Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Rupert Murdoch and alternative Facts. Right, you can already guess where I'm coming down on this one. There are no such things as alternative facts. There are alternative perspectives, of course, but facts are facts, despite whatever spin Kellyan Conway tried to deploy during the Trump years.
We can disagree about how to interpret facts, but there they remain stubborn things. When stubborn people collide with stubborn things, When the like of Rupert Murdoch assembles a media empire largely designed to embrace and disseminate disinformation, you have the makings of a Crash Course episode. Murdoch, the ninety two year old progenitor the Fox News Miasma, recently retired from his perch atop Fox Corp and News Corp. Fox owns
various Fox media and broadcasting properties. News Corp. Pulls over more straight arrow enterprises like a Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins, as well as a handful of brass knuckle tabloids that have cut swaths through new York, London and Sydney. But Fox is likely to define Murdoch's legacy a legacy. Some of his former executives now reject. Three of them jointly noted in a recent public statement, and I quote we never envisioned and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation
machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become. For his part, Murdoch seems untroubled barrier mistakes, he likes to say. Joining me today is Molly Jong Fast, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, a ubiquitous TV commentator, and the host of the Fast Politics podcast. Molly is shrewd, candid and unspinnable. We're going to talk about Murdoch, the media, and the epic disinformation cyclones surrounding us. Howdy Molly, Hi, how are you ell? I'm glad to have you on.
Well, I'm glad to join you.
So the departure point for talking about Rupert Murdoch's career and his legacy, I say, I have a hard time believing that a noted hard worker and control freak like Rupert Murdoch, who assembled this giant empire of media assets from scratch with a little help, you know, from an Australian paper he inherited from his father, will just let go of the reins and let young Lachlan run the show.
But maybe that's the case. We'll talk about that. But I wanted to know just first and foremost, what is Rupert Murdoch stepping down from his perch symbolized to you? How do you think about that?
I mean, I think it's a fake. Say again, this is the question here when you have people who are bad faith actors, like the Murdochs and Donald Trump, and you know, people where again and again they have told you who they are. I want to believe them. So I put very little steak in what Rupert Murdoch says publicly, and much more steak in whatever it is that he does. And in this case, look this sort of death star, the New York Posts, the Wall Street Journal, all Fox News.
I think Fox News is the most destructive of the trio. But Fox News has got many other conservative media, you know, the right side broadcasting. They've gone on American news, right streamers, Newsmax, so they are no longer just one cancer. There's a metastasis right in our American media ecosystem. So I would say that I don't put much steak in what Rupert says or what lock row.
Let's start with, why do you think Rupert's being disingenuous?
I mean, I have no reason to think one way or the I mean, here's what I would say. I think life imitates art, and he will probably stay controlling the company until he dies, as he did on the HBO show Succession, which I know is not actually a biopic, but more and more it does seem like, you.
Know, Rupert's mother, I think she lived till she was at least one hundred and twenty, but that might be too high. It's definitely well north of one hundred. So he could, you know, if the genes are at tel Rupert could be with us, you know, for twenty more years.
I mean, I think what's relevant about Rupert Murdock stemming down is that there is the acknowledgment here, there's the tacit acknowledgment that someday he will die. And when he does die, do you.
Think that's really the tacit acknowledgement He does because he thought, well, I'm just going to send his segal out to the world that I recognize my own more.
Talent fatality at ninety two. I mean, you know, this is not some like brave you know, shot across the bow here. I mean, he's in his nineties. But I would say this. I think that what is relevant about this is that of eventually the kids are going to have a fight because there are four kids, four voting kids, and only one of them is an actual fascist or you know, we're not supposed to say fascist is fascist adjacent?
Or is fascist friendly? Okay, yeah, is fascist friendly? So there's going to be a big fight and it'll be that, I think is what is interesting.
Just so our listeners know that the Murdock's exercise control over their media empire through a trust, and the kiddies each have an equal stake. Lockin's running the show has one steak, but his.
Siblings Elizabeth and James, and there's one other one who's older.
Yeah, they all have their own say, and there appear to be of a different political persuasion than Lachlan. Some people anticipate a food fight.
And then there are the younger kids who don't have voting stakes, but who do have financial stakes. So I mean, eventually, when he dies, there will be a real reckoning for the station. But again, the thing about Fox, which I think is import or to realize and was not true in nineteen ninety six when it started, is that the horse has already left the barn, right, like Pandora is out of the box. Right. If Fox ends tomorrow, they're
still right side broadcasting. There's still Newsmax. There is such little pushback to.
