An inside look at the downfall of corporate media | Steve Krakauer

Steve Krakauer has worked across the media spectrum, from Fox News to CNN, and is the person behind Fourth Watch, an eye-opening newsletter for anyone that wants to catch up on some sobering facts about the media.

In this episode, Ken and Steve give a behind-the-scenes look at how the press works, the divided media landscape, and the concept of free speech on social media.

His upcoming book “Uncovered” is available for pre-order here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/steve-krakauer/uncovered/9781546003472/

Sign up for his newsletter, “The Fourth Watch,” here: https://fourthwatch.substack.com/

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

Transcript

Ken LaCorte: 0:00

With trust in the news media reaching a new low every year, the illusion of truly fair news is slowly disappearing. Steve Krakauer, a former media insider who's worked inside both conservative and liberal media outlets offers a sobering view on the media landscape. In his newsletter, fourth watch, he and I talked about the decline of corporate media, the impact of social media and his upcoming book uncovered. Thanks for joining me, I've been I've been a big fan of yours for a long time, out of all of the other kinds of media writers and people out in the universe. You are the most person the person out there who kind of most I find myself thinking, aligning myself with and saying, This guy kind of thinks like I do, we came from similar but opposite opposite paths on things I came from Fox, you came from CNN, give me a quick overview of like, how you went from, from CNN to writing your Media Watch and some of the stuff you're doing?

Steve Krakauer: 0:57

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, like you said, I, I do think that you know, in some ways working at CNN, you working at Fox, there were kind of polar opposites in some ways, but I do think actually, a lot of ways it's, it ends up being more similar than being outside of that, which, you know, I've been now outside of like, literally outside of New York for almost nine years now. And and then outside of like the industry that the bubble, if you will, for even longer and and when you do, I think you step back, you end up seeing a lot of similarities between the different ends of the corporate media spectrum, let's say so, yeah, you know, I was an NBC page, there was almost my first job actually was at Fox News for a few months before I got that job as a overnight PA, working on the cut ins and on Fox and Friends Weekend. And then was an NBC page. And then I went to media reporting at TV newser, and immediate, and so did that for several years and got to know the industry really well. I was very much like the insider going all the medium parties and living up in that New York scene. And then I met Piers Morgan, I was a big fan of peers from before he got hired at CNN. And I really thought that the show had big potential there, you know, he was stepping in to replace Larry King, and it was going to be this big interview show. And I've seen, I had seen some appears as interviews. And so in that meeting, which was sort of reportedly going to be this off the record coffee, between a media reporter and a future CNN host, I kind of made my pitch to him about why I should work for him, which was essentially and this was 2010. Basically being I call it a digital producer, you know, you're on one hour a day, what happens the other 23 hours, you know, we've got this new thing called social media and Twitter that's kind of happening now. We've got a website, you know, that maybe we could do some things with some extra content, and made that pitch. And he really bought into it. Shortly after I got hired there. I got him on to Twitter, which he had, then you know, about a month, a couple months later, he changed the password on me and started doing it himself. So he was he was totally in. And then I ended up getting promoted at CNN and doing that basically for the network. So I was in charge of how TV content lived online on social media on website, did that for a while. And I really was the one thing that I wasn't doing at CNN was content. And I really wanted to do more with that I was a little bit pigeon holed there. I loved my time at CNN, but I was kind of more of the corporate marketing, managerial type. You know, in the digital space, I met up with Chris Powell, who I'd known for a while, who was the CEO at the blaze and kind of carved out a role as Vice President of digital content for the blaze, and ended up moving down to Dallas. That's what got me out of New York, as the Glenn was based and still is based in Las Colinas, outside of Dallas, I did that for several years, ended up starting my own company, and, and really stayed outside of the media world until about 2019. When I when I started fourth watch, that media newsletter that I write, and then got connected or reconnected with Megyn Kelly, the next year in 2020, and started working with her on her just, you know, not yet launched a podcast and then Kelly show.

Ken LaCorte: 4:00

So just on the piers thing, so piers is an interesting guy, because recently I've been you know, when you see the clips on him, he has been talking about free speech has been kind of normal. When he had the CNN show, he just couldn't shut the fuck up about gun control. And it's like, from a large percentage of the country, the last thing we want to see is a British guy telling us to give away our guns, was nobody able to jump on him on that he just kind of drove that it seemed like right into the ditch.

Steve Krakauer: 4:26

It's fascinating. I mean, I think the thing is that, you know, peers generally can't shut the fuck up about anything. And so and so, you know, it was all very authentic. And he went from one to the other. You know, he was big on the the Arab Spring that was happening at the time and freedom and it's part of a protest there. And I think he gave tough interviews to politicians across the spectrum, early, early days. And, and then yeah, you know, Sandy Hook happened and that became a big passion for him was that particular issue and I do I think even he, in his book, which he wrote, you know, well, he was so allowed CNN acknowledge that it was the challenge of the British voice coming in and talking about, you know, taking people's guns, and I think turned off a lot of people. And, you know, it's it's definitely something that I think ended up defining his time at CNN, although I think it's disappointing because I actually think that a lot of what he did there, if it ended up being the news cycle dictated the way that that show went. But if it started off on that path, I remember the first week we launched, we launched with big interviews, solo one hour interviews with Oprah, Howard Stern, Ricky Gervais, George Clooney and Condi Rice. And I was like, Okay, if we can do this now, we can't do this every week. But you know, that sort of thing would have been amazing. And I still think actually has a platform, even maybe even more now than it did at the time. But no, you're as you said, he has certain things that he's very passionate about, I think, you know, there, there are things I agree very much with him about, like with free speech, and Twitter and whatnot, and things I disagree with him on, I think, certainly COVID in those early days of COVID, although he's kind of backed off on that a little bit. But you know, one of the things I love about piers is as I got to know him, you know, he was at our wedding. My wife was his publicist for four years before, before, before he even came over to CNN. And so we go way back, and he loves to argue and love to debate and he's totally fine if you disagree with him and kind of have that back and forth, which is great.

Ken LaCorte: 6:22

It was an edge because Larry King provided an interesting niche on TV, which I don't see really exist in all that much. He would let somebody come on. And then Larry, we would back off and let that person you would learn about that person wasn't a debate show. It was he'd have Yasser Arafat on and he'd be like, so what do you like for breakfast? And then you'd learn something about Yasser Arafat as opposed to somebody jumping in your face and saying, How could you sign or not signed the Accords of whatnot. And piers wasn't that he was obviously a very, very different different person on that. You know, CNN, and, and Fox, I think have both radically changed since since we have have left there. So I left basically on on rental right after the right after the Trump election of 2016. It sounds like you were kind of in a similar timeline maybe a little earlier. So the big question, and we could probably talk all day about this, but let's go down that path is, is what the heck happened to journalism and America, because you know, we used to we at CNN and Fox used to both be certainly closer to each other ideologically, Fox was was off to the right, CNN was was off to the left, we could argue on who who was how much over what line. And since then, it was really before that it was probably since 2012 or so. Both of those, both of those entities have kind of gone to the mattresses and and really, really pitched to their audience. I asked this to a New York Times journalist on what happened. I think he had zero clue as to as to actually what was going on. He was blaming, you know, the death of local newspapers, why everybody hates hates journalists. What do you see? What's your operating theory on? What happened to journalism in America?

