Speaker 1: There is a great deal of political commentary and social
Speaker 1: commentary that examines the collapse of trust between institutions and
Speaker 1: the American people through a static lens. It observes the
Speaker 1: existence of the breach without much pondering about why it occurred.
Speaker 1: Why has there been such a fraying of the bonds
Speaker 1: of respect, of the capacities for trust between companies and
Speaker 1: the American people, Between brands and the American people, Between
Speaker 1: political parties and the American people, Between high political officeholders
Speaker 1: and the American people. Institution after institution has lost trust.
Speaker 1: Now most of the media coverage focuses on a specific
Speaker 1: dimension of the collapse of trust, a quarter of it,
Speaker 1: if you will, if you think about it like a
Speaker 1: pizza round and sliced, And that portion is the collapse
Speaker 1: of trust between the American people and their government, between
Speaker 1: the American people and their candidates, between the American people
Speaker 1: and the Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And all
Speaker 1: of that is true, deeply so. But there is also
Speaker 1: a corresponding collapse of trust, for example, with big tech.
Speaker 1: Giant tech companies were once deeply admired. Today they are
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly distrusted and broadly feared. There is a wide consensus
Speaker 1: understanding the capacity of these companies to reak true havoc
Speaker 1: while returning little benefit. The days of Google proclaiming itself
Speaker 1: as doing no evil and Facebook being a happy place
Speaker 1: and social media being benign are long gone. The American
Speaker 1: people know that trust was breached. But it's not just
Speaker 1: with big media, or the big insurance companies, or big
Speaker 1: medicine or big agriculture. The list goes on. It includes
Speaker 1: the Boy Scouts, where there are seventy eight thousand allegations
Speaker 1: of sexual abuse. It includes the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church,
Speaker 1: the Southern Baptist Convention. Everywhere there is a powerful institution,
Speaker 1: it seems there is hypocrisy, malfeasance, and wrongdoing everywhere, including
Speaker 1: the media. America's media companies have become reviled by the
Speaker 1: American people. The American people do not believe them because
Speaker 1: what they see is the daily production of conflict, Its
Speaker 1: manufacture division for division's sake, for billions in profit. The
Speaker 1: American media, of course, is not monolithic. There is a
Speaker 1: material difference between the Fox News and the New York Times,
Speaker 1: we're told, and there is in many ways, But there
Speaker 1: are also similarities that must be talked about because they
Speaker 1: speak to the corruption of a national spirit and a
Speaker 1: degradation of the American people and their ability to tell
Speaker 1: what is real from what is not, what is up
Speaker 1: from what is down, what is read from blue and
Speaker 1: blue from green. On the election evening, Brett Baer was
Speaker 1: terrified to tell the Fox News audience that, in fact,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump had lost. It helped set in moment a
Speaker 1: national crisis. It helped inflame and extremism that threatens the
Speaker 1: existence of the republic. Fear of the mob can be
Speaker 1: that powerful, and it can be that degrading to both
Speaker 1: truth and any sense of journalistic integrity. James Bennett is
Speaker 1: the former New York Times reporter, opinion page editor, an
Speaker 1: editor of The Atlantic magazine. He is a towering figure
Speaker 1: in the modern era of American journalism. He is a
Speaker 1: reporter who has traveled to every corner of the world
Speaker 1: and every inch of America. He has covered every type
Speaker 1: of issue, from the elderly as he explains, to conflict
Speaker 1: and war in the most dangerous places on Earth. He
Speaker 1: writes about the crisis at the New York Times and
Speaker 1: a collapse of journalistic integrity and absolute immolation of the
Speaker 1: time zone standards and a rising tide of dishonesty and
Speaker 1: intolerance and ends justify the means double standards in the
Speaker 1: pursuit of ideological conformity and dogma in an institution in
Speaker 1: the United States that is part of the United States
Speaker 1: inextricably so that exists because of the First Amendment that
Speaker 1: has turned so utterly hostile towards it. With James Bennett
Speaker 1: shows and demonstrates is that The New York Times has
Speaker 1: become so broken that it actually takes clear language and
Speaker 1: distorts its meaning, changes the clear understanding in English of
Speaker 1: what it says to fit a narrative that conforms to
Speaker 1: the sensibilities of what is a mob of New York
Speaker 1: Times journalists who are aggrieved, brittle, and hostile to the
Speaker 1: expression of any thought, opinion, or idea that does not
Speaker 1: conform ideologically to the mean of the mob. It helps
Speaker 1: me understand some things so much better, such as the
Speaker 1: years I spent on television, and at the second the
Speaker 1: camera would go off and we would go to commercial break,
Speaker 1: how many of the reporters and all of the ones
Speaker 1: at the New York Times would pick up their phone
Speaker 1: and look at it. Staring at the Twitter, no doubt
Speaker 1: reading what is the mob saying? Enforcing? How do I conform?
Speaker 1: What James Bennett tells is a tale of utter madness.
Speaker 1: He tells the tale of what happened when he dared
Speaker 1: to print an opinion stupid, although it was by United
Speaker 1: States Senator Tom Cotton. What happened? What happened with the
Speaker 1: words are violence, crowd that an idea is a physical attack.
Speaker 1: Let me explain clearly, with this type of smug arrogance
Speaker 1: and hostility to truth, embrace overtly of double standards, and
Speaker 1: the despising of any idea, it isn't ideologically rooted in
Speaker 1: the dogma of identity politics. I'll explain what it has wrought.
Speaker 1: There are no people who can claim credit more so
Speaker 1: than Arthur Salzburg and deemed back At with their access
Speaker 1: journalism and intolerance and smugness that have been more of
Speaker 1: a wind beneath the fascist wings of the Trump eagle. Truly,
Speaker 1: it is amazing, and I encourage everybody to sit down
Speaker 1: and read read the details about the gravest journalistic scandal
Speaker 1: of our time, and that is the shattering of the ethic,
Speaker 1: the ethos, the tolerance and the embrace of Americanism at
Speaker 1: the New York Times. Read it, understand it, Appreciate it
Speaker 1: for what it is. It is a warning about a
Speaker 1: growling authoritarianism of spirit. It demonstrates a weakness in our
Speaker 1: democratic fiber. If The New York Times doesn't respect the
Speaker 1: integrity of dissent and the power of the First Amendment,
Speaker 1: If The New York Times is filled with brittle children
Speaker 1: who need trigger warnings to confront the mob, then American
Speaker 1: journalism stands on a line of near irredeemability. It is
Speaker 1: certainly facing a deep crisis. It says a lot that
Speaker 1: mister Saltzburg decided to directly address mister Bennett's descriptions and journalism,
Speaker 1: not with participation, not with responsiveness to the questions in
Speaker 1: the story, but after the fact, denunciations and clarifications. Who
Speaker 1: else does that remind you of? It looks like the
Speaker 1: publisher of The New York Times has embraced the fake
Speaker 1: news strategy. It's not surprising because in the end he
Speaker 1: shares something with Donald Trump, just like Deane Baguette, and
Speaker 1: that is a deep contempt for the American people.