Episode 1 - “The State of the Media”

Foreign. To the maiden voyage of a new podcast True Journalism which has two traditional journalists that will share their stories and their viewpoint from what we like to call fact based truth based news reporting and but used to be called investigative reporting which is based entirely on facts, not on innuendo. And we're kind of running counter to the obvious trend in the media these days where most of the viewpoints are propaganda based or opinion based and we have a host of demagogues and all the networks that spew their opinions and there's been this gradual erosion of opinion versus what is fact. And seeking facts is so illusion. So I'm Richard Schreiber, your co host and I would love to introduce my esteem, my distinguished co host Tom Martin who has walked the walk as they say over over 20 years as a news producer working for some of the pantheons in broadcasting. Man I admire tremendously for his service to truth and journalism. Tom?

Yeah, thanks for. Thanks Richard Grade Now I'm excited about this. When you said maiden voyage I had an image of the Titanic but that that's a different headline. So we're talking about modern headlines, not.

Not. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully it'll be more successful than that. You know speaking, speaking of fact based I. I know there's conspiracy theories around whether the Titanic actually did hit an iceberg or whether it was just an internal explosion that happened through some mishap or human intervention and anyway but we're not going to go there because we don't know the facts.

I think it's can now be found at Graceland. I don't know if those things.

Indeed I guess our first topic of discussion that we want to talk about is the state or the current state of the news media. We were talking off camera that I'm working on a book and have for some time called the Decline of American Journalism which really has its roots traced back to the out the outcome of Watergate when Woodward and Bernstein basically took down an incumbent two term very powerful figure in Richard Nixon who actually I admired and later became of all things an intimate foreign policy adviser to Bill Clinton as they kind of formed an interesting friendship before Nixon died. But in any event the Republican Party in large part after they saw that a newspaper reporters of all things could bring down an incumbent president even though it was all his doing. He committed crimes and all he was was held accountable by the press and by the judicial system. We know about the famous scene with Barry Goldwater walking into Nixon's office saying you don't have the votes you need to Resign before you get impeached. But it was a different era and the Republican Party, as I said subsequently, wanted to make sure that that never happened again. So in the Reagan administration, yeah, they repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which was a document. Which was a document and a system that required news reporters to basically stick to the facts. Tom. And boy, boy, we, we've moved far away from that, huh?

There's been a lot of change, a lot of change in the news media, that's for sure. Yeah, I got my start as, as you mentioned. I feel like I have many years in this business. Got my starter in 1982. I was still in college in Washington, D.C. started CBS News, Washington bureau there. Ronald Reagan was president. That was right around the time of the Oliver north scandal, if you remember.

Yes.

And I will, can't resist throwing in a little bit of trivia, pre CBS News trivia for my life. I was actually in the room when Richard Nixon said, I am not a crook, because my father, wow. My father was a lifelong newspaper editor. He actually started USA Today in the 1980s and worked with the Miami Herald and the Atlanta Journal Constitution and so on. So there was, that was during his time with the Miami Herald, there was a newspaper editors convention at Disney World. Of course, that's where he uttered Disney. He said, I am not a crook. But we, we learned otherwise pretty quickly after that, I have to say. But it's an, it's an interesting time. I guess I was brought up in a family believing that, you know, journalists can be watchdogs and it's important to be of the highest integrity, not, you know, so that you could shine a light on suspicious activity. And I'd like to think there are still some good, solid journalists still working today. It's been, it's, I give them so much credit.

Who would you point out? I mean, this Christina Manipur is, is one for sure.

I was just thinking of her, as a matter of fact. Yeah, exactly. Nicholas Kristoff is another one I admire. There, there, there are many. I probably couldn't list them for you at the moment, but I know and even, even journalists who names me not may not even know who are dedicated, you know, to investigative journalism. And they, they really are sincere about that. It's, you know, I, I mean, another. We, we, we could probably discuss for a full hour or more whether it's possible to be a totally neutral observer of the news because we all kind of bring our slight biases to anything. It's human, human natures and psychology. But I really do believe that the best journalists can kind of detach themselves as much as possible from that. And the people we really have to worry about, as you were suggesting earlier, are those, like, repeating like a mantra, fake news, fake news, until we no longer. It's like, don't believe your eyes and ears. So those are the people we need to be concerned about.

