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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back onto the show revered and respected journalist Larry Doyle. Now, if you didn't hear my first conversation with Larry, I highly advise that you listen to that first. And that was episode 677. And to underline the kind of admiration that people had for Larry's work, he was the very first person to interview Nelson Mandela after he was released from Robben Island.
So that I think really details the respect that he had. We touch on many, many things from his time in Vietnam being a war correspondent, meeting Nelson Mandela in the first one. At the end of that conversation, though, Hurricane Ian was bearing down on the state of Florida and Larry and his wife actually evacuated their home. Literally mere hours later, Ian came through and devastated Sanibel Island and the surrounding areas.
So as we sit down in the second conversation, we had another hurricane bearing down on us. I think it was Milton, if my memory serves me right. But we actually get to reflect on the impact of Ian, the devastation it happened, how Larry and his family lost their home, the insurance element, the FEMA response. So some really interesting takeaways of what it's like to actually be a victim of one of these storms.
We then dive into the politicization of the media, the devolution of dissemination of actual knowledge, health care and some other incredibly powerful topics. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I always say, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of over one thousand episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. I just want to touch on one more point. My Instagram was shut down this week for posting a perfectly innocent, kindness video. Obviously, there's more to the story than that that I'm not aware of. But regardless, the new Instagram page that I'm literally starting from scratch is behind the shield 911.2.0.
So two point oh. So you can find that on Instagram. I'm back posting all the things that we did before, regardless of whatever the backstory was that had that one taken away. Because I've lost that platform, too, I just want to reiterate that my new book, kinder, is available on paperback and ebook through Amazon. And I'm working on the audio book currently, which will be out early December. So with that being said, welcome back, Larry Doyle.
Enjoy. Well, Larry, I want to firstly say thank you for inviting me back to your home. This is a different home now. There's a certain irony to our conversations. We spoke two years ago, literally hours before Hurricane Ian hit the west coast of Florida. And then we'll talk, obviously, about the impact to your home. And we're now sitting in Gainesville, Florida, hours away from Hurricane hitting us again.
Well, days. But so I want to thank you firstly for welcoming me to your new home and bringing coming back onto the behind the shield podcast. Significant differences in this new home. Well, I mean, the obvious one is we're an hour and a half drive from either the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico coasts. We're in an area that does not flood. And we're no longer built on stilts. Shortly after you left my Sanibel home and Ian hit. We had nine feet of water in the garage.
We left one car behind that floated away. And ironically, I'm someone who, when I was living on the coast, tracked hurricanes religiously. I was tracking Ian to virtually the last minute. And I admit I misread what I was looking at on a computer model. And I and the meteorologist did not account for the sudden right turn that Ian met, putting Sanibel almost in the bullseye. About nine o'clock that morning of September 28th, we were still at home.
The local police department knew that we were still on the island and they called and they said, if you're going to leave, you have to leave now. And I said, now, they said this minute. I said, what's up? We're about to close the causeway. When winds reached 40 miles an hour, they closed the bridge causeway that was the link, the only link to the mainland. And they said the winds are now at 42 miles an hour. If you don't leave now, you're not getting off. So we I had prepared a box of documents.
I really prepped them to survive what I thought was going to be a severely glancing blow from the hurricane. Took that took a couple of items of clothing and Smitty, my dog, and we were the last car to leave the island. I mean, we barely got out, otherwise we'd have been stuck there for days. It took we were able to get back onto the island three days after the storm had by taking a boat. Beaching on the on the on a base side, not the Gulf of Mexico side, and then making our way into the house.
Where we found, you know, literally almost complete destruction. I had friends who were on the task force, the USAR task force that came and one of them, they were from down south. And I forget exactly what happened, but they ended up getting right behind the hurricane. But everyone else was I don't know if it was another band, but they were held back by another storm. Or I forget exactly what happened. So this one team was pretty much on their own and they were going in evacuating patients,
you know, person by person, multiple floors. And they just talked about the mass devastation. Talk to me about what you saw. I mean, this is a beautiful, idyllic, you know, affluent neighborhood at that point. You know, what was you beach on the on the boat? What was the difference that you witnessed with your own eyes? Well, on the boat, I was trying to prepare myself for the absolute worst, but thinking, no, it's not going to be that bad.
When we got to the house, the first thing we noticed was complete damage to the roof. We had skylights on the roof that were blown out. So I knew that we were going to have a lot of water inside. The steps, we were on 13 foot stilts. We had so 13 feet of steps to go from the ground level to the first deck of the house. The stairs were intact. I said, this is good. Got to the door, put the key in, had to jimmy it a lot, open the front door.
And we were on the second floor of the house, the first floor of habitation. I went in, I said, wow, everything looks pretty good here. I mean, the pictures were on the wall. I was like, OK, we got to the second floor, which was gone basically. And then we were proud to land a little more and said, oh, this is a lot worse than we thought. I was in shock.
As I was saying, having covered the aftermath of a lot of disasters caused by Mother Nature and some by man, when I was working and would come upon hurricane victims, you worked very hard at being sympathetic to supplying them with what other help you can, et cetera. But you never can comprehend what the victims are going through until you've been one. So I was I was shocked. It took it took a lot for me to try to force myself back to my usually optimistic attitude.
We before we hit record, you talked about the kind of mixed feelings you have for the FEMA response. Now, as we sit here recording, you're getting a lot of that when it comes to people in North Carolina in that area with Helene. So, again, through your own eyes, you know, what were the pros and what were the cons of being a homeowner in the in time?
I think there are a lot of similarities between what I saw and experience on Senebel because it was cut off from the mainland because the causeway was it was a wreck. So the isolation was extensive, similar to what's going on in some of the smaller mountain towns in North Carolina. Consequently, it took FEMA quite some time to establish any kind of branches on Senebel Island. They established a number of response centers on the mainland, but they were difficult to go to and well overcrowded.
FEMA, to me, they they they kind of overwhelmed the playing field with representatives, which is OK to a point, but a lot of these representatives. And I know this because I visited a lot of FEMA officers and wound up talking to people from California. Arizona had no local knowledge of the geography, the topography, what had happened, had never visited the impacted areas.
And I don't want to be too critical, but I discovered that one of the problems I had with FEMA that I eventually worked out, I will say that one of the initial problems was the representatives didn't sing from the same hymnbook. They all had different interpretations of what help was available, what I qualified for, what I didn't.
