My name is Leonydus and this is Informed Dissent.
What's up, everybody? Welcome to Episode 2 of Informed Dissent, the podcast where we push back on the culture of Groupthink and challenge the narrative. I hope everyone’s having a great week so far. I just want to say really quickly that I really appreciate you guys. We had about, I think, 1400 downloads on the first episode last I checked and many people have been sending a lot of words of encouragement as well as donating and, I don’t always have time to respond to those emails and messages on social media, but I do see him and I just want you know how much that means to me and how much I appreciate that love and support. So thank you.
Alright, let’s get to it. Episode 2. Enemy of the People.
Now, I don’t even need to tell you who I’m talking about when I say that. Everybody knows. These past four years have solidified, at least in my mind, the fact that the mainstream corporate media cannot be trusted. Ever. I’m telling you right now that if the New York Times came out with a Breaking News story telling me that today is Wednesday, I would go do my own independent research just to confirm. I don’t trust you. Now this didn’t start with Trump either but it has become so much more pronounced and obvious as they become more frantic and unhinged and the mask continues to slip. I like to point at the way the media covered the Ferguson and Mike Brown situation as the moment I really began to realize the media was lying to us. Because before that point, I guess I just believed everything they said. Because I was insane. If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you probably know that I voted for Obama, twice. So yea. So the Mike Brown thing really exposed the media to me. That was 2014. But the point is that this predates Trump. But ever since 2016, holy shnikes, they have lost their collective minds. Journalistic integrity? Yea, that's a relic of some long-forgotten past. Kind of like Joe Biden’s cognitive function.
Look. I know this episode is probably preaching to the choir here, but it’s important that we understand what’s happening. When I say people need to do their own research and challenge everything, this is why. The truth is elusive when so many people reporting the “news” have an agenda. Half truths, deceptive coverage, and often even outright lies have distorted reality for so many people. And as the saying goes, a lie can get half-way around the world before the truth gets its pants on. But I think that saying actually needs updated in the age of the internet and social media because now, a lie can get around the world multiple times instantaneously, getting fully solidified in people’s minds so that when the truth finally does surface, nobody really cares. It’s too late.
See, the problem is that this kind of sensationalism….these lies that they tell, are often far more intriguing and interesting than the truth. Which, of course, is the point. It’s gets the eyeballs. Boosts the ratings. That’s what they’re after. It reminds me a Thomas Sowell quote, which by the way, if you are going to listen to this podcast, get used to hearing a lot about Thomas Sowell. If you don’t know who he is. Pause this, right now, go look him up. He is a personal hero of mine and has helped shaped my thinking on a myriad of issues. Greatest philosopher of our time, hands down. But anyway, he said one time that the reason that so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer and they don’t want explanations that fail to give them that. And it’s true. That’s why the media can tell you that America is horribly racist and people will believe it because it gives them the emotional satisfaction that they yearn for. The mainstream corporate media capitalizes on this…by lying. Or being intentionally deceptive or misleading, which I also call lying, because they’re clearly doing it on purpose. Now, they sometimes use little disclaimers to get away with it, like “if true…”. CNN is notorious for this. Of course, it’s never true. But that doesn’t matter. They say it and put it out there as if it is and people spread it as if it is. And then when the actual truth comes out, nobody pays attention. Because the truth isn’t as exciting, it doesn’t evoke the same emotional response, especially not when it goes against your agenda. A good example of this is the Charlottesville situation and the whole claim that Trump called white supremacists “very fine people.” That lie was spread all over the place and delivered a giant serving of confirmation bias to people who hate Trump. When the full context of his remarks were finally acknowledged and it was noted that he was talking about people protesting the takedown of statues and that he directly condemned the white supremacists, few people cared. Just pretended like the context wasn’t even important. The story had already been told and there was no changing it. Even to this day, people STILL promote the “fine people” lie. Even Joe Biden has been pushing it. But the evil part of that is that I don’t think he is doing it because he thinks it’s true. I think he is doing it because he knows that people don’t realize that it’s not. That’s the power of the media.
