Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: We had a very funny introduction. It was really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it referenced our company sexual harassment protocols. It was hilarious.
Speaker 1: You're never gonna hear it. We weren't recording.
Speaker 2: I was recording, so you can hear my section. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you can just accept what Garrison said without context
Speaker 2: and we'll open with that, that'll be great. Yeah. That
Speaker 2: is a classic Robert Evans intro. You just did it.
Speaker 3: I feel like it always comes from inside.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about journalistic objectivity,
Speaker 1: that's right, a thing that we've just demonstrated perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the professional media class. So let's have
Speaker 2: a little talk about media objectivity. Right. It's been a
Speaker 2: major tenet of traditional legacy media that they must remain unbiased.
Speaker 2: This hasn't all been the case in the United States.
Speaker 2: Right used to have explicitly partisan news sources, which we
Speaker 2: have now with Fox News, I guess. But that's why
Speaker 2: you have newspapers like I think Saint Louis has a
Speaker 2: Saint Louis Democrat or the so and so Republican like
Speaker 2: that they would be very explicitly a partisan newspaper. It's
Speaker 2: only really when journalism sort of took on this strong
Speaker 2: professional and I mean professional here in terms of like
Speaker 2: the professions right, like law, accounting, jobs that are associated
Speaker 2: with university education, and a class identity, that it started
Speaker 2: to assert this kind of it's an attempt to appear
Speaker 2: rational and scientific in its methodologies, right. And one of
Speaker 2: the ways that journalism did this was to talk about objectivity.
Speaker 2: I should indicate here that objectivity is supposed to be
Speaker 2: a means of verifying information. I like that we should
Speaker 2: objectively check that what we have written is correct.
Speaker 1: The example I always give is that if I'm in
Speaker 1: a protest scene where there's a clash between proud boys
Speaker 1: and you know, a group of leftists, and you know,
Speaker 1: someone on the left pulls out a can of mace
Speaker 1: and sprays it first, that's objectively what happened. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that that's the only thing I report. For example,
Speaker 1: if the person they maceed is somebody who has been
Speaker 1: like harassing those individuals online for weeks, or has been
Speaker 1: doxing them or assaulted them at previous like, all of
Speaker 1: that is like relevant context, but it doesn't change what
Speaker 1: objectively happened in that instant, right, Like, it's not on
Speaker 1: me to pretend that I think these sides are equal,
Speaker 1: but it is on me to accurately report like what happens. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the one of the areas
Speaker 1: in which a lot of people, especially when we were
Speaker 1: talking about, like, you know, situations like this, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks in kind of legacy media get stuff wrong
Speaker 1: is they think that all that matters is what happens
Speaker 1: in that moment, right, and what happened previously, what's happened
Speaker 1: in other engagements, what's happened like over you know, the
Speaker 1: last two or three years of however long the conflict's
Speaker 1: been going on that city is immaterial. Well, all that
Speaker 1: matters is what happened in the second when that reporter
Speaker 1: was scene. And if you're if you're thinking that way,
Speaker 1: you're going to miss more than someone who comes in
Speaker 1: with just an outright bias, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I think very often it's seen as
Speaker 2: kind of instead of being like a value of the
Speaker 2: outlet in the way it verifies information, it's seeing as
Speaker 2: being a personal kind of like quality that journalists should
Speaker 2: have in every aspect of their lives. Yeah, Like I'm
Speaker 2: aware that it's some of the big legacy broadsheets in
Speaker 2: the US, like you can't attend to protest unless you
Speaker 2: are covering the protest, right.
Speaker 1: And there's even that famous case of that journalist being like,
Speaker 1: I don't vote because I think that that would be
Speaker 1: a violation of like my objectivity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. I got it forgotten
Speaker 2: about that one.
Speaker 1: Like you're allowed to have opinions, that's just not supposed
Speaker 1: to be the entire basis of your reporting, you.