Some of the fact checking, fact checking and.
Pushback when they lie that they can get away with it.
We'll talk more about the ecosystem that Murdoch has built, but it's worth pausing for a moment to think about how we got here, which is he rode test at all of this overseas. Yeah, first in Australia and then on Fleet Street, and then he came to America and owned a succession of papers that he went to school on. Originally the Village Voice, He had New York Magazine. At one point he ended up with the New York Post, then he famously got the Wall Street Journal. Over a
period of decades. But Fox was the sort of realization of some of the lessons he and overseas. Right.
Yeah, I mean, I think look, propaganda works, right, and what we saw with the Dominion case, which I think is really an important moment in American media studies.
Right is here, But I want to wait. I want to wait to get to this case. I just want to talk a little bit for a minute about the phenomenon of thoughts itself long before dominion came along. You know, he built this network under Roger Ales that had a combination of a news arm and commentators. But the real
mojo for the network where it's commentators. They tracked in conspiracy theories, seth Rich, birtherism, you know, the January sixth uprising, alternative viewpoints about what that meant over a period of decades. Why do you think that got traction?
Why do I think it got traction? I think Look, tabloids have a long and storied history in America and Great Britain, and people like to read trash. I mean that is like, I feel like that is one of our basest instincts. And for a long time politicians in America at least had a sort of code and honor code. Right, so you know you would have a decorum, right, there'd be Senate decorum and you still have it. It's interesting you still have a disconnect between the Senate and the House,
right the House is significantly. People are much sleazier to each other in the House and they're in the Senate. Right in the Senate because you kind of it's a little bit more clubby, which can also be problematic sometimes.
But I think people liked that there was this kind of tabloidiness of it, and I think all right, And I also think that like one of the reasons why this propaganda has really grown is because there are really racist people in this country who see that they demographically can't beat it, right, they can't win, right, they are not having babies fast enough to keep this country white. And the racism the underlying I'm not even going to say it's anxiety, because I don't think you should give
them the benefit of the doubt. The racism, the sort of American racism which has I think long been an undercurrent in life in America for centuries. Yeah, really got all flared up with this when they started to understand this demographic change and then also when they started to feel that they could not keep up the standards of living that their parents had.
I mean, yeah, I mean, but that's anxiety as opposed to racism. You know, the idea that you can't keep up your living standards. I'm not denying that they're obviously racism and sent some of this as well, right, but it is informed by a number of factors, and I do think economic anxiety is one of them, right.
But I also think the deep undercurrent, Right, you don't get to Obama's birth certificate unless you're a racist, right, you don't, because otherwise that's not insecurity about your job. That's the belief that this man can possibly be one of OZ because he's black.
And I think that Birtherism and Obama is a signal moment because it involves so many things. Obama was presiding of an administration that was dealing with the fallout of a financial crisis, right, people feeling economically insecure. He was black in a nation in which, you know, as you noted, the demographics were working against white people. And he was being pillaried in a media ecosystem that could make conspiracy
theories go viral and a way they hadn't before. And I think one of the things to think about with Fox and its evolution is they put their finger on sort of this issue of discontent. When Roger Ales first started the idea that there was this silent majority that wasn't being heard from on the major networks, and they sort of took baby steps. When you look back into
it now, you know, sort of soft conspiracy theories. The institutions are against you, but they weren't wholesale trafficking initially in propaganda, racism and disinformation. And with each passing decade it became more and more severe. And I do think of the Birtherrism moment as when the floodgates began to open and led right into the shoes of Donald Trump.
Yeah, for sure, and Trump was part of it, right. This is like the Tea Party, you know, the Tea Party is this sort of rage towards institutions for not delivering what you want. And then you've got from there Birtherrism and the beginning of Donald Trump. I mean, hell has no fury like a white man told he might have to be the same as everyone else.
You know, Murdoch is clearly a newsman in the old fashioned sense of it. He's liked newsrooms, he's liked reporters, he's owned properties that do do quote unquote straight news reporting. But he also knows what he's unleashed on the other side of that ledger, which is again propaganda disinformation, playing people's worst emotions. I think I know the answer to this one, but I always like hearing other people's thoughts
on it. Why do you think he likes to luxuriate in the cesspool while also funding old fashioned news gathering.
