Speaker 1: Pushkin ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the month debates.
Speaker 2: Not long ago, a few thousand people gathered up Roy
Speaker 2: Thompson Hall in Toronto, the fanciest performance space in the city,
Speaker 2: to hear a debate parliamentary style, opening statements, rebuttals, closing arguments.
Speaker 1: So I want all of us to think tonight carefully
Speaker 1: on our debate motion. Be it resolved. Do not trust
Speaker 1: the mainstream media.
Speaker 2: Speaking for the resolution, We're two prominent journalists.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt Tayibi, had been a reporter for
Speaker 3: thirty years, and I argue for the resolution you should
Speaker 3: not trust mainstream media.
Speaker 2: Tayibe was one of the people Elon Musk turned to
Speaker 2: when he took over Twitter to publish on Twitter the
Speaker 2: so called Twitter Files, with the intent of showing that
Speaker 2: liberals were meddling with free speech. Matt Tayib has a
Speaker 2: massive online following.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter,
Speaker 3: my stepmother was a reporter, my godparents are reporters. Basically
Speaker 3: every adult I knew growing up was a reporter. So
Speaker 3: I actually loved the news business, but I mourned for it.
Speaker 3: It's destroyed itself by getting away from its basic function,
Speaker 3: which is just to tell us what's happening.
Speaker 2: Taybe's partner was the prominent English journalist Douglas Murray, Oxford educated,
Speaker 2: beautiful suit, a certain international man of mystery.
Speaker 4: Thanks not fair, It's a great pleasure to be here
Speaker 4: with about Yad said, I've come a rather long way
Speaker 4: from the front lines of the Ukraine conflict because I
Speaker 4: like to see these things with my own eyes for
Speaker 4: myself and to come to my own conclusions. I came
Speaker 4: out through Moldova the other day, through London, then got
Speaker 4: to Toronto and friend of mine said, why are you
Speaker 4: going to Toronto? I said, an invitation to Toronto in
Speaker 4: late November. Who on Earth says no to that? Only
Speaker 4: a madman would say.
Speaker 5: No to that.
Speaker 2: On the other side, defending the mainstream media was the
Speaker 2: New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, a monk debate veteran
Speaker 2: one of America's strongest liberal voices.
Speaker 6: Think about the big stories of the last five years
Speaker 6: or so, you know, from the Trump presidency to COVID
Speaker 6: to the war in Ukraine. Now, if you had just
Speaker 6: followed the CBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post,
Speaker 6: the BBC, they all got some things wrong, but in
Speaker 6: terms of the big stories, if you paid attention to
Speaker 6: the mainstream media, you were likely to be much safer
Speaker 6: and much closer to the truth then if you followed
Speaker 6: the kind of contrarians, if you followed the people who
Speaker 6: were saying, don't trust the mainstream media, trust these alternative
Speaker 6: sources of information.
Speaker 2: Tayibe Murray Goldberg, and then.
Speaker 1: Michelle's debating partner is a Canadian journalist. Yes, I will
Speaker 1: claim him as one of our own, a veteran New
Speaker 1: Yorker staff writer, a podcasting sensation who doesn't love revisionist history,
Speaker 1: and an internationally acclaimed author. Ladies and gentlemen, Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
Speaker 2: and misunderstood. This episode is about what happened when Michelle
Speaker 2: Goldberg and I attempted to defend the honor of the
Speaker 2: mainstream media against its many enemies. I entered this battle
Speaker 2: to cheers from my hometown Craft. I grew up not
Speaker 2: far away, and I went to college in Toronto about
Speaker 2: a mile from the theater. This whole evening was putting
Speaker 2: a pep in my step. I've met with Michelle that
Speaker 2: morning at breakfast at our hotel, I said to her,
Speaker 2: We're going to win this thing. How could we not?
Speaker 2: This is Canada. If anyone is going to trust the
Speaker 2: mainstream media, it's Canadians. I wrote out my opening comments
Speaker 2: on the plane, had a lovely visit with my mom,
Speaker 2: put on my snappiest suit jacket, then strode out on
Speaker 2: stage and warmly shook the moderator's.
Speaker 1: Hand because we want to know, are you open to
Speaker 1: changing your mind over the course of what you're going
Speaker 1: to hear in the next ninety minutes. Can you be
Speaker 1: persuaded to move from the pro camp into the con
Speaker 1: camp or vice versa.
Speaker 2: I should let you know before we get too far
Speaker 2: along that I am not someone who gets nervous. I
Speaker 2: don't get stage fright. I am the son of a
Speaker 2: man whose personal credo was nothing bad will ever happen.
Speaker 2: And that's how I felt on the evening of the
Speaker 2: month today. The room was packed, I felt the surge
Speaker 2: of love from my countryman, and Michelle was on fire.
Speaker 6: However, if you followed the mainstream media, you knew that
Speaker 6: COVID was airborne. You knew that it was more serious
Speaker 6: than the flu, and you knew that the vaccines were
Speaker 6: likely to protect you. The COVID contrarians, the contrarian media,
Speaker 6: the one who we're saying not to trust kind of
Speaker 6: mainstream sources of opinion. We're saying, this is just another flu.
Speaker 6: Deaths are going to be six thousand. The media doesn't
Speaker 6: want to tell you. I mean, Matt wrote this several times.
