Michael Oreskes | Former NY Times and NPR Editor

Michael Oreskes joins Ken on the podcast to discuss the political left and right, the current state of the media, and how the Internet changed both.

Oreskes is a journalist with decades of experience. He worked at the New York Daily News, spent 20 years at the New York Times, 7 years at the Associated Press, and then a couple more as a senior president of news and editorial director at NPR.


To find Ken in the social world, click: https://linktr.ee/KenLaCorte

Transcript

Ken LaCorte: 0:00

So first of all, thank you, I appreciate you, you know, I was thinking this, I was thinking this morning on paper, I really shouldn't like you. It's like I'm looking at your resume and and you know, I spent my I spent my life at Fox, I believe that the media has way tilted to the left and that it is, and it is now so disjointed and and not paying it. Choosing politics over truth and pretending to still be be fair and balanced to quote an old phrase. And looking at your resume, which is amazing on in that world. It's New York Times it's a P, it's daily news. It's a what was AP International? Nearly a decade.

Mike Oreskes: 0:49

Yeah. The International Herald Tribune. Yeah.

Ken LaCorte: 0:52

But you, AP might be next year? Well, you and I have always gotten along so well, because we actually cared about like, like, cared about the essence of truth under underneath all of the all of the food fight. Yeah. And and, you know, from from my aspect, it feels like journalism has completely gone off the rails and gone to a place that it was in the late 1800s, early 1900s. In America, does it? Does it feel that way for you to?

Mike Oreskes: 1:19

Yeah, I worry a lot. First of all, thank you, Kim, I feel the same about you, whatever that means. And maybe that is part of our what drew us together was that? Well, we have very different backgrounds, in terms of our careers and media, I think we do share a concern that things have run off the rails? Because I think they have. And I think there's a lot of reasons for and they're not all about media, frankly, I think some of them are about the society in general that media has just latched on to or took advantage of for commercial reasons. But I think we we do share a worry that this is going it's going too far, that you know, we live in a country that was built on the idea that we would disagree with each other. That's that's actually inherent. And things like things like the bemoaning of polarization really are kind of a historic, I mean, this country's had long periods of polarization. It's not. It's not the polarization in itself. It's the it's the willingness to let go of even basic facts in the pursuit of a point of view. And I see that happening in politics. I see it happening in media. And I think that's unfortunate and scary.

Ken LaCorte: 2:39

Did you see it starting to fall apart when you were on the inside? Or does it take you Bing? And how did you first start noticing that and went? Well,

Mike Oreskes: 2:50

I have to say I first started noticing this challenge as a journalist simply covering things. And in fact, in 1991, maybe we could go look it up. But I wrote a series for the New York Times called the trouble with politics. And it described and quoted quite a number of people on both left and right, talking about the phenomenon that we're beginning to see happening, where it was impossible to discuss seriously challenging issues, because things were so polarized as they put it there. And I went back a year or so ago. And I reread that series. And I thought, wow, if they only knew what was really only seen what was fully coming, how. But I do think that that was when I first began to sense that things were shifting. And that that series had some things in it about media, including, you know, the rise of cable niche television wasn't specifically about Fox at that point. But it was more that there were these these all news cable channels that were dividing and fragmenting things and they were contributing, they were I don't believe they were the source of fragmentation, but I do believe they helped contribute or exacerbated where they frankly, they gave people who want it to be in their own little tribe, they gave them a place to go. And you know, that was one of the problems. I think there was also just a general problem in both print in visual medium, of over simplified and boiling things down and, and going from a complicated issue with lots of shades of gray to a simple soundbite. Remember sound bites, we used to talk about sound bites as wearing wearing something. You know, now they look like like the Oxford English Dictionary. The problem has been a while in the making, and we've been digging this hole for quite some time now because that was 1990 So that was 30 something years ago. And so as I'd say, that's when I first started to realize that some tides were running that were going to carry us away if we didn't do anything. And we didn't. And

Ken LaCorte: 5:10

those were literally the quaint old days. I mean, right. Right, those were,

Mike Oreskes: 5:14

I look back and think, Wow, that was

Ken LaCorte: 5:16

pretty good. Yeah. So I saw two things when I so so, you know, when I came in with Fox, you know, we strongly believed the whole kind of TV world is 30 degrees to the left. And we're gonna come in 15 degrees to the right, and we're gonna suck up this massive audience because we're the only only people there. And then I think it's worked as a financial model for that pretty well. And it's, it's kind of we had the, in my view, the flip problem back then the flip problem is everybody was saying the same thing. And there was a political spin to it, it was just all exactly the same spin. Right? I mean, whatever was in The New York Times, was going to lead, ABC, CBS, NBC News national broadcast that afternoon, and the guy's you squint your eyes? Could you tell the difference between rather broke on Jennings, you know, they all had New York sensibilities, they're a blocks were entirely the same. And often there be blocks in the you know, as they built their, their shows. So it was a little bit of a matrix. Like, it's like, there's only one truth, we're telling it, and, and it's coming off of this little island in in New York. And when we came there, you know, I was very proud to be part of the rebels that are saying, look, there's a different point of view out here, and we're going to offer that up. And, and it worked well. And but then, I guess when it came to the 2000s, I noticed two things that were happening. One was multiple monopolies were starting to be destroyed. In other words, CNN had a monopoly on cable that they didn't have to try hard to get an audience. You know, in New York, you had a couple a couple newspapers, but that was pretty a typical right in most cities, it had gone down to, hey, we're in one, we're in Los Angeles, there's one real newspaper here. So they, they didn't have to cater to an audience. So while while their worldview was was to the left, and in my opinion, it probably wouldn't that argument anywhere. They didn't have to really reach for it until they had competitors. And And I'll never forget, when I saw it really starting to come up, it was the it was the Obama Romney race. And I thought, Man, the media is really really flogging for this guy. And I told my managing editor, I was like, I've never seen the media this biased in my life. And, of course, that was, again, still quite quite old days. What do you see as some of the driving forces that that other driving forces or whether you agree or disagree with that park that kind of brought that, that drove that division more?

Mike Oreskes: 7:55

Well, I think the biggest single one was digital. I mean, the digital the digital crackup of traditional media. And I think that actually, it created two effects that both of which had a tendency to push newsrooms from the middle. The first was, that I think a lot of newsrooms became very smitten by the idea that digital gave them a chance to be as big as television, print newsrooms, you know, it's like this, there was a kind of build it, and they'll come idea that newsrooms didn't have to be confined by the four corners of their printed page. They could reach scale, they could reach a different scale. And so they set out to pursue it. And instead of glory and riches, following what followed was disasters, they ended up with the pennies on the dollar, in advertising revenue from this bigger scale, and ended up actually in deep financial trouble. And that's that pressure, that financial pressure, I think caused a lot of newsrooms to lose sight of their core values. I think it caused a lot of newsrooms to chase audience by pandering even more than we might have pandered in the past, I think right? Yeah. All writers and all journalists and all I mean, everybody's trying to get people's attention

Ken LaCorte: 9:22

and attention, they want to be loved. They want to get the awards, but

Mike Oreskes: 9:26

in the line between valid attention seeking and true pandering is not always easy to spot and maybe we felt went too far over it before we realized we've done it too. So but I think the pursuit of scale and and dollars in a penny on the dollar business of digital. I think both had an enormous impact on the decision making inside newsrooms. And I think a lot of the damage was actually not sort of intentional politics. I don't think it was that they set out to be left or right. I think it was more that the mindset Have a lot of newsrooms just didn't see the full range anymore. And also, there wasn't a lot of reward in the middle, the old newspaper model really rewarded the middle, it was really built on the idea that you could assemble a very big by print standard, you can assemble a big, general audience that reached across the community. And the digital model actually broke that. And it became much more important to chase a niche of that audience. And one of the most obvious niches was a political niche. Right. So I think that became a lot of pressure to just seem to lean into your audience more. And I think that that produced a lot of what we're talking