Now, I don’t necessarily think it’s entirely the fault of the people who are being duped either. I used to be one of them. We’ve all been duped at one time or another by a dishonest media. And it still happens from time to time. But I think that many people just don’t have the time to do deep dives. I mean, I’m interested in politics and social issues and I read the news and research a lot, but it’s hard to stay on top of everything because I have a family, a job, and I can’t spend all day looking stuff up. So for somebody who is busier than I am and who is largely apolitical, they pretty much have to rely on the media to tell them the truth. So what happens when journalists decide to lie? What happens when they tell people that the President colluded with Russia to win an election? What happens when they tell people that America is racist? What happens when they tell people that a high schooler wearing a MAGA hat harassed an innocent Native American man in a horrific act of racism? See, this is what makes me so frustrated with these mainstream journalists that are constantly pushing their agenda, not only when it’s outright deceiving people, but particularly when it leads to destroying people’s lives or at least just trying to destroy people's lives. The Covington kid was lucky. He was able to clear his name and was able to actually sue the outlets who smeared him. But not everyone is that lucky. The media has incredible power and they have been abusing it for far too long. I believe it was Malcolm X who said the media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. Because they control the minds of the masses. And he was right.
Propaganda is extremely powerful. If you can get in and control someone’s emotions, you can control them. That’s why politicians are constantly using appeals to emotion. They want you emotional because when you are emotional, it’s hard to be rational and you are easier to manipulate. It’s a means of persuasion. Advertisers use it too, because they know they can get people to buy their product if they make them feel something. It’s like that Sarah McLachlin commercial with the dogs looking all forlorn and she’s in the background like ("In the Arms of an Angel" plays). There’s a dog looking up at her all melodramatic. There’s like slow-motion closeups of a depressed-looking beagle. Looks like it’s crying. It’s terrible. But they do that for a reason. It’s all about getting at people’s emotions. That isn’t always a bad thing, but when it’s used nefariously, to intentionally try to manipulate people to believe lies, then we have problems. The media is supposed to help us cut through all that and get to the actual truth. That’s what the media is supposed to do. Journalism is supposed to be objective and supposed to give us the facts. They give us the facts and we decide what to think about those facts. That’s the way it should be. Now, it is they give us a narrative and a biased spin on some of the facts, if we’re lucky to get even that, while they tell us what we’re supposed to think. Tucker Carlson is a racist because he mispronounced Kamala Harris’s name. Oh ok, but Joe Biden also mispronounced it and you didn’t say anything about that. No, because my job as a journalist is not to report the facts, it is to give you a carefully crafted narrative and to tell what you’re supposed think.
And see isn’t always about what they actually say either. It is just as much about what they don’t say. What they choose not to report on. That kind of manipulative reporting is absolutely lying by omission. If you had good parents, they certainly taught you that half-truths are still lies and if you had good parents, you went out and picked your own switch and got your butt electrified for telling half-truths. But somehow this has become standard journalistic practice, likely because it serves the intended purpose very well and they can get away with doing it. But it is extremely damaging because it distorts reality. It distorts the truth. Like the “fine people” example, the intentional omission of the context was egregious and painted a complete lie that millions of people believed and still believe to this day. Now the journalists who pushed that stuff would claim that they were being objective because he actually did say “there were fine people on both sides” but by omitting the rest of what he said, they are lying about what he actually meant. This tactic of taking things out of context and reporting them so that people will come to erroneous conclusions is evil. I don’t know how else to characterize it. And yet, it is a favorite of the corporate media and they do it all the time. Just recently, it happened to the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. I always mess up her name. Kayleigh McEnany. I don't know if I'm saying that right. You know who I'm talking about. She said that science shouldn’t stand in the way of schools reopening because the science supports it. I believe her exact quote was “the science is on our side.” But then here came people like Jim Acosta at CNN, only quoting “science shouldn’t stand in the way of schools from reopening” as if she meant “ignore the science.” It’s an evil, dirty trick and I think any journalist caught purposefully doing it, or doing it on a regular basis like Acosta does should absolutely lose their credentials and lose their jobs. Or at the very least, should be hit with law suits. There has to be something to deter them from doing it. It’s just egregious and unacceptable. But that’s just me.