Speaker 6: The media doesn't want to tell you about Ivermectin.
Speaker 2: She had Tybee and Murray on their heels.
Speaker 6: In the run up to the invasion of Ukraine. Again,
Speaker 6: I think Matt said that, you know, the media is
Speaker 6: over hyping this, that people are kind of taking stenography
Speaker 6: from the Biden administration that Russia actually is probably not
Speaker 6: going to invade.
Speaker 2: When it was my turn to speak, I tried to
Speaker 2: build on what Michelle said. The mainstream media was right
Speaker 2: about things like COVID in Ukraine because it's a profession
Speaker 2: with standards and rules and a long tradition of searching
Speaker 2: for the truth. The non mainstream media is a set
Speaker 2: of institutions that are outside of that tradition, that have
Speaker 2: an open and not a closed platform. And you cannot
Speaker 2: have an open platform and simultaneously adhere to a strict
Speaker 2: set of professional norms. You cannot say anyone can become
Speaker 2: a doctor and then complain when the surgeon takes out
Speaker 2: your spleen and thinking that it's your call pattern right now,
Speaker 2: Why am I making such a big deal about this,
Speaker 2: Because trust is not about content. Trust is about process.
Speaker 2: I got my journalistic training at the Washington Post, one
Speaker 2: of the great newspapers in the world. I learned about
Speaker 2: that process, about what it means to respect the truth
Speaker 2: from some of the greatest journalists of my generation. This
Speaker 2: was from the heart. We're nailing this, I thought to myself.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 4: I can't sit here and listen to Malcolm Gladwell talking
Speaker 4: about fact checking and the importance of it. Not to
Speaker 4: get too mean, Malcolm. I read your book David and Goliath.
Speaker 4: The chapter on Northern Ireland is more filled with inaccuracies
Speaker 4: than any other chapter in a non fiction book I
Speaker 4: have read. It is having written a not very well
Speaker 4: selling but widely acclaimed book on Northern Ireland myself. My
Speaker 4: book on Northern Ireland didn't sell anywhere near as much
Speaker 4: as yours did, Malcolm, but mine was filled with facts.
Speaker 2: Oh God, all of us have had the dream of
Speaker 2: we're walking down our high school corridor and we realize
Speaker 2: suddenly we're not wearing any pants. That was me in
Speaker 2: that moment, the stage of Roy Thompson Hall, in front
Speaker 2: of a few thousand people, suddenly realizing this is not
Speaker 2: going well.
Speaker 4: It's so strange hearing you debate, Malcolm, because you listen
Speaker 4: to nothing that your opponents say. It's quite extraordinary. I've
Speaker 4: met it before, but never quite so badly as it
Speaker 4: occurs in you. You keep saying things that neither of
Speaker 4: us have said, and then you try to pathologize what
Speaker 4: we say. Now, Malcolm, why don't you listen to what
Speaker 4: comes out of our mouths and try to learn something
Speaker 4: from it? As I am with you this evening, But
Speaker 4: at the moment, all I get is you dismissing every
Speaker 4: single story we come up with, every egregious failure of
Speaker 4: the mainstream media.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine afterwards texted me to say, why
Speaker 2: didn't you tell me you were up against Douglas Murray.
Speaker 2: I would have warned you to stay home. A simple
Speaker 2: YouTube search would have shown me that he's a regular
Speaker 2: at the fabled Oxford Debating Union, a master of the
Speaker 2: cut and thrust.
Speaker 4: But I beg you to actually consider the fact that
Speaker 4: what we are describing is, even if you think, not
Speaker 4: as accurate as you would like, an expression of a
Speaker 4: problem that is going on in our societies. Functioning. Functioning
Speaker 4: liberal democracies need to have trust in their media, and
Speaker 4: the best that your site has been able to come
Speaker 4: up with so far tonight is to say, we get
Speaker 4: things wrong quite often, but you should trust us.
Speaker 2: You can't see it listening as you are. But Murray
Speaker 2: had the room in the palm of his hand.
Speaker 4: Take the hunter Biden's story. Oh here we okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: Of course you don't want to no end to that
Speaker 4: kind of of course you don't want to hear it, Malcolm.
Speaker 4: Of course you wouldn't because it goes against your ideological presumptions.
Speaker 2: In the Monk debate, the audience votes on the resolution
Speaker 2: once before the debate and then again after the debate
Speaker 2: is over, and the winner is the side that causes
Speaker 2: the most people to change their minds. Remember the resolution
Speaker 2: that night was be it resolved, do not trust the
Speaker 2: mainstream media.
Speaker 1: Let's just quickly review where we started out tonight's debate.
Speaker 1: It was pretty much a split opinion. If I believe
Speaker 1: it was forty eight in favor, fifty two opposed. We
Speaker 1: then asked you how many could change your mind. So
Speaker 1: let's see what happened of the last ninety minutes. Did
Speaker 1: either team of these debaters swing opinion one way or another?
Speaker 1: There we go sixty seven per set in favor of
Speaker 1: the motion, thirty three percent of post.
Speaker 2: It was the biggest swing in opinion in the history
Speaker 2: of the Monk debates. We got cream. I went back
Speaker 2: to my hotel room, lay down on my bed, stared
Speaker 2: at the ceiling, and made the mistake of checking social media.
