Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio. My son left for sleepaway camp today. He's eleven. My eight year old son joins him in a few weeks, and my fourteen year old daughter is doing something similar. It's the worst. Being apart from them is just terrible. I miss them every day, and I miss them like I turn to say something to them and realize they're not there.
Just awful.
I think a lot of people hear this perspective and think, oh, that's obvious. But some parents, and absolutely no judgment for me on this, enjoy when their kids go.
They take trips, they.
Invigorate their marriage, and a lot of people say their families are happier and healthier when the kids return. All of this to say, it's definitely a net positive for families who do it.
Why would they?
And I know this, but I still hate it?
So why do it? Right?
That's a question I ask myself after they've.
Been gone a few weeks.
Why send my children out into the world like that? I just want to keep them.
Close to me.
And you know, partially it's because this is what American Jews do. I mean, non Jews go to sleep away camp too, But it's a real big part of the American Jewish experience. I didn't do it growing up because I was an immigrant from the Soviet Union, and even if my parents somehow had the money, they probably wouldn't have known that sleep away camps existed. But I have little American kids, and part of our religious experience in
this country involved sleep away camp. But also the kids love it, and again they come back happy, mature, having done things for themselves, lived a life outside the family bubble, made new friends, challenge themselves. I mean, the whole thing. There are a lot of things that are good for kids that we don't necessarily like. Struggle is good for kids, but it's kind of hard to watch that from a parent's perspective. Having to try hard is good, learning how
to get along with other people, all of it. It's hard to watch them fail, it's hard to be apart from them, but all of it leads to a better outcome for them. It's funny. COVID has been back in the news the last few days as Anthony Fauci again pretends he had no power or influence and never locked anyone down or put anyone in a mask. It brings up all the old feelings of feeling bad at the time that I was not able to do what I felt was right for my kids, and having to listen
to these idiotic guidelines that made no sense. And the worst part I remember this so clearly, was being accused of just wanting free babysitting when I would push for schools to open. And the truth was that that time, that cozy time at home where we didn't see anyone or have to do anything, it was great. I loved it, but I knew it was bad for them, so I pushed for that time to end. Sometimes the things that feel good for the parent aren't necessarily what's best for
the kids. It's a hard but necessary lesson. Keep sending in your ideas for new questions for the guests. As I mentioned when I hit the one year mark of the show in October, I'm going to switch up my three standard questions, so if you have ideas for what they should be.
Let me know.
I've already gotten some really good ones. The email is Carol Maarkowitz Show at gmail dot com or tweet at me on X Thank you for listening. Coming up next and interview with John Ziggler join us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is John Ziggler, host of the Death of Journalism podcast.
Hi John, So nice to have you on.
Always great to talk to you, Carol.
So, how dead is journalism on a scale of like one to like very dead?
I would say eleven. This one goes to eleven in my opinion. That's why we do a podcast called The Debt of Journalism. I think this has been a long time in coming. I think there are a lot of reasons for it. But yeah, it's pretty much about as dead as it could possibly be, and we see examples of it almost every single day. In fact, you know, when I started this podcast, Carol, I thought, am I really going to be able to do two hour podcasts
per week focusing on this topic? And if anything, I find myself having to cut material in order to keep the podcast from getting too long because there's just so much evidence of it on a daily basis, as you well know.
So does it matter that journalism is dead or is this a problem for us?
Well?
I think it's a huge problem.
I think that our entire system of government is based upon the fourth of state being at least somewhat relevant and competent.
It's not, and it's not in a lot of ways.
This goes way beyond just normal political bias. You know, when I'm fifty seven years old, when I started being interested in politics, way way back in the nineteen seventies early eighties, you know, that was the big thing, liberal bias in the news media.
To me, I long for those days. I long for the days of where that was the biggest problem in the news media.
