The South African Perspective - Part One (with Robyn Curnow)

South Africa, Britain and the US. So you were a CNN journalist and anchor for over twenty years and had a ring sight seated at almost every defining event over the last twenty years, and you now have a great podcast I want to plug Searching for America, where you explain or try to explain America to the rest of the world. So if you ever find America, please let us know. I will.

obviously didn't announce yourself when you walked into places. But I'm sure the sort of sense that the media and spies or intelligence was sharing the same space wasn't a big leap for people, And I think particularly in those days. Now this is ten years ago, and this is outside America.

I think in those days it wasn't a big leap because for a lot of particularly African nations, with public broad broadcasters and the way societies were set up, that actually there was an intersection between journalism and spying, and that journalists sometimes had to report back to the government, or sometimes journalism was used as a front for a ficial a kind of spying operations. You know, that wasn't

a far leap. So I think I've always had to deny that I was there for the wrong reasons, and the way I dealt with it was just to be pretty open about the way I was asking questions and everything, and use humor, which I'm sure you guys would use a lot as well. The way it is now that the entire institution of sort of media is seen as some sort of suspicious puppet of some dark, nefarious, sort of secret organization, and that we are being being played

and all playing the public. It's terrifying and it is worrying, and I don't know how it got so bad so quickly. Yes, social media. Yes, leaders using the sort of the opportunity to do this in order to get themselves credit. There's that, And I think there've also been a few owned goals by mainstream media that perhaps as the debate got more and more fractured and fragmented, we did all pull into

different corners. And so what you see now, even from ten years ago when I moved to America, you do see more of a defined CNN is taking a position, or Fox taking a position, or MSNBC taking another position. And I think that sort of perhaps in trying to protect ourselves, we might have just played into some stereotypes and that hasn't been helpful and it'd been given some of the critics an easy win.

right wing stuff. I think the places that we consider more left wing media seem much smaller and being able to reach far fewer people, Like how did that happen? Like if you had even asked me a few years ago, I'd said, well, you know, on the spectrum media overall maybe is a little bit more liberal than conservative. But now that's actually not true. I don't think a right No, I.

dartboard in one thirty minute bulletin. Whereas I think what you're talking about now is this fragmentation to this narrow casting where you're seeing these tiny little it's not even just echo chambers, it's echo chambers with an echo chambers with an echo chambers. It's this network of honeycomb of

the these tiny, little fragmented pieces of media. And that's where I think the ecosystem for the right, which is the podcast which you talked about so much during the run up to this sort of recent US election, particularly the kind of bro podcasts which just seem to have so much more clout. Why are those so much more powerful now and why are they getting so much audience? And I think that's also the question, you know, is it a conspiracy? No, I think it's because people are

looking for something else. They don't trust the bias as they see it, the liberal bias of the mainstream media. But I don't think there's an easy answer to this, and this is why I'm puffing and puffing when I'm saying this, and I think it's probably also probably why you're asking these questions. And I don't think the bosses in New York have the answer, because if they did, they also wouldn't be trying. They would have fixed the viewership problem at CNN. They would have fixed the viewership

problem at MSNBC, at New York Times. I mean, look at Washington Post. Nobody reads it really, I know I do. They're losing audience and they're not gaining new audience. And if there was an answer to this question, then we would have the solution. And I think we're in this incredible space of transition technologically clearly, you know where you can call it the Third Industrial Revolution. You can talk

about reformations or whatever. But the sort of media, the ugliness and the messiness of where we are in the media right now, it's like a stew It's a mess. We're not quite sure where it's going to all land up. So I'm sorry, I'm not even answering your question because I don't have an answer. And there's a reason I'm not working in the media anymore, because it did become quite toxic.