Speaker 7: Malcolm gave the perfect talk to show exactly why nobody
Speaker 7: trusts his media. Malcolm Gladwell has failed as an intellectual
Speaker 7: in this debate.
Speaker 8: Wow, you got owned and you were so smug and
Speaker 8: arrogant as you were getting known be better.
Speaker 2: You've lost my respect.
Speaker 9: This was a funeral for Malcolm Gladwell's reputation.
Speaker 5: Gladwell's not half as smart as I thought.
Speaker 7: He was just washed.
Speaker 4: Malk get his butt kicked by Doug and really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I had hit rock bottom. What do you do after
Speaker 2: you've been humiliated? You call your mother, of course.
Speaker 5: Tex While Meg style in English It says, when things
Speaker 5: go wrong, convert them to something that is desirable.
Speaker 2: And the first thing my mother did when I asked
Speaker 2: for maternal reassurance was remind me of an expression from
Speaker 2: her native Jamaica. This is my mom's first solo appearance
Speaker 2: on Revisionist History. By the way, what kind of son
Speaker 2: makes his mother wait eight years for a cameo? I
Speaker 2: want to go back over the pronunciation of the of
Speaker 2: the words in dialect. Pronounce it and then spell them
Speaker 2: out for me, just so I can see in my mind. Okay,
Speaker 2: the expression.
Speaker 5: Tech spoil t e K. It's it's a it's a
Speaker 5: version of take take what is spoiled because we do
Speaker 5: not use the rounded vowels in Jamaica. They're all broad
Speaker 5: a vowels. We instead of saying spoil, we say spoil. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but they're all English words. Take, spoil, make style. Those
Speaker 5: are four English words, but they're just pronounced differently.
Speaker 2: It's beautifully economical.
Speaker 5: Exactly that. It's the economy and also the humor which
Speaker 5: is which, which is also striking.
Speaker 2: Put it in a sentence in your best Jamaican dialect.
Speaker 5: We don't use it in a sentence. We use it
Speaker 5: as a commentary on a situation. Here is someone walking
Speaker 5: along in a dress that does not fit with what
Speaker 5: is commonly being used, and she says, well, midare you
Speaker 5: watch and see everybody will be wearing a dress like
Speaker 5: this soon. Maya techspoile make style.
Speaker 2: This was her moral instruction to me in typically elliptical
Speaker 2: choice glabor fashion, Take lemons and make lemonade, take spoil
Speaker 2: and make style. So what did I do? I went
Speaker 2: straight to the top. I got in touch with the
Speaker 2: local legend of New York debating K M. D. Colandria
Speaker 2: aka deca, founder of the Brooklyn Debate League. I told
Speaker 2: Dica about the very public undressing Sid effered on the
Speaker 2: stage of Roy Thompson Hall, and Dico said, you need
Speaker 2: to come to Brooklyn, And so I did, all the
Speaker 2: way to the Crown Heights neighborhood in what used to
Speaker 2: be the old Hebrew Hospital, Narrow Hallway, cats, everyone eating
Speaker 2: big bulls of pasta, Franklin Avenue shuttle lumbering along in
Speaker 2: the background.
Speaker 7: What's all, George, Oh you can't do that?
Speaker 2: During the podcast, really, Dico had put together a dream
Speaker 2: team of three to analyze my performance. Sissan Kuss Rove,
Speaker 2: Jonathan Conyers and Dico himself. Jonathan is built like a linebacker,
Speaker 2: Big James hardened Beard works as a respiratory therapist when
Speaker 2: he's not writing books and teaching debate. Cissan is thirty something, extroverted, charismatic.
Speaker 2: In the John Grisham version of his life, he would
Speaker 2: be a trial lawyer who would win a ten billion
Speaker 2: dollar verdict from the jury in Mississippi. Dico is reserved,
Speaker 2: studied philosophy at Yale, Irish and Italian and background, and
Speaker 2: somewhere along the line converted to Judaism and went to
Speaker 2: rabbinical school. I sat down at Deco's kitchen table. Each
Speaker 2: of the three had pages of densely written notes in
Speaker 2: front of them they had prepared. Jonathan was to my left.
Speaker 2: I started with him, Jonathan, can you speak to the
Speaker 2: Was the tone different from the debates you're used to
Speaker 2: with students?
Speaker 7: So that's a very good question. So I'll answer this
Speaker 7: in two ways. The tone that you had throughout the
Speaker 7: debate was very similar to some of the students that
Speaker 7: I do work with, and that's what I teached them.
Speaker 2: I have the thickest kid in the world. No, I
Speaker 2: want to just pile on Oh they piled on.
Speaker 9: So San was next, And I think what I want
Speaker 9: to explore is the sort of disconnect between the things
Speaker 9: that you thought should have mattered to the audience and
Speaker 9: what actually turned out to matter.
Speaker 7: To the audience.
Speaker 2: Bendica, what was your strategy?
Speaker 9: Why do you think you won?
Speaker 10: Like if you talked us through, like your offense on
Speaker 10: that debate, like why do you think you want.
