226. 20:15It's fascinating, also, when you're a media  and this happens because people can just
227. 20:19go to the website and see what's there.  That's what's really interesting to me.
228. 20:27They don't want the facts, and I talk about  this in the book as well. When you understand
229. 20:32that the narrative is the goal, not honest  reporting—you have to get out of the mindset
230. 20:37that these places still, by and large,  are trying to do honest reporting. They're
231. 20:42working with a different goal in mind:  to advance a narrative. So they succeed.
232. 20:46They don't want the other information that you  want to provide them. It doesn't matter what
233. 20:50you show them and tell them. They're going  to stay on that narrative. I have ignored
234. 20:56many false things that have been said about me  over time because it almost drives that further.
235. 21:03The people who are driving the false narrative  take what you say, as you prove that it's untrue,
236. 21:09and they're able to spin and turn that up  into a ball and make it all sound like that's
237. 21:13also part of the narrative. It almost feeds it.  That's the natural thing, what most people do,
238. 21:19and the false narrative becomes  bigger and bigger and more pervasive,
239. 21:23and more people find out about it, and  it's almost counterproductive sometimes.
240. 21:28I'm just remembering something, I think  in sort of early in the book, you were
241. 21:32discussing your work at CBS and how some of the  stories that you spent quite a bit of time on,
242. 21:38very thoughtful pieces, just were killed. But  the one example was kind of startling to me,
243. 21:43and it was the editor, I believe, who just  simply says, "I believe religion is the root
244. 21:49of all evil. We're not running this as is."  I may be embellishing a little bit here. But
245. 21:54this is kind of a bizarre concept because  if there's people that are thinking this,
246. 22:00prominent in newsrooms, killing stories, I can  really imagine how a narrative would be shaped.
247. 22:08Just this specific question, how prominent is  this kind of thing in newsrooms across America?
248. 22:16This was some years ago. I think it's  fairly common. In local news, I will say,
249. 22:20I felt there was more freedom for  local reporters. It was less political.
250. 22:24What we did on a daily basis  wasn't about politics in general.
251. 22:28And I didn't feel like there was that heavy-handed  shaping. But then come into national news.
252. 22:34When I was at CNN, back in the day, in 1990,  we weren't shaping, nobody was telling me
253. 22:39how to anchor and what to say. It was totally  different than today. We didn't put our opinions
254. 22:42in anything. But fast forward to CBS—and I'm  not just calling out CBS because I know from
255. 22:47my friends and colleagues the same things have  happened and are happening in national newsrooms
256. 22:52across the country—but even before we saw how  pervasive it was, there are all of these little
257. 22:57ways that narratives slip into our reporting  by what we report and what we don't report.
258. 23:02And I was trying to, with these anecdotes,  talk about how I've put a lot of thought into
259. 23:07it. I made, I'm sure, many mistakes without  thinking about how we're shaping the news and
260. 23:11biasing the news, sometimes unconsciously. But  there are these startling examples like that.
261. 23:17Now, I say in the book that I'm not a religious  person. But that's irrelevant to the notion of
262. 23:22whether I am going to address religion in  a story in a fair way, and let people on
263. 23:27both sides of an issue that impacts that speak.  And that's exactly what I was doing in a story.
264. 23:32But because it's so seldom done—at least it was  seldom done in this fashion at CBS—one executive,
265. 23:38when the story was finished, had the nerve—well,  they were all kind of like pooh-poohing the story,
266. 23:44and the only reason was because in a  dual-sided story with different people in it,
267. 23:48there were people on the pro-religious  side that didn't look like nuts and fools.
268. 23:53And quite frankly, there were  executives that wanted me to replace
269. 23:57these people who are quite typical Christians,  basically here in the United States on that side
270. 24:02of the first story we were doing, they  wanted me to replace those people with
271. 24:07people who appeared more extreme and  unreasonable to represent the religious view
272. 24:11so they wouldn't look like they're  people that the public can relate to.
273. 24:16And I refused to do it. And I just said,  "I'm not going to put other people in the
274. 24:19story. These are the people that we spoke  to, and they represent that view well."