So I actually think that there was a moment, or at least two moments that I can think of, where Murdoch tried to pump the brakes on Fox and it was too late, and so instead of stopping the propaganda, they lost market share. I think at some point he realized that he was no longer driving the bus off the cliff, that the bus was going on autopilot off
the cliff. Now I still don't think he gets any credit for that, but I do think he's savvy enough to know that at this point the monster he has no control anymore.
So what are the two moments?
Moment is first, when Trump starts to get the nomination, sometime between twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, he realizes that this guy's going to be the nominee, he doesn't want it and there's nothing he can do right. And then he's going to win. And then after January sixth, they all said like, we're going to stop doing this, and they couldn't because they saw their numbers go down. I mean, count is not really the right word, and they didn't. But I think that's the other moment.
And so you're saying that he luxuriated in the cesspool because he had created an unstoppable machine, not because he liked rubbing it all over his arms and legs.
I think he wants money. I think all he cares about is money, and I think that this was the winning formula and by the time that door was open, he just was like, you know, look, this is an incredibly competitive business, and I think this guy cares more about winning than about like American democracy. I don't think Ripper Murdoch wakes up in the morning and is like, oh, I might be ruining America's democracy. I think he's like, the numbers are good, the numbers are bad.
And famously he's used his media holdings to flex It gives him enormous way in the business world, it gives them enormous way in the political world.
You want to win. You don't get to be a billionaire like that. Unless you just don't And I curse, now I can't curse. You don't care about anything but winning.
And you know, famously he even had editors who went around wire tapping people. Whether the extent to which Rupert knew about that or didn't was debated in a courtroom. But he did establish a culture of very brass knuckled approach to digging into people's business and sort of threatening enemies perceived or actual.
Yeah, no, of course, I mean the guy is that, you know, we don't spend enough time I say this as someone who grew up very not wealthy myself, but in a place where I was exposed to a lot of wealthy people. We don't spend enough time talking about the kind of extreme I want to say, ambition and lack of compassion. One must have to make billions of dollars. And so I think it's fair to say that billionaires are not like you and I that.
They offer although I would say I do know compassionate billionaires, right, and I do know billionaires who have high standards. And I think that Rupert is an unusual amalgam of low standards, no standards, variable standards, professed high standards and it would seem a almost complete lack of compassion.
Yeah, I mean right, and he also in his mind whatever. We can't know what's in his mind, but the pure ambition does not lend itself to compassion.
On that note, I'm going to take a break so we can hear from our sponsor and we'll come right back. We're back with Molly John Fast, Vanity fair scribe. We're just talking about the arc in a very brief, compressed way of Rupert Murdoch's career. He's handed the reins off
to his sons. One thing I just want to touch back on is this idea of what changed in the propagandic ecosystem in the sort of seventies, eighties, nineties up to the notts and now because I think of you know, past events where people's jaw dropped the Willie Horton ad. You know, when Michael Ducaccus was running for president, Fox calling Florida early for George W. Bush when the final vote tally in his race against Al Gore was still
being calculated. Those sorts of things at the time were much debated and seen as sort of grotesque manifestations of hardball politics and a kind of unreltting news environment. But none of it really seems again to me to be on the same par with what began when Barack Obama became president. Even the Clintons. I think the Clintons would complain, as Hillary did, you know, vast right wing conspiracy. I don't even think the Clintons were really exposed to the
same kinds of things that Barack Obama was. And so I do see Obama the Obama presidency assist departure point along with the rise of social media and then the advent of Donald Trump. We talked a little bit earlier about that demarcation, but I want to talk about it a little bit more now in terms of how you think about that.
Yeah, I mean, look, social media. I think social media is amazing and good because I came of age I started writing in the nineties, and there were just so many gatekeepers, right. You'd write a piece for Vogue, and maybe it would go up, and maybe it would get thrown out. You know, you'd pitch the editorial page of the New York Post. You know, there were just gatekeeper after gatekeeper after gatekeeper, and I think that was the way it was, but it would sometimes cause really interesting
voices to not be able to break through. And so what I do think is really cool about social media is that you do have people like I was watching this TikTok the other day of this amazing guy who's like a brilliant pundit who there is no way you would ever have heard of this person was it not for TikTok? And I am just delighted by it every day. Unfortunately, you know, I think that I really do look at Congress as this sort of biggest screen.
I mean, I think it's putting the car before the horse to go to Congress. So I agree with you, well, I mean, go ahead.
