Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 1: So we've been covering here a lot the current and
Speaker 1: potential impact of AI and there was one story that
Speaker 1: we're really interested in but didn't feel we had the
Speaker 1: expertise to fully tackle, which is there's been a few
Speaker 1: AI generated songs. The one that popped into my feed
Speaker 1: first was a Drake the Weekend song that sounded pretty
Speaker 1: good to my ear and sounded pretty realistic, so potential
Speaker 1: to upend the music industry. So to talk about all
Speaker 1: of this, we wanted to bring in music expert Anthony Fantano.
Speaker 1: He's on YouTube at the Needle Drop.
Speaker 4: Great to meet you, sir, Hey nice for me YouTube.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, first of all, that first Drake in the
Speaker 1: Weekend song, just on a music level, like my ear,
Speaker 1: is very un Trained, et cetera. But did you like
Speaker 1: the song. I'm not a huge Drake fan. I like
Speaker 1: some of his music, not all of his music. I
Speaker 1: liked the Weekend actually more, and I kind of liked it,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought the song was pretty good.
Speaker 5: I thought the instrumental little piano loop and that was cool.
Speaker 5: I thought the Weekend vocals were decent, though maybe not
Speaker 5: as convincing because stylistically they sounded like something.
Speaker 4: More from like an older era of his career than in.
Speaker 5: More something kind of the more pop centric stuff that
Speaker 5: he's doing now. But the Drake vocal was like dead on.
Speaker 5: It was like, you know, completely nailed in terms of
Speaker 5: like it's sounding exactly like him.
Speaker 1: So when you first heard the song, did you know
Speaker 1: it was AI generated or did you hear it before
Speaker 1: you realized that?
Speaker 6: And if you do, you.
Speaker 1: Think you would have been able to tell, is what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get at.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think I would have been able to tell. However,
Speaker 5: you know, I feel like the AI conversation is kind
Speaker 5: of like too pronged right now, and which one we're
Speaker 5: having can be kind.
Speaker 4: Of confusing at times.
Speaker 5: The you know, I think like, you know, the conversation.
Speaker 5: The conversation could kind of go two ways. You're either
Speaker 5: discussing about like this idea of like AI generated music
Speaker 5: replacing artists, because you know, there's kind of this hypothetical
Speaker 5: of I don't know, you open up a program or
Speaker 5: some kind of AI learning you know, whatever it is interface,
Speaker 5: and you sort of put in I want this kind
Speaker 5: of song that sounds like this, and da da da
Speaker 5: da da, and then just like hands it to you,
Speaker 5: and you know, artists are kind of replaced in that way.
Speaker 4: Because it sort of like creates this ease of creation.
Speaker 5: The other flip side of it, the flip side of
Speaker 5: it is like this idea of impersonation, like we're not
Speaker 5: just making music idly to replace other musicians who maybe
Speaker 5: sort of putting that music out there where literally impersonating
Speaker 5: a famous artist and making their music for them in
Speaker 5: a way and sort of passing it off as their stuff.
Speaker 5: In this conversation is very much in in that lane
Speaker 5: because when I dug more into the song, you know,
Speaker 5: of course, like I came to learn that the ghost
Speaker 5: writer guy who created it, like he.
Speaker 4: Produce the song themselves.
Speaker 5: So the song produced by a human the melodies and
Speaker 5: vocals written by a human, the lyrics written by a human.
Speaker 4: The AI portion.
Speaker 5: Of it, where that comes into play is when he
Speaker 5: laid down the vocals for the track. He used this,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of like vocal AI deep fake whatever personality,
Speaker 5: not personality, but program to turn his vocals to sound
Speaker 5: like Drake's vocals, and you know, so like there's a
Speaker 5: very human touch throughout the entire song. The AI came
Speaker 5: into play in order to sort of like make the
Speaker 5: vocals sound as if it was Drake on the track. Now,
Speaker 5: you know, with that being said, there's still causes for
Speaker 5: a concern that come into play here, because you know,
Speaker 5: for me, this is like really not so much an
Speaker 5: issue of like our computers taking over, but you know,
Speaker 5: should people be allowed to use this technology to basically
Speaker 5: impersonate other people, impersonate other artists to either you know,
Speaker 5: undercut their potential earnings as artists, because you know, they
Speaker 5: could sort of make their songs for them, or maybe
Speaker 5: make a whrle song or a defading song or something
Speaker 5: that would be embarrassing in some way and sort of
Speaker 5: like pass it off as like, yeah, oh, here's a
Speaker 5: Drake demo where he says this like heinous thing or
Speaker 5: something like that. I don't know if you're aware of
Speaker 5: this artist, but you know, an art pop and sort
Speaker 5: of experimental pop artist who hails from Canada, who goes by.
Speaker 4: The name of Grimes.
Speaker 5: She recently, like you know, put out this call to
Speaker 5: a lot of her fans, and she's kind of very
Speaker 5: much of this vibe, like she likes technology, she likes
Speaker 5: machine learning, she likes AI, she likes you know, kind
Speaker 5: of these futurists, these futurist aesthetics and you know, viewpoints,
Speaker 5: and she kind of puts that out in her social
Speaker 5: media and her art, and she encouraged her fans to
Speaker 5: sort of like start AI generating her music for her.
Speaker 4: Here, you know, hear some stuff, some stems and whatever
Speaker 4: for my vocals, which.
Speaker 5: You can feed into this program or manipulate in every
Speaker 5: way you want, in whatever way you want to sort
Speaker 5: of make it sound like it's me singing on a song.
Speaker 5: And if you put it out and put my name
Speaker 5: on it, we can cut a fifty to fifty in
Speaker 5: terms of like the revenue. But you know, in sort
Speaker 5: of encouraging her fans do that, she also had to
Speaker 5: sort of put out a message saying like, hey, listen,
Speaker 5: I can't really endorse the song or allow you to
Speaker 5: keep it up if you're using it to say crazy
Speaker 5: stuff or endorse or you know, platform ideologies that I
Speaker 5: don't agree with that are like extreme or weird or
Speaker 5: something like that. So, you know, I think there's a
Speaker 5: lot of you know, potential moral questions that come into
Speaker 5: play with, you know, the way that this technology could
Speaker 5: be used to, you know, ruin the reputations of other artists,
Speaker 5: because it sounds so real because as you were saying earlier,
Speaker 5: I couldn't really tell that wasn't Drake on the track.
Speaker 4: It sounds like you can Drake on the song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. Is that the same Grimes that was
Speaker 1: with Elon Musk is at that crimes?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh okay.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting because so this is a person who
Speaker 1: is sort of embracing the technology and saying, go forth,
Speaker 1: make them and even she's having to say, but we
Speaker 1: got to put some limits on it, and I can't
Speaker 1: really endorse this music and you know, keep it in
Speaker 1: the in the straight and narrow of not being too
Speaker 1: wild and crazy, which I think does expose how many
Speaker 1: moral tricky, difficult moral questions it raises how have other artists,
Speaker 1: I mean, how have Drake and The Weekend responded to
Speaker 1: this particular song. I think there were other songs that
Speaker 1: were put out similarly.
Speaker 5: Right as far as I could tell, they haven't sort
Speaker 5: of made any kind of direct, know acknowledgments toward the track,
Speaker 5: mostly because I think in doing that it's going to
Speaker 5: bring more attention to it than they want and probably
Speaker 5: encourage more artists to do it. Any interaction they've had,
Speaker 5: but those tracks, from what I understand, has been done
Speaker 5: through their record label. And while the song, and I
Speaker 5: believe there's another Drake song that's been floating around as
Speaker 5: well that may have been created the same way. Those
Speaker 5: tracks are still kind of floating around in a few
Speaker 5: different places on social media, but from what I understand,
Speaker 5: they've been taken down off of streaming, taken.
Speaker 4: Down in an official capacity.
Speaker 5: On maybe other platforms where it could have potentially been anetized,
Speaker 5: because they just want to make sure that, like you know,
Speaker 5: on the platforms where Drake's music is making the labels money,
Speaker 5: that this song is not like competing with other tracks
Speaker 5: that he has up and has out. Because the song
Speaker 5: was getting hundreds of thousands of streams over the course
Speaker 5: of days.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I went to look for it, it was
Speaker 1: pretty hard to find, but I was at that point
Speaker 1: at least able to find it. Do you know if
Speaker 1: the technology is sufficiently advanced now where you said this
Speaker 1: was basically like a human did everything except the actual
Speaker 1: and even the vocals, but then it's run through this
Speaker 1: AI program that switches his vocals to sound like Drake,
Speaker 1: to sound like the Weekend. Is the technology anywhere close
Speaker 1: to advanced enough that you could literally, as someone like me,
Speaker 1: just type in like make me a song from Drake
Speaker 1: that sounds in this kind of way, and that it
Speaker 1: would come up with something that was reasonable.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, No, it's it's nowhere near that at this point. Like,
Speaker 5: there are some instances of you know, weird underground like
Speaker 5: band camp pages where somebody has like maybe fed a
Speaker 5: bunch of.
Speaker 8: Beatles songs into something and then sort of asks to
Speaker 8: make a bunch of Beatles music and it sounds like
Speaker 8: this really vague, weird mush.
Speaker 4: Where it's it's it's kind of weird.
Speaker 5: It's like looking into you know, a bunch of it's
Speaker 5: like it's like staring into a word jumble where it's like,
Speaker 5: if you stare at it long enough, you could pick
Speaker 5: out certain words and circle them, but it mostly just looks.
Speaker 4: Kind of like noise. You know, mostly just sounds like noise.
Speaker 5: It's something that kind of resembles music, but not like,
Speaker 5: you know, accurately. However, even though it's not there, it
Speaker 5: probably will eventually reach that point. Things will advance to
Speaker 5: the point where you could potentially just like punch in
Speaker 5: I want a Drake song and then.
Speaker 4: It just like plops out a Drake song in front
Speaker 4: of you or something like that. And you know, I
Speaker 4: think there has to be some kind of I.
Speaker 5: Don't know, initiative on the part of Congress or somebody
Speaker 5: to sort of like nip this in the bud before
Speaker 5: it becomes like a bigger thing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I think there should potentially be at some point like
Speaker 5: repercussions for people who might possibly use this technology nefariously.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: And this doesn't just apply to artists.
Speaker 5: This applies to public figures, personalities, also individual people as well,
Speaker 5: because I mean, you know, using this stuff, if you've
Speaker 5: had enough recordings of anybody's voice, you could potentially just
Speaker 5: kind of doctor like a phone recording or something like
Speaker 5: that and like put it out and make it seem
Speaker 5: like you know, so and so said this that or
Speaker 5: the other thing and sort of like you know, completely
Speaker 5: ruin their reputation. You know, it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 5: like a case of defamation in a way. So there
Speaker 5: is that, and then you know, I think maybe there
Speaker 5: needs to be some kind of like you know, I
Speaker 5: guess look or revision into the greater scheme of copyright
Speaker 5: law or something in terms of like being able to
Speaker 5: say you can't literally claim my voice as your own
Speaker 5: or you know, I'm not advocating for you know, anybody
Speaker 5: to be sued or sort of taken to court if
Speaker 5: they have a voice that's maybe similar to another artist's voice,
Speaker 5: but you know, using this technology to recreate someone's vocal
Speaker 5: and you know, sell it or market it or commercialize
Speaker 5: it in some way, I think there should be that
Speaker 5: should be.
Speaker 4: De incentivized, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you know right now, I think it
Speaker 5: should be kind of treated in the same way that
Speaker 5: sampling is. You know, there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 5: lot of sample based music out there, and a lot
Speaker 5: of great sample based music, but a great deal of
Speaker 5: it is kind of like you know, operating in the underground,
Speaker 5: it's allowed to kind of like exist on social media
Speaker 5: or maybe put up for free on YouTube and that
Speaker 5: sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Or even if it is on a.
Speaker 5: Music streaming platform, it's probably being you know, uploaded by
Speaker 5: an artist.
Speaker 4: Who doesn't really have that much of a fan base
Speaker 4: or a following anyway. You know. However, if a certain
Speaker 4: song that does happen.
Speaker 5: To sample a copyrighted track is on a platform where
Speaker 5: it is making money and it pops off and it
Speaker 5: gains attention, that's usually when record labels kind of come
Speaker 5: calling and want a cut of whatever it is that
Speaker 5: artist is making off that viral song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, is there an ad sharing there's an
Speaker 1: ed sharing case going on right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, currently there's an ed sheering case going on.
Speaker 5: I mean, I would say topically, like definitely, you know,
Speaker 5: in a different realm. However, it is a case that
Speaker 5: I'm watching and I'm very concerned about because personally, I
Speaker 5: don't think the similarity musically between the Marvin Gaye song
Speaker 5: and the Edge Heeran song.
Speaker 4: Are all that close.
Speaker 5: And there are other tracks out there that are pretty
Speaker 5: popular that I think have even greater similarities. To you know,
Speaker 5: popular songs in the past point ultimately being there. I
Speaker 5: think if you start kind of, you know, suing artists
Speaker 5: left and right over these you know, not even not
Speaker 5: even like a clear plagiarism of a melody or a
Speaker 5: lyric or something like that, like literally just like you know,
Speaker 5: it's a similar vibe or it's a similar set of chords,
Speaker 5: you know, like nailing an artist down over a set
Speaker 5: of chords, which I mean the chords to let's get
Speaker 5: it on.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're nice to listen to.
Speaker 5: It's a beautiful song, it's a great track, but like
Speaker 5: they're not profoundly unique, Like it's not a profoundly you know,
Speaker 5: it's like suing some over a drum beat.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this gets into like how it's tricky
Speaker 1: to draw the line because you also don't want to
Speaker 1: stifle creativity.
Speaker 4: Right and you can imagine, right.
