The Ben Mulroney Show - The news bias regarding Iran/Will the regime fall?

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

Guest: Bill Roggio / Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow GUEST: Rabbi Mark Wildes, Founder and Director of the Manhattan Jewish Experience. Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founding Partner of Chatter AI If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. If you have been living under Iraq this weekend, and this is the first you hear of it, I'm going to do my best to explain to you what is happening in Iran as we speak. since not as since uh 1979 the fine and good and just and decent people of iran have been living under a repressive uh religious autocracy known as the islamic regime where rights have been taken away where women have been marginalized where people have been disappeared where terror is the name of the game. This is a regime that has fueled and funneled and paid for terrorist activity around the world. They have funded, I looked it up, guys, just to give you an example of how indecent and inhumane and corrupt and corrosive and destructive this regime is. Over the past 10 years,

One, two, three, four, five, six. About 30, 30 terrorist attacks launched either directly by Iran or by its proxies. They're a bad actor. They are evil embodied. And for that reason and many more, the United States, as well as Israel, conducted and have been, conducting some of the most sophisticated air attacks on that country that the world has ever seen. They have been plotting to obtain a nuclear weapon. And I ask you, do you want a country that has no regard for human life, human decency,

the rule of law, in control of a nuclear weapon? And so, yes, the United States and Israel took it upon themselves to launch an air campaign that has been designed to beat down and destroy this regime. They have thus far gained air superiority over Tehran striking missile sites, naval assets, internal security forces, more than 550 killed in these strikes. The Ayatollah, the supreme leader, the religious leader of that, of that, regime dead as well as almost all of his senior leadership. Iran has tried to do what they do best, so chaos, by launching retaliatory attacks across the region firing drones and missiles, not just at Israel and U.S. bases, but indeed into the Arab world.

The UAE received 165 ballistic missile attacks, two cruise missiles, and 541 drones intercepted since just two days ago. Qatar, same thing. Now, who's in charge now? It's sort of like a hydra. You cut off one head and a bunch of others pop up in its place. There's a council called the Assembly of Experts, 88 member clerical body. They're going to select the next Supreme Leader. They're not going to be long for this earth. Israel's intelligence is second to none inside the regime. They know where all these people are. And the second that they, second that one of these people gets elevated, there's a target on their back. Now, a lot of people, I think rightly and for right reasons, are playing devil's advocate

and asking, could this be another forever war? Could this be another Iraq? Could this be another Afghanistan? Let's listen to Secretary of War Pete Hegeseth on why that is not the case. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars, stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both.

Our generation knows better and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation building wars dumb. And he's right. This is the opposite. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat. Destroy the Navy. No nukes.

Israel has clear missions as well for which we are grateful. capable partners, as we've said since the beginning, capable partners are good partners. Unlike so many of our traditional allies who ring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force. Iran's neighbors didn't necessarily comment on the attack, but they condemned Iran's retaliatory strikes. Saudi Arabia came out in full force against it. I think they were going to sit on the sidelines. But when they got a barrage of missile sent their way, they lined up right quick, right quick against Iran. UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, all of them. And if you

want my opinion on this, I will defer to the 90 million Iranians who have been living under the heel of this repressive regime for 47 years. And while I'm sure it's not everyone in the country, the whole lot of them are happy right now, that they feel that the day of their liberation is upon them. It is nigh. I've heard certain Iranian who are part of the diaspora calling this not a war, not a military operation. It's a rescue operation for the people of Iran who for far too long have been forced and subjugated to live under this repressive regime. I see it with my eyes. I hear it with my ears. And I I know it to be true.

However, American left wingers have, I think they think they know better. I think they know better. And I'm not just American, just Western left wingers. I don't know what's going on with the press. I do not know what's going on

with what is supposed to be sober-minded journalists who are there to relay fact. Every word is a choice. Every picture is a choice. choice. And as I just told you, there are countless images of celebratory Iranians, both at home in Iran and abroad amongst the diaspora, celebrating, cheering, hoping that this is the beginning of the end of this cancer among nations. So you want to explain to me why the CBC website picked a picture of two

women mourning the passing of the Ayatollah, when they could have picked pictures of countless Iranians celebrating their liberation. The image is stark and it was a choice. You have to, you have to put on blinders and choose this picture over the countless celebratory ones. You have to pick that. It is a choice. The Washington Post in its obit of the Ayatollah, and may I remind you that this Ayatollah suggested that women who are convicted of crimes need, if they are virgins, they need to be raped prior to being put to death to ensure they do not get to heaven. And what did the Washington Post say about this disgusting, cretan, cancer, tumor of a human being? With his bushy white beard and easy smile,