Ken LaCorte: 10:43

about. I mean, so I first noticed it, you know, one other thing that I noticed at Fox it kind of during the, you know, from 2000 to 2010, or 2012. Was, was the success of opinion versus news. Right? So it's like, you know, we had built our we had built our day, so the morning was like, the, you know, the the morning show, they do the cooking that sit around, they jabber on the on the couch, it was kind of a free flowing, a lot of opinion type thing. Then we went into a hard news day from from 9am. Really, up until later afternoon, probably close to five. Maybe there we'd have one opinion show in there. But But then, you know, we'd have the fox report with Shepard Smith, which was a very pretending to be when Shepard was doing it sometimes. But it was, you know, ostensibly a hard news show. It really was our show. Bear and then and then it went into all the talkers. And the talker has made at least twice as much money as anybody else on the on the channel so all the news guys are looking down at the end of the at the end of the night saying why is Bill O'Reilly earning twice as much as me when I'm working harder and running all over and flying off to to floods and explosions. And the ratings same thing was happening so it was you know so we we at Fox kept inching up the the talk show times to be later in the afternoon, then it's like, okay, well, let what's her name in the middle of the day, kind of express her opinions and it won't be just a straight new show. And the numbers started popping up. The second thing that was clear was that middle or even the the continual exposure to both sides of the ideological debate wasn't something people wanted as much. Right, the numbers went up when we took combs off of Hannity and Colmes I mean, that used to be a left right show and what it's just like, You know what, it's gonna be the all Hannity our, the numbers went up, and people liked it more, we made more money, we beat CNN by by bigger levels, and those forces are tough to fight against. I

Mike Oreskes: 12:58

mean, that's yeah. And actually, it's a really, really great point. And, and kind of it goes all the way back to Bill Buckley and firing line. I mean, you know, various people have talked about trying to bring back a show like that, that was essentially a left right show and, and, and nobody's done it, nobody can do it. Now. There's no Bill Buckley, um, you know, he was a very singular unique figure, but, but his show was also built on the idea that there was a interesting conversation to have between people of different ideological points of view. And who's doing that today? You and me, that's

Ken LaCorte: 13:35

kind of interesting. You're right. I want to get into this in a little bit. But for me, maybe right now, for me, the golden age of media, is actually this right here is his long format. Podcast, whether it's audio or video, I think are out of all the crap out of all the kind of craziness that that that the internet gave us, from from clickbait, to chasing things to creating the Kardashians as a 24/7 operation. For all of that badness to good, great things came out of it. One was that camera that you could hold up, you know what well, and in a new situation, or in a world situation when something happened somewhere. Now there's 20 cameras on it, right? That's now that can be abused. And it's often abused, you know, people, provoke somebody and then wait till they say something stupid and record it and Haha, people lose their job before before they realized it. But the other thing is this long, long format thing and this long format concept, which, which, and I want to talk about Joe Rogan, because he's he's obviously the 800 pound gorilla, actually about as close as you can come out of fat gorilla. And he started it with with zero concept. He's been doing this thing for over 10 years. And he started it with zero concept that he would reach a big audience and if you recall, we used to chuckle at stuff like that oh a long format you know who wants to watch an hour interview two guys talking when you when you know when you can with no graphics no punching things? No we're going to Cincinnati no doubt the joke segment and reader mailbag. And and that when I first saw him a few handful of years, it's like, it felt like wow, here's a light because he doesn't have he's not reaching for you know he's he's reaching for a distinct audience, but it's not in the same way that everyone and his distinction is pretty big. In other words, it's not bland, but it's like, you know, you got to like a guy who says fuck a lot, who's talking drugs? Who's not you know, he's he has a lot of things that a lot of ideological people on both sides, you know, they don't agree with that. Right. But the larger issue of yeah, this is kind of how people are these are all open, interesting conversations, where nobody's yelling at each other, there's no fakeness nobody's doing the anchor voice that man. And and it kind of in the same way that cable news brought more grit and reality and authenticity to the to what was really crazy or what was really isolated before and and in the national news, you know, on TV on CBS Evening News, you know that there was a lot more authenticity and that this has done it to another level. So that's, that's my biggest hope for the future. Is this long format stuff.

Mike Oreskes: 16:32

I thought it was incredibly interesting that when Spotify was faced with the choice between Neil Young and Joe Rogan a choice that a few years ago, Neil, Neil Young would have won in a heartbeat. They ended up yeah,

Ken LaCorte: 16:50

now first of all, they gave up they got to deal with their Panama 100 million bucks. Right. And I got a feeling Neil Young albums I you know, I was a massive Neil Young fan. But you know, this was a guy who used to speak power to truth, truth to power used to be against the government and now he's like, you know, all you authoritarians, you need to shut that guy up. It was like such a it was such a reverse hippie move that it was like you're just the but but people you know, this, this. This pandemic has got people getting getting ready in many ways and and that that certainly was one of them. But I think that Joe Rogan besides Donald Trump has been the first one. There's a couple guys who have actually stood up against what I consider a full bore media onslaught, right? The first one was Trump. And part of it is just he had that kind of, you know, I mean, he was Trump, he had his own ability to push back. He fought like a like, like, like a guy with with, you know, he fought back crazily. He understood how to turn the attacks into making more publicity for him. And the media is pylon actually created him as president. He couldn't have been elected 10 years ago. In fact, he ran. And I think we've seen it look a little bit younger she done.

Mike Oreskes: 18:12

He understood what a lot of people in the media didn't understand. Which is that going to war with him was good for him.

Ken LaCorte: 18:19

Yeah. And if he would just go 10% over something. The media would go 50% attacking him and everybody would be talking about it. It was it was it was a brilliant political strategy, whether you would he loved or hated him as a person and politician. Jordan Peterson has has kind of stood up against this. And and Joe Rogan right now. I mean, you look at what they've done to Joe Rogan in just the past couple of months. I mean, here's a guy who I don't know if you ever watched the show, but but he is, you know, he's never been a diatribe. He's he's got his points of view. You know, he's very into the whole health in this and, and, and, you know, big workout guy and, and, and he's off the the, he's off the establishment messaging for COVID has more more more questions about about vaccines, and was also willing to try some of the prophylactic measures that that I think are underplayed in the press? reflexively because what if this thing works, and that's something else then you weren't going to take a vaccine. So that's kind of an elevated as sainthood status. Um, but his massive size, his his distributed audience, and and again, Joe's just saying these last couple weeks with him, he's been it first they first when he came down with COVID You know, CNN ran a full bore campaign against him, saying he took horse the warmer and all this crazy crap. I'm 100% sure they changed the video of him to make him look sicker when he when he made his announcement because CNN he looked a little greener and look a little worse, worse on all of that. They drove that into the ground when he made the point that hey, this was prescribed by a doctor. Yeah, there's not evidence of that, you know, they haven't done studies on this drug that I that I took, but beautiful little that is a horse, the warmer when it said fact taken by millions of people worldwide is is by doctors was was was nuts. Then they had the big doctor list against him the other the other day, the Surgeon General, the United States came out and said he should be he should be censored from from his from his platform now who is jumping on it as well, and all that shit. And he's going to win. And and I think wherever you stand on some of this, that's an encouraging sign that maybe the cancel machine is losing a little bit of its comp, or I don't know, maybe it's just when somebody that big they can they can they can fight back better.

Mike Oreskes: 20:51

Yeah. Well, it's an interesting question. And it's interesting, too, that the though, who the Surgeon General, I'd much rather see them say, he's wrong. He's got the science wrong. He's missed the point about the value of the vaccines. But the minute they go into the vein of he shouldn't be allowed to speak. They're exercising a different authority. And they're there. They're experts on public health, but they're not experts on First Amendment free speech, any of those issues. And I think that's one of the things that Joe Rogan's benefited from, which is that by getting them to overreach, he builds up his strength. I mean, he is wrong about a number of these medical and health issues. He's got a right to be wrong, but but but, but the idea that we're gonna silence him because he's wrong, as opposed to saying that he's wrong, and hope we can get the message out, we will not be made have any public health credentials at all, or any other credentials for that matter. But, um, but I do have some sense of the communications challenge that is risen up around COVID. And I think they, they misunderstand what gets people to listen. I mean, people don't listen to you, because you say that guy should be shut up. That doesn't, that doesn't actually when you were a single person doesn't get one more person vaccinated. But it does how Joe Rogan fight?