Speaker 2: Know exactly, Yeah, Like, and I think sometimes because people
Speaker 2: always do have opinions, right, but the opinions that are
Speaker 2: conceived of as neutral and the ones that are conceived
Speaker 2: of as being subjective are very telling, right, Like, the
Speaker 2: media for a long time has been the domain of educated,
Speaker 2: older white men, like people like me. I guess I'm
Speaker 2: not old, but getting that way. And it also has
Speaker 2: been the domain of like capital in the state, right,
Speaker 2: like Jeffrey Bezos owned several newspapers pro market biases, pro
Speaker 2: capitalism biases, pro state biases, that those are not really
Speaker 2: investigated much in the media in the way that other
Speaker 2: biases might be. Right, It's also created this idea that
Speaker 2: the media always needs to shoot for the middle in
Speaker 2: any given discussion, which I kind of want to investigate
Speaker 2: a bit, when Donald Trump says something which is overt,
Speaker 2: like Donald Trump has said things which are nativist, right,
Speaker 2: nativism is a form of racism. Donald Trump therefore has
Speaker 2: said racist shit. The way that this is far too
Speaker 2: often treated in the legacy media is it's the racist
Speaker 2: shit that Donald Trump said, correct, or like, maybe we
Speaker 2: should consider this racist thing that so and so has said, right,
Speaker 2: rather than this shit is racist Donald Trump has said
Speaker 2: of shit that it's racist, or other members of the
Speaker 2: Republican Party. All this serves to do is when we
Speaker 2: have a topic and the people in Congress anchor themselves
Speaker 2: on the very far right, what is acceptable discourse, the
Speaker 2: media then moves discourse to the right so that position
Speaker 2: is in the center, right, it serves to ratchet that
Speaker 2: overton window to the right. I'm demonstrating this for my
Speaker 2: colleagues with hand signals, which of course only two of
Speaker 2: the hundreds of thousands of people listening to me will
Speaker 2: be able to see the right way to our podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a very compelling mime of a ratchet
Speaker 3: like it looked like you basically were doing it. I
Speaker 3: could not tell.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell the difference. No, that's why we call
Speaker 1: you ratchet. Straps out.
Speaker 2: Got me a ratchet, Jimmy. Yeah, it's This podcast is
Speaker 2: sponsored by Invisible Ratchet. Now it was time to pivot
Speaker 2: to add It's not time to figure to add yet.
Speaker 2: I think we should talk about the way other professions
Speaker 2: concerned with the truths deal with this topic, right, because
Speaker 2: journalism is pretty much unique and considering objectivity something that
Speaker 2: we as individuals have to embody in every action that
Speaker 2: we take. And I guess the most relevant one will
Speaker 2: be academia, which is something else I am unfortunate enough
Speaker 2: to have participated in for far too much of my
Speaker 2: adult life. So academia still not great, But we have
Speaker 2: accepted that everyone is biased in academia. Right, We rely on,
Speaker 2: among many other things, something called standpoint theory, right, which
Speaker 2: is a cornerstone of modern feminist thought. Most of you
Speaker 2: will be aware of it, even if you're not aware
Speaker 2: of it. Basically, it holds that we see the world
Speaker 2: differently based on where we see it from. Our gender, sexuality, raise, ethnicity, experience, age,
Speaker 2: and a million other things impact the truth we know
Speaker 2: in the world. We experience and standpoint theory posits that
Speaker 2: perhaps people not from a certain threating may have valuable
Speaker 2: insights into it. Right, So, sometimes the outsider perspective is
Speaker 2: a valuable one. But also people from that setting may
Speaker 2: see things outsiders may not see, and we have to
Speaker 2: acknowledge those biases, right, and then continue to tell the truth.
Speaker 2: How do we tell the truth? In academia? We do
Speaker 2: something called peer review. Peer review is bad. Peer review
Speaker 2: strongly reinforces the status quote right. I will give one example.