Speaker 1: And and so the way that Grimes is looking at
Speaker 1: this is almost like, oh, this is a whole other
Speaker 1: genre of art that could be could flourish, could be created.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing that seems really clear to me
Speaker 1: is you have to have total transparency. You can't be
Speaker 1: trying to pass this track off of oh, this is
Speaker 1: actually Drake or this is actually the Weekend. Has to
Speaker 1: be really clear up front what this thing actually is.
Speaker 1: But even then, it, you know, is still incredibly tricky
Speaker 1: because you know, you're taking away some of the uniqueness
Speaker 1: of that artist. I mean, I certainly, I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: love it if there are a bunch of AI, you know,
Speaker 1: crystal balls that were doing a reasonable job impersonating me,
Speaker 1: and it became hard to tell what was the real
Speaker 1: me and what was you know, what some human created
Speaker 1: and put my voice on top.
Speaker 4: Of it right exactly.
Speaker 5: You know, It's like I underst there's some people out there,
Speaker 5: a lot of fans who don't necessarily, you know, care
Speaker 5: for a handful of reasons. One because you know, the
Speaker 5: fans just want to be entertained, and the idea of
Speaker 5: the prospect of an AI song is interesting, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's they want to see how accurate it is, how
Speaker 5: close it is, is it actually a good song and
Speaker 5: vibe to And you know, Drake at this point is
Speaker 5: as far as the music industry goes, he has all
Speaker 5: the money in the world. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 5: hard to feel bad for Drake missing out on you know,
Speaker 5: a few hundred thousand or even a couple of million
Speaker 5: dollars because somebody put out an AI song.
Speaker 4: It's it's potentially more popular than tracks that he's put out.
Speaker 5: However, you know, I do worry about like the trickle
Speaker 5: down effects that could possibly have two smaller artists. You know,
Speaker 5: I would hate to see an artist or a band
Speaker 5: who's maybe more on that you know, middle tier of
Speaker 5: popularity and they're living maybe closer paycheck to paycheck in
Speaker 5: terms of you know, success and you know, notoriety in
Speaker 5: the music industry, which may not be as big as Drake,
Speaker 5: but still valid. You know, there are lots of musicians
Speaker 5: who operate on you know, that sort of level. I
Speaker 5: would hate to see them sort of getting undercut by
Speaker 5: this technology, you.
Speaker 4: Know, and and in a way.
Speaker 5: Sometimes they are, especially if they're like you know, ambient
Speaker 5: artists or electronic artists maybe whose work could be a
Speaker 5: little more easily recreated through these programs and stuff, or
Speaker 5: you know, sort of have their livelihoods threatened by you know,
Speaker 5: Spotify playlists that are just sort of like growing generic
Speaker 5: music onto it in the background that's not particularly that
Speaker 5: that's not specifically licensed to any artists who are actually
Speaker 5: popular in those fields, just so that they can sort
Speaker 5: of like save themselves streaming revenue money at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, so they don't have to, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of like include actual artists in those fields on
Speaker 5: these playlists.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So I worry about, you know, those artists kind of
Speaker 5: being hurt by this, by this technology, you know, because
Speaker 5: of the fans at this point, they're curious.
Speaker 4: About it, and a lot of them don't.
Speaker 5: Really seem to air all that much much, you know,
Speaker 5: in terms of whether or not it could potentially have
Speaker 5: negative effects. And the music industry, I think is like
Speaker 5: having a really tough time figuring out how to handle
Speaker 5: this really hot potato. Because in the past, as the
Speaker 5: music industry has like tried to go on crusade after
Speaker 5: crusade against various types of technology that are changing the
Speaker 5: paradigm of things, be it like you know, home taping
Speaker 5: is killing music, burning CDs and pirating music is killing music.
Speaker 4: It's napster, it's this.
Speaker 5: It's that every time they've gone on one of those
Speaker 5: crusades streaming is killing music, it's only brought more attention
Speaker 5: to that thing, and it's only further solidified that thing
Speaker 5: is like, you know, the thing to do and like
Speaker 5: the way forward that everything is essentially going to be operating. So,
Speaker 5: you know, I think them going full throttle and trying
Speaker 5: to you know, work against this could create almost like
Speaker 5: a streisand effect.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 5: So I'm not really sure what their motivations or what
Speaker 5: their plan is going to be going forward from here,
Speaker 5: other than maybe to kind of play whack a mole
Speaker 5: with these tracks when and if they managed to get hot.
Speaker 4: Randomly, you know, where.
Speaker 1: Do artists make the bulk of their money, Like what's
Speaker 1: the most what's like the largest percentage.
Speaker 4: Of that much of the time, it's like touring merger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that that was the case, and I
Speaker 1: mean that's something that can't be replaced by AI. So
Speaker 1: I guess that's hopeful for the existing music industry as
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 4: I mean so far for now.
Speaker 5: I mean that there was like that Tupac hologram a
Speaker 5: while ago, which people didn't take the hologram stuff, but like,
Speaker 5: who the heck knows, at some point it could be
Speaker 5: something that like you know, comes back or.
Speaker 1: You know, I think human beings are biased towards human beings,
Speaker 1: So no, I.
Speaker 5: Actually agree and I think that's kind of like the
Speaker 5: strongest argument against the AI thing, because you know, here's
Speaker 5: a thing in order for us to have a copy
Speaker 5: of a Drake song or you know, like a like
Speaker 5: a an understanding of what a copy of a Drake
Speaker 5: song is, that we have to have an entire catalog
Speaker 5: of Drake music and.
Speaker 4: Base that off of in the first place, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, you know.
Speaker 5: In the past, and look, there are lots of like,
Speaker 5: you know, artists who are sort of like I guess,
Speaker 5: like you know, not real, or they're you know, ce
Speaker 5: g I representations of other artists, or you know, they're
Speaker 5: they're vocal voids something like that. You know, their artists
Speaker 5: out there sort of like are created by people behind
Speaker 5: the scenes and a lot of the time because there
Speaker 5: isn't a human touch or element to that, and you know,
Speaker 5: there's no personality, there's no depth to that because it's
Speaker 5: just a representation of something else. Like it has an audience,
Speaker 5: but it only sort of goes so far because as
Speaker 5: you said, people are interested in people.
Speaker 4: People are intrigued by.
Speaker 5: Drake as an individual, as a personality, as a storyteller,
Speaker 5: as you know, somebody who is flawed he makes headlines,
Speaker 5: you know, through his triumphs and his lows as well.
Speaker 5: You know, people just find him interesting. And that's kind
Speaker 5: of the case of a lot of their favorite artists
Speaker 5: as well. You know, people obsessed with their favorites on
Speaker 5: a deeper level. You know, the fans of Taylor Swift,
Speaker 5: for example, aren't just into Taylor Swift because they think
Speaker 5: she's a good singer or a good songwriter. They like
Speaker 5: her storytelling. They really kind of get into the personal
Speaker 5: element of her songs and they sort of like understand
Speaker 5: all the lore in terms of like who she dated, Well,
Speaker 5: there's the relationship.
Speaker 10: With right, what was going on in this song?
Speaker 1: What was this all about? What was the emotional like
Speaker 1: you know, this emotional context that brought the thing is.
Speaker 4: Like AI can't come up with that, you know.
Speaker 5: It's like an AI generated program is never going to
Speaker 5: tell you, like a heartwarming story about its grandmother with
Speaker 5: the specificity that a human being could, you know.
Speaker 4: And maybe the technology could.
Speaker 5: Advance to a point where you know, it's there one day,
Speaker 5: but like, you know, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 5: people at least at this point. I don't know culturally,
Speaker 5: things could change in twenty or thirty years, but at
Speaker 5: least at this point, I think your average person you know,
Speaker 5: could potentially feel like maybe a little gross at their core.
Speaker 5: They feel like, oh, wow, this like story that I
Speaker 5: got like really invested in and felt moved I didn't
Speaker 5: even happen.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It was just like basically AI manipulation, right exactly.
Speaker 5: Because I think, like, you know, the draw or kind
Speaker 5: of the the the emotional impact for a lot of
Speaker 5: music fans is like when they're hearing a certain song
Speaker 5: from a singer or a songwriter or whatever.
Speaker 4: You know, they sort.
Speaker 5: Of get into it because they believe, Oh, that's reality,
Speaker 5: that's the thing that they did, that's the thing that
Speaker 5: they had to happen. They're sort of like relaying that
Speaker 5: experience to me through their music. If people were to
Speaker 5: sort of you know, people get upset and you know,
Speaker 5: disappointed when they come to learn and it does happen
Speaker 5: every so often that you know the songwriter or rapper
Speaker 5: x Y or Z actually lied in.
Speaker 4: Their song, you know, or they made something up or
Speaker 4: you know, whatever it was.
Speaker 5: You know, it didn't happen, and it wasn't really within
Speaker 5: the realm of like you know, artistic license or the
Speaker 5: kind of you know, slight exaggerations you could make in
Speaker 5: a song to maybe make it more salacious or interesting.
Speaker 5: You know, coming up with stuff that is completely fake
Speaker 5: whole cloth usually ends up, you know, disappointing fans and
Speaker 5: making people mad, you know, and to understand that or
Speaker 5: come to realization that the artists that you're listening to
Speaker 5: on top of it isn't you and real, the stories
Speaker 5: aren't real, and the thing that made the music isn't
Speaker 5: even a person.
Speaker 4: It's like not even a representation of anything. You know.
Speaker 5: It could be a big disappointment to a lot of
Speaker 5: people and just kind of make them divest from the music.
Speaker 4: In a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's all very interesting and very thought provoking.
Speaker 1: So Anthony, thank you so much. It's great to have you.
Speaker 1: Great to meet you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're great to meet you too. Thanks for having
Speaker 4: me on my pleasure.
Speaker 2: We talk a lot here about rogue law enforcement. One
Speaker 2: of the best examples is a recent incident in Boston
Speaker 2: for a simulated FBI and Department of Defense raid where
Speaker 2: they mistakenly barged into the wrong hotel room, kidnapped basically
Speaker 2: a man who was sleeping there, and then held him
Speaker 2: hostage for several hours before he could convince them that
Speaker 2: it wasn't part of the drill. CBS News Boston uncovered
Speaker 2: the story. Here's what it said.
Speaker 11: FBI agents working with the Department of Defense barged into
Speaker 11: a room on the fifteenth floor of the Revere Hotel
Speaker 11: on Stuart Street in Boston. The FBI says it happened
Speaker 11: just before midnight on Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Agents banged on the Drawargia Room fifteen oh five.
Speaker 11: Inside was a sleeping Delta Airlines pilot who was a
Speaker 11: guest at the hotel. He opens the door, and sources
Speaker 11: say agents barged in handcuffey, interrogated the pilot for more
Speaker 11: than forty five minutes, and put him in the shower.
Speaker 11: Nearly an hour later, sources say they realized their mistake,
Speaker 11: took the cuffs off and released down. The FBI says
Speaker 11: agents were conducting a training operation and a mock interrogation
Speaker 11: to simulate what a Department of Defense employee deployed overseas
Speaker 11: could encounter.
Speaker 3: Uh, that's pretty nuts, crystal.
Speaker 2: So first of all, I don't know why the hell
Speaker 2: we're even doing that, but what they also discovered, like.
Speaker 1: A regular hotel where regular people are sleeping, and even
Speaker 1: if you got the right door, surely there are people
Speaker 1: in like rooms next to him and trying to sleep,
Speaker 1: and you're in there like banging on the door at
Speaker 1: midnight and interrogating somebody in the like what are you doing?
Speaker 12: What are you doing?
Speaker 2: Forty five minutes before they took his handcuffs off, they
Speaker 2: threw him, presumably while he was in his underclothes in
Speaker 2: the shower, and they realized their mistake, and they realized
Speaker 2: their mistake and apologized to him. They said, we were
Speaker 2: assisting the Department of Defense in this training exercise, mistakenly
Speaker 2: wentto the wrong room detain the individual not intended. Thankfully,
Speaker 2: nobody was injured. Boston Police was called and responded to
Speaker 2: the scene. Safety is always the priority of the FBI
Speaker 2: and our law enforcement partners, and we take these incidants
Speaker 2: very seriously.
Speaker 13: Listen, I don't know whose.
Speaker 2: Pilot is, but you need to sue the living crap
Speaker 2: out of these people, and I hope you get a
Speaker 2: massive payday because the FEDS can't just drag you out
Speaker 2: of your bed while you're asleep and throw you in
Speaker 2: the shower, hair and handcuffs and just it's all just
Speaker 2: one big misunderstanding. So mister pilot, whoever you are, please
Speaker 2: sue that, Please sue these people, and you know, FBI,
Speaker 2: please don't do this at crowded hotels in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night in downtown bo. You know, there are
Speaker 2: some crappy motels where you can probably simulate the same thing.
Speaker 2: And you know, the craziest part is, Chris, we're probably
Speaker 2: paying exorbitant smounts of taxpayer dollars to put this in
Speaker 2: higher farce on in the first place.
Speaker 4: As actually somebody.
Speaker 2: Pointed out, you know, if you tried this something like
Speaker 2: this down in the South, imagine you're doing this in Texas, You're.
Speaker 3: Gonna get killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you've got if you walk into the wrong
Speaker 2: hotel room, somebody's gonna blow you away.
Speaker 3: And a lot of people are strapped across this country.
Speaker 1: People and stressed. How many incidents have we had recently
Speaker 1: horrifying things of neighbors and you know, people who show
Speaker 1: up accidentally at the wrong house and they end up
Speaker 1: getting murdered because they knocked on the wrong door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are stressed out. A lot of Americans have guns.
Speaker 1: Imagine how terrifying this is.
Speaker 2: Like you bargin my house. You try and handcuff me
Speaker 2: or something like that, you're gonna get killed, Like, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: And it's one of those.
Speaker 2: Especially you know, if they're operating the way that you
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of people who would do that.
Speaker 2: So they're lucky for their own sake and for their
Speaker 2: innocent agents that nothing happened.
Speaker 1: And then it's crazy to take him an hour. This
Speaker 1: guy's trying to persuade them like I am not whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing, I'm not part of it. I'm really not
Speaker 1: part of it. And for an hour they don't believe him.
