Truth And News Reporting
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Do you have to believe everything you see on the news? Are news stations really reliable these days? Today, Bill Stierle and Tom share their insights about the truth and news reporting. The power of messaging in reaching to a person’s consciousness is monumental. The repetition of a message through looped branding and how these messages become facts and beliefs is how politics has been controlling the people. Bill and Tom also tackle how Republicans are making their ranks grow through these news reports that feed propagandas. They also talk about how Trump used hype to win the elections and how he is such a talented marketer.
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I’m excited about this discussion we’re going to have about truth and news reporting because I’m wondering if there is much truth left in news reporting, at least in television news reporting. I’m even scratching my head as to how we got here, but I’m betting you can help shed some light on that, Bill.
Tom, this whole thing regarding truth and news reporting is challenging because we’ve got to, now in our environment, not only hear the news but we’d have to go back and check to see where it is on the level of truth. Is it a 6 out of 10 truth? Is it a 4 out of 10 truth? Is it a 7 out of 10 truth? Where is it on the truth piece? What news has turned into is a battle for the amygdala, a battle for the fight, flight and freeze, a battle for validation. It’s a battle for branding. That’s where news has shifted to. Whereas if I said, “Tom, what would you prefer, Coke or Pepsi?” That’s a brand battle between two different kinds of sugar water. Do you like it this way? I like it this way. They’re two different sugar water so that’s the taste of it. If the news isn’t held to the standard, it’s opinion. When can something become opinion and still be on a newscast? Can you have an entire newscast dedicated to opinion and still call it a newscast? No. You call it Fox & Friends. It’s not a newscast.
It might also be the Rachel Maddow Show or something. A lot of these shows are injected with opinion and are maybe based on opinion. They do bring some reporting and facts into it. There seems to be a big difference between television news and the newspapers and even online news. I see when browsing newspapers, if there’s an opinion piece, they spell it out. This is an opinion piece. It’s the same thing on online news. If you look at CNN.com or something like that or a number of other outlets that I personally see trying to stay in the place of integrity and identifying the difference between, “We’re reporting on something and these are the facts we have at the time.” The who, where, why, when, what versus, “This is what I think based on what I’m seeing.” They’re calling that as opinion pieces. They don’t do that on Fox & Friends or on the 24-hour cable news networks, do they?
People should know what they’re getting away with. People should know that it’s an opinion piece.
When Fox started out, I believe they had a lot more of what I would call fair news reporting and trying to show things more objectively. Over the years, people at Fox News in particular who were those voices of reason either got pushed out or we’re frustrated, disheartened and left. Think back to Chris Cuomo who went to CNN. Who was the one that left? Is it Shepard Smith or somebody who left Fox News? He was one of the only people to try to call a spade a spade and not be another mouthpiece for the Republican Party or the president.
We used to have news media law, a guideline for how news is going to be categorized. These are the things you need to say. Once you’re outside that, you can’t call yourself a news thing. You can’t be on a news channel. That’s what we would say here is fitting. You’ve got to provide this dual piece to it so that there’s a report on both sides. You can’t use a narrative of this is what the other side is saying. They’re wrong because they’re saying it this way. Look at that and use the language of labels or judgments or criticisms or use language that causes the listener to get riled up. You couldn’t do that. That was one media executive talking to Ronald Reagan to get it changed.
I can’t remember the entire story fully. It was one person who asked that law to be changed. Reagan changed it. It took place under Reagan. There wasn’t a big fight or the big push back or the votes that were needed to keep the thing in place that was needed for the real fair and balanced narrative to show up. We’ve got what we’ve got now. That’s been problematic ever since 30, 40 years. That’s the degrading of it. What happens is that certain mindsets that get fixed on right, wrong, good and bad to attach this is my dogma or this is my belief structure and it’s fixed. They can get hijacked by any propaganda. There are many types of private propaganda that you can put in front of them. It’s not any. There are certain types of propaganda.
It’s propaganda. We’ve gone over this before in past episodes is it’s the promotion of the faith. That’s where propaganda came from. It’s a Catholic term. It’s a religious term. I’m going to propagate the faith. I am going to propagate this message, the good news of Jesus, of Christianity. It’s spread the word. This is because I had an emotional experience with my prayer. It made a difference for me. It changed my life. I’m okay with the mistakes that I make or the judgment. I get forgiveness this way. All those propagated messages then get to be reinforced in a person’s place of worship. This is what we stand for here. This is our belief.