Exactly. And you mentioned that. And again, our purpose is not to be political. It's to report on the facts. But, you know, when you see things like in the recent trials, or if that's what you want to call it, more like congressional hearings as trials, if, as you saw, Cash Patel and Pam Bondi essentially being on. On trial by Congress, and rightfully so, because Kash Patel, of all things, took the Fifth the other day, which is absolutely unconscionable for an FBI director, a man who's supposed to be the, you know, one of the highest law enforcement. The highest law enforcement person in the country, and he takes the Fifth. Right. And, you know, you could tell from the questioning, again, this is not a political statement, but you could tell from the questioning by both sides in that congressional hearing with Pam Bondi that unilaterally the congressional leaders were trying to hold her accountable for the fact that the Justice Department was breaking the law by not releasing all of the Epstein trials unredacted, which is what Congress signed into law, you know, which means that that was a bipartisan, bipartisan account, even though obviously most of the Republican congressmen voted that way. And there were, I believe, five. Five Republican congressmen that joined the Democrats to get that passed. And we all know, of course, that Marjorie Taylor Greene has kind of become, even though she's left Congress, she's kind of become the spokesman for the Republican Party or the MAGA Party, whatever you want to call it, in trying to hold Pam Bondi and even Donald Trump, the president, accountable for the Epstein trials. You know, just. Just some interesting, shocking really, that both Pam Bondi and Cash Patel would essentially perjure themselves during these. These trials. Trials, again, they're not trials. They were congressional hearings, you know, such that one took the Fifth and the other was repeatedly called on statements that she was making that were misinformation from a legal perspective, trying to claim privilege, when other lawyers in. In the congressional ranks said, you're dead wrong on that. So interesting times we live in. I. I don't know if there's anything analogous to this, Tom, in a prior part of our government history. There probably is if we look back a hundred years. It's just that there wasn't social media when James Buchanan was doing what he was doing as president. Right.

Well, we, I mean, I certainly have heard people, people talk about the accusations flying back and forth between, you know, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams or what have you. It's like our, our whole nation will burn to the ground if you elect that guy. It's like, okay, maybe it seems more personal because we're living through this moment, but there's no, no question about the fact that we have a media presidency right now in, you know, his second term, interrupted by, I would can't resist saying a legitimately elected intercession or whatever, you know, Biden, whatever, whatever we may think of Mr. Biden. But, you know, going back a number of years, again mentioning Reagan and the Oliver north trial or hearings, I should say I was in those early years of getting my television news career started working, and I was working for a show. It was interviews in the middle of the night called Night Watch, hosted by Charlie Rose, who I thought was great interviewer, did a great job, fantastic show. He had his own downfall for other reasons and argue about that one, but not related to politics. But, but our executive producer was a longtime friend, actually. He was our. I won't, like, go into all kinds of tribute for you, but the guy who was the executive producer of that show, Night Watch, was a former movie critic from the Miami Herald during the 70s. My dad was there at the Miami Herald, so I got, I knew him very well, and he had moved from newspapers into television. Kind of like the fellow who kind of inspired me to get into television news. Van Gordon Sar is his name.

Ah, yes, of course.

And, and so this guy who was the former movie critic had moved, if you, if you remember, you know, you, you and I are, I think we're both eligible for aarp. So back, you know, so you might remember the Tom Snyder Tom show.

Oh, I do, yeah, of course.