It was just that there was a pretty significant liberal bias. We are so far beyond that now. It's the whole system is broken. And the main reason there are many reasons for this, but the main reason is that the business model for the news media broke horrendously catastrophically. We're seeing that almost on a daily basis now, in dramatic fashion. I mean, it's remarkable how fast the old media is
collapsing right before our eyes. And you know, a lot of conservatives, Caro W'll probably take joy in that.
I don't take as.
Much joy because I think that there's a really important role to play not just in fair reporting, but also in educating the public. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the public seems to be less educated about important topics than they have ever been in probably the history of the country.
Yeah, I mean that's absolutely right.
So you know, when you're talking about this, I'm thinking to myself, like, what do I think is the biggest problem with the media, And obviously the bias is a huge thing, but that they're so frequently wrong and they
don't correct anything. Like I just could think of plenty of examples recently where the New York Times, which I don't really read that much anymore, partly because it's so wrong, but I read like the newsletters they send out, so they get things just plain factually incorrect frequently and it never gets corrected.
What would you say is kind of the biggest issue here?
Well, you and I I think I have are a like mind when it comes to what I call the COVID panic. And what we just saw was really remarkable and in so many different ways, But the media was dead wrong in unison on many things regarding COVID, not everything.
And look, I hear a lot of people say, wow, we.
Didn't know, we didn't know, right, we knew, Well.
You knew I knew.
I mean, you know, and I'm not that smart you are, but I'm saying I'm all that smart.
You know, I just read some things and things didn't make sense, and you know, that's that's really where it all came from, right, And.
I think that there is a massive deficit of trust post COVID. I don't know if you saw it, but I guess I think he was your former governor, and Anthony Cuomo recently acknowledged, and that there is that if they did the same things again from a government perspective as they did during the COVID panic, that the public would.
Not trust us. Well, a huge part of that is so right.
Oh yeah, I thought that was actually being somewhat optimistic because I because if you, if you haven't lost trust in the government and the media. And let's be clear, Carol, never in my lifetime has the government and the mainstream news media worked hand in hand more significantly than they did during the COVID panic.
It's never happened before.
This was not the way it was supposed to operate, but they did so. And the most remarkable aspect of this was they were wrong way more than they were right, and it wasn't even close. And you know, to me, the most glaring example, I think there's a little ambiguity with regard to the vaccines, but they were totally wrong about you know, whether there should be mandates. That's one
hundred percent true. There should never have been mandates for a vaccine like that that didn't stop transmission and all the other issues with it. But to me, if you still, in twenty twenty four believe that masks work to stop COVID, then I can't help you because there's never been a major issue about which the reality was.
So obviously the opposite of what the media told us.
They vowed for masks because the government did so, and they were wrong, and many, many millions of school children especially were harmed because of this. This wasn't just a minor inconvenience. This was a situation where people's lives were dramatically impacted, especially when it came to schooling, and we've never gotten any acknowledgment that they were wrong. To this day, the main streamers media won't fully admit that masks don't work.
And I believe if we had another pandemic.
Again, we'd still, especially in the blue states like here, in California, people would mask at least forty fifty percent of the population would mask up automatically. And it's just astonishing. It's astonishing that we're still living in that world care.
You know, I'm still pissed off about the mask thing because it hasn't been touched. Like they're kind of there inching closer to lots of stuff, Like a lot of them have admitted that the six feet you know requirement made no sense and didn't come from anything scientific. They've admitted that maybe schools should have been open the whole time, But nobody has touched masks, and we know that it was bullshit.
We know that it didn't do anything.
We absolutely have no data to suggest otherwise. And you're right, I think should there be another pandemic, I think a large number of people would be.
Right back in the masks.
I you know, my thing about masks is if you believe it works, why wouldn't.
You wear it all the time, one hundred percent of the time.
Like, if it keeps you from getting sick always, why not wear them?
Right?
And people are like, oh, well, because I was afraid of dying of COVID. But even that, you knew you weren't going to die of COVID, you knew what the percentages were.
I mean, I hope, and yet you know.
You continued doing this crazy thing for so long, and so you know, I think it's a hopeful, hopeful thing that they wouldn't do it again.
