The Glenn Beck Program - July 27, 2024


Ep 6 ｜ Media Manipulation： How the Left Came to Rule Journalism ｜ The Beck Story


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 1 minute

Words per Minute

142.33725

Word Count

8,787

Sentence Count

527

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Bill Burkett was a West Texas rancher and retired lieutenant colonel at the Texas National Guard.
00:00:12.620 According to a report in Texas Monthly Magazine, Burkett said he received a phone call in 2004 from a mysterious woman who said her name was Lucy Ramirez.
00:00:23.000 The woman told Burkett she was calling from a Holiday Inn and that she had some information that might interest him.
00:00:27.940 A few days later, Bill Burkett made his way to a cattle show in Houston, Texas.
00:00:33.940 He was approached by a man in a cowboy hat who handed him a manila envelope.
00:00:39.040 Inside the envelope were four memos with national ramifications.
00:00:43.980 The instructions inside told Burkett to make photocopies of the memos, then burn the originals and erase any DNA evidence that could identify their true source.
00:00:53.220 Burkett followed the instructions, then gave one copy of the memos to a CBS News producer named Mary Mapes and another copy to USA Today.
00:01:03.520 Six days later, on September 8, 2004, the four memos were the subject of a Dan Rather report on 60 Minutes Wednesday.
00:01:11.960 Last week on this broadcast, we heard for the first time the full story from a Texas politician who says he helped George Bush avoid military service in Vietnam.
00:01:22.440 Former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes said he helped Bush get a highly coveted place in the National Guard.
00:01:28.120 We also presented documents for the first time, which indicated that once Mr. Bush was accepted into the Guard, he failed to live up to the requirements of his service, including following an order.
00:01:38.900 The 2004 presidential election between the incumbent George W. Bush and his challenger, John Kerry, was just two months away, one month before the 60 Minutes report aired, and the Kerry campaign was extremely nervous and furious.
00:01:55.160 A group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was attacking Kerry's Vietnam service record, even accusing him of lying about aspects of his military exploits.
00:02:05.660 Kerry called a campaign meeting at his wife's Pennsylvania farm, where he recruited a member of the finance committee to help him form a campaign attack of their own.
00:02:16.120 Kerry's recruit was a longtime Democratic operative in Texas politics named Ben Barnes, the man mentioned by Dan Rather in the 60 Minutes clip you just heard.
00:02:26.300 After that Kerry campaign meeting, Ben Barnes reached out to Mary Mapes, who was Dan Rather's longtime producer at CBS News, and agreed to tell what he knew about George W. Bush's allegedly shoddy service record in the Texas Air National Guard,
00:02:43.360 and how Bush Jr. allegedly got a cushy assignment to allow him to avoid serving in Vietnam.
00:02:49.760 Two weeks later, Bill Burkett gave Mary Mapes a copy of the four memos that he had mysteriously acquired at a cattle show in Houston.
00:02:59.940 Because the memos contained information alleging bad performance reviews of Bush Jr., and that he had avoided some of his National Guard duty altogether,
00:03:09.740 this was potentially a bombshell report, one that could alter the trajectory of the presidential race.
00:03:18.000 This was Dan Rather and CBS News at the peak of the media profession, delivering objective, hard-hitting reporting to keep the public informed and help preserve democracy.
00:03:31.460 This was a top-tier example of expert journalism at work.
00:03:36.100 Or was it?
00:03:39.640 You ever wonder why things are the way they are in America?
00:03:43.520 Welcome to The Beck Story, my podcast about how our past informs our present.
00:03:50.360 How did we get here? Where are we going?
00:03:53.120 The first season is about a cult of expertise developed in America, how it permeated our government,
00:03:58.860 and how this allegiance to so-called expertise has far-reaching implications for our nation right now.
00:04:07.280 A remarkably consistent through-line extends from the original progressive movement right through the actions of the left-wing elites today.
00:04:16.680 When the United States was founded, its newspapers were almost entirely partisan.
00:04:25.380 Historians often refer to the period from roughly the 1780s to the 1860s as the party-press era in America,
00:04:33.460 because newspapers were mostly aligned with political parties, campaigns, and candidates.
00:04:38.380 And they were completely open and blatant about their partisanship.
00:04:42.160 There was no golden standard of objectivity.
00:04:46.540 In fact, it was the exact opposite.
00:04:49.420 The press thought they were performing a public good by promoting their political positions and criticizing their opposition.
00:04:57.260 Before the Civil War, many American newspapers were partially or entirely funded by the political parties.
00:05:04.280 Sometimes reporters and editors even worked part-time for state and federal lawmakers.
00:05:09.280 When Andrew Jackson was elected president, he rewarded several loyal newspaper editors with jobs in his administration.
00:05:17.600 When Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, won the 1884 presidential election,
00:05:22.720 the Los Angeles Times, which was considered a Republican paper at the time,
00:05:27.700 actually refused to report the results for several days.
00:05:31.560 That was the lay of the land back then.
00:05:34.500 And Americans didn't really complain about the partisanship.
00:05:37.340 It was expected.
00:05:40.220 Newspapers, however, gradually became less partisan as a result of the free market at work.
00:05:46.520 As big city newspapers expanded their operations, subsidies from political parties no longer covered the cost.
00:05:53.780 So advertisers filled the void.
00:05:56.660 Wider readership meant that advertisers pressured editors to tone down the extreme partisanship.
00:06:02.020 This general aim by newspapers to capture as many readers as possible was one side of the equation that led to the journalistic ideal of objectivity.
00:06:14.100 The idea that reporting the news should stick to the five W's.
00:06:19.280 Who, what, where, when, and why.
00:06:21.860 The other side of the equation was the coming together of journalism and academia.
00:06:28.140 Before the late 1800s, if you were a journalist in America, you most likely worked your way up as an apprentice, depending on the size of the newspaper.
00:06:39.020 You might work all of the aspects of the operation before eventually, maybe, getting to try your hand at covering some low-level event.
00:06:47.940 It was very much a working-class profession.
00:06:51.300 Well, that slowly began to change when, in 1879, the University of Missouri offered their first college-level journalism course in the U.S.
00:06:59.840 By 1908, it had the nation's first school of journalism.
00:07:04.760 Four years later, Columbia University started the first graduate program for journalism, funded by a grant from the publisher Joseph Pulitzer.
00:07:14.320 Within eight years, 11 other state universities across the country had journalism departments.
00:07:19.500 This academic influence on journalism meant that a new generation of reporters began to see their craft as fitting right in with a new scientific rationalism and expertise, progressivism.
00:07:33.080 The scientific approach to journalism emphasized objectivity.
00:07:37.600 Historian Richard Kaplan described it this way.
00:07:40.060 He said,
00:07:41.200 Under objectivity, journalists adopt the pose of scientists and vow to eliminate their own beliefs and values as guides in ascertaining what was said and done, supposedly avoiding all the subjective judgments and analysis.
00:07:56.480 The journalist strives to become a rigorously impartial expert, a collector of information, end quote.
00:08:05.740 That was the academic theory of objective journalism.
00:08:10.060 But since this new journalism was coming of the age at the same time as progressivism, it couldn't help being influenced by the progressive obsession with expertise.
00:08:22.360 The progressive mindset was not content to provide facts alone for the public because the public was too ignorant and impulsive to act responsibly based on those facts, especially when it came to voting.
00:08:34.220 For progressives, then, the proper role of the press was to shape public opinion.
00:08:41.420 Under the influence of progressivism, this new academic journalism became a cause in objectivity clothing.
00:08:49.160 The new journalism and progressivism seemed to go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
00:08:54.620 Historian Richard Hofstadter put it this way, quote,
00:08:57.440 It's hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter reformer, end quote.
00:09:12.380 Those reporter reformers found their ideal collaborator when Theodore Roosevelt suddenly ascended to the White House in 1901.
00:09:21.740 Theodore Roosevelt understood, probably better than any other president before him, the power and the usefulness of the press to the White House.
00:09:30.940 On his first day in office, Roosevelt invited the heads of Associated Press, the Scripps McRae Press Association, and the New York Sun to the White House.
00:09:40.560 He offered to keep them in the loop concerning his agenda, as long as they promised not to betray his confidence or publish anything he thought that shouldn't be published.
00:09:49.080 Theodore Roosevelt started the first informal press briefings at the White House.
00:09:54.700 Every afternoon, while he reclined in his barber's chair for his shave, reporters were allowed to pepper TR with questions.