An executive producer of that show by the name of Roger Ailes. So Roger, I think he was executive producer of the Mike Douglas show for a while, things like that. And so when Ronald Reagan, and there's a lot of qualities that I actually admire about Ronald Reagan. I thought he was a very good leader, very good orator, had a vision for America. And so, so he, you know, he tapped the television talents of Roger Ailes, Morning in America and that kind of thing. And ever since, you know, that mark also marked the creation of Fox News, which has been around many decades at this point, but certainly our current incumbent president is a media creation and he knows the Power of the media. I mean, I think you and I were discussing that. I know you said we're not going to get political, but off camera, I.

Mean, say what you want about President Trump. He's, he's an expert at marketing and harnessing the media and social media in ways that effectively distribute his message. You can argue that it's false or lies or arguments or scarcity tactics or fear mongering or whatever those things are. But you must admit he's incredibly effective at what he does. And he's been able to cultivate this populist figure since his days with the World Wrestling Federation and the later with the Apprentice. And he just is able to somehow penetrate the veneer that most people have with politicians and somehow reach them. So, unfortunately, the messaging, one could argue, is another story. But yeah, you mentioned Ronald Reagan, again, politically, policy wise. You know, one, one could argue one way or the other with some of his things and certainly the Oliver north thing and there were other things, and he also had a lot of, initially anyway, people from Wall street and the oil industry. He was like the first president that I remembered that stocked his cabinet with, not politicians, but people from private industry, many of whom were CEOs of companies and where they started to write the policy. And that's something that we talk about today, unfortunately, is that lawmakers are often not the authors of policy. It's usually the lobbyists or the government contractors who essentially enable them to write policies that favor them getting government contracts, for example. But yeah, again, under the Reagan administration, I think things began to, began to change. And it's an interesting story about Roger Ailes and, and how he became, and obviously he had his fall with Fox News and, and during an era where we had other instances of unfortunately sexual, sexual manifestations or charges brought against various people and men in power. And I do want to talk about the Epstein trials, but not in the manner that everyone else is talking about them. And that is, and I want to run this by you, obviously, Jeffrey Epstein has been around since the 1980s and he had, somehow he survived the Reagan administration. Bush won Clinton, both terms. Bush, George W. Bush. And it was only until, of all things, Donald Trump became president, that he ultimately was convicted by the Justice Department and died in jail like a year later. So I know one of the things that Pam Bondi, during those missing three minutes of video, right. Which will never be found, and it seems like something that would show up in a Francis Coppola Godfather screenplay. But anyway, I found that super interesting. And in a recent expose that was done by, I think, Gary Melburg, who's Ms. Now reporter and a very good one, I think, because he's also an attorney. So he knows the law inwards and outwards. And obviously in recent years that that kind of reporting has been pretty important to navigate through all the, the stuff. But he pointed out that in 2005, the Bush administration was ready to go to trial with Jeffrey Epstein, but the Justice Department dropped it. So what I find most discouraging about Jeffrey Epstein's case, and there are many, is that he survived five presidents, including Joe Biden, and none of them, none of them ever brought charges against him. And I believe, and this is my speculation, and forgive me, I believe Joe Biden knew this and he just let it drop purposefully so that it would fall in the lap of, of President Donald Trump and would essentially blow up on him. So that was kind of like a smoking gun or a Trojan horse that Joe Biden left behind for Donald Trump. And Pam Bondi, when she questioned why Garrick Marlin. Sorry.

Merrick Garland.

Merrick Garland, thank you. Didn't do anything about it. She's right. He should have and he didn't.

Yeah, no, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. And I may have my. Well, I shouldn't say I may. I do have my political views and they'll probably become pretty apparent if you listen to me. Listeners listen to me for 15 seconds, but I'll try to try to keep them in check. But don't forget that one name that has surfaced during these Epstein files, the millions of pages, is Bill Clinton. And Bill Clinton did have certain extracurricular activity in the White House. So there's been something about men and power and, oh, yeah, that kind of thing for decades, you know, forever.