Ken LaCorte: 22:23

Well, and in my mind, he personally is more credible. credible, not necessarily right or wrong, but credible, trying to tell the truth. Open to Oh, I was wrong here. You're right. I mean, I've actually seen that happen on there. He's more credible than CNN. He's an incredible data. It's like, you know, you look at like a guy like fat, who I, you know, people are obviously polarized on. But now there's enough things that I'm like, okay, he knows a little bit more about science than me. Right? I got it. But like Ian's and very, very smart, but I don't trust that his motives. And I don't trust that he's always believing what he says, and whether it was a small issue for and you know, it

Mike Oreskes: 23:11

in this

Ken LaCorte: 23:13

pandemic, we've learned a lot of things. So it's fair to have changed your mind saying, Oh, I don't believe that this, this, this spread this way. And then later I do or, you know, I mean, right. It changed over time. But, and this mace seems somewhat small, but no, I actually don't think it is when he told people not to wear masks, not because he didn't think that people should wear masks, but because he didn't want to have the 95 PPE depleted in America, which he basically admitted to later, right, that was a Oh, okay, so he was lying to us about this, for what he felt was the greater good. And then the second thing, which, and this will slowly come out over the next five years, I am 1,000% convinced those guys are all lying their asses off on the origin of coke. And they knew it from 15 minutes. And when when somebody woke Fauci up from a nap and said, Oh, hey, they're getting this weird that this new weird disease in Wuhan. He knew what happened. He knew because we were playing all sorts of funding games through third parties that there was a debate in the in scientific community about should you actually be doing that stuff because it could get released as it's happened before in China and other places. I've been SARS came out of a lab and they got leaked. And so I'm convinced that 15 minutes into it, you know exactly what happened. That, you know, whether it was whether it walked out on the bottom of somebody's shoes, whether it infected somebody there, whether it's somebody sold dead back to it, however it did it that it leaked out of that lap there and for them to have done that whole same rigmarole you know, 230 scientists say that, that the lab leak theory is a conspiracy. See theory. And of course, back then, because Trump, Trump was involved in the mix, the press took that hook, line and sinker. I mean, wasn't until Vanity Fair came out, what, six months ago when they were the first kind of non conservative source that pulled that apart and had a lot of people then scratching their head. And so, you know, when you ruin your credibility, because you do some things like that, you know, you certainly don't have the right to say I should be the only person speaking.

Mike Oreskes: 25:31

Right. And, and I think, I think one of the big lessons that hopefully, people will, will learn from all of this. If you're in any kind of a communications role, if you don't trust your audience, your audience is not going to trust you. So if you start with messages that are designed to steer people, as opposed to instruct them, or help them or share the facts with them, you're going to get in trouble. And I think that's exactly what happened on the mask issue.

Ken LaCorte: 26:06

And in fairness, and politics, well, no, no,

Mike Oreskes: 26:09

I bet I think many of these things and, and, and in fairness, you know, one thing that hasn't been talked about enough, frankly, is the fact that a lot of these public health issues are not pure science and others. Sure, follow the science, great idea, good phrase, good Twitter, good tweet, or what you and I would have called a bumper sticker once upon a time, remember bumper stickers? I did. So but but a lot of these choices are not just pure science choices. They're they're balancing interests. And the minute you're balancing an interest, that's politics, so they shouldn't be political, that that's actually wrong criticism. It's not that they're, it's not that they won't be politics in this, it's to be clear about what's a scientific point, what's a political point. And, and also, and this is where I fought both the public health people and the journalists, we are really bad. And I think both the public health people and the media people deserve criticism for this, but really bad at explaining what we don't know. And admitting that there are lots of things we don't know. And admitting that this is a, this is our best understanding of a situation at a given moment, not not a hard and fast, unchangeable truth. They're very few unchangeable truths of the world. And most of those are beyond our grasp as mortals anyway. So the the reality that there are a lot of things that we're only beginning to know and of course, in, in a pandemic, when things are moving and changing all the time. And assertion of certainty, is almost always going to be wrong, you have to be willing to say, you know, this is the best I have at the moment. And I'll be back to you with more. I mean, the issue of how COVID not the issue of the Wuhan Institute, the that that issue of where it started, is, is clearly something where for some reason, many people in the media just decided they knew an answer. They didn't know. I mean, it was it was clear that we didn't know for sure what the right answer was. And, and they should have just acknowledged their ignorance and let it be there for a while until better information emerged. And it's also clear that the Chinese, whether it's intentional deceit, or it's just the way they are, we're not open and honest at the beginning of this pandemic about what was going on. They weren't even open and honest with their own public health people. You know, the army took over the medical and public health issues, and didn't even tell their own CDC what was going on.

Ken LaCorte: 28:38

I mean, they were honest with some of the people they put jail to shut up? Well, they got a very clear,

Mike Oreskes: 28:45

so there were a lot of, but there were a lot of issues about what we knew and what we didn't know. And you know, and we could have been as journalists a lot clearer about the fact that we didn't know a lot of things. And one of the most telling episodes of all, you know, there were, there were a number of really smart people who figured out pretty quickly that this virus spread easily in the air through, you know, what they call aerosols. But the but the mainstream public health officials were still convinced and still determined to believe that it's spread more like the flu and big globs, and big globs sink to the floor quickly. So if it's a big glob, it's going to be on surfaces, it's going to be all over the place. That's why you should wash your hands. That's why you shouldn't touch your face. Remember that don't touch your face. It turns out they were wrong. Okay, they were wrong. But it took them longer than it should have taken them to understand that there were other experts who had knowledge that they didn't have that they should have listened to more carefully. It took them too long to make that transition. And that is directly related to the issue of why it took why there were these reversals about masks. There's if the stuff is spreading and falling onto surfaces, you know that a masks not actually that important. But the minute they realized it was spreading in the air, and there were experts who realized that, but they were experts and other subjects are experts in aerosol, you know, air filtration engineering. Now,

Ken LaCorte: 30:16

I've actually worked in aerosol aerosolized medicine for a while.

Mike Oreskes: 30:19

Well, there you are. See, I didn't realize I was here with a resident expert that, you know,

Ken LaCorte: 30:23

it was, and there and back then they didn't even know that much shit, either. I mean, it was it, you know, there's always you know, so when you when you expel something, or, or when you breathe in, and aerosolize, you know, it's a, there is a, a, you could almost plot it out on a chart of large particles versus small particles, and there's going to be a mass in between. And there were always debates even back then how, how big did a particle need? In our instance, it wasn't to get a disease into you. It was it was how to get a drug into you, how big should that particle be? To get that, that in there. And in the 90s, the early concept was, if the particles are too small, they blow back out. So you want them to be a little larger. But that was then it's like, okay, well, you look at cigarettes, cigarettes, get nicotine and do like that. And smoke particles are very, very small compared to like, aerosolized fluids in there. So so even then the science was kind of all over the place as as people tried, you know, you you go you get a nebulizer, you put different micron sizes onto something, you have somebody breathe that in and see how much goes in there. Harder to test on a on a on a pandemic. I mean, do they still, is that settled that that that surface transmission is is minor on this? I think that's

Mike Oreskes: 31:43

pretty well, what they what they figured out, it's, it's not non existent. It's possible, but it's not the main, it's not the main way that this has been transmitted. It's mainly being transmitted from person to person through the air.

Ken LaCorte: 31:55

So much chicken hands. Um,

Mike Oreskes: 31:58

that's just who you are. I can't change that.

Ken LaCorte: 32:00

No, no, that's fine. I don't have to touch you. I actually love shaking hands and hugging people. I do kind of, I'm one of those guys that kind of like, yeah, okay, now I got, you know, did he wash his hands after he went to the bathroom? You know, yeah. He asked a couple questions after you know, this, this

Mike Oreskes: 32:18

program is having real revelations. The political consultants who didn't like to shake hands, I'm fascinated by

Ken LaCorte: 32:26

reason I wasn't I wasn't much of a politician versus Wow, look, and and I can't dismiss just the Donald Trump factor, because I think that the Trump election was the first time that I saw journalists talking publicly, there was the there was the fact that on CNN, what's, what's his name? It does the show. Alright, Brian Brian Stelter. You know, he was one of the early, we need to change our priorities as journalists to help save America versus kind of giving a balanced view and telling the truth. I mean, they were like, by just telling the truth, we might not be able to kill Donald Trump. So we need I mean, there was a very public debate going on in the early parts of 2017. Where, where and then we saw where everybody went, everybody just leapt on it leapt on him and then and then clicks follow, right? I mean, the toughest thing to sell in 2017 to 2000 Today is a story that is telling a nuanced look at Donald Trump, right? Trump was right on this but he probably went that far and his and his excessive behaviors did did that is going to get how many clicks on on you know on Facebook and Twitter whereas if you say one extreme or the other that's your that's your path to get

Mike Oreskes: 33:53

this is this is the he created the vaccine but then kicked it away School of Journalism. Yeah, it