Speaker 14: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of questions, Like I said, a lot
Speaker 4: of questions.
Speaker 2: Sue them, make sure every single one of them gets fired.
Speaker 4: Do not drop this because this is some craziness. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 4: we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 1: Got a little story for you about a CNBC reporter
Speaker 1: and the cozy relationship between Washington elites and the media class.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and put this up on the screen. So
Speaker 1: this is headline here with the New York Post, the
Speaker 1: video that exposed the relationship between Trump donor and not
Speaker 1: just sending Trump to Ryan. This is Tom Brocky's huge
Speaker 1: name in Republican Politics and CNBC anchor. She was also
Speaker 1: the person who was involved with Jeff Shell, who was
Speaker 1: the CEO of NBC. He was fired NBC Universal. He
Speaker 1: was fired after an internal investigation revealed what they called
Speaker 1: inappropriate conduct, having some sort of a remote romantic relationship
Speaker 1: with this reporter. So put the next piece up on
Speaker 1: the screen. What happened is she was getting ready for
Speaker 1: a live shot and he Tom Barrock, this major Trump donor,
Speaker 1: wanders into the background, and she's seen in this video like,
Speaker 1: you know, telling him to get off the screen, and
Speaker 1: then he walks away and her, you know, colleagues and
Speaker 1: coworkers who are able to see this, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: this has been passed around CNBC quite a lot realize
Speaker 1: that this is this billionaire who, by the way she
Speaker 1: put the next piece up, she had, you know, done
Speaker 1: interviews with as a supposedly neutral journalist.
Speaker 6: There were also.
Speaker 1: Questions about how she had been able to secure an
Speaker 1: interview with Jared Kushner, who, of course, you know, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's son in law and also key aid in that administration,
Speaker 1: and so there were questions raised about, hey, maybe this
Speaker 1: relationship that you had, maybe that's what led to you
Speaker 1: scoring this big interview, So I mean, obviously incredibly embarrassing
Speaker 1: for her, but also I think does reveal the nature
Speaker 1: of the incestuous world that is the political media industrial COMPLI.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of the Ali Watkins case. Do you
Speaker 2: remember this case? Twenty seventeen. Ali was a star CIA.
Speaker 4: Reporter here in Washington.
Speaker 2: She was actually and well, she was getting all these
Speaker 2: great scoops over at BuzzFeed, and everyone said, how is
Speaker 2: Ali doing it? And then one of a fifty something
Speaker 2: year old man who had access to set intelligence gets
Speaker 2: indicted and it turns out that she was having a
Speaker 2: long time affair with him, and he just so happened
Speaker 2: to be feeding her a bunch of information which she
Speaker 2: never disclosed to her bosses. And by the way, Ali
Speaker 2: she rode on these scoops from her career, from online
Speaker 2: to the New York Times, where she was publishing some
Speaker 2: of this information. And then I remember this was a
Speaker 2: big scandal kind of at the time. She actually, crazily enough,
Speaker 2: was not fired by the New York Times for this behavior.
Speaker 10: I just looked it up.
Speaker 2: Now she's writing about subways in New York, So I'm
Speaker 2: happy for her. But the point is that this is
Speaker 2: more common than I think a lot of people think.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's just the incestuous literally in some cases
Speaker 2: relationships between sources and the people who cover them. And
Speaker 2: you know, the only mistake that they made here was
Speaker 2: getting caught on camera.
Speaker 3: That was it. That's the only thing.
Speaker 2: And by the way, it turned out that she was
Speaker 2: not only having an affair with him, but also with
Speaker 2: the head of NBC who was fired coincidentally on the
Speaker 2: same day as Tucker and Don Lemon, which is why
Speaker 2: nobody heard about it, right, but that was a pretty
Speaker 2: big deal story. Yeah, to have him get fired as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, putting the sex out of it. I
Speaker 1: think it really shows you how a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the industry like they get had by the connections
Speaker 1: and the relationship. To the contrary of in an ideal world,
Speaker 1: this is a reporter who is holding power to account,
Speaker 1: who has an adversarial relationship with key powerful figures, you know,
Speaker 1: in politics. But instead, the real way that you get ahead,
Speaker 1: and the reason that power is often not held to
Speaker 1: accout is by developing these close relationships with them, and
Speaker 1: then you get the scoop and you get the big
Speaker 1: interview and you get.
Speaker 6: The access, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you know, very embarrassing for her, but I
Speaker 1: think more broadly revealing about the game that's played it.
Speaker 2: Oh, media, that's so insane. She fired yesterday. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess there's probably some human resources whatever, but there.
Speaker 1: Was apparently there was apparently some sort of human resources
Speaker 1: investigation at CNBC back in twenty twenty one over how
Speaker 1: the hell did you get this scoop with this interview
Speaker 1: with Jared Kushner Because I guess, I mean, I wasn't
Speaker 1: familiar with her. Hadley Gamble is her name. I wasn't
Speaker 1: familiar with her. I also don't watch the NBC all
Speaker 1: the time, but I get the impression she's not like
Speaker 1: one of their top level talent. So then when she
Speaker 1: was able to score this big interview, people were like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on here? And it actually
Speaker 1: triggered human resources investigation. Now, in fairness to her, apparently
Speaker 1: it didn't turn up at least enough wrongdoing or corrupt
Speaker 1: behavior to get her fired. Or then again, maybe they
Speaker 1: don't know care about cropp behavior if it lands in
Speaker 1: a big interview.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's totally nuts, all right, We'll see you guys later.
Speaker 3: I'm Maximilian Alvarez.
Speaker 7: I'm the editor in chief of the Real News Network
Speaker 7: and host of the podcast Working People, and this is
Speaker 7: the art of class war on breaking Points. Look, it
Speaker 7: is no secret that I am no fan of corporate media,
Speaker 7: and if you are watching this channel, then you, like me,
Speaker 7: probably have a healthy distrust or even disdain for most
Speaker 7: corporate media outlets and pundits and would like to ignore
Speaker 7: them entirely if you could. But the fact remains that
Speaker 7: for better or for worse, we can't.
Speaker 3: Just ignore them.
Speaker 7: Being engaged democratic media literate citizens means at least having
Speaker 7: a good handle on what the media ecosystem looks like
Speaker 7: and how media, both independent and corporate media alike, shape
Speaker 7: our discourse, our public policy, our political activity, our culture,
Speaker 7: so on and so forth. And regardless of how we
Speaker 7: feel individually, we can still acknowledge that the changes taking
Speaker 7: place as we speak across the corporate media landscape are
Speaker 7: a big story and they will produce political ripple effects
Speaker 7: that will all have to contend with some good, some
Speaker 7: bad others that will just have to wait and see
Speaker 7: how they develop. From the earth shaking news on Monday,
Speaker 7: April twenty fourth, that Fox News has cut ties with
Speaker 7: its star host Tucker Carlson, and CNN has done the
Speaker 7: same with host Don Lemon. To the news that five
Speaker 7: point thirty eight founder Nate Silver is expected to be
Speaker 7: cut from ABC, and NBC chief executive Jeff Shell was
Speaker 7: fired for sexual harassment. There are some seismic shakeups happening
Speaker 7: in the world of corporate media right now, and everyone's
Speaker 7: talking about what these shakeups will mean, and everyone is
Speaker 7: everyone seemingly has an opinion on uh, Tucker and Fox News,
Speaker 7: Lemon and CNN, and I completely understand why. But I
Speaker 7: can't help but wonder why. If we are all as
Speaker 7: invested in the inner workings of our media ecosystem as
Speaker 7: our reactions to this week's news would suggest, why has
Speaker 7: it been so difficult to get people to care about
Speaker 7: critical changes happening within other corners of that ecosystem, Changes
Speaker 7: that I would argue will have just as much, if
Speaker 7: not more, of an impact on our daily lives and
Speaker 7: our respective access to journalism that we need to be
Speaker 7: informed democratic citizens. Take, for example, the ongoing strike at
Speaker 7: the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, a vital journalistic institution that is
Speaker 7: descended from The Pittsburgh Gazette, a paper established in seventeen
Speaker 7: eighty six and that has been serving the broader Pittsburgh
Speaker 7: area for generations. In October of last year, over one
Speaker 7: hundred workers represented by five labor unions, including production, distribution,
Speaker 7: advertising and accounts and receivable staff, walked off the job
Speaker 7: on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Speaker 7: The strike began after the newspaper's management, Block Communications, which
Speaker 7: is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance
Speaker 7: for employees on October first. As Michael Sinado reported at
Speaker 7: The Guardian at the time, quote, the strike is unfolding
Speaker 7: in a US media industry that has seen widespread layoffs
Speaker 7: over the past decade, with newspapers hit especially hard. Workers
Speaker 7: at the Post Gazette have been working without a union
Speaker 7: contract since March twenty seventeen, claiming they haven't received any
Speaker 7: pay raises in sixteen years end. Quote. So why aren't
Speaker 7: we talking about the strike at the Pittsburgh Post Because
Speaker 7: and what can focusing on this strike and looking at
Speaker 7: the broader media landscape tell us about the changes happening
Speaker 7: in the industry that we might not be able to
Speaker 7: discern if we are only focusing on the big ticket
Speaker 7: news about Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon to talk about
Speaker 7: all of this and more. I'm honored to be joined
Speaker 7: today by our two guests, Bob Batts Junior and Steve Mellon.
Speaker 7: Bob is a lifelong journalist who worked at the Pittsburgh
Speaker 7: Post Gazette for thirty years before going on strike and
Speaker 7: being named interim editor of the worker's strike paper, the
Speaker 7: first in the digital age, the Pittsburgh Union Progress. This
Speaker 7: is a really cool paper that is run by striking
Speaker 7: members by workers on strike at the Post Gazette. As
Speaker 7: of today, they have published over one thousand stories, plus photos, graphics, ads,
Speaker 7: and even a fictional story, which you can find at
Speaker 7: Union Progress dot com, which offers free subscriptions and a
Speaker 7: thrice weekly newsletter. Steve Mellen has been a journalist and
Speaker 7: photo journalist for more than forty years. For the past
Speaker 7: few decades, much of his work has focused on working people.
Speaker 7: He left the Pittsburgh Press after a strike there in
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety two and spent much of the next four
Speaker 7: years traveling to industrial towns to report on the changes
Speaker 7: people there were experiencing. He returned to newspaper work in
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety seven, taking a job at the Post Gazette.
Speaker 7: He's been on strike since mid October twenty twenty two,
Speaker 7: along with his colleagues, and now co chairs the union's
Speaker 7: Health and Welfare Committee and writes for the strike paper,
Speaker 7: the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Bob Steve, thank you both so
Speaker 7: much for joining us today on breaking points.
Speaker 4: Thank you Max.
Speaker 12: Thanks Max.
Speaker 7: We have, of course spoken at different points for the
Speaker 7: reporting that we've done on the strike here at the
Speaker 7: Real News Network, including a Worker Solidarity live stream where
Speaker 7: we had Bob on a couple months ago, and a
Speaker 7: full length Working People episode my podcast where I got
Speaker 7: to speak at length with Steve. If folks want deeper
Speaker 7: context on the strike, I highly recommend that you go
Speaker 7: check those reports out. But for those who haven't seen
Speaker 7: those reports, and for those who may in fact be
Speaker 7: learning about this crucial strike for the first time right now,
Speaker 7: I was wondering if we could start by going around
Speaker 7: the table and just sort of giving people the essential
Speaker 7: context they need about this strike. What led to it,
Speaker 7: how long you know that process had been brewing, What
Speaker 7: the sort of key issues are that brought you and
Speaker 7: your co workers out on the picket line, and any
Speaker 7: other kind of essential context that you think folks need
Speaker 7: to know upfront about this strike that they may just
Speaker 7: be hearing about right now.
Speaker 3: So, Bob, why don't we start with you, then Steve
Speaker 3: will go to you.
Speaker 15: All right, Thank you, Max. And you know, I feel
Speaker 15: like I'm sitting here at my dining room table. I'm
Speaker 15: caught in two different things that are going on. Sort
Speaker 15: of the economic storm that's hitting the media industry in general,
Speaker 15: and sort of this labor uprising or recognizance or awakening
Speaker 15: that's also happening. We're certainly caught in both of those things.
Speaker 15: Our strike has a long history. It's very complicated. There's
Speaker 15: a lot of nuance. But Max, you started out right
Speaker 15: by talking about how people haven't gotten contractual raises in
Speaker 15: sixteen years. That's older than my teenage son is. It's
Speaker 15: embarrassing to say, but that's the case with this strike.
Speaker 15: We work in the newsroom. We're both editors, photographers, reporters,
Speaker 15: so we make the news, we cover the news. But
Speaker 15: we were proceeded on strike by four other unions who
Speaker 15: had their health care taken away. In October of twenty two.
Speaker 15: We already knew about that, because that happened to us
Speaker 15: in twenty twenty, which was three years after our last
Speaker 15: contract expired, and we could not come to terms with
Speaker 15: the new one. Our company imposed conditions on us, said,
Speaker 15: we're at the impass. We cannot come up with a contract.
Speaker 15: We're just going to tell you how it's going to be,
Speaker 15: and that includes this new healthcare that's different than what
Speaker 15: you guys bargained before. So when twenty twenty two got here,
Speaker 15: we were ready to go on strike on our own issues,
Speaker 15: our own unfair labor practice charges, which we had already
Speaker 15: just finished this past fall explaining to the National Labor
Speaker 15: Relations Board, and since we went on strike a very
Speaker 15: memorable day that Steve was talking about an administrative law
Speaker 15: jas said that everything that we're mad about, everything that
Speaker 15: we are on strikeover, is correct. The company's wrong, the
Speaker 15: breaking federal law. We felt good about that, but that
Speaker 15: was a couple of months ago, and we're still on
Speaker 15: strike because we have we still have not been able
Speaker 15: to get that ruling enforced. We're hoping to get the
Speaker 15: NLRB to do that and to you know, inforced. Basically
Speaker 15: what this logize has said in the meantime.