Speaker 2: I thought that that any it was to be honest,
Speaker 2: it began with a certain degree of arrogance that I
Speaker 2: thought I just couldn't imagine how anyone could legitimately argue
Speaker 2: that the mainstream media was worse than the at tournative.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, let's start there. If I assume that most
Speaker 2: people were on my side before I began, then why
Speaker 2: was I even debating. Debating is persuasion. It's based on
Speaker 2: the idea that there are people listening who don't agree
Speaker 2: with you, and your job is to change their mind.
Speaker 2: It's not a conversation. It's not you say what you think,
Speaker 2: I say what I think. It's a contest adjudicated by
Speaker 2: a third party, and the winner is a person who
Speaker 2: does the best job of clients inside the head of
Speaker 2: that third party.
Speaker 9: Because Ultimately, the wind condition of debate is the judge
Speaker 9: circle in your name.
Speaker 2: Sissan was the first to respond.
Speaker 9: Ultimately, it's figuring out what's important to that person and
Speaker 9: how do I show them that this thing that I'm
Speaker 9: advocating for functions under a value system that they hold.
Speaker 9: I think that's what's important about debate, and it's.
Speaker 2: An empathetic it's an intellectual exercise in empathy. Empathy. I
Speaker 2: just failed the first test of debating. I should have
Speaker 2: put myself inside the heads of those in the audience
Speaker 2: who didn't trust the mainstream media and then try and
Speaker 2: bring them around. Second related point. If you watch the
Speaker 2: whole ninety minute debate on YouTube, which for the love
Speaker 2: of God I dearly hope you do not, you will
Speaker 2: notice that mister Murray and I did not get along.
Speaker 2: At a few points. I called him Doug, to which
Speaker 2: he took great aense and called me Malk.
Speaker 4: Well, Malk, I'm going to try to take this more
Speaker 4: seriously than you did in your endless creation of straw men,
Speaker 4: which just is ceaseless.
Speaker 2: This evening, after the debate was over, Murray tweeted and
Speaker 2: retweeted word of his victory fourteen times. He's that kind
Speaker 2: of guy. But my advisors at the Brooklyn Debate League
Speaker 2: were not happy about my antipathy towards mister Murray. If
Speaker 2: reading the mind of the judge requires empathy, then how
Speaker 2: is pursuing some personal vendetta going to help matters? How
Speaker 2: do you engage in the delicate art of persuasion if
Speaker 2: you're getting all emotional. I tried to explain, I didn't
Speaker 2: know Douglas Murray much at all, so I did a
Speaker 2: little research into Douglas Murray in terms of the Douglas
Speaker 2: Murray without meaning. I'm not intending to demean him, but
Speaker 2: he is someone. He is one of those english people,
Speaker 2: white english people who objects to the number of non
Speaker 2: white people who have moved to England in the last
Speaker 2: fifty years. I'm actually not exaggerating here. Let me read
Speaker 2: too from a speech Murray once gave. It is late
Speaker 2: in the day, but Europe still has time to turn
Speaker 2: around the demographic time bomb, which will soon see a
Speaker 2: number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It
Speaker 2: has to All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must
Speaker 2: stop in the case of a further genocide such as
Speaker 2: that in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a
Speaker 2: strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively. Those
Speaker 2: who are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be
Speaker 2: persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once
Speaker 2: the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have
Speaker 2: been removed. That last sentence from Murray is what throws me.
Speaker 2: Immigrants from certain places should be persuaded back to the
Speaker 2: countries from which they fled. Like there's the whole thing
Speaker 2: that he does with on Andrew Sullivan's podcast where he
Speaker 2: talks about his dismay that many there are many cities
Speaker 2: in England now where whites are in the minority. Now.
Speaker 2: My mother happens to be one of those people who
Speaker 2: was a black woman who emigrated to England in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three or whatever, sixty two. So she's talking in
Speaker 2: the fifties, he's talking about So he's talking about my mother, right,
Speaker 2: So this is like it was it's street for me.
Speaker 11: It's like that dude is that dude is one of
Speaker 11: you know, people used to shout the.
Speaker 2: End word to my mom when she walked down the
Speaker 2: street in England in nineteen fifty whatever, and I'm in
Speaker 2: my mind, I'm imagining he's one of those people, right,
Speaker 2: So it's like that's what was happening when I was
Speaker 2: getting riled up. I was like, I walked in thinking
Speaker 2: he's a piece of shit. That's I realized now, you
Speaker 2: can't do that. If you do that, you've lost before
Speaker 2: you've even started. This is why in high school debate
Speaker 2: you have to prepare both sides beforehand and you find
Speaker 2: out whether you are for or against the resolution on
Speaker 2: the day of the debate. They don't want you to
Speaker 2: be yourself.
Speaker 7: And again, like you know, Dicoka attested this more than anybody.
Speaker 7: Dico has had students who parents have just been deported
Speaker 7: or on the verge of being deported and didn't have
Speaker 7: to go and speak about open borders and immigration and
Speaker 7: don't know which side of the fence they have to
Speaker 7: debate on. That is tough for fourteen fifteen year olds too.
Speaker 7: After they give a speech, I have to go cry
Speaker 7: because they missed their dad or mom and they don't
Speaker 7: know if ice is coming or I can't do this.
Speaker 7: I can't do that. When I get it, I have
Speaker 7: been there there were times where I felt racism occurring,
Speaker 7: or people told me you can't use your personal story.