In some ways does it seem that the divisiveness in this country and the way that people are receiving their news flash information. We’ve seen maybe that the boundaries of what news have been blurred and what’s acceptable has shifted that in some way the news outlets are a bit like religion or people worshiping their side to an extent.
Their belief structure is moving in that direction. This is why other countries have a hard time because they’re not welcoming a diverse group of beliefs. They are an exclusion for people of other faces. They’re not tolerant of other people’s spirituality in the place. One of the things that’s unique and was unique about America is there were acceptance and tolerance that you could practice any religion you want here. You also got to follow these other rules here in government. Some people go like, “No, we want these religious rules over here to be the governmental rules.”
It’s tough in America to have freedom of religion and separation of church and state, which is what it’s supposed to be. You saw the convalescence of the person reading the Bible, quoting the story of Jesus, how he’s being prosecuted and having a similar narrative to what’s happening to Trump. There are different things going on there. They were not the same. Are we going to use Bronze Age justice? Are we going to use our modern rules and the interpretation of those rules to govern this nation where Imperial Rome would be a model? There is the governor of a territory that gets to decide about the accusers.
We don’t do that. We put twelve people in a box. We let them decide. We try to get impartial people, not people with a stake in the game to make the judgment. Who has the money to pay for people to have a stake in the game? All of a sudden, we see at the highest level of both the Senate as well as the Supreme Court. I’ll put partial people in there, no impartial people. I’m going to put people that have a belief structure and a mindset that favors this mindset that’s not in alignment with my belief structure.
Bill, one of the things that I am seeing and I’m concerned about is the general viewer of our modern television news programs may not have awareness of how far away from truth some of the things they’re hearing are. Let’s go back to the ‘80s. I remember distinctly watching a news program like the Today Show which had, at that time, Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley on as the hosts or an evening news program like Walter Cronkite, CBS News. I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite. At that time, these news correspondents, anchors, whatever you want to call them were careful not to express any personal opinion. In fact, it was well known when one of them expressed an opinion. There were some consequences for that. They were reprimanded and may be suspended. If you look at something like the Today Show with Savannah Guthrie and/or Fox & Friends with those people, there are a lot of opinions injected into it. They’re not afraid to express their opinion. In fact, in many ways, it’s encouraged. We’re in a whole different place when it comes to news.
News is entertainment that gets ratings that we can get paid from. There was a movie a long time ago, Sally Field, Newman, Absence of Malice in ‘72. It was all about how someone’s opinion could move its way to the front and get like wildfire. All of a sudden, it’s proven to be not true, not at all. The reporter took the story and what the direction that they wanted to is like, “Oh my gosh.” The consequence was their job and stuff. You see someone fired and then six months, a year later, they’re on somebody else’s new show with little consequence. They’re on somebody else’s channel. It’s not to say that’s all that terrible, but it’s also terrible. I’m not saying you’ve got to punish a person to infinity and beyond to exaggerate a little bit.
It’s the hit that a person takes that’s challenging because there is an offense that if somebody says what the news is and reporting what that news is, that they’re staying close to the fact, but the ratings won’t be as high. You’ll notice that there’s no mystery that our president is interested in ratings. He calls CNN losers to show poor ratings. It’s poor ratings because it’s not hype. He’s proving that hype wins elections. That’s what he’s proving. The hype is going to overcome justice is what he’s doing.
During the impeachment trial, the House managers presented what they call opening arguments, which I find an ironic term because it’s a whole lot of the meat of the trials. It’s not an opening argument. The opening argument is for three days during the business week and then came the defense’s turn for opening arguments and started on Saturday. There were tweets from the president and all the news coming out of the White House that they weren’t happy that the president’s defense was starting on a Saturday when the ratings would be much lower, much fewer people would be watching. The president is all about hype and ratings. He knows it well and experienced in all of this. He wants attention.
