This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
That one, yeah, oh, you got to do it yourself. I sure, sorry, but we don't have union people here to turn the mics on.
Four.
Is this thing on? I can't even hear. I don't know.
Turn it up on the little the follow the court. No, not that one down there. I got it. I got it. There's a chord. Can you hear it now yet? How about now?
No?
No, no, we'll.
Figure it out during the next commercial break.
Christina Pascucci is here for sanon today.
I feel like it's the first day of school. I'm so excited to be in your.
Midst You completely overdressed for one thing, I know, but I made up for.
It because I have slippers on on the bottom, professional on top, slippers on the.
Bottom because it is going to get cold in here.
And I have my blanket too.
That's very smart. Those are very wise choices for you. There were some breaking news to tell you about. Just before the show started. Amy mentioned that Ethel Kennedy has died at the age of ninety six. This is rfk's widow, Kennedy family matriarch, had suffered a stroke in her sleep last week. They just announced that. I think it was yesterday that they announced that part of it. They said that she died this morning in a hospital in Massachusetts, obviously surrounded by family.
She is a well known human rights advocate, and she had a long life, ninety six years old.
Ninety six is extra innings and she that seems to be pretty common outside of Kennedy's who have their lives taken from them. I mean, Kennedys tend to live pretty long. Consumer prices up two point four percent from a year earlier in September, according to new numbers that came out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Higher than expected actually, which was two point four but it has gone down a little bit. Diddy is back in court this afternoon.
The expectation he's going to demand that he's released on bail when he goes to court today.
I bet he will.
The audacity of asking for that now that I mean, now that he's been indicted, and now that we've seen one hundred and twenty more lawsuits that will be filed against him, And I don't know, if you heard Tony Busby, this is the tourney out of Houston, who's been taken all these calls. He said that he fielded three thousand calls originally and then came up with one hundred and
twenty lawsuits and then announced a ditty hotline. I mean, this is where we are nowadays, but that they will also have probably hundreds more come out of the calls that he's received.
As them no doubt, and as egregious as it already is, I think we've barely skimmed the surface of what we're going to find out, including some of the other big names that may have been involved, and it will be very interesting to see.
This thing is just cracking open.
Not to mention the fact that while the other big names not is it big names that were potentially victimized? Was it big names that are just witnesses or is it big names that were also allowing this to happen and having some hand in creating these situations for these people?
All of the above.
Yeah, And I don't even think, I mean, we're so desensitized today because we see it all, it seems and with this, I don't know, it sounds like just what horror films are made of.
And I saw this story.
Denzel Washington ran out yelling it diddy from a party years ago. And so even people who didn't partake, I think knew something was going on. And what's the implications for those people. I mean, all of it is very interesting to consider.
The big news, of course, is Hurricane Milton has made its way across the state of Florida. It's now out off of Cape Canaveral. Some of the incredible images that we have seen, for example, the roof being ripped off the Tampa Bay Rays Stadium. I didn't realize that that thing was all cloth. Now it's all gone. Governor Rohn de Santis is about to give a response or an update, an update, I should say, on the hurricane response. So we'll keep an eye on updates like that throughout the morning.
But he did say this earlier today.
Storm did bring much destruction and damage. Tornadoes ravage parts of the East coast so the state. Flooding occurred on the west and east coast, and strong winds lashed the state, especially in Penelas, Hillsboro, Manatee and Sarasota counties.
One of the odd things that happened. Was we warned.
Obviously, we everybody was warned about the storm surgeon In some places it was, you know, twelve to fifteen feet high, like they were expecting. But there were portions of Tampa Bay specifically where they saw what they referred to as a negative storm Sirch.
A lot of places where the water count pulled out towards sea, and it was just very eerie because that area is usually inundated with water and they saw the bottom of the seafloor. And I didn't realize tornadoes were such a big part of hurricanes. It doesn't seem like it's been as significant in the past.
As it was during this storm. Or is it just that I didn't hear about it as much.
I've seen tornado warnings go up with hurricane warnings and watches, but I've never seen them materialize in the numbers that we saw yesterday, which was one hundred plus different tornadoes.
Perhaps that touch potato warnings. Yeah, and then I think at least twenty hit.