Well, let me explain why they've never corrected themselves. It's not just not wanting to admit they were wrong, which is a huge part of the mainstream news media, because these are all egomaniacs who think that they are smarter than the rest of us, So they don't want to admit they were wrong. That's always number one. But the biggest part of the problem is for the mainstream element.
You know, outlets like the New York Times, their subscriber base is extremely liberal, and they are part of the mask cult, and they don't want to have to tell their cult, their base of subscribers that they were duped, that they did something for two years that they didn't have to do, so they'd rather just pretend it never happened. Because you know, we've seen this on the right. You know, neither of us are fans of Donald Trump.
You know, the right.
Wing media won't say anything that will offend the Trump cult members. Well, the mainstream media won't say anything that will offend the mass cult. And the most dramatic example, and there are so many, there are hundreds during the COVID panic, but I'm sure you remember one. There was a Dutch study early on they'd indicated, oh guess what, masks don't work? Right in The New York Times originally printed a headline it says, massive Dutch study indicates masks
don't really work. That's a paraphrase, right, That was basically what they the original headline was. They got so much blowback from their subscriber base and for people on Twitter, they changed the headline to say something along the lines of masks may not work, but here's why you should wear one.
Anyway, right, right, right. That's not literally what.
The headline said. And that's not news, that's not journalism. That's therapy. That's therapy.
So hard to understand why no one trusts.
Them, Just bizarre, exactly.
I was thinking about this.
You know, you've taken some very controversial opinions obviously, and you know, I could think of some that were very very controversial or you know, outside of kind of the I don't say norm right, just you believe things that not everybody leaves.
Does it feel good?
Because for me, I honestly would.
Prefer if everybody just agreed with me.
I really would. It's not I'm not like there to have the argument. I'm having the argument because I think you have to. But I prefer I would prefer if everyone would just fall into line and believe me when I You know, when I argue.
And be on my side. Do you enjoy the strife?
No, I actually don't.
I wish I did not have to go through some of the things I've gone through standing up for unpopular positions. By the way, I'm almost always right when I do that, because I don't do so casually. I only do so when I am positive that I am right, like for instance, with COVID. And I actually think, Carol, that some of the situations I've been in prepared me for the COVID panic.
That's I think one of the reasons.
Why I not that I was special, but I was certainly one of those at the forefront, right at the start, saying WHOA, WHOA, WHOA?
Hold on here, what are we doing?
And it's the reason why I was more than there were two reasons why I was willing to do this. One because you know, it's Churchill's old saying, the greatest exhilaration the man can feel is being shot without result. And I've been shot many times and I'm still standing, So I don't fear the attacks.
That's number one.
But number two, I had seen the same kind of panic in other situations and what happens under those circumstances, so I felt like I was prepared. And I also, I guess this is number three. I understand the media exceedingly well. I mean, I've been in every aspect of the media throughout a very long and tumultuous and bizarre media career.
I know a lot of these people. I've dealt with them.
I get them probably better than they get themselves, and so I knew exactly how this was going to go down, and I, you know, talk about it controversial things. I am of the belief, Carol, this is a little bit far field, but I guess a sense of where I'm
going with this. I believe to my dying breath that if Hillary Clinton had been president during the COVID panic, there would not have been a COVID panic, not because Hillary Clinton was better prepared to handle this than Donald Trump, but because the media would not have seen it in their interest to destroy this president and his reelection chances.
I mean, I loathed Trump, but I am easily able to see that if they had seen the COVID panic through the prism of oh my god, what's this going to do to Hillary's reelection campaign all of a sudden, we would have seen a vastly different narrative out of the mainstream news media. There would not have been the same kind of panic, and we certainly wouldn't have seen the Blue states shutting down immediately, because they would have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
You're putting Hillary's reelection in jeopardy here.
Gavin Newsome, as you well know, was the person that effectively shut the country down. There's no chance he does that if Hillary Clinton is running for reelection in twenty sixteen.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. The fact that Europe also freaked out in Asia, I think it was a mass.