Steve Krakauer: 8:11

Yeah, it's it's kind of the core question. I think. And I know, I've got the book coming out in February uncovered, which, which really, I tried to get at this because I do think that there was this inflection point, look, even when I was at CNN, there were moments where I thought this was an odd comment made by one of the executives on our morning call. And you know, that's, that seems a little bit far fetched and out of left field, or, or there were certain decisions mainly on what not to cover or how not to cover something, then how to cover it that I thought this seems like we're, you know, maybe not going down the road of pure truth and honesty here. But it but it wasn't that much. I was in all of the top meetings in 2012. During that election campaign, it was there at every debate site there for every primary night, every general election with all the top executives, I did not feel like CNN was putting their finger on the scale one way or the other for Obama over Romney. Clearly there was a mandate shift that happened for years. And then and then subsequently the the entire Trump presidency. And I think that there really is multiple factors here. I do think that I'm not sure the depth of local news. But I do think that there's a level of bias that is ignored, or is less emphasized when people talk about like political bias, but I actually think is more important than geographic bias. I do think that there's a huge difference between even someone who identifies as a Republican who lives in New York who lives in DC, who is part of the general establishment, you know, corporate structure, whether it's through media or through politics or through business, then even a person who maybe leans left, but lives outside of that bubble, there is a very clear divide there. And I do think that the more the corporate press gets closer to a singular bubble, and away from the people, that that bias is only going to grow and that and has grown so I do think that there's that. And most

Ken LaCorte: 10:01

people don't realize how close geographically or the center, you can, you can start eating a sandwich. And you can watch from Fox to CNN, to ABC to NBC to New York Times and not be finished with your lunch. By the time you're, you've gone through every single top media outlet in the country, or at least.

Steve Krakauer: 10:21

So funny you say that I literally, that's one of the things I wrote about it, it would take about 90 minutes, I tried to map it out for you to watch it from Yeah, all those places. You mentioned New York Times Wall Street Journal, they are that close in New York City. I mean, that is, you know, it's it's amazing. And people who I don't go to New York City very often are a lot of times surprised by how small the landmass is, compared to obviously, how many people are there, there's many, many people there. So. So I do think that that is a structural change. And before we even get to Trump, I also think another factor that doesn't get covered enough is just the business model that's changed. I mean, you could have the purest journalistic intentions through the entire Trump presidency, everyone is only caring about journalism. And you still have a business model where every day less and less people watching traditional model in a traditional way, watch TV, read newspapers, every day your business is changing is like quicksand, and you cannot change it, there's nothing you can do that will change the viewing habits or the reader habits of the way people consume content. It's just a factor. And it honestly I think makes people go very uneasy makes people make decisions that are not based on the bottom line that are that are almost like flailing panic decisions that happen because of this. And if the business was still perfect, and still good, and no one was drifting away. I don't think some of those decisions would get made, I think that there would be a lot more grounding on it. Also,

Ken LaCorte: 11:44

I completely agree. Although I think that most of the decisions are business decisions, and are actually smart business decisions. But you know, you just back up to the 80s. Everybody had monopolies. I mean, the New York Times, you know, all it had to compete against was the New York Post, which is just a different world and the Daily Mail, they didn't compete against every single organization online, the LA Times had no competitive, the network's at all kind of we're all losing a little bit of money. We have some bragging rights on, on whether Tom Brokaw is bigger than Dan Rather, is bigger than the Jennings where if you squint your eyes, they're the same guy. They're talking about the same stuff that they read the New York Times, that's that morning. But the monopolies started to fall apart. As you know, Fox was one of the first ones to jump into that world and say, okay, CNN has been doing this for 20 years by themselves. Now, there's competition, and we certainly defined ourselves on, you know, that, that we are giving you a different political slant, we're giving you pretty girls, and we're giving you graphics that are gonna, that are gonna make your, you know, hopefully you don't have one of those things where you where you fall into a puddle when you when you see bright graphics. And and that was the beginning on on cable news. But then we saw it hit the newspaper industry when you don't have you know, when we were growing up, you couldn't read the Chicago Tribune, you know, unless you got on a plane and went to Chicago or that one outlet that had all the all the all the country's newspapers. So yeah. And everything now competes on a headline. That's, that's where it's, that's where I see as a huge, huge difference.

Steve Krakauer: 13:20

And, and, and they compete with, with you and with me, and with the general you, I mean, people who watch this, literally, you know, and it's not to inflate the other mean that, you know, they're not necessarily the New York Times or Fox News. But every day, an individual person can can grab some of that oxygen and be part of the quote media when they never could before. And that actually, I think there's there's a couple elements that that are that are really interesting when it comes to social media and the way that that's changed the game. Because yes, that does bring fear into corporate, you know, C suites and to the newsrooms across the country, because everyday, you're less and less relevant just because you have Yeah, you have more, you know, that landscape is changed, but also, the feedback loop. You know, I think this is another huge factor to it. Before, you know, you might be able to send an email to someone and before that you could send a letter to the newsroom. Maybe that reaches a person and then maybe someone kind of goes and goes through and says that we won't show the anchor, the bad ones is something you know, now they get on Twitter. And, you know, Twitter is, is as I'm as obsessed as the average, you know, a cell, a media reporter, but they get positive and negative feedback, what feels like very important feels like very large amounts of feedback, even if it actually is only a couple of 100 people may be saying something, and it can it can really affect decision making. I mean, it actually does affect decision making, particularly if you're not particularly strong in your conviction or in your idea of saying I'm going to to cover the story a certain way no matter what, once you start to get that negative feedback. It has an effect a lot of times on people and that's something that just didn't exist before and really only is it existed in the last 12 years something like that. I mean, it's it's barely a new phenomenon.

Ken LaCorte: 15:05

You know, it's interesting I, I looked, you studied just a little bit of journalism history. And you of course, you talk about the the days of yellow journalism with with Hearst, and and, and Pulitzer and all these guys fighting and there was a dozen newspapers in New York and they all had the kids out there screaming about the headline. And it was kind of interesting, because it was the same clickbait game was going on back then with those kids, because whoever had the best headline and the loudest bell would be, would be able to sell more newspapers. And now we sell every single headline that way. And back then it didn't really change until people started moving out to the suburbs. And part of it was the New York Times, ironically enough, kind of kind of saying, all right, we're not going to play this game, we're going to give you the newspaper of record, which they said it's lit on fire. That's been the saddest, the saddest decline of journalism in America has been the New York Times deciding not to be a fair newspaper anymore.

Steve Krakauer: 16:03

Yeah, the New York Times is an interesting one, I think. Because even the way we talk about it, like I say, we say CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, and they're these are giant organizations, and there's some good and there's some, some not so good. And, and I think that, you know, part of the problem is when they become so big, and you become your representatives. Now. I mean, the another big change is this, this rise of kind of influencer journalism, you know, people that used to be beholden to the organization that they were from, you know, that you almost didn't know people's names, you maybe knew the very top people at the very top of the food chain. But besides that you didn't know the general reporter. Now, every individual reporter has a platform themselves that are making news, and they are now reflections. And they almost feel like free agents, you know, now, I'm associated with the New York Times, and, frankly, is it good for the New York Times? Or is it good for them? It's certainly a lot of ways can be end up being bad for the New York Times. And I think, you know, as I do think that the New York Times is an example of something that does good journalism, still somewhere in there, but

Ken LaCorte: 17:05

they as long as you don't, as long as you don't talk about politics or any social thing, they're well, that's

Steve Krakauer: 17:09

the thing, they are often so in their own way. And so overridden with, with the kind of toxic elements of that newsroom, almost the internal politics that ended up spilling out and making the journalism decisions, the wrong journalism decisions for for what used to be a very reputable newspaper. Yeah.