Ayatollah Khomeini cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor. And he was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels, especially Victor Hugo's Le Miserables. You are humanizing somebody who does not deserve empathy. The New York Times chose this headline upon learning of his death. Ayatollah Ali Hamini, hardline cleric who made Iran a regional power, is dead at 86. All of that's true, but that is you had to choose those words. Just as somebody pointed out, were they to do that, give the same treatment to Hitler, they would write, furor Adolf Hitler, dog-loving artist who made Germany a world power is dead at 56.

And for context, here's what, here's what that same newspaper said about Rush Limbaugh, right-wing loudmouth on radio. Rush Limbaugh dies at 70, turn talk radio into a right-wing attack machine. they actually treated Rush Limbaugh worse than the Ayatollah who authorized to open to shoot people in the face over the course of the last few months so I don't know why they've been doing this but they've been doing it we have to ask ourselves some questions when we come back we're going to be speaking with somebody from the foundation for defense of democracy and the question is what's the state of play in Iran I want to get it

from somebody who knows far better than I. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. We are talking the state of play in this air campaign against the Iranian Islamic regime. President Trump has said that this campaign could go on for as long as a month. We're two and a half days in. And a lot of damage has been inflicted, but damage is relative. Unless we know the capability militarily from an intelligence,

standpoint, what resources they have, how spread out they are, how hardened their targets are. We really don't know whether this bombardment has yielded the results that we would hope at this point. So somebody who probably has a better idea about that than I. Please welcome to the show, Bill Orogeo from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bill, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on a pleasure. So what I've seen thus far, Bill, is a demonstration of force and a demonstration of just how more sophisticated the U.S. military apparatuses than any other military in the world. And it's impressive. But I think we need to get a sense of what they're up against. What is what are they fighting? And the damage that they've inflicted thus far,

how fatal has it been thus far? Yeah. So, and we also have to remember we're doing it in partnership with the Israelis. Yes. And the Israelis clear. have the inside track on intelligence. Yeah. I think that's the key driver in this operation. The very intelligent, we witnessed this last summer. Look, I have no doubt that we can destroy things that we could kill people. And we've done that in the first two and a half days.

We killed the head of the Mueller regime. Aytolucamei in the first 24 hours. They're a defense minister, key aids, et cetera, et cetera. We've destroyed warships. We've targeted, you know, all types of facilities. We do those things well, but what is our objective? And we've heard two things from President Trump. Sometimes they're both the same.

Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other. One for Iran to end its nuclear and missile programs, and the other is to rid the Iranian, the country of Iran of this regime. Now, if it's to destroy weapons systems and set them back, we can do this via air. Is it going to take a month? Is it going to take two months? I honestly can't tell you that. I'm not sitting in a, you know, I don't have access to that level of intelligence.

I can tell you in my experience, it should take months. Yeah. The U.S. war plan against the Houthis, remember, was supposed to be six months. President Trump got impatient with that and pulled the plug after one month. The Houthi survived. The Iranians have far more assets than the Houthis, but I'm sure we're applying far more the force. Yeah.

And like I said, watching the, so the technological gap in terms of, of what the U.S. and Israel are capable of putting in the theater of war versus the Iranians is stark. But it's all about structures as well, right? I don't know how the IRGC is built. You know, the Revolutionary Guard is built. But I heard somewhere that they are built on a loose cell structure, that if you kill off the leadership, then these independent cells can still operate and function and fight back. Is that, is that your assessment? Parts of it do. Okay, so it's built like it has a military structure. It has a command. There's different elements of the IRGC and they operate differently. The RGCA has its own ground forces, its own air force. It has its own missile force. It has its own navy. Those things are the easy parts to target. The harder parts to target are the parts that, and this is back to where is what is our strategy. If it's regime changed, look, those missile systems and whatnot, that's, isn't what props the regime up internally. It's the thugs on the streets. It's the IRGC intelligence

agencies. It's the disease, which is basically their militia, that they were enforcers out on the street. Those are the things that are harder for us to hit. You know, again, a missile launcher targeting Israel isn't going to stop guys with rifles, brutalizing Iranians on the And look, Bill, the president said it in his opening Salvo speech. And the Iranians, have been saying it as they hack, you know, the prayer apps, letting members of the regime know, put down your arms, you'll have amnesty, join us in our fight to bring freedom to Iran. So we know that that thought and that argument has been presented as a value proposition