For instance, I was talking to them about my flood claim and I would tell my representative, before you can even put in a flood claim, you have to apply for an SBA, Small Business Administration loan. I said, I don't want a loan. Well, you have to have one before we'll process your claim for flood damage. I said, what? It took three or four trips to a field office for FEMA to sort out the fact that, no, I didn't have to apply for a loan that I would then have to repay.
So, I mean, the intention was excellent, the execution not very good. What about just the simple resource of being a homeowner? I mean, some people, there's a spectrum out there. There's people who are very well off and they might even have a second home or certainly they got money in the bank to go stay in a hotel. And then you have the other side of the spectrum, which I would argue is a lot more of us on that end.
What about just simply the ability to find somewhere as a shelter, to get clothes, to all the things that a lot of these people have lost? Well, we were very fortunate because we went inland and took shelter at a condominium that two of my nieces own about eight miles inland from Sanibel. And the impact there was severe, but less. I mean, the streets flooded, et cetera. Power was out, but it was safe. So we were very fortunate in that regard. Most of the people I knew on Sanibel evacuated.
Very few stayed and unfortunately, a number of them perished in the storm, mostly from drowning. So, yeah, there are a couple of things I can say about surviving a hurricane. If you're told to evacuate, evacuate. If your home is damaged. Take pictures, document all your losses. And when your insurance company eventually comes. Quiz them about your policy, make sure they have read your policy. Record what they tell you. If you can.
Because my experience with three insurance companies, Flood, Homeowners and Windstorm, aka Hurricane, were entirely different. Oh, and auto insurance. The auto insurance company that I had was wonderful. I reported nine feet of water in the garage. It was a watermark, it was measurable. And the fact that I'd left one car there that floated around in the garage. And they said, no problem, give us the make of the model. They said, you'll have a check in two weeks.
I said, do you want to see the car? No. They said, but eventually we'll want it towed away. I said, OK. It took them three and a half months to get the car towed away. But they were remarkable. I mean, there was no questions asked. The other insurers were a lot more difficult. My first examiner for my federal flood insurance came and told me, oh, you're not covered. I said, what? He said, you're not covered. I said, why? He said, well, because this is a wind event.
I said, but the wind pushed the water. Well, sorry, you're not covered. I mean, I wanted to throw this guy off the deck of the house, but he left. He said, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to be a good guy. I'll give you $500. And I said, get off the property. Fortunately, there was a FEMA representative who was at the house at the same time who witnessed this. And when the guy left, said, he's wrong. He's wrong.
And I said, two years ago, we had a heavy rainstorm and in the garage, excuse me, had about four inches. The flood insurance people paid me $2,500 for the four inches of water I had in the garage then. And now they're saying, you're not covered.
Well, eventually that got worked out, but it took months, months of me denying the claim, filing a supplemental claim, having the flood people come out again, having a contractor present when the flood people came out to point out everything they had missed or not included. The same thing happened with the windstorm coverage. I had to file supplemental claims, have these adjusters come out again. And the adjusters are a treat.
I mean, they show up and they say, oh, Mr. Doyle, we're here to help you. Do you mind if I call you Larry? We're here. We're on your side. I said, great. Let's take a walk around. So they did. They came up with a number and I said, ridiculous. Here's a contractor estimate. I had them come back with the contractor present. They walked around again. Suddenly their initial payment doubled. The same thing with homeowners, supplemental claim.
Made sure the contractor was present when their adjuster returned more than doubled. So the lesson is, document everything, pictures, paperwork, keep a record of every visit you have from an insurance representative. Make sure you get their full names and contact numbers. I had the contact numbers for the adjusters who came out initially for homeowners and windstorm. And when I called them to tell them I was filing supplemental claims, they never answered their phones.
And I understand that insurance companies, when disasters like this, particularly the magnitude of a category three, four, five hurricane, they have to reach out to people, representatives of theirs. They're not employees. They're contract people who work for these insurance companies. And they come from all over the country. Again, these are people who are ignorant of the geography, the topography, the history. So you've got to be very diligent dealing with the insurance companies.
Do not assume, despite all assurances from their representatives, that they are your friends or on your side. They are not. I have to let the media off the hook slightly. Because in the case of Sannabel, which I'm most familiar with, the island was inaccessible. I mean, media wasn't going to be able to just get over easily and prowl around. If the media came, they'd have to come by boat. Then they're going to have to walk through the island. Well, you can only walk a certain distance.
So you're going to see a limited amount of debris and destruction. So from what I saw during my trips back to the island, the damage was much more extensive than the media was initially reporting. Because I was able to make more ingress into the island than they were. I got a kick out of it when some of the local stations in Fort Myers reported about their trips back to the island. Well, their initial trips back to the island were to accompany the governor, the mayor.
And they stood at beachside and talked about everything they didn't see but heard about. So I had to, you know, I could fault the media for perhaps not digging deep enough. But I also understand that they were under severe restrictions into how far they could navigate. The technology helped. Because one thing that the local media was able to do pretty successfully was use drones.
And the drone footage they supplied, which I only saw a couple of days after the storm, because where I was living, the power was intermittent. The drone footage told the story. I want to be careful how far I go to criticize the local media. But I think they were hoodwinked by officialdom. Yeah, that's the thing. It's not saying it's the media specifically. But why is it? I'll give you a perfect example. The Vegas shooting.
You know, when we had the Pulse shooting in Orlando, that story went on and on and on and on. And rightly so. It was an absolute tragedy in modern American history. The Vegas shooting, again, it appeared that it got all this coverage for a very short time and then all of a sudden it went away. Now, was that the media specifically? I don't think so. But it just makes you ask the question, why do some of these storms get all this coverage and some don't?
Why do some of these attacks get all this coverage and some don't? Is there an underlying reason or is there someone benefiting from quieting down some stories, scaremongering others? I'm just curious. Oh, there's no question. Politics enters into the coverage of every event like a hurricane or the Pulse night clip shooting. I mean, you know, in Orlando, my goodness, you have to protect the city's represent, you know, you know, identity as a tourist hotspot. It's not only Disney there.
It's you know, there's a lot of other things to do and see in Orlando. You can't make the city a dangerous place to visit. And again, you know, with hurricanes, I think again, because of a lot of political pressure, local media in particular doesn't want to present the worst case scenario. Like there wasn't a lot of attention, at least in my mind, paid to the destruction on the Santa Belle and particularly Fort Myers Beach of the infrastructure and the destruction to the business community.
I mean, both those little areas, Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel rely heavily on the tourist trade. And all of a sudden you start to tell people there's nothing to come here to see. That knocks down your revenue base quite a bit. What about contrasting that? Before we hit record, you mentioned about witnessing and reporting on other hurricanes and one was Honduras. And if you think about that, it's you could just imagine it would be a more fragile population than mainland the US, for example.