Yeah, there were a couple in Fort Myers. Some of the damage. And again, when you think of hurricanes, you think of the wind speed, because that's how we gauge how strong the hurricane is, what category it is.
Ye.
But it's not even necessarily the winds that cause the most damage. I mean, the most spectacular damage may be in tearing the roof off of a baseball stadium. But it's the flooding, it's the storm surge. It's the power outages that are going to exist for the next several days for some people.
And yeah, millions of people without power, including my in laws who were in Orlando and they had a bat They thought they.
Were over prepared.
They've been through a million hurricanes and they kind of thought, you know, we're good. We have a generator, and then it turns out their power goes out and the generator doesn't turn on.
Yikes.
Yeah, not good.
So right now they were going to talk to us later today and they said, we've got to figure out this generator situation. They have no cell service at their house. They have to drive out to try to get cell service. And another person who I know who lives in Saint Pete, a little bit closer where the storm hit initially, and she said she's been a Florida in her entire life.
She's never seen a storm quite like this.
One of the things that happens in the aftermath of destruction like this, whether it's man made or nature made, this is an opportunity for people to step up and find a way to help out. Even if you can't go to places like Florida or Georgia, North Carolina who've been ravaged in the last couple of weeks, you can definitely give to people who are doing it.
And we're going to talk to one of those people who's doing that right now, Franklin Graham, he's president of Smardan's.
Percy joins us, Franklin, are you here with us with you?
Yes, thank you so much for taking the time. I mean, we know there are thousands of people on the ground doing the incredible work responding to not only Milton but also Helene like your organization has been. Can you tell us what you've been seeing on the ground.
Well, with the storm overnight in Florida, Milton, We've got we were working in Tampa and in Perry, Florida. We pulled those teams back up into Georgia into a safe zone. The team to Perry is already back to one in Tampa, should be in in this afternoon and we'll be set up in those locations continuing to help the people from the previous hurricane. Now we have another third team that will be going and we'll wait this afternoon to decide where we assess at. We've already had people on the
ground up around Saint Petersburg. Not as much flooding as we thought of there, but a lot of tree damage in these retirement centers and retirement villages, so a lot of people out they're gonna need help. These are people who are fixed income, people don't have a lot of money, but trees have damaged their homes. So we're going to cut those trees up and help them repair their to keep them from leaking. Then down put the Gordas to the south and the Fort Myers area a lot more flooding.
I think we had a quite a bit more. Uh maybe the tide search there was a much higher. So we're looking at going in there. Uh probably maybe late this afternoon and maybe in the morning. But you have to let the roads clear, you have to let uh, you know, the local authorities get the power lines off the roads and the trees off the roads and those sort of sort of things. So things are moving a little bit slow right now, but by this afternoon it'd
be a lot better. And then of course, uh, Hurricane Helene. We just uh, we're still dealing with that here in the Carolinas, where you have hundreds of people that are still missing.
Uh.
This was a storm that uh, you know, we talk about a thousand year event. I don't know, but we've never seen anything like it. Little tiny streams became raging rivers, and it just the slides, the infrastructured damage, power lines down the roads, not not just a section rope, but some cases miles of road are gone, and the bridges of the mud slides. So their whole sections of the of the western part of the state that are that are just cut off. People can't can't go left, they
can't go right, and they're just stuck in it. Now they can walk out, and we've talked to people as take you know, ten hours to walk out, so that for an elderly person that that's just not possible. So you've got to fly in. So we've we've been we've been using helicopters. We will by the end of today, we'll have over one hundred and sixty flights that we have made. We have the US military helping US National Guards, helping US businesses, people like Joe Gibbs Racing U his
corporate helicopter. You know, he's he's loaned that in his pilots to help Rick Hendrick, same thing, Rick Hendrick Racing. Uh, They've they've loaned their helicopters. So we're just grateful for the businesses that have come beside us, the military that come beside us. We're holding out generators fuel. Elon Musk has provided starlinks. We've got those set up, and but the things with the starlinks, we have to send a technician. You just you know, it's a little overwhelming to hand
somebody something like that. They don't know quite what to do, so you have to have an it person help them just plug it in and get it going. And so we send those guys out too in the helicopters. But it's it's been it's been tough. It's but we're just thankful for the people that have that have helped and these volunteers, and it's just so many neighbors are helping neighbors and it just puts a lot of faith back in the American people.