Speaker 2: I once had a journal article, right for a history journal,
Speaker 2: killed in peer review. The piece was about the nineteen
Speaker 2: oh nine tour of Catalonia that was a bicycle competition
Speaker 2: for those of you who aren't familiar. It was killed
Speaker 2: because my media analysis didn't mention television coverage. The television
Speaker 2: was kind of crudely invented in the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 2: did it become widely available until the nineteen forties, Right, Like,
Speaker 2: this is not a reasonable objection. Nonetheless, someone was able
Speaker 2: to kill my piece because of it, because that's how
Speaker 2: peer review worked. Right. The people who are as people
Speaker 2: who are in petitions of power can kill your shit
Speaker 2: if they want to, and they can give the most
Speaker 2: ludicrous region. That is how peer of view, among other things,
Speaker 2: reinforces state just quo. Right. The other thing that we
Speaker 2: do in academias we declare our conflicts of interest, and
Speaker 2: this is something we don't do in journalism, right, Like
Speaker 2: outlets may have a conflict of interest policy. But again,
Speaker 2: like conflicts of interest aren't explicitly declared in a piece
Speaker 2: like you wouldn't see sometimes NPR does it.
Speaker 1: Actually, Yeah, I mean a number of outlets do declare like,
Speaker 1: for example, this outlet is owned by someone who has
Speaker 1: a financial interest in the company we're reporting on, or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if the Washington Post is doing a story about
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos or Amazon, yeah, usually they will say in
Speaker 3: the bottom or the top that the paper is owned
Speaker 3: by said said figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where it becomes more murky is like sometimes people
Speaker 2: have a financial interest or if something is your beat, right,
Speaker 2: you may have other fire financial interest within that beat.
Speaker 1: Well, and there's there's the very common case of people,
Speaker 1: especially now within kind of the sub stack journalism, being
Speaker 1: like friends and social with people that they are reporting
Speaker 1: on and not disclosing to their wider audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like access journalism more generally ready. Yeah, Like the
Speaker 2: way I got this piece was by being invited to
Speaker 2: the drinks party, And if I say anything I'm kind
Speaker 2: about this person, I won't be invited to the drinks party. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Or simply the conflict of interest that is presented by
Speaker 2: the more ludicrous my headline, the more people will click
Speaker 2: on this website, and the more time they will spend
Speaker 2: on the page, and the more advative you they might generate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's really the largest issue with modern journalism
Speaker 1: is that that kind of determines almost everything for an outlet,
Speaker 1: is like what's what's going to get clicks, what's going
Speaker 1: to rile people up as much as possible, And that
Speaker 1: is that that doesn't count as financial interest, right, Like
Speaker 1: the fact that the outlet has invested financial interest in
Speaker 1: keeping you on the page as often and as long
Speaker 1: as possible doesn't count as like a conflictive interest in
Speaker 1: any way. And that's kind of one of the fundamental issues. Whereas,
Speaker 1: like a lot of times, a lot of outlets won't let,
Speaker 1: for example, a black journalist report on a black man
Speaker 1: being murdered by the police, right because they see that
Speaker 1: as like an inherent conflict of interest, and the gap
Speaker 1: between those two things is where a lot of the
Speaker 1: real problems, a lot of the worst problems in modern
Speaker 1: journalism arise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talking of problems, we need to pay to ads, sure,
Speaker 2: all right, we are back. Part of this also manifests
Speaker 2: in like journalists being supposed to not have any individual
Speaker 2: opinions about anything, even if it's irrelevant to that beat.
Speaker 2: This has been the case for a lot of people
Speaker 2: regarding the genocide of Palestinian people. Right, Like you could
Speaker 2: be the weekend editor, you could write about brunch, and
Speaker 2: if you work at certain outlets, you are like under
Speaker 2: pain of losing your job, not allowed to post to
Speaker 2: what is happening in Gaza. It is a genocide to
Speaker 2: take a stance on these issues, right, And that is bad.