275. 24:23But that happens, not just with that,  religious stories, but that's just one example.
276. 24:32You describe and come back to this  concept repeatedly in the book,
277. 24:37the substitution game. Tell me  about the substitution game.
278. 24:41I think a lot of people play it today, but it's  just that I gave it a name. I think I started
279. 24:46in the last book. If you see a news  item treated a certain way—when one
280. 24:53person or one side does something—and then it's  treated entirely differently when another side
281. 24:59or another person does it, then you can probably  think that there's a narrative involved.
282. 25:03And this happens all the time. I played this on
283. 25:07Twitter the other day where I tweeted out and  said, "Donald Trump has announced that he's
284. 25:14going to hole up and not take questions  from reporters until next Thursday and
285. 25:18not make any appearances." And then I said, "Not  really. It was Joe Biden who did that." But can
286. 25:25you imagine the news coverage if Trump were  to say, "I'm just not going to take reporters'
287. 25:29questions or appear in public for days, a week  and a half or two weeks before the election"?
288. 25:36And I'm not saying which is right or which is  wrong. I'm simply saying that whoever does that
289. 25:40thing should be treated in the news the same way.  It shouldn't matter who's the one who did it,
290. 25:45but too often, I think, we at home know that  incidents are treated differently, depending on
291. 25:51who did them and what narrative  is being furthered on the news.
292. 25:57There's this propensity to infer motive,
293. 26:00right. I'm thinking now of The New York Times  headline that you describe, where the President,
294. 26:07basically, I think he denounced racism,  denounced white supremacy. It's curious
295. 26:13because this is something that came up recently,  of course, in the debates. He was actually asked,
296. 26:18"Are you ready, sir, to denounce white supremacy?"  I recall that actually, reading your book,
297. 26:24that it was actually on the front page of The New  York Times. But that headline was changed, right?
298. 26:30Yes. So for once, The New York Times actually put  an honest headline about Trump that said he had
299. 26:35denounced racism or promoted unity. And  The New York Times got so attacked by the
300. 26:41leftist mob on Twitter—and again, these  concerns are just a few people creating
301. 26:45the appearance that there's a big mob—that The  New York Times actually changed its headline.
302. 26:50And we can see in that chapter about The New  York Times that there was a later discussion at
303. 26:54a staff meeting about—and a lot of headlines have  been changed on The Times like this by the mob,
304. 26:59sort of like news by popularity contest—and
305. 27:03there were people who are arguing, "Well,  they've been demanding Trump denounce racism."
306. 27:07By the way, I did a podcast on this the other  day. He's done this since 2000, explicitly,
307. 27:12so many times, but the media always pretends he's  never done it, but there's always demands for him
308. 27:17to do it. And then when he explicitly does it,  these New York Times staffers were arguing, "Well,
309. 27:22we shouldn't report that he said it because he  didn't mean it because we all know he's a racist."
310. 27:26So on the one hand, they're demanding this
311. 27:29disavowal of racism and condemnation—which Trump  has done repeatedly—but when he specifically does
312. 27:35it, and it makes a headline, they  say, "Well, The New York Times, we
313. 27:39should not grant him that because we're just doing  his bidding by reporting what he said." And they
314. 27:45changed that headline to say something completely  different, then went off on another narrative.
315. 27:51A lot of, I don't know if we can call it  journalism anymore, is actually not just
316. 27:57trying to tell you what happened and dig into  that, but to tell you what to think about it,
317. 28:03right, and hence, this inferring of motives.  You have a number of really fascinating examples
318. 28:11of this that you're describing. How is it that  we as an audience—I guess I'm in the media. I
319. 28:20play both sides—but how is  it that people are complicit
320. 28:26in getting this type of whether you want to call  it censorship or shaping of narrative in only a
321. 28:36particular direction or in only a particular  few directions? How are we complicit in that?
322. 28:41I'm blaming us because we are in part to blame,  but the people who are doing it to us have been
323. 28:48quite clever about the way they've done it. I  spoke a little earlier about how prior to 2016,
324. 28:53if you look at the news, people were not asking  for their news to be curated. They weren't
325. 28:58asking for these massive fact checks by third  parties and conflicted nonprofits and academics.