Speaker 7: That's not fear. This rich kid don't understand what it's
Speaker 7: like to be poor, so don't talk about that. So
Speaker 7: it happens. We have to come in and understand that
Speaker 7: debates are not personal and we have to talk about
Speaker 7: these topics because if we can't have dialogue, if we
Speaker 7: can't have respect in all this loss. So I'm going
Speaker 7: to challenge you, Malcolm, to say, if they can control
Speaker 7: the opposure and if they can understand that we can
Speaker 7: have real conversations, so can you.
Speaker 2: Our culture tells us to be authentic and put our
Speaker 2: feelings first. But if you're trying to win a debate,
Speaker 2: your focus needs to be on your opponent's feelings, how
Speaker 2: their mind works. That's the number one. Don't be yourself.
Speaker 2: It's a dead end. Okay. Second, lesson, all of my
Speaker 2: advisors at the Brooklyn Debate League were baffled by a
Speaker 2: crucial moment early in the debate, this moment in particular.
Speaker 4: And nobody is saying that non mainstream media don't have frailties.
Speaker 7: Of course they do.
Speaker 4: The simple proposal in front of the audience tonight is
Speaker 4: whether or not you can trust the mainstream media. That
Speaker 4: is that you don't need anything else. You don't need
Speaker 4: any other information from else where. You can just turn
Speaker 4: on CBC in the evening and you know you've got
Speaker 4: your stuff. You can pick up the New York Times
Speaker 4: the Washington Posts in the morning and you know that
Speaker 4: there's no spin on the story. It's absolutely accurate reporting.
Speaker 2: The debate Connoisseuran Sasan loved this little move. What Murray
Speaker 2: was saying was that if you have even the slightest
Speaker 2: doubt about the perfection of the mainstream media, then you
Speaker 2: have to vote for his side, and no institution can
Speaker 2: meet that standard. It's like saying, unless all prescription drugs
Speaker 2: are guaranteed to act perfectly every time without side effects
Speaker 2: or complications, you can't trust prescription drugs. It's nuts.
Speaker 9: They took this topic don't trust mainstream media and made
Speaker 9: the central question of the debate be are there political
Speaker 9: biases in mainstream media? As long as that's the question
Speaker 9: that the audience is asking themselves to make the winner,
Speaker 9: you lose.
Speaker 2: What my side should have said was, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: the way you guys are defining the resolution makes no sense.
Speaker 2: So San said that then I'd be free to offer
Speaker 2: a simple alternative, something like.
Speaker 9: In a scenario where a non mainstream news source and
Speaker 9: a mainstream news source directly disagree with each other, and
Speaker 9: we have no way of discerning who's right based on
Speaker 9: what we have available to us, who should we give
Speaker 9: the benefit of the doubt to? I think that leans
Speaker 9: a lot more your way.
Speaker 2: But we didn't say that. We sat there and let
Speaker 2: our opponents stack the deck against us. Why Dico had
Speaker 2: a hunch.
Speaker 10: Did you write down any notes while your opponents were speaking?
Speaker 7: What were you doing?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: That was.
Speaker 2: I was scribbling furiously. I was the only one who was.
Speaker 10: But I realized they were saying or what you were thinking.
Speaker 2: Both, But I realized it inhibited my ability to listen
Speaker 2: to them. So I was so busy I was trying
Speaker 2: to conceive of what I would how i'd respond in
Speaker 2: the moment. So while I was doing that, I was
Speaker 2: missing what the next part of the next thing that
Speaker 2: they were saying, do you know? I mean? Dico also
Speaker 2: picked up on what led to my most embarrassing moment
Speaker 2: in the whole debate, the Walter Cronkite thing. A AI
Speaker 2: Cronkite was as I'm sure, you know the legendary CBS
Speaker 2: news anchor and wartime correspondent who for decades stood for
Speaker 2: all that was dignified and trustworthy in American journalism. Matt
Speaker 2: Taibi brought him up in his opening statement.
Speaker 3: Once the commercial strategy of the news business was to
Speaker 3: go for the whole audience. A TV news broadcast was
Speaker 3: aired at dinner time, and it was designed to be
Speaker 3: watched by the entire family, everyone from your crazy right
Speaker 3: wing uncle to the sulking lefty teenager in the corner.
Speaker 3: The system had flaws, but making an effort to talk
Speaker 3: to everybody had benefits for one thing, and inspired trust.
Speaker 3: Gallup polls twice twice showed Walter Cronkite to be the
Speaker 3: most trusted person in all of America. That would never
Speaker 3: happen with a news reader today. With the arrival of
Speaker 3: the Internet, some outlets found that instead of going after
Speaker 3: the whole audience, it made more financial sense to pick
Speaker 3: one demographic and try to dominate it. How do you
Speaker 3: do that? That's easy. You just pick an audience and
Speaker 3: feed it news you know they'll like. Instead of starting
Speaker 3: with a story and following the facts, you start with
Speaker 3: what pleases your audience and work backward to the story.
Speaker 2: Back when we had Cronkite, the system worked. I heard that,
Speaker 2: and I thought, give me an effing break. So when
Speaker 2: it was my turn, I responded, I was greatly amused
Speaker 2: by the affection Matt Tabby has for the age of
Speaker 2: Walter Cronkite, which he seemed to hold up as a
Speaker 2: kind of golden moment. In that moment, the mainstream media
Speaker 2: was pipulated entirely by white men from elite schools. Why
Speaker 2: you would have had such affection and say that's the
Speaker 2: gold standard and we should trust the mainstream media precisely
Speaker 2: at the moment when the mainstream media is least representative.