So talk to me about what you witnessed there and the level of destruction and death in a more fragile island like that. I forget the year, but it was in the 90s and late October, very, very late this season, Hurricane Mitch roared through Honduras. We made our way eventually out of the Cusagalpa, the capital, into the countryside. Ripsa took us days and reached little villages that were no longer, they were invisible, covered under just mud.
And one of the most horrific scenes I've seen anywhere where we reached a mountain village that was just under a muck and mud, not a house or a hut standing, but sticking up through the mud were hands. I cannot imagine that an accurate death toll was measured. I think the authorities then were saying, well, such and such, Santa Santa something had a population of 600. So we assume 600 people died here. Consequently, in the case of Honduras, there were no rescue efforts.
No search and recovery, no rescues, just done. Was there a specific country that should have been responding as an allied nation or were they just completely left out to dry? Left out in the mud. The surrounding Central American countries had neither the wherewithal or the ability to help. The United States wasn't terribly involved in Honduras there then. Their interest in Honduras didn't have to do with the recovery from an earthquake.
It was a country and an area, the mountainous area, completely left on their own. I found it baffling and I want to get to Haiti, so this is a good segue. I was working for Orange County, 10-12 years ago, and Haiti had the earthquake. I'd reached out right off the bat and said, hey, I speak French, not amazing French, but I speak French well enough. I'd love to go be part of a rescue effort. Are we sending people?
It fell on deaf ears and a few days later an email went out saying, hey, does anyone speak French? I go to Haiti, they put a list together and by the time they did, FEMA was already sending teams away from there while they were still finding people alive. What about that element? To me, firstly, the altruistic side, we should be there and hopefully as many of us are needed to facilitate the rescue effort.
Even selfishly, that gives American rescuers a chance to practice, to have it so that you can bring those skills back to our soil as well. More often than not, and this is not, you know, towering everyone with the same brush, but there seems to be an element of premature, you know, bringing everyone back prematurely rather than staying there and following through. And I think that the Haitian earthquake was an example of that.
One of the most remarkable rescue efforts I've ever seen was in Haiti after that earthquake. We flew from Miami into the Dominican Republic, rented some big four wheel drives, drove to the border, got stopped at the border, told we couldn't come through. We perhaps paid a small gratuity and were allowed through. And the first town over the border, less than a mile from the border, was just cracked wide open by the earthquake. We eventually made it all the way into Port-au-Prince.
And at that time, now we're three or four days after the earthquake, at that time, some repairs had been made to the airport. So some relief was coming in. And I remember an LA County search and rescue team and the famous, and I guess famous for good reason, the Miami-Dade search and rescue team were headquartered in a certain area, a little outside Port-au-Prince, in the city limits, but at the extent of the city limits.
We went over there, linked up with them and convinced them to let us follow them on some of their missions. And I'll tell you, it was the most, one day was the most remarkable day. We were following the Los Angeles team and they were going through a neighborhood with the dogs, the cadaver dogs and stethoscopes and flashlights.
And I remember they'd go up and down the street, they'd park their vehicles, they'd walk up and down streets and surviving residents would come to them and yelling, this house, this house, someone's still alive in this house. They'd go to that house, they'd have the dogs, they'd dig. It was amazing. We were on one search and I'll tell you, this was, they were told there's somebody under that debris. They looked and they said, okay, we'll take a look.
They sent the dog, the dog woofed around and they said, all right, well, they started to dig. With their flashlights, there was a kid, I forget how old, 10, 11, in the debris still there alive. He was able to, in a very, the rescuers told me in a very low voice, say he was there, he was there. Frantic activity, they dug. They dug. By this time, because of all this activity around this particular damaged structure, a crowd had formed.
I mean, I hate to say it, but I think for these poor Haitian people who had no shelter, watching the rescuers work was almost, I want to be careful, almost to them a form of entertainment, something to get their mind off their own trouble. Well, once the LA team identified that there was someone still living in there, as I said, furious work. I mean, I mean, I did, you know, careful work, you know, prying off slabs of concrete in such a way that another slab won't fall and replace that.
And finally, after maybe a couple of hours, they lifted this child, a young girl, out of the rubble. And I'm telling you, there were tears in my eyes. First of all, because, excuse me, of the valiant efforts of these people. And almost more so, the crowd went wild. And you know what they started to chant? USA, USA. Can you imagine? It was, I mean, so, you know, I, you know, I, you cannot underestimate the work that these search and rescue people do.
I mean, not only is it, it's life threatening to them, it's against all odds. And the rescuers, after spending a couple of days with them, we kind of had established our own street cred with them. So we were more or less accepted, right? And I was doing an interview with one of the team leaders and I said, what do you do when you're actually inside the rubble? They said, we have a three tier thing we do. First, if we detect a sign of life, it goes to a second person to verify that.
If the second person verifies that, it goes to a third person. The third person spends a lot of time with hearing devices, flashlights, everything. If the third person says no, we have to give up. I said, how is that? They said, heartbreaking. I mean, it's a vote. I said, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, boys. No, it's horrendous. It's the same with when we do triage, where we're taught.
You have the walking wounded, they will get off to go to one area, and then we have yellows and reds, and then you have blacks, and blacks are deceased or about to be deceased. And that could be in a school shooting. And these rescuers have to walk by these mortally wounded children if there's not the ability to save them and keep moving on. Even if they just saw them take their last breath, it is what it is. It's a brutal, brutal thing they have to do. I think that was the attitude.
If the third person says no, it's move on because maybe we'll find somebody else and now we'll have time to find that other person. And also, there's a phrase in the fire service, risk a little to save a little, risk a lot to save a lot. So if you verify that it is a legitimate rescue rather than recovery, then maybe you're going to take slightly higher risk.
But if you get all that way and you tunnel and there's a collapse and someone's hurt and then you discover that person was actually not alive in the first place, that's a tragic loss too. Yeah, I think the international response, particularly the American response of sending in rescuers post-Hasian earthquake was pretty good. And then again, as you probably remember, there are a lot of independent American efforts there.
The actor Sean Penn put together a huge group to bring in supplies and things. Catholic charities, I mean, there are a lot of non-governmental helpers in the case of Haiti. I love Doctors Without Borders. It's another great organization. MSF, those groups, amazing people. Well, while we're on the topic of Haiti, I'm trying to remember if I've got my facts right. I thought it was Kenya had sent troops in to try and stabilize. Okay. So you've spent some time there.