Speaker 4: Here we are on strike.
Speaker 12: Yeah, actually that's pretty good, Bob. You know, it's still
Speaker 12: depressing to me, I think two thousand and six. I
Speaker 12: mean here, I'm sixty three years old. I haven't had
Speaker 12: a raisin. She's what sixteen years. You know, we've been
Speaker 12: without a contract in since twenty seventeen. You know, I
Speaker 12: didn't need an administrative logize to tell me that the
Speaker 12: post because that was bargaining at bad faith, because that's
Speaker 12: set in on these negotiating sessions. And I'd listened to
Speaker 12: the company's attorney. You know, it's always the company attorney.
Speaker 12: There's several of us from the guild that are usually there.
Speaker 12: It's a bargaining team. And then there's a number of
Speaker 12: us who just come to the witness to be a
Speaker 12: part of the process. And I sit in there and
Speaker 12: I listened to the company. You know, we will go
Speaker 12: through an extensive process of putting together proposal on say healthcare,
Speaker 12: how to resolve this issue. We'll have meetings and you know,
Speaker 12: we'll debate a good plan, and we'll take that plan
Speaker 12: in and we'll present that plan. And then what we'll
Speaker 12: hear after our extensive explanation is that that won't work
Speaker 12: for us. We like our original proposal. That's over and
Speaker 12: over and over and over again, and it was just
Speaker 12: it was good to hear an administrative law judge confirm
Speaker 12: that the company has not been bargaining in good faith.
Speaker 12: That you know that that uh, they they don't want
Speaker 12: us around. They don't want a union around. They want
Speaker 12: they want to have a union free shop. I think
Speaker 12: that's pretty obvious. They they they want to be able
Speaker 12: to run the newsroom the way they see a fit,
Speaker 12: with no input from from uh, from the workers, from
Speaker 12: the people that actually put this thing out. I think
Speaker 12: we all agree that that would be a disastrous uh.
Speaker 12: That would be disastrous for the Post because that and Max,
Speaker 12: I was so glad to hear you talk a little
Speaker 12: bit about the history of this paper. And that's one
Speaker 12: of the things that really pains me about this is
Speaker 12: that you know, this is a newspaper with with a
Speaker 12: long and story and and uh a wonderful history in
Speaker 12: this city of doing doing a great job of covering
Speaker 12: local news, evolving with the city, and the way I've
Speaker 12: seen this newspaper treat people in just the last step,
Speaker 12: I don't know, four or five years, it's it's it's
Speaker 12: heartbreaking to me. I know, Bob has committed a good
Speaker 12: chunk of his life to this paper. I have a
Speaker 12: number of our colleagues have we have a number of
Speaker 12: younger colleagues who've come in, very talented people who are
Speaker 12: committed to telling the story of the city, to reporting
Speaker 12: the important things that people need to know. And to
Speaker 12: see them treated like this is over and over and
Speaker 12: over again. It's really frustrating to me. And it's it's
Speaker 12: anger and it angers me. And you know, one of
Speaker 12: the things that I really appreciate is this is being
Speaker 12: able to talk about it. You know, we've been out
Speaker 12: for seven months now, and there was a time when
Speaker 12: it was you know, we were on the news a
Speaker 12: lot because it was new. It's a new strike. It
Speaker 12: was you know, first newspaper strike I think in more
Speaker 12: than two decades, so there was a uniqueness to it.
Speaker 12: And but that time has passed and other things come along. Max.
Speaker 12: You mentioned the Tucker Carlson thing and then Don Lammatt,
Speaker 12: and you know, we kind of get shoved to the side.
Speaker 12: And it's important that the story stay in front of
Speaker 12: people for a number of reasons, not just because of
Speaker 12: what the impact that this strike is going to have
Speaker 12: on the news industry. But the role this plays in
Speaker 12: the general movement now that I see of around the
Speaker 12: country where people are standing up in the newsrooms and
Speaker 12: they're saying enough of this. You know, unions have been
Speaker 12: hammered since nineteen eighty, since Reagan took on the pat
Speaker 12: Co workers. And you know, I think here we are,
Speaker 12: forty years later, saying enough of that. We're tired of
Speaker 12: getting pushed around, We're tired of getting stomped on. We
Speaker 12: want to have a say. We deserve that. We're the
Speaker 12: ones who put the paper out, Where the production workers,
Speaker 12: where the journalists who put this paper out. We want
Speaker 12: to have a say in how we treated. You know,
Speaker 12: I've got I'm going to in an hour, I'll be downtown,
Speaker 12: downtown Pittsburgh for a rally. The Starbucks United Workers are
Speaker 12: having a rally today. They're in the middle of their
Speaker 12: own bargaining sessions. That to me is a great thing.
Speaker 12: I look, these are you know, I remember unions when
Speaker 12: I first came to Pittsburgh in the eighties, and you know,
Speaker 12: there were guys like me. Now they were older white guys.
Speaker 12: I go down to stand on these strawbucks line. These
Speaker 12: are younger people that're fired up. It's a very diverse crowd,
Speaker 12: and they hang with us. They'll come and stand, they'll
Speaker 12: stand with us on a picket line. These are people
Speaker 12: my daughter's age, twenty four years old. I'm standing next
Speaker 12: to Tory Tambalini. A couple of weeks ago, we were
Speaker 12: trying to stop a truck, one of the delivery trucks,
Speaker 12: from delivering the post because that we were standing in
Speaker 12: front of an idling Mac truck. That's a very uncomfortable thing.
Speaker 12: And Tory looked at me and she said, I'm not moving.
Speaker 12: Are you moving? I said, I'm not moving if you're
Speaker 12: not moving. So we did not move, and that truck
Speaker 12: didn't get through. They were probably thirty of us there,
Speaker 12: twenty or thirty of us. That's good to see. That
Speaker 12: one is my heart.
Speaker 7: And something that I really don't want to be lost
Speaker 7: on folks. As a crucial part of this story, right,
Speaker 7: we're going to finish off by talking about what the
Speaker 7: post is, that strike means in the context of the
Speaker 7: labor movement in general, which we cover relentlessly here for
Speaker 7: my segments on breaking points at the Real News Network,
Speaker 7: so on and so forth. But I think in that vein, right,
Speaker 7: it's really significant that a these striking journalists at the
Speaker 7: Post Gazette have been keeping a strike newspaper, going to
Speaker 7: continue serving the communities that they are reporting on and
Speaker 7: for while they are on strike not getting paid. That
Speaker 7: in itself, I think is a really remarkable accomplishment, and
Speaker 7: everyone should go subscribe to the union Progress because that
Speaker 7: is one way that you can support striking workers at
Speaker 7: the Post Gazette. But also, like you said, Steve, I
Speaker 7: mean the fact that y'all are standing in solidarity with
Speaker 7: Starbucks workers who are fighting their own fight, right, That
Speaker 7: is what the bosses fear. That is what we need
Speaker 7: more than ever, and that includes folks who are watching this.
Speaker 7: We all have a role to play in that. But
Speaker 7: before we get there, I want to just zero in
Speaker 7: really quick on kind of what this means for the
Speaker 7: media industry and particularly the market that you guys serve
Speaker 7: over there in the broader Pittsburgh area, right, because.
Speaker 3: There's there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 7: As we said that, I think for the average news
Speaker 7: consumer may be hard to parse out right, because media
Speaker 7: gets sort of like lumped into this giant bucket.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: In fact, a lot of people's well founded disdain for
Speaker 7: say corporate media or the media in general tends to
Speaker 7: come from, you know, people who they perceive to be,
Speaker 7: you know, the partisan hacks and figureheads on the mainstream
Speaker 7: networks like Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, the people at the
Speaker 7: opinion section at the New York Times, Right, I hate
Speaker 7: the opinion section at the New York Times, But even
Speaker 7: I have to admit that it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 7: the New York Times sucks ass because part of my
Speaker 7: friends for the opinion section, but they still do the
Speaker 7: news desk, does you know, reporting that's important. They got
Speaker 7: a lot of resources, right, I just to kind of
Speaker 7: accept that, Right. So, even that's just like one example
Speaker 7: of how this slippage can occur where we lump in
Speaker 7: the people that we righteously hate in the media and
Speaker 7: we throw the baby out with the bath water, right,
Speaker 7: And that we can see that kind of happening on.
Speaker 3: The local media level as well. Right.
Speaker 7: But we have like a real, like intense drama unfolding
Speaker 7: here where you know, the former owner of the paper
Speaker 7: bill block, you know, passed away and then this sort
Speaker 7: of succession style drama unfolded with who was going to
Speaker 7: inherit the paper, what direction it was going to take,
Speaker 7: and how that connects to the larger sort of kind
Speaker 7: of changes that we're seeing in the industry, with local
Speaker 7: newsrooms closing basically continuously for the past twenty twenty five
Speaker 7: years as we speak right now. I mean, there are
Speaker 7: there's a bit of a bloodbath kind of going on
Speaker 7: in the media industry, with layoffs at a wide range
Speaker 7: of outlets, from Fandom, ESPN, Box, NBC News and NBC MSNBC,
Speaker 7: Vice News, BuzzFeed, the Washington Post. There are union drives
Speaker 7: at outlets like Business Insider and hearst Own magazines. I mean,
Speaker 7: there's a lot going on here, and it may be
Speaker 7: hard for people to parse through. So I just wanted
Speaker 7: to ask if you guys could say a little bit
Speaker 7: about what it means to have a union workforce at
Speaker 7: a local outlet like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Like, why
Speaker 7: should people care about that?
Speaker 15: Well, I mean, you care about what's happening in your
Speaker 15: community and what your local officials are doing, and what
Speaker 15: your neighbors are up to, and how much they paid
Speaker 15: for their taxes on that woods that got torn down
Speaker 15: next to your house and they're building a development to it.
Speaker 15: Local news matters to your community. I'm here to tell
Speaker 15: you that you can cover a community very well with
Speaker 15: corporate news, because seven months ago I was corporate news.
Speaker 15: I got paid by a corporation to cover local news. Suddenly,
Speaker 15: six seven months ago, I was independent media because I
Speaker 15: was suddenly not getting a paycheck. I was doing exactly
Speaker 15: the same thing. Boots on the ground, you know, but
Speaker 15: on the ground, I live on your ground. Journalism telling
Speaker 15: you what's going on and what somebody says is going
Speaker 15: on isn't true. How the state playoff basketball championships.
Speaker 4: Are going to work.
Speaker 15: Who's running for county executive?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 15: Who pays for it? Can corporately funded? Good local news
Speaker 15: is great because you have a lot of people who
Speaker 15: are very good at what they do, and they are
Speaker 15: keeping a watch on your officials and your culture and
Speaker 15: your everything. So we chose to just keep doing that
Speaker 15: on strike because that's what we do, that's what we do,
Speaker 15: that's what we're made of. So we don't care if
Speaker 15: we get We do care, but we can do it
Speaker 15: whether or not we get.
Speaker 4: Paid for it.
Speaker 15: But I would say, like the North start to quote
Speaker 15: something that Steve was talking about at a meeting we
Speaker 15: had the other night, is covering your local news and
Speaker 15: being smart about it. I mean, there's a big difference
Speaker 15: between me and Steve and Tucker Carlson, and I'm nothing
Speaker 15: but glad about that. We are journalists. Tucker Carlston was
Speaker 15: like a celebrity, you know, figurehead. Keep your eye on
Speaker 15: local news. You'll you'll care about it at one point,
Speaker 15: even if you think you don't. And that's the thing
Speaker 15: that we're fighting for with this strike in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Bob, I'm glad you mentioned that. I mean, we're
Speaker 12: doing this now without any pay. So that's i think
Speaker 12: a testament to our colleagues who are committed to this.
Speaker 12: You know, there's there are a couple of disconnects here. One,
Speaker 12: You're right, Bob, there's a disconnect between what we do
Speaker 12: and what Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon does mean. Uh
Speaker 12: that there's there's a huge divide there it and it
Speaker 12: pains me that we're sometimes lumped in that category. You know,
Speaker 12: we're the ones who go sit in three hour meetings,
Speaker 12: you know, and take endless notes and then for over
Speaker 12: that story till eleven o'clock at night to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 12: what's important take out of here? You know what do
Speaker 12: the readers need to know? Uh, that's the kind of
Speaker 12: thing you know, we we we go sit in these
Speaker 12: high school ball games because that's important. You know, it's
Speaker 12: important to a community to that takes pride in its
Speaker 12: high school athletes, you know, to to uh to. That's
Speaker 12: that's how the community gets a sense of who it
Speaker 12: is a sense of identity for a community. You know,
Speaker 12: a newspaper, a local newspaper forms a lot of functions.
Speaker 12: It does inform people, lets people know the important things.
Speaker 12: What's happening at the county jail. You know why this
Speaker 12: has been an issue in here in Pittsburg. Why we
Speaker 12: have so many people die in the county jail. They're
Speaker 12: turning down that woods. Just like Bob said, Who's what's
Speaker 12: going to happen with the taxes? What's that mean to me?
Speaker 12: Those are all really important things. In addition, it helps
Speaker 12: you know, it's a reflection of the community. And this
Speaker 12: gets to the feature stories do viituaries that we publish.
Speaker 12: You know, the community sees it's self reflected in the
Speaker 12: news in a local newspaper in a way it is
Speaker 12: not going to see itself reflected on CNN or MSNBC
Speaker 12: or Fox News or any of the others. That's like
Speaker 12: a that's that's a fantasy world. If you want to
Speaker 12: see what the world actually looks like, what your community
Speaker 12: looks like, go to your local paper. You know the one.
Speaker 12: The other disconnect here is that you know, Bob is right.
Speaker 12: You know, we're committed to this. The people who walked
Speaker 12: out of that newsroom on the eighteenth of October are
Speaker 12: committed to local journalism. They're committed because we're still doing it.