326. 29:03There was a market for that that was  cleverly created in 2016 by those
327. 29:07who wanted us to demand it and then be  so happy when finally Facebook was fact
328. 29:12checking things for us because we don't know  what to think, and we don't know what to decide.
329. 29:16Think about that. Five years before  this happened, that concept, I think,
330. 29:21would have just really stunned everybody  that we would invite companies—who have
331. 29:25no expertise in any of this stuff, by the  way, no matter how many experts they hire—to
332. 29:30be the ones that step in on a moment's notice  with a news story and tell you what's true, and
333. 29:34give you context and tell you what you can't share  as if they know any of those things in an instant?
334. 29:40But now, we've become so numb to the notion,  we're actually inviting it. The subtitle of
335. 29:45my book is "How the [News] Media Taught Us  to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism."
336. 29:50Many of us are inviting and cheering on these fake  fact checks and the curating of our information,
337. 29:55our news, not realizing I think, the  slippery slope that we're going down whereby
338. 30:01I think in 10 years, if we don't change  things, it'll be a distant memory
339. 30:05that we could find most information we wanted  to find on the internet. We won't be able to
340. 30:09access it anymore. Only that which the  powerful interests wish for us to see.
341. 30:15It's deeply, deeply disturbing, obviously.
342. 30:21It's almost like we want to only be reading  the things that we already agree with.
343. 30:29One thing, this debate over Section  230, without getting too arcane,
344. 30:34but a lot of people are saying, "Well, these  big tech companies are censoring Trump and Trump
345. 30:40supporters and Republicans, but not liberals."  And I fear that what comes of that is, again,
346. 30:47clever people pulling strings behind the scenes to  make us go, "You should censor the liberals too."
347. 30:53What we're doing if we say that is we'll  just do it both to all of us equally,
348. 30:58we're basically giving more control, and  we're giving up more of our own thoughts,
349. 31:04control of our own thoughts and information to  the same players who will then go, "Okay, well,
350. 31:09we'll censor left and right. We'll censor  everybody. We'll really be heavy handed."
351. 31:13When I think we should be looking from a 30,000  foot high level, stepping way back, and telling
352. 31:18them not to touch our information, except that  which is illegal, not in a subconscious way
353. 31:26demanding that they actually censor more.  That's not going to ultimately help anybody.
354. 31:32Another thing I just thought of, a  few people have asked me about this,
355. 31:35actually, and I said, "Well, I don't know."  How do you see yourself politically? Do
356. 31:40you see yourself as conservative? Do you  see yourself as liberal? Do you try to
357. 31:45stay out of those categories?  How do you fall, personally?
358. 31:53I have not talked about my politics. I just  don't, so a lot of people mistakenly assume
359. 31:59I'm conservative. For years, people  mistakenly assumed I was liberal.
360. 32:04Just in a general sense, I will tell you that  I think I'm like a lot of Americans. Probably,
361. 32:09if you pick certain issues and I told you how  I felt about them, I would be liberal on some,
362. 32:14conservative on others, change my  mind depending on the circumstance.
363. 32:18What I think is really important to  do—and I've worked very hard to do this.
364. 32:22Maybe I didn't think about it in my early  years—but assuming I feel a certain way
365. 32:28based on who I interviewed, or what I said, is  going to be wrong. I mean, it's pretty hard,
366. 32:35I've found, for reporters to take away  their own personal vested interests.
367. 32:39But if you can, it's a beautiful thing to open  your mind, regardless of how you feel about
368. 32:44something and invite in a different viewpoint  or opposing viewpoints. And I've told myself
369. 32:50as a reporter, one way to do that is to start  with the premise that most people have a point
370. 32:57to make. Like, there are sometimes ridiculous  points that don't make any sense. But in general,
371. 33:02people who view things differently often  have rational viewpoints on both sides.