00:10:01.920 Then, at the end of the workday, he invited reporters into his office while he signed letters and documents.
00:10:07.780 When the new executive office building, later known as the West Wing, was constructed in 1902,
00:10:12.980 Roosevelt designated a room for the press that was adjacent to his office.
00:10:17.160 No president had ever done that before.
00:10:21.000 One historian later described the White House under TR as, quote, a reporter's paradise, end quote.
00:10:28.660 Theodore Roosevelt made friends with a lot of reporters, but he was especially tight with Lincoln Steffens and Ray Stannard Baker,
00:10:37.060 two of the star progressive journalists at McClure's magazine.
00:10:41.000 Steffens and Baker, along with their colleagues at McClure's, Ida Tarbell and William Allen White, essentially invented activist journalism.
00:10:50.880 They were really good at it.
00:10:52.620 And they inspired a cottage industry of copycats.
00:10:56.200 Lincoln Steffens was born to a wealthy California family.
00:11:03.760 The mansion he grew up in eventually became the California governor's mansion.
00:11:08.320 His father bankrolled years of study at European universities, where, according to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin,
00:11:14.560 the young Steffens, quote, absorbed radical social ideas.
00:11:19.380 When his father finally pulled the plug on his son's European study life, Steffens moved to New York City and landed a job as a police reporter with the New York Evening Post.
00:11:29.060 That's where Steffens first got to know Theodore Roosevelt, who was police commissioner.
00:11:34.820 When T.R. later became governor of New York, he gave Steffens special insider access, allowing Steffens to accompany him to meetings when T.R. visited New York City almost every weekend.
00:11:46.320 Roosevelt once sent a letter of recommendation for Steffens that said, quote,
00:11:49.740 He is a personal friend of mine, and he has seen all of our work at close quarters.
00:11:55.480 He speaks at first hand as an expert.
00:11:57.320 In 1902, Steffens wrote a six-part investigative series for McClure's titled The Shame of the Cities.
00:12:05.940 It was about corruption in state and city governments.
00:12:09.160 The series made him a celebrity.
00:12:11.440 Later, a glowing article by Steffens about Wisconsin's progressive governor, Robert LaFolliette, was credited with helping LaFolliette win re-election.
00:12:21.960 LaFolliette wrote Steffens a thank you letter that said, quote,
00:12:25.160 No one will ever measure up to the full value of your share in this immediate result, end quote.
00:12:33.540 Across America, Steffens was held up as a crusading journalistic hero.
00:12:38.660 One article raved, quote,
00:12:40.140 Instead of having his news and his editorial on separate pages,
00:12:44.640 Steffens welds the two into one so that the fact and the meaning and the portent of it strike you simultaneously.
00:12:50.900 For progressives, strict objectivity wasn't necessary if you had the right kind of progressive expertise.
00:12:59.400 Steffens relished in his new status as a hero expert and presidential influencer.
00:13:04.540 When one of his anti-corruption stories threatened to derail the re-election campaign of Ohio's Republican governor,
00:13:11.420 Roosevelt wanted to send someone from his administration to give a speech in support of the governor.
00:13:17.160 But Steffens wrote to the president begging him not to help the governor, whom Steffens described as weak.
00:13:23.560 Steffens wrote to his father, quote,
00:13:25.300 If I'm to have so much influence, I want to make it a power for the possible and worthwhile.
00:13:33.760 Flush with his new celebrity status and influence,
00:13:37.020 Steffens was invited to join President Roosevelt for lunch at TR's Oyster Bay home on Long Island.
00:13:43.620 The president later gave Steffens a sort of all-access pass to talk to anybody in his administration.
00:13:50.680 On this pass, Roosevelt wrote, quote,
00:13:53.260 To any officer or employee of the government,
00:13:56.660 please tell Mr. Lincoln Steffens anything whatever about the running of the government
00:14:01.280 that you know not incompatible with the public interest
00:14:05.420 and provided only that you tell him the truth,
00:14:08.280 no matter what it may be, I will see that you are not hurt.
00:14:11.440 T. Roosevelt.
00:14:12.340 Thanks to the type of reporting that Roosevelt eventually labeled muckraking,
00:14:17.160 McClure's became the leading progressive publication at the time.
00:14:20.820 A competing magazine called it one of the greatest moral factors in America.
00:14:26.880 President Roosevelt invited Sam McClure, the magazine's publisher,
00:14:30.640 and Lincoln Steffens to dinner at the White House,
00:14:33.000 where Roosevelt pitched them article ideas on his battles against trusts and unions.
00:14:38.920 A new era was dawning for the press
00:14:41.460 and for what would eventually become known as the media.
00:14:47.240 Journalism had become powerful.
00:14:49.560 In Theodore Roosevelt's mind, at least,
00:14:53.100 he and only he wore the pants in the progressive family.
00:14:56.500 Eventually, he somewhat resented the booming influence of these activist journalists.
00:15:01.700 By 1906, he was criticizing Steffens for his habit of, quote,
00:15:06.080 Repeating as true unfounded gossip of a malicious or semi-malicious character.
00:15:10.860 As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin described it, quote,
00:15:13.780 It had seemed that crusading writers were intent on usurping Roosevelt's authority,
00:15:19.900 creating the intolerable impression that rather than summoning,
00:15:24.380 Roosevelt was being dragged.
00:15:26.900 And yet, by the time Theodore Roosevelt decided to run again for president in 1912,
00:15:32.600 he had fully joined forces with the leading progressive journalists
00:15:35.980 and their ideas for giving America a makeover.
00:15:39.800 For a speech titled The New Nationalism, Roosevelt collaborated with William Allen White,
00:15:46.580 one of the four big journalists at McClure's,
00:15:48.900 as well as with Herbert Crowley, the editor of the uber-progressive magazine The New Republic.
00:15:55.040 President William Howard Taft warned that the platform of Roosevelt's new progressive party
00:16:00.640 showed, quote,
00:16:02.360 An entire willingness to destroy every limitation of constitutional representative government, end quote.
00:16:09.280 The one thing that remains true of progressivism today,
00:16:12.720 as much as it was true from the outset,
00:16:15.200 is the self-importance of its experts.
00:16:19.020 The McClure's writer, Ray Stannard Baker,
00:16:21.240 said they honestly believed that he and his fellow progressive journalists were saving the world.
00:16:27.920 McClure's magazine was so influential on public policy in the early 1900s
00:16:32.520 that William Allen White said it was like America had, quote,
00:16:37.720 a government by magazine, end quote.
00:16:41.140 In 1906, a friend wrote to Ray Stannard Baker, quote,
00:16:45.120 It is through writers like yourself and Mr. Steffens
00:16:48.420 that the country as a whole is beginning to understand.
00:16:52.560 In the future, your influence on the life of the republic will be held to be greater than that of the men
00:16:58.380 who now rule our Senate and our House.
00:17:03.060 It was a rather prophetic statement,
00:17:05.980 because once the Pandora's box of progressive journalism had been flung open,
00:17:11.480 and with it the clear bias toward left-wing causes,
00:17:15.380 it would never be shut.
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00:18:23.720 By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as president on March 4th, 1933,
00:18:33.040 what we call the media had been revolutionized.
00:18:36.740 Print media was still hugely influential,
00:18:38.980 but radio and movies now created enormous new industries.
00:18:43.760 If Americans remember a line from any of FDR's speeches,
00:18:47.840 it's probably this one from his first inaugural address.
00:18:51.140 So first of all, let me assert my firm belief
00:18:56.500 that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
00:19:04.380 But FDR said a lot more in that speech
00:19:07.480 that you won't find quoted in history textbooks,
00:19:11.020 like this alarming statement near the end.
00:19:13.660 And it is to be hoped that the normal balance
00:19:17.720 of executive and legislative authority
00:19:20.460 may be fully equal,
00:19:23.320 fully adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us.
00:19:28.420 But it may be
00:19:29.860 that an unprecedented demand
00:19:32.960 and need for undelayed action
00:19:36.360 may call for temporary departure
00:19:39.840 from that normal balance of public procedure.
00:19:43.360 It was the classic progressive justification at work.
00:19:49.040 Trust us.
00:19:50.100 We're the government.
00:19:51.320 We're here to help.
00:19:53.040 We just need to press pause
00:19:54.560 on some of the Constitution for a little while
00:19:57.720 until we get through this crisis.