Speaker 12: We're not getting paid, but we're still doing it. We
Speaker 12: still think it's important. Obviously, the owners of the paper
Speaker 12: don't share that belief, and I think that's the thing
Speaker 12: that bothers me so much about many of the newspaper
Speaker 12: owners now owned by hedge bunchers, whoever, their values are
Speaker 12: not our values. You know, their values are treating these
Speaker 12: newspapers like piggybanks that they can drain dry and the
Speaker 12: cast aside, you know, cast the carcass aside. What's that
Speaker 12: do to the community. It's heartbreaking to see what that does.
Speaker 12: You know, we got some communities now that have you know,
Speaker 12: major metropolitan areas that have newspapers that have a staff
Speaker 12: of forty people. You cannot cover a place like Pittsburgh
Speaker 12: with forty people. You know, we're trying to do it,
Speaker 12: but Bob, how many people we now have a dozen.
Speaker 12: We're working our butts off, and we're just we're not
Speaker 12: even scratching the surface here of what needs to be
Speaker 12: covered in this city. So that's that's heartbreaking to me.
Speaker 12: I think what's happening here in Pittsburgh is important. You know,
Speaker 12: I've had news friends in this industry for forty years.
Speaker 12: And if I knew fifty people back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 12: that we're working in the newspaper, let's go to two
Speaker 12: thousand who are working in the newspaper industry. I can
Speaker 12: probably count two or three of them that are still
Speaker 12: in the industry now that are that are not here
Speaker 12: in Pittsburgh. You know, so many of these people have
Speaker 12: gone on, they've retired, they've taken other jobs, they're in
Speaker 12: pr they've gotten out of the business, they're teaching or
Speaker 12: doing something else, and we don't we can have a
Speaker 12: voice in this you know. The thing that's important. What
Speaker 12: I love about Pittsburgh it's a union town, and that
Speaker 12: we're a union shop, and so the company can't come
Speaker 12: in and just say you're out of here. We're changing things.
Speaker 12: We don't need you ten people. We're tossing you guys. No,
Speaker 12: we're going to stand up and say no, you're not
Speaker 12: going to do that. You're not this what we're doing.
Speaker 12: What what happens at the post is that is going
Speaker 12: to affect this community. And we're not going to put
Speaker 12: up with that. We have friends and neighbors. We know
Speaker 12: we have a community we care about. We're not going
Speaker 12: to let that happen. We care about what happens our families,
Speaker 12: to ourselves. Obviously it's all wrapped up into a hole.
Speaker 12: But if we didn't if we did not have a union,
Speaker 12: Bob and I probably wouldn't be sitting here talking. We
Speaker 12: would have been out of here probably ten years ago,
Speaker 12: given our age and everything. That would have tossed our
Speaker 12: asses out of here. So, you know, I wish everybody
Speaker 12: in the newspaper industry had this opportunity. You know, somebody
Speaker 12: sitting in the middle of in the Midwest whose boss
Speaker 12: comes in, is that comes in. The owner comes in
Speaker 12: and said, we're going to two days a week and
Speaker 12: I'm getting rid of forty percent of the staff deal
Speaker 12: with it, and we we uh we can in Pittsburgh
Speaker 12: say no, we're not going to deal with that. You
Speaker 12: have to deal with us.
Speaker 7: So, like with the last five minutes that I've got
Speaker 7: you guys, I want to kind of drill down on
Speaker 7: this point, right, because again I'm speaking to viewers here
Speaker 7: at breaking points. I know you guys are a kind
Speaker 7: of heterodox bunch, right, That's why you're here. We got
Speaker 7: folks with more right leaning politics, more left leaning politics,
Speaker 7: somewhere in the middle. That's great, but I want to
Speaker 7: caution everyone watching against taking the partisan bait here.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: Maybe you hate BuzzFeed News and the work that they did,
Speaker 7: that's you know, that's fine, that's.
Speaker 3: That's your call.
Speaker 7: And maybe you're cheering on the fact that they just
Speaker 7: you know, laid off, you know, like all their all
Speaker 7: their workers and they're they're going under. Like you may
Speaker 7: think that that's a win for your side. But what
Speaker 7: we are trying to communicate here is that the larger
Speaker 7: ground swell, the larger systemic failure failings of for profit journalism,
Speaker 7: corporate ownership or or private equity ownership over the vital
Speaker 7: civic institution of journalism and the media landscape writ large,
Speaker 7: this spells disaster for all of us, regardless of what
Speaker 7: side of the political spectrum we happen to be on.
Speaker 7: So you may cheer when you know people at an
Speaker 7: outlet that you hate kind of get fired, but I
Speaker 7: promise you it is coming for the outlets that you
Speaker 7: read as well, and the independent journalists, the folks on
Speaker 7: Substack or even outlets like ours at the Real News Network, like,
Speaker 7: we are not going to be able to serve all
Speaker 7: of the needs that need to be served here in
Speaker 7: the absence of those outlets like We've got a long
Speaker 7: way to go to rebuild a healthy, functioning media ecosystem
Speaker 7: in this country, especially one that is committed to actual journalism,
Speaker 7: not just corporate sensationalist crap like they you know, pedal
Speaker 7: at the mainstream networks, right, And in that vein, we also,
Speaker 7: for that very reason, have a vested interest in the
Speaker 7: struggle at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as far as it
Speaker 7: pertains to the labor movement, right because labor workers banding
Speaker 7: together and actually forming that backstop that Steve talked about, right,
Speaker 7: that kind of wall that working people can form if
Speaker 7: they are banded together in such a fashion to say
Speaker 7: we are not going to just let rich people in
Speaker 7: corporations and elites dictate everything that happens in our society.
Speaker 7: We have a say in what happens here. We deserve
Speaker 7: to be at the bargaining table to bargain over the
Speaker 7: terms and conditions of our employment and in fact how
Speaker 7: these businesses, whether they be Starbucks, Amazon, or the Pittsburgh
Speaker 7: Post Gazette, are run. And we all have a vested
Speaker 7: interest in that as fellow workers, as consumers, so on
Speaker 7: and so forth. So I want to kind of end
Speaker 7: just with the kind of short round of the table,
Speaker 7: well talking about that and the significance of the Post
Speaker 7: Gazette struggle in terms of the broader kind of labor
Speaker 7: movement that we cover here at breaking points at the
Speaker 7: real news and beyond, because I think one thing that
Speaker 7: really sticks out to me because I see, I get
Speaker 7: the press releases from you guys and your union every
Speaker 7: time there's another bargaining session with management at the Post
Speaker 7: Gazette and they don't show up, they or they just
Speaker 7: show up and they stonewall every new proposition. They just
Speaker 7: fold their arms and say nope, Like what seems very
Speaker 7: clear to me, and I'm speaking for myself here, you know,
Speaker 7: not speaking for anyone else, but looking at what management
Speaker 7: at the Post Gazette is doing and how they are trying.
Speaker 3: To stretch this strike out.
Speaker 7: They don't they are not bargaining in good faith at
Speaker 7: the bargaining table, as the NLRB has said, they are
Speaker 7: trying to effectively kill the unions, right. They are trying
Speaker 7: to strangle the unionized workforce to the point that they
Speaker 7: they could eventually push a decertification vote and get the
Speaker 7: union out of their newsroom. They don't want to close
Speaker 7: the shop down, but as you said, Steve, they want
Speaker 7: to get rid of the union. This is happening all
Speaker 7: across the board, right. Warrior met Cole coal miners in
Speaker 7: Deep Red, Alabama, who were on strike for nearly two years.
Speaker 7: Warrior met Cole has filed a petition to decertify the
Speaker 7: union there the United mind.
Speaker 3: Workers of America.
Speaker 7: That was always their plan was to stretch things out,
Speaker 7: demoralize people, not bargaining good faith, and ultimately try to
Speaker 7: kick the union out so that the company could better
Speaker 7: serve its Wall Street shareholders. Keep in mind, the number
Speaker 7: one shareholder of Warrior Met Cole is Black Rock in
Speaker 7: New York City. This is what Starbucks is trying to do.
Speaker 7: They're trying to delay, They're trying to union bus, They're
Speaker 7: trying to fire people and close down shops until eventually
Speaker 7: the union drive runs out of steam. This is what
Speaker 7: workers at CNCH Industrial who were on strike in the
Speaker 7: Midwest last year told me when they were saying that
Speaker 7: management also was not budging at the bargaining table, and
Speaker 7: they were getting whispers that management was planning to push
Speaker 7: a decertification vote to get the UAW out of their shop.
Speaker 7: So this is class war that we are watching. And
Speaker 7: I wanted to ask Bob and Steve if you just
Speaker 7: had a few words to say two folks in closing
Speaker 7: about the significance of the post gazette strike in terms
Speaker 7: of the labor movement right now in this country and
Speaker 7: what folks watching and listening can do to stand in
Speaker 7: solidarity with y'all.
Speaker 15: Well, I mean, as I said before, that we're sitting
Speaker 15: here in the middle of the two storms, the economic
Speaker 15: storm that city media and also this sort of labor
Speaker 15: you know, uprising that we're part of too. So Steve
Speaker 15: and I laid out how passionate we and our colleagues
Speaker 15: are about local news, and that's coming from our place
Speaker 15: as journalists. Now we find ourselves as kind of labor activists,
Speaker 15: labor catalysts, and we care quite a bit about that
Speaker 15: as well. Steve is going to this Starbucks rally today,
Speaker 15: not just as a reporter, which he's very good at,
Speaker 15: probably as a photographer as well, but he's also going
Speaker 15: someone going as someone that has a long standing but
Speaker 15: certainly newly honed interest in and understanding of labor issues.
Speaker 15: And so one thing that I think is going to
Speaker 15: come out of this, I don't know where any of
Speaker 15: this is going to go. And you know, even our
Speaker 15: own strike and this isn't my idea. I stole this
Speaker 15: from our National Newsguild president, John Schloyz. But when you
Speaker 15: have a whole bunch of journalists in Pittsburgh on strike,
Speaker 15: or we have one hundred and twenty news workers maybe
Speaker 15: now forty of us are in the newsroom, When you
Speaker 15: have the New York Times workers newsroom workers descending on
Speaker 15: a shareholders meeting yesterday, you have the Washington Post newsroom
Speaker 15: workers taking like a lunch long strike. You know we're
Speaker 15: going to lunch out today. It's not just us, And
Speaker 15: what you're going to have is you're going to have
Speaker 15: journalists that at least are more sympathetic and empathy and
Speaker 15: knowledgeable about labor and how strikes work and what it
Speaker 15: feels like to be on the line for two years
Speaker 15: in the case of Warrior Coal and everything that Starbucks
Speaker 15: workers are going through. So in some ways, I just
Speaker 15: think some of us media types, independent or corporate or both,
Speaker 15: are getting schooled on what some of this stuff means.
Speaker 15: And I think Steve and I and my colleagues are
Speaker 15: just as passionate about unions and having a voice in
Speaker 15: your workplace, and we want to be part.
Speaker 4: Of that as well.
Speaker 12: You know, you know, we're what abob now seven months
Speaker 12: into this thing, and you know there are times when
Speaker 12: I'm on the phone on the people with some of
Speaker 12: my colleagues a lot, you knows, as a member of
Speaker 12: the Health and Welfare Commadian and so I have these
Speaker 12: conversations a lot, and people tell me, you know, six months,
Speaker 12: seven months into this that you know it just like
Speaker 12: the world is going on without me, that you know,
Speaker 12: my life is stalled and the world's going on without me.
Speaker 12: These are fellows strikers, and you know, I have these
Speaker 12: conversations with people, and it's it's easy to see that
Speaker 12: on the inside what really helps. I've had a couple
Speaker 12: of conversations this week. Yesterday I was on the phone
Speaker 12: with the young woman from the Pacific I think it's
Speaker 12: the UH Pacific Asian Labor Organization here in Pittsburgh's a
Speaker 12: fairly new organization advocating for you know, people who are immigrants,
Speaker 12: who are new into the workforce here that really don't
Speaker 12: understand their rights. Trying to teach people what those rights are,
Speaker 12: and the people in the work newly undered in the workforce,
Speaker 12: and how they can stand up for their rights. And
Speaker 12: you know, she said to me, I was interviewing for
Speaker 12: her for a story, and she said to me afterwards,
Speaker 12: she said, Steve, she said, we're watching you guys. We're
Speaker 12: paying attention, and we really appreciate the stand where you're taking.
Speaker 12: I've heard that a couple of times that in the
Speaker 12: past week or so, and you know, that really lifts
Speaker 12: my heart to know that that that this effort is
Speaker 12: worth it. You know, no matter what the outcome is here,
Speaker 12: you know the fact that we're standing up, that we're
Speaker 12: we are are in some ways showing people how this's done.
Speaker 12: You know, we've one of the problems we have is
Speaker 12: that we can't go to anybody for advice because nobody's
Speaker 12: been on strike, and nobody in the newspaper is alive
Speaker 12: now involved in this has been on strike this long.
Speaker 12: So you know, we're we are blazing new paths. You know,
Speaker 12: the Starbucks workers, you know what of them came up
Speaker 12: to me a couple of weeks ago and said, Steve,
Speaker 12: we we kind of feel like you guys are big brothers.
Speaker 12: So you know that that makes me feel those comments
Speaker 12: like that. You know, it's it's hard to state how
Speaker 12: how sustaining those comments can be and how important it
Speaker 12: can be to hear those things from us, because you know,
Speaker 12: sometimes when you're in the bubble and you're getting up
Speaker 12: every morning every day and you're thinking, I'm still on
Speaker 12: strike because they don't have any money. I got to
Speaker 12: go to work for free. You know, we have all
Speaker 12: these other issues we have to deal with, you know,
Speaker 12: keeping the strike fund up, hearing that is is important
Speaker 12: for sustaining this, keeping our mental health in in good stead.