Things were not regulated properly in the beginning because people didn't understand it, and so you know, content was kind of given away for free and then all of a sudden, and again I blame I was going to say, equal parts Congress and media companies for not being able to see what was coming, and then all of a sudden we all had to backpedal and say, like, you like our free content, now will you willing to pay forty bucks a year for it?
On top of that, very smart analysis as well is that we have conflicted feelings about the idea of gatekeepers. As you've pointed out gatekeepers especially in the you know, the classic big metro newspaper era, three network era, it was largely white men. It became privileged white men who stood atop those various institutions, and it meant that diverse
few points didn't come into the newsroom. It meant that a variety of subjects didn't get covered, and meant that talented people like you in a previous era wouldn't have gotten a shot. So social broke apart that kind of media monopoly on the intellectual and creative side. And I think that's important and worthy.
On the other hand, to pause you for a second, because like, I come from a family of like I'm a NEPO. I don't want to say baby, but NEPO middle aged. So let's not cry for me, Argentina.
Here should we tell the audience about your elements?
You know, my mom was writer, my grandfather was a writer, or they're both day No, my mother is still alive. Sorry, sorry mom, Sorry mom, But I'm just saying I don't know that. I think I was quite lucky by being born where I was born, But I dot.
You're also being modest. Now you also have your own collection of talents, right that had to get discovered in a specific way.
But I do think that you know, there are a lot of people for whom the you know, social media has been in Sorry, go on, So yes, I didn't mean to interrupetw No, No, it's.
All good, and I agree with that. I also think there is a positive side to gatekeeping m HM, which is being a screen for value. Now, if it's just a limited number of people with their hands on the gate then what you're screening for has very narrow parameters.
But if you also are concerned that propaganda, racism, right, negative aspects of how we communicate or live or act in the world shouldn't just be plastered all over people's eyeballs twenty four to seven or pumped into their ears twenty four to seven, or put in their papers twenty four to seven, gatekeepers play and important. That's true, and that is where social media has completely dropped the ball, and they've lived under this. I think canard that, well,
we're technology platforms. We had Facebook and Twitter and TikTok are just technology platforms and we are just here to let everything blossom and we can't play any role in telling people to go the other way right, and that has been lost. Along with the privilege that disappeared. The gatekeeping role has really been, I think disastrously watered down.
Yes, I agree, and I.
Think there's a certain longing people now have for clarity around facts. Where do facts reside? Who assesses them? Can media be a vehicle for actually finding commonality having civic discussions. I think it's very hard right now, and I'm not optimistic about it, But I was wondering if you are optimistic about.
It about facts coming back?
So yeah, about the ability to have narratives that people can consider dispassionately, with an eye towards problem solving, as opposed to mudslinging, with an eye towards creating good policy, as opposed to saying policy doesn't exist, with an eye towards communicating better because we're a diverse community, as opposed to using it to create for their divisions. You know, the proactive positive side of media.
I mean again, media reflects the culture, right, so you know, we could like sit down and talk about the people on the opinion side at the New York Times or at the Washington Post or at the Wall Street Journal.
But I actually think when I think about that question, I think of, like I do a podcast too, where I interview nine guests a week and I talk to a lot of politicians, and like, I don't think media solves its problems itself, but there are some pretty exciting you know, I interviewed Congresswoman Summer Lee, who I've interviewed before, and she was talking about you know, she had a statement that Menendez needs to resign. Robert Menendez, demo from New Jersey, who is.
Face with lots of gold bars.
He's facing his second set of indictments. Gold bars, Mercedes is half of that.
Stuff in pockets.
Yeah, but she had said, you know, we're not going to we have no moral high ground if we don't take it, and we cannot be the party that tells Clarence Thomas he has to resign after going to two different Koch Brothers summits. If we have a senator who's googling how much can you sell a gold bar for?
Well, that's a high minded thought, and I don't disagree with you. I think there's a moral thing there that you're airing on the podcast. There's a point being driven towards. But I'm talking about sort of the broader world we live in right now, when people are surrounded, particularly via social by raw propaganda and disinformation, and not by strong conversations about a moral way to be a senator or what is and isn't breaking the law. I'm worried about the broader world that in right now.
I mean, again, with this disinformation, misinformation, the propaganda stuff. I worry about it, and I would love Congress to do more legislating on it, and they have an opportunity to which they have continually let the orse out of the barn. But I do worry about it, and I certainly worry about, you know, this continual death of local news.