Ken LaCorte: 33:58

was you know, he told you to put bleach in it's like as a conservative i i always had a love hate relationship when they would when the press would obviously go way overboard, for instance that like the bleach thing, I had liberal friends in MYRIN say, you know, I watched what he said and he didn't fuckin say that it didn't come close to that. Or when you you know, like the car Rittenhouse case, I think was was was good at exposing how how biased media wise, right because if you are a person who just read CNN or Newsweek or or some of the some of the major sources out there, you had such a a, a wrong view of the events in Kenosha that night. And that then when the trial came up and it was televised, and a lot of people started saying wait a second I thought he was chasing down people and shooting black people wait a second I thought that he was a white supremacist who was doing you know and and all of those things pull down on People were still, you know, we're still had different opinions on that. But, but sometimes when when they go completely overboard, it at least causes people to pull back. And from my view, from my view, it's, it's usually on one side, but you can argue all that. But then people, if they can say, you know, I need to check multiple sources on things just as a consumer, I used to be able to go to one site, and trust it, there's very few sites that I would go to read anything that had any kind of social or political implication. And just believe it for you. You know, the, to me, the biggest disappointment in this whole whole episode was one of your former employers, The New York Times, I mean, the New York Times, I always knew they leaned left, right, it didn't bother me, because they had the smartest writers, they had very good journalists, they would bring in, you know, because of their position they would get in the top, you know, when they would interview somebody, they would have real substantive experts, when you when you stumbled online to a New York Times story about whatever that was, you said, Alright, now I've gotten to the definitive case on this, and I, and I'm going to learn the most and I'm gonna leave being smarter. And when they join the, the, the club of, we're more about politics than about truth. And and, and explaining the world to you. That was probably the biggest disappointment, you know, I didn't care that Huffington Post went crazy, right? And, and, and people on the left shouldn't care all that much that that Fox is going to give you a conservative point of view, because everybody knows that, but when the most trustworthy name and news went, went woke, that, that that hurt, that's that's sucked. Did you? Do the New York Times? guys talk about that, too? They acknowledge that? I believe that what? Sure. And what's going on in that company now?

Mike Oreskes: 36:55

Well, I can't say, you know, I can't say for sure what's going on now inside, because I am not inside anymore. I think what you're describing, though, both at the New York Times in some other places, was the feeling that we had to actually pass a conclusion pass judgment. Our job wasn't simply to present the material for which you the citizen can make a decision, but that we actually have to take you by the hand and tell you what it means. And that's, that's been a process that's been developing in journalism for quite some time. You know, there had to be a take, there had to be a spin there had to be, you know. But Trump, as he did with so many things, pushed everything over the edge. And he, he, of course, was intentionally trying to do it, he wanted the press to become the enemy. That was his whole strategy. And unfortunately, a fair amount of the American media played right into his hands, and did become his opponent in a way that broke the norms of traditional journalism. And the argument, I never bought the argument that because Trump was breaking the norms, journalism should break the norms, that that equivalency never made sense to me. It struck me that the more Trump went out over the edge, the more we should stick to our basic values. And, and one of the reasons for that is, you know, I mean, as you said, New York Times, journalists and other journalists are good at what they do. I mean, they know how to gather information, they know how to present it, you know, so that it doesn't get distorted in, in the presentation. But we're not any smarter than anybody else. So if you say, Well, what's, what's the truth here? I mean, I, I almost never use that word truth, because well knows what the truth is. Here's the facts. As best I understand them, I'm going to share them with you. That's my job. As a journalist, I'm not going to tell you what you should make of these facts. Because a that may depend on your own positions and your own views that you bring to the table and be I'm not good enough to know. There's a reason why we always used to call journalism, the rough first draft of history, right? Because in the in the pressure of the moment, you can't always know what everything means. You can't always know quote, unquote, the truth. What you can know is what you can learn and what you can find. And, frankly, I'm a strong believer that Donald Trump doesn't do well when you actually just show who he is. I don't think that you need to do more than that to capture what a Donald Trump is,

Ken LaCorte: 39:41

you know, journalists figured out a terrific way to weaponize facts. I mean, you know, Jane, Jane Meyer, she is one of the one of the worst examples of that. She's smart. She's Beloved. She you know, she hopes she takes down a conservative every three to six months. But she's and she generally writes things that are true. But she is an expert at putting them all together excluding any facts that are outside of her narrative. She comes up with a narrative. Brett Kavanaugh is probably a rapist. And if you read the story that that she did on him, especially now when it's when it's in the back, you know, it's like, everything in that story was was true, but so crazily distorted. That, and it's a lie. I mean, I mean, that is, you know, I always talk about you know, Fox News could have done a story saying Pete Buda judge gave a speech, wearing underwear and socks to a gay audience. And that was undoubtedly true. It just takes ignoring the fact that he was wearing a suit and a tie and shoes and pants. And, and I got into the Jane Meier thing again, recently, you know, she had gone after Fox and me a couple years ago. And, you know, she interviewed me for two hours, didn't ask about a certain issue, turn that into a 600 words of her thing and literally didn't, didn't ask me one word about it, because she wasn't after the truth. She was after that fact total nuggets that she could use to and then with the requisite denial, no, we didn't do that. And, and into presenting a good picture. And that's, that's the scariest part, you know, lies are easy to overcome. What's hard to overcome is when you say okay, candidate X is giving a rally, go to that rally, find out the biggest retards and racist and people get them to say stupid things, get it on tape. And then that's our, that's our function here and ignore all those people over there, ignore 90 95% of it. And and, yeah, the lying through the line by telling true facts, I think is has become an art form to some of the larger journalists now.

Mike Oreskes: 42:00

So So part of part of what we're talking about here, Ken is something that I know you care about. And you and I have talked about a lot, which is, the more we get media that falls into camps, along with the political polarization. And whether it's on the left or on the right, the more the middle just disappears, that we don't, we don't have a media of the middle anymore. And we don't have a media that's just there to serve. It's there to help give you the material to be a citizen, not tell you how to be a citizen, or what kind of citizen you should be. And I know you've thought about that a lot. But why do you think we've had so much trouble maintaining some something in the middle?

Ken LaCorte: 42:45

Look, I think for all the reasons we said that, that the middle, the middle doesn't sell I actually think the Fox News model was and still can be, it's rough around the edges pretty damn good in the sense of attaching attaching people with very, very definite points of views with news reporters that are doing their best to tell the story straight. Now, obviously, you're going to, they're not going to be covering different stories, right, Fox today is covering the funeral of a slain cop. I bet CNN isn't spending nearly as much time on that. But I bet CNN will find a gay guy who got beat up and in a in a hate crime and they will come I mean, there is that. But you know, one thing that I would that when I when I ran kind of the West Coast reporters for Fox, it was just one simple sentence was give both sides their best shot. That's all you had to say to a reporter. You know, they jam it all down into 100 and 100. A minute 10. Right. I mean, in news, TV news is very, very condensed. And and you know, my girlfriend's a, she's an on air reporter for Fox, and she just does it. She interviews these people. And she says, okay, she doesn't look at, let's get the stupidest person on this side, or where he did something, this and the smartest person on this side and put that into into a piece. It's just the desire to say, I'm going to give both sides their fair shot in this issue that solves 80% of the world's ills, or 80% of journalists ills, which, by the way, not but it's not as fun. Yeah,

Mike Oreskes: 44:23

by the way, just to dissent slightly for something you said. I have been watching CNN, so I can't directly respond to what you said about CNN. But I am here in New York, where we just lost two police officers in a horrifying shooting. And my observation about the television coverage in general, and I'm mostly just watching the main network news outlets is that they've been deeply respectful. And I have honored these two officers and have not fallen into any kind of a trap of We still have to pay lip service to some other movement that says that the police aren't aren't right. They mean these, these two officers are really being treated, treated as the not just the heroes that they are. They're being treated as really devoted young men who wanted to serve and who found their role in life as police officers, and that there's really something wrong, that those two people died in a in a completely preposterous situation that reveals so many things that are wrong, both and, you know, oh, I managed to go at both left and right here. I mean, that guy should not have had those weapons. I mean, this guy was armed to the teeth with illegal weapons. He had a Glock with a revolving magazine. I mean, there is no reason why anybody in this country needs a weapon like that, frankly, I don't know what Wait up. So there's something wrong with the gun piece of this. And those two officers ran right smack into that. Right. This is also a guy who clearly had severe mental health issues, a guy who had been repeatedly imprisoned. I mean, there, there are so many things wrong with this picture. Right. But the one thing I'm not seen in, and I've been paying close attention to a lot of the coverage. I have not seen a you see, this is what the police deserver This is what the police are gonna get or

Ken LaCorte: 46:17

Yeah, cuz people probably burn him down at this at this point. But well, right. Well, here, let me let me put it this way. If that shooting happened for years, I mean, how many how many cops die in the line of duty every year in America? It's about 300 or so?

Mike Oreskes: 46:31

Is that the number?

Ken LaCorte: 46:33

You know, it changes? Yeah, that's a number that sticks. In my mind. I think they're, most of those were shot, some of them die. Another popular way that the police die in action is chasing somebody in the car and having a fatal fatal fatal wreck on that. But that meant that 6000 Police died over a 20 year journalistic career and we paid attention to tenable over time, I'm not saying that that's, you know, obviously, you can't pay attention to every murder in America when when there's 15,000 people being killed, killed killed every year. But, you know, now, because the politics, because people are seeing kind of the breakdown in social order in their city. And now it's like, hey, actually, cops and and criminals. This is this is a more important thing than it was for you walking to the grocery store that that would have been four years ago, that we are now into that into that world, which in this instance, is is probably a fair and good thing.