That's true, and from what I understand, you guys actually have volunteers who lost their own homes and helen.
Yes, yes we do, and we've got you know, it's just it's just the spirit of of the people that just get you excited. Christ. They're just people that are willing to come and work at their own expense volunteer, and yet they also have problems and they've had loss. But we're just excited to be able to respond. We always want to respond in Jesus' name, you say, I want people to know that God loves them. Sometimes people come to the storm like this they think, well, you know,
maybe God's mad at me. No, God loves us. This wasn't his plan when when sin came into the world. We live in a fallen world. And and I want people to know that God loves us. He cares for us, and he sent his son from heaven to this earth to take our sins. And he died and shed his blood for our sins. And he was buried and God raised him to life. And if we put a faith in trust in him, God will forgive us of our sins. And this is this is a message we want everyone
to know. And but we help we help everyone regardless. And uh, but when we finish helping them and cleaning up their their yard or cutting the trees off, what we do is we all the volunteers will get a big circle and we present them with a Bible and all the volunteers will sign the Bible and give it to them. And every homeowner is so appreciative because they they've got something that's a that they will keep in their family. All the names of those volunteers that came
to help them. Uh, you know, we had one lady that they Christian I gave one of my chaplains gave her two gallons of water. Okay, just two gallons of water. She cried. She cried over two gallons of water. And uh that's how desperate some people are. Uh. And so the need is great, and knowing Florida, the need is going to be great, and we're going to be in Florida. We're going to be down there for some time, just like we are here. But we we thank God that
we're in a position to help. He's given a lot of people to help us, and we praise him and thank him for that. He's given us good weather this week. Uh so the ground is drying out. The rivers are going down here in North Carolina. We're thankful for that, and so it's going to help us just be able to get out there and work and do a better job.
I choose this word in purposefully. But you guys at Samaritan's Person International Relief having a MAC just an update quickly from Governor Ronda Santis.
He spoke a few minutes ago.
My sense is that a lot of the people did leave who were in the evacuation zones. I know we had over eighty thousand people staying in shelters. You had massive heavy traffic on the interstates over the last several days leading up to the storm because I think people were deciding, you know, to just get out of dodge. We also can say that the storm did not produce
the worst case scenario in terms of storm surge. If you remember about twenty four hours ago, maybe thirty six hours ago, the fear was a Category four strong four going into Tampa Bay, producing about fifteen feet a storm surge. That's an area with Pinellas County peninsula and then the surrounding areas in Hillsboro County that is very low lying, very susceptible to storm surge that did not end up happening.
All of that good news, Still some deaths to report. Looks like most of the deaths are going to be from tornadoes actually and the damage that results in. So again, updates will come out of Florida throughout the show today
and we'll definitely bring those to you. We mentioned this week the story of CBS News and whatever the world is going on at CBS News last week, Tony, You're gonna have to correct me to thank you, right, that's you said that earlier Tony Dkopple, one of the anchors of the CBS Morning Show, was interviewing I mean, he was one of three that were interviewing ton of I believe about a book that came out and just asked him, pointed, aggressive but civil questions.
Why not detail anything of the first and the second into five of the cafe bombings, the bus bombings and the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you just don't believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist.
Well, I would say the perspective that you just outlined, there is no shortage of that perspective in American media.
That's the first thing I would say.
Again, calm, civil, right, normal.
He asked questions as journalists should to present both sides because the book that this author wrote is pro Palestinian and doesn't really lay out both sides of a very complex, centuries old conflict, and so he was asking him, you know what a journalist should well.
The heads of CBS News, Wenny McMahon Adrian Roark, decided to chastise him for the way he handled the questioning.
They made him sit down with.
The Race and Culture unit at CBS News and the standards team, which advises on context, tone and intention of programming, and the discussion apparently focused on his tenor and his body language during the exchange, which was again civil. You don't have to agree with either one of these guys, but it was a civil, normal discussion between two smart people hashing out their difference.
Is about a very important issue.
The Free Press has done some excellent reporting on this, if you want to go, check them out on Instagram or social media, and they had some audio recordings from Elite in a meeting between the people you were just talking about. And now apparently the Free Press is reporting that CBS execs are saying the question should be asked whether we should discuss whether Israel even has a right to exist, which you wouldn't say that.