Speaker 12: You know, there's a workers Memorial Day tomorrow. One of
Speaker 12: the big issues that they're dealing with now this year.
Speaker 12: It's not just people dying on the job, it's mental health.
Speaker 12: They realize that. So it's kind of fortuitous that it's
Speaker 12: that that that we're talking about this at this time.
Speaker 12: Another big thing, you know, you're right Max the Post,
Speaker 12: because that views this is a war of attrition. You know,
Speaker 12: they've got money, we don't. That's that's what it boils
Speaker 12: down to in their minds, and they think they can
Speaker 12: win with that. You know, we have a strike fund.
Speaker 12: You know, I hate to come down to this, but
Speaker 12: you know we have a strike fund. That's how people
Speaker 12: are paying their bills. And you know, I hate to
Speaker 12: say it, but you know, if you go to the
Speaker 12: go to pup, go to the donate page and donate
Speaker 12: some money to the strike relief fund. Those you know,
Speaker 12: we need mental health. We also need to be able
Speaker 12: to sustain this financially because the blocks are probably right,
Speaker 12: they've got more money than we do. You know what
Speaker 12: we have We have the community on our side. We
Speaker 12: have the moral high ground here. I'm going to claim that.
Speaker 12: Uh and uh, we have the best journalists. One thing
Speaker 12: we don't have is we don't have the money.
Speaker 3: That they have.
Speaker 12: There there or write about that. I don't think that
Speaker 12: I'll take where I'm at with no money any day
Speaker 12: of the week. But the fact is we got bills to.
Speaker 7: Pay from the Real News Network and Breaking Points. We
Speaker 7: are with you, guys. We stand in solidarity with y'all.
Speaker 7: And I want to encourage everyone watching and listening to
Speaker 7: this to please go to the Pittsburgh Union Progress website
Speaker 7: subscribe to the strike paper. You can, as Steve and
Speaker 7: Bob mentioned, you can find links to donate to their
Speaker 7: strike fund there. Post publicly about this, keep this story alive,
Speaker 7: let people know about it, reach out to the owners
Speaker 7: of the paper to express your thoughts and feelings about
Speaker 7: the strike and the value of having these workers secure
Speaker 7: the contract that they deserve so they can keep doing
Speaker 7: the work that they love and serving the communities that
Speaker 7: they are a part of. So I want to thank
Speaker 7: the great Bob Bats Junior and Steve Mellan for joining
Speaker 7: us today on Breaking Points. Bob is a lifelong journalist
Speaker 7: who worked for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for thirty years
Speaker 7: before going on strike and being named interim editor of
Speaker 7: the worker's strike paper, the Pittsburgh Union Progress. As of today,
Speaker 7: they've published over one thousand stories, plus photos, graphics, ads,
Speaker 7: and even a fictional story, which you can find at
Speaker 7: Union Progress dot com. Steve has been a journalist and
Speaker 7: photojournalist for more than forty years. For the past few decades,
Speaker 7: much of his work has focused on working people. He
Speaker 7: left the Pittsburgh Press after a strike there in nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety two and spent much of the next four years
Speaker 7: traveling to industrial towns to report on the changes people
Speaker 7: there were experiencing, and he returned to the newspaper work
Speaker 7: in nineteen ninety seven, taking a job at the Pittsburgh
Speaker 7: Post Gazette, where he has been on strike with his
Speaker 7: co workers since October of twenty twenty two. Bob Steve,
Speaker 7: thank you both so much for joining me today on
Speaker 7: Breaking Points. Thank you all for watching this segment with
Speaker 7: Breaking Points, and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet,
Speaker 7: the Real News Network with links in the show description.
Speaker 7: See you soon for the next edition of the Art
Speaker 7: of Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of
Speaker 7: each other, Solidarity forever.
Speaker 16: Right now, at around three o'clock Eastern, you could see
Speaker 16: that gray black plume of smoke coming out, which gets
Speaker 16: worse and smells worse as the day moves into night,
Speaker 16: and definitely as night goes into the early morning. Hey,
Speaker 16: it's Jordan with Status KUP News with a special report
Speaker 16: on the ground in Kalamazoo, Michigan. For breaking points. I
Speaker 16: am wearing a mask outside on a rainy day because
Speaker 16: right behind us is Graphic Packaging International, a multi billion
Speaker 16: dollar packaging company that is literally poisoning the poor black
Speaker 16: part of Kalamazoo, Michigan. They are releasing over thirty different
Speaker 16: kinds of toxic gas which is causing crazy rates of asthma,
Speaker 16: COPD cancers in the community. And since twenty fifteen, one thousand,
Speaker 16: nine hundred and fifty let me repeat, one, nine hundred
Speaker 16: and fifty black infants under the age of one have
Speaker 16: died in Kalamazoo County. The majority of black residents live
Speaker 16: in this area on the north side near Graphic Packaging plant.
Speaker 16: My cameraman and I both yesterday and today we reported
Speaker 16: right next to the plant yesterday and both had headaggs
Speaker 16: and sore throat and even being half a block away
Speaker 16: you could feel it with a headagg dizziness. We have
Speaker 16: a lot more to tell you what is being released.
Speaker 17: From that and there's over thirty different toxic gases and chemicals,
Speaker 17: sulfur to axide, hydrogen, sulfide mouth.
Speaker 6: I'm not go oner, captain.
Speaker 18: Do order to an asthma attack. Then she was seventeen.
Speaker 18: Then I found my son unresponsible. He couldn't breathe, Uh
Speaker 18: to a asthma attack. Now, due to that, my son
Speaker 18: has a track. He's on twenty four hour oxygen and
Speaker 18: I have a life support machine at my house.
Speaker 6: How old is you say?
Speaker 10: My son is thirty two.
Speaker 18: She complained about the smell she had, Like I said, uh,
Speaker 18: almost every day I had to take her to go
Speaker 18: get an asthma tribute at the hospital. To the point
Speaker 18: it got so bad that the hospital had her come
Speaker 18: in two times a week. It had a shot flown
Speaker 18: in from California that she had to get inserted into
Speaker 18: her and stayed at the hospital for like three hours
Speaker 18: to make sure she did have no kind of reaction
Speaker 18: from it to be able to come outside. This is
Speaker 18: graphic packaging, and the smell out here, it's joking the
Speaker 18: shit out to me right now, August fifth, This is
Speaker 18: graphic packaging.
Speaker 6: This is one fifteen in the morning.
Speaker 18: Today is Wednesday, August twenty fourth at three fifteen in
Speaker 18: the morning.
Speaker 3: This is graphic packaging.
Speaker 10: It smells like wall age. Got the suitt.
Speaker 18: Look how thick the white smokey.
Speaker 10: It's choky bis. I tried to videotape it.
Speaker 18: It is September fourth, about one forty in the morning.
Speaker 18: This is graphic packaging. Once again, look at this. I'm
Speaker 18: at home now look at this fourth while. Oh, this
Speaker 18: is graphic packaging at two fifty seven in the morning.
Speaker 18: It's probably two fifty seven or two fifty eight. Now
Speaker 18: look at this, y'all. It's killing us. As a young kid,
Speaker 18: my son was great active. You couldn't sit him down.
Speaker 18: He wouldn't stop moving, and he didn't have asthma when
Speaker 18: he was young. He didn't get asthma until we moved
Speaker 18: over here.
Speaker 7: When was that.
Speaker 18: About five years ago?
Speaker 10: What about your daughter?
Speaker 16: Was she was she relatively healthy before you guys moved here.
Speaker 18: Uh, she had asthma a little, I mean she had asthma,
Speaker 18: but she was act just like my son, kept moving.
Speaker 10: You couldn't sider down.
Speaker 18: She played football, she played basketball, baseball, rad track.
Speaker 10: She did everything she possibly could.
Speaker 16: Just a little case of asthma and which could be
Speaker 16: helped within hailer. But it was after you moved here
Speaker 16: that for her the asthma got a lot worse, and
Speaker 16: your son the same thing.
Speaker 18: Yes, we done reached out to several people. We have
Speaker 18: not got to respond back. It's like they don't care
Speaker 18: how we live. They don't care if we live or die.
Speaker 18: That's how I feel. Women begging and begging and begging
Speaker 18: for them to do something about this factory.
Speaker 10: And they did something, all right. They gave them all
Speaker 10: them billions of dollars to expand to make it even
Speaker 10: worse for us over here.
Speaker 16: Governor Whitmere, yes, deal was dealing with COVID and many
Speaker 16: other things. But her administration, she came in office in
Speaker 16: twenty nineteen, her administration was fielding these complaints from a
Speaker 16: lot of residents on the North Side and twenty one.
Speaker 16: I still don't understand it. But a multi billion dollar company,
Speaker 16: Graphic Packaging, which is international. They're all over the United States,
Speaker 16: headquartered in Atlanta. But I guess they wanted to expand here.
Speaker 16: And the governor, her Michigan Economic Development Council, which is
Speaker 16: an arm of the government, approved a deal that would
Speaker 16: allow Graphic Packaging one hundred and twenty five billion dollar
Speaker 16: bond deal to expand can you make why would they
Speaker 16: have allowed expansion knowing all the complaints and at that point,
Speaker 16: Graphic Packaging had also been fined quite a bit for
Speaker 16: leaks and things like that. Was the state not aware
Speaker 16: of all the complaints. We're not just talking like, oh,
Speaker 16: it smells bad, but it's not a safety problem. It's
Speaker 16: the smell is overwhelming, and you have kids dying of
Speaker 16: severe asthma attacks. Kids can't even play outside the school
Speaker 16: near the plant. They don't even take them outside for recess.
Speaker 16: So not that you have the governor on speed dial,
Speaker 16: but I have to assume she was aware. Her administration
Speaker 16: was aware of this problem and approved it.
Speaker 19: Anyway, There's no there's no rational explanation for the state
Speaker 19: not being aware because by that point, Graphic Package had
Speaker 19: been fined several times, there had been a number of
Speaker 19: complaints filed.
Speaker 4: So yes, they were aware.
Speaker 6: Like it's it's affecting the whole city.
Speaker 17: Because at first Graphic Packaging was releasing five hundred thousand
Speaker 17: tons of toxic gases and chemicals. With the expansion, they
Speaker 17: had added an additional seven hundred thousand tons of toxic
Speaker 17: chemicals and gases so now there's one point two million
Speaker 17: tons of toxic chemicals and gases just blowing the whole
Speaker 17: on the whole city.
Speaker 20: Two thirty in the afternoon, I am about a half
Speaker 20: a block away from Graphic Packaging, which is the multi
Speaker 20: billion dollar international packaging o care here that is basically
Speaker 20: poisoning the city of Klamazoo, predominantly the poor black part
Speaker 20: of Calamba Zoo. Not going any closer because it really.
Speaker 16: The smell is overwhelming.
Speaker 20: They gives you a headache and sore throat.
Speaker 21: Yes, we smell it all the time, been smelling it
Speaker 21: for years. It has affected my husband's breathing as and
Speaker 21: he's on uh he has asthma and breathing. He has
Speaker 21: breathing treatments. And my daughter she had asthma oh about
Speaker 21: five years ago when she was in high school, and
Speaker 21: I kept thinking I didn't know it at first. I
Speaker 21: was thinking she kept getting tired and tired, and I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 21: so what could be wrong. I mean, you're active in school.
Speaker 21: But when I took it to the doctor, that's.
Speaker 6: What it was.
Speaker 21: In the summer, we can't even open our windows due
Speaker 21: to the smell at all. My daughter's graduation party was
Speaker 21: in my backyard, and I was so embarrassed because alls
Speaker 21: I smell was a pollution is I mean it smelled
Speaker 21: like dog. It's smell like a sewage and uh that's
Speaker 21: what it was.
Speaker 6: Smelled like, just like a sewage.
Speaker 21: And as my company was sitting around, you know, and
Speaker 21: I noticed the faces and you know, people were just leaving.
Speaker 22: We always smelt it. We always thought it was the river. Yeah,
Speaker 22: but it's it's bad. My grandkids been sick and my
Speaker 22: oldest been sick two years since he came into this world,
Speaker 22: nose running, coughing for the whole two years. Though they
Speaker 22: don't care about us.
Speaker 16: And the Uh did you notice that the more they
Speaker 16: were outside where obviously.
Speaker 22: The more they outside, the worst they would get if
Speaker 22: I keep them in the house. But you can't contain kids.
Speaker 22: They want to go outside, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 22: Bop who use in all that form and they can't
Speaker 22: go outside and enjoy it because they're gonna be sick.
Speaker 22: It gonna matter a hundred degrees outside, They're still gonna
Speaker 22: be sick.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 21: It's so bad now that Okay, my granddaughter she has
Speaker 21: asthma really bad. She's twenty and every time she comes
Speaker 21: over to my house, she's a granny. I'm not coming
Speaker 21: over here anymore because I always have to use mine
Speaker 21: heller every time I come over. And then I also
Speaker 21: have a great grandson, which is her baby. She says,
Speaker 21: every time he comes over, he gets sick. She say,
Speaker 21: you know what, every time your baby sits, she says,
Speaker 21: never gets sick until he comes to your house.
Speaker 6: And she took him to the doctor because.
Speaker 21: She thought he had a cold, and they and he's
Speaker 21: only seven months and the doctor said he doesn't have
Speaker 21: a cold. They told her that it was asthma, and
Speaker 21: ask her what kind of environment was he in, and.
Speaker 6: She told him safe.
Speaker 21: That's all she was say was safe, because she really
Speaker 21: think didn't understand the courtion.
Speaker 6: But yes.
Speaker 21: And then my other great granddaughter, I keep her every
Speaker 21: other weekend, and every time she comes over, she'll say, Granny,
Speaker 21: it stinks. And she gets sick for some reason and
Speaker 21: we don't know why. And I asked her, Mama, said,
Speaker 21: was she's sick before she came over? She said no,
Speaker 21: But every time she comes to our house she gets sick.