By the way, another way they do this lying by omission and distortion of reality is through selective reporting. This is especially malicious because it’s not always easy to catch unless you’re actually doing your own research. It’s the whole you don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t know that they are ignoring or burying certain stories unless someone else reports on it or you discover it yourself. There are tons of examples of this and how they use it to shape narrative. For instance, Trump will do something and the leftist media will freak out about it and then the Daily Wire or someone will point out that Obama actually did the exact same thing and the media didn’t report on it hardly at all. Suprise. And they definitely didn’t do what they’re doing now, which is vigorously flopping around on the ground, screaming and kicking their legs, crying about how bad the mean old orange man is. Look at how they covered the illegal immigration holding facilities under Trump vs Obama. Many of the facility pictures they used to attack Trump were actually even from the Obama era. I mean, come on. Look at how they covered deportations under Trump vs. Obama. Executive Orders. Treatment of journalists, themselves. Which, by the way, Obama was horrible. Horrible. He used the Espionage Act to prosecute more people for leaking sensitive information than any President in any other administration combined. He also did things like going after the AP, seizing records of reporter’s home and cell phones without notice and went after James Rosen, a reporter at Fox News, tracking him and spying on him. Many people don’t even know about these things. All they hear is how Trump is trying to undermine the free press by calling them the enemy of the people. I mean, can you even begin to imagine if Trump did any of those things that Obama did. Do you think the media’s being honest here? How do you think that kind of selective reporting might distort reality? Or just sticking with the Obama thing, look at the Russia Hoax, my goodness. The media spent years on that foolishness, breathlessly following every single whisper and rumor and unidentified sources and reporting it as if it’s the gospel. “If true!” They said. There was a video with a supercut of all these anchors and pundits saying “this is a bombshell, this is the beginning of the end, this is the tipping point, the walls are closing in” over and over and over, all about Trump’s presidency ending because of Russian collusion. All day, every day for like 3 years. But then we find out it was all a farce, it was a setup, Obama’s FBI manipulated the FISA courts and spied on Trump’s campaign, an FBI lawyer admitted to falsifying documents, we have text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page suggesting conspiracy and the media just shrugs it off. No bigs. None of this breathless reporting and walls closing in verbiage for this. No mention that Obama is implicated because he was POTUS during this whole thing. No mention even that Biden is implicated and he’s running for President! And there are a lot of people in this country who still think Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election and that he’s going to do it again. It’s absolute madness.
Another good example of this is the recent case with Cannon Hinnant. Which is one of the worst stories I’ve heard in a longtime and it was practically ignored by mainstream outlets. It was finally covered after it went viral on social media and people were calling out the mainstream press for ignoring it. But if you don’t know the story yet, what allegedly happened was a little 5-year-old boy named Cannon was riding his bike and this guy, Darius Sessoms, who lived next door to the Hinnant’s came out with a gun, put it to Cannon’s head, and pulled the trigger. Just absolutely horrific, horrific stuff. As a father, it is just, I can’t even begin to imagine. But it was several days and much outrage before most mainstream left-leaning outlets even covered it. Only local and conservative outlets were covering it and I think maybe the AP initially did a small story on it but that was it. It took days and trending on Twitter before they finally wrote something. I don’t know if any stations even covered it on the air or not. They may have, but it just wasn’t made to be a big deal. And it looks like it quickly exited the news cycle as soon as it arrived. Many people may not see a problem with that. But my issue is this. Had Cannon been black and Sessoms white, what do you think would have happened? We would have had instantaneous national coverage. It would have been instantly labeled a hate crime. Pundits would have been opining on it and anchors discussing it for weeks. It would have sparked protests and riots. It would have been front page on New York Times and Washington Post. Editorials would have been written about how horribly racist America is and how little black boys can’t even ride their bikes without being shot. And all of this would lead to the horrendous conclusion that this sort of thing is evidence of rampant racism and that something like this does not happen to white people. By not reporting Cannon’s story the same way they would have reported a black child’s story under the same circumstances, they are manipulating the narrative and painting a reality that does not exist. That is the danger. And that is my problem with selective reporting and selective outrage. It distorts perspectives. That’s why people believe that unarmed black people being killed by police is an epidemic and also believe that unarmed white people being killed by police is something that pretty much never happens. Even though more unarmed white people are killed by police in 2019 and out of total people killed by police, white people were more likely to be unarmed. Selective reporting makes people believe that Trump has done nothing good at all because everything they report is negative, despite his long list of accomplishments. I mean, look at how they treated the peace deal between Israel and the UAE. Look at how they’ve handled the pandemic. All kinds of selective reporting going on. Especially with the attempted suppression of hydroxychloriquine, holy cow. The point is that the media has the power to shape narratives, not just by what they report but also by what they don’t.