372. 33:07And when you start to say as a reporter,
373. 33:09"I'd like to represent the most rational  viewpoints I can find on both sides,"
374. 33:13it just sort of opens up reporting, and I think  you get at more of the truth, you become more
375. 33:18accurate, and you shouldn't feel like you have  to shove your own opinion down someone's throat.
376. 33:23If the job of your reporting is—and  I think a lot of reporters do this—if
377. 33:27you think people need to come away at the end  of a story thinking like you do about a topic,
378. 33:32then I think you've made a big mistake. I  think the goal should be to present viewpoints
379. 33:36and facts, especially if powerful interests are  trying to hide them. And then I say to myself,
380. 33:41"At the end, if you're unconvinced of  what someone in the story was saying,
381. 33:45or if I think taxpayer money was wasted and this  is demonstrated in the evidence, but you don't
382. 33:49mind how the money was spent, I'm good with that.  I just wanted to bring the information out there."
383. 33:54And I think that's sort of how I approach my  job, and I do it in a non-political fashion.
384. 34:01So you mentioned Section 230. This is  something that I've covered a number
385. 34:06of times on the show. Speaking of social  media giants becoming publishers—which is
386. 34:16what that question really is—it seems like  Twitter, frankly, in the past week now has
387. 34:23kind of taken things to a different level  where they decided to suppress a story that
388. 34:31they transparently said hadn't been fact  checked even by one of these, you would argue
389. 34:37not necessarily legitimately even fact checked.  I was thinking of using this story, using the
390. 34:44"Slanted" lens to look at this story and how it's  playing out because I thought it's almost like a
391. 34:48textbook example of all the lessons or ideas that  you're bringing up in "Slanted." Can we do that?
392. 34:57I think absolutely. The notion that Twitter  would claim to be an instant expert on a story
393. 35:03they have no knowledge about. Their experts can't  possibly—even if they were to try to contradict
394. 35:08some of the Hunter Biden story that was in The New  York Post, they certainly have no more credibility
395. 35:14than The New York Post, who presumably  has been working on this story longer,
396. 35:17and neither do the one-sided experts they may  consult who would tell them that that story is
397. 35:21not true. They weren't in the room, they weren't  in a position to verify or not verify emails.
398. 35:26But you go back to the Russia-Trump collusion  story, which turned out to be, as we all know—and
399. 35:31even as Trump's enemies working on the  Mueller team acknowledged—there was no
400. 35:35evidence of any American working with  Russia or colluding with Russia in 2016.
401. 35:40And how many stories do we still  have, and did we have at the time,
402. 35:43forwarded uncritically by the press, without  counterpoints, without evidence—as they like
403. 35:48to say, but they didn't say it was without  evidence—as if true? Anonymous sources,
404. 35:53presenting false information, presumed to be  true, no counterpoints. This was the classic way
405. 35:59that you cannot, as a journalist, legitimately  cover a news story, and we did it for years.
406. 36:04And then here comes a story that has some  documentation and on-the-record documents and
407. 36:10sources, and all we hear about is, "unverified,  without evidence," and it's immediately taken off
408. 36:15Twitter. What Twitter is doing in these final days  before the election speaks to me of desperation.
409. 36:22The big tech companies—I'll have a story on this  on full measure in a couple of weeks—insiders
410. 36:27talk about how important it is to some of  these companies and the people leading them
411. 36:31and the employees for President Trump not to be  president, for certain agendas to be advanced,
412. 36:36social agendas, in a one-sided fashion and how  they make sure algorithms and the things that they
413. 36:42design accomplish these very partisan, political  goals in ways that are often unseen to us.
414. 36:49And I can only say that they've decided or they've  been fearful that in these last weeks, that hasn't
415. 36:54been enough. So they're actually stepping in and  putting the thumb on a scale in such a visible way
416. 37:00with people, accounts. They don't even care  if Congress calls them in and slaps them in a
417. 37:05couple weeks, because the election will be over.  They're trying right now to play the short game
418. 37:09out of desperation to try to make  sure Trump doesn't win another term.
419. 37:15There's all sorts of people saying
420. 37:17these laptops or these drives or this  whole thing is Russian disinformation.
