The Anthony Cumia Show - September 15, 2025


The Fog of War in the Age of Social Media ｜ 09-14-25


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

127.20009

Word count

1,178

Sentence count

84

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the WBC Minicast, host Mike Wendlandt talks about the recent shooting death of Charlie Kirk and how the media reacted to the news of it. He also discusses the dangers of instant information and how it can be misused.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:00.080 Listen, all you New Yorkers.
00:01:02.620 You ain't taxi.
00:01:04.020 Okay, then you wanna look around.
00:01:05.320 This is the 77
00:01:07.160 WABC Minicast.
00:01:10.680 Even though
00:01:11.680 social media has given us this amazing
00:01:14.220 outlet to get
00:01:15.300 information,
00:01:17.580 true, false, whatever,
00:01:20.060 immediately,
00:01:21.920 there are still
00:01:23.200 plenty of pitfalls with this instant information that we get from social media and uh i i think
00:01:33.520 we really got to at least understand that what we're seeing especially during that period they
00:01:41.040 call the fog of war when uh when these things first happen uh it's not going to be accurate
00:01:50.060 It's guaranteed to not be accurate.
00:01:52.660 It's not even like it might not be accurate.
00:01:55.840 If you're reading something within the first few minutes of a story breaking,
00:02:01.640 it is not going to be accurate.
00:02:03.260 There may be some flex of truth in there.
00:02:07.540 The first thing I read about Charlie Kirk was that he had been shot.
00:02:14.280 Now, that's true.
00:02:16.040 That was true.
00:02:17.180 It's kind of a wide open, how did it happen, who shot him, this, that.
00:02:23.460 So he had been shot, and the report was he has been shot.
00:02:30.040 After that, I didn't see any truth for quite some time.
00:02:36.960 It's just the nature of the beast.
00:02:40.920 Everyone wants to be first to get the info out there,
00:02:45.060 and everyone wants to be right
00:02:47.540 and we all want it to align
00:02:51.300 with our political ideology
00:02:53.860 or what we believe, whatever it is
00:02:56.660 we don't want it to go against our beliefs
00:03:00.440 so if you want this
00:03:03.000 to be a right wing
00:03:05.480 Trump supporter that did this
00:03:08.300 you're going to post anything
00:03:10.880 that leans that way
00:03:13.580 even if it's complete disinformation or misinformation.
00:03:17.580 If you want it to be a left-wing, radical,
00:03:21.760 you're going to pick up on those and repost that and go,
00:03:26.280 see, I told you.
00:03:28.920 So being in your little bubble really doesn't do you any justice
00:03:34.220 in these situations.
00:03:37.580 It's, you know, like I said, that fog of war settles in
00:03:41.820 and you're absolutely going to gravitate toward the news that best suits your belief system
00:03:50.040 and your agenda, regardless of side.
00:03:53.160 I've done it.
00:03:54.260 I've done it before.
00:03:56.520 Not that, like I'm saying, I'm the litmus test.
00:03:59.120 I'm so perfect that even I have done it.
00:04:02.740 Yeah, I sounded a little pompous there for a second.
00:04:06.440 But, you know, we do it.
00:04:08.440 I'll say it that way.
00:04:10.220 We all do it.
00:04:11.820 We want to be right.
00:04:13.680 We want to have been right.
00:04:17.000 You know, if something verifies what we've believed for so long,
00:04:22.420 we love the idea of posting it and going,
00:04:24.920 yes, see, I told you.
00:04:27.280 It's human nature.
00:04:29.500 It would be fantastic if every person was devoid of emotions
00:04:36.740 that attach you to stories that are aligned with your belief system.
00:04:44.240 It's just human nature.
00:04:46.580 Let's all forgive ourselves for being humans.
00:04:50.100 But that doesn't necessarily make it right.
00:04:54.440 Every report I got after the initial he's been shot
00:04:58.360 was some speculative nonsense,
00:05:01.620 and it was pretty much a coin toss
00:05:05.020 whether anything in these reports were going to be accurate or not.
00:05:10.760 And a lot of it wasn't.
00:05:13.280 My first impression was I thought it was going to be the usual kind of somebody
00:05:18.720 walked up with a pistol, took a pot shot from the crowd,
00:05:24.120 hopefully missed or just wounded him with something that could have been treated.
00:05:31.480 uh no one really thought we would see what we ended up seeing and that's a whole nother thing
00:05:39.680 about oh the uh social media and the access to this instant information because it isn't only
00:05:49.140 words and it isn't only pictures it is hd video of stuff that relatively speaking a short time ago
00:06:01.200 was just unavailable to people you could go to certain websites back in the day as i like to
00:06:11.660 call it and see horrific things they were usually car wrecks um gore gore.com i think was one
00:06:21.240 whatever it is but uh now you couldn't avoid watching this graphic execution of a man
00:06:33.800 you just couldn't avoid it you were scrolling and just it was everywhere
00:06:42.400 and uh that's another thing man that i don't know how healthy this could be for society
00:06:52.200 and i'm on board with a few of the people that uh did say no we need to show this
00:06:59.000 this needs to be made available to to show and to see and let it settle in that this is happening
00:07:07.720 And these people are doing these horrific things to people that are just trying to exercise their First Amendment right, live their lives, they have their ideology.
00:07:21.160 But, man, if you're someone that wants to avoid actually seeing graphic violence, I don't even know what you do.
00:07:30.120 Go off the grid.
00:07:32.120 Go down to Baja, California, like I do. 1.00
00:07:35.860 Get off your cell phones and talk to the indigenous people of Baja, California, Mexico.
00:07:45.740 Well, thank you, Jesse, the body Ventura.
00:07:49.080 But some people can't go off the grid.
00:07:54.140 We, I don't know whether we chose to or not, we are stuck in this digital world
00:08:01.400 and we are having things presented to us that aren't pleasant.
00:08:05.860 And I think in the long run, our access to some of the stuff that is available to see, especially to more impressionable people and young impressionable people, will not bode well for society.
00:08:21.800 Not like society is doing great as we speak, but man, man, oh, man.
00:08:30.380 Take this as your sign to go.
00:08:32.680 Just get out there and go.
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