Obviously, you're far more well-versed on that kind of history and politics than I am. We talked last time about my experience in Labadee, this little corner that Royal Caribbean has and what an absolutely gorgeous country it actually is. What is your kind of observations on the potential of stabilizing that country again? Well, in the case of the Kenyans who went in, they haven't been able to bring in their anticipated number of personnel, not even close.
The funding for the Kenyan effort has been dismal. Just a couple of days ago this week, a Haitian gang raided a town about 60 miles outside Port-au-Prince, killed 90 people, including women and children. The Kenyans couldn't respond. They didn't have the personnel or the equipment to take on a gang. Poor Haiti. The horrible phrase that is often associated with Haiti is, poorest country in the Western atmosphere. That's true.
I remember flying from San Domingo to Port-au-Prince in a small plane over the border. The pilot said, directly below us is the Haitian Dominican Republic border. I said, how do you know that? He said, look at the trees. I said, ah, I get it. On the Haitian side of the border, you could literally mark the borderline. The trees are all deforested, cut down, verdant growth on the Dominican side.
Because the need for firewood, wood to build, reconstruct, was so desperate on the Haitian side, the forests were denuded. I've never seen a delineated border that I could measure in brown on one side, green on the other. I don't know about Haiti. A lot of their problems are self-inflicted, corrupt governments. Coming back to the Duvaez, then Aristide, the good priest who came in, who was as dirty as anyone else. And then, you know, Raoul Cedrus and his gang that took over.
You're not going to get a lot of international support, I'm afraid, for a country that can't rule its own roost. So a lot of the problems in Haiti, as I said, are self-inflicted. I mean, it's become an ungovernable country. Corrupt politicians, corrupt police department, non-existent or corrupt army, poverty, not enough done to improve the welfare of the populace. It's a bunch of guys on top siphoning everything off and lining their own pockets.
So unfortunately, and it is unfortunate, it's a country that's not going to get a lot of international sympathy until it cleans up its own act. And it can't. Where do you begin? Things are so deeply rooted, exactly. I mean, in our lifetime, how many governments has Haiti had? I've worked with some Haitian guys when I first moved to America. I was down south testing for the fire department.
I worked for Boucher Brothers, who if you go on Miami Beach, all those blue chairs and umbrellas, that's all Boucher Brothers. I was told that there was some sort of connection, which is why they've got all that. I don't know. But anyway, there were a couple of Haitian guys and they were talking about when they were there, it was Papa Doc and then Baby Doc. Kind of like the deep belief in voodoo, and someone would curse them and they would see a green light and it would be a red light.
And it was just all these different elements, the violence and the poverty. And then you stand in Florida and you see all these people fleeing this country and you hear this kind of anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric, which I get it. I'm a legal immigrant, but I came from an affluent country that could afford it. And you hear the stories of, for example, 90 people being murdered, men, women and children.
That adds the other side of the conversation of why these people are getting in the raft and fleeing for their lives. I like Haiti. I like the country. And I still have a number of Haitian friends. Only a couple who still are on Hispano Island. But I've stumped those through a solution. I mean, the solution is to start at grassroots level. And there are just too many disparate factions battling for control. I had a green beret on the show and he was sitting in a plane on an airport.
I'm sure it was down here somewhere. Getting ready to go and be a peacekeeping force in Haiti, like an invasion. And they were called off on the tarmac. But I'm always curious because again, you think about the potential tourism.
I'm surprised that the U.S., a long time ago, before it got really bad, didn't have interest in there because you think with it being such a close neighbor to Florida and with so much tourism and cruising and all those things that if not from a humanitarian point of view, from a business point of view, that the U.S. would have stepped in years ago. Here's a story I can tell you about the American interest in Haiti. And it goes to the American interest in America's pastime baseball.
At one time, Haiti, I think in the 70s, 80s maybe, there was a brief period of peace, not a lot of prosperity, but some peace. And it was alluded to as the happy Haitian theory. And here's how it reflected on baseball. At that time in baseball, more home runs were being hit than at any time before. All the baseballs used in America were manufactured at that time in Haiti.
The happy Haitian theory was the happy Haitian people enjoying a modicum of prosperity are stitching the baseballs tighter and therefore they fly farther off the bat. And that was America's interest in Haiti. That's where it ended. The happy Haitian theory. I've never heard that before, but that's very sad in many ways, especially as the Dominican right next to him. We have so many baseball players playing in Major League here.
Well, I want to shift to a different nation, but I don't want to make it as a topic itself, but more a kind of overview of journalism. What I have experienced and witnessed, especially more recently, is it seems like the most censored voice these days is the middle of the road, common sense voice. We talked last time about Fox and CNN and that kind of divided screen and it being opinions, not news anymore.
And it's, for example, with this whole Gaza thing, and we're recording this on October 7th, that if you stand up and say what happened to the Israeli people that were killed that day is terrible and what's happened in Gaza to the Palestinian people and Israeli since is also terrible, that is heresy. How dare you just pick a side? You're either at pro-Israeli or pro-Palestine. You can't be both. I find that insanity, you know, the same as Russia and Ukraine.
I don't believe that all Russians wanted to invade Ukraine and there's Russian people that are probably opposed to it. With that journalistic lens, what is your kind of perspective now on even topics that arguably the answer sits in the middle, that that's a kind of silence voice and you have these polarizing camps. And if you don't subscribe to one of those two, then you're the kind of odd one out. You're exactly right. I mean, this is, there's an abyss in this country.
I mean, the division is as grave as well, certainly in my lifetime. I mean, the media is somewhat at fault, but I think most at fault is the American electorate, the American people. And unfortunately, we have become so inured to the lies of politicians that we don't pay attention to them much anymore. It's just accepted. I mean, the things that politicians say these days and get away with is amazing.
I mean, just recently, the poor Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, you know, being surprised of accused of eating the pets. I mean, come on. I mean, and then you have an American congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in the last few days has been in her bully pulpit, blaming the recent destruction from hurricanes on the Democrats because somehow they have shifted the weather patterns. I mean, look, this stuff is incomprehensible. But how many people believe it? I don't know, 40, 45 percent.
This is, you know, insane. I mean, the poor media is sucked a bit in the middle. They a good media is bound to point out falsehoods, lies, accusations that don't hold true. I mean, they do that and they're attacked by being partisan. They don't do that. They're attacked as being partisan on the other side. So the poor media is kind of stuck in the middle.