But I also I don't know. I mean, maybe this is a moral failing on my part, But I'm a little bit hopeful because we have seen this is not twenty sixteen where Trump won, you know, because we saw online there was a story about John Podesta and spirit cooking and comet ping pong, right like we've actually seen in the last bunch of elections, Republicans have underperformed even when they have said, you know, blatant lies about a candidate.
I mean I'm thinking about like herschel Walker versus Reverend Warnock, right, Like that was a race where the Republicans were pumping out a lot of information about Reverend Warnock and he still won. So I am a little bit more hopeful about that. There is definitely a fair amount of Misteve Banna calls of flooding the zone with you know, but I don't know that it works quite the same way it used to.
And do you think that's because voters and viewers have become more sophisticated because of the barrage of muck, that they've become more able to sort of discern reality from fiction.
I don't know, But I do know that my husband sent me a picture of a raccoon eating a piece of pizza on top of a garbage can, and I immediately wrote back, is that real? So I do think like we are much more savvy in a certain way. I don't know that seven years ago I would have said is that real? I probably would have been like, where did you see that?
Yeah? I think what we've gone through these phases in the Murdoch Trump Waltz that we've seen since twenty fifteen. It begins with Bill O'Reilly in a kind of lighter version of pumping the gas. And then you get to Sean Hannity, where he's very much in the tank with Trump. They're talking on the phone, He's making up excuses for Trump on air. When Trump's numerous liaisons with other women come into the public purview, Sean Hannity is saying, well,
just look at King David. He had five hundred consorts, you know, and all these other absurdities to explain away the grotesque immorality of it all. And then we wind up with Tucker Carlson, who is an open propagandist. He
creates alternative narratives whether Trump is there or not. And so it suggests to me that Trump is, and the media cohort next to it can last well beyond Rupert Murdoch and well beyond Donald Trump, because it'll always will be another Tucker Carlson who realizes, you don't need Trump or Murdoch to make this work.
So I don't want to. I feel like you're making me be the hopeful one here, Tim that's not gone. No one wants that.
I'm just I want you to road test if I'm being too unhopeful.
So Look, Chucker Colson, in my mind, was one of the scariest as someone who has had seen what he's done to people he targeted. He was really, in my mind, one of the sort of scariest of those kind of people out.
There, especially because he was really good at it.
Yeah, he was really good. Look, I think the thing that we don't talk about enough, and I'm sorry to tell you I'm gonna again be optimistic here. I don't know what's happening, but after January sixth, a lot of Trump supporters went to jail. They went to jail for doing what Trump told them to do, right on us, yes, And so what that did is it had a chilling effect, maybe not on all of them, but certainly on some of them. Right they realized that like you do crime,
even for your guy, you go to jail. And that's why we have people going to jail in this country because the idea is and again it doesn't always work, certainly, but accountability causes people to stop doing things. And so I do think it's worth thinking about. You know, Trump has had four indictments and each time he has not had huge crowds show up at the courtrooms.
Right.
Remember in Georgia. There was a lot of anxiety that closed down the streets. They closed down to this, They goes on that, and in the end it was really not a huge crowd. I also think, and again, there was a time and I say this not from like reporting I've done, but just from my own experiences online as a woman online, there were times during the Trump administration when things were really hot, like you could get
really a lot of death threats in a minute. These guys, yeah, these guys were You were just getting death threats and death threats and death threats. That seems to have pooled down a little bit. And you know, Tucker Carlson, he was. I mean, the thing about Fox, which I think is important to realize is that Fox always wins. They're like the house right with these reporters, reporters, with their opinion hosts.
They always win. So like they fire Bill O'Reilly and Bill O'Reilly went on to have a podcast and not really do anything, and they fired Tucker, who was their biggest rainmaker. And Tucker is doing a thing on X but it's not really it's sort of no consequence. And Tucker's gone from like this major voice to so if we were a year ago and Tucker were still on the air, he'd be telling Matt Gates what to do.
There was a time last year when Tucker Carlson was telling Republicans in Congress that they needed to start a commission. I can't remember what it was called, but a commission to investigate the January sixth Commission. So he was like giving direct orders to mentor legislators. Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. So I actually think Tucker Carlson was unique because he was much smarter than most of those people and really uniquely dangerous.