With that attention, it’s exposure for his brand, “I’m a rich guy that fights for you. I’m not a rich guy that takes advantage of you. I’m not a politician that says one thing, but when they get in there, they can’t get anything done.” He’s getting something done. The problem is what he’s getting done is illegal. That’s a problem. I’m fighting for something. If I have my lightning rod, Joe Biden, and that’s the president’s instinct, nobody else in the field could beat him except for Joe Biden. That’s his emphasis. If I take out this guy, the other ones are in trouble. I’m not going to let this guy get momentum. He’s right from the perspective of he’s done the damage already.
The brand damage of Joe Biden is a nice guy. There’s a question in people’s minds. At least ten million people believe that something with Joe Biden and his son happened in Ukraine that was illegal or was unethical. Let alone Trump’s family doing all these unethical things. Their side has it and that allows us to demonize the other side. It’s nothing like calling somebody else on the playground, “You’re a bully.” “No, you’re a bully.” The person that’s not a bully goes like, “How did I become a bully all of a sudden?” If he transferred his brand to you because you were arguing with the bully about being a bully, it’s weird, but that’s what propaganda does. That’s what messaging does is it sticks inside the person’s consciousness and that’s why you don’t see one progressive insurance. How many times do you need to hear it, fifteen minutes?
That’s branding repeated and repeated until it’s all the people remember.
It could save you.
It’s 15% or more.
It’s the filling in of the brand message. It’s like, “We’re going to change our brand message. What are we going to do with all of these flyers? Save them, we’ll use them later.” It’s crazy. That’s what branding is, messaging.
Let’s go with brand messaging and changing it. There’s been a lot of changing of brand messaging going on where when you had the president’s defense in the impeachment trial, their message was there was no quid pro quo. He was going after corruption. He wasn’t going after Joe Biden. That’s their whole message. The revelations would come out that John Bolton is on record saying, “Yeah, the president withheld the security assistance of nearly $400 million in exchange for leaning on the Ukrainian president to launch investigations into the Bidens, in particular, not corruption as a whole.” The other talking point, the Republicans and the president’s defense have been saying for a long time, “There’s nobody with direct evidence, direct knowledge. We haven’t heard from anybody. It’s all been 2nd or 3rd hand that we’ve had witnesses. No firsthand witnesses.” You’ve got a firsthand witness who has not testified yet admittedly but is on record in a book saying this is what happened. You see the president’s defense narrative, his team defending him, shifting and saying, “Even if it was a quid pro quo, it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.” Backtracking, trying to change the story that to maybe be ready to admit that he did that, but then saying, “So what?”
They’re getting ahead of the story. The propaganda is getting ahead of the story, which is John Bolton finally having enough or finally realizing his brand damage is going to take place. He’s going to be worse off by being quiet. He’s got to lose all of his mid-support for his beliefs. His hardliners are going to stick with it, but all of John Bolton’s mid support will evaporate. He’ll be a commentator on the news one day as if that’s news. He was several years on Fox as a contributor. Have you seen how they have now shifted from a respected former cabinet member, administration, official person of integrity? Now that he’s at odds with the president, Fox News is throwing him under the bus.
They’re pre-loading propaganda in order to get the storm to past. You might as well damage him than damage the president or damage the party. The party’s loss is 15% to 20%. It’s struggling a little bit. Seeing how they’re going to get that back is tough because there’s this entire category of people that are moving away from this Republican vote into this independent vote, which is how Clinton got elected when there was Ross Perot, George Bush and Bill Clinton all on the stage at the same time. The Conservative vote got split with Ross Perot and George Herbert Walker Bush. He got split and Bill Clinton got elected. You haven’t seen an independent on the stage again. Why? The Republicans aren’t going to have any part of their vote-getting split.
Their constituency is already inherently on the decline in America as the way the population is shifting ethnically and immigration-wise. The largest demographic of Republicans are older white men and women to a degree. Not exclusively by any means, but certainly, that’s the largest demographic, which is in decline as Baby Boomers are retiring and dying. There’s much more coming in that are in the African-American community or the Latino community. Their ranks are dwindling and they are struggling.
It’s hard to sell Conservative values when there’s no real economic support for Conservative values. If the Republicans wanted their ranks to grow, they need to take a hard turn to help the middle class. They’re not in that mental space to do that because they’ve been demonizing and undercutting the middle-class for many years. If they want their ranks to come back, make it stable for Americans to have a living wage, get a vacation a year, not have to work two jobs. If the Republicans want to cut back, don’t give lip service to it. Do it and their ranks will grow fine. There will be all kinds of inclusion inside their party if they grow the middle class. It’s off-brand. We’ve got angry fundamentalists people over there instead of helping the people where they need to help so they don’t have to work two jobs. They get a pay raise and they go buy more stuff in order to float more money to the upper 1%. They’re not even paying attention to the system, which is upsetting. They don’t even know how the system works.