And I don't think there's enough nerve and gumption on the part of the media to really shine light on a lot of these claims and falsehoods that are being spread around. I mean, when Ronald Reagan was president, his press secretary, whose name was Larry Speaks, said anything told five times becomes truth. And that's right out of the playbook of one particular political party. Repetition, repetition, repetition, pounded into the people's heads and they're bound to believe it. I don't get it.
I mean, the only way a free press can function is by being tough. It's not the free press's job to be nice. It's more to be nasty. They're there to expose. I mean, it's almost like the press should be here to observe, not to participate. And your observation has to be tough. I mean, why did the people who foster the most exaggerated claims take umbrage when they're questioned about them? Well, we talked about this before.
This is one of the things that I found where I'm called a libtard or a Trumpy or whatever side it is. And again, you're standing in the middle looking like a tennis match, looking left and right going, what are you people talking about? But this is what happens when you have a system where real leaders can't succeed. I would say, I had her on the show, Tulsi Gabbard. I think she's fantastic. RFK, I think he's fantastic. But once again, they couldn't get anywhere near the end.
So now it breaks my heart, but they're both aligning to one side. But I think the other side is horrendous as well. And then you have all these legal cases and looking into their history. It's like, well, because our system keeps bringing horrible people to the surface. And you, I'm sure, Nelson Mandel is one of them. But so many incredible leaders in the past, probably in the military and maybe in journalism. I as a firefighter, and this is why it jars at me so much.
The leaders that I respected, lives were in their hands. So these were tried and tested, incredible men and women. So when you hold Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or any of these people in front of me, to me, they're nowhere near a leader. And this is why I think we keep having these problems.
If we had a system that actually allowed real leaders to come in, that didn't have to be extremely wealthy, didn't have to be devoid of ethics, so you take money from lobbyists, we wouldn't have as many of these problems because these leaders would pull us together. But instead, we're cleaved as a nation by these two polarizing figures every four years that they don't want the country united. United we stand. Well, to me, the initial question is, who wants the job?
Why do you want to be president? But it was a sought after profession. You're not doing it for the money. Years ago, it was a very prestigious role, you know what I mean? And so this is the problem. How do we get here? Well years ago, it was a prestigious post because America was a prestigious country. I think it goes back to the fact that, you know, America on the world stage is a diminished character now.
I mean, just take a look at the absence of any significant influence that American policy has in the Middle East. You know, we just don't have the image, the force, the wherewithal. And I'm not saying that, you know, that the country as a whole should be the bully boy on the block. But we should be able to exert more influence. But I think we're weakened as the world looks at the state we're in now. You know, we've got an election for the most important position in the country that's in the mud.
Have you ever seen a film called Idiocracy? It was a tongue in cheek comedy. I think it's about 20 years old now. And it's, there's this, on that theory that you got all these career people and they're following their career and they might maybe have one kid in their late 30s. And then you have other groups of people that are, you know, having all kinds of children. And the whole tongue in cheek perspective is that the country gets dumber and dumber.
And the president at this point now, fast forward, is a former WWF wrestler. And ironically, everyone's wearing Crocs. And the backstory is the costume designer was like, well, no one's ever going to wear Crocs in the future. So we'll use that as the costume choice. Here we are now. And most people are wearing Crocs. But the whole point is if you listen to the way that they're talking, it's literally how this social media back and forth is. We have arrived at Idiocracy.
And it's, the politics now has become like the preamble of a wrestling match rather than two groups of mature people who, you know, if one doesn't succeed in the run, then you're like, well, they're still, they're still good. They're going to support each other. The country is first. But as one of my guests said to me, we've got to remember that we are the poster for democracy. But if you look at our statistics, you know, it's 70% obese or overweight. We consume 75% of the world's opioids.
We're 4% of the population, but we have 20% of the world's incarcerated population. You know, our education is in the toilet. I mean, it's not down on us. It's just we are allowing this politics to start driving our country into the ground. And those are the topics that we need politicians to be talking about, not eating animals in Springfield or, you know, all these other ridiculous things. Well, that goes back to what I was saying that America is diminished, diminished now as a world leader.
I mean, people look at this shining, you know, city on the hill and they say, well, yeah, but the city's got no lights on. I mean, and the the problems in this country for what this country is are remarkable. And I don't hear many real time real life solutions from anyone. I've come to the point now that I'm just really looking forward to this election being over. I mean, I just can't listen to I mean, promise after promise.
And you know, either Democrat or Republican, the speakers know 90% of the promises they're making are unachievable. You know, they're the realism of politics, I think has left us. I think, you know, it's a desperate drive for superiority. But once having achieved that superiority, what you do with it is the danger. I mean, you know, the Democrats are far too liberal. The Republicans cater to only to the rich. I mean, I mean, I don't I don't get it. Sometimes it makes my head swim.
And then I get a headache. Well, what I mean, just to put it into fixable things, when I was talking to Tulsi Gabbard, the common denominator is the same even in the fire service, why we're losing so many firefighters is it's a it's a false economy. You know, and you look at the obesity crisis, there's all this pushback on, for example, national health, which is what I grew up with as a little boy in England, amazing system when it's funded and you know, staff properly.
But you know, what we've done is we've allowed we've allowed the country to become fat and sick. And you have this incredible millions and millions and millions of people who are legal drug addicts, statins, hypertension meds, I mean, all the things versus a proactive thing like let's make our country healthy. Now we won't be draining, you know, this, you know, billions, if not trillions of dollars on health care.
You know, so this, you know, you look at the mental health crisis, the same thing you look at the violence in the schools, you know, all these elements, if you if you invest in the front, you can fix these problems. But the problem is, drug companies make a lot of money. You know, I mean, you saw like ecstasy just get turned down. So MDMA for mental health therapy, but Oxycontin, which started the opioid crisis was FDA approved. Well exactly. But it goes back to the root of what America is.
It's a capitalistic system. It's for certain people to make as much money as they can. How they can. I mean, I am floored when I occasionally watch regular what I'll call regular television by the commercials. If I watch one of the 630 evening news shows, all the commercials are aimed at an older population. They're all for medical products. I'm telling you, I mean, and I get a kick out of these commercials.
If a minute commercial runs, the last 20 seconds are a voiceover in fast, cicado language about all the dangers. Exactly. The side effects, which most of the illicit drugs don't. By the way, you could die if you take this. Exactly. I love the antidepressant ones. The suicide is one of the byproducts, you know, I mean, that's that's isn't that mean that it doesn't work if a mental health drug is causing suicide ideation?