Forever. And I remember watching on Netflix about probably five or six years ago, there was a. A reporter who went on to cover into this unbeknownst. They call it a corporate cabal which exists. And it's interesting that there was a television series that spoke about it called the Blacklist. This corporate cabal made up of billionaires, ex presidents and every ex president was on the roster and it was men only. And essentially what they did is they met and they talked about and they got together, I guess, and tried to collaborate and do things. And some of it probably not on the up and up. And according to the reporter, not me, according to the reporter's views that came out in this documentary or, and whatnot, all Jeffrey. And people don't realize that the most egregious part of what it appears Jeffrey Epstein was involved with was teenage sex trafficking. But he was connecting heads of state from all over the world. And I think it's apparent now that he used this, the sex offense angle to blacklist all of these people into getting whatever probably money currying, favoritism and so on and so forth. So Jeffrey Epstein wove this, this web of, of corruption that far exceeded just simply teenage sex trafficking, which is arguably the most contemptible part of what he was orchestrating. But he was bringing these heads of figure to get the heads of state and these billionaires together to talk policy and to, to plan how to influence politicians who were also there. So it was all entire ecosystem of depravity ultimately that unfortunately had a ton of influence well beyond just the sex trafficking angle, which again is at being the father of a 19 year old daughter. And I know you have a daughter just makes me try, makes me drive to my knees every time I think about things like that. And the fact that these young women were brought in from all over Eastern Europe and South America and places and, and just well, the traditional teenage sex trafficking which goes on and sadly Americans are the number one consumers of this. So as we are of most things. And that's what you know, Epstein was providing.

Yeah, clear. We, we see this really, the scandals really resonating through the UK right now in a way hasn't yet here in the United States. And telling my wife recently that as I was, as you know again you and I have talked about, one of the PR projects that I worked on recently was for an artificial general intelligence firm. And the, one of the two co founders of this firm, you know, I was reading his Wikipedia profile to kind of read in to do my PR work that he, you know, he was given some money by Jeffrey Epstein, $100,000 or something like that. We see that Bill Gates's name has come up in these millions of pages. We don't know whether it's, you know, because they're talking high level policy.

Well, there was a quote about an antibiotic for gonorrhea that he apparent reportedly gave to his wife which led to her divorcing him. And that's not me, that's not hearsay. I think his wife actually was on the news recently to indicate as such.

Yeah, no, that's, it's quite, you know, the scandal. I do, I do hope it all comes out. It shouldn't, you know, no one should be protected in a situation.

So. No, and I think the worst Part of the recent release of the documents is, as others have said, is the fact that the names of the victims were unredacted. The names of foreign dignitaries like Prince Andrew and others. Was it Prince Andrew?

Yes, that the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew.

But, and then we've seen massive resignations, you know, all over Europe and, and the world, in UK and even in Scandinavia, of people, people that were unredacted foreign leaders. So it's interesting that our Justice, Justice Department, some of the claims are they're protecting American politicians, dignitaries, billionaires, but they had no problem exposing the victims and foreign dignitaries, which is curious and difficult to believe that it's arbitrary.

No, it's really prolonged suffering of if I can, you know, maybe they can only use that word themselves, but there must be a lot of suffering of the women survive this thing. So what you're touching on now relating to this Jeffrey Epstein scandal is, does touch on one of the themes I think we want to explore in this series. And you might want to talk a little bit more about that since this is our first episode as far as polarization and I've, I've found myself kind of sucked in a little bit to knee jerk reactions and like, well, somebody just posted this nasty dig at somebody I don't like in political power. So I'm going to retweet that or you know, it's like, hey, hey, wait a minute, Tom did it, you know, somebody posted an innocent question. Did that really happen? I thought, wow, I, I'm not really sure if it did really. So as you know, both of us have been writing a lot for Substack in recent months. And so that generated a, an essay myself that I wrote after watching the, the Charlie Kirk memorial service. I know that's a topic that you and I have talked about, but again, relating to the Epstein scandal. And recently Pam Bondi, Attorney General, you know, was testifying before in the House and she managed to arrive with her little book of digs and all the Congress people. But you raised a very good point. I never, I never want to find myself falling into that polarization. Like, you know. You raised a good point. Well, during those years of Merrick Garland and the Biden administration, why was nothing done? That's a very good question. I don't want to say, well, let's just not pay attention to that. No, that's a very question.