Ken LaCorte: 17:27

Now in the, the levels that they mislead, are shocking. You know, they rarely will lie with a fact. But they will just keep out. And I always call it my, my Pete Buttigieg. thing I say I tell people could you imagine a Fox News said that Pete Buda judge gave a speech that to gay supporters wearing underwear and socks. And I'm sure he did. But there were probably some straight guys in the room. He was wearing a suit, he was wearing pants, he was wearing a shirt. But all you have to do is leave out certain elements of fact, and I could just tell you a true scenario, that that led you to believe something that was 100% 100% False. And that's kind of where we are with with with a lot of the big boys right now. I don't trust any institutions anymore in the journalism world. Some of the National Review, I find they are intellectually honest. And that's that's where I come down to. It's kind of like that there. And there's a handful of organizations, but most seem to go along with their, I'd say the party line, but it's really them targeting an audience and then saying, all right, I don't want to say anything that's going to piss off this audience. And that's tricky. Look, it's tricky. For me. It's like, I believe certain things that I know that everybody who reads my newsletter thinks I'm a nut for not thinking the election of 2020 was stolen or not thinking that Governor Lake should be installed in in, in Arizona. And it's this like I looked at I couldn't find it. So sometimes there's just a tendency just to say, what's the advantage? It's like walking into a room and sitting down with a Catholic person and saying, you know, that that's the wrong religion, and it often just doesn't take you anywhere.

Steve Krakauer: 19:16

Yeah, no, I think that there's, you know, a couple of those, you know, there is this general consensus that forms and any deviation from that consensus can really put if you make a person feel out on a limb, no matter what kind of, you know, audience that they're talking to. So I do think that there's there's a huge sense of that. But I also think, you know, one of the things that really stood out to me after the the election of Donald Trump, but I do think is, you know, certainly a factor in where things ended up going. Was it was such a shock to the system. I truly think and I've talked to many people in the in newsrooms that have gone on the record with me or off the record, that that no one in any of those newsrooms thought that there was a chance that that would happen and including on that night, you You have to figure and I, I thought that there was a chance but a low chance that he would win. But when you when you have people that that something like this happens where everyone we know, do not vote for this person, they would never vote for this person and at least that they would say publicly to this to the people in the media. It should be an eye opening experience. And I did. The next year I went and I talked to some of the executives I knew at CNN and other places, ABC, CBS, and I tried to get a sense of does this moment bring a level of humility and introspection now? Is there is there a sense that, that we want to figure out how we got this wrong? What we missed? And for a brief moment, there was and actually, you know, in the book, I talked to Selena Zito who got hired right after the Trump election, and almost as a reaction to it. And there was a few month period where she was on, they were asking her questions, and then it changed. And then as soon as you got in there almost immediately within 2017 It was almost accusatory of Why do these people think this thing that's that's completely ridiculous and not true. And then that introspection completely went away and and actually ended up going the other direction. And it caused so many little mistakes to happen and little mistakes that went uncorrected and unaccountable. I mean, there was there was no penalty for getting things wrong in the Trump era. And that was whether it related to Donald Trump directly. That was how,

Ken LaCorte: 21:23

unless you said something positive about him, and you were a mistake, and then you would be fired and smile. Yeah. But you know, and you and I both wrote about stuff like this, you're like, when I see 12 mistakes. And for those people listening, that's air quotes there when I see 12 mistakes in a row, and they're all on the same ideological side. I stopped thinking that their mistakes and I started start thinking something else. I actually saw it a little bit earlier than you that I remember having a conversation with the managing editor@foxnews.com on the 2012 election saying, Wow, this was the most biased I've ever seen the media before in my life, not particularly to CNN, but you know, we even had a bias watch section that we popped up on on the front of the.com, which I ran in. And so we had something every day on that, but it's like, laughable now. Now, it's like it's like looking at the overt sexuality of a 1950s movie because a girl showed her ankles or something. It's, it's, it's kind of humorous, and you're right, like, right after the election. What I noticed is it was definitely a geographic thing as well. The closer you were to New York DC, the less that you saw this coming just because you you just bought that hole. You call it the Sella quarter or media. Yeah, so is that catching on? That's, that's, uh,

Steve Krakauer: 22:39

you know, I have to say I thought I invented the phrase, but I ended up looking back a while back I maybe I popularized it so other people know, but I used to take the cell all the time from New York to DC.

Ken LaCorte: 22:49

That's the train. That's what they call it. I never called it that.

Steve Krakauer: 22:52

But well, the Amtrak train I always I read about it in the book. Also, it was, you know, Amtrak ran a train from New York to DC and it stopped you know, in Baltimore, it stopped in Philly along the way. But the the Sella it I think it maybe had one stop. I mean, they all those towns, it was the fast one, right. It's everyone wanted to get on the SLO, because that was your fastest route from the other ones, he just blew right by the rest of the country. And that's kind of the feeling that I had a bit it was like, you know, you kind of see him out the window. But other than that, you know, we're not stopping in these places, or one of the other

Ken LaCorte: 23:23

things, we think smart here and we're not gonna we're not gonna get muddied up by anyone. So yeah, so I saw it kind of like starting to spin off the wheels. And then of course, when when Trump came in everybody's everybody's head blew up. And then they literally made I remember Brian Stelter, who I'm not a fan of, in most, in most ways, especially just given the hypocrisy he you know, he would be somebody out there who was as bad or worse than the things he would decry. It was kind of it was, it was like, like watching a hooker get mad at people having affairs. But he was one of the people who, you know, there seemed to be a Twitter consensus among journalists that the threat of Donald Trump, ie Hitler 1933 is so bad, that it is smart for us to drop our values and put those aside to put this concept of balance aside to put the concept of complete fairness aside, how do we cover him doesn't matter, let's go after him as heavily as possible. And it was, it was a quasi public conversation that I saw, and then the entire media just kind of jumped onto that whole train.

Steve Krakauer: 24:29

You're so right. In fact, it was actually happening out in public, there was a sense that there were places like if you look at I'll just throw a couple of people out there. So that O'Brien, Jay Rosen, who was a professor at NYU, who made a very clear call to the media to say, this is extenuating circumstances, you know, yes, you had standards before. But this request is an existential threat to the country, to democracy to the freedom of the press. We must drop our previous standards and actually doing it and we saw it in real time. I mean, we He used to have two sources to first story to go on the air at CNN, that was dropped to one. I mean, and it was, you know, one anonymous source ended up often being wrong probably had an agenda of him or herself always do, right. And that and that's how these stories ran out. And I do think that there was this moment where, and again, I've talked to Brian about this, I've talked to other people, I think that there was a sense that there was a real threat here, real or perceived, I think you and I will agree it was a perceived, not not the threat that they thought it was. But then it becomes this galvanizing force. Now we're all in this together, we're gonna fight this and we're gonna, we're gonna really, you know, it's gonna be Watergate every day here at the network. And when you're in that mentality, and I think about it a lot, if I was at CNN, still, if I never left, would I have gotten caught up in this moment, and I'd like to think I wouldn't. But you know, Jeff Zucker, who was the leader at CNN, and who I worked with for a year before I left is a really interesting guy. You know, personally, I really liked him. He's the kind of person who would get you excited to go to work and to do your job and to, to help other people. And I wonder if, if it was a lie, I think that was spun that this is what we're doing here. But if it felt like this noble lie that got people excited and started to do it, and you know, to be able to bottom line is you saw the ratings also, you know, people, not a massive number of people in the country, but enough that the ratings were boosted by this, this sort of overall, you know, overreach of what the Trump administration actually was.