Speaker 2: Like journalists are human beings too, and it's ridiculous to
Speaker 2: suggest that that we shouldn't or can't have opinions on
Speaker 2: these things and still do good reporting, right we can.
Speaker 2: We just have to make sure that the reporting itself
Speaker 2: is accurate. Sometimes what this leads to is like like
Speaker 2: what I guess another, like Rubbie, you spoke about it,
Speaker 2: that like the inherent conflict of interests that like traffic
Speaker 2: on a website presents for journalism. Another like inherent issue
Speaker 2: is that like every source is seen as biased, right,
Speaker 2: Like you said, like black folks might not be allowed
Speaker 2: to report on black men being shown by the cops,
Speaker 2: accept state sources, which are far too often seen as
Speaker 2: speaking the verbatim truth, right, Well, this is what the
Speaker 2: police said. Yes, yeah, that is how we get I
Speaker 2: guess A pretty good example of this, I'll link to
Speaker 2: it in the show notes is a piece I wrote
Speaker 2: five years ago I think about police officers overdosing on fentanyl.
Speaker 2: Some of you will be familiar with this, some of
Speaker 2: you will not, But it is not possible to overdose
Speaker 2: on fentanyl just from being in its presence, like in
Speaker 2: an outdoor area next to a thing that has fentel
Speaker 2: in it. The piece I wrote dealt with the San
Speaker 2: Diego Union Tribune. Who I mean, this was a spectacular instance,
Speaker 2: I guess, of journalists like serving as police snographers. What
Speaker 2: happened here is that the police had produced an edited
Speaker 2: video with like music and shit of this supposed overdose.
Speaker 2: Right of a young cop who was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know what they call it. He's like apprentice with an
Speaker 2: older cop, like the with a more experienced cop and
Speaker 2: they were going around doing cop stuff. They found some stuff.
Speaker 2: They tested it for fentanyl, and this guy collapses. The
Speaker 2: younger cop, the older cop gives him several nacans. It's
Speaker 2: not just waste some yeah, no, just like I think
Speaker 2: there was one instant where someone received seven knock ants,
Speaker 2: which like, like, that's a threat to your fucking nasal
Speaker 2: integrity if nothing else. Yeah, if knokin doesn't work the
Speaker 2: first time, like I.
Speaker 1: Mean, people do sometimes often it's not especially like with
Speaker 1: serious ods. They'll often put people like in the hospital
Speaker 1: on drips, but you would have to take a massive dose,
Speaker 1: not just be near fucking.
Speaker 2: Fin Yeah, yeah, to like be like I think this instance,
Speaker 2: like they were outside testing it in like the boot
Speaker 2: of a car, Like it's ludicrous thing that you and like,
Speaker 2: it would be good if they familiarize themselves with some
Speaker 2: of the what an overdose looks like. Right, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I'm mixed.
Speaker 1: If they weren't cops, I'd respect the desire to like
Speaker 1: time theft from work, because I think that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of this is. It's like, oh shit, if I
Speaker 1: have an overdose, like I get to stay out of
Speaker 1: work a couple.
Speaker 2: Of days with day that's what that's a that's a framing.
Speaker 2: I'm amenable to you. Unfortunately, they are gods. Ver If
Speaker 2: you're a reporter, though, like it is absolutely on you to, oh,
Speaker 2: this person having an overdose? What are the symptoms of
Speaker 2: an overdose? What does an overdose look like? Should I
Speaker 2: talk to a medical professional? Or you could just ask
Speaker 2: the perlice information officer who shared this with you, how
Speaker 2: did you verify this as an overdose? With whom did
Speaker 2: you discuss the toxicology report in this case? That information
Speaker 2: wasn't available right the way I was able to obtain
Speaker 2: that just to do I guess clarity is first of all,
Speaker 2: I saw the publication where they didn't mention any fact
Speaker 2: checking that they'd done. You can also pra the emails
Speaker 2: to the police as well as from the police, right,
Speaker 2: so you can see if other reporters have done fact
Speaker 2: checking that way or have asked any follow up questions
Speaker 2: that way I done, that they would have found out
Speaker 2: that you say that you can't overdose in fentanyl this way.