And the interesting thing is, is according to Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump told her we can't release the Epstein files because too many of my friends would get hurt. I could imagine Joe Biden saying the same thing. Perhaps George H.W. bush, perhaps George Bush, Bill Clinton, even Barack Obama. Even during Barack Obama's administration, they never chose to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein. And Barack Obama has more people, more immigrants were expelled under Barack Obama than any other president. You know, that's not a knock on him. That's just, that's a fact. But that's against them.

Well, earlier we were talking about CBS News and speaking of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, one of the stories in the news right now is, you know, under Barry Weiss, who's brought in by the new owners of CBS News, they've brought in a number of contributors and kind of essayists and, you know, people with opinions rather than correspondence and so on. And one of them, I saw a very inspiring story on CBS News 60 Minutes a number of months ago about this Peter Attia, longevity expert. Turns out he's heavily mentioned in these Epstein emails and so on. So it's like, what do you do with a person like that? Who. It's like when Deepak Chopra for that matter, was talking with a friend about how apparently Deepak Chopra is mentioned in.

In those files as well, and as is Elon Musk. But again, the thing to be mindful of is there are other elements to what Jeffrey Epstein was doing besides teenage sex trafficking. So the fact that like Musk was there, you know, the, the guy has like 14 children with 13 different women. So you can draw your own conclusions on that. But, and he talked about wanting to party. He might have just been going there for a good time. We don't know if he had any interest in any of the young women there. We just don't know. But again, I do, I do know.

I do notice that, you know, and I don't mind admitting that my number one news source for many years has been CNN people. Ah, cnn. I know how, how he must think, but I noticed that whenever they report on allegations, when they report on elements or tangents of this Jeffrey Epstein scandal and mention the name Donald Trump, they make it very clear. Let's just be clear. No allegations have been lodged. There's no, no accusation. You know, so even though Trump's name is mentioned thousands of times, apparently millions.

Millions actually, according to the, the Senate senator. I forget his name, but yeah, more than a million times Trump was mentioned by one of the Sen. Had the ability to go see, to go view the files unredacted or semi unredacted a lot.

We don't know for sure. But makes like Chopra and Bill Gates. It makes, makes you wonder. Elon Musk.

And so, yeah, and yeah, we also know that there's been some rumors, again, only putting it in the context of where things are going in the news media. To your point, we know that Larry Ellison bought CBS News and handed it off to his son, who wants to legitimately or not, create a news empire. And there's also been some talk that they will pursue the parent company that owns cnn. And hopefully, you know, if, you know, obviously back in the days, you know, when I was growing up, the FCC or the Federal Communications Commission, you know, was, was pretty authoritative in preventing these kinds of things. There was a time, for example, if you owned a television station, you could not own a radio station or a newspaper in the same market.

Well, we should, we should be sure to give President Trump credit for keeping a nice healthy distance from what goes on at the Justice Department and the ftc. And I, someone told me that he like, kind of suggested he would bless that takeover of cnn, but I know he's far too scrupulous to ever do.

Anything like that for certain. But yeah, a lot of those agencies were defanged, if you will, by subsequent administrations. I'm not going to say which political party other than to say that that's happened. One party seems to be more for government deregulation. And, you know, on some levels, that's arguably legitimate. There's no question that the federal government became bloated and largely ineffectual and a lot of things that it attempted to do. But there are better ways, there are better ways to empty a room than throwing a hand grenade in the center of it, which is I, which I think is what Doge did and what they did. And I'm not going to get into the some of the surrounding stuff on.