00:19:59.800 Just a few weeks after FDR made that unconstitutional declaration
00:20:08.580 about what he might have to do,
00:20:10.960 an odd movie was rushed into American theaters
00:20:13.780 called Gabriel over the White House.
00:20:17.020 It was made during the height of the Depression's economic upheaval
00:20:20.320 when banks were failing daily.
00:20:21.800 The movie made an overt suggestion
00:20:24.300 that a brand new president like Roosevelt
00:20:26.920 should take over as dictator.
00:20:30.000 The movie's clear message was that
00:20:32.160 this was the only thing that could save America
00:20:35.180 from sloppy democracy.
00:20:37.820 In January 1933, movie producer Walter Wanger,
00:20:41.740 who was a strong FDR supporter,
00:20:43.760 bought the rights to the futuristic novel
00:20:45.960 called Gabriel over the White House
00:20:48.160 by British author Thomas F. Tweed.
00:20:51.100 He got financial backing from the media magnate
00:20:54.180 William Randolph Hearst
00:20:55.560 to rush the movie into production.
00:20:58.200 Hearst was also a huge FDR supporter
00:21:00.280 and helped him get the Democratic nomination in 1930.
00:21:03.380 Hearst even wrote some of the fictional president's speeches
00:21:06.180 in the movie version.
00:21:08.160 In the movie, Walter Houston plays
00:21:10.180 just-elected President Judson Hammond.
00:21:13.620 At first, he's indifferent to the nation's problems
00:21:16.220 like crime, corruption, and unemployment.
00:21:18.780 But then, as he's speeding back to the White House one night,
00:21:22.260 he crashes his car.
00:21:24.300 As President Hammond lies in bed,
00:21:26.580 something mysterious happens.
00:21:28.560 The angel Gabriel enters his body,
00:21:31.520 and he wakes up with renewed purpose.
00:21:34.240 He fires his cabinet,
00:21:35.840 and instead of suppressing a million-man march
00:21:38.160 of the unemployed in Washington,
00:21:39.780 he works to turn them into an army of reconstruction.
00:21:45.200 Sound familiar?
00:21:46.940 Massive government works programs
00:21:48.960 were linchpins of the New Deal.
00:21:52.080 Soon, Congress wants to impeach President Hammond,
00:21:55.180 so he marches in to confront them.
00:21:57.260 Mr. President,
00:21:58.740 there is a movement in Congress for your impeachment.
00:22:01.880 Hardly time for making any requests,
00:22:03.820 however small.
00:22:04.560 Very well.
00:22:08.440 I shall withdraw that request,
00:22:10.080 but I would like to substitute another.
00:22:12.300 I ask you gentlemen to declare a state of national emergency
00:22:15.420 and to adjourn this Congress
00:22:18.580 until normal conditions are restored.
00:22:24.100 During the period of that adjournment,
00:22:26.260 I shall assume full responsibility for the government.
00:22:31.360 Mr. President, this is dictatorship.
00:22:34.520 Senator Langham, words do not frighten me.
00:22:36.900 But the United States of America is a democracy.
00:22:40.060 We are not that ready to give up the government of our house.
00:22:49.800 Water, please. Water.
00:22:52.460 And if what I plan to do in the name of the people
00:22:54.940 makes me a dictator,
00:22:56.720 then it is a dictatorship
00:22:57.960 based on Jefferson's definition of democracy,
00:23:01.120 a government for the greatest good
00:23:03.220 of the greatest number.
00:23:04.400 This Congress refuses to adjourn.
00:23:14.560 I think, gentlemen,
00:23:15.740 you forget that I am still the President
00:23:17.660 of these United States.
00:23:20.040 And as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy,
00:23:22.840 it is within the rights of the President
00:23:24.440 to declare the country under martial law.
00:23:27.380 On the radio, President Hammond announces his plan
00:23:33.460 to save banks and farms and repeal Prohibition.
00:23:37.800 Almost as if he was following the same script,
00:23:41.160 FDR started his famous fireside chats on the radio,
00:23:45.660 announcing his own bank and farm savings plan
00:23:48.720 during the first 100 days as president.
00:23:51.480 Oh, and Prohibition was also repealed
00:23:53.940 during FDR's first year in office.
00:23:57.380 In the movie, President Hammond uses a secret army
00:24:00.520 and tribunal to bring crime lords to justice,
00:24:03.820 having them executed by firing squad
00:24:06.180 with the Statue of Liberty in the background.
00:24:09.200 You're the last of the racketeers, Diamond, and why?
00:24:12.060 Because we have in the White House a man
00:24:13.960 who's enabled us to cut the red tape of legal procedures
00:24:16.780 and get back to first principles.
00:24:18.840 An eye for an eye, Nick Diamond.
00:24:20.820 A tooth for a tooth.
00:24:22.740 A life for a life.
00:24:24.920 Fire!
00:24:27.380 Despite these left-wing fantasy elements,
00:24:30.520 FDR and members of his administration
00:24:32.520 screened an early version of the film at the White House
00:24:35.620 and even suggested revisions.
00:24:38.360 The day after the movie was released in theaters,
00:24:41.020 FDR wrote a letter to William Randolph Hearst saying, quote,
00:24:44.460 I want to send you this line to tell you how pleased I am with the changes
00:24:49.240 which you made in Gabriel over the White House.
00:24:53.360 I think it is an intensely interesting picture
00:24:56.340 and should do much to help.
00:25:00.900 The progressive magazine, The Nation, wrote at the time that the movies, quote,
00:25:06.120 All too evident purpose is to convert innocent American movie audiences
00:25:11.200 to a policy of fascist dictatorship in this country.
00:25:15.380 The movie's dangerous message seemed to be lost on most of the viewers
00:25:19.480 because it was a commercial and critical hit.
00:25:22.400 It would probably be much better known today
00:25:24.800 if it wasn't for Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin
00:25:28.300 ruining the benevolent dictator concept shortly after the movie was released.
00:25:33.480 But the movie was a harbinger of a new age in media messaging.
00:25:39.880 One journalist at the time understood the significance and wrote, quote,
00:25:44.860 Gabriel over the White House sets a precedent.
00:25:47.720 It opens up, for good or for evil,
00:25:49.560 a new channel of influencing the mass emotions and judgment of a people.
00:25:53.520 We know now that a most dangerous weapon of propaganda can be forged.
00:25:58.560 Another dangerous weapon of propaganda
00:26:00.840 when Franklin Roosevelt became president
00:26:02.840 was radio.
00:26:04.880 Not that he had too much to worry about
00:26:07.320 from the biggest players in radio at the time.
00:26:10.100 As historian David Beto recounts in his book,
00:26:13.100 The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights,
00:26:15.780 the day after FDR took office,
00:26:18.060 CBS, NBC, and the National Association of Broadcasters
00:26:21.580 announced that all radio facilities
00:26:24.180 would be on an instant's notice
00:26:26.740 should the White House need the airwaves for anything.
00:26:29.580 The vice president of CBS,
00:26:31.900 who was a Democrat and FDR classmate when they were at Harvard,
00:26:35.940 vowed that his network would not air any program, quote,
00:26:39.900 that in any way was critical of any policy of the administration, end quote.
00:26:45.480 When FDR became president,
00:26:47.800 U.S. radio stations had to renew their federal broadcast license every three years.
00:26:52.940 But in 1934, the new Federal Communications Commission changed the rules,
00:26:58.180 so stations had to renew their license every six months.
00:27:01.380 This gave the FDR White House powerful authority over which stations got renewed.
00:27:07.600 And during FDR's first re-election campaign in 1936,
00:27:11.440 he got word to the FCC chairman that he should decline renewal
00:27:14.740 for any stations considered to be hostile towards his administration.
00:27:19.780 The clampdown was effective.
00:27:22.640 As historian David Beto describes,
00:27:25.120 In 1938, some 375 stations carried over 8,000 hours of transcribed programs
00:27:32.820 of the Federal Housing Authority and the Federal Housing Administration,
00:27:36.540 while the Works Progress Administration had its own network radio show.
00:27:41.380 When journalist Stanley High asked a local radio station owner
00:27:45.020 why they ran these programs for free,
00:27:47.700 the typical reply was,
00:27:50.300 we know what's expected of us.
00:27:52.040 Bending over backward in this way was also an understandable strategy
00:27:56.920 to win favor at license renewal time.
00:28:00.660 Despite this lopsided advantage for FDR in controlling the airways,
00:28:05.240 he still went after the rare radio personality who dared question the regime.