They’ve been definitely trying to pander to the middle class, especially with the tax law that was passed in 2017 that was sold to Congress. The majority of American people, that was sold to them as, “This is for you. You’re going to get more money in your paycheck now.” Some of them did, some of them didn’t. It was a modest increase in your paycheck at the expense of our budget deficit, which now in the Trump administration, the deficit is over $3 trillion. When President Donald Trump said his economic policies, his tax plans were going to reduce not only the deficit but the national debt. It’s nowhere in the neighborhood of that, which is going to have huge consequences for the middle class going forward because somebody is going to have to pay that bill.
When the next administration or the administration after it comes down, it will come down again when the new tax, there will be some relief on the debt. How do we get the truth of how debt works, that most people are in debt? The problem with being in debt is you don’t want the debt to be big that all of a sudden it bankrupts the country. You don’t want that to take place because that’s where the depression sets. The dollar is not worth what it needs to be worth overseas and stuff. There are lots of problems with economies. It’s holding up an illusion of value. When we talk about news reporting, if they’re fighting for that imprint, you could even say that what you and I are doing is fighting for an imprint.
We’re fighting for a healthy discussion about truth. Here’s a healthy discussion about if something is an opinion, it doesn’t though repetition becomes a fact. That’s what’s happening through repetition. It becomes a fact. It becomes a belief. Look at two phrases, witch hunt, and hoax. Those are belief terms. A witch is a religious dig. It’s not a witch hunt. There are no witches. Witches aren’t real. That’s belief stuff. That’s what the Catholic Church did with all its holidays is put them next to pagan holidays and propagate them. Jesus was born in early February. He wasn’t born in December. It wasn’t on the 25th. It’s next to the solstice.
The winter solstice is where the pagans used to worship on December 21st. They put Christmas on December 25th to take that population and throw a bigger party over here. Tom, have you ever promoted a party? Yes. You want your people to come to your party. They get into your faith and believe the things. Easter, what am I going to do with that? I want to put Easter right next to the spring. That’s why bunny rabbits are at Easter. How did bunny rabbits get there? That’s a pagan religion thing, not Christianity, but they put it right next to it. This is how human beings get pulled around. Friday the 13th is a day of intimacy, sexuality and a beloved time for married couples to stay home and be intimate with each other because that was Freya’s, the goddesses of love, worship day. They changed the calendar so people wouldn’t do that because there was not as many Friday the 13th. It’s the same new cycle. The powers that yank people’s limbic brain, their amygdala to our side so we have enough votes. It is discouraging.
You and I are aware of this. Our audience is aware of this. I think we are approaching information we all receive with perhaps a healthy dose of skepticism to say, “What’s the source? Is this news? Is this opinion? Is this a fact? Is it not? Where is this on the truth scale?” The average person is not equipped with all of the skills and knowledge to be able always to see this. Where does that leave us? The best marketer is going to win the day.
The way capitalism is set up is the best marketer wins. If I go back in the field of time and compare VHS cassettes to beta cassettes, the beta was the higher quality, higher resolve, smaller, more effective, better machine. Yet VHS eclipsed and crushed that product.
It was due to marketing. There were a number of things. Marketing was a big part of that. Sony wanted to keep beta, although it didn’t want to license and let other people make beta machines, which was clearly as we look back in history, a big mistake for them.
How do you do that in the political thing? It’s hard because if you’ve got two parties, all you’re doing is you’re branding. The problem is that the Republicans have moved off of brand messages. Fiscal conservatives have moved off their brand message.
They’re nowhere in the neighborhood of it. I’m convinced that’s part of why Paul Ryan left the House of Representatives because he came in as a fiscal conservative. Somebody who was going to knock on a vote for any new spending without cuts and what is already being spent. That went out the window as he lost control of the narrative.