Like absolutely not help.
But I I look, there would have been it still would have been a big deal. I'm not pretending the whole thing was about Trump.
No, I'm hearing you.
Yeah, I'm saying I'm saying that, you know, there would have been an argument to be made. The United States is different. You know, we got the Statue of Liberty. We're going to stand up strong. We're not going to panic. We're gonna do We're gonna get through this together.
You know this.
You know we're we're not going to destroy our principles over this. Uh and and you know we're gonna come out stronger in the end. That would have been it would have been a you know, already referenced Churchill once. It would have been a Churchill World War two type of reaction, rather than the curl into the fetal position, wear a mask, shut down schools, and forget about your damn freedoms. We're now living in a country of tyranny,
especially if you live in a blue state. And so I really and by the way, Carol, I tried to write about my theory during COVID for a rather mainstream news outlet that I was working for at the time. I'm not going to mention it right now, but I was that I was never censored. This outlet previously, I was censured from writing that take.
Censored that's crazy.
That's not a crazy take. I mean maybe just I'm seeing it through like.
Take because at the time I was basically saying, what the heck are we doing here?
That this is all political, or at least the.
Lens through which everyone is seeing this is political, and some of them was subconscious.
I'm not saying that this was.
I'm I'm a very anti conspiracy type of person, which makes me unusual on the right these days because I'm also yeah, the right, the right is dominated by conspiracies unfortunately, and the era of Trump.
But so I'm not even suggesting this was, oh, we can get Trump with this COVID virus. That's not what happened.
People just they realized, oh my gosh, well, you know, one they panicked, and two the nice side effect of this is we're going to destroy child Trump's election. Yeah, and so we can go we can go pedal the metal on this with our craziness because there's no downside politically, and I think they were vindicated in that because obviously Trump lost the election, although I'm not sure he would acknowledge that.
So this leads me into a question that I ask all of my guests, and that's what would you say is our largest cultural issue? And is it the fact that people will just do whatever they're told?
Wow, we have.
So many And I guess you when you say issue, you mean what problem do we have culturally?
That's the biggest?
Well, to me, public ignorance is number one, as everything flows from that. But but related to that is a complete lack of belief in our basic founding principles, foremost among them freedom of speech. I mean, I'm a I'm a conservative libertarian. I'm a big free speech guy. It is really scary, especially how younger people view the issue of free speech. And you know, I mean, we're seeing it right now with the Kansas City Chief kicker Harrison Putcker.
I don't agree with everything he said. I got two young daughters.
But the idea that the you know, the liberal elites and the National Football League and everyone else are going down on him this hard for simply giving a commencement address.
He didn't hurt anybody, didn't hurt anybody.
They're going after him harder than they do NFL players who beat the crap out of women physically. And I really think Carol, part of it, part of it's political right because it's seen its conservative. We can't we can't have a conservatives taking out in the mainstream like this,
especially for Taylor Swift's team. We can't do that. But but I think there's another aspect of this, and that is that you know, we live now in a world where we think, at least younger people think, you know, the whole sticks and stones may bake break my bones, words will never hurt me.
That's gone.
Now.
Saying something that someone disagrees with or hurts their feelings is actually maybe worse than hitting them in the face.
Far warmers, you may as well hit them in the face, because you're going to get into far more trouble for saying, you know, men can't get pregnant or whatever on a college campus than violence. Violence, I think is like kind of shrugged off.
Now.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, when I was younger and learning the way that things were supposed to be in this country, that would have been inconceivable because if only because every kid was taught sticks and stones may bake, may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Every kid knew that, and I don't know what the heck happened. Did we stop teaching it or I don't know, but somewhere along the lines, we got to this idea where you can be physically harmed and traumatized by words that somebody uses, even.
If they're not directed at you specifically.
Just be a general group of people, or they just make you uncomfortable, or they make you question your own beliefs. It's really scary. So we have a lot of cultural issues, but that one, to me, really strikes the court.