00:28:10.740 Ladies and gentlemen, Boke Carter.
00:28:13.500 Hello everyone, Boke Carter speaking.
00:28:16.640 Well, Germany, Italy and Japan have signed an agreement, as we know.
00:28:19.540 A top CBS commentator named Boke Carter had been a strong FDR supporter until 1937,
00:28:27.780 when he dared to criticize the administration for its court packing plan and foreign policy.
00:28:34.100 Through back channels, FDR was able to get the advertising agency for Carter's main sponsor,
00:28:39.660 General Foods, to get him to sign an agreement to tone down his rhetoric.
00:28:43.580 When Carter's criticism continued, however,
00:28:47.160 he suddenly found the Treasury Department investigating his taxes.
00:28:51.540 FDR even bragged during a dinner conversation that Carter was being thoroughly investigated
00:28:56.980 and that it, quote,
00:28:59.040 would put an end to Carter's career.
00:29:01.860 Just a few months later, CBS canceled Boke Carter's show.
00:29:06.680 Hugh Johnson was another casualty of FDR's effort to control the airwaves,
00:29:10.140 as well as the effort of the networks to appease the president.
00:29:14.560 Hugh Johnson's situation was strange because he had worked for the FDR administration
00:29:20.040 as the head of the National Recovery Administration for the first two years
00:29:24.160 after it was created as part of the New Deal.
00:29:27.340 But after he began daily radio commentary on NBC in 1937,
00:29:32.080 he was frequently critical of FDR and his policies.
00:29:35.360 The vice president of NBC called the White House to apologize for Johnson's commentary
00:29:40.980 and to assure the president that the criticism would stop.
00:29:45.360 Five months after his show began, NBC pulled the plug on Johnson's show
00:29:49.820 and replaced him with a committed New Dealer.
00:29:53.760 The FDR administration had the precedent of the Woodrow Wilson White House during World War I
00:30:04.720 to serve as its guide in using media and propaganda to serve its agenda.
00:30:10.660 In case you missed it, I explored that dark chapter of U.S. history in episode three of this season.
00:30:16.100 In that episode, I mentioned George Creel,
00:30:19.780 whom Woodrow Wilson appointed to the head of the Committee of Public Information,
00:30:24.680 which was the government's massive propaganda arm during World War I.
00:30:29.860 FDR also loved George Creel and used him to write articles
00:30:33.340 that outlined his policies and tested public reaction.
00:30:37.300 Sometimes FDR even dictated whole paragraphs for Creel to include.
00:30:41.640 FDR also adopted Theodore Roosevelt's tactic of making gentlemen's agreements with journalists
00:30:48.780 that often kept them from printing negative stories.
00:30:52.640 He cultivated loyalty among journalists by giving them off-the-record information.
00:30:57.520 This often resulted in positive coverage from those wanting to maintain FDR's confidence.
00:31:03.420 Just like with radio, if a publication dare go after FDR for any reason,
00:31:08.800 he went after them with a vengeance.
00:31:12.340 Even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt got involved in at least one occasion,
00:31:16.200 convincing the IRS to investigate conservative newspaper publisher Frank Gannett.
00:31:22.440 FDR tried to get his attorney general and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
00:31:26.680 to go after what FDR termed right-wing publications.
00:31:31.700 Historian David Beto points out that the president even regularly
00:31:35.840 sent his attorney general newspaper clippings of articles he considered to be, quote,
00:31:41.580 problematic, with a note attached saying,
00:31:44.960 what are you doing to stop this?
00:31:47.960 In April 1942, during one of his fireside chats, FDR said,
00:31:52.920 this great war effort must not be impeded by a few bogus patriots
00:31:59.260 who use the sacred freedom of the press
00:32:02.700 to echo sentiments of the propagandists in Tokyo and Berlin.
00:32:08.780 Note the idea that anyone who did not tow the FDR progressive line
00:32:14.120 wasn't simply a fellow American exercising their right to air a different opinion.
00:32:18.740 No, no, no.
00:32:20.480 They were bogus patriots.
00:32:23.520 Eventually, FDR wore down Attorney General Francis Biddle,
00:32:27.860 who had the Department of Justice formally analyze the newspapers
00:32:31.280 that FDR was talking about in that fireside chat.
00:32:34.480 The ones he felt were most against him,
00:32:37.520 the New York Daily News,
00:32:38.940 the Washington Times-Herald,
00:32:40.480 and the Chicago Daily Tribune.
00:32:41.960 But this official analysis found that the papers were not echoing enemy propaganda
00:32:47.620 and the whole matter eventually faded away.
00:32:51.400 The fact that Roosevelt, FDR, occupied the White House for 12 years
00:32:57.660 solidified the culture of the biggest forces in media,
00:33:01.460 tilting firmly to the left in their coverage.
00:33:04.500 The vast majority of media figures and the journalists simply loved FDR.
00:33:10.720 He was their Gabriel over the White House.
00:33:16.180 Wouldn't it be nice if you lived in a country where you didn't have to constantly worry
00:33:19.040 that your government was lying to you?
00:33:21.140 A country where you could take it for granted
00:33:23.520 that they weren't making decisions based on what they think is in your best interest
00:33:27.880 and not what you think is.
00:33:30.620 History shows us, unfortunately, that the more bloated a government gets,
00:33:34.380 the more this happens.
00:33:35.560 I make it a point to make critical decisions for myself and my family,
00:33:39.920 and you should too.
00:33:41.280 You should get a Jace case.
00:33:43.080 It is a personalized emergency kit that contains essential antibiotics and medications
00:33:48.500 that treat the most common and deadly bacterial infections.
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00:33:55.780 and all you have to do is fill out a simple form online,
00:33:58.600 and you'll have it in case you need it.
00:34:01.220 There are also add-on options like EpiPens and Ivermectin.
00:34:04.020 Jace Medical, they encourage you to take your family's health into your own hands.
00:34:10.380 Go to Jace.com today and enter the promo code BEC at checkout for a discount on your order.
00:34:15.020 That's promo code BEC at J-A-S-E dot com.
00:34:19.480 And that's the way it is.
00:34:21.040 Friday, March 24th, 1978.
00:34:23.700 This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News.
00:34:26.140 Good night.
00:34:27.660 At the end of every newscast on CBS,
00:34:30.840 Walter Cronkite signed off with that phrase.
00:34:34.020 And that's the way it is.
00:34:36.580 But was it really the way it was?
00:34:40.440 Cronkite admitted in a 1998 interview, 17 years after he retired,
00:34:45.660 that his catchphrase maybe should not have indicated with such certainty the way it was.
00:34:51.920 This is Cronkite telling the story about his boss at CBS initially disapproved of the sign-off.
00:34:58.580 When he came in, he complained the next day that he didn't like it.
00:35:02.840 And he didn't like it primarily for a very good reason.
00:35:05.940 He said, you're telling people that's the way it is.
00:35:08.500 Well, we can make mistakes in that broadcast.
00:35:11.000 It's not necessarily the way it is.
00:35:12.740 You're bragging about something we can't produce.
00:35:14.820 Well, I realized he was right about it.
00:35:17.740 But by that time, a couple of days had gone by, and people were already commenting on it.
00:35:22.240 It just caught on instantly.
00:35:24.660 And I pointed out to him that distinguished broadcasters like Edward R. Murrow would have their sign-off line.
00:35:31.120 And his was, good night and good luck.
00:35:34.520 And Lowell Thomas, so long until tomorrow, and so forth.
00:35:38.180 And all these guys had them.
00:35:40.280 And why shouldn't I have one?
00:35:42.240 Well, he yielded to let us try it.
00:35:45.260 And it did just, it built, it snowballed into something people seemed to appreciate.
00:35:49.720 So he went ahead and did it, despite the fact that he was right,
00:35:53.920 that maybe we shouldn't have made that statement.
00:35:56.580 Cronkite unintentionally created a motto for the mainstream media and its left-wing bias
00:36:03.340 that persists today more than ever.
00:36:06.820 The volatility in America in the 1960s and 70s further embedded left-wing bias in the national news media.
00:36:14.600 Logically, for a business supposed to be anchored in objectivity,
00:36:18.800 it also further cemented the partnership between the media and the democratic politician.
00:36:23.800 An all-too-predictable pattern was established.
00:36:28.360 Democrats, especially the presidents, were generally given the benefit of the doubt,
00:36:32.540 while virtually every move by Republicans was treated with suspicion.
