In this interview, Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla discuss what they view as a media‑driven hysteria surrounding COVID‑19. Prager opens with a personal anecdote about a recent PragerU fundraising event and his commitment to transparency. The conversation quickly turns to criticism of mainstream outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and the Los Angeles Times, which they accuse of using graphic, "scare‑porn" imagery to coerce the public into mask‑wearing and other pandemic measures. Carolla likens this approach to propaganda, arguing that the more the government and media amplify fear, the more people will tune out. Prager cites specific data—26 COVID‑related deaths among children under 14 in the United States as of June 17, representing 0.013% of that age group—to illustrate the disparity between the narrative of danger and the actual risk to kids. The hosts also compare the declared political affiliations of news organizations, noting that Soviet newspaper Pravda openly identified as the Communist Party organ, whereas the New York Times does not label itself as a Democratic Party organ, implying a lack of transparency. The segment concludes with Carolla promoting his film "NoSafeSpaces.com," positioning it as a counter‑cultural response to the perceived suppression of dissenting viewpoints.
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So you will love this. If you heard this, I feel bad because I— it's precious. My son and I were doing a fundraising event for PragerU in Michigan just a couple of months ago, and I mentioned this transparent line in my talk because I aspire to be transparent. He gets up, he goes, Before anything else, I'd just like to share with you that growing up with a transparent was a challenge.
Good one. Yeah, it's a very good one.
Yeah, I thought you'd appreciate it. How do you— so they want to put out— the New York Times wants to have the government put out very gruesome deaths of people from COVID to scare people into masks. What's your take?
Well, if the government— first off, would you like the government to be a propaganda machine? Because that's— it's essentially propaganda. It is. I mean, you could do the same thing about airplane crashes or moped crashes. I mean, you could choose. It's like we say smoking, you know, 50,000 people die of secondhand smoke every year when no one dies of secondhand smoke. I think There's a, it's, you're in very dangerous waters when you have lost the people. So I say to all, I work with a bunch of young guys at my podcast, and I say to all those guys, if you heard something on CNN 5 years ago, what would you have thought? And they go, I just believe that's what happened. I said, now if you hear something on CNN, what do you think? And they go, mm.
Is that right?
Yes.
Well, that's actually comforting. It's depressing, but it's comforting.
Right, but it's CNN and Los Angeles Times, New York Times. It's no different than the governor or the mayor.
That's correct.
And if they want to keep going down the sort of hyperbole scare porn path, then we're going to tune out even more. They don't realize that if they— the harder they bang that drum, the less we listen.
Well, they claim, her claim was that scaring people about cigarette smoking worked.
Yeah, well, tell, telling your kids, uh, the boogeyman's under the bed, so go to sleep or eat your vegetables. I mean, it's lying. I, if it's okay to lie, then it's okay to lie, but you're going to lose your constituency. People will stop listening. And it's insane that she is actually coaching up the government to essentially lie, which they're already doing. They've been lying.
Talking about that, uh, Sean brought in this piece of data through June. Remember I asked your son how many people— I didn't know the answer— how many people under 14 have died of COVID as of June 17th? The number was, let's see, 26. 8 under 1 year, 5 1 to 4, 13 5 to 14. So we're talking about 0.013%. And for that, these kids should be scared and wear masks and not go to school.
—And that's the information that people aren't getting. —That's right, they're not getting. —At all. The news agencies won't report on that. Yeah, we're now at a point where everyone is just gonna have to start deciding for themselves what's best for them, because there's clearly an agenda going on. And not only that, they're saying this stuff out loud that they're not supposed to be saying out loud. You're not supposed to announce, "We need to start scaring people," before you start scaring people, when you've been scaring people. You know, there's, there's, these people are bold and brazen and oftentimes stupid. That's a dumb article. You're not supposed to announce that we want the government to scare people.
That's a great point, but this is, this is where we're headed. The, you know, I, uh, I have said this, this is really, I think, an important point. You, you, as you, as I know You know me well, but so I studied Russian in order to read Pravda, the famous newspaper. At the top of Pravda, it said, "Organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." There was more honesty in that sense in Pravda than in the New York Times because it doesn't say, "Organ of the Democratic Party." Right.
But I think people are starting to understand that.
Ah, that's the key. Adam Carolla and my movie is out. NoSafeSpaces.com.