421. 37:23Let's look at the real Russian disinformation  campaign that we know: Trump-Russia
422. 37:27collusion, [which] involved Russians providing  false information through an intermediary
423. 37:32of Democrats to the FBI. That was never flagged  by the same people as Russian disinformation,
424. 37:38and yet now something where there was no  evidence of Russian disinformation, that's
425. 37:42the default claim that's thrown out  there because it will take hold.
426. 37:46You see it does, because the public's been primed,  a certain segment of the public, by the narrative
427. 37:52to believe and to accept that. Glenn Greenwald  had an interesting article. I think I read a
428. 37:58little bit of it with a tweet. He's the liberal  publisher of The Intercept. And a lot of classic
429. 38:04liberals see these things the same way you do,  some of these things that we're talking about.
430. 38:09He said, "Can you imagine  a public that has gotten so
431. 38:14basically brainwashed, that  everything that happens is
432. 38:18deemed to be foreign interference or interference  by the Russians and that the public buys that? How
433. 38:23sad is that?" And I think he was spot on with  that. But that's all part of the narrative.
434. 38:28It's been planted since late 2015 or early 2016.  And it's really taken hold among people who are—I
435. 38:37won't say unthinking people because they're not  all unthinking—but a lot of people that don't have
436. 38:42time to do or the desire to do their own thinking  for themselves and their own research, and they
437. 38:47just are pummeled with these narratives on comedy  channels and just everywhere you look. The news
438. 38:53of course and social media, it just becomes  their reality, and that's what they believe.
439. 39:00It's incredible. A number of media have been
440. 39:04largely silent on this, but I did notice,  actually, that CBS has started to cover it.
441. 39:12I thought that was interesting. And the  other thing, speaking of the whole Russia
442. 39:16collusion and everything associated with that, the  Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the FISA abuse,
443. 39:22CBS did hire Catherine Herridge, who seems to  be doing a pretty straight-up journalistic job
444. 39:28around this material. Does this suggest that  CBS is deciding to go off-narrative here?
445. 39:38It's hard to say.
446. 39:41If you read the books that I've written about  this, there's so many competing things going
447. 39:45on at the same time. Sometimes, an outlet, in  my view, will hire somebody so that they can
448. 39:50keep them quiet or keep them less visible.  Catherine Herridge, I believe, had far more
449. 39:55visibility when she worked at Fox News because  she was on all the time with breaking stories.
450. 40:02I've talked to people at CBS. I think she's done  great stuff. I've seen her tweet out some things.
451. 40:07She's not—now maybe this has changed in the last  month—she's not seen frequently on the evening
452. 40:13news. She tweets a lot of stuff that she probably  can't get on. Or maybe she's on the morning show.
453. 40:18This is how they bury [news]. They pretend  to want to cover something, but there's a
454. 40:22way that certain people can, in fact, bury the  news and make sure it gets less prominence.
455. 40:28They're also competing. They hired, I don't want  to name a name who, but they hired somebody else
456. 40:31that had a lot of promise and talent in an arena  like that some years ago, and then basically
457. 40:38proceeded to never use that person on the air.  This is not an unusual thing that happens.
458. 40:44That having been said, not everybody at all the  networks [is like this]. There's still some great
459. 40:48people, there are still some good news people,  there's still some great reporting being done,
460. 40:53even at The New York Times, which is [devolving].  I spent a whole chapter talking about the
461. 40:57devolution. Even at CNN. So it's not a monolithic  thing for which there are no exceptions.
462. 41:04But in a general sense, I think,  we've reached a place where,
463. 41:08like you just said, you're surprised that  there's an instance where, wow, CBS actually
464. 41:13covered one of the biggest stories of the last  week. They actually gave two minutes to it.
465. 41:18It's sort of like we think that's progress because  the situation is so, the starting point is so bad.