00:36:37.320 When John F. Kennedy was president, he maintained a very close relationship with Ben Bradley,
00:36:42.900 a Newsweek correspondent at the time who would go on to become the legendary editor of the Washington Post.
00:36:47.980 Here's Bradley's third wife, Sally Quinn, in a 2017 interview talking about her late husband's friendship with the Kennedys.
00:36:57.260 You know, he loved Kennedy, and they were, Ben and his then-wife, Toni, and Jack and Jackie were neighbors.
00:37:04.420 They lived next door to each other. They were best friends.
00:37:06.480 And so when the Kennedys moved into the White House, Jack Kennedy said,
00:37:11.220 you know, it's really hard to make friends in the White House.
00:37:13.940 So they were over there three nights a week having dinner.
00:37:18.320 In a 2012 book titled, Yours in Truth, a Personal Portrait of Ben Bradley,
00:37:23.840 former Washington Post journalist Jeff Himmelman recounts an instance in 1959
00:37:29.180 before Kennedy had officially entered the presidential race,
00:37:32.840 when Ben Bradley was assigned to cover a speech by Lyndon B. Johnson in Pennsylvania.
00:37:38.380 Johnson was considered Kennedy's main competition for their party's nomination.
00:37:42.180 Bradley wrote his report for Newsweek, then sent Kennedy a private memo ripping apart Johnson's speech
00:37:48.680 and Johnson himself, and giving Kennedy campaign advice.
00:37:53.160 He described LBJ as being like, quote,
00:37:56.180 somebody's Gabby Texan cousin from Fort Worth, end quote.
00:38:00.620 According to Jeff Himmelman's detailed account,
00:38:03.520 when Kennedy became president, he gave Ben Bradley FBI files on some organizations he wanted to discredit.
00:38:10.820 In return, Kennedy demanded approval over anything that ran in Newsweek.
00:38:16.780 Bradley and Newsweek agreed.
00:38:19.380 Bradley later wrote, quote,
00:38:21.320 This is a right all presidents covet, but which they should normally not be given.
00:38:28.180 This one time, the book seemed worth the candle, however,
00:38:32.020 and we decided to strike the deal.
00:38:34.320 It's hallmark characteristic of progressive journalists and politicians alike
00:38:40.780 that they have the necessary expertise to be the exception to the rule,
00:38:46.080 or that the uniqueness of the times demand that they be the exception.
00:38:51.940 In 1974, just over a decade after Kennedy's assassination,
00:38:56.000 CBS News reporter Mike Wallace asked Ben Bradley about his friendship with the Kennedys.
00:39:00.680 Lots of people in and near the White House think Ben Bradley is too friendly with the Democrats,
00:39:05.600 especially the Kennedys,
00:39:06.980 and is using the post in a personal vendetta against Richard Nixon.
00:39:11.560 Were you too close to Kennedy?
00:39:13.520 I think I was, yes.
00:39:15.820 People are trying to draw some comparison between Ted Kennedy and I and Jack Kennedy and I,
00:39:21.420 and I don't know Ted Kennedy very well.
00:39:23.320 I'm sure I know who he is, and I see him, and we say hello.
00:39:27.180 Think he'd be a good president?
00:39:28.260 No ideas.
00:39:31.980 I'm not political, Mike.
00:39:33.720 What?
00:39:34.200 I am not political.
00:39:35.480 I don't care who's president.
00:39:36.900 I really don't care who is president of the United States.
00:39:41.120 I want to know all about him and what he's doing and how he's getting there.
00:39:44.840 But who is president makes absolutely no difference to me.
00:39:48.220 Well, I've...
00:39:49.080 Really, truly, that is a fact.
00:39:50.920 Maybe Bradley really was as non-political as he claimed.
00:39:57.120 But his defensiveness seems a little too on the nose in that report,
00:40:03.120 and it illustrates the enormous transformation that had taken place
00:40:06.900 since the party press era of the early 1800s.
00:40:11.080 While the old party press was still blatant and unapologetically partisan,
00:40:15.960 the modern media was still partisan,
00:40:19.380 but worked hard to maintain a public veneer of objectivity.
00:40:23.380 And this is still the norm today.
00:40:27.680 In 1964, that veneer of objectivity became difficult for the media to maintain
00:40:33.140 when Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona became the Republican nominee for president.
00:40:38.840 Quotes like this one from Goldwater and the campaign trail sent the media into panic mode.
00:40:44.100 I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
00:40:59.660 And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
00:41:14.100 Just two months before Election Day, a magazine called,
00:41:17.860 and it's impossible to miss the irony here,
00:41:20.560 Fact Magazine,
00:41:22.080 published an entire issue devoted to their assessment
00:41:25.520 that Barry Goldwater was mentally unfit to be president.
00:41:29.840 The cover headline read, quote,
00:41:32.080 1,189 psychiatrists say Goldwater is psychologically unfit to be president,
00:41:38.660 the unconscious of a conservative.
00:41:40.640 A special issue on the mind of Barry Goldwater.
00:41:43.100 In the Fact Magazine issue,
00:41:47.240 psychiatrists from across the U.S.
00:41:49.680 characterized Goldwater as, quote,
00:41:51.900 paranoid, a megalomaniac, and grossly psychotic.
00:41:56.880 One called him, quote,
00:41:58.600 Inwardly a frightened person who sees himself as weak
00:42:01.440 and threatened by strong, virile power around him.
00:42:04.940 Fact Magazine.
00:42:06.140 The editor, Ralph Ginsberg,
00:42:08.560 went on to compare Goldwater's paranoia and his danger as a leader to,
00:42:13.380 who else?
00:42:14.980 Adolf Hitler.
00:42:16.740 Understandably, Goldwater blasted the media on the campaign trail,
00:42:20.340 insisting that their liberal bias distorted his positions.
00:42:24.140 He gave pins to the journalists covering his campaign that read,
00:42:29.100 Eastern Liberal Press.
00:42:31.360 Ultimately, Lyndon Johnson seized on the portrayal of Goldwater as an extremist,
00:42:36.080 which culminated in the infamous Daisy ad that ran only once on network TV on September 7, 1964.
00:42:44.700 The ad depicts a three-year-old girl in a field picking petals off a daisy
00:42:50.200 until something catches her attention in the distance
00:42:52.740 and an ominous countdown is heard,
00:42:56.080 leading to a nuclear blast and a mushroom cloud.
00:43:02.100 Six, eight, nine, nine.
00:43:07.960 Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.
00:43:21.340 These are the stakes to make a world in which all of God's children can live
00:43:28.320 or to go into the dark.
00:43:31.420 We must either love each other or we must die.
00:43:37.060 Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd.
00:43:40.900 The stakes are too high for you to stay home.
00:43:45.380 Two months after that ad aired once,
00:43:49.780 Johnson won the election in a landslide.
00:43:58.540 A major turning point for the media's alignment with the left
00:44:01.820 and for the public's perception of media bias
00:44:04.360 came during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
00:44:09.520 Several radical left-wing groups converged in Chicago to protest.
00:44:14.180 The Youth International Party, better known as the Yippies,
00:44:18.020 the national mobilization to end war in Vietnam,
00:44:21.820 and the Students for a Democratic Society.
00:44:24.640 They got the fight and attention they came for
00:44:28.100 when violence broke out
00:44:29.600 and the Chicago police force cracked down with a vengeance.
00:44:33.460 Thus, the night that Vice President Humphrey
00:44:35.420 was to receive the Democratic Party's nomination for president
00:44:38.700 was also the night of the bloodiest confrontation.
00:44:42.700 But whatever the reason, a clash did occur,
00:44:45.580 and this is what it looked like.
00:44:47.540 It speaks for itself.
00:44:48.920 Perhaps in part because dozens of reporters were injured in the crackdown,
00:45:14.360 the media's coverage largely laid the blame
00:45:17.380 for the violence on Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley
00:45:20.040 and the police force.
00:45:22.180 Historian Stephen Hayward concludes,
00:45:24.520 quote,
00:45:25.220 The Chicago police reacted to a calculated provocation,
00:45:29.360 and like the case of fighting schoolchildren,
00:45:32.440 where the second child to strike a blow
00:45:34.420 is usually the one caught by the teacher,
00:45:37.440 the media caught the police reaction
00:45:39.760 and attributed it to the cause of the violence.
00:45:44.000 End quote.