Ken LaCorte: 26:35

Yeah, I mean, it look, you could, you could come out with an article saying Donald Trump is a misunderstood genius, and it would get shared all over Facebook. Or you could come out and say, you know, Trump, Hitler hates another Jew, and it would get shared. But if you came up with something kind of reasonable in the middle, good luck on that. And that's, and look, I spent a big chunk of my 401k Trying to find that middle ground and completely failing at it. It was, I mean, to a weird extent, the public, including, including both of us, we get the media we deserve. Because it's like, you know, how often it's like, what are we sharing? What are we clicking? What shows are we watching? You look at Fox, I mean, it's clear that the, the more sober news shows the writing sucked, you get somebody at the at the end of the night, saying, Let me tell you why those other guys are a bunch of a holes. And here, you know, here are things to make you feel better about how you feel in politics, and I'm on your side, and I'm going to interpret this all for you. And those ratings are, you know, four times higher than somebody saying, Here's what happened today.

Steve Krakauer: 27:40

Yeah, it's, you know, I think people are tribal. And certainly there are elements that appeal to it. But then I also look at the success of other places, you know, particularly the place like Joe Rogan and and others that are there's a there's a more nuance to it. And and they found success in it because there is so much choice now in the media landscape. I do think that there are opportunities for more nuance out there because most people are not so polarized. In fact,

Ken LaCorte: 28:08

when you when you go to a dinner party, nobody's that crazy. But outside a long format podcasting, where do you see that? Because I agree on Rogen and Rogen like blew me away because Rogan was everything that wasn't supposed to work right. And it worked amazingly huge Now he'd been plugged, you know, the guy had been going for a decade in the in the trenches, but do you see it popping out on on any format besides kind of long format digital?

Steve Krakauer: 28:36

Well, I guess, you know, I would say substack is the other one right? It's kind of on the on the on the digital side of it. I I think there have been forays into trying to make that kind of ethos work on let's say TV. I know like news nation is an example of trying to to carve out that lane. And I'm not sure it's going to work in the old models. And so I don't know if it's going to if we're going to go back to a place where you don't have to be honest CNN in theory you know, with Chris Licht, who I also know and have great respect for and I think that he is at least going to make an attempt to try to get back to the CNN evolved not the not you know more back towards the news and objectivity side. Um, but it's a tough it's a tough gig especially with Trump running again but but that is going to be an attempt there

Unknown: 29:23

but maybe

Steve Krakauer: 29:27

it won't Trump running No,

Ken LaCorte: 29:29

maybe on CNN that that all could be just a just a fig leaf. You go in after the revolution you kill all the people you don't like but you know, when you're popping Don Don Lemon back in the morning shows and whatnot, then that makes me scratch my head and say maybe this isn't a reach for objectivity that was claimed

Steve Krakauer: 29:48

Well, I I'm gonna be very curious to see what scene it looks like, let's say six months to a year from now because yeah, right now they're they're kind of rearranging the deck chairs, you know, and I don't I don't think that's hot. I think everyone One who got to know what CNN was just because people are in new settings and are maybe toned down and are not doing what they called Maryrose and little monologues, antiTrump monologues now that those have been pared back and you don't see the breaking news banner, that's that's not going to do it, it's going to take massive wholesale change. And I, I still think that that might be coming. But But yeah, no, it's when they

Ken LaCorte: 30:21

hire you to be a regular commentator there, then I'll then I might believe some of it. Yeah, I just think it sounds good. And they'll shift things around. But I'd love to be wrong on that.

Steve Krakauer: 30:34

It's something to watch. I don't think if your goal is getting the most of these traditional Nielsen ratings possible, which I also think, you know, we can dig a real in the nitty gritty, I think that Nielsen, you know, as a system is set up to, you know, is not exactly the best way of judging in cable news, you know, the the success model, right, if you're going to try to do that, you know, try to get back to a new way where it's news focused, if you're only going to care about the Nielsen ratings, you're in trouble until

Ken LaCorte: 31:05

the Nielsen ratings got too good. Because, you know, back in the day, it was like, this is how this show did this is how this show, they might break it into 15 minutes. And when they said, Oh, well, we now can break it down into one minute increments. So you know, which guests popped when you know, which headline popped I thought, Oh, this sounds like exactly what is happening in the.com world, whereas you know, you and I know that, you know, we had a system at Fox and everybody has the same system, you'd put in five headlines for a story. And whichever story you know, and you'd go out, not so much over the edge, or you lost your credibility, but you'd put a little bit of, of teasing us or clickability into there, and then the computer would figure out which which click the best and so your your your clickbait machine drove up. And the exact same thing is happening on cable news, they literally know which guests don't right anymore.

Steve Krakauer: 31:55

Right? Yeah, it's gotten here. You're right, it's gotten too good. I feel that same way about the about the digital metrics, you know, let the way views. And, you know, we can see exactly when the drop off of podcasts or video, you know, clicking I remember when I was at CNN, we use Chartbeat, which really was just I mean, it was so fun. Because you could see exactly what people were clicking on in that moment. When I could, I could put a tweet out from the at CNN Twitter account, and watch it shoot up on a heartbeat or I can move a story up and down the page and see how it changes it. And and I remember Jeff looking over my shoulder at it, because we were you know, it's fasting when you can see Chartbeat

Ken LaCorte: 32:31

had those those cool? Like, like you were looking at RPM or rights per hour thing?

Steve Krakauer: 32:37

Yeah, yeah. And it was fluctuated. And and, you know, because I think that everyone wants feedback in that way. I mean, this is like, it's a real time feedback. And there's a lot of positives to it. But there are also a lot of drawbacks to it a lot. A lot of bad decisions can get made by putting too much emphasis in a very small sample size. And I think you see that all the time these days.

Ken LaCorte: 33:00

Well, it's also you have to decide where where do my morals stop. In other words, I knew that if I put up a story of when I first got in and Britney Spears and you know, the top story that I had during my first year at Fox News is when she had a picture of her taken without panties getting out of a car. And it was because I said, Hey, find the photographer and ask him if he thinks she did that intentionally or not. That was our top story of the year was me saying, you know, I want another 2 million clicks on something

Steve Krakauer: 33:33

call up at least you know, further the story. I mean, it could have just been like, at least you gotta like, like a neck story too.