to these people who would present an obstacle to the people rising up. Is there an emotional or an intellectual rubicon that has to be crossed by these people for them to literally wave a white flag and say we give up? So a lot of members of this regime, if not most, if not all have literally have blood on their hands or other than the guys who issued the orders to do it. And these aren't just people who are doing it for power or money alone. Most of them, if not all of them, are ideologically committed. So this would be like saying, you know, Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State fighters are just going to turn because we offer them money or offer them sanctuary. I don't, I'm far more skeptical of many that the regime elements, the RGC, the besiege and whatnot, the members of government are just going to surrender because they're given amnesty. I don't think that's appealing to them.

The repeal is, it's the religious fervor. This is something we have underestimated the entire time during the war on terror is we've underestimated the ideological component, the fervor of our enemies. But Bill, talk to me about the plans that have clearly been in the offing by, you know, by call it the exiled Iranians. they're currently being led by the crown prince. From what I understand, there have been plans, have been put in place over the course of years for this very moment. And I have to wonder, and you can tell me

whether I'm off base, but is there not a role for the CIA to play a covert role to get weapons into the hands of people who would take it upon themselves to fight these people in the streets? It feels like that. That has to be a component here, right? Absolutely.

A ground gain is key, and I'm glad we got to this because this is what I didn't get in my opening. Without an armed resistance, I think efforts that you're not going to overthrow this regime to the air alone. And this is one of my major concerns. And I have not seen a major effort to arm a resistance to put an effective. If we're arming them today or last week or last month, that's a mistake. It needed to be developed over the course of years. Right.

You know, building a resistance and arming them is a very difficult prospect. And you're dealing with the regime that is very good at rooting this stuff out. Yes, the CIA absolutely has a role to play. And I think this is a major failing of the West, is that we haven't supported an Iranian resistance. I haven't seen, you know, most of what I've seen from, you know, the Crown Prince is to, to, it's all political, and that's great. You know, getting people out on the streets is great, but the reality is if you're going to go up against regime thugs

who are going to fight as dirty as possible, you need to be able to match them. Agreed. And I'm not saying. Well, but to be fair, because we haven't seen it yet doesn't mean it hasn't been happening, correct? I mean, there could be, they could be waiting for a moment of weakness

that they haven't identified yet. That is possible. I don't discount it. I don't my experience in observing resistance groups both ones that are on our side or those are that are enemies is that they're conducting activities long before that moment of opportunity arrives. I don't think you can just, you know, pop the quirk and have instant resistance. Right. Okay. So I see.

Yeah. You're saying we would have seen precursors. We would have seen skirmishes. We would have seen, we would have heard of, you know, rebels going, you know, going toe to toe. in a village somewhere prior to this? That's exactly correct. You're pointing out that like the hinterlands, where the reigning regime is going to be the weakest,

is where they have the least amount of power. And I would expect to see areas, you know, declaring themselves independent of the regime. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, again, because this feels like a new theater of war and it feels like the implications are different from what we've seen. in the past. I don't really have a point of reference to know whether two and a half days, three days is enough to expect what you just described. So I'm going to maintain optimism,

but I do appreciate you coming in with your learned expertise to just give us some more context. So Bill, thank you very much for joining us on the show today. I do hope you come back soon. Always a pleasure. Happy to join you anytime soon and all the best to the Iranian people. You don't need AI agents, which may sound weird coming from from Service Now, the leader in AI agents. The truth is, AI agents need you. Sure, they'll process, predict, even get work done autonomously. But they don't dream, read a room, rally a team,

and they certainly don't have shower thoughts, pivotal hallway chats, or big ideas. People do. And people, when given the best AI platform, they're freed up to do the fulfilling work they want to do. To see how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Let's go to New York, shall we? If you're living in a city like Toronto, then you've been on edge. A person like myself who's been a proud and staunch supporter of the Jewish people of this city to live in peace. I don't think I have to say any more than that.

Forget everything else around the world. I want my Jewish brothers and sisters to be able to live in peace. I don't believe that they're living in peace. I believe that they are on edge. I believe that they are fearful. And I believe that they have been demonized unfairly. And the silence of those in power who could do something about it has contributed to that feeling of unease. Now let's look at New York City, where there is a new mayor who is tremendous at social media.