00:45:46.660 Based on the deluge of calls and letters
00:45:49.160 to newspapers and TV networks, however,
00:45:51.920 Americans watching from home
00:45:53.880 were far more sympathetic to the police
00:45:56.060 and detected media bias
00:45:58.380 that favored the radical protesters.
00:46:01.560 Later that year, Richard Nixon was elected president,
00:46:04.180 and highlighting bias in the media
00:46:06.320 became a recurrent theme of his administration.
00:46:09.760 It wasn't just a Nixon political perception, however.
00:46:13.500 In 1971, a woman named Edith Efron,
00:46:16.280 who was the writer for TV Guide,
00:46:18.000 one of the most widely read magazines in the U.S. at the time,
00:46:21.740 wrote a book titled The News Twisters,
00:46:24.980 which was one of the first examinations of media bias of its kind,
00:46:29.040 specifically concerning the 1968 presidential election.
00:46:32.380 One of the most enthusiastic promoters of Efron's book
00:46:35.800 was President Nixon's former television advisor,
00:46:39.320 a man named Roger Ailes.
00:46:41.900 You may have heard me mention him before,
00:46:44.340 because more than two decades later,
00:46:46.360 he went on to become the founding CEO
00:46:48.580 of a new cable channel called Fox News.
00:46:54.420 Two other major events in the life of the nation,
00:46:57.040 Vietnam and Watergate,
00:46:58.480 helped solidify the media's left-leaning bias.
00:47:01.440 Vietnam was a disaster,
00:47:03.940 no matter what side of the political aisle you were on.
00:47:06.220 For it seems now more certain than ever
00:47:08.640 that the bloody experience of Vietnam
00:47:11.040 is to end in a stalemate.
00:47:13.720 But it is increasingly clear to this reporter
00:47:16.040 that the only rational way out then
00:47:18.980 will be to negotiate,
00:47:21.180 not as victors,
00:47:22.580 but as an honorable people
00:47:24.240 who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy
00:47:26.980 and did the best they could.
00:47:29.480 While there had been a general consensus
00:47:31.720 across party lines
00:47:32.780 concerning the Cold War during the 1950s
00:47:35.220 and the first half of the 60s,
00:47:37.600 Vietnam ripped up that consensus,
00:47:40.200 especially among Democrats.
00:47:42.380 The far left came to view Vietnam
00:47:44.700 as not just a fight to contain the spread of communism,
00:47:49.240 but America acting like an imperialist oppressor,
00:47:52.940 supporting a corrupt South Vietnamese government
00:47:55.620 that was trying to destroy
00:47:57.140 its own people's liberation movement.
00:47:59.860 As the conflict wore on,
00:48:01.660 the media saw it as their duty
00:48:03.560 to correct the naive wrong think of Americans.
00:48:07.680 And when the U.S. ultimately left Vietnam
00:48:10.100 without decisively winning the war,
00:48:12.720 the media felt vindicated.
00:48:15.060 As historian Bruce Thornton explains,
00:48:17.580 quote,
00:48:18.520 Despite the political bias of much
00:48:21.180 of its reporting of the Vietnam conflict,
00:48:23.040 the media congratulated themselves
00:48:25.660 for ending the war
00:48:26.640 and confirmed their status
00:48:28.420 as the righteous watchdogs
00:48:30.380 monitoring the government,
00:48:32.120 speaking truth to power,
00:48:34.100 and protecting liberties,
00:48:35.760 end quote.
00:48:37.300 You see, to the media elite,
00:48:38.560 certain events like the Vietnam War
00:48:40.020 and later the Iraq War
00:48:41.580 during George W. Bush's presidency
00:48:43.340 were so horrible
00:48:45.100 that they cannot be reported as regular news.
00:48:48.740 they must be interpreted for the masses
00:48:51.320 through the progressive lens.
00:48:53.700 If there is one newspaper
00:48:54.920 the White House is less than enchanted with,
00:48:57.500 it is the expletive-deleted Washington Post,
00:49:00.620 whose diligence and persistence
00:49:01.960 almost single-handed
00:49:03.100 flushed out the Watergate story.
00:49:05.360 It's a pretty good story, Coach.
00:49:07.600 It is Bradley who said go
00:49:09.260 only after he had grilled
00:49:10.620 his two young reporters,
00:49:12.040 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
00:49:13.740 He insisted they come up
00:49:15.700 with two independent sources
00:49:17.160 to verify every revelation
00:49:18.940 they had dug up.
00:49:20.320 Bob Woodward.
00:49:21.580 Bradley said at the time
00:49:22.940 he was going to hold our heads
00:49:24.640 in a pail of water
00:49:26.000 until we came up with a story,
00:49:27.680 and I mean, he said that literally.
00:49:29.580 Bradley kept pushing,
00:49:30.980 and Woodward and Bernstein
00:49:31.960 did come up with the stories
00:49:33.240 that broke Watergate.
00:49:34.640 That was a 60 Minutes report
00:49:36.100 from 1974.
00:49:38.520 Woodward and Bernstein
00:49:39.820 went on to turn their reporting
00:49:41.620 into a book titled
00:49:42.820 All the President's Men.
00:49:45.100 Then, the 1976 Academy Award-winning
00:49:47.720 adaptation of their book
00:49:49.140 augmented the legend
00:49:50.980 of the reporter
00:49:51.880 with the righteous cause.
00:49:54.440 All the President's Men,
00:49:56.160 the story of the two young reporters
00:49:58.180 who cracked the Watergate conspiracy.
00:50:00.860 White House.
00:50:01.720 Howard Hunt, please.
00:50:03.460 And piece by piece,
00:50:05.140 they solve the greatest detective story
00:50:07.360 in American history.
00:50:08.560 There is no way the White House
00:50:10.200 can control the investigation.
00:50:11.620 Robert Redford played Woodward,
00:50:15.060 Dustin Hoffman played Bernstein,
00:50:17.180 and remember
00:50:17.700 the Washington Post editor
00:50:18.920 Ben Bradley?
00:50:20.240 He was the one played
00:50:21.640 by Jason Robarts,
00:50:22.860 who won an Academy Award
00:50:24.460 for the role.
00:50:26.220 Watergate turned
00:50:26.960 the Washington Post
00:50:28.040 into a national media power player.
00:50:31.060 The Watergate story
00:50:31.940 became legendary,
00:50:33.460 no more so than
00:50:34.460 in the collective mind
00:50:35.660 of the media elite.
00:50:37.140 It was like the perfect
00:50:38.720 superhero origin story.
00:50:40.820 This is what the media
00:50:42.920 existed for,
00:50:44.060 to root out corruption,
00:50:45.900 to expose the unscrupulous powerful,
00:50:48.980 and, to the left,
00:50:50.780 the fact that the powerful
00:50:52.000 in this case were Republicans
00:50:53.620 was just the cherry
00:50:54.840 on top of the superhero
00:50:56.000 origin story.
00:50:58.260 Watergate became the Holy Grail,
00:51:01.180 the prize that both media elites
00:51:02.940 and wide-eyed journalism majors
00:51:04.880 aspired to.
00:51:06.460 And the effort to capture
00:51:07.720 that lightning in a bottle again,
00:51:10.160 and the glory that comes with it,
00:51:12.280 would lead to a spectacular
00:51:14.000 disregard for the truth.
00:51:15.980 On September 8, 2004,
00:51:23.820 CBS aired the Dan Rather
00:51:25.400 60-minute story
00:51:26.540 about the alleged memo
00:51:27.820 denigrating George W. Bush's service
00:51:29.940 in the Texas Air National Guard
00:51:31.760 during the 1970s.
00:51:33.140 It was a competitive decision
00:51:35.720 by CBS to go ahead
00:51:37.100 and air the story
00:51:38.080 because, the following morning,
00:51:40.520 USA Today was set to publish
00:51:42.180 their own story
00:51:43.080 about the memos.
00:51:43.900 It didn't go the way
00:51:45.900 Dan Rather and CBS had hoped.
00:51:48.780 The media world
00:51:49.860 was in the midst
00:51:50.680 of another shift,
00:51:52.400 a digital revolution.
00:51:54.980 Bloggers online
00:51:56.180 scrutinized the memos
00:51:57.440 and labeled them forgeries.
00:51:59.840 CBS and Dan Rather
00:52:00.980 received fierce blowback.
00:52:03.560 Where had the mysterious memos
00:52:05.200 come from?
00:52:06.520 Well, Bill Burkett,
00:52:07.680 a retired lieutenant colonel
00:52:08.940 in the Texas National Guard.