About any other country.
And so there's someone else who's been doing some excellent reporting around this, who's a friend of mine, who are going to bring on right now.
His name is Moshwa Nunu.
He is the founder and editor of mo News, and he actually helped launch CBS Morning News, which is at the center of this debacle.
And Mosch, we'd love to welcome you to the show.
It's great to be with you, guys. Thanks for having me.
All Right, so you saw what's happened, you saw the fallout from all of this. Does this blow your mind like it does mine?
Well, let's be candidate here. I spent a decade at that place, so it does not. I wouldn't say it blows my mind. I think we started to see the origins of this.
I would say around.
Twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, things start to shift. I think Christina, you can speak to this as well. Where you know the news not so long ago, newsrooms are places for robust conversations, sometimes not even polite conversations.
When I talked about.
Internally between producers reporters, you're pashing out complicated subjects. What do you think the story is? What do you think the story is? And suddenly we start to see this and it's not altogether different from if you had on professors or university administrators. They start to see sort of gen z coming into the universities in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. Now they come into the workforce in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
and now we're almost a decade in. And now suddenly you start to get to the point where not so long ago, if you're in a newsroom and you rejected an idea about you know something you pitched I want to do a story an X and the bosses didn't like it, you go back and say, you know what, I got to make that story better. Let's figure out
way make it more interesting. And I already saw and I admittedly left CBS in twenty nineteen, Starting around twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, if you've got a story rejected, and maybe you had a certain agenda in mind, you went
to HR and said, I don't think management. I think management is biased and not treating me fairly and I think this is the natural evolution out of all of that, because ultimately, why was Tony condemned internally because enough people internally felt that they didn't like the way that he conducted the interview because it went against their world views.
But the idea of going to.
Listen, I don't know, I don't know the structure, and you're gonna have to help me out on this. If somebody in the newsroom, producer, editor, whatever, thought that Tony did that wrong, is the is the best mechanism to go to management?
Or do you go to Tony and say I.
Did to me right? Okay?
I just want to make I just want.
To make sure that I wasn't coming up with like I know there's a hierarchy, and I know that there's a certain amount of you know, there's still office politics that are involved there, But just Tony and say hey, I didn't like that or I thought this, or I disagreed with you.
I think that again. You're seeing this more and more and I'm not going to like cast a whole generation one way. But I hear this from friends of mine who teach on college campuses, where if somebody has an issue with somebody else, or an opinion they disagree with people like, it's not natural for them to call them on the phone or.
Talk to them.
Instead they're tweeting or posting on social media that this person is wrong without ever having a conversation.
With that person.
So I think it's a culture has been created there where the knee jerk is to go to management and get it condemned. And then of course management decided to air all this publicly in front of the entire staff, instead of management perhaps going directly to Tony as opposed to, you know, making it an issue for the entire organization.
We should say that there are some who came to his defense, though, like at the top of CBS News and also someone on that call in which the audio was leaked who said, look, this is part of being a journalist, is present both sides, and he did it with civility.
Correct.
Yeah. You know.
One of the reasons, by the way it would lead to the free press of all places, is there's clearly people who are sympathetic to Tony's viewpoint, right, and so the free press, you know, was able to certainly comes
at these issues. The free press started by Barry Wife who left a place like The New York Times that dealing with some of the same issues, where the political stances of the staff have gotten so far left that people who are pretty mainstream or centrist not so long ago guys now are viewed as outcasts or right wingers.
And so, you know, I think that one of.
The issues, philosophically speaking, is somebody who started helped start that show more than.
A decade ago.
It was a place to have robust conversations. It's a place to have asked challenging questions in a world in morning television where you typically, you know, was the world of fluff and cooking segments and fashion segments, et cetera. And that was the intention, and that's the technically what the copele did here. Sometimes as a journalist, you asked, you know, questions that are slightly more provocative to a
listen and answer. And even the clip you guys played there, what did you hear coach effectively because of the way Tony asked the question says, yeah, you're right, I'm only presenting one of viewpoint here, and that's why I'm presenting one of viewpoints in my book Talk.