Speaker 2: They didn't even try. And like both sides this, I
Speaker 2: guess like sometimes you'll see outlets doing that now, like
Speaker 2: this cop overdose from fentanyl but doctors say they can't.
Speaker 2: Like it's a which I still think is an absolutely
Speaker 2: ludicrous practice. Right. That's like saying this person tried to fly,
Speaker 2: but you know that people say gravity will make them
Speaker 2: fall to the ground, like one of these things we
Speaker 2: know to be true. So I guess what I would
Speaker 2: propose we do instead of this ludicrous practice of like
Speaker 2: pretending to be objective about everything all the time, is
Speaker 2: that we are honest about our biases, honest about our
Speaker 2: conflict of interests. We're honest about like our standpoint, and
Speaker 2: then we do reporting, which is obviously verifiable, right, And
Speaker 2: that means, like you'll see that at the end of
Speaker 2: these episodes, right, we share our sources that we used
Speaker 2: after we're try and communicate where we got information from
Speaker 2: and how we got it. And I think we should
Speaker 2: strive for moral clarity in the way we say things
Speaker 2: instead of driving to this mill ground. So, like, what
Speaker 2: do I mean by moral clarity? I mean saying the
Speaker 2: cops killed someone, not officer involved shooting. Right. If you
Speaker 2: work with fucking words and you find yourself writing something
Speaker 2: as convoluted as officer involved shooting, then you have strayed
Speaker 2: from the foundational reason for journalism existing. Yeah, you have
Speaker 2: gone beyond God's light. Yeah yeah, yeah, you live in
Speaker 2: the darkness. There is I think a place for fact checkers.
Speaker 2: I think people got a bit carried away with fact checking.
Speaker 2: I don't quite know how to phrase this correctly. I
Speaker 2: had an experience once where I had written a piece.
Speaker 2: The fact checking of that piece centered on the fact
Speaker 2: that I had used the noun beach chair to refer
Speaker 2: to this chair. Yes, the fact checker believed that it
Speaker 2: was a lawn chair. To me, did not impact the
Speaker 2: overall thrust of the piece, right, like the nature of
Speaker 2: the chair. Unfortunately, that ended up killing the story. We
Speaker 2: ran out of time to go over the court documents
Speaker 2: because of the nature of the chair discussion. And I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that's what we need to do.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, and I think the other and probably
Speaker 1: larger problem with fact checking is fact checking is an
Speaker 1: in in and of itself is ha. I showed that
Speaker 1: they were wrong. I checked the fact where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what they wrote got out to thirty million people
Speaker 1: and your fact check got out to like sixty So
Speaker 1: what you did didn't really matter. And what we should
Speaker 1: probably be doing is looking at an intervention higher up
Speaker 1: on the line to stop the bullshit from getting out,
Speaker 1: rather than being obsessed with well I fact checked it, like, well,
Speaker 1: but that didn't really help you know, yeah, right, just
Speaker 1: at what point do we give that up?
Speaker 2: Is pointless? Yeah, you are like not even a footnote
Speaker 2: to this other thing that this person.
Speaker 1: No, we need to the intervention needs to be happening
Speaker 1: earlier because the bullshit is still getting out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And this happens like we're inly this a
Speaker 2: bizarre situation where like writing outlets can say what the
Speaker 2: fuck they want, right like, Like we have whole massive
Speaker 2: media empires going in on this idea that the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty election was stolen. Then we have like centrist outlets
Speaker 2: instead of being like, no, the election wasn't solen. That
Speaker 2: that's bullshit, constantly trying to like investigate those claims as
Speaker 2: if they were credible and useful, rather than illustrating why
Speaker 2: they should be dismissed and then moving on, right like,
Speaker 2: instead of investigating why this conspiracy is so important. We
Speaker 2: see that a lot with immigration right now, but we
Speaker 2: saw it a ton in the presidential debates, right Like,
Speaker 2: It's a good example of what you were saying JD.