00:52:10.960 He first gave the memos
00:52:12.360 to Mary Mapes,
00:52:13.260 who was Dan Rather's
00:52:14.220 producer at CBS.
00:52:15.880 But Burkett lied to CBS
00:52:17.900 about exactly how he got the memos.
00:52:21.180 Here's Dan Rather
00:52:21.900 a few weeks after
00:52:22.940 the 60 Minutes report
00:52:24.060 was first aired,
00:52:25.380 asking Burkett
00:52:26.220 why he changed his story.
00:52:28.540 Why did you mislead us?
00:52:31.600 Well, I didn't totally mislead you.
00:52:33.980 I did mislead you
00:52:35.420 on the one individual.
00:52:37.200 You know, your staff
00:52:37.960 pressured me to a point
00:52:39.440 to reveal that source.
00:52:41.580 Well, we were trying to get
00:52:42.940 the chain of possession.
00:52:44.640 I understand that.
00:52:45.240 And you said you had
00:52:45.920 received them from someone.
00:52:47.100 I understand that.
00:52:47.580 And we did pressure you
00:52:48.440 to say, well,
00:52:49.220 you received them from someone
00:52:50.200 and that someone was whom.
00:52:51.420 And it's true,
00:52:51.980 we pressured you
00:52:52.700 because it was a very
00:52:53.640 important point for us.
00:52:54.560 And I simply threw out a name
00:52:56.940 that was basically,
00:52:58.700 it was, I guess,
00:53:00.320 to get a little pressure off
00:53:01.320 for a moment.
00:53:03.180 Burkett originally said
00:53:04.280 he first heard about the memos
00:53:05.540 from a mysterious woman
00:53:06.920 who said her name
00:53:07.760 was Lucy Ramirez.
00:53:09.760 USA Today
00:53:10.520 did its own additional digging
00:53:12.180 trying to find this Lucy Ramirez,
00:53:14.760 but she never turned up.
00:53:16.620 Then on September 20th, 2004,
00:53:18.960 Dan Rather had to share
00:53:20.240 this update on the air.
00:53:21.940 The documents purported to show
00:53:24.060 that George W. Bush
00:53:25.200 received preferential treatment
00:53:27.120 during his years
00:53:28.400 in the Texas Air National Guard.
00:53:30.760 At the time,
00:53:31.460 CBS News and this reporter
00:53:33.060 fully believed
00:53:33.980 the documents were genuine.
00:53:35.980 Tonight,
00:53:36.460 after further investigation,
00:53:38.100 we can no longer vouch
00:53:39.240 for their authenticity.
00:53:41.160 The failure of CBS News
00:53:42.500 to do just that,
00:53:43.740 to properly, fully scrutinize
00:53:45.480 the documents
00:53:46.080 and their source,
00:53:47.460 led to our airing the documents
00:53:49.140 when we should not have done so.
00:53:51.120 It was a mistake.
00:53:52.140 CBS News deeply regrets it.
00:53:54.900 Also, I want to say
00:53:55.840 personally and directly,
00:53:57.520 I'm sorry.
00:54:00.460 Dan Rather's producer,
00:54:02.220 Mary Mapes,
00:54:03.220 was fired.
00:54:04.260 Three other CBS executives
00:54:05.700 were forced to resign.
00:54:07.900 Six weeks later,
00:54:09.100 George W. Bush
00:54:10.080 beat John Kerry
00:54:11.220 by two points in Ohio
00:54:12.940 to win re-election.
00:54:16.060 CBS conducted
00:54:16.900 an internal investigation
00:54:18.240 which did not determine
00:54:19.760 whether the memos were real,
00:54:21.260 but blamed Mapes
00:54:22.740 and others
00:54:23.160 for not vetting
00:54:24.180 the documents.
00:54:25.760 Dan Rather agreed
00:54:26.500 to resign
00:54:27.160 and his last broadcast
00:54:28.460 as an anchor
00:54:29.340 on CBS Evening News
00:54:30.780 was March 2005.
00:54:33.900 Rather later sued CBS
00:54:35.440 but the case was dismissed.
00:54:37.260 Rather has never
00:54:38.020 stopped insisting
00:54:39.040 that the memos
00:54:40.260 are genuine.
00:54:42.220 Mary Mapes
00:54:43.240 wrote a book
00:54:43.820 about the ordeal
00:54:44.640 titled
00:54:45.040 Truth and Duty,
00:54:46.260 the Press,
00:54:47.480 the President,
00:54:48.380 and the Privilege
00:54:49.180 of Power.
00:54:50.400 In 2015,
00:54:51.500 it was adapted
00:54:52.080 into a movie
00:54:52.980 called Truth.
00:54:54.500 Cate Blanchett
00:54:55.260 played Mary Mapes.
00:54:56.620 They do not get
00:54:58.000 to smack us
00:54:58.700 just for asking
00:54:59.380 the question.
00:55:00.840 They want to talk
00:55:01.760 to your source.
00:55:02.780 No.
00:55:03.940 It's bad.
00:55:06.700 I never should have
00:55:07.660 asked a question.
00:55:08.840 You gotta make your case.
00:55:10.100 Honey,
00:55:10.360 you have to fight.
00:55:12.580 Somebody
00:55:13.100 has got to confirm
00:55:14.080 those memos.
00:55:16.560 And guess
00:55:17.440 who plays
00:55:18.200 Dan Rather?
00:55:19.860 Robert Redford,
00:55:21.100 who also played
00:55:22.540 Bob Woodward
00:55:23.420 in All the President's Men.
00:55:24.840 The Legend of Watergate
00:55:26.920 Lives On.
00:55:28.240 Dan Rather and his team
00:55:29.280 seemed desperate
00:55:30.240 for the Bush memo story
00:55:31.620 to be the next Watergate.
00:55:33.560 But it wasn't.
00:55:35.240 But the scandal
00:55:36.040 surrounding their coverage
00:55:37.440 of the story
00:55:38.040 was a preview
00:55:39.460 of things to come
00:55:40.480 for America.
00:55:43.420 Yuri Berliner.
00:55:45.260 He was a senior
00:55:46.320 business editor
00:55:47.020 at National Public Radio.
00:55:49.200 In April of 2024,
00:55:50.740 he published
00:55:51.200 an essay titled
00:55:52.120 I've Been at NPR
00:55:53.500 for 25 Years.
00:55:54.840 And here's how
00:55:55.840 we lost
00:55:56.540 America's trust.
00:55:58.500 He proceeded
00:55:59.420 to describe
00:56:00.100 how NPR's
00:56:00.980 blatant left-wing bias
00:56:02.700 led to the misleading
00:56:04.200 reporting on the
00:56:05.180 Trump-Russia
00:56:05.800 collusion hoax
00:56:06.900 and how they turned
00:56:08.160 a blind eye
00:56:09.020 to the COVID
00:56:09.720 origin stories
00:56:10.820 as well as
00:56:12.140 ignoring the
00:56:12.720 Hunter Biden
00:56:13.260 laptop scandal.
00:56:15.140 Naturally,
00:56:15.860 Berliner resigned
00:56:17.020 shortly after
00:56:17.880 publishing his essay.
00:56:19.840 Such a confession
00:56:21.040 came as no surprise
00:56:22.440 to most Americans,
00:56:23.500 especially conservatives.
00:56:24.840 Left-wing bias
00:56:25.960 in mainstream media
00:56:26.880 is anecdotally obvious,
00:56:28.920 but it has also
00:56:29.820 been confirmed
00:56:30.580 by diverse studies
00:56:31.660 over the past few decades.
00:56:33.420 One such study
00:56:34.380 in 2004,
00:56:35.340 conducted by
00:56:36.020 professors from
00:56:37.000 UCLA
00:56:37.680 and the University
00:56:39.260 of Chicago,
00:56:40.620 concluded that
00:56:41.380 the media are,
00:56:42.560 quote,
00:56:42.880 skewed substantially
00:56:44.760 to the left of the
00:56:45.940 typical member
00:56:46.640 of Congress.
00:56:48.140 Thus,
00:56:48.660 if the opinions
00:56:49.700 of viewers
00:56:50.440 and readers
00:56:51.140 are similar to
00:56:52.000 those of their
00:56:52.620 representatives,
00:56:53.780 the media slant
00:56:54.980 is far to the left
00:56:56.660 of that of most
00:56:57.540 of their customers.