There is a concept in psychology called the availability heuristic and what that is is basically a cognitive shortcut where we analyze the likelihood of something occurring by relying on immediate examples that come to mind. So the easier something is recalled, the more probable we think it is. The problem with that is that it operates as a type of cognitive bias. And that’s why people may overestimate the prevalence of something, like police killing black people. There was a famous experiment done in the 70s where people were asked whether there are more words that begin with K or more words that have K as their third letter and like 70% of the participants said words that begin with K, even though there are twice as many words that have k has third letter. It’s just much easier to think of words that begin with K so we think it's more prevalent. The availability heuristic can distort reality. So with that in mind, it is easy to see how what the media chooses to cover and inject in the public consciousness can play a major role in what people believe to be true. And that is why people might think that a George Floyd type of situation is commonplace and evidence of rampant racism while a Tony Timpa situation, a white guy in Dallas, Texas who also died after being pinned on the ground by police for a prolonged period of time, people might think is extremely rare. And the reason for that, largely, is how the media reports it. How it’s framed. Of course there are other things going on as well like confirmation bias, where people only seek out evidence that confirms their preconceived beliefs and reject or ignore evidence that does not. But how many people have actually even heard of Tony Timpa? I hadn’t. Not until the whole George Floyd situation came up and Timpa’s story began spreading on social media. What about Duncan Lemp? A white guy who was shot and killed by police during a no-knock of his house. Sounds a whole like Breonna Taylor doesn’t it? So then why isn’t the name Duncan Lemp well-known? Why is that? Why would the national media highlight one case but not the other, when they were nearly identical? And what do you think that might do to people’s perception of reality if you only report on one type of story that fits a particular narrative while ignoring other stories that tell a different narrative? Perhaps people would be inclined to believe that someone putting a noose in a Nascar garage of a black driver is a probable story or that there is a high likelihood that two guys in MAGA hats would attack a well-known actor in Chicago, pour bleach on him, and put a noose around his neck. People believe these things because they believe the narrative that has been perpetuated. They believe what most easily comes to mind, not the actual reality. They believe there are far more words that begin with the letter K. And that's the media's fault.
A man was nearly beaten to death by Black Lives Matter protestors/rioters in Portland over the weekend. Haven’t heard any updates on his status yet but last I heard he was unconscious in the hospital still. And the video is awful. Did the media cover it? Did they condemn it? Did they discuss the dangers of extremism and using violence to advance a political cause, also known as terrorism? Governors like Andrew Cuomo in New York and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan forced COVID patients into Nursing Homes causing widespread deaths among elderly nursing home patients. How did the media respond to this? Did they condemn them? Did they have any criticism at all? Did they come out against Cuomo and Whitmer being honored and given time to speak at the Democratic National Convention and pretend like they did a great job with their states? Anything? A hashtag trended on Twitter titled #WrongTrump when the President’s brother passed away, being used by people lamenting that it wasn’t President Trump who had died. Did the media cover that? Did they denounce it? Did they talk about the toxicity that exists on the political left and how wishing someone dead because they disagree with you is clearly evil behavior? No. Washington Post did write an article about his death, by the way, and made the headline about a law suit. Nice. And that's particularly egregious when you remember how the Washington Post eulogized the terrorist Al Baghdadi as an austere religious scholar and Soleimani as a most revered military leader. But this is who they are. When Herman Cain passed away, people mocked his death and minimized it, making it about him going to a Trump rally and not wearing a mask, never mind that masks are not supposed to keep you from getting the virus, but that’s beside the point. Did the media talk about how horrible that behavior is? No? They were the one’s engaging in it, taking the opportunity to use his death to attack Trump and the GOP. And remember, once upon a time, they told us not to wear masks and scolded us for wearing them. Then they told us to wear them and scolded us for not. And they pretend like the first part never even happened. They tell us to trust experts, but what happened when experts began touting the efficacy of hydroxychloriquine? Did they promote them? Or did they shut them out? Why? We know Bill Clinton was on the flight logs for the Lolita Express and that a witness, one of the victims, placed on him on Esptein’s island. ABC was even going to air the story at one time but it got killed by executives. Nobody cares about that? Nobody wants to talk about it? Planned Parenthood employees have been caught on video discussing and actually admitted in court to selling fetal body parts. Selling fetal body parts. How many people even know about that? Was it a major news story? That seems Pulitzer worthy doesn’t it? But if you google it, are there tons of discussion from major news sources? Any investigative reporting? Editorials? No? Massive riots and protests break out during a pandemic. Did the media treat them like they had been treating moms who took their kids to the park or people going to the beach? Did they call them terrorists like the did to people who were actually peacefully protesting the lockdowns. Did they denigrate the BLM protestors and rioters as selfish and putting public health at risk like they did to business owners defying mandates? Or did they support them and even go as far as saying that the BLM protests are somehow immune to spreading Coronavirus? Do we call that honesty? Is that journalistic integrity? When West Point cadets were seen playing the circle game, did they assume the best or the worst explanation? Did they refrain from smearing the young cadets knowing that they could potentially ruin their lives? Or did they just go ahead and report that they were flashing white supremacist hand signals? Joe Biden appears to be in significant cognitive decline, very possibly dementia and he’s running for President of the United States. But nobody wants to ask questions about that? Nobody wants to dig into it? At all? What about his dealing with Ukraine and the suspicious situation surrounding his son, Hunter? No? Nothing? What about the fact that he also has made multiple remarks that would deemed extremely racist were it a conservative saying it, such as saying “you ain’t black” if you don’t for him or saying that Latinos, unlike black people with notable exceptions, are diverse in attitudes about different things. How did that go? Did the media go after him? Did they proclaim him to be a raging racist indicative of the long history of white supremacy in this country like they never miss an opportunity to do? Or did they just let it slide?