And he's got a smile that could light up Broadway. But his words belie the unifier that he wants to be or says he wants to be. And so I thought we should go down to New York City and talk with Rabbi Mark Wilds, the founder and director of the Manhattan Jewish experience about what life is like for Jews in that city with this added new dimension of war in Iran. Rabbi, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. Rabbi, talk to me about what life, listen, I think life for Jews in New York followed a similar path

to life for Jews in cities like Toronto over the course of the war. But you have the added dimension of a mayor that has not always given a full-throated endorsement for the value of the life of Jews in New York City. Is that fair to say? I mean, he doesn't put it that way. No.

You know, he likes to create a distinction between his attitude towards Jews and Israel and his attitude towards Jews in New York. York City, but it's really, it's falling on deaf ears because if you have a mayor who just doesn't accept your country, I mean, my country is the United States, but my country is also Israel, and there are millions of Jews living in Israel, and he is just not accepting of their legitimacy. He doesn't really believe in legitimacy, excuse me, of the state and the people of Israel. and that obviously makes a lot of New Yorkers very uneasy.

You know, we travel. I have two sons who live in Israel now, and they're under a barrage of attacks from Iran right now, and we're getting zero sympathy from the mayor. In fact, he's saying just the opposite. He's saying that the one country that has been attacking Israel unrelentlessly, excuse me, relentlessly, pardon me, the one country that's been attacking through its proxies,

through Khasbalah, through Khamas, they should be left alone, and we should just allow them to continue their reign of terror against their own people and against the people of Israel. So that's obviously going to make people who live in New York City feel, you know, unsettled. Has this new theater of war in Iran created a deeper situational alliance between the Iranian diaspora and the Jews of New York City? I do think so. I think that, I mean, there are many. Iranian Jews who live in New York City that are Jewish and there are many Iranian

just people, you know, from Tehran, from other parts of Iran who live in New York, who are thrilled and they're taking to the streets celebrating what the president has done. Yeah. And honestly, this is not about the president. This is not about Trump. You can really, you know, dislike the president. You could have not voted for him and really been in favor of Kamala, whoever else, and still see the need for this strike against Iran.

And they've just been literally terrorizing that part of the world. And not just that part of the world. We're getting terrorism here in the United States because it's being funded by Iran. And to have our mayor of a city with over a million Jews lambasting the president for doing this. I understand nobody wants to see their country pulled into war. But the government, the United States, the U.S. armed forces are doing a spectacular the job at pinpointing the terrorists, the bad guys, take them out of commission so that all of these bombs and all of these terrorist activities can be put to a halt because if you don't,

if you don't cut off head of the snake and head of the snake is Iran, and remember, they chant death to the Jews. Yeah, it's death to America. Death to America. We hear it followed up in Canada. Death to Canada. I mean, there are, there are, like I said, there are, there are, like I said, There are, you know, decent people can disagree. But I do not believe that those who are taking a position against this, against this war, I do not believe that most of them are doing so from a good faith position. I just don't. What I see are people who are deliberately misleading.

They are cherry-picking facts to suggest that this was an unprovoked attack is disingenuous. when as what you just described has been life in the Middle East as well as life beyond the Middle East with with terrorist attacks and and and and and the funding of terrorist groups in places like Canada and the United States. It is disingenuous. It's bad faith. And it's a demonstration of of I don't know what it's proof of. But I do not look at those who take issue with this necessarily as people who are seeking the truth or trying to further a proper debate.

I mean, there might be, unfortunately, a lot of young people who are just fooled by a lot of the social media out there. Because for people to be mourning, I mean, the New York Times described the shot, not the shock, excuse me, I told me he as someone who created regional power. I mean, he was a murderous dictator who in the last couple of weeks alone, killed minimally 30,000 of his people. And you didn't hear boo. No protests in the streets of New York from the same people that were protesting when Israel was, you know, defending themselves and fighting back after they were attacked on October 7th. It's just, it's crazy.