With Mowanunu, founder and editor of Mo News and also had a hand in the creation of CBS Mornings back in the day. About what's going on with CBS News. Sherry Redstone right now, of course, her paramount Empire controls CBS News is now criticizing the CBS News people for the way they criticized Tony Mo.
You're gonna have to say his name again, Kopyl, thank.
You, all right.
Struggled with that for the last three days.
It's a tough one.
Tonydacoppel and the way that he interviewed Tanahase Coates just the other day regarding his mister Coates's new book and how Tony was like, hey, I read it, read that.
Listen. He did everything. I think he did everything.
The way he's supposed to do as an anchor interviewing somebody about a book when it comes to a very high profile, very controversial subject, which is make him defend it. I mean, you don't have to, but it's a perfectly acceptable line of questioning.
I mean, I'm a former journalist.
I worked at KTLA in Fox for many years, and to me, this is a journalist's responsibility.
And Mo, I think you would agree.
I'm just very concerned about where this goes from here, are some of these historically credible newsrooms going to become, you know, places for activists to push their own agendas.
This doesn't seem to end well.
No, it's going in the wrong direction, right. And actually, you know during the break that I was thinking about, you know, at CBS there's a rich heritage, right and literally in the hallways, you know, across from my desk there were photos of Mike Wallace and Edward R.
Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
And the fact that now atone the tone of questioning doesn't meet the editorial standards like this, the place that prides itself on having asked hard questions for decades, right, Like the fame is Edward R. Murrow and interviewing Joe McCarthy effectively, by the standard guys like this effectively means that anything on cable news, anything on radio, and frankly, most of the podcasts.
Out there don't meet the editorial standards.
Of CBS News based on this new standard they've tried to create. And I think the conservative this creates its killing effects. And that's a bit of what we got from that editorial meeting that was leaked right the free Press has audio of Jen Crawford, who I know very well, the chief legal corresponds. They're saying, I don't even know what to do moving forward. How am I supposed to ask questions? If these are the new rules?
Well, I gotta tell you you're my new follow I gotta.
Follow is the best. So I just have to give.
MO news a shout out most I hope you don't mind, but he I have watched him create.
You know this real.
You have a massive following half a million people. I think you've built this into relatively quickly. I know it's taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears and patients from your wife, but it's really incredible. People trust you because you present the news in such an unbiased way, which, as we've been talking about, seems to be a lost art.
It's it's sadly it's become novel. I appreciate by I appreciate it. By the way, if you want to follow me, you can follow me just it's my first name on Instagram at mosha at ms agh and ivid Hailey a news podcast, the Mode News Podcast.
But you know, it's.
Incredible to me that in twenty twenty four something novel to say is that we're going to do something nonpartisan, and we're going to call dolls and strikes, and we're going to be transparent with people.
But we know and what we don't know because.
To your point, Christina, increasingly it does feel like newsrooms are full of activists and there's only a right point of view and even the idea of pushback. There are only certain ideas and certain viewpoints that you should be pushing back on these days, and others are not to be questioned.
Yeah, and my concern is that all the good ones are going to leave the newsrooms because they're fed up with this, and then what's left will be the ones who are pushing that agenda. So I think my I don't know how much time we have left, Gary, but I think my final question would be what do we do? We can't just let this go unchecked?
What can we do?
Consumers of news, people who are listening right now, what action can they take?
Well, you know, it's interesting, Ultimately, the viewership, the listenership, the readership is going to dictate what these newsrooms do. If they see continuing loss of audience, then they know they have to do something different. So I think it's important these days to let you know news organizations that you like or that you think are relevant to your life.
Let them know what you think, and hopefully they will be a responsive to that, because I think we're dealing with a larger societal issue here that people don't trust the media, and stuff like this only reinforces distrust, so people trust to alternate sources which are not as trustworthy and don't have journalistic standards, and then we find ourselves in a predicament where we're at where this week I'm being asked by people whether the government is creating hurricanes,
because that's you know, that's a question that people are.
Asking because they so distrust the media.
Mo Founder, editor of Monews.
Check them out Momo dot newsmo dot News or at Mosha like you said ms h eh on social media.
Mo.
Great to meet you and thanks for taking time.
Thank you You're the best.
Love to talk to you, guys. I'll be back anytime. All right.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio Lab