And that happy note, We're going to take another break to hear from your sponsor. My friend the Optimist will be coming back, and we will be back shortly. I'm back with Molly Jong, fast writer, podcast host and professional gadfly. So, Molly, we've been talking about the road behind us and the road we've just emerged from in terms of the media colliding with the Murdoch Empire and with political haymaking. Rupert stepped out of the game, at least temporarilier. He'll be
more behind the scenes. What do you think about going into the twenty twenty four election in terms of the media's relationship through overcoming disinformation and propaganda in the interests of fact gathering, while also being plain about when people are trying to spin them or lie to them. You know, it's a bill of particulars that are hard for a lot of media organizations to balance.
Well. One of the things that I'm the most concerned about is the false equivalencies, and that I think really the road to another Trump presidency is lined with you know, I listened to a really straight news reported podcast. I'm not going to mention it because I'm going to be really critical now, and these are very smart, really mainstreamy straight reporters, but they are addicted to the ada I think.
I know the podcast, I think to the idea of both sides sort of having equal ways.
Right, and just that somehow the you know, Trump tried to end democracy, he tried to end it, right, and Biden news three years older than Trump. These two things are not equivalent, and so I do think that is a big problem. I also think Republicans, and not even Republicans, this sort of far right heritage crew have worked the refs so hard that every time a mainstream medium political editor is looking over a piece he's saying like, do we seem too liberal? Does this seem to have a
liberal bias? And again that is not how this is supposed to go. Right. You need have a democracy bias, not a political biab.
Well, and the healthy question is do we have it right?
Right?
And accounting for how biases can shape what you think right or wrong is I do think there's a good, strong, honorable legacy in mainstream news gathering about assuming you're ignorant, assuming you need to dig a little further to get towards where the truth resides, and that trying to do that on breaking news in an anodyne, programmatic way serves
a purpose. I think the problem in the Trump era is that process ran up against a man who's a pathological liar and who had self interest ahead of everything else, and the media, I think had a hard time figuring out how you package what he was about using traditional methods, and I think going into twenty twenty four it's possibly even more pressing than it wasn't twenty sixteen that the media learned to shed some of its traditions so people can understand the reality around them.
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I also think this guy is unprecedented. Right, You're not covering a normal politician. But they had said I would say, like the Republican parties talked to talk to fascism, right or tap to an anti democratic I mean, right now we have Al Obama fighting with the Supreme Court about their refusal to redraw the maps. This Supreme Court, which is a very Trump heavy six ' three court, right.
Which believes in federalism and letting the states have more.
Work, leeves in federalism, which believes in originalism, which isn't even a thing, which believes that you know that women can be beaten by their husbands if it's smaller than a thumb. Obviously, I'm speaking hyperbolically here, but I do think that, you know, this Republican Party has really turned on democratic norms. So I think there is a feeling in mainstream media that you cannot be hysterical, that you cannot be emotional, that you must be calm and look
at things squarely, which is true. But if Donald Trump gets re elected, we may no longer have elections. So I don't know how you can be calm and look squarely at the end of democracy that way.
I mean I think this tension is between quote unquote fact based reporting and accurate reporting, because not all accurate reporting only involves the fact pattern and involves interpreting intent, and Trump has long broadcast his intent in a way that isn't simply about fact checking, and the media I think has lacked certainly. I think in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen early warning systems portraying that and educating people
about it. I think the reality of his presidency put mainstream media back on its feet, and there's another bite of the apple coming in. I think a lot of the coverage of the January sixth insurrection showed the media in better form. But in that case, everyone could agree that breaking into the capital overtly and being violent on the steps of the Capitol was a bad thing, regardless of the spin that was tried to put around interpreting
that event. I think Trump still roll forward with this idea that because he's a presidential candidate, he gets treated with a certain amount of distance and introspection that doesn't actually reflect what he's about and what he's doing.
Yeah, I think that's right. I also think that that they're just the framing. It's so hard to get out of the framing. One of the things that I do think the media has done that's really good is they no longer we'll say things like I mean, I was thinking about this weekend where Trump threatened General Milly with execution.
Executing a former general. Yes, way that czars and pharaohs of the past did it.
Not a very normal thing for a healthy democracy When he said that, I think previous iterations of the mainstream media covering Trump would have had does Milly deserve to die? You know as a headline. Now, what I think is interesting is there's just sort of been silence, which actually think is awesome, so bad, but in a different way.