And, you know, to have a mayor who, I mean, I'd love to enter into a dialogue with him about this and really understand why he thinks this is a bad thing. How is he able to go to sleep at night knowing that the Ayatollah, and the jihadist Islamist in Iran, or mowing down their own people. Yeah. In cold blood for simply protesting, and the United States is not supposed to do anything,

supposed to just remain silent, as all those tens of thousands of people are being killed, and for what? They're just protesting and trying to get their basic human rights, so they don't have to be forced to dress and live in a certain kind of way. Rabbi, what do you make of Western, media outlets that refused to report on the bloodshed in the streets of Tehran because they said that as responsible journalists, they couldn't independently verify the numbers associated with

the carnage. And yet, they dusted off the same old playbook that they used for two and a half years in the war in Gaza, where as soon as there is a report, a report of a school being attacked by accidentally by a missile that they claimed was American. Well, they went with that pretty fast. They jumped on that one pretty fast. No independent corroboration required there. What do you make of that?

It's selective. It's convenient. And it's criminal. It's criminal because your job as a reporter, as somebody in the news business, is to just present the facts. Let everybody else determine what they want to do with those facts. Yeah.

But for you not to show. shine a light on one of the worst catastrophes that is happening. The numbers are staggering there. And we could argue what the numbers are, but even according to the most moderate and conservative estimates, you're talking in the tens of thousands. Nobody's arguing that. Yeah, yeah.

And for them not to report on this because it's somehow, you know, and I get it, by the way. Nobody wants to go to war. And nobody, you know, I, but if this is not done, this is just irresponsible, And I don't know. But I was very pleased. I was very inspired to see that they were pro-government, U.S. government, protests that are supporting.

And of course, there are many Iranians that were taking to the streets of New York just yesterday and applauding what the president did because basically he's liberating their people. And they'll be able to go and see their relatives, which they have been able to see some in decades. Yeah. I tend to take, just as I did in the war in Gaza, I tend to listen to the people who are most affected by it, you know, the Jews in Israel and the Jews here in Toronto. And in this case, I'm paying attention to the Iranian diaspora. And what they're telling me is that they are wholeheartedly hoping that this leads to their liberation. And I am not going to listen to a left-leaning Western liberal for information that I could rather get from the source.

Rabbi Mark Wilde, thank you very much for joining us. Please be safe. very, very best, sir. It is my pleasure. Can I say something in conclusion real quick? Sure. It is our Jewish holiday tonight. It's called Purim, and it's one of an ancient dictator named Hamun in ancient Persia tried to annihilate the Jewish people and good people of the world, and we fought back and we prevailed and we will prevail again. I want to end on a positive note because the holiday is just celebrating that tonight. Jews from all over the world, in Canada, the United States, Israel are going to be celebrating the survival of the Jewish people

because good people spoke up and fought back. Well, happy holidays, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's a pleasure. All right, when we come back, our good friend, Tony Chapman, joins us, and we're going to look at the war in Iran from the perspective of marketing and messaging. I think it's sometimes the messenger is the message sometimes, and so we'll talk about that next. At the beginning of the show, I was talking about bias in the media, which is as clear as the nose on my face or the chin on my face as a Mulruni.

I think that's more apt. And I said every word is a choice and every image that a newspaper or an outlet selects is a choice. And somebody who can say that in a far more effective way than I is my next guest, Tony Chapman, the host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, and the founding partner of Chatterayai. Tony, welcome to the show. Always a pleasure. I have been quite surprised and taken aback by what I view are exceptionally hot takes by Western media on this initial airstrike in Iran, the attempt to portray the Ayatollah as some kindly grandfather, as opposed to what he actually was,

and pushing a narrative that Iran, if you just left them alone, would leave everybody alone. I'm shocked by that. And rather than focus on the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Iran, celebrating their eventual freedom, they're picking pictures of two women crying at the death of the Ayatollah. These hot takes are fascinating to me. And I'm sure you have something to say. Well, the interesting thing about war is that its storytelling is as important as the weapons that you put in the sky. And what happens is how people frame the war and position it is how they serve it up to the readers that they feel that's what they want to digest.

I'll tell you a great example. Framing is so important, right? It's like, is it a war? Is it a strike? Is it an operation? It is a campaign? Retaliation. So the first way is you frame, what am I doing?

Why am I doing it? Step two is you've got to assign roles. You're just a great example. Is he a hero or a villain? Is this a victim or is a threat? And you're seeing today with the media is so biased, they're going so far to sort of that left or right as opposed to even considering a position that, as you said, is based on reality, hundreds of thousands of people cheering. Yeah. Next step you assign it is the moral compression, right?