Mike Oreskes: 47:33

Right? Well, Mayor Adams is Eric Adams is mayor of New York, because of that trend, you

Ken LaCorte: 47:40

just described it. What do you think of this guy?

Mike Oreskes: 47:42

You know, I think it's a very interesting figure. He's trying to carve out a I mean, by New York standards, you know, a moderate political, Democratic position, that takes crime seriously, that takes public safety seriously. But then also obviously recognizes social issues and social problems and the need to, for the need for government action to address them. So I mean, he's trying to carve out a different kind of middle of the road politics that's more frankly, more like the old Democratic Party than the than the woke left Democratic Party. Right. And you know, and he's pretty explicit about it. He's not, he doesn't sort of sneak around about it, he criticizes some of the more progressive members of the New York political delegation. And he's, you know, he's up there wearing police and fire paraphernalia, and every chance he gets.

Ken LaCorte: 48:36

Really, could he have done that if he was white? In this?

Mike Oreskes: 48:39

I don't know. I don't know. And it's a completely interesting question. And in a way, the answer, the answer is well, good for him. I mean, if he's, if part of what he's doing is redefining racial politics as your country to move the politics to a better place. That's, that's more power to him. I don't know the answer that question. And I don't know that there's any way to know it without having, you know, a real example. I mean, you'd have to have somebody run for office with his politics, but a different race. I don't know. But, you

Ken LaCorte: 49:11

know, did somebody relatively pro cop run against him in the Democratic primary?

Mike Oreskes: 49:20

No, there weren't. He was probably one of my friends was the only one who had actually been a police officer. Right. So that was that he he sort of just had that. That was Carter, who he was right. Yeah. So I think I think it's it's certainly I think there were a unique set of circumstances in that race, including the fact that he's a police officer. On the other hand, I think there's a lot that can be generalized from that race. And he would be the first to tell you that. I mean, he's not shy about trying to tell the rest of the country and the rest of the Democratic Party that he thinks he's got the model for the future, and whether he's right or wrong, and whether the Democratic Party will agree with him is You know, we have interesting thing to follow. But I think it's interesting and important. I mean, I don't think it's a small development. I mean, that that he's come into office determined to I mean, he's, he's restored the plainclothes anti gun units that we're so criticized, and probably validly criticized for some of their abuses in the black community. And yet, his point was, well, we've got to cure the abuses, but we can't throw away the need to shut down the gun crimes. So he's taking it. You know, as you said, he's taking another try at coming up with aggressive anti gun policing, while saying we're not going to go back to some of the old abuse. And we'll see, we'll see if he can find that line.

Ken LaCorte: 50:50

And New York, you poor guys, you've outlawed guns ever since I was born. And you still can't fix that problem. Right? Yeah, didn't get in my neighborhoods, we have lots of guns and no crime. So maybe it's just me.

Mike Oreskes: 51:02

And by the way, it's not only New York, I mean, it's it's a lot of big cities in this country have this problem of a, a category of illegal off the books, guns, these are not, these are not regular citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights, right. This is a different group of people. These are gang members, drug dealers, petty criminals of all sorts, I mean, part of the problem is, it's just so easy to get a very powerful gun, and then use it the first moment you lose your temper. You know, we had an incident here in New York the other day, where two guys were in the waiting room of a hospital in the Bronx, a hospital, they were in the hospital, when this guy was in the hospital, because he was getting treatment for a previous gunshot wound. And while he's in the hospital, this other guy sees him and thinks that he's looking at him badly. I don't know whether he was or wasn't looking at him badly. But he says, What are you looking at? And the guy says, gravels Adam, the guy pulls a gun and shoots. You know, there's something wrong with that picture. There really is. And even with the Second Amendment, even with second amendment rights, it's too easy to be walking around. And these are by the way, these are not. These are illegal guns, you

Ken LaCorte: 52:23

know, I'll give you a yes. But on that. It always seems to happen in certain areas, and not another, you go to you go to Phoenix, and there are guys walking around, open carrying in the grocery store in Phoenix. And I remember looking at and trying to say okay, because a lot of states are very, very open on on on firearms. I live in California, where we're trying to ban peashooters, and it will be a continual fight, possibly to the death. Um,

Mike Oreskes: 52:51

I just want to say for the record, I just don't think you should have

Ken LaCorte: 52:55

you know, like for that and you don't see when in states and regions that have liberalized gun laws, you don't see scientific and or statistical evidence of that anecdote you've got you don't see guys just shooting each other over traffic conditions and, and things like that, that just doesn't seem to be a driver of numbers. And I'm sure somebody will say no, here's this study and, and I don't trust half the people that are in that that world because they're worse than you know, they're worse than the press trying to get rid of or or elect Donald Trump. But I actually find it's kind of especially New Yorkers are funny because because there's such a little gun atmosphere there. Everybody kind of that you know, who has a gun for uses one is either a cop or a criminal. Whereas if you go to Idaho or parts of rural California even or Texas or other places, everybody has one and it's just a different different world on that and so that's that's why you know, they always used to call me up on the gun stores because I would be one of the only persons even at Fox conservative place that actually would own firearms go to a range just keep them as as as part of that for my life. And to be honest, I don't even keep them for crime as much as I keep them for if this if this society ever falls apart. I'd rather have 20 guns in the in the basement of my house than not

Mike Oreskes: 54:30

which I'll admit is why I'm coming to your house when the society I mean, it

Ken LaCorte: 54:33

sounds a little paranoid until you just take a any 100 year look at history on the planet. And and you know, you and I both been to places that have fallen to shit.

Mike Oreskes: 54:43

Right. And I think I think what's what's I don't, obviously I do think we can be tighter about guns than we are in in parts of the country without any loss of you know, your certain basic right. But what I think most employers About the point you're making is that it isn't the gun in itself. It's the gun combined with the mental health combined with the drugs combined with the criminal activity, it's it's all of that all of it, it's a stew. That's the that's where the violence and the danger is. It's it's not it's obviously not. I mean, it's obviously not you, you're not the threat.

Ken LaCorte: 55:25

Yeah. Interestingly, the, the Washington Times, this was probably 1520 years ago. So so, you know, we all report things when they're unusual, right, which which means we don't report most murders in Chicago because they happen every day and and you would have a newscast filled, filled with The Times about 20 years ago, and, and I knew the guy who was who was on this project, you know, what would normally happen in Washington as you'd have the, the the southeast, minority, heavy crime, heavy drug, most murders, so a high profile murder would get a lot of attention, and those would never be covered, just because it wasn't that and they decided for, I think it was at least a year to assign a reporter to every single murder that happened within Washington DC, right, and to and to do the calls to talk to the cops to talk to the you know, find the case and write a story on that. And interesting that, you know, I asked this guy I said, What's, what's your takeaway on that, and his takeaway was, most of the murders happening in Washington were drug sellers killing each other, that drugs, sometimes it was by gun bad, but it was but that, but that the hardcore drugs was kind of underlying the vast majority of murders there, I don't know if that's still the case, I don't know how much those numbers change. You know, for me the best thing to come out of the BLM Movement, which we can get into if you want, right, which I think is going to set back most black Americans in the goals that they're trying to achieve. But whatever is the the cop cams that the body cams on officers. And there's a there's a great YouTube site, if you're interested in seeing that it's not, it's not easy to watch all of that. But now almost every city is getting smart, right? And releasing these kind of right away, when somebody gets gets killed by a cop. And, you know, you, you see, sometimes you see some bad bad cop actions 95% of the time, you're like, Man, I want to kill that guy faster or quicker. And a couple things jumped out is I've watched probably at least 100 of these over the over the last over the last year. One is probably up to 50% of guys were shot by and it's almost always guys, it's 95% male versus versus female, some female. They were trying to kill themselves. They were they were, you know, many of them is they're literally running at a cop screaming fucking shoot me and swinging at him with a knife that that is a good good chunk, then there's a big chunk that you're kind of not sure whether they were trying to kill themselves, or whether their rage button just just kicked in, you know, they were beaten up their wife, the cops come they come out, they grab a baseball bat. They're just they just went into rage mode. You've seen people do that. And, you know, in driving or in various situations, and the cop and the cop show shoot them. Some of them were, were that cop probably didn't need to do that seven times, or he had enough room, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes the guys flip and turn. And so you know, you see the good and the and the and the bad use of force. And it's it's not the impression that anybody has in America on on the we hate cops. I mean, yeah, and they're literally people who like you shouldn't call the police on your stolen car, because it might lead to a black interaction with cops. And that person could get killed. Nobody got shot in any of these for just, you know, nobody who pulled over and said, Oh, okay officer and didn't pull a gun or try to run or run with a cop hanging out the door or whatnot. I mean, the incidence of that are almost minuscule, not not zero, but pretty damn close to.