Ken LaCorte: 33:39

But then, you know, you also knew that it's like, okay, so and I had on one hand, I was being judged on the size of my success, right? And it was always can foxes numbers aren't as online ours are lower than CNN, you're being judged on getting bigger than them. So that was more so than Oh, you broke a story here. I only had a couple of like, digging journalists to to actually find you know, serious journalism like like that. So I mean, the answer could have been if you just follow the numbers do porn, right? I mean, porn porn explodes online, I you know, it's still 20% It's so popular. They keep it out of most metrics, when you when you see what are the top sites on there, because it's like, that's kind of, you know, the Pornhub is bigger than probably bigger than CNN and Fox on some of those. But so that's where it gets your, like, you playing into what the audience want might be might be very different than what what you should be playing into. They're

Steve Krakauer: 34:37

even Right, right, exactly, you know, and, yeah, it's how much are you going to wait, what is driving the numbers and then adjust what you're doing based on that. And you know, not to make too hard of a turn here. But, you know, one of the terms that I used a lot when during the early days of COVID, and even into 2021 and to this year was fear report because I think a lot of the COVID coverage, a lot of people were afraid. And so there was that, and I think that that was authentic. And there was a story we didn't really know. But if you're going to go one way or the other, if you're going to say, Should we take it, you know, maybe this is this, maybe this is really bad. Maybe this is, you know, not so bad. And you know, and if we just go item by item, when it comes to COVID, almost across the board, the media chose the most outrageous, you know, over the top, you know, prediction or, you know, way of describing something to make people more afraid, and certainly also to drive interest. I mean, it

Ken LaCorte: 35:36

doesn't that isn't that the media doesn't everything. I mean, there it's freeway shooting shark attacks, murders in your neighborhood. Airplanes. I mean, you know, John Stossel would you know when he ran through the numbers, and he said, every time I covered a plane crash, I was killing people because, you know, one plane crashes, 747 crashes and 100 people die. Okay, well, that happens every week, numerically on our highways, and you will never have a large, large news organization covering a five car death, it just are five death car car crash. Same school shootings. I mean, when you look at school shootings, compared to the number of people who get shot every year, it's it's it's, it's a horrible and horribly small number. And of course, that drives no policy, because people are saying, how do we deal with murders in America, looking at school shootings, which is statistically such a small number, that it's it's, it's, uh, it just just doesn't make sense. But you know, if it bleeds, it leads us has, you know, bought your house? Totally. And

Steve Krakauer: 36:40

I think that there, you know, like, true crime as it relates to the news is, absolutely, I think that that is 100%. True, I think that, you know, I put COVID in a different category, because it actually was affecting people's lives. And the results of, of this kind of coverage was massive, structural societal changes that we saw, as opposed to like an I, I was a defender of, let's say, the missing plane coverage that CNN did, you know, pure, just like entertainment value. And I do also think that one of the things that journalists have a problem that journalists have is that a little too, you know, self important. I think at the end of the day, a lot of you know, cable news is entertainment people. I have a friend I hate to admit that too. Yeah, I I know, someone who's an avid CNN watcher loves Don Lemon, and not a particularly political person. I said, Well, what do you what do you like about it? He's like, he's just really funny. It makes me laugh. And I was like, well, like, you know, the politics. He's like, No, it's just like, No, He's just funny to have on in the background. Like, I think that people also often over inflate exactly what they do that there's a level of entertainment there also. And I do think like, you know, like the missing plane coverage, that is a story people care about now is the most important story in the world and the resources that CNN devoted to it, probably not, but it's interesting, and I'm still kind of fascinated by that. So there's some things in that category. And then there are the really important things and and how they get that wrong. And then also, I think, you know, my main problem with the Trump coverage was not so much the coverage of Trump, but the coverage of Trump voters and half the country that it ended up going to which I think was so destructive for our society, then it was just about like a single person.

Ken LaCorte: 38:20

So so I'm a believer that the media, slit its own throat with Trump. Alright, so they were like, Trump, Hitler has to stop. So we're gonna we're gonna every single thing and there's only so many times that I'm willing to like, look into oh my gosh, he he was cheering on the death of a baby and then you read it and it's like, now he really wasn't Oh, he he said that Nazis were good people. Well, he fucking didn't write he didn't tell people to drink bleach and he wasn't even talking about you know, so it's like, there's only a certain amount of times I'm kind of willing to go to the well and like, spend 15 minutes and find the original video and do all that until you just come with the I don't trust the press. Right. So then when you have something like a January 6, or when you have something like a presidential election where I am seeing weird stuff out here I'm seeing I'm seeing you know, people telling I see the poll watchers going home and people resuming counting I'm hearing about a a burst pipe that shut things down and it turns out not to do and hanging chads this and and when the vast majority of American what when when a small majority of Americans and the overwhelming number of Republicans have zero trust in the in the media. Well, who do they turn to? Because it's like they the media had always been the referees and when the referees decided Trump has to go. They were players at that point. I mean, it's like right now. It's like where do you go? I was I was thinking of this. It's like, there's been a lot of nonsense reported on Nancy Pelosi his husband's attack from the very getgo there was no break in. Well, it was there. Oh, well, glass came the wrong way. Well, you know what I live in San Francisco, I see broken glass all the time, or I live right outside of San Francisco. And I guarantee you when you hit a glass thing, it shatters all over the place. X, Y, and Z. And and there's still some questions as to that an NBC report out there. Yeah. But where do you go? If you're conservative, and you're trying to get some trying to get a real fact check? Because every single like, whoever calls himself a fact checker, they're all on the left. You might not trust Fox anymore, because you still think that they through Arizona and you know, Fox has clearly made a decision. We don't want Trump around anymore. I mean, that that's, you know, I've seen that well, certainly the Murdock's has because you've seen it at the Wall Street Journal, you've seen it the New York Post, and I think you'll see a mixed version of it at Fox, as different anchors go for go for different audiences there. But when there's no more referees on there, what do you do? It's,

Steve Krakauer: 40:59

it's a, it's a really tough question. And I do think, right, first of all, I think we've very interesting what happens at Fox over the next year, I think that I could I could, as you mentioned, the split, you know, do we see Sean Hannity and others, being more supportive of Trump and then say to Tucker Carlson and others, maybe not, I think that's gonna be a really interesting story to watch. But in terms of fact, checks. I, you know, I don't often actually see Fox doing a lot of like, liberal fact checks, and wherever I think that they could actually be a good business model for them to put some, you know, resources behind that. I'm not sure. You know, I might my short answer is, is it takes work, it takes looking at multiple places, you know, I think of like a place like Real Clear Politics, where, you know, they've gotten multiple sources and you kind of read a bunch and have to make a call for yourself. You maybe find a person like, you know, like a Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi, who's on substack, who you think is generally a straight shooter, doesn't you know, is I don't wanna say hetero heterodox in their point of view, but you feel that they are not going to only tow a certain line one way or the other. You know, you try to just find a few people that I guess that you can you can rely on because, you know, you mentioned the Paul Pelosi story. I think that's such a good case study in this because, yeah, as you clearly it was a breaking, he was attacked. We will eventually learn more about this. But the fact that NBC expired this report from a reporter who has now been missing from air from social media for almost a month, Miguel Ommegang, a guy who's been there a dozen years, who's a great reporter who spent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of that week, reporting on the Pelosi story, then on Friday, he does another report, and that one gets disappeared. And then he hasn't been heard from since. And then NBC Bay Area backs it up in some corroborating fashion. And all we're really talking about is Why did Paul Pelosi walk backwards instead of forwards when he opened the door? There's it's not a conspiracy, but conspiracy to some because some Yes, yes. And that's a that's a fan

Ken LaCorte: 42:55

and they were reacting to the appearing to feed into the conspiracy that he was buddies with a

Steve Krakauer: 43:01

guy and that can that's I think what what gets at the big problem is that is that there's such a fear now of the press of not them getting a story rolling necessarily, but of them potentially, you know, having people out there interpret their their report, even if it's true in some sort of way that they're gonna get blowback from, you know, the critics on Twitter or

Ken LaCorte: 43:23

because they're because they're, they're playing politics as opposed to reporting reporting facts, and they're worried about, wait a second, that might feed into the narrative that is the wrong narrative on it.