466. 41:25You mentioned earlier that you feel like  in 10 years, we might be past the point
467. 41:31of no return. I don't think you're meaning  to be alarmist, but you're saying things
468. 41:35are heading in this direction where there just  isn't a lot of news anymore, and it seems to,
469. 41:42I don't know if you agree, it seems to be  accelerating in that direction. What do you see,
470. 41:47and this appears a bit I think in the conclusion  of your book, but what do you see as the path
471. 41:54forward to try to get back to straight-up  journalism and let people make up their own minds?
472. 42:03I think people should definitely keep speaking  about it. Don't quiet down and just accept that
473. 42:07this is the way it is. Fight and call it out  when you see it. But I think the answer—there's
474. 42:12a lot of people working on this problem because  in the general public outside of Washington,
475. 42:17DC and New York and outside of the newsrooms,  the public wants regular old news again.
476. 42:23I've asked a lot of questions of people over  the years, even those who want to watch CNN and
477. 42:27MSNBC for the left news and want to watch Fox  News for the right news or CBS or whatever—CBS
478. 42:34for their left. They still all say they  would go to a place that was in the middle
479. 42:39if there was a place because they know they
480. 42:41have to kind of discount the news they  see depending on where they watch it.
481. 42:44They know that if they see a certain thing,  "Well, I know where they're coming from."
482. 42:49And they want a place where they can go and  kind of get the straight story and believe
483. 42:53that they're getting a factual representation.  So there's a market for it, I believe. And a lot
484. 42:58of people know this, and a lot of news people  are trying to figure out how to make the most
485. 43:01of that and how to make it where these big tech  platforms then don't control what they're doing.
486. 43:07So on two fronts, there are news people that are  trying to develop news sources that do that very
487. 43:13thing. And secondly, there are technical people  that are working on the problem of being able to
488. 43:18distribute news and opinion outside the platforms  controlled by the big tech companies in a way that
489. 43:24they can't deplatform you and take your opinions  off and take certain scientific studies out.
490. 43:32I think we'll have a breakthrough because  there's smart people working on the problem.
491. 43:36I'm not smart enough to know technically what  form that'll take, but I'd like to think we'll
492. 43:40go down that road. One of the scariest things  to me, let's look at the coronavirus example.
493. 43:46Google announced that it had developed a  partnership on the front end of this with
494. 43:49the World Health Organization to make sure when  people were searching under coronavirus early
495. 43:55on that they would be directed to World Health  Organization-approved information and sites.
496. 44:01How dangerous is that, especially when you  consider that WHO admits it was wrong about so
497. 44:07much? But by doing this, Google has cut us out  of the equation of being able to say, "We know
498. 44:12you guys are wrong. Medical experts are sometimes  wrong and the government is sometimes wrong and
499. 44:17certain experts," and then they've cut you out of  being able to easily do your own research and find
500. 44:22unconflicted information because they're directing  what you'll see when you look for information.
501. 44:27And again, by their own admission, were dead  wrong about quite a few things that they put out.
502. 44:32But that's all we were allowed, that's  where we were being pointed to. So
503. 44:35imagine that—and that's happening with other  issues too that they're not disclosing—on
504. 44:40a massive scale where pretty much any information  you try to access, they get to control
505. 44:45who you're pointed to, and you will never  find the scientific studies that say the
506. 44:49other thing because they'll have effectively  buried them or made sure that they're unseen.
507. 44:56This is a very interesting point because I  think there's tons of evidence that the WHO
508. 45:01was compromised by perhaps the biggest special  interest out there, the Chinese Communist Party.
509. 45:08That is the most important reason, again, why I  at least don't want special interests coming in
510. 45:14and curating my information in my searches. And  I firmly believe if a private company wants to
511. 45:20offer that service to the people that work  with it, "Hey, would you like us to curate
512. 45:25your information? Would you like us to aim you to  places where we want you to look?" that's fine.
513. 45:29But I also think we shouldn't have to opt  into that because there are some of us
514. 45:34on various topics that want to do our own  research. Some of my best stories have come from
515. 45:39me being able to go off of the narrative, off of  what's being reported by these news organizations
516. 45:45that would be accepted as the only true sources  that are actually reporting wrong information.