00:56:59.160 In 2024,
00:57:01.100 the London-based
00:57:02.160 Economist magazine
00:57:03.320 commissioned a study
00:57:04.220 of language
00:57:05.200 used by American
00:57:06.180 news outlets
00:57:06.840 and found that
00:57:07.840 journalists tend
00:57:09.020 to prefer the
00:57:09.740 language used
00:57:10.460 by Democratic
00:57:11.240 lawmakers
00:57:11.820 and that the
00:57:13.380 disparity has grown
00:57:14.960 since the start
00:57:15.840 of the Trump
00:57:16.320 presidency.
00:57:17.540 The Economist
00:57:18.440 concluded,
00:57:19.120 quote,
00:57:19.360 Are conservatives
00:57:20.460 right to see
00:57:21.420 the media as a
00:57:22.320 whole,
00:57:23.000 rather than just
00:57:23.880 specific outlets,
00:57:25.500 as hostile terrain?
00:57:27.420 Our results
00:57:28.300 suggest so.
00:57:29.900 Of the 20 most
00:57:30.800 read news websites
00:57:31.960 with available data,
00:57:33.840 17 use Democratic
00:57:35.220 linked terms
00:57:36.160 more than
00:57:36.820 Republican linked
00:57:37.740 ones.
00:57:38.580 The same is true
00:57:39.440 of America's
00:57:40.200 six leading
00:57:40.980 news sources
00:57:41.640 on TV,
00:57:42.800 of which Fox
00:57:43.600 is the only one
00:57:44.580 where conservative
00:57:45.340 language predominates.
00:57:46.960 The mainstream
00:57:49.560 media workforce
00:57:50.580 is trained
00:57:51.760 almost exclusively
00:57:53.160 in the leftist
00:57:54.280 worldview by
00:57:55.200 American universities.
00:57:56.860 And one of the
00:57:57.720 key components
00:57:58.520 of such an
00:57:59.360 education
00:57:59.840 is political
00:58:01.240 activism,
00:58:02.340 that that is
00:58:03.060 the highest calling.
00:58:05.100 When that's
00:58:05.760 at the core
00:58:06.580 of your belief
00:58:07.320 system,
00:58:08.240 it's incompatible
00:58:09.700 with old-fashioned
00:58:10.720 journalistic ideas
00:58:12.040 of objectivity,
00:58:13.800 balance,
00:58:14.400 and fairness.
00:58:15.880 That is what
00:58:16.860 created a distinct
00:58:18.260 shift in media
00:58:19.520 news coverage
00:58:20.140 in 2016.
00:58:21.620 It's not a theory.
00:58:23.020 This was actually
00:58:23.900 advocated for
00:58:24.940 in a front-page
00:58:25.920 New York Times
00:58:26.620 article in August
00:58:27.760 2016,
00:58:29.000 written by the
00:58:29.820 media columnist
00:58:30.900 Jim Rutenberg.
00:58:32.680 It rallied
00:58:33.420 American journalists
00:58:34.300 to, quote,
00:58:35.100 throw out the textbook
00:58:36.040 American journalism
00:58:37.120 has been using
00:58:37.800 for the better part
00:58:38.680 of the past
00:58:39.180 half-century,
00:58:40.220 if not longer,
00:58:41.040 and approach it
00:58:42.140 in a way you've
00:58:42.880 never approached
00:58:43.560 anything in your career.
00:58:45.720 Rutenberg wrote
00:58:46.680 that journalists
00:58:47.360 may need to take
00:58:48.480 an oppositional
00:58:49.480 approach to covering
00:58:50.580 Donald Trump,
00:58:51.520 even though,
00:58:52.360 quote,
00:58:52.740 it may not always
00:58:53.700 seem fair to Mr.
00:58:54.640 Trump or his supporters.
00:58:58.120 For the next four years,
00:58:59.680 it seemed all of
00:59:00.640 mainstream media
00:59:01.400 took his advice
00:59:02.380 as marching orders.
00:59:04.680 The Pew Research Center
00:59:05.720 examined news coverage
00:59:06.920 from major media outlets
00:59:08.460 for the first 60 days
00:59:09.620 of Trump's presidency
00:59:10.620 and found 62%
00:59:12.440 of the coverage
00:59:13.040 was negative.
00:59:14.780 The same research
00:59:15.520 found just 20%
00:59:16.700 negative coverage
00:59:17.520 for Obama
00:59:18.140 over the same period,
00:59:19.600 28% for George W. Bush
00:59:21.320 and Bill Clinton
00:59:22.000 at the start
00:59:22.620 of their terms.
00:59:23.820 And it only got
00:59:24.720 worse from there.
00:59:26.320 Five weeks
00:59:27.220 after the inauguration
00:59:28.380 of Donald Trump,
00:59:29.120 the Washington Post
00:59:29.900 adopted its first slogan
00:59:31.660 in the newspaper's
00:59:32.660 nearly 150-year history,
00:59:35.620 Democracy Dies
00:59:37.280 in the Darkness.
00:59:38.120 It's the slogan now
00:59:40.400 on the masthead.
00:59:41.800 The Post insisted
00:59:42.960 that it had nothing
00:59:44.020 to do with the new
00:59:44.820 president,
00:59:45.460 President Trump.
00:59:46.920 Washington Post owner
00:59:47.900 Jeff Bezos said
00:59:48.900 he got the slogan
00:59:49.780 from Bob Woodward,
00:59:51.300 who used the phrase
00:59:52.480 during a conference
00:59:53.320 presentation in 2015.
00:59:55.620 Woodward said
00:59:56.420 he first came across it
00:59:58.060 in the U.S.
00:59:58.740 Court of Appeals,
00:59:59.900 a ruling that
01:00:00.620 predates Watergate.
01:00:05.180 Well, maybe they're
01:00:06.080 being truthful
01:00:06.940 in their insistence
01:00:07.980 that democracy dies
01:00:09.300 in darkness,
01:00:10.260 is not a reaction
01:00:11.620 to the Trump era.
01:00:13.120 But in the ensuing years,
01:00:14.700 their coverage
01:00:15.160 of everything
01:00:15.940 from Russiagate
01:00:17.020 to the Biden family
01:00:17.920 scandals makes it
01:00:19.000 nearly impossible
01:00:20.260 to believe.
01:00:22.160 Perhaps the Washington Post
01:00:23.620 and every other
01:00:24.320 American media outlet
01:00:25.480 would be better served
01:00:26.740 by adapting the quote
01:00:28.160 etched in the granite
01:00:29.380 outside of the former
01:00:30.860 Dallas Morning News building,
01:00:32.920 a quote from George Dealey,
01:00:34.720 who was the paper's publisher
01:00:35.940 in the early 1900s.
01:00:37.580 He said,
01:00:38.820 and I quote,
01:00:40.580 Build the news
01:00:41.400 upon the rock
01:00:42.120 of truth
01:00:42.840 and righteousness.
01:00:44.800 Conduct it always
01:00:46.200 upon the lines
01:00:47.320 of fairness
01:00:47.900 and integrity.
01:00:49.880 Acknowledge the right
01:00:51.060 of the people
01:00:51.660 to get from the newspaper
01:00:53.520 both sides
01:00:54.680 of every important question.
01:00:56.620 We constantly rely on experts
01:01:02.740 to make decisions for us.
01:01:04.000 Because even eyewitnesses
01:01:05.920 and experts
01:01:06.580 can get it wrong.
01:01:07.700 But experts do get things wrong.
01:01:09.620 You have to seek out sources
01:01:11.160 from other points of view
01:01:12.780 and then critically examine
01:01:14.580 their motivations
01:01:15.660 and credibility as well.
01:01:17.020 And we I quote,
01:01:19.340 Thank you,
01:01:20.320 That you lend an opportunity
01:01:22.860 to Monday.
01:01:25.440 Long and many
01:01:26.680 may,
01:01:27.100 see you soon,
01:01:28.460 or have some
01:01:30.460 truccast
01:01:31.700 or other points of view
01:01:32.860 that you think
01:01:33.660 or do not
01:01:34.060 or have some
01:01:36.500 on another angle.
01:01:37.380 Or yeah,
01:01:38.000 that you know,
01:01:38.340 you know,
01:01:38.860 if you listen
01:01:38.980 or these things
01:01:39.360 and you know,
01:01:39.880 what's your Strategies
01:01:40.440 and you know you
01:01:41.140 see you next?
01:01:41.680 It just
01:01:43.200 takes celebrating