Mike Oreskes: 59:24

And one of the things I think you're you're capturing in this is this phenomenon of suicide by cop is a very tip of a very, very, very deep iceberg in this country of mental illness. And to be honest, if I had only one thing that I could do, in terms of the crime problem in this country, and there's no reason why we should do only one thing we should do. All the right things we do and we can debate what the right things are, but but if I could only do one, it would be to take another Start at the problem of how do we deal with the violent mentally ill, because we've really blown that one big time. And this was not a New York is a poster child for how badly we've blown it. But it's happened all over the country. You know, we we decided as a society, that Institute's institutionalizing 1000s and 1000s of seriously mentally ill people was both inhumane and unaffordable. So we decided we were going to change. So we took all these people and put them out of their hospital beds. This is, you know, nearly half a century ago 60. And we never fixed it, we never came up with Okay, so that's fine. We're not going to keep them locked up in hospitals. But what are we going to do? And, you know, this poor woman Michelle, Alyssa go is dead today, because we didn't solve that problem 40 years ago, and she was shoved off a subway platform in Times Square, by a severely mentally ill man who was in and out of treatment, and in and out of jail. And who was never put into the proper program, there are programs, there are ways to deal with this. But as a society, we have really blown that one. And if we fix that it would fix a lot of the other problems wouldn't, wouldn't completely eliminate the gun issue. But it would put the gun that there would be fewer guns in the hands of seriously mentally ill people. And that would be a major step.

Ken LaCorte: 1:01:20

I don't think that we have good solutions for that for for a handful of reasons. And part of it is is I think that psychology is still an evolving field. I mean, you know, when you look at it, saying it's like, okay, probably one of the largest goals of the psychological community would be to stop people from killing themselves. That's a pretty bad thing to happen. And it's all a, a mental issue on that, right. And suicide numbers aren't down in America. They're not spiking, but they're, but But you know, they've never, we've not seen them have any widespread support. We've seen cancer, cancer solutions come down, we've seen people dying are living longer with with heart conditions, living longer with all those, but we kind of haven't figured that part out. And then there's always that you asked this question all the time, is that guy stupid? Or is he evil? And the and that's not exactly what I'm talking about with mentally ill. But there's a question of when you see a guy saying, You go fuck yourself and pulling a gun and another guy in a hospital? You know, it's like, is he in a bad person? Or is he a broken person? Or maybe both? And how do you fix that? And I don't know what the solutions I mean, clearly, re institutionalization of some people who really need it is is is an important fact. I mean, I don't know what the streets in New York are like, but when I go into certain parts of San Francisco, it's heartbreaking to see somebody lying down on top of themselves in a wheelchair. That is clearly mentally ill. And people are just including me just walking by it's it's like, because you know, if that guy had a broken leg, we'd be like, Oh, my God, this guy has a broken leg. He's bleeding. We, we help we call things you do it instead? Let the guy sleep out overnight, because it doesn't get to freezing San Francisco.

Mike Oreskes: 1:03:24

Yeah, no. And we have a fair amount of that here in New York as well. Although I must say I've, I've never seen a city in America as bad as San Francisco on this front. And I don't know quite the combination of events. You know, there is a program in New York state. That was the first of its kind when it was inaugurated. But I think a number of other states now practice something similar. And it and it all goes back to a horrifying case of a woman named Kendra Webb Dale, who something like 25 years ago, was shoved off a subway platform by a schizophrenic man, and died very similar to the case we just had last week with Michelle go. After her death, her family really rallied to the cause of doing something like they didn't want the death to be in vain. And you gotta admire them for this. And so they passed a law here in New York State, which they actually called Kendra's law. And it both created and gave judges the power to require a kind of outpatient psychiatric treatment for people with serious mental illness so that you can enforce their medication. You can keep close tabs on them, you can recognize if they're deteriorating, which is, you know, one of the serious problems for the mentally ill is that being mentally ill and out on the streets is a recipe for getting worse.

Ken LaCorte: 1:04:51

Right and so drugs right into that and

Mike Oreskes: 1:04:53

then and then right, so, so we have a stew especially in big cities where we just Create really nightmarish situation. So anyway, the state of New York adopted a program of outpatient therapy that wasn't violent it was I mean, it could be voluntary, you could just volunteer to take it, but it could be imposed. So for example, if you were arrested on some crime, the judge could rule that part of your sentence had to be you must enroll in this program. And actually, one of the one of the big unanswered questions about the death of Michelle go last week is why the guy who shoved her off the platform wasn't in such a program because the program exists. So I think, a lot of what we're looking at in this country, I mean, I take your point about, we're still in search of all the solutions, but there are a couple of very simple things that exist. And that if we could just be more vigilant. And if government could be more competent and competent, about making sure these things are really in use, it's clear there are there are some 1000 people or so in this program right now. And it's very clear, there are many more people in New York State who should be in this program. And could be if you know, if, if the cops, the prosecutors, the judges, the outreach people, the social workers, if they were all just more vigilant about getting more people into the program, he would make a big difference. And it's not rocket science. It's an existing program.

Ken LaCorte: 1:06:18

How hard is it to get drugs easily in New York?

Mike Oreskes: 1:06:22

Well, I don't know from personal experience, I have to say, by the way, I have to say I'll get a share one thing that isn't the full answer to do better, it is now very easy, of course to get cannabis, both legally, illegally, of course, but it's also now there is a cannabis shop right around the corner for me on the block that used to be known as needle Park. Right a movie goers will know that even if they don't know New York, right? There's this place that was made famous in the movie panic in needle Park, there's now a legal cannabis shop on that part. So whatever you want to make of the societal change, that's happened. I think most other drugs in this city are pretty easy to get. And though it's a big, big illegal business. And of course, that's where a lot of the gun violence comes from, is, you know, turf battles over gun over excuse me over drug distribution. But, you know, there's a lot of drugs in the city

Ken LaCorte: 1:07:13

in San Francisco, they still have. So you can drug addicts can always you can always get your your dope somewhere, right? You know, somebody who knows somebody, but one of the things that that made the San Francisco homeless problem even worse is that they literally have an obvious open air place that I could go walk to, in certain neighborhoods in San Francisco today and buy drugs. So if you're a you know, you got off the off the bus, you're coming in from a place you're you're on the spectrum, but pretty close to the messed up spectrum drugs are are part of your world. You know, you don't have to you don't have to search around for it. It's there right in front of you, obviously, if you're an addict when you I mean, you literally watch people inject themselves on on city streets in San Francisco. And, you know, I know from from, from experience with with whiskey, that I'm watching a TV show and the guy's like, pop it up some whiskey, and it's like, you know what, pause the movie for a second. I want to Jack Daniels. I do that all the time. And and I can't imagine if you are a drug, you know, an intravenous drug user also with screwed up problems in it, you know, in your head, that seeing people in those states continually using crazily easy to get doesn't make that 10 times easier for you to fall back into that into that world, even if you weren't trying to do it aggressively.

Mike Oreskes: 1:08:39

Yeah, yeah, I just one of our great tragedies, frankly, is our inability. I mean, we we spent billions of dollars on a war of drug on drugs to try to cut off the supply and we clearly failed, what didn't work and then of course, the problem that that so much of our drug problem now is not the old fashioned heroin. It's this no the new fentanyl and

Ken LaCorte: 1:09:01

that's the one that's killing. The heroin guys are the ones who then go stab somebody to death. The fentanyl guys are the ones who are overdosing. Yeah. It's like I'm I'm pretty liberal on liberalizing most drugs, because it's kind of like the hey, you know, I'm fine on psychedelics that was fine on on cannabis for years. And you know, the Libertarian part of me is like, hey, just because you can't handle your shit doesn't mean I should, it should be illegal for me, right? Like gambling. And I'm sorry, if you gamble away your house, that's not my problem. But it shouldn't be legal for me to do whatever, to have a poker party or go to a casino because because you can't handle your shit.