Did you always want to be in media? Did you always want to be like a writer podcaster?
Well, I originally wanted to be a television sportscaster, which is what I was. I don't know if you know that, but I began my career as a television sportscaster in the nineteen nineties after graduating from Georgetown University in the late eighties. And so I was a TV sportscaster and reporter and an NBC affiliate in Ohio and a Fox affiliate.
In North Carolina.
And then I realized I'm just way too controversial for sports television, and I went into talk radio and then documentary films and a whole bunch of other things, and now I do podcasting and some television work. So yeah, I've always been interested in the media. I've always liked broadcasting. I don't know whether or not a many good at it. I've done a lot of different things in a very mediocre fashion in this industry, that's for sure.
And it's never been boring.
I've done a lot of very interesting things in this business.
Do you feel like you've made it?
Just to ask my wife, She'll be the first to tell you absolutely not.
You know.
I have done some things that will probably be remembered for better for worse. But I don't think any we're close to coming to say I've made it. I've come close to making it, you know. I would like to believe there's still another chapter to be written, But if there isn't, I would probably be disappointed in how much I have a common pushed in this career to this point.
You know, I actually have to tell you that, like going on your podcast, I think it was.
Maybe like a year ago. Now.
I loved it. I had, I we had. I really thought it was one of I mean, the best hits like ever.
We argued a lot a.
Lot, and I really really loved it.
It was like we had a very friendly disagreement and it was fantastic.
I really, I really appreciate you saying that, although I was disappointed I couldn't get you to publicly endorse Rondo Santis, that the.
Endorsement game it was really all all it was. I mean, I love Ronda Santis obviously, but you know, I could have made the.
Difference, Carol.
You could have made friends, You could have made the difference in the public nominating process.
Maybe, I think, you know, it was just it was fun to disagree with somebody on in a really friendly way where we liked each other at the end of it and it was all fine. But we we definitely had like a full on argument, and I thought it was great.
So I love your podcast and I think that's well.
Thank you.
I think you've made it.
Oh wow, I really appreciate it.
Well, your wife.
I will tell my wife, Carol Mark Whens things I've made it which may have some impact with her.
So I appreciate that very much, Carol.
So the last question that I ask all of my guests is leave us with a tip on how people can improve their lives.
Wow, I feel like you didn't read the pre email I sent about all this.
No, I know what.
I didn't realize that there was another part of the email. I saw the link. So I have to say I'm not fully prepared, but I can come up with something.
So that's okay.
So the two of the three questions so far, you know, I asked.
I have three questions that I ask all my guests, and this is the last one.
Well, hold on, I still want I want to see if I can nail this one too, So I want to make sure I understand the question. So are you talking about from a practical standpoint, like on like an every day basis, you can live a better life.
People leave us with tips I don't live life too seriously or read every night before bed, or it could be like literally, I mean a lot of people say work out, because that's apparently what people do.
I don't.
But you know, here's what I would tell Here's what I would tell my younger self, which is kind of in a way.
That's the way I interpret this question.
Use your youth when you have it. Do things that you can only do when you're young. When you're young, do not wait to do them for when you are older, one because they may never happen, and two because getting old sucks and you're only young ones, and it is your greatest commodity is your youth. Use it to the fullest extent that you have it while you still have it.
Because almost anybody in my age group would give anything to go back, you know, twenty thirty years ago based upon what they currently You know, my gosh, if we could go back and know then what we know now, it would be a wonderful thing. But even without the knowledge, just know, don't sit around doing nothing when you're young. I mean that would be the number one thing. Every day is precious when you're young, because it is a commodity that is going to slip away.
Far faster than you could possibly realize.
Youth really is wasted on the young. I don't think they appreciate it enough that they don't their knees don't hurt, and their back doesn't creak and all of that.
So thousand, thank.
You so much for coming on. He is John Ziggler, host of the Death of Journalism podcast.
Check it out.
Thanks so much, John, Thank you, Carol.
Thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Marcowood Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.