So remember Trump in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, the number was that he had about two billion dollars in free media from saying crazy stuff and having it reported credulously. So now I think we have another problem, but it's a different problem, which is he's not getting that free media, but people aren't seeing what he's doing.
He's not getting the air you know to float his balloon. But people also aren't being critical of what he's doing and covering the sort of the dimensions of it in a robust enough way. Yeah, So what is the structure that solves this problem in your mind? I have a thought about that. But what is an overarching approach to this that you think would remedy this.
Oh, I don't know, you tell me.
I mean, I think part of it is just being more aggressive about how things are packaged for viewers and for readers and for listeners. I think you can have very short, just the facts, ma'am, kinds of synopsies of events that give people a general handle on what occurred that doesn't need to take sides. But I don't think that should exist is the only take. I think that's
why commentary exists. I think that's why news analysis exists, and I think papers and broadcasters with the ability to do it should be more aggressive about packaging those things together to give their audience a fuller picture of what the world's really about, and do it in a highly responsible, but very aggressive way. I think that that's the traditional
role of the meeting. I think the media just has to adapt to the fact that there's more disinformation and propaganda out there that has to be taken on head on and chewed up and exposed for what it is. I think the other thing is that social media companies have to be brought to heal. I think they have to be treated the same way as traditional media organizations. I think they have to police their platforms for garbage and disinformation and hate speech in the same way that
traditional publications have done it. I think those are two strong steps towards getting there. But that might be too simplistic. Come up.
Well, I think the question is is section two thirty good or you know, should media company is not be responsible for what is published on there?
I mean Section two thirty was invented at a time when media platforms were being built from scratch, and it was a way to give startups without a lot of money a way to get content that they didn't have to police so they could get their feet on the ground. Those same platforms, a number of them emerged as major multimedia forces that I think now should police what's on
their pages, or their platforms or their airwaves. And I think that Section two thirty shouldn't give Facebook or Twitter a free past towards again bringing up this ugly word, but being better gatekeepers.
Yeah, no, I agree.
When you look at where we are right now, do you see a media organization doing it in a way that you think is right. Is there a media organization that you think has a good playbook?
That's a hard question. There are a lot of journalists that I really say back writing a lot of really interesting stuff. You know, what is so interesting about the moment we are in is more and more everything becomes decentralized. Right, So, like, there are people I always read at the New York Times, people I always read about any Fair, people I always read at The Atlantic, people I always read at the Washington Post. There are people I love at the New Yorker.
So I would say what's pretty interesting is like these sort of brands have in my mind. I don't read something necessarily because of where it is. I read it because of who wrote it.
So the personal filter becomes more important.
Yeah, I mean that's not always true, And I'll read all the sort of politics vertical at the Washington Post and the New York Times or but I tend to like their opinion writers who I just skip them.
I always like to end the pods with asking people about what they've learned, what they know now that they didn't know before. Molly does Rupert Murdoch dissent from the top of Fox and the evolution of Fox over the last decades teach you anything about the way that the media ecosystem in the Murdoch ero works.
I just think you can never underestimate the way that some people just want to watch the world burn.
Wow, So you sees though you are actually the pessimist after all this back and forth about who's the opertor who's the pessimist. I mean, I don't necessarily disagree. I mean, I think part of the Republican political agenda is to defenestrate the federal government, and Donald Trump would just like to burn the house down rather not being given re entry. So I think that's true. But the extent to which people will sort of enjoy the conflagration is a trippy element of all that.
I also think Donald Trump just wants to stay out of jail. I mean, you know, I think that at the end of the day, the man just thinks like this will keep him out of jail, and we cannot underestimate the kind of motivator that is for him.
That's a discusion for the next time you come on to talk with me, Mollie, because we're out of time today. Thank you for joining me.
Thanks.
Molly jong Fast is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the hosts of the Fast Politics podcast. You can find her on Twitter at Molly jong Fast. Here at crash Course, we believe that collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that I may be perceived by some as a pessimist, even though I've always thought of myself as an optimist. But given the media sworld that we're in now, I have
to say I feel very pessimistic. What did you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a review. It helps more people find the show.
This episode was produced by the indispensable Anna Maserakas, Moses Ondam and me, our supervib producers Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help from Sage Bauman, Katie Boyce, Jeff Grocott, Mike Nize, and Christine Vanden. Bilart Blake Maple says, our sound engineering and our original theme song was composed by Luis Gara. I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week with another crash course.