Speaker 2: Is really puzzling to me. Then Douglas Murray chimed in, of.
Speaker 4: Course, Malcolm, you did a little nasty jab there by
Speaker 4: trying to pretend that Matt Tabi is desperate for the
Speaker 4: era of white men in broadcasting. Takes a certain hutzpur
Speaker 4: to make that claim.
Speaker 2: Tabe then defended himself, and.
Speaker 3: Yes, as I said in my speech, the old system
Speaker 3: under Walter Cronkite had its flaws, but it did have
Speaker 3: its advantages as well. Making the effort to talk to
Speaker 3: everybody garner more trust in the public. There is a
Speaker 3: reason why people trusted newspeople more twenty or thirty or
Speaker 3: forty years ago than they do now.
Speaker 2: And once again I got irritated, this time with that
Speaker 2: phrase making the effort to talk to everyone I just
Speaker 2: wanted to do. Make a short list of the people
Speaker 2: who were not spoken to by journalists in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties. And you may want to add some
Speaker 2: if I miss some black people, a.
Speaker 11: Women, poor people, gay people, people with mildly left wing views.
Speaker 11: I mean, words fell me when somebody, when it presented
Speaker 11: with a critique of his rather adiosyncratic position on Walter Cronkite,
Speaker 11: comes back and says, oh no, no, no, there's more
Speaker 11: or to my great love of this man. So I'm
Speaker 11: on my high horse, waiting my work flag standing up
Speaker 11: for inclusion. But wait, first, back to less than one.
Speaker 11: Don't be myself.
Speaker 2: It's not smart. But that's not even the worst of it.
Speaker 10: Do you remember the context in which Matt brought that
Speaker 10: comment up in his opening?
Speaker 2: It was he was me talking about how that was
Speaker 2: an example the way it was back then was worthy
Speaker 2: of our trust. And it's not like that anymore.
Speaker 10: You Remember why what he was saying in his opening
Speaker 10: was not I am lifting up the nineteen fifties as
Speaker 10: the golden standard of media and Walter Prava blah. Yes,
Speaker 10: that sentencement came out of his mouth, but that's not
Speaker 10: what he was saying. What he was saying was look
Speaker 10: to the nineteen fifties, look to the past. When you
Speaker 10: had a whole family gathered around the TVs watching one show,
Speaker 10: that show had to talk to all of the people
Speaker 10: in that room, to the parents, to the kids, to
Speaker 10: the grandparents, even if they had different interests, different political ideologies, whatever.
Speaker 9: That one show.
Speaker 10: Had to talk to a diverse audience. It could not
Speaker 10: have an agenda in the same way that it does today,
Speaker 10: because today it's not talking to a whole family. It's
Speaker 10: not even talking to a whole neighborhood or a whole household.
Speaker 10: We all have our individual echo chambers that we lean
Speaker 10: really hard into.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 10: What he brought up about Walter Cronkite and about the
Speaker 10: nineteen fifties was just a detail.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see. Deco's point was that the people in
Speaker 2: the audience, the judges, surely understood what Taibi was saying,
Speaker 2: But I didn't.
Speaker 12: The main point there was totally ignored, and it was
Speaker 12: a really important point for the af offense because their
Speaker 12: whole argument was you can't trust mainstream media because there
Speaker 12: are agendas, because.
Speaker 10: They're not trying to give you the truth. They're trying
Speaker 10: to give you the spin and the story and cater
Speaker 10: to a They call it demographic hunting. I think right
Speaker 10: that they're catering to a specific demographic.
Speaker 2: The Crownkite bit was a provocation waved in front of
Speaker 2: Malcolm Gladwell that sent him charging off in the wrong direction.
Speaker 10: It was like a distractor thrown in there that worked,
Speaker 10: and you got totally distracted and went down this whole
Speaker 10: rabbit hole and missed that bigger picture.
Speaker 2: Where did I do anything? Well, no, not really remember
Speaker 2: what Douglas Murray said.
Speaker 4: It's so strange hearing you debate, Malcolm because you listen
Speaker 4: to nothing that your opponents said.
Speaker 2: Turns out he was right. And that was when Deco
Speaker 2: told me I had to come to Brooklyn again for
Speaker 2: listening lessons. I met with the Debate League at Unity Prep,
Speaker 2: a charter high school in Williamsburg. I sat myself down
Speaker 2: in a high school classroom for the first time since
Speaker 2: the late nineteen seventies, Deca, Jonathan, and Sisan were all there,
Speaker 2: along with a dozen or so high school debaters. There
Speaker 2: was a step class in the adjoining room. I was
Speaker 2: a long way from Roy Thompson Hall.
Speaker 7: All right, open for him, look up. Being able to
Speaker 7: listen is the most important skill a debater should have.
Speaker 7: All right, stand up. You know the routine. If you agree,
Speaker 7: you on this side. If you disagree, you on that side.
Speaker 7: Come on, come on.
Speaker 2: Jonathan kicked things off with a warm up exercise, open
Speaker 2: for him, a mini debate on the question of the day.