Look, it costs a lot of money to fix a lot of the societal ills of this country. And it involves plowing money in to the fixes. There's very little capitalistic financial return into fixing a lot of these problems. Same as the fire service. It's not supposed to make money. It's a service. And just, you know, hours from now, as we sit here or days again, the fire service, EMS, law enforcement, people are going to be screaming for them.
But those people are nowhere to be seen when they need staffing and, you know, more time off and more training. I'll digress for a minute and tell you a personal story. One of the reasons we moved here to Gainesville, north central Florida, there were two private primary reasons and they were 50 50. One was to get away from the coast and the hurricanes. And the other was because of the exquisite University of Florida health system that exists here.
I mean, Gainesville is, as I call it, a medical city. I have my retiree health plan with UnitedHealthcare. When I came to Gainesville, the first thing I did was get in touch with the University of Florida health system, which takes UnitedHealthcare. And I got a general practitioner who I went to and then had that general practitioner relay me to other doctors. I wanted to see an orthopedic doctor, a vascular doctor, a heart doctor for just a checkup.
And I had appointments within three weeks to see all these other specialists. I mean, amazing. All right. Then in late July, I got a letter from the University of Florida health system and said, as of September 1st, we are no longer affiliated with UnitedHealthcare. So I made some inquiries, could never get a straight answer, but discovered the issue was obviously money. And they never worked it out.
So as of September 1st, I could no longer see my five University of Florida health doctors because they all took UnitedHealthcare. So I've had to find other physicians in the area who are still affiliated with UnitedHealthcare. And there aren't that many. So you talk about the capitalistic system in health. Here is a poor patient who's stuck between two behemoths arguing over a dollar sign. I mean, I've always been an advocate of universal health care.
I mean, a country this big and this well equipped in the medical field should be able to provide that. Well, Roosevelt was going to, from what I understand. And then when he passed, they scrapped it. Because you look at it, Japan and Germany, our two enemies in the war, they got a version of universal health care and we got this profit based system. But you were right. You mentioned earlier, this is a country of lobbyists. You know, which lobby is going to contribute the most?
Which lobby is going to talk the loudest? Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't benefit the people. And this is the thing I tell, tell this story once in a while. My granddad got cancer at 99 years old. And the guy was, he was so fit and healthy prior to that, that the cancer actually spread like he was a young person. That's how he probably would have lived years, years beyond that. Got T-boned in the car is how they found it. And I asked him, you know, did they put you on a backboard?
And he's like, did who? I was like the ambulance. He said, I didn't call an ambulance. 45 miles an hour, T-bone. Anyway, but through the bruising and everything, they found this cancer. And I watched him get the most amazing care as he went into hospice and he was at home and he had a hospital bed put in. He had nurse visits, he had doctor's visits. They visited my grandmother after he passed for like another week or so, removed all the gear. That was all national health.
And he had paid for private insurance, but Bupa in England, every year you get older, they bump the premium more and more and more. So they paid their whole life. And when they actually came to use it, they couldn't afford it anymore. So it was a national health that took care of my granddad.
So when you hear these horror stories, yeah, if you're in inner city London or Manchester, you know, and you see an overwhelmed ER, and yeah, you're probably not going to get the best service compared to, you know, more rural where I lived. But that's what the national health is supposed to be like, you know, lots of doctors, lots of, you know, support, lots of places, and then a proactive initiative to make British people healthy. So you don't use it very much. That's the model.
But now the British are not too far behind the Americans and there's a lot of, you know, obesity and ill health growing there too. So this is the issue. Having seen what national health looks like, that is the answer. I mean, Finland has an amazing health care, sorry, school system, Norway has prisons, Finland, sorry, Portugal's drug policy in Switzerland, but the UK, the national health, I think, is the world's best. I really do.
No, I cannot understand the obstruction to having a national health system. I mean, you just got to do it properly. You got to do it the right way. But obviously in America, you'd have to do it simultaneously with improving health. But let's ask ourselves, who doesn't benefit from a universal health care system? Drug companies, and they will. This is the thing, you ask British physicians. Who doesn't benefit? Yeah, but the lobbyists. The lobbyists. Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah. Not the lobbyists, the clients of the lobbyists. Look, you know, there's always a lot of talk about the cost of prescription drugs in this country. You know, why can a weight loss drug in this country cost $1,500 a month for use? And in the UK, the same drug is $90. How can that be? Well, I could tell you how it could be. The company that manufactures the drug is making a lot more in this country. 100%. And then again, even with, it was a perfect example.
When the gas and diesel prices went through the roof, you know, was it a couple years ago now, the whole conversation was, you know, what's wrong? The prices are so high, it's not fair. But there was no conversation on why am I driving, you know, a suburban that's the size of a school bus. It's the size of me, my husband and my one child. You know, so it's the same with the prescription meds.
We should be asking, well, how do we get Americans to take less medicine as well, which is getting them healthier? Well, you know, the drug companies will say, well, you know, we have to charge these exorbitant prices because it all goes into what we call R&D, you know, research and development. And I'd say, well, the research and the development has already been done on your $1,500 a month obesity drug. So you're not pouring any money into that. So why not drop the price of that drug?
Well, if we do that, then we won't have that R&D money. So we go on to the next fix. Yeah. I mean, just go look at the Oxycontin story, you know, the Sacklers did. I mean, it's there. I remember being in Broward County, literally in a doctor's office trying to get to see the doctor and, you know, drug rep after drug rep after drug rep went in, you know, all like look like models, you know, with their little wheelie sample case.
And then you go in and they're throwing meds at you, you know, and this is a profit based health care system. And what's the result? I always say even with the fire service, if the way we do it profit, profit, profit, health system in a capitalist society, come on. Well, if it worked, then we'd have a healthy nation. It's that simple. Is it working? We don't have a healthy nation. So there's your, you know, you don't need any more evidence.
No, it's shameful that a nation with the resources that are available here and the medical care that's available here. If that medical care was applied to a universal health system, I mean, Americans would be a lot healthier, a lot happier. They'd live longer. They'd prosper more.
Yeah. Yeah. One of the most heartbreaking things that I saw when I first became a firefighter here was you walk into an ER with a patient and the first thing that they're asked is their social security number so they can start the billing, you know, not, you know, are you okay? What's wrong? I mean, obviously we would tell the nurses that, but immediately there's an admin person with a, you know, used to be a clipboard, now it's a computer taking all their details so they can start the billing.