That, not, not with reference to Doge, but another aspect of this, this whole thing that we're talking about here. And I'd be interested in your, your views here. I know we may have just have a tight amount of time to finish up this episode, but again, a lot of my friends, you know, people my age, maybe former CBS News producers and so on, are not really fans of Barry Weiss, shall we say, and the way she's approached things. But when I heard that she, you know, had an all staff address about changes coming and layoffs that may happen and so on, she did say we need to kind of reinvent ourselves for the future. And so there are a lot of people I know, I mean, I actually worked with Walter Cronkite Briefly, on one election night when I worked with Charles Karl's camera crew, our older audio guy actually worked with Edward R. Murrow. And so there's kind of that continuity. But I'm just curious what your thoughts are. You know, you and I are fascinated by AI and the upside of AI. And so maybe as much as I may not like Barry Weiss and a lot of my friends may not like Barry Weiss, maybe she has a point that we are moving into the future now. We can't do things the way they did in the 1950s.

You know, I think from a technology standpoint, that's spot on. AI can certainly be used when accessing legitimate citations. I think can be used as a, as a tool that can source and seek the truth and perhaps equalize some of the bias and opinions. Whether or not that will translate to the news media is questionable because we all know there's this dichotomy between the left wing and the right wing media. And you know, that the out the outcome and the output of that content is strictly designed to retain the listenership of their respective audiences. And they'll do anything in their power to do so, including demagoguery and propaganda, like we said earlier. And that's not unique to one side. That's just, that's just the way things are.

I can't, can't resist sharing this thought with you. That crossed my mind a moment ago as we were talking. So, you know, like I said, Donald Trump is a certainly a media president. You know, success built on the Apprentice and so on. And who has one of his top critics been for many years? Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California. I think he has a media career to thank himself. So it's interesting how, you know, maybe it's unavoidable. I don't know.

Yeah, well, Schwarzenegger seems to be a fairly principled man, although you could argue, you know, having a child with your maid is not consistent with that. But I think his, his value set in the way he approached government. When he was governor of California, he had Democrats actually within his policy and within his inner cabinet. So he recognized the value of true collaboration and bipartisanship. And I'm just a little bit miffed that we have this statute or this law in our Constitution that says you have to be born an American in order to be president. Frankly, I think someone like Schwarzenegger would be a very good president because of his ability to cross over the aisles and because he also has a very, very generous aspect to his character in that he gives back a lot to charity. And he believes in mentorship of young people. You know, he's someone who has truly respected the fact that when he came to America, couldn't speak the language, was young, but a lot of people helped him, and he in turn is paying that forward.

Yeah, we have a nation of immigrants. I, I mean, my family's in, you know, those immigrants as well.

So, yeah, my, my grandfather came through ellis island in 1921. I have the manifest from Bavaria in Germany.

Well, now, now we live in an age where new, new principles of democr enshrined. You know, the Lincoln Memorial. I think if you look on the right hand corner that says we can do things the easy way or the hard way. And like, what do you, how do you respond to that? I don't know.

I don't know what's easier, what's hard. But so as we, as we wrap up, Tom, we what we may actually introduce in in future podcast is a little bit of a rant of the day. I think we'll skip that for this time. I think we talked enough about topics like the current state of news and Jeffrey Epstein and much more to talk about, but always within the guise of this is not political. We're not trying to impress upon anyone our point of view, but our conversations hopefully will maybe trigger some thoughts on the size of our audience. So I'll throw the ball to you, my friend, to close us out.

Yeah, I love, love hearing other points of view. Again, I did not, you know, I had to kind of like take an outside look at myself. Like, am I, am I just pressing retweet or something? It's like, it's a, this is a time when I think we can be introspective and like, try to gain a sense of reality and truth. As, as you said, it's a noble, noble pursuit. And it's an honor to be joining forces with you for this conversation, this series of conversations, and look forward to the next one. And I think as we come to a close, we did not hit an iceberg. Yes.

Right. And hopefully we didn't ignite or have any explosions below the the water line either. Thanks everyone for tuning in and we'll you next week. I'm Richard Schreiber.

Tom Martin. Great to be with you.

What is it that Ed Murrow used to say?

Good night and good luck.

Good night and good luck.