Its complexity gets flattened to good versus evil, weapons of mass. destruction, things that you just sort of can rally behind, or as you said, the good grandfather. Right. And because that's what that's what the listener digest. Today they're just, they haven't got the ability to go deep. They're not going into that they're not critically thinking. They just want to be served out the snackable content. And then the fourth is urgency. What Americans are very good at is we had no choice. Time ran out. We did all we could in negotiation. And then the The final thing is really where you want to talk about who's on your side. We hit the precision, targeted, surgical, as opposed to mass casualty.

So what you do when you're attacking the enemy is it's so important how you frame the story to get the nation behind you. What we're seeing nowadays, though, and what you just pointed out is instead of the narrative being obvious to most is you have the other side. the Tucker Carlson's of the world that are out there with their own version of propaganda because they're seeking their 15 megs of fame. Yeah. So it really becomes down, it really comes down to a war of words

and who is best to sell this story to ensure that the nation's behind you, your allies are behind you, the world is behind you, versus what we're seeing now is so much fracturing because with social media, you have an ability to reach an audience

that, again, is not going to critically think they're going to buy the two, two women crying because their leader has been killed. And Tony, but the most egregious part of that is that was on the CBC website. And look, the CBC likes to tell us that without them, Canada falls apart, that they are this unifying force that brings us all together. So you want to explain to me how if you truly believe that, then you believe that Canadians

flock to the CBC to understand. to make sense of this flashpoint that could change everything in the world. And you're going to put it out a picture that says the result of this action is people crying in the streets of Tehran for the loss of their supreme leader. That's what that image projects to the listener and to the viewer and to the reader of the CBC. that is not an accurate depiction of what is actually happening. Yes, I'm sure those two people exist, but you have to avoid and sidestep and pretend that the thousands of pictures and images

of the legion of Iranians who are happy in this moment doesn't exist. All over the world. All over the world. And that is, that selection of that picture over all those others is a choice to put out into the world a very specific, and highly politicized

version of events. And if that's what the CBC is all about, you're begging me to come to the position that they must be defunded immediately. Well, first of all, use the word audience, very literal. I mean, there's a very few Canadians now

that go to CBC for news. There's some Canadians that go there for CBC's opinion of events. Long lost is journalistic credentials. It really is just an opinion piece. Many people feel it's the opinion of the party in power because they're the ones writing the check and allowing the organization to continue. If this is a free market network, I would question whether it would be solvent because it's not representing what it should be, which is I'm going to take you to the middle ground. I'm not going to take you to the right or the left.

I'm going to give you both points of view. I'm going to give them to you with accuracy and journalistic integrity and you decide. And if that was the case here, they would have to say without question that the vast most. majority of people in Iran right now are very happy these steps have taken. In fact, tens of thousands of people lost their lives because they protested a few weeks ago to overthrow this government. And in the past, we sort of ceded that and never backstopped it. In this case, we have. But that's not what CBC has long lost, that journalistic integrity. And people have to realize that when they're listening to this, I always say to people, when you're listening to the

news, why are they saying this? Yeah. Take it to the middle ground and say, This makes sense, as opposed to just grabbing onto the snackable content and running with it. And I would argue the other side, America is equally good with its propaganda, with its war effort. I mean, the weapons of mass destruction that brought him into Iraq that never existed. That was given them permission to attack that country. That galvanized the nation. That brought the allies together. And I think that we got to realize that on both sides, they're very good at propaganda.

But if you go to the citizen journalism, if you go to the actual people on the, on the street and say, how do you feel? Use that as your judgment because they're the people that have been living, the people that have had their parents in prison, that have been killed by this regime, a very small part of that country controlled these people. And I think that what we're seeing right now is civil liberty. And what we might see is a much more peaceful world at the end of it. And that's what we got to hope for. And there's nothing wrong with approaching what's happening in the skies above Iran. with cynicism and skepticism.

There's nothing wrong with that. But this isn't that. This is deliberately trying to shape a reality that is not reflective of what's actually happening. And I don't know what the end result is going to be for a number of these news outlets. But I cannot imagine that it's going to lead to increasing their viewership or increasing the trust that people have in them

when they're literally asking people not to believe their eyes or believe their ears. We're going to have to leave it there, my friend. but I always love getting your take on these stories from your very unique perspective. Thank you very much, my friend. Well, you keep the fight going. Thank you, my friend. Hello there.

Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock. She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman's a shark. You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem.

To crack a case. This is how I get things done. Emmy-winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock. All new Thursdays at 9 Eastern on Global. Stream on Stack TV.