Absolutely. You walk into the doctor's office, they don't say, what can we do for you? It's insurance card and driver's license, please. Yeah. Well, I don't have an insurance card. Next. My dad just had a PE, had knee surgery and he threw a clot and it went to his lung. So he had an ambulance ride and granted, I'll be fair, that particular hospital, he waited a long time to be seen, but again, the NHS has been stripped, you know, it's not the way it's supposed to be at the moment.
They've absolutely slaughtered it. But you know, he had, he was in the ER for several days, you know, like I said, ambulance ride, all these drugs, all these therapies to take away with him, everything. Didn't cost him a penny. Zero pennies, you know? So the patient goes in and all they got to think about is getting better, you know? Whereas here you have the audacity to get cancer, well now you're thinking, am I going to lose my house as well?
Because I'm never going to be able to pay these bills. Right. Well, my wife had a complete right knee replacement in late June. A very successful operation done by a very good surgeon here, with whom we had two or three follow-up visits. And he pronounced everything going well on track and you're a little bit ahead of the game. And the last time we went, he scheduled the next appointment and it was for September 16th.
And he said, listen, I'm just giving you this appointment September 16th, but I'm not going to be seeing you. I said, why? He said, well, because UnitedHealthcare and the University of Florida part ways on September 1st. So as she recovers from her knee replacement, she can't go back and see the surgeon who did it. The physical therapy outfit that she was seeing, she can't go back because they won't take insurance. You've completely messed up the care now.
I said to myself, well, at least you had almost two months of recovery under the aegis and the care of the good doctors. But then you're on your own. Yeah. And this is the thing. I mean, like I said, when you've seen it done better, even with Portugal, I sat with the guy that spearheaded the decriminalizing addiction with Zsao Gulao in Lisbon. And it was amazing. He showed me around the facilities.
And when you proactively, like you said, invest and you educate the people, like here's what we're going to do. We're going to use a lot of money, taxpayers money, but we're going to decriminalize addiction. We're going to build these addiction centers. We're going to build these mental health facilities. There's going to be job creation. There's going to be housing. But this homelessness and this addiction that you're seeing and these loved ones that you're losing, we're going to address that.
That's a proactive element. It's the same with this. In the NHS, especially the one that I knew when I was growing up, there wouldn't be a break in care. You would see those same physicians from the beginning to the end. It wouldn't be this. You know, this has happened to so many people. I've got a friend who's a firefighter and his wife has cancer and she was on a very expensive chemo drug and the fire department changed insurances on him and he had to pay out of pocket.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. You know, that's just that's not for the people. So this is the thing. You know, you get the national health kind of labeled as socialized medicine, like you're going to have these, you know, hammers and sickles all through the hospital. But all it means is altruistic medicine. Let's make a healthy population. Let's take care of the people that need it so they don't have to worry about anything other than getting better.
Oh, no, I don't I'm still stumped by the fact that this country for all its genius cannot come up with a universal health system. I mean, absolutely. Well, I want to shift to one more topic and then be mindful of your time because we've got to help get ready for this next hurricane. But one thing as I told you, price of admission. Absolutely. You got to help me shove some furniture and in case Milton comes knocking. Absolutely. I'd be more than happy to.
One thing I didn't ask you about last time, which I fell into this eight years ago, but I'd love to get your take is actually the art of interviewing. What was your kind of, you know, your your your journey into it? And then what what skills or tools have you used along the years? Because I mean, just to recap, you were the first person that interviewed Nelson Mandela after he got out of Robben Island. So clearly you got to a point where you were extremely trusted.
So what about the art of conversation? Because I think that's something that as again, with this whole idiocracy thing, I think it's lost these days. Well, the Mandela case was kind of an outlier because CBS News, through no fault of our own, I may add, had a very bad reputation in South Africa with the South African government. We did a lot of reporting during the apartheid days about the evils of apartheid and the toll it was taking on an entire society.
And the Mandela family are reporting put us in good favor with the Mandela family. That may be the reason we got the first interview. I'm not sure. But I'll tell you a story and it goes back to hurricanes. I remember in the aftermath of one hurricane, we came upon a family sitting outside their damaged home and their neighbors in an almost equally damaged home next door to them were with them. So a group of, I don't know, eight to 10 people, adults and children.
And we walked up to them and said, can we talk to you a little bit about what happened here? And we were met with great animosity. Get out, you people. You just come here. You're bloodsuckers and you don't care. So I didn't want to get into a prolonged argument with these people. But I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I got angry actually. I said, we're not here bloodsuckers. I said, you don't have to talk to us. I understand that. That's your right.
It's also my right to ask you if you want to. And I said, you must understand something. We're not here to make light of the situation. But if we talk to people like you and you can tell us your experiences, what you've gone through, what you're going through, et cetera, that gets a message out. Maybe yes, you need more help here. You're not getting enough attention. People hear that. The government hears that. I said, I don't understand why you think we're here working against you.
So we had about a five minute conversation back and forth about that. And they said, OK, yeah, you can talk to us. We'll tell you. So I think I have to be careful how I say this. But an interviewer has to be somewhat sympathetic to the plight of the subject. Now that doesn't mean you have to agree with everything. But you have to establish some kind of rapport of honesty and kind of sympathy. I haven't gone through a hurricane. I don't understand what it's like. What's it like?
So you've got to establish a playing field that kind of levels out that you're not seen as just a blood sucking publicity grabbing horror. But you've got some empathy. You just, as I used to tell people, we want to tell your story. I'm not telling my story. It's your story that counts here. And sometimes it takes some work to do that. It's hard.
And then equally important, once an interview starts, if you hear something that one of the great lost arts of interviewing now is the follow up question. Too often interviewers go in with a list of, okay, this is Harry Smith. His house was damaged on this date. I've got four questions for Harry. And you ask question number one, and obviously there's a follow up, but you stick to your list.
So the interviewer has to be extremely flexible and listen to an answer and say, there may be more, there may be something even more important. And you say, well, let me just clarify or let me ask you about what you said. And that I think elicits more of a conversation. I mean, you really don't want the interview to be horribly confrontational, except in some cases. I mean, and it has to be, you have to, you have to involve yourself with the subject.
And as I said earlier, in the case of a hurricane, it's difficult because these people have gone through it. They've lost everything. You know, you're going to drive 40 miles back up the road tonight and sleep in a hotel. So you've got to have some empathy and sympathy. You also can't roll over. I mean, every, every situation is different, but I think the most important thing is for the interviewer to make them, you know, believable. You know, you have to, you do have to sell yourself.