517. 45:50And I'm able to dig deeply and find counterpoints  and people who know different information and
518. 45:56other scientific studies that ultimately turn out  to provide the truth. If you cut that off from
519. 46:01people, you've 1,000 percent been able to just  control the line of thought in a negative way.
520. 46:08And I joke that if this were  the case several decades ago,
521. 46:13we would still say cigarettes were safe  because let's say there were all these
522. 46:17studies that show cigarettes can cause cancer.  Well, the prevailing opinion at the time said
523. 46:21that that wasn't true. Doctors at the time said  there was nothing wrong with smoking cigarettes.
524. 46:25They would effectively be able to impact what  we see and know so that we would never see those
525. 46:30studies that show that cigarettes were actually  unhealthy. And we would be bouncing around today,
526. 46:35happily smoking or believing that that was true, I  guess, and wondering why people were dying without
527. 46:41understanding that there were many scientific  studies supporting the other view because we
528. 46:45wouldn't have been able to access them under  this sort of control that we're talking about.
529. 46:50Sharyl, there's many, many of these examples,  and I think your book is an incredibly thoughtful
530. 46:56treatment of this whole issue, and frankly,  in a very, very balanced way. I actually
531. 47:02also haven't—that's why I asked you about  your political inclinations, because
532. 47:06you keep them close to yourself, clearly. When is  the book coming out, and how can people get it?
533. 47:13November 24. Preorder now anywhere. If  you don't want to order from Amazon,
534. 47:18you can order from HarperCollins  or anywhere you like to get books.
535. 47:22And on my website, thank you for asking,  sharylattkisson.com, if you click where I'm
536. 47:27promoting "Slanted," you can find out how to get  signed copies or a free signed bookplate sticker
537. 47:33to put in there as a gift for somebody, whatever  you want to do. All the information's there.
538. 47:38I've said that it would really be nice—my social  media is throttled down if people know what that
539. 47:43means. My reach is far smaller this year than it  has been in past years, even though I have a much
540. 47:49greater following because it's being dialed back.  And so I'm trying to promote the book any way I
541. 47:54can, and I say: wouldn't it be nice for The New  York Times to be forced to put my third book in a
542. 47:59row on its bestseller list when there's a chapter  in it about the devolution of The New York Times?
543. 48:04That's like one of my goals, so I  hope people will consider preordering.
544. 48:08I wish you the best of success with that.  Any final thoughts before we finish up?
545. 48:14I would just say that as simple as something  [like a review]. I've gotten some very nice
546. 48:18reviews and discussions of the book from  people like you and others. But interestingly,
547. 48:23I thought it was interesting, Publishers Weekly,
548. 48:25wasn't even sure what that is, but they put  out what I consider a very lukewarm review,
549. 48:31doesn't even look like they read the book, very  short review, where they call it unconvincing.
550. 48:36I'm thinking, "This is interesting."  It's another example of, in my opinion,
551. 48:41somebody who doesn't want people to  read the book for their own reasons,
552. 48:44made sure a review was written—there's no name  signed with these reviews that they put up, but
553. 48:48they're pretty well read inside the industry—and  they put out sort of a negative review.
554. 48:53And this is all, again, part of I think, I  suspect, a shaping of the information landscape,
555. 48:59and it reminds me of Scott Adams, who's  off-narrative. He's written those comedy books,
556. 49:06comics about Dilbert, and he's a Trump supporter.  And he talks about—and I have this in my last
557. 49:12book—when he became a Trump supporter, [he] became  someone that people didn't like for that reason.
558. 49:18His speeches got canceled. He got negative  reviews about his book that was coming out
559. 49:22that were suddenly posted. There are all kinds  of things that are happening in ways that are
560. 49:27unseen to us. And I just say, dig deeper when  you see something happening or a narrative being
561. 49:33forwarded by so many people, your first thought  should not necessarily be, "I believe that," but
562. 49:39"Who wants me to believe that and why?" And  that, I think, will lead to a lot of truth.
563. 49:46Sharyl Attkisson, such a pleasure to have you on.
564. 49:49Thanks so much.