Steve Krakauer: 43:34

Right? I think they're distrustful of their own audience in some in some weird way. They actually don't have enough faith that their audience can interpret things. And I think about this with January 6, two, I mean, January 6, a terrible event that that I look at those early days, I remember, like some way seen and handled January 6, for the first couple of days, was talking about this riot at being terrible, and going through some of the videos of it, and these people need to be arrested. And, and it's kind of what everyone can agree on that everyone's on board with that. But then it shifted, and then the overreach started and then we saw this, this attempt to to only talk about certain things and not others. We see it now with this with the report that might be coming out which finally I saw some people starting to push back on people like Adam Schiff, why are they not going to talk about some of the security failures? And

Ken LaCorte: 44:21

so you had written about, about some of the pipe bombs that they had discovered earlier day before that didn't get mentioned at all by you know, I'd say the press or the you know, the press and and, like the Democratic establishment, so much of them are in bed saying the same things. I mean, you know what I watch? When I watch a just recently a supposedly member of the press saying, or you were asking the White House, are you worried about Elon Musk and what tools are you using at your disposal to basically to stop this guy from slightly censoring people less on Twitter, and then the White House having a perfectly prepared response because they knew the question was coming. We're keeping a close eye. We're keeping a close eye on Elon Musk. It's like, Who the fuck do people think you are? And the press is just like, Ah, they're all for it.

Steve Krakauer: 45:13

Well, and that's again, that's a problem. I mean, I expect that from the podium. Sure, you know, so you're gonna keep an eye close on Elon Musk, you know, these are the kinds of people that we have in government on both sides of the aisle, that for a veteran Reuters reporter to ask that question, to essentially endorse this, you know, this, this censorship and this, you know, I've described it as anti speech activism. I think that again, this is one of the biggest problems in the press today, is there is a real interest in in sort of cheerleading for censorship in wanting to suppress certain ideas because of, I think, a general distrust of people of having conversations. You know, last year, I wrote a column for the hill called in defensive misinformation because I don't love misinformation. I that's become a very trendy term now. But I think that misinformation I wrote is the tax we pay for freedom, it's the tax we pay for having a free flow of ideas, and we're going to get things wrong, look, the corporate press is gonna get the wrong, and we don't have to hold everything against them and get mad at them for spreading misinformation and shut down their accounts. There are things that are going to be true and things that are not going to be true, and we're gonna have to weed them out together. That's a free society. This there is a real fear now. And an activism that has happening among the press, of just letting ideas into the marketplace of free speech. And that really is scary. That's a big change to what it used to be.

Ken LaCorte: 46:35

And that's why I'm sharing on the Elon Musk. That's the biggest, pro Free Speech Movement we've action we've seen in America in a handful of years.

Steve Krakauer: 46:46

Agreement. Yeah, yeah. Because they say he's not trying to censor the other side. It's not like, Oh, now you were censoring the right now we're gonna send to the left. It's, it's how about, we don't censor anybody. And it's

Ken LaCorte: 46:57

one of the gals he knocked off for a couple of days when she was leaving him. And I thought that was a little too capricious. I hope he, I didn't even like the, I mean, I'm loving what he's doing there. And God bless him to spend $44 billion, that way, it was a good deal for America. I didn't like the hate Trump, we're doing a poll, should we keep them on or off? So it's like what you would have kept him off if the poll when a company said it's under, but he's also just, the guy just bought a $44 billion toy, I'll give him a few months of having fun tearing around the parking lot. Right.

Steve Krakauer: 47:27

I tend to think that that was more of like a little the trollish side of Elon Musk, I think that he was gonna be, you know, opening that Lena to I actually think the real debate with Elon right now I know, he's resistant to like, let letting Alex Jones back on the platform, for example, because, you know, he said that, one of the things that that he feels strongly about is not use it, you know, children, and the fact that Alex Jones was found guilty of, essentially, you know, claiming that that kids were, you know, in Sandy Hook, we're not really killed. I don't know, I don't know about that line, I'm a little bit weary of that line. To be honest, I think that, you know, direct calls to violence, there's a very real reason to censor that and to not have that on a platform. But beyond that, then you start getting into your own personal feelings about about where that line should be. And I would, I would hope, you know, he actually goes back on that also,

Ken LaCorte: 48:15

I mean, we actually do have a speech code in America, it's called civil law, and criminal law, you can't i can't say, I want to kill you, I guess I can want to kill you. But, you know, you can't call for violence. And and if you go over the line and say, you know, Steve, he raped a girl last night? Well, we actually have a system, it's called the judicial system to take care of things like that. It would be nice if, if one just honed to that. But I also realize, you know, they're worried about about the gab effect. I mean, you know, so gab comes up, and it's basically everybody who was kicked off of Twitter. Well, there were a lot of innocent people who were kicked off, but there are a lot of dickheads and Nazis and just people you know, you wouldn't want to live next door. And and I think the biggest thing that Twitter could do, and he could do there is say, here are the rules. And we will have a somewhat transparent policy and process to show that that we are upholding these rules fairly. Well. That's all I want. Right? It's like, look, I was banned for I was banned from YouTube, not Twitter, ironically, YouTube and Facebook for mentioning the words. While I don't even know if I can say these days for mentioning the name of the CIA operative, turned in Donald Trump and started the impeachment of the United States president, if you said his name on YouTube or other outlets, you would be whistleblower banned because that was the one whistleblower in America that they decided to keep quiet, because he was a CIA guy at Langley, but that's could be a reason. And then Facebook was even worse. So. So look, I worked in politics many years ago, this was in like, late 80s, early 90s. Down in South America, and down in South America. This was the hadn't really had democracies there for a whole long time. And it was the people in Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, the places that I spent a lot of time working. They, they kind of understood that there was the biases of the news media because the news media was largely owned by political families. It was like, if the Trump's own channel two and the Kennedys own channel four, and there was, so it was pretty clear, like, oh, it's love friends, it's the you know, they're the Social Democrats there. And everybody kind of knew the score a little bit that way. And I think that we as a media are not going back to the media you and I grew up with which was was these these monopolies who didn't have to really reach hard and try hard for an audience because they were making enough money to be happy and selling as many Macy's ads as they could at any newspaper or TV. And I think that we're going to see more and more of a broadening it out and my biggest fervent hope is instead of it being 80% democratic and 20% Republican it's it's it's mixed and mashed where where it's representing America to an extent. And, and we're in this weird, awkward fray phase of a lot of people still thinking they're getting kind of, to coin a phrase, a fair and balanced approach from NBC when they watch their local Evening News, even though they're completely in the tank on, on on a lot of things. That's how I see it, headed to that direction. And I don't know if the whether that's 10 years or 20 years and and a better educated news consumer knowing that they're getting different spins from different places. How do you see us? Where do you see us going over the next decade?