Speaker 2: Vance can just lie and even Donald Trump actually can
Speaker 2: lie about people eating dogs and cats and it doesn't
Speaker 2: hugely matter if an hour later and use outlet tweets, oh,
Speaker 2: we fact check him, and it's not okay. Right, You're
Speaker 2: still broadcast to millions of people that Haitian migrants eat
Speaker 2: dogs and cats and that's not true. And I think
Speaker 2: we need to strive for something that it's closer to
Speaker 2: the truth, and it's closer to fairness, and it gives
Speaker 2: us moral clarity because what we're all doing right now,
Speaker 2: what the legacy media doing is doing right now, is
Speaker 2: like woefully inadequate to meet the moment. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I think where I don't actually know how to solve
Speaker 1: things is the incentive structure, Yeah, is so broken. And
Speaker 1: to an extent, all of this talk about objectivity. And
Speaker 1: when I say that, I mean, like the talk that
Speaker 1: outlets and editors have about objectivity, is there more than
Speaker 1: anything to obscure the fact that the economics of journalism
Speaker 1: make it almost impossible for it to be anything but
Speaker 1: a willing agent of disinformation. That's the real issue is
Speaker 1: you can have the Washington Post, and you can have
Speaker 1: the New York Times host good reporting, but a huge
Speaker 1: amount of their income will always come from having columnists
Speaker 1: whose entire job is to piss people off or to
Speaker 1: stoke the egos of people in power. And I don't
Speaker 1: know that the good work those outlets does outweighs the
Speaker 1: crap that they spill into the public discourse, because that's
Speaker 1: what's incentivized. And so I think to an extent, there's
Speaker 1: almost no point in actually engaging with the objectivity debate
Speaker 1: with the people who are pushing it, because they're not
Speaker 1: pushing it honestly, they're pushing it as a way to
Speaker 1: obscure the fact that they make their money the same
Speaker 1: way Mark Zuckerberg makes his money, which is by spreading fear, anger,
Speaker 1: and doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's the bad op ed industrial complex. Like
Speaker 2: I've been guilty of that. Right, you see a fucking
Speaker 2: headline on social media and you're like, that's bullshit, and
Speaker 2: then you click and read. Right. I used to like,
Speaker 2: when I was a little baby, channel let's engage with
Speaker 2: this and be like that's bullshit because and I try
Speaker 2: and write about it somewhere or post it on social media.
Speaker 2: But I have come to realize and in doing that,
Speaker 2: I'm doing exactly what they want me to do, which
Speaker 2: is in you sending people to their website to click
Speaker 2: on adverts and to make the money. So I think
Speaker 2: it's better that we do not do that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that is the fundamental conceit of journalism right now. How
Speaker 2: it pays the bills is keeping you on that page,
Speaker 2: and a way it keeps you on that page is
Speaker 2: making you angry. There is like a model, I think.
Speaker 2: Then you see this like in community small community newspapers
Speaker 2: right now, like I guess outlets like Left Coast Right
Speaker 2: Watching in California and Oregon, where like people genuinely buy
Speaker 2: building trust and telling the truth, gain the support of
Speaker 2: their communities and financed by them. But I mean the
Speaker 2: orders of magnitude and income difference are like they're not
Speaker 2: making Washington Post money over at Left Coast Right Watch.
Speaker 2: I know this should be true. So yeah, pretty fucked
Speaker 2: and it will only get worse. I think, like, as
Speaker 2: as as we continue to slide into the post truth
Speaker 2: fascism world, I can't really our legacy outlets doing much
Speaker 2: about it. If all they ever going to do is
Speaker 2: strive for the middle ground.
Speaker 1: On this, Well, all right, Okay, everybody, all right, you
Speaker 1: go have a good day and now, world, It Could Happen.
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