Now some may want to chalk this all up to unintentional errors or oversights. And I might be inclined to believe that if it didn’t happen all day, every day. Every single day we see this stuff. That list barely scratches the surface of examples of how malicious and damaging the fake news media is. It would probably take a whole season of episodes to cover it all. And even that wouldn’t do it justice because everyday, they are doing something new. Every single day, it’s something else. So what do we do about it? Honestly, I don’t know a good answer. Because the freedom of the press is vital and we need to do everything we can to protect the 1st amendment. I believe that. 100%. But at the same time, people do need to be held accountable when they actually cause harm. I think Nick Sandman, the Covington kid, had the right idea. We need to get better equipped at and used to raining down lawsuits on these journalists and media organizations when they lie and cause harm. If any other company gets caught lying to its customers or causing harm to people, they are held liable and the same should happen to the media. If you want to be purely opinion and entertainment, fine. That still doesn’t mean you can go after teenagers and smear them as racists, but it means that people will know that not everything you say is going to be true. If that’s what you want to be, then do that. Be explicit about it though. Like Rachel Maddow, when she got sued by OAN for calling them Russian Propaganda, she claimed in court that she’s just an opinion host. Just an opinion host. As if that means that she’s not beholden to facts at all. She can just say whatever she wants whether it’s true or not. Doesn’t matter. She'll just, ya know, pretend like it's true. Tell everybody it's true. Doesn't matter. But Ok. fine. If that’s what you want to do, then fine. But you need to make that explicit and make sure that people know and understand that you are not a journalist, that you are not giving fact-based news and that they have no reason to trust anything that you say. Still, I think Maddow should have been hit hard by the courts for disparaging OAN because opinion-host or not, that’s still libel. Regardless, I do think lawsuits are probably the best weapon that we have outside of just taking away their viewership, which is easier said than done.
Now I feel like I should point out that this clearly isn’t all journalists or all media. Obviously. I am mainly talking about outlets like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, Vox, HuffingtonPost, etc. etc. These so-called journalists and the organizations they work for, the ones that peddle fake news for a living, news meant solely to manipulate people and skew the truth. Journalists that tell you that Trump won’t accept the election results while ignoring the fact that Democrats STILL haven’t accepted the results of 2016 and have done everything they possibly could to remove Trump, including impeachment. Journalists that tell you that Florida did worse than New York in its handling of the coronavirus. Journalists that push conspiracy theories and tell you that Trump is trying to steal the election and that he doing it by shutting down the post office. Journalists who seem to be trying to stir up a race war by telling you that police are killing black people, that white people are inherently racist, and that slavery is the defining feature of our country all while ignoring thousands of deaths in the inner cities, many of them children, over 100 children killed since June. Journalists who tell you that secret police are kidnapping people. Journalists that tell that you can’t go church and you can’t go to the gym or you can’t go to your grandpa’s funeral because you are putting other’s lives at risk but have nothing to say about large crowds attacking police, blocking traffic, assaulting people, and setting buildings on fire and nothing to say about George Floyd getting multiple, massive funerals and John Lewis getting multiple, massive funerals and everyone in attendance is somehow exempt from the rules of COVID spread. Journalists who have no problem smearing you and trying to destroy your life as long as they’re the ones to report the story first and boost their own career and advance their narrative. Those are absolutely the enemy of the people.
Thanks for listening. I’m Leonydus. And this has been Informed Dissent.
If you would like to help support the show through donation, you can do so through donorbox.com/leonydus. That's donorbox.org/leonydus. I really appreciate that. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe, give it a five star rating, share with your friends. Also follow me on social media @leonydusjohnson and also check out my website at leonydusjohnson.com. And always remember, do your own research, challenge everything, and don't be afraid to stand up for what you believe. We'll see you next week. God bless.