Steve Krakauer: 51:46

Yeah, I'd like to get to that place reminded me that I wasn't familiar with the South America version of it. But like in England, you know, same kind of thing. Each newspaper, you knew where they were coming from, no matter what, because of the ownership of it. The problem always, I think, with the Trump era, like I, we haven't mentioned, MSNBC, I don't think this entire time. And that's because Mbc is pretty transparent about what they are, they are a left leaning news network, cable news network, they don't try to pretend that there's something that they're not, and the way that CNN or the New York Times, or the Washington Post did during the Trump era. And frankly, you know, before that, so I, I do think that, that, that having a level of transparency, a level of intellectual honesty, and and you know, being honest with the audience is needed. I don't know if that's going to happen, though, because I think the one the I don't know if that'll happen at an organizational level. But I do think that one of the potential benefits of what we're seeing with this, the real fracturing of the of the media landscape, overall, each individual persons with growing their personal brand, again, I've talked about some of the negative aspects of it. But one of the positive aspects of it is I've seen it described where the media can end up being more like record labels, you know, where you're signed with a record label, essentially, but you're your own artist, and you move in and out. And I don't know if this is the perfect solution, but at the very least, you become a fan, you don't really become fans of record labels, you become fans of bands or of artists, and you follow them where they go, and they do their work. And they're pretty transparent about who they are. And for time, they're with this organization, and then they move to another one, I think that that may end up being a slightly better model, because at the very least, you are the individual building blocks that make up an organization, you know, a little bit more of where they're coming from. So I think that that's one element of it. And the other one, I will say, when I hope where things are going, is I think that they're finding you're finding your your average journalists in a little bit of the wrong place. You know, I think that there is a, there's a pretty clear line about about how people come into these these large media organizations, a lot of them are Ivy League educated or very, you know, the top J schools in the country. And to be honest, you know, nothing against them. But you don't need to have that kind of background to be a journalist. This is not a job. We weeded them

Ken LaCorte: 54:02

out at Fox. If you think it's good that you have a journalism degree. Well, it is in some ways, but it's also puts you in an ideological camp that we wanted, you know, we were actually for some diversity in thought at Fox.

Steve Krakauer: 54:17

Exactly. Yeah, you want that diversity of thought you want the diversity of backgrounds of experiences. I mean, this goes beyond, you know, politics, you don't need to do all of a sudden hire a bunch of Republicans, you need to hire people who went to different kinds of schools who grew up in different areas who maybe you're not, you know, are not comfortable in places like New York and DC and it feels very foreign to them. That's a good thing. And then you should maybe embed those people, not in those places, embed them in communities where they don't only see one kind of bubbles point of view. I think that you know, one of the great things with the way the podcast and YouTube and substack is it's And on some level also COVID and the way that we've seen with work from home, is that we're getting people out of the bubble, we're able to see a media environment that is not so siloed in the way it has been in the recent past. And I think it's a major shift that's happening right now. And there will be giant players that emerge. But then there, those will be few and far between, you know, most of these, these organizations are going to end up being more and more fractured. And we're going to have to rely more and more on individuals and hopefully, individuals of more diverse thought than we have right now that are in the middle.

Ken LaCorte: 55:27

I hope I'm not getting too boring by agreeing with everything you're saying. I completely think that the concept of trusting or distrusting or knowing where an individual is coming from is huge. You know, if Joe Rogan says something, and he's a pretty bright guy, but I also feel like outside of like, like diet supplements and that whole world where he you know, he's he's, he's certainly got a point of view. He seems like a guy who's who's being honest about things that he'll ask questions. He's not trying to disprove somebody's wrong, and he's trying to get to the bottom of things. I completely trust him. If he came up and said, you know, what, I really looked into something and this something is red or blue or green, I'd be like, I trust him. Whereas curious, CNN or Fox said it, I'd be like, Okay, well, maybe they're doing that. Or maybe they're saying what they know, their audience wants to hear. Whereas he made a career out of being himself I really believe. But I also love like the lives of tick tock. So here's a gal who all she does all day. Western her work is she scours, basically, mainly teachers and other lefties saying around kids is she's kind of kind of tied into that world saying, over the top crazy shit on on tick tock and posting it themselves, right. And all she does is get it, clip it out and say, Here's what a teacher you know, here's a teacher in, you know, in Omaha that's making the kids Pledge of Allegiance to the gay flag and and she just lets it run. And of course, now she's the hated one on, you know, they're the ones, they tried to shut her down. But it's like, oh, okay, that's what an investigative reporter at a fox or somewhere else might have done in past years. And I trust her in the sense that I don't you know, that I've never seen her falsely edit something up or twist the words on something or say this came from one spot, and it came from somewhere else. But I also know that I'm getting a very distinct point of view. And I'm getting activist journalism, you know, Project Veritas, same thing. And, and, and I, I see this whole kind of panoply of things at yet some people so you know, from the Rogan's who I think don't have an agenda to other people who kind of do but I, you know, you can you learn over time, who's being honest on things and who's not who's saying things, because it sounds good. And there's a lot of Yeah, fuck yeah, moments in there. And you're like that. I mean, you know, you're you're willing to go and, and either correct yourself when you've been wrong, or bring in both sides of of a discussion, as opposed to leaving out the inconvenient side to prove your to prove your case. And I think that's, I think we're all figuring that out on a personal level that fed into the first first of those two points, which I think that's where we're headed to.

Steve Krakauer: 58:11

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's right, and I look at the ellipses of tick tock is absolutely, you know, essentially a citizen journalist who's, who's, you know, aggregating content that's already out there. And, and is very clear about her point of view. And I think that that's, that's, that's what you want, I think, then you get the reaction to it as as this is somehow dangerous. And, and that's, that's where I think a lot of people I think, go wrong is that you, this is also why I'm, I have a general rule, where anyone who has ever said anything in their past, you know, from when they were in high school, or college, and this happens to people that you know, end up, get this gets uncovered by one side or the other, and then they try to cancel them, and usually their organization, you know, gives in and ends up firing them or something. I'm just, you know, fully against that in total, because I think, you know, the idea, we want people to feel like they can speak we want people to feel like they can admit when they're wrong. And and there's, again, I think, you know, we can get down the cancel culture road, but we don't, we need the ability to, for people to authentically say I got this wrong. And for that to be a good thing for that to actually be I constantly increasing media outlets when they very rarely admit that they got something wrong and make as public their wrongness as they did when they got it right originally, or when they when they got it, you know, when they did the original thing. I I think that we need to encourage that because that's, you know, that's a society that we want people to live in and to operate and not to feel like they're walking on eggshells all the time or just shutting up completely and just saying, I don't even want to get involved because I you know, who knows what the perilous road this might be?

