Episode Overview
Transcript
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Why does the Research the News Podcast exist? Now if you look at our mission statement, we exist to have healthy dialogue with people of all backgrounds promoting open discussions between people of different viewpoints to research the news and search for truths. Now that's our mission, but there's a reason why podcasts like this have to exist, and to me it's media consolidation.
Now, I'm going to go into some facts here; in 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the American media - that was magazines, books, music, newspapers, movies, radio and television. That is a tiny number for a country of over 300 million people. And by 1992, that number was around 25 companies that controlled all of the media. And less than 10 years later in 2000 that number was at six.
Now, there have been some mergers and these are the five media companies that control 90% of the media: number one Time Warner-AT&T, number two Disney, number three Comcast NBC Universal, number four News Corp, which is Fox News, and number five Viacom CBS and on top of that, that's not including the Washington Post being owned by Jeff Bezos, or all of the Bloomberg channels and publications owned by Michael Bloomberg (the guy who spent over $500 million of his own money to buy his way onto the stage at the presidential debates), or even Warren Buffett owning around 70 daily newspapers. Now I like Warren Buffett, but he shouldn't control 70 newspapers.
So why does this all matter? There's a term called the fourth estate that's been used throughout history to describe the press, but what is the fourth estate and why do they call it that? Traditionally in Europe there were three groups who held most of the power and specifically the top two. There was the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners - the commoners being the ones who had, of course, the least amount of power. The press is supposed to be that fourth rung of power that holds the others in check - the government. That's why journalism is important, and the best definition of journalism I found is from the American Press Institute who says the purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.
The press is supposed to inform us, not feed us propaganda to help their personal agendas - and just to be clear this isn't an attack on the left or the right media. They're just two sides of the same coin, and we're all being shaped by these people whether or not we watch mainstream news. The outcomes of this are people who go against core beliefs we as Americans should all be fighting for. I can't stress this enough. It wasn't long ago that we didn't have freedom of speech and in fact, people fought for hundreds of years to get the freedom to say what they wanted without being jailed. That idea of freedom of speech has always been a rallying cry for liberals throughout history who were held back by tyrannical governments and monarchies, look through the history of France, the history of America they were revolutionaries - liberal revolutionaries. But now Facebook and Twitter are censoring conservatives and many liberals are celebrating it. To be clear, the First Amendment doesn't cover private companies, but it's still shutting down speech. And many conservatives today continue to decry cancel culture while calling for boycotts of Major League Baseball and Coca-Cola, but to be clear none of the these people are classical liberals or classical conservatives. These are those people who are shaped by the media conglomerates; those five groups that control 90% of the media. They're the people who are believing the media hype.
So when you watch the news today, it feels like we're all terrible people. This group hates that group. But when you break it down, they're just all made up groups. The media puts people into groups and then makes sure to let everyone know that the other groups are terrible people. If you're black, you have to hate police. If you're white, you should be afraid of people of color. If you're gay, just know that all Christians hate you, and if you're a gun owner, you're okay with school shootings, and if you're a straight white male, you're the worst of the bunch. The truth is there are bad people in all of the groups I just mentioned, but the number of good people in those groups outweigh the bad by an astronomical amount. But if we only focus on the bad, it seems overwhelming. And that's what the media is there to do. So we need to stop idolizing media commentators and political candidates that promote these fallacies because all it does is lead to more people who are far left and far right and unable to have rational conversations about the real issues we face.
So to wrap up, in 1891, the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde wrote "in old days, men had the rack - which was a torture device. Now they have the press, that is an improvement certainly, but still it is very bad and wrong and demoralizing. Somebody called journalism the fourth estate that was true at the time no doubt, but at the present moment, it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, The Lords Spiritual will have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by journalism." This was 130 years ago. And it's important to note that Oscar Wilde was sentenced to 2 years of hard labor for being gay. But he said this years before he was put in jail. His trial was considered one of the first celebrity trials. It was a big news event and the press was a big part of why he went to jail; simply for being gay.
The press, The fourth estate can come for anyone, but right now they are sending us after each other and we need to stand up and say this is not alright. Only 41% of Americans say they trust the media, so my question is - why do we keep blindly following their narrative?