He’ll be back in ten years to run for president. He’ll make you a pretty good run. He will say, “The party is back and those bad guys are gone now. We’re not like that anymore.” It’s like bull crap. You’re still like that. You’re the one that didn’t stand up to him in the past. He ducked and covered.
He took the most literal off-ramp you could take to get out of government at that time. We don’t see enough of the existing Republicans taking that off-ramp. We see them hitching their wagon to the Trump train.
That’s similar to VHS. Here’s another model with a different bell and whistle, but it’s still the machine that still doesn’t work well. It works okay, but it’s not quality. It’s good enough. Is our government going to wind up in the dollar store? That’s the thing that we’ve got to decide on. I like dollar stores, but it’s not what I want my ethics and government to be.
We can’t only have dollar stores. That’s an interesting marketing analogy to bring in because if you’ve done any little bit of research on the phenomenon of dollar stores, especially in rural communities, they’ve driven grocery stores with healthy food out of local communities. People are primarily in some portions of America especially in the lower-income communities and more rural communities, are shopping almost exclusively at dollar stores. There are no fresh fruits or vegetables. It’s all preserved foods. This is contributing to our health crisis.
Capitalism doesn’t care about what’s best. It doesn’t. How does the dollar fall and can I get a market or an interest in that product or service to get enough of an impact so the person gives me their money? Capitalism is not interested in value as much. People take niches and run with them. There’s plenty of business at the top end. What happens is that the middle group gets crushed and they’re forced down.
Which is where the volume of people is. The vast majority of people are in the middle to low.
With news reporting, it’s like how do you put a bow in propaganda other than listening to things and learning things that are going to give you a perspective without judgment. You and I put our opinion and judgment into things. We’re also giving the perspective of the good reason why people had voted for Donald Trump because they believe in loyalty. They believe that this person, because of his enthusiasm and his popularity, knows something about business. Therefore, business principles get things done where governmental principals don’t. What is missed in the narrative is how much money is being used for candidates to spend most of their time raising money for the next election.
Most of the time not paying attention to laws in the government and writing good laws to help a solid nation stay stable. We’re becoming top-heavy. You don’t have to look far. It’s happening quicker. We’re becoming top-heavy quickly. Whereas Rome took 1,500 years and England took several 100 years before it topples. The top-heaviness of a system doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable long-term. What eventually gets lost is freedom. Tom, that’s what gets lost. Once propaganda gets polluted in a person’s mind, they don’t even know that they’re voting against themselves.
My sister doesn’t know that she’s voting against herself by voting Republican. She has no idea. She’s in her 60s. She has no idea that when she’s casting her vote, she’s casting for a person that’s going to vote to cut her Medicare. She has no idea that’s what that person is doing. She has a fantasy that these people because her life is not fair. The way she sees it, “I’ve done everything I was supposed to do,” and Conservative, she doesn’t know that and doesn’t believe that her vote is voting against her.
That’s the talented marketer that Donald Trump is. When he speaks, although outrageous things come out of his mouth, off the cuff, he speaks in a way that a lot of people in this country like because it’s different and refreshing. It’s not the typical political speak. Like you’ve said in the past, he creates a lot of sizzle and makes people believe he’s on their side rooting for them and going to fight for them. In reality, what he achieves is not in their best interest in general.
The freedom piece is what we could pick up next time. If we talk about truth and freedom, we can now pull this thread forward from news reporting. We could see how the freedom of speech and the freedom of information and that’s how truth gets per purchased too. It’s turning off the dial of freedom and it becomes more about the way Russia is doing things is that we’re not letting people go. All of a sudden, they’re losing their freedom because they’re complaining, submitting. That’s what they’re doing.
It's hard to sell conservative values when there's no real economic support for conservative values.
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That’ll be an interesting discussion. We have at the foundation of our system, freedom of speech. That freedom of speech may be endangering our freedom.
It is because our brain is getting hijacked because of it. I’m only going to look at people that are in agreement with me that don’t have a perspective. I’d be happy to sit in a room full of Trump people and talk to them about how freedom is getting hijacked from them. You’re not allowed to have free thought because if they take away this choice, you get to lose five other choices. You lose it. Tom, this is good. I want to thank the audience for staying with us and going through this complexity of how the truth and news reporting gets purchased this way. It’s been a lot of fun, Tom.
I enjoyed it. Thanks. I look forward to the next time.
Thanks, Tom.