You don't want to oversell. That's a crime. I mean, but you want to explain, you know, we're not here to get ratings because of you. We're here that maybe somebody hears your story and says they need help. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. When I think of the, the blood sucking journalism to me, the image that pops up immediately is for example, after a school shooting, they're sticking microphones in parents faces who just lost a child. So when you look at that, where is that line?
The most important thing is as an interviewer, you have to mature enough to understand the difference between being involved in a story, getting a story and the extraordinary right of privacy that people deserve. I mean, I got into a lot of trouble at CBS one day in the aftermath of some disaster. Like I'm, I can't recall the particulars, but it must have been a storm or a tornado or the town was, it was, you know, heavily damaged.
And that night under a famous tree that still existed in the town, there was like a prayer meeting. Right. And my bosses in New York said, we want you to take the crew and go over to the prayer meeting and talk to those people. And I said, no F in way. I said, if they break up and disperse, I'll walk over a couple who are leaving. I said, but I'm not going to wade into their prayer meeting. And it became a big country. Well, I'm at hand, there'll be consequences if you don't.
I said, I'll take the consequences. I'm not doing it. Unfortunately, there were no consequences, but there were a couple of tough moments. So you know, you know, as a reporter, a journalist, automatically you're intruding on another person's life. You've got to be smart enough to know there's a line, you know, these people deserve their moment of, you know, morning silence, remembrance, whatever. You're not part of it. You're there to observe, as I said, not participate.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of journalists who don't mind barging right into the middle of your living room while you're, you know, or the other side of that, what I see as well, a lot is, for example, there might be a shooting and the journalist is interviewing someone who walked by an hour later, you know, or the weather guy is trying to pretend that the weather's really bad and then someone's walking their dog right behind them and you can see that it's not deep. So what about that side?
How does that, you know, kind of sit with you? You know, that's just bad media. I mean, that's, you know, and you, you most often see that on a local or level of television than when people ascend to like networks that usually they've been around the block a couple of times and understand there are some rules, but you know, it's, it's the nature of a lot of journalists who, you know, go for the home run. Holy cow. Look, that person over there is crying. Let's get over there.
I don't care what she has to say. She's crying. What about the long form conversation? One of the beautiful things about this, about podcasts is you get to sit with someone for an hour or two hours, whatever it is, and have this back and forth. And, you know, like I said, it was Tulsi or whoever, now you get to hear, oh, this is this person's early life. This is, you know, the kind of family dynamic and this is the spiritual beliefs.
And now, you know, they're, they're an athlete, they're a member of the military, and you paint this whole picture of this person. And a lot of times, you know, Joe Rogan is a good example of Bernie Sanders and some of the politicians he's had on. You come away going, thank God, like for the first time, I've actually heard this person entirely talk about, you know, a concept and learned about who they are. What is your kind of perspective of that?
We have such a soundbite kind of social media clickbait environment at the moment, that long form conversation, the need to go back to kind of the kind of journalistic 60 minutes era that you grew up with. Those days of 60 minutes of journalism are done. It's not going to be replicated. The country is too polarized. And most of the things you see now on television are not news shows. They're opinion shows.
I mean, you know, you've got Fox in one corner, MSNBC in another corner, CNN trying to find like a bit of a middle ground. There's a, you know, it's gotten to either for us or against us. But there's an old expression, I forget some famous author, I think that, you know, a lie goes around the world five times faster than the truth can catch it. And in this country, it's been determined by our leaders and our potential leaders that, yeah, you can get away with exaggerations and lying.
But somebody is going to report it. And you know, I said to someone the other day, the only growth industry that Trump can point to is the number of fact checkers that have been hired.
Like I said, I might just see this on both ends, you know, we're just bleeding money as taxpayers looking into all these people, you know, and it's just, God, if you just get some good human beings back in there, you know, then we wouldn't be worried about scandals and lies that these people would have good ethics and, you know, actually act on what they said they were going to do. Well, you can't be all things to all people. So therefore, that's when the promises come in.
I'll promise all things to all people. I'll deliver on 10%. Yeah, exactly. But one more one more kind of closing one. I heard someone think it was Joe Rogan actually say, maybe it was him or his guests, I forget. But they were talking about the news, the media almost reaching its expiration date, you know, there was there was a danger because we've got, as you said, opinions now on news that it was actually going to nosedive. What's your perspective on that?
Well, I think the days of what I refer to as good media, for instance, example, 60 minutes are diminished dying because of the advent of what is called social media. I mean, social media is an unfettered reservoir of whatever. They can say anything. Social media has no guardrails. It's got no bumpers. I mean, you do. It's the Wild West. I think, you know, I don't know how you regulate it. I mean, it's easy for me to criticize it.
But how you regulate it without getting diving deep into free speech, provisions, etc. But I mean, it's a it's a dangerous megaphone that's out there now. It's loud and too many people don't hear it. And even worse, believe it. Like you were talking about, you know, Robert Kennedy Jr. I mean, I thought, given this guy's sense about evacuation, you know, inoculations, I think that how can I believe him? You know, he lost all credibility with me, with some of his denials of things.
I mean, it's one thing to espouse a point of view. But when your point of view has been disproven, either by science or in the case of another politician in the courts, how do you stick by them? How do you keep peddling them? I don't get it. I just don't understand how again, there's no realization of, yeah, well, you know, I may be wrong about that. No, I'm never wrong. So how can we fix it? I think I asked you, King, for a day last time.
But from a journalism news station point of view, because I think last time when we talked, you held the BBC still highly as far as news. And I've seen even a slight decline in that being pulled towards the American model slightly. But how do we put that back? How do we turn that around so that we can have these middle of the road, you know, honest voices asking the questions that need to be asked? I think we're well around the bend.
I don't think we're ever going to get back to that, I think we're always going to be a polarized media and therefore a polarized country. I mean, I don't think you can recover at this point. You know, it's like Haiti. You know, the root causes are so entrenched. You're not going to recover. I mean, I don't want to say journalism is doomed, but it's getting on life support. Absolutely. Well, I want to thank you for another amazing conversation. We're about to move some furniture in a second.
But this, you know, coming from the background that you have and coming from the journalistic era that was still journalism, even though we touched on some more current events, your perspective, I think, is invaluable because you are of that era where your perspective, I think, is rooted in the middle that we discussed. So I want to thank you so much for this second conversation inviting me to your Gainesville home, which I hope is going to fare a lot better than the last one.
Well, let's say this way, I mean, you know, I'm I'm all for a fair media, but I am demanding of an accurate media. We can't skip over obvious miss faults, missteps, lies, provocations. We've got to call attention to them. And damn it, if we lose audience or viewers, hey, at least we did our job.