Speaker 21: And then when I take her home, I'll call her mama. Next,
Speaker 21: I said, how was she doing? She said, Oh, she's fine,
Speaker 21: She's not doing any of those things you said she
Speaker 21: was doing so and and oh and.
Speaker 6: My great grandson.
Speaker 21: The doctor would he said, since he doesn't have a cold,
Speaker 21: they actually gave him some medicine for asthma.
Speaker 10: So he's on he's on some medication.
Speaker 6: And there's so many stories. All the stories are the same.
Speaker 17: Like I'm the one that gets the messages and the
Speaker 17: calls all the time because I'm know when to file
Speaker 17: the lawsuit. We have a civil rights complaining against Environmental
Speaker 17: Great Lakes and Energy. We have a civil rights complaining
Speaker 17: against the city of Kalma Zoo. We're gonna file another
Speaker 17: lawsuit against the government soon. And I just heard another
Speaker 17: story from a lady that said she had a quit
Speaker 17: her job.
Speaker 6: She lives a couple of blocks away.
Speaker 17: She has raising her grandchildren and she has to take
Speaker 17: them to the doctor every single day for breathing problems
Speaker 17: every day.
Speaker 19: This is not anywhere near as much of an issue
Speaker 19: on this side of town because prevailing winds push it.
Speaker 12: Away from here.
Speaker 19: But yeah, after the expansion, it's become a lot more noticeable.
Speaker 19: So we took a little while after they got up
Speaker 19: and running with the full expansion before we started to
Speaker 19: notice it pretty regularly, and really in the last since
Speaker 19: this last summer, it's been.
Speaker 4: Probably i would say.
Speaker 19: Three days a week or so where you can smell it,
Speaker 19: and probably usually it'll be about one day a week
Speaker 19: where it's you get a headache going outside, or my
Speaker 19: wife is a little more sensitive, she'll get her lips
Speaker 19: will burn and she's actually gotten some like rash under skin.
Speaker 19: But yeah, it's it's liked out about about once a
Speaker 19: week probably.
Speaker 22: They tell them to move this planning out. Oh it's
Speaker 22: shut down us. We go try to fight. They don't
Speaker 22: care because y'all minorities to us. They look at us
Speaker 22: like we beneath them.
Speaker 6: We are human.
Speaker 22: Why I'm beneath you because I didn't take ten extra
Speaker 22: courses at the college. They talking about slavery over and
Speaker 22: all that. No, it's not because we still live in slavery.
Speaker 22: Because y'all still don't give a fuck about us. Why
Speaker 22: do we have to go through this? Because if somebody
Speaker 22: white who stayed this was on the way and portage
Speaker 22: and somebody white would have came and told them, look
Speaker 22: at this gases, look at all this, they would have
Speaker 22: cut that shit out.
Speaker 4: A long time ago.
Speaker 16: The smell is really bad. I can't even describe it.
Speaker 16: It's just a mix of like rotten something, and it
Speaker 16: almost like the more you the closer you get, it's
Speaker 16: a rotten smell and it kind of goes up your
Speaker 16: nostrils a little bit. And this is at whatever time
Speaker 16: it is now, probably six o'clock.
Speaker 3: Sure you've heard that.
Speaker 16: Now, since the expansion, the smoke and the smell is
Speaker 16: starting to go to the west side, in the whiter
Speaker 16: part of the town. White folks are starting to complain.
Speaker 16: Do you think if enough white people get angry, maybe
Speaker 16: they'll do something about it.
Speaker 10: That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 18: If enough rich white people could play that's over there
Speaker 18: by the western area, in the west side area, the nice,
Speaker 18: nice neighborhoods, then I think they're finally gonna do something
Speaker 18: about it. But right now, us black in this community,
Speaker 18: they don't care. They don't care at all. Whit more,
Speaker 18: she doesn't care. I thought she did when I voted
Speaker 18: for her, But I say, she don't care.
Speaker 16: What about President Biden. Obviously he's not the governor, but
Speaker 16: he talks a lot about environmental justice and he likes,
Speaker 16: you know, he says, he ran that. You know, I'm
Speaker 16: I've done a lot for the black community. He said,
Speaker 16: I find that highly questionable. But shouldn't the president step
Speaker 16: in if American citizens are basically being poisoned?
Speaker 18: Yes, the president should. That's what I think. He's the president.
Speaker 18: He got charge over Whittmore, he gets telled him what
Speaker 18: to do and what not to do. I think he
Speaker 18: really just don't care neither. All they wanted was the
Speaker 18: votes that we gave him. They told a good lie
Speaker 18: until they got into office, and that's all it is
Speaker 18: was a lie.
Speaker 10: They're not doing anything that they said it was gonna do.
Speaker 23: Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another
Speaker 23: segment of fifty one to forty nine on Breaking Points,
Speaker 23: where we uncover together the true motivations and incentives underlying
Speaker 23: their political, business, and cultural institutions. And today, hey, we're
Speaker 23: going to talk about Elon Musk's new company town.
Speaker 24: If you'd like to live in Elon Musk's proposed utopia town,
Speaker 24: get a job at one of his companies, and you
Speaker 24: could become the newest resident of Snailbrook. Musk employees have
Speaker 24: described it as a Texas utopia.
Speaker 23: What do you think does Elon's new utopia represent a
Speaker 23: form of benevolent paternalism where the company is there to
Speaker 23: take care of its employees needs and provide them with
Speaker 23: a good quality of life, or is this just another
Speaker 23: incarnation of modern day serfdom? Reporting from the Wall Street
Speaker 23: Journal quote. In meetings with landowners and real estate agents,
Speaker 23: mister Musk and employees of his companies have described his
Speaker 23: vision as sort of a Texas utopia along the Colorado River,
Speaker 23: whereas employees could live and work the boring company. Employees
Speaker 23: could apply for a home with rent starting at about
Speaker 23: eight hundred dollars a month for a two or three bedroom,
Speaker 23: but if an employee leaves or is fired, he or
Speaker 23: she would have to vacate the house.
Speaker 4: Within thirty days.
Speaker 23: Depending on your background, your opinion of company towns can
Speaker 23: probably go one of two ways. Forbes Magazine, rights affordable
Speaker 23: Housing Corporate America can be part of the solution quote.
Speaker 23: As housing prices continue to rise across the nation, developers,
Speaker 23: local governments, and major corporations have an opportunity to work
Speaker 23: together in the twenty first century as partners rather than adversaries,
Speaker 23: to help address the inequities of housing affordability. On numerous fronts.
Speaker 23: This would be the most generous interpretation. I'll just put
Speaker 23: it that way. It's kind of perfect that Forest Magazine,
Speaker 23: a flagship Corporatis publication, was the one to actually put
Speaker 23: forth this take, a take that I'm very familiar with
Speaker 23: because it's the world where I come from. This is
Speaker 23: going to be a slight to my alma mater. But
Speaker 23: day one of business school, we were indoctrinated with this
Speaker 23: notion that we weren't in it for the money. We
Speaker 23: were in quote, the business of doing good. But then
Speaker 23: we took classes about how to make money through private equity,
Speaker 23: how to union bus, how to personify a brand in
Speaker 23: a way to manipulate consumers to buy by buy, and
Speaker 23: that was somehow good. That was okay, because it obfuscated
Speaker 23: the realities of what we were doing. This is, just
Speaker 23: my opinion, the genesis of a lot of society's problems
Speaker 23: that the business community purports to want to solve are
Speaker 23: oftentimes byproducts of private industries blind pursuit of profit.
Speaker 25: Okay, So I saw this tweet the day about Elon
Speaker 25: Musk reportedly building a town in Texas for his employees
Speaker 25: to work and live in, and I saw up here
Speaker 25: that they were like, oh my gosh, the history of
Speaker 25: company towns, and I was like, oh no, we're back
Speaker 25: on this now.
Speaker 23: This is the other take, the take that I think
Speaker 23: is more honest because it's based on history. You know,
Speaker 23: the old adage that past behavior is the best predictor
Speaker 23: of future behavior.
Speaker 25: So company towns were popular in the US from the
Speaker 25: eighteen eighties to the nineteen thirties. The company would own
Speaker 25: all the buildings and businesses in that town, and these
Speaker 25: companies tried to build a like utopian workers society.
Speaker 23: Coincidence, I think not that this is the exact pitch
Speaker 23: that Elon Musk is making a Texas utopia. And what
Speaker 23: does history tell us about such utopias.
Speaker 13: I'm in Lelo, Colorado, where in nineteen fourteen Colorado National
Speaker 13: guardsmen killed upwards of twenty plus citizens, including women and children,
Speaker 13: for striking against Colorado Fuel and Irons extremely unsafe and
Speaker 13: exploitative labor practices. At the time, Colorado Fuel and Iron
Speaker 13: built company towns to house their workers, providing them with
Speaker 13: health care, education, and basic amenities. However, these towns were
Speaker 13: wholly owned and operated by the company, and they were
Speaker 13: created to control their workers exploit their labor, instill loyalty,
Speaker 13: and to prevent unionization.
Speaker 23: Ah, I get it, and I think you get it too.
Speaker 23: It will be a utopian worker society in the sense
Speaker 23: that it will be optimized for the company to extract
Speaker 23: the most amount of value that it can out of
Speaker 23: the worker. Key tenets of such utopia productivity, efficiency, centralized control.
Speaker 23: Is it possible that it is not a coincidence? Why
Speaker 23: in America healthcare is tied to your employer. Vacation days
Speaker 23: you get any at all, are set by the company.
Speaker 23: Sick days, parentalies all tied to your employer. I think
Speaker 23: this is done by design to increase the corporate sphere
Speaker 23: of influence and limit your recourse against potential exploitation. Do
Speaker 23: you really want to add housing to that list as well?
Speaker 26: I took a job that was ran by a billionaire,
Speaker 26: and how the housing was set up is that you
Speaker 26: could either live in the housing or you could find
Speaker 26: your own apartment or house. And these homes were nice.
Speaker 26: They were many mansions. Okay, they were really nice, but
Speaker 26: it was terrifying because that job was so abusive. But
Speaker 26: I didn't want to lead because that meant I did
Speaker 26: not have housing.
Speaker 23: This is serfdom. No. I mean, I kind of get it.
Speaker 23: The housing is going to be below market rate. But
Speaker 23: with every basic human need tied to your employer, are
Speaker 23: you really truly free? Really think about it all the
Speaker 23: downstream effects. Imagine if you're being discriminated at work by
Speaker 23: your boss, or if you spot a safety issue, or
Speaker 23: you simply have a different viewpoint than Elon, If you're
Speaker 23: in constant fear of losing your job and your shelter
Speaker 23: in one fell soup, do you actually have any freedom
Speaker 23: at all? We're talking about Elon Musk here, a hardcore
Speaker 23: kind of guy, one who really likes to test the
Speaker 23: boundaries of the law. Case in point, his Tesla gigafactory
Speaker 23: was purportedly built on wage theft and safety violations.
Speaker 9: Were Little towns have downtown main streets with old buildings,
Speaker 9: and they're full of mom and pop restaurants and shops.
Speaker 9: Elon Musk came to town. His team are bringing a
Speaker 9: whole new energy to our counting the jobs that are
Speaker 9: not an hour away from where they live. A lot
Speaker 9: of times our kids grow up and they've had to
Speaker 9: go away to be an engineer. The more opportunities we plant,
Speaker 9: the more the kids will be with us.
Speaker 23: This is somewhat tricky for me to discuss because I
Speaker 23: am not in the Elon Musk is an idiot type camp.
Speaker 23: This is a guy. He built PayPal, He revolutionized electric
Speaker 23: vehicles at Tesla SpaceX, is beating NASA at Space Exploration Twitter.
Speaker 23: I'm not so sure about it. I'm gonna withhold judgment there.
Speaker 23: You can't take those successes away from him. But come on,
Speaker 23: let's be real. What do you think is gonna happen
Speaker 23: to that town? Do you think he's gonna be like guys, guys,
Speaker 23: we have to respect the history and culture of the town.
Speaker 23: We have to be sure not to displace the local population.
Speaker 23: We have to build responsibly.
Speaker 12: No way.
Speaker 23: He's already trying to dump wastewater into the Colorado River.
Speaker 23: And they say that the reason that they have to
Speaker 23: do that is that the facility right now doesn't tie
Speaker 23: into the city's treatment system. The infrastructure is currently not
Speaker 23: in place yet, so in the interim, this is their solution.
Speaker 23: And that's according to Rejieve Patel, an environmental consultant working
Speaker 23: with the boring company. Yeah, what's the big deal? One
Speaker 23: hundred and forty thousand gallons of wastewater, no worries. By
Speaker 23: the way, I did some digging. The environmental consultant, Rejieve Patel,
Speaker 23: is a partner at Green Think Consulting, LLC, where they
Speaker 23: provide regulatory expertise and environmental compliance. I know, environmental consulting.
Speaker 23: It sounds really wholesome, but it is just corporate for
Speaker 23: we will help you find the best way to skirt
Speaker 23: environmental regulations and not get sued.
Speaker 14: The dirt that you pull out of a tunnel, there
Speaker 14: are government regulations on what you have to do with that,
Speaker 14: because there's oil, there's grease, there's products in there. There
Speaker 14: are families down there drinking well water from the same well,
Speaker 14: from the same aquafer groundwater that I'm pulling from too,
Speaker 14: And I hope, I hope they're concerned that I want
Speaker 14: this to be a positive thing. I'm not anti musk,
Speaker 14: I'm not anti growth, I'm not anti tunneling. But I'm
Speaker 14: anti breaking the law and I'm anti corporations who think
Speaker 14: they can tell our officials that the rules don't apply
Speaker 14: to them.
Speaker 23: Right. I talked about this at length a few weeks ago,
Speaker 23: but we got a big problem in present day America.
Speaker 23: We got a case of billionaires acting like wanta be kings.