Speaker 2: What's more important to a debater being a good listener
Speaker 2: or a good talker?
Speaker 7: Agree is always over here, Disagree is always over there. Thanks.
Speaker 7: Being able to listen, I'm so sorry. Being able to listen,
Speaker 7: it's the most important skill that debata could have. Being
Speaker 7: able to listen is the most important skill.
Speaker 8: Is UH one of the most important skills in debating
Speaker 8: because the way the way people read UH read their contentions,
Speaker 8: and at some points you wouldn't be able to gain
Speaker 8: gain and obtain as much information as you can to
Speaker 8: put down in your blow chart. Because debating is not
Speaker 8: only about using information against information, but it's also about
Speaker 8: obtaining It's also about obtaining something and understanding that in
Speaker 8: order to use information to fight it.
Speaker 13: Welly, I do vo, I do agree with what you said.
Speaker 13: I just feel like you can be a good listener.
Speaker 13: But what it really takes is when you have confidence
Speaker 13: and you basically pretend like you know your stuff.
Speaker 14: But you also said you have to listen to your opponent.
Speaker 14: So that's also a very important skill to listen to
Speaker 14: your opponent, cause if you don't listen to it and
Speaker 14: you just drawing stuff down, you might say the wrong
Speaker 14: things or write down the wrong things to what your
Speaker 14: opponent is saying. So I'm saying and that listener is
Speaker 14: more important because, as my other teammate said Jade, she
Speaker 14: also referred to how they read their contentions or their
Speaker 14: sub points. They read fast, and if you can't catch
Speaker 14: those points, then you're not gonna know what you gotta
Speaker 14: write or what you gotta focus on.
Speaker 8: Can I say something real fully? Yes, I have something
Speaker 8: for all the output all accurate A Jay, To start
Speaker 8: with what you said, you need to write in order
Speaker 8: to you need to write in order to listen. But
Speaker 8: it is true that that is true. But you but
Speaker 8: Listening is a prerequisite to writing, because you can write
Speaker 8: a whole but of nonsense. But what if you don't
Speaker 8: have to write accurate information you didn't listen to the
Speaker 8: right numbers, you listen to the racisistics, then what is
Speaker 8: your writing have to do?
Speaker 2: Anything?
Speaker 8: I can sit there and draw up a ferry, but
Speaker 8: that's not going to make my argument any better unless
Speaker 8: you listen.
Speaker 2: Then the hard part began.
Speaker 9: What is this thing?
Speaker 2: This wasn't Someone was standing at the front of the room.
Speaker 2: He told us he would simulate a debate. Our job
Speaker 2: was to keep track of every argument he made. In
Speaker 2: the debate world. This is called flowing. Sassan said. He
Speaker 2: would try and make it easier on us. So we're
Speaker 2: going to do a game with playing cards where.
Speaker 9: I am going to say the name of a card
Speaker 9: in a deck of cards, and you are going to
Speaker 9: flow it like it's a speech. So you're going to
Speaker 9: make a column. So if you have a sheet of
Speaker 9: paper and we have notebooks for you, you're going to
Speaker 9: want five columns, and in this first column, top to bottom,
Speaker 9: you are going to write the cards that I'm going
Speaker 9: to say out loud. You're gonna want to listen carefully
Speaker 9: because I'm not going to repeat anything. The test is
Speaker 9: to see whether you're going to be able to write
Speaker 9: it all down without missing anything.
Speaker 2: Now, if you think this sounds like a silly exercise,
Speaker 2: I encourage you to pause this podcast, get a pen
Speaker 2: and paper and try it for yourself.
Speaker 9: Ready, Hello, my name is Sasan and I'll be speaking
Speaker 9: on the affirmative today. My first argument is the three
Speaker 9: of hearts, and we know that's true because of the
Speaker 9: four of diamonds. And you can't forget about the jack
Speaker 9: of spades. You know, a lot of people tell me
Speaker 9: ten of diamonds, but what those people don't realize is,
Speaker 9: first off, ace of hearts, secondly the six of clubs,
Speaker 9: and finally the nine of spades.
Speaker 7: That's it.
Speaker 9: That's the speech, So you should have these written down. Okay, great,
Speaker 9: now we're going to do the negative speech. Switchbank color.
Speaker 9: All right, I'm the negative and I disagree with everything
Speaker 9: that guy said. He says three of hearts more like
Speaker 9: the seven of diamonds. You know, people like to talk
Speaker 9: about Jack of spades, but what they don't realize is
Speaker 9: king of hearts. Ton of diamonds is okay, if you
Speaker 9: don't remember that the Ace of Spades is there, and
Speaker 9: as far as the Ace of Hearts goes, more like
Speaker 9: the two of hearts. Finally, they brought up the nine
Speaker 9: of spades, nine of spades, nine of seriously, because have
Speaker 9: you never heard of the Queen of clubs? That's my
Speaker 9: old speech. And I'm maybe unnecessarily aggressive here.
Speaker 2: How did I do? I was terrible. I could keep
Speaker 2: up for the first minute or so. Then I fell behind.
Speaker 2: I miss things. Sisan gets up and talks about playing cards,
Speaker 2: and I can't keep up.
Speaker 7: I got I have a question for you? Is this hard? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 7: people have a question for you.
Speaker 1: Is this hard?