And there's an other case coming with smart manic. And the second one is miss you've mentioned sinister forces behind one American news network is owned up to fifty percent, it's not clear by the Altani family, the Royal family and Cutter. So you've got a foreign influence. It's not a democracy that has must have some influence on these. And yet this is not the New York Times or the Washington Post, which are fact based and yes they've made mistakes, but they cop to those mistakes and they

say we got this wrong, and they'll retract things. And so I my sense is that there are conspiracies within the media, but it's not the places where that generally are getting blamed for it. I don't think there's some cunning plan behind the Washington Post, right or maybe Jeff Bezos now, but yeah, no.

not another story that we're hiding. And you can have a few glasses of wine and we'll tell you the real story when you come to our house. But what's going on air is something different. And the word always comes around, particularly if you grew up in a place like South Africa, that's the word that you used to

describe sinister groups of whoever. And that surprises me still as if to say, you know, really what's going on, and it's got worse and worse, and the self inflicted stuff is it because we took ourselves too seriously, that we lost the sense of storytelling perhaps and joy and fun. Sometimes news would be kind of a little bit more less produced.

whether it's bureaucracies, or whether it's media. There's something about the distrust that we've seen, probably fueled maybe solely by Donald Trump, but then while people still not believing in sort of basic truths, and I don't have the answer for that.

And I've sat on the sports fields next to very vociferous Maga Trump supporters, people who are very Christian and fulfill that stereotype of red neck ignorant and as Hillary Clinton would have said, deplorable. You know who are the people that voted for Trump? Well, it's these rednecks out here in Georgia. And you can kind of if you're not careful. And I think this was one of the mistakes,

when I say South self inflected. One of the mistakes a lot of the media made, particularly with the run up to the first Trump election, was not listening to the anxieties coming from that chunk of America, the middle America or the lower middle class America, the white men,

the non college educated people. It was sort of dismissed as sort of red neck deplorables who were being taken out, who were being fooled by this rich gold tapped a multi billionaire who was really just a really just bankruptost the time. But when I sat next to them on the sports field and you're in the middle of nowhere, and they're good people, their sons, their dads, their wives, their sons and daughters. They're the first people in a pouring rainstorm that would pull over and help you change

a car tire. And so that's the disconnect that I'm trying to find, because I think if I do what I was doing when I was at CNN, which was trying to have this sort of high brow analysis with Washington folks or whatever. And yes, I have a master's degree from Cambridge and international relations. I can talk foreign policy for hours, But does that really help me to understand the instincts and the patterns and the anxieties and

the hopes that American voters are really feeling. And that's what I'm trying to do, And I think being an outsider helps. So I kind of try to listen to them with compassion, and I've found that fascinating, where you walk into a place and you're like, I'm not going to try and judge them. I might not vote for them. I maybe don't believe in the same things, but I'm not going to other them, and particularly coming politically is

a white South African. I understand that very clear political, very easy way of othering somebody and maybe you fearful of somebody else. And I think a lot of American leaders Trump in particular, but then towards the end also a lot of very left progressive Americans have made the same mistake and have othered, do you know what I mean? So I think that the sort of So that's the very long version of what I'm trying to do, so to try and look past why don't they believe in vaccines?

I sat next to the field and I'm like, what's with the anti vaxin shit going on here?

a real chance, do you know what I mean? It's interesting, I'm curious, and so I think a lot of people and as you know, a lot of conspiracy theories are bred from a fear of the unknown, and if you play into that, whether on the left or the right, you can create fear and anxiety which then gets amplified unfortunately by news because it's good for ratings, and it creates this as I remember, John, I think you called it this angertainment industry, and that's unfortunately where maybe again

one of these self inflicted aspects of mainstream media, which is really I hate the term, but is that the more we catered towards ratings, the more we amplified our own part in the division. And people have just got sick and tired of it, or they just like, I don't want to be scared and angry, or you're making me too scared. You're making me too angry today and there's a weird little calibration that goes on in people's brains, and yeah, that's where I am.

Southern Africa was completely full of wild conspiracy theories. And I remember foolishly thinking in the US, we don't at least have that we don't believe in, like secret military bases or witchcraft, or you know, because we have modern medicine we believe in. So you've lived around the world as well, and are we any different than anybody else now or were we?

But the Jesus stuff, the personification of Jesus as somebody who is walking with you, goes fishing with you, drinks a beer with you. Jesus is right there. That kind of personification of Jesus is very American. And it's not just evangelical, and it's not just Trumpian either. There's something baked in and obviously I'm in the South here, so I see it within my daily life, and so it's

not just a Catholicism. I'm a very lapsed Catholic, but that sort of high Church stuff that I grew up with, where you talk about God as some sort of supernatural being and Heaven is something that is esoteric here in America. People believe you will go to Hell, and that plays into the politics in a way that I've not seen

in any other nation. I think that if you talk about conspiracy theories, a lot of conspiracy theories here talk about the devil or the demon or Satan or you know, even with you know, even when Trump was shot, there was this meme going around and with the sort of a Jesus who looked like a white bearded Jesus sort of saving him as if he was his own personal, you know, secret service agent, sort of deflecting the bullet.