Mike Oreskes: 1:09:44

By the way, we should we should have crossed a line on gambling habits. I mean, it's all on my phone. Now sports betting. I mean, I I went to a college that was banned from college sports because we were shaving points and you can do that. And now I could even go bet on my college teams. I think I don't know, I've seen you bet on college teams and sports betting but

Ken LaCorte: 1:10:02

I don't know I've a friend who's got a startup, it's actually doing very well in that gambling space. And there's still a lot of legal, it's all kind of a legal play on that. So what their what their concept is, is, is you can do your gambling there. What they do though, is when you put your $20 into the computer or into you know, you pay $20 to be part of this, this thing, they go and place your bets on horse racing around the world, because horse racing is legal in and even off track betting is legal in most states. And that's controlled under a whole separate thing. So they put it on that. And you you know, you won some lost some and that's behind the scenes, and then you're playing your little game online, and they're giving you back your money, but they're really giving you back your money because you you placed they placed a legal bet for you on a horse somewhere, or a competitive tandem of that. So that's kind of, it's a lot of work to get around. Short Brown, hey, you know, what I want to shift for a second local media and local journalism. So so you'd written a piece 15 years ago now about kind of kind of the decline and the decline of local local journalism, which I I find one of the big problems that we have, even though it's not an in your face, obvious problem. It's a you know, and in New York and San Francisco in the major is that's, that's, it's, it's irrelevant. And of course, if something's irrelevant, in New York, nobody cares about it on a national level. But the lack of resources and news, that's, that's earning money for a 40,000 population town somewhere, which means they're not sending a reporter to the to the city council, they're, you know, they're it's gotten washed away, it's within the, the TV of a large, you know, Bell California was, was, was probably the best example of that a food recall a handful of years ago, Bell California, in Los Angeles, Hispanic, probably 95%, Hispanic, heavily, probably the majority of them primarily spoke Spanish at home. It was, you know, within within LA County, and, but it didn't have its own newspaper, LA Times isn't going to write a whole lot of things on that TV news, it was too small was 40,000 50,000. People, you know, too, too small to care all that much. And the city council, they're just just went hog wild. I mean, if people were making hundreds of 1000s of dollars, I mean, it was like they turned it into an organized crime zone. And it wasn't until several years of that where it gets when they got so greedy that it became became popular. Is there have you seen financial and and I don't mean, just the billionaires who say, Well, I'm going to put some some, you know, we've seen some of them trying with civitatis. And some other things to to get some local reporting going back, although I don't trust billionaires when they put too much money into media, because they sometimes have an agenda. And sometimes that's not the same as my agenda. Do you see any bright light or in that world?

Mike Oreskes: 1:13:18

First of all, I can I think this is so much the biggest problem we're facing in journalism, I think this collapse of local news is far more dangerous, and far more disturbing, even than all the problems we've been talking about, about the big national places. And by the way, it is a problem here in New York, it's not the case that it's only a problem in small towns,

Ken LaCorte: 1:13:44

you right, because it's probably bounce chunks of New York. Right.

Mike Oreskes: 1:13:47

And and you know, and frankly, if you look at what's happened here in New York, yes, the New York Times is still here, in the sense that its name is still on the newspaper. But it's not here. The way it once was as a as a force in local journalism. They still do some stories about New York, but they're not covering New York, the way they used to. The Daily News is a shell of what it once was. Your friends at the post are actually the most energetic and aggressive these days. But even even these big city wide papers really can't get down on the street from neighborhood to neighborhood. So there are smaller ones. There are a whole swathes of New York that that used to have much more coverage than they have. So the the, the collapse of local news is a very serious problem in this country. I do see a lot of people trying to come up with with solutions. And I do some I see some encouraging things happening. And I'd like to see more momentum for them. And I'd also like to see more people view this as the real important issue to solve. So for example, I believe that local news, even though obviously, there's partisan politics, even at the local level, It's also an easier place for people of different points of view to come together and say, Okay, we're going to make this work, we're going to make sure we have local news here. Because, frankly, if you don't have a way to talk about basic local issues, if you can't talk about where to put a sewage sewage plant, right, if you can't talk about, you know, what are the public safety issues in your community? You can't have a society. I mean, all this debate at the national level and all the polarizing, it's worrisome, there's things to talk about, but it's absolutely essential to have local information or local it,

Ken LaCorte: 1:15:34

but But companies like AOL lost billions, right. And that that I actually tried to set up a series probably 15 years, I was still at Fox I was doing as a side project to set up some hyperlocal websites in my neighborhood. And in an online thing, and and you know, I didn't exhaust all the possibilities. But when you try to go try to use the standard economic, economic, you know, advertising if per eyeball, you know, on a local thing like that, you could make $10,000 a year in a in a town the size of Calabasas, California. Right? And that's not enough, that's not enough to get you as a reporter, let alone anything. Right. Absolutely.

Mike Oreskes: 1:16:18

So I think I think there are a couple of things, though, that you begin to see working. First of all, if you can put together a chain of those of what you just described, enough of them so that a you can aggregate the advertising. And if you also ask people to help pay for, I mean, people,

Ken LaCorte: 1:16:38

the second, but the first thing is what what, what, what AOL did, what did they call all their hyperlocal sites? They, they had 1000 of

Mike Oreskes: 1:16:46

them. Yeah. And there are and others have now following in your footsteps? I mean, patch is essentially similar to what AOL tried to do. And

Ken LaCorte: 1:16:53

I think patch, I think patch is the same company.

Mike Oreskes: 1:16:56

Right? No, but I mean, it's the same purpose. It's the same idea.

Ken LaCorte: 1:17:00

Yeah, yeah. No, but I think that patch is the is the

Mike Oreskes: 1:17:05

is the successor is the successor. No, no, that that's true. But you know, there are there are chains of community papers, for example, in New York that are doing fine, they make money and they you know, some of them also take subscriptions from their readers and others take only from there from their advertisers.

Ken LaCorte: 1:17:27

Know if I trusted a young person to not to go too crazy on the politics. I say young person doesn't have to be young person. I would pay $5 a month to have somebody who was investigating what my locals City did. What did that I mean, I but but I've never seen those become successful. I mean,

Mike Oreskes: 1:17:46

well, it's hard. It's a lot of work. And it's not nobody's gonna get rich doing that. It's yeah,

Ken LaCorte: 1:17:52

I mean, a girl shows boobs, a girl shows her boobs, she can pay a rent on only fans. But but there's no kind of a similar setup on a on a journalistic sideline. You know, one I wonder if it can be merged with theirs next door? Are you around for 10 years, they're, they're basically a this is Facebook, but you have to live it's Facebook for you and your neighbors right? And you literally had to get a postcard yet to prove you live within that zip code to be part of that of that thing. And but there's no professionalism on that right that's that's what they've got is it's usually just people bitching about things but that's where I find the most amount of news when there's a traffic accident maybe somebody saw it and wrote about that but again, mainly since somebody had a guitar playing last night at 930 But I wonder if there's a merging of a social thing on that with a social site like a next door to be merged with and in this next door area where if you want to pay to actually have somebody you know go ask the City Council questions and and to go File Freedom of Information Act requests and to go find out you know, what those major issues are going on? I just don't think we need that somehow.

Mike Oreskes: 1:19:09

I totally agree and actually if after this call you want to get together and see if we can build it I'm with you. Dude, I've

Ken LaCorte: 1:19:15

lost so much money trying so I lost I lost probably$100,000 200,000 on on on trying to find a local solution then after after I got bounced out of Fox I said let's get a real fair and balanced let's let's bring a guy from NPR let's bring a guy from Fox News tried to do that last my ass on that and of course was branded as a as it reactionary right wing Russian troll by the formerly best newspaper in the in the planet that is that turned into a piece of shit. So yeah, no, I'm out. I'm out fixing this problem. But you write for a logo you write for a look.

Mike Oreskes: 1:19:54

I do. I do. I actually worked with a chain of community papers here and you You're a cold stress media that actually does a lot of good service. I mean,

Ken LaCorte: 1:20:05

bitching about Trump mainly.

Mike Oreskes: 1:20:08

My usual it's not my usual topic, although I have been known to do it and

Ken LaCorte: 1:20:13

I was gonna, I was gonna bring one up because they did the, you know, it's like, there was a picture of Trump looking like an idiot. And then there was a picture of Rudy Giuliani, who looked like, you know, you just set him on fire he was Rudy Giuliani is crazy, but Roger Ailes always used to say is I can photo editors are sadistic bastards. So when he would get an interview done by them, he would never let them take the picture. He blank, right, you can either have a picture that I give you and use it, or you can go pound sand. And, and I learned that lesson, actually, when I was, I ran my college newspaper, and the local, the local newspaper wanted to do a profile on the college. Right? It was Claremont, California. I'll never do this again. Oh, wow. I said, I did it again. Because New York Times Group too. And, and the guy gave even while I was doing an interview a photographer with a little longer, but let's just sat there and take pictures as I was talking. So that literally the picture would be it was like this, you know, halfway through New York Times did something more intentional, put a shadow on me and and you know, made it look like I was I was I was I was duplicitous. But photographers can be as evil as any journalist in their, in their own way, if you if you let them.