Speaker 13: Really hard?
Speaker 7: This is really hard? And you guys are doing amazing.
Speaker 7: I'll see it all over your face. This is frustrated.
Speaker 7: You don't supposed to be an expert. I don't even
Speaker 7: know what you said half the tom, and I'm been
Speaker 7: doing this for a long tom. Alright.
Speaker 2: This is what happened to me during the month debate.
Speaker 2: I was taking notes, but I didn't know how to
Speaker 2: take notes, So when Murray twisted the terms of the debate,
Speaker 2: I just missed it. And when Tybee made that reference
Speaker 2: to Walter Cronkite, I heard the name cronkite, but I
Speaker 2: missed the context. Am I making excuses for myself? Of
Speaker 2: course I am. But what debate tells us is that
Speaker 2: the failure to listen is not a failure of will
Speaker 2: or motivation or character. That's what we assume when there's
Speaker 2: some breakdown in communication. If someone doesn't listen, we assume
Speaker 2: they don't want to listen. We hear the yelling and
Speaker 2: screaming on the internet, and we see it as evidence
Speaker 2: of some great flaw in our society. But maybe, at
Speaker 2: least some of the time, the person who doesn't listen
Speaker 2: acts that way because they don't know how to listen.
Speaker 2: They haven't practiced, they don't know where to start. Listening
Speaker 2: is a skill like playing the piano or learning to cook.
Speaker 2: I ask us, on how long would it take me
Speaker 2: to listen the way he does, to learn how to flow?
Speaker 9: I think if you really focus on it, a school year,
Speaker 9: I think to be really comfortable with it, probably like
Speaker 9: two school years. Yeah, yeah, and that's half of your
Speaker 9: college competitive career, that's half of your high school competitive career.
Speaker 2: A long time. But imagine if we did it, if
Speaker 2: we all went to debate school, learn those lessons we're
Speaker 2: able to say to ourselves in the middle of a
Speaker 2: heated argument, this isn't about me. Learned how to avoid
Speaker 2: Walter Cronkite's sized rabbit holes. Understood the debating is not
Speaker 2: the art of talking, it's the art of listening. Oh
Speaker 2: and maybe the most important lesson of all. Do you
Speaker 2: know what they teach you to do at the Brooklyn
Speaker 2: Debate League After the debate is over, after one side
Speaker 2: has lost and the other has won.
Speaker 7: All right, you guys, go to culture, tell each other
Speaker 7: compliment why we love each other?
Speaker 8: Go go go compliment?
Speaker 7: Who shout out? Shout out, and.
Speaker 2: All around the room the debaters shouted out happily to
Speaker 2: each other. The idea of how do you just look
Speaker 2: to that attitude?
Speaker 8: Because attitude is in that one word believe is a
Speaker 8: really strong word to use, which gave you such a
Speaker 8: good lead may some arguments.
Speaker 13: And I love how you be coming in like you
Speaker 13: know what, your what your presence, like you're gonna clear
Speaker 13: you know. So then it amps me up, Like when
Speaker 13: you have like that attitude, it amps me up and
Speaker 13: it makes me want to clear too.
Speaker 9: So I like that.
Speaker 2: Matt and Doug my Monk debate antagonists. I appreciate you
Speaker 2: for forcing me to take what was spoiled and give
Speaker 2: it new life. Now, one last question. So I I
Speaker 2: approached you with this because, as I said, I had
Speaker 2: this disastrous experience with the Monk debate, and I so
Speaker 2: I wanted to use this opportunity to learn to be
Speaker 2: a better debater. Do you think this is typical of me?
Speaker 2: That I would am I a take spoil make style
Speaker 2: kind of person.
Speaker 5: In your mind, you are such a highly successful person
Speaker 5: that one would not associate with you many occasions in
Speaker 5: which you needed to do that.
Speaker 2: That's just a much the fact that you.
Speaker 5: I beg your pardon, I.
Speaker 2: Said, that's just a mother speaking you. You will not
Speaker 2: admit to any frailty on the part of your sons.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, not only that I'm not aware of them,
Speaker 5: but so so much. But the fact that you have
Speaker 5: risen above in this is remarkable way justifies my my
Speaker 5: faith in you and my confidence in you.
Speaker 2: Oh that's what I meant by maternal reassurance. Revision says
Speaker 2: Street is produced by ben Ada F. Hafrey, Leeman gistdou
Speaker 2: Kiera Powell, and Jacob Smith. Fact checking by Kashaw Williams
Speaker 2: and Tolly Emlin. We are edited by Julia Barton and
Speaker 2: Peter Clowney. Original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering by Sarah Bruguier,
Speaker 2: and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Twitter taunting by Nina Lawrence, Leeman, Gistou,
Speaker 2: Justin Richmond, Ben Holliday, Emily Vaughan, and David jaw Special
Speaker 2: thanks to the Unity Preparatory Charter School and Brooklyn Debate League.
Speaker 2: If you're curious about the league and the fantastic coaches
Speaker 2: behind it, keep an eye out for Jonathan Conyer's's forthcoming
Speaker 2: memoir I Wasn't supposed to be here out this September.
Speaker 2: Jonathan has incredible stories to tell, most of all special
Speaker 2: thanks to my mom, Joyce Scleppo. I'm hersa