Speaker 23: People like Elon Musk think they are the law, like
Speaker 23: he says all these wonderful things. I want to protect
Speaker 23: the environment, I want to preserve free speech, I want
Speaker 23: to build this utopian town, save humanity, YadA YadA. But
Speaker 23: that's not who Elon Musk is.
Speaker 25: His approach is to do anything required to keep his
Speaker 25: businesses competitive.
Speaker 23: He is a ruthless businessman, and a lot of people
Speaker 23: revere him for that. But that is all he is.
Speaker 23: He is for protecting his speech, his freedom, not yours.
Speaker 7: If he wants people to work like he wanted them
Speaker 7: to work at Twitter, yeah town.
Speaker 4: They never leave in that town.
Speaker 10: Not wrong about that.
Speaker 3: They go to work four seven in that town.
Speaker 23: They're not wrong. Companytown or no company town. To Elon Musk,
Speaker 23: everything everyone is a resource, a means to build his empire,
Speaker 23: to expand his empire. You are a Cognis machine. If
Speaker 23: you are working great, but if you get sick, injured,
Speaker 23: step out of line, you will be discarded and replaced.
Speaker 5: Book like hell, I mean, you just have to put in,
Speaker 5: you know, eighty hour eighty one hundred hour weeks every week.
Speaker 23: The thing about all this work is that because he
Speaker 23: owns the company, he reaps all the reward. But if
Speaker 23: you're like on the factory floor, it's a little bit more.
Speaker 4: To indentured servitude.
Speaker 23: So snail Brook tests Elon Musk's new company Town. I
Speaker 23: hate to say it with his employees sounding pretty jazzed
Speaker 23: about it, but it's not gonna be utopia. Well maybe
Speaker 23: for Elon it'll be his utopia, but for most everyone
Speaker 23: else it'll be dystopia. But hey, that's just what I believe.
Speaker 23: I want to know your thoughts. What do you think
Speaker 23: about Elon Musk and his utopian Companytown. Let's talk about
Speaker 23: in the comments section below. If you found this video helpful,
Speaker 23: please take a second to go over to my YouTube
Speaker 23: channel fifty one forty nine. I have many videos breaking
Speaker 23: down various different subjects. The link will be in the
Speaker 23: description below. Keep on tuning into breaking points, and as always,
Speaker 23: thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 27: Three reasons BuzzFeed News closed in the style of a
Speaker 27: BuzzFeed listicle, decline, an advertising revenue, challenges of the digital
Speaker 27: news landscape, over alliance on social media. That's pretty much it.
Speaker 27: Those are the things I'm going to talk about. Obviously,
Speaker 27: a realisticalist more than three things, but the ten things
Speaker 27: that it's bad up didn't really all make sense. Also,
Speaker 27: the last time I did this, it gave me a
Speaker 27: funny title like three reasons BuzzFeed News closed, and we're
Speaker 27: all totally bummed out about it. I don't know why
Speaker 27: it's not being funny anymore.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 27: When I was in college, BuzzFeed was just dumb quizzes
Speaker 27: and lists and they spread around on Facebook or wherever.
Speaker 27: All did was gathered potentially viral content from around the
Speaker 27: web and try to capitalize on memes and nostalgia and stuff.
Speaker 27: But in twenty eleven, they hired Ben Smith from Politico
Speaker 27: to help make a news division. Over the following few years,
Speaker 27: they added staff, built an investigative team, started winning awards.
Speaker 27: In twenty sixteen, they won a National Magazine Award. In
Speaker 27: twenty twenty one, they won a Pulitzer for their coverage
Speaker 27: of internment camps in China. They published exposd's had a
Speaker 27: spot in the White House Press Corps. They had become
Speaker 27: a mainstream outlet. Now at the same time, they operated
Speaker 27: at a loss. I don't think there's anything wrong with
Speaker 27: that news is important. At one point they tried to
Speaker 27: get a billionaire to buy them. They had advertising, but
Speaker 27: obviously it wasn't enough. In twenty nineteen, they laid off staff.
Speaker 27: In twenty twenty one, BuzzFeed Proper went public. Then in
Speaker 27: twenty twenty two there were a few more layoffs in
Speaker 27: the news division, and finally, in April twenty twenty three,
Speaker 27: CEO Jonah Peretti announced that BuzzFeed News was closing. But
Speaker 27: there are digital media companies that have done alright, So
Speaker 27: why did BuzzFeed have to fail? And I think there
Speaker 27: are a few key reasons, well, a couple key reasons,
Speaker 27: and actually the first I want to talk about. In
Speaker 27: order to talk about it, we should take a second
Speaker 27: to talk about the algorithm, specifically the Facebook algorithm.
Speaker 15: I still don't understand the algorithm currently.
Speaker 27: The Facebook algorithm uses four factors to decide which posts
Speaker 27: you see first. Facebook takes all of your friends, all
Speaker 27: the pages you follow, all the photos that you ever
Speaker 27: want to have to see again, but sometimes Facebook shows
Speaker 27: it to you anyway. And then Facebook assesses thousands of
Speaker 27: signals that are attached to that content, like who posted
Speaker 27: it and how often you interact with the person who
Speaker 27: posted it, whether you liked it or commented, and I'm
Speaker 27: sure countless other parameters that we would just find chilling
Speaker 27: if we knew about all of them. Then it takes
Speaker 27: those signals and makes predictions about what you want to see.
Speaker 27: So every time your friend from college who you haven't
Speaker 27: seen in ten years post a picture of her stupid
Speaker 27: kids average artwork and gushes about how complex it is,
Speaker 27: and you spend five minutes examining it for traces of
Speaker 27: actual talent, of which there are clearly none, And so
Speaker 27: Facebook understands that you delight in hating those pictures, which
Speaker 27: is why Facebook is constantly showing them to you. So
Speaker 27: the algorithm then gives all that stuff a relevancy rating,
Speaker 27: and it starts presenting it to you accordingly. Now, up
Speaker 27: until twenty eleven, Facebook's algorithm was called edge Rank, but
Speaker 27: there are always changes being made. After a change in
Speaker 27: twenty twelve, suddenly the reach of brands dropped thirty eight percent.
Speaker 27: This Forbes contributor writes about the experience of having posts
Speaker 27: reached forty eight percent of his audience in August and
Speaker 27: then only three percent of his audience a couple months later.
Speaker 27: That change was billed as a way to reduce spam
Speaker 27: from certain brands, but had the added effect of making
Speaker 27: room for more ads on Facebook Now. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 27: they retired edge rank and went totally to machine learning.
Speaker 27: In twenty fourteen, they gave a big boost to video.
Speaker 27: Also in twenty fourteen, apparently a major downturn in organic reach,
Speaker 27: Facebook warned pages against posting overly promotional updates, saying that
Speaker 27: such posts would be shown to fewer people. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 27: they warned pages that they would see lower traffic because
Speaker 27: Facebook was favoring friends updates. In twenty eighteen, again, Facebook
Speaker 27: announced that they would prioritize posts from friends and family
Speaker 27: over public content. The algorithm is constantly evolving, and their
Speaker 27: priority is keeping users on the platform and making money.
Speaker 27: And if the way to do that is to disfavor
Speaker 27: posts from brand unless they're paying for it, then they
Speaker 27: will so clicking out of Facebook to go to your
Speaker 27: news site when you're not even paying for it, what's
Speaker 27: in it for Facebook? Nothing? So with that in mind,
Speaker 27: it seems crazy to rely on Facebook's algorithm, or probably
Speaker 27: the algorithm of any social media company for the success
Speaker 27: of your business, because they can just take it away
Speaker 27: from you. There's only so much you can do about it,
Speaker 27: and that's not new information. But it appears that even
Speaker 27: with all of that volatility, that algorithm was what BuzzFeed
Speaker 27: was banking on because Ben Smith, who I mentioned helped
Speaker 27: launch the news division in twenty eleven, wrote that they
Speaker 27: had immersed themselves in an optimistic web culture that imagined
Speaker 27: a reader who cared about which Disney princess she was
Speaker 27: and also the worst of how the American justice system
Speaker 27: treated abused women who wanted to argue about the color
Speaker 27: of the dress, and also understand the science behind it.
Speaker 27: That was back when all of it was mixed up
Speaker 27: in your Facebook feed and it felt novel. So this
Speaker 27: is issue number one. BuzzFeed's growth was thanks to their
Speaker 27: content spreading around on Facebook or other social media that
Speaker 27: is clearly not reliable, and you come to be at
Speaker 27: the mercy of the algorithm and you're just waiting for
Speaker 27: numbers out of your control to start dropping off. As
Speaker 27: was recently pointed out, BuzzFeed leadership has called out a
Speaker 27: sharp decrease in Facebook referral traffic during the past few
Speaker 27: earnings calls, and as Ross Barkin points out, a lot
Speaker 27: of millennials have aged out of BuzzFeed, and for gen
Speaker 27: z TikTok probably fills that need for addictive, pointless content
Speaker 27: much better than BuzzFeed ever could. So a huge source
Speaker 27: of traffic was dwindling, and that is bad for advertising. Now,
Speaker 27: BuzzFeed News always operated at a loss. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 27: they had approximately two hundred and fifty employees, but didn't
Speaker 27: generate anything close to the revenue needed to cover costs.
Speaker 27: The idea was that it was subsidized by the rest
Speaker 27: of BuzzFeed. Nothing wrong with that. Funding is obviously a
Speaker 27: perennial problem in the news business. Already had the admirable
Speaker 27: goal of wanting to keep the news free, but how
Speaker 27: to do that. In twenty eighteen, they tried to get
Speaker 27: bought by a billionaire, which is one way to get
Speaker 27: news outlets funded. That's how, for example, the Intercept got
Speaker 27: off the ground. But having your news outlet in the
Speaker 27: hands of just a single wealthy person is obviously not ideal,
Speaker 27: So the Intercept put themselves on a path to get
Speaker 27: away from that. BuzzFeed would never even get that opportunity
Speaker 27: because they weren't able to sell to that billionaire. But
Speaker 27: here's another thing. BuzzFeed has done a lot of good,
Speaker 27: serious work. You go to their website under the investigations
Speaker 27: tab and you have four or five six thousand word
Speaker 27: pieces on deadly terror networks and drug cartels use huge
Speaker 27: banks to finance their crimes. How Amazon escapes blame when
Speaker 27: one of their delivery trucks run someone over. Insurance companies
Speaker 27: paying comps to investigate their own customers, but I wonder
Speaker 27: if they would have been able to inspire people to
Speaker 27: pay them or to donate to the degree that they
Speaker 27: would need to move toward independence truly, because to inspire
Speaker 27: someone to donate or pay for pay well content, they
Speaker 27: have to see a lot of value in your work,
Speaker 27: and they have to see the urgency of their contributions.
Speaker 27: And who sees urgency in a contribution to a for
Speaker 27: profit company, So that might be a tough sell. That's
Speaker 27: one problem. But this kind of brings us to the
Speaker 27: branding issue, and I hate the word branding, but the
Speaker 27: idea that people would delight in the intermingling of substance
Speaker 27: of journalism and mindless entertainment seems to have been a
Speaker 27: huge miscalculation. In twenty fourteen, few research asked Americans what
Speaker 27: news outlets they trust, and BuzzFeed came in last out
Speaker 27: of thirty six. In twenty sixteen, Columbia Journalism Review gave
Speaker 27: participants a long form article. Some people thought it was
Speaker 27: from The New Yorker, some thought it was from BuzzFeed,
Speaker 27: and they found there was a trust gap and people
Speaker 27: viewed the New Yorker as more credible. Not a huge surprise,
Speaker 27: but the point is that it appears they never were
Speaker 27: able to overcome this branding issue. Now, this might be
Speaker 27: why BuzzFeed News went to its own website in twenty eighteen. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 27: according to digit Day, BuzzFeed News's editor in chief actually
Speaker 27: said that they were poised to make this newsroom financially
Speaker 27: sustainable over the course of twenty twenty three. Now, clearly
Speaker 27: they didn't get the chance to explore that. I don't
Speaker 27: know what their plan was, but when it comes to
Speaker 27: funding of news, I think there are a couple things
Speaker 27: we really just need to accept. Serious journalism can be expensive,
Speaker 27: and if news outlets are investment vehicles, journalism is almost
Speaker 27: always going to suffer. Half the newspapers in this country
Speaker 27: are owned by hedge funds, which is why newspapers are
Speaker 27: constantly being gutted and closed advertising and classifieds used to
Speaker 27: pay for small and mid range papers to operate, and
Speaker 27: that's mostly drive up. Large papers like The Posts and
Speaker 27: The New York Times are institutions that people can't escape
Speaker 27: paying for, and they have in house ad agencies creating
Speaker 27: branded content, including for fossil fuel companies. Cable News has
Speaker 27: cable carriage fees and huge advertising. They are also institutions
Speaker 27: that can't be escaped. And even still, why does cable
Speaker 27: news employ so many pundits Because it's cheap for independent media, though,
Speaker 27: I think it's pretty clear that premium subscribers and partial
Speaker 27: paywalls are a good way for organizations to do good
Speaker 27: work and survive. And if your income is coming from
Speaker 27: subscribers who believe in what you do, you're not behold
Speaker 27: in two advertisers or investors, as was the case here
Speaker 27: where several large shareholders urge BuzzFeed to shut down the
Speaker 27: entire news operation. Shutting down the newsroom could add up
Speaker 27: to three hundred million dollars of market capitalization to the
Speaker 27: struggling stock. Oh good, But where even that breaks down
Speaker 27: is on the local level, where investigative journalism is still
Speaker 27: expensive but you have fewer potential readers to rely on
Speaker 27: and to solve for. That is more serious public funding
Speaker 27: for journalism, because journalism has to be regarded and as
Speaker 27: a public good. There are just certain things that need
Speaker 27: to be emancipated from a profit directive and that will
Speaker 27: do it for me. If you found this video interesting
Speaker 27: or helpful, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points.
Speaker 27: You can also check out my YouTube channel where I
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Speaker 27: to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching and
Speaker 27: I will see you in the next one.