Ken LaCorte: 59:55

No, it's a sign that you actually care about truth more than you care about pushing your agenda. And I hate the Young Turks show it's like retards yelling at each other it's like screaming and whatnot but the gal on there Anna

Steve Krakauer: 1:00:08

because yeah because

Ken LaCorte: 1:00:11

the Anna with the with, ironically with the Armenian sounding name yeah came out twice in the last in the last year saying hey wait there's something weird going on here the first one was the Kyle Rittenhouse case where she was like I watched this trial and the trial wasn't anything like any of the news media I read I read going going up to it and she came out and basically said it seemed like a right verdict. And and you know, and that was that case was was one that was just so crazy to read a long national news organization ABC did a long, long piece on on, you know, one of the guys who was shot, you know, calling him the paramedic never once mentioning that he had a nine millimeter in his hand and he was lowering it at Kyle right. The second before he got shot just didn't make it into their 1500 word piece. And then she did something else on the crime to basically saying no, it's it's, you know, this, this isn't a Republican made up concept that crime is rising in the country. And I thought okay, I'm now 40% More likely to believe her on anything else. She says because she said those things, of course that upset her base. But that's that's the that's the flip side to that. I mean, if Hannity came out tomorrow and said, you know, what the 2020 election wasn't stolen, he'd lose 20% of his audience to and they go to Newsmax or somebody, you know, somebody somebody down the road, but he might get that 20% back from from other people who said, wow, Hannity is Hannity's open minded at least.

Steve Krakauer: 1:01:43

And I actually think that they most of them would eventually come back, and any of you might be mad for a minute, but they will come back, because, you know, I have produced Megyn Kelly show, Megan has said, pretty much that as well. And, you know, we as a show, really investigated, you know, was, is a potential that that this was this was stolen and looking at all the court cases, and that, you know, I guess there were hundreds, but certainly many of them, and came to that conclusion and said, Look, I get people will feel this way and talk about the early voting, and the rule changes and all that all that's true, and those are all fair points. But 900%, very much, you know, Pennsylvania, the massive changes there, all of that played a factor but, you know, not stolen, and I think that people will, will ultimately respect that, that you're being intellectually honest about your own feelings. You're not telling you're not you're not, you know, making, you know, saying that, Oh, people who believe that are idiots. I mean, it's, you're being respectful of people's opinions. But you're, you're being honest about your own, that that can go a long way. And I think so many in the press are so nervous to put the truth out there. I mean, I've actually I've seen examples of this in different in different ways. And most of it has been off the record of people saying, you know, essentially, I agree with you about certain things and, and doing it through direct message and text message and email, and never giving any indication that they actually will ever say that on the air or on social media, because they feel that there is no benefit to them to do that. Because they can only be a downside, they'll be attacked, and they'll they'll lose money. I just disagree with that. I think that there's absolutely an upside to it'll get they'll gain respect from people that don't like them. The people that do like them will have respect for them, even if it's a grudging respect, all so long as

Ken LaCorte: 1:03:24

they don't get fired by your boss. And Megan's a terrific example of that, right, she left she, you know, she, she went more anti Trump than anybody at Fox. And then of course, that whole thing went then she was praised right up to make a trillion dollars at NBC who didn't like her to begin with, and then eventually gets fired for saying the most innocuous of concepts which was was was what like, yeah, when we were kids, and we dressed up like Diana Ross and put blackface on that really wasn't racist. And then yeah, that was enough to lose her job.

Steve Krakauer: 1:03:53

I mean, even just acknowledge that that happened. It was like, you know, whether that was racist? Yeah. I mean, look, that was the early days. Also, I think of this, this wave that happened. And you know, I think in her case, also, like you said, there was there were there were there. It was not like they were there was a single incident. I mean, they were just, they were trying, I think to find something. It's

Ken LaCorte: 1:04:15

she's, she's in a much better place than she Oh, yeah. She got the money from NBC, I believe. And now she can be Megan because Megan shoved into an NBC happy throw. That that's not the best Megan. I mean, I mean, I used to watch Megan while I used to listen to their their their their editorial call every day because Trish, Gallagher's office was next to mine and he was like I don't hear mainstream when she was on the one o'clock the one o'clock hour and that was you know, certainly throughout the day and I didn't really watch the evening that was the best hour on Fox we had for the years that Megan was doing that because because she went after she went after good stories, different stories than you were gonna get anywhere else online and she was so smart about it. So it's it's

Steve Krakauer: 1:04:58

been great. I I have seen you know, I've no Meg and I was on, when I was at mediate I was, I was one of the first shows I was ever on back in, like 2009 was her show, she was so nice off camera on camera. You know, I was very, very green doing that. And we kept in touch off and on. But when you know, which really it was March 2020, prefer everything shut down. And we had coffee in New York, and you're just sort of talking about art, what do you what do you want to do next and, and I, you know, she had lots of offers, obviously, she could have done a lot of different things, but I really, you know, even knew then just from knowing her a little bit, you know, if if this person who you know, is so you know, smart and can tell the news, you know, in a very digestible way, but also has this other side, and, you know, I mean, just, you know, drops F bombs every now and then when, when necessary, and can be her full self. I thought that was just like the perfect venue for it. And obviously, I was, you know, big fan of a podcast myself, and it just, it just felt like a good fit. And it really has I mean, you know, the, the mandate we have on the show is is what's true, you know, let's go into the stories that other people aren't doing. Cover them, you know, let's give them the we've, you know, we've had, we've had everyone on, you know, we've had Dinesh D'Souza on we've had, you know, we've had people on, you know, big COVID vaccine fans, and we've had Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on we've had, you know, everyone because it's it's we want to be a venue of, of, you know, conversation and honesty and interesting conversations and debate.

Ken LaCorte: 1:06:25

Have you ever gotten zapped off of off of YouTube without you? Have they ever like,

Steve Krakauer: 1:06:28

we so we have a really good relationship with YouTube? Like, like,

Ken LaCorte: 1:06:32

how does one do that besides being Megan Kelly? Yeah,

Unknown: 1:06:35

I mean, it was a connection. One be Megan Kelly. Oh, yes. Yes.

Steve Krakauer: 1:06:39

In fact, you know, when Megan before she's She launched it, she did a couple of interviews and really only put them on YouTube. And, and so that relationship existed before. And so like with with Robert F. Kennedy, we, you know, before we put that interview out and it was a it was actually a double interview was four hours long. We had long conversations what what is there? What can we put on and how and how do we do it? And you know, we we were able to put an interview out there that are off case I was happy with we were happy with and was stayed monetized on YouTube completely. So yeah, it worked out well. But it's a little bit of a tight rope. And it's funny, you know, even back in March, the things that you couldn't see on YouTube about, let's say vaccines, or about masks or about lockdowns you actually can say, now, which is

Ken LaCorte: 1:07:25

wild, because a lot of those things have turned out to be completely true. You were exactly. It's like, we need a new phrase for like conspiracy theorists because it's like, okay, every time I hear about a conspiracy theory, it's now a 5050 shot whether it's going to be proven to be to be true. Yeah, just give it time. All right, dude, well, look. So if people want to find you, they can go I will put links on all of the places that these are. Fourth watch is your newsletter and it comes out three times a week ish or so.

Steve Krakauer: 1:07:54

I wish I'm a little bit slow on that at least once a week. But yes, fourth watch dot media, you can subscribe. It's free.

Ken LaCorte: 1:07:59

Right, right. And then you got a book coming out, which I'm looking forward to, to read over but but it's not coming out to the beginning of the year, right? Yes, February.

Steve Krakauer: 1:08:07

It'll be out in February uncovered, available now for preorder. But yes.

Ken LaCorte: 1:08:12

So it's kind of really like you to preorder a book, but I know

Steve Krakauer: 1:08:15

I hear that doesn't really happen very often, but it's you know, and I will say also, I in the link that you put in, you can download the first 16 pages of the book for free right now. So that's available. Go Cool.

Ken LaCorte: 1:08:26

All right, dude. Well, look, thank you for your time. This was fun.