Mike Oreskes: 1:21:27

But one of the things that's really, I think, both interesting and heartening about local news and the local audiences to, to go into my own experiences. You know, I have occasionally done stuff about Trump, but it's I don't do it very often, because nobody cares. It's not what people are really interested in. What they're really interested in, is what's happening in my block what's happening in my neighborhood. My my story this week, in fact, is about the new district attorney, and whether he's gonna prosecute serious crimes in the county, and that people are really interested in

Ken LaCorte: 1:22:03

you know, I might have been confusing, an article that I saw that you had written somewhere else versus because it hadn't had been pictures, because you wrote a bunch on a building that was, what is the blood works building that was oh, yeah, to go from a two story building to a 20 story? Yeah, that's the kind of 1010 stories on that, which I was like,

Mike Oreskes: 1:22:22

what it's gonna be what, you know, what's, you know, what, what will development rules be what, there was a big controversy here in my neighborhood over where to put homeless people during the pandemic, you know, these really gritty local issues that are that are actually quite substantive. There's, they're, they're not easy. Often, they're often very difficult and they invite involve trade offs. But people really want to talk about the substance of them. And there'll be big disagreements, it isn't that there isn't fierce argument in politics. But it isn't wrote, it's much it's much more pragmatic. And I find that heartening actually, doesn't mean couldn't kick that away. But

Ken LaCorte: 1:23:00

where's the media going in the next five years?

Mike Oreskes: 1:23:04

Well, I hope, and I actually have some optimism that we're gonna we're kind of recognize that we're not as all knowing as we like to paint ourselves. And therefore our determination to be the final judge and jury of the political realm is not a good role for us that we're not actually that good at that role.

Ken LaCorte: 1:23:33

Why do you think what do you think will realize that now?

Mike Oreskes: 1:23:37

Because I think it's costing us a lot, actually, I don't think it's actually working for a lot of news organizations. It drove a lot of traffic when we had Trump to help us polarize that for another Trump, and and you know, his return would actually be a difficult problem for media, because I think it would call the question of, are we just going to go back to the same ride the wave of polarization, which leads to a shaky kind of journalism, or are we going to actually try to be the kind of journalism that says, I'm not going to tell you what the right answer is, but I'm going to give you everything I can to help come to the right answer. Because that's what we're good at. That's what we know how to do. And I see that I do see that happening. By the way, in local journalism, I see people really setting out to try to understand problems and explain them sometimes in a really aggressive, investigative way, sometimes just in a more explanatory way, but always with a real eye toward what's the service I can give. And I think if we see our journalism as a service to people not as an end in itself, and not as a political role. I think we'll be better.

Ken LaCorte: 1:24:44

Yeah. I don't see that happening. Because I think that journalists to who went slammed his heart the president or vice versa, as hard as they could felt in their heart that they were saving America. That that that that when They that, that they've equated getting their political ends done with journalism. And I think we've got now a whole class of young people who didn't even come close to ever having kind of the whole tell both sides story fairly and and that they don't believe that it's bad. I think that they really feel that exposing Republicans who obviously hate people, and they hate homeless people, that is the path towards making a better society, and I can and I get more clicks, and I get more friends, giving me giving me high fives at the party and I still get more money from from, you know, who was the who was the CNN guy was the CNN White House reporter who used to get into it with Trump and he was dude, he wrote a book he.

Mike Oreskes: 1:25:49

tapper, Jake Tapper.

Ken LaCorte: 1:25:51

No, no, the loudmouth guy who was always getting into the fights the press that doesn't narrow that doesn't matter. Yeah, Temper Temper is actually temper out of out of almost all the guys there. I like 10. Anyway, the one that everybody that was the very highest polarized one who just said that, that that Virginia is like north, North Korea because of the of younguns fight against a critical race, critical race theory, and was complaining about that he still had the lashes from the Trump presidency, but became popular wrote a book made tons of money on that I still see the rewards, both psychological and financial, paying for for extremism and point of view politics, I

Mike Oreskes: 1:26:31

owe you. I mean, I think the two of us laid out the

Ken LaCorte: 1:26:35

evidence that

Mike Oreskes: 1:26:38

there are a lot of bad incentives out there. And those incentives have gotten worse. I agree with that. And I think, on the other hand, we haven't saved America. I mean, we may have, we may have thought we were saving America, but what have we accomplished? I mean, we where are we I think we have to have more faith in the people we allegedly serve. This goes back to the whole conversation we had about, if you don't trust your audience, your audience is not going to trust you. And we have operated in a way that doesn't. That doesn't send a message of trust in our audience, it sends a message of pandering to our audience,

Ken LaCorte: 1:27:13

you know, and then you have to be Be careful of your audience when you disagree with them. Right, if Sean Hannity truly believed that the election wasn't stolen. And he said that on his show, his ratings have dropped 20%. And I, and similarly, if, you know if, if Rachel Maddow said, You know what, I think all of the global warming predictions have gone way, way overboard, and it's getting warmer, but I don't think it's going to be that bad. I think that the rise in oceans will be consistent as to what they've been throughout the last 10 years, three millimeters per per year. And that's nothing by the time I'm dead, if she said that, she would, she would be less popular, she would lose an audience. And I mean, they all have that to worry about.

Mike Oreskes: 1:27:59

I think part of where I agree with you, in a sense, is that I think there's a lot of bad incentives out there. And obviously, one of the incentives is if you say something that isn't what your audience expects you to say, you could be in trouble. And that's true on both the left and the right, right. And it takes a certain spine to say, I'm in this for the long run. I'm not just in this for today, and I'm gonna try to make a go of it by giving people the giving people reality. And that's what journalism used to be about. I don't even know that journalism was ever about truth. But I do hope we were at least trying to be about reality. And the simple fact is, and, frankly, Trump's mishegoss about stolen elections is the best example there isn't that this election wasn't stolen, he lost. And journalists who insist on saying that it might have been stolen because they're wearing their audience won't like it if they say something else, are actually digging themselves deeper into a hole that they'll never escape from. And you're right. They

Ken LaCorte: 1:29:03

are generalist, who out and out refuse to look into a lot of hinky stuff right and and look half the reason why the right thinks that is because nobody seriously investigated any of this shit. Not one news organization that you know of or that we know by name on as a mainstream legacy news organization actually said, You know what, why did that why did they kick people out at a certain hour? Or where did that trunk come from? Or those late night shifts? Let's really get into this. Man. It was a whole lot of nope, Trump's gone fuck you This is? Of course not. And, and would I be shocked if some of those things come out to have some element of truth at the bottom of them? No, I wouldn't have any of them. Have any of them been there? No. But you know, well,

Mike Oreskes: 1:29:49

although as the as the legitimate conservative and Republican reviews of this election say this is not me speaking this is the country Serving as groups that have taken a close look at this election. They all say that there was no pattern of troublesome issues. He, what was your word, hinky? It was there was no there was no pattern of hinky behavior any different from any previous election. And none of it would have been a big enough to change the results of the election.

Ken LaCorte: 1:30:19

I get that claim. And I think it's probably the case. I just don't think it's been investigated. And I know that it has a way to say that, right. I mean, part of it is part of it, it was 98% 92% of journalists were so thrilled that he was gone, and that America was saved, and that we're not going to be in Nazi Germany the next four years, that that there was no serious looks at any of that. The other part of it is I've been involved in a lot of journalistic investigations. You don't you don't cover shit like that in three weeks. Right. I mean, I mean, you know, there are there are people who have won awards for uncovering electoral voter fraud, that takes a year it takes it takes somebody to turn it takes the you know, it takes, it takes time and resources on that. And neither there have been, you know, there was no time on obviously, in an election and certainly no resources. So, I mean, would I be shocked if we learned some things? No. But did I have I seen anything that I'm like, Aha, there's a smoking gun. I you know, every smoking gun that I was, I heard about, you know, the, you know, came came to be nothing. And

Mike Oreskes: 1:31:29

there we go.

Ken LaCorte: 1:31:31

Alright, right, Mike. It's been, this was a quick,

Mike Oreskes: 1:31:34

it's Ken. I'm making a note that five years from now we're gonna come back and do this again to see how journalism's done

Ken LaCorte: 1:31:42

now we'll do it earlier. We'll win Trump. I think he's coming back in and I think the whole world will explode again. That's if I had to pay attention to that. But

Mike Oreskes: 1:31:52

from your lips to wherever.

Ken LaCorte: 1:31:54

My lips. Alright,

Mike Oreskes: 1:31:55

great to see you.