And I found that interesting because I think if you believe that Hell and Heaven exists literally, and that Adam and Eve is a literal story, then I think it's a quicker leap to saying there's child trafficking and a pizza parlor in Washington, or all these CIA agents want babies, And so I think the American conspiracy stuff is somehow wrapped up in a very particular version of America's Americans idea of Hell and Earth and Jesus and the devil.

we will tend the war graves. So every couple of months the American embassy would send out and the ambassador and the deputy ambassador, the DCM would go out and they would tend to the war graves. And the number two in the embassy was kicked out of the country and accused of political witchcraft. It was like he got PNG, And I thought that could never happen in the United States.

And now I hear Marjorie Taylor Green talking about demonic forces are behind the Democrats and Jesus is protecting one particular thing, and I think, note, we're not actually too much equatorial Guinea.

apparently a guy and who's whatever. But that doesn't surprise me because South Africans, as you know, whether white or black, have this extraordinary ability to believe all sorts of things that still kind of amazes me and infuriates me on many levels. So yes, being in America, I sometimes hear some of the stuff and I'm like, you can't make this stuff up. But then I think back to some of the stories I had to cover when I was in Africa, and You're like, yeah, no, there's been it's

been crazier. That's why I can never quite put my finger on what it is that makes somebody, often highly intelligent people, sometimes in your own family, believe stuff that

you think, yeah, no nah. But also the presidents, and I think the use of conspiracy theories in Africa by African leaders can be quite Trumpian or I think that sense of referencing forces out to get you, nefarious secret people who are trying to bring you down and stop you is a very African leader kind of way of dealing with power and keeping it and making sure that you are you keep people around you in check as well.

Adam about you. Jerry used to all this over and over again, probably and mcgarbi was pretty good at it. Jacob Zumer constantly was bringing up threats. Even the current set of leaders in South Africa are constantly saying they're about to be poisoned or they were nearly poisoned. And I think that sort of sense of a leader constantly under attack is a very easy way out and it's very effective.

an intellectual. He had a university education, so in many ways it wasn't coming from a place of sort of ignorance. And he did his own research and he came up with the concept that HIV did not cause AIDS, and then his cabinet around him started also being kind of fueling into that, and it became a yes man cabinet, Yes women, there were quite a few of them too,

and so it became this sort of AIDS denialism. But right from the top that was sort of had a veneer of intellectualism around it, and you know, it was like, we have to question, we have to question everything. We also don't want the imperilous American Western pharmaceutic companies to take advantage of US Africans. Therefore, this is also an

exercise in US standing up for our rights. So it was shrouded this whole conversation about what caused HIV AIDS, and hundreds of thousands died because of the denihalism around HIV and the slow roll out of antiretroviral drugs, but

that played down. So the sort of the questioning of basic facts in order to support the leader's inability to control this massive death rate then played into all sorts of other conspiracy theories, which one of them was if you have sex with a virgin, you'll be cured of AIDS. And so South Africa has this incredibly high child rape rate and at first nobody could understand what was going on until it became evident that there was this rumor that HIV you could be cleaned you could be cleansed

by somebody who was fresh. I suppose thirty forty percent of people believe that. But you know, how do you fight that and how do you then try and convince people that this isn't the truth when from the top it's been said, you've got a question that that you've got to look at alternative therapies was the line from from the top for many people who were ignorant about

basic medical facts that then became justified. But what was so interesting about the sort of sleep with a virgin is that that trope actually started in sixteenth century England and it's a you know, it's an old Victorian trope about when people got syphilis, and it probably goes back also to sort these ideas of these Christian martyrs who would be would would be cleansing to a society because they would they would remove a society's access to the

demons or devil or Satan or whatever. So the whole concept of that, you know, rape of virginary to be cleared of it goes back to some sort of Western idea. So I think a lot of these conspiracy theories, these tropes of power or of explanation that are behind the conspiration theories often quite similar in overlapping. You know, if it's not the aliens who are controlling us, maybe it's

the Jews. You know, that's an old one, And so I think there's often an overlap and often culturally surprisingly close in ways that you wouldn't think.