The Daily Beast Podcast - Rupert Murdoch Is Still a Billionaire. He Won.

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik talks about Fox News' settlement with Dominion. Plus! Moms Demand Action Founder Shannon Watts discusses the latest escalations in America’s ongoing gun crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

What an excellent show we have today. Mom's to Band Action founder Shannon Watts joins us to talk the latest escalations in the gun crisis in America. Then we'll talk to NPR media reporter David Fulkenflick about Fox News's settlement with Dominion. But first, let's have some fun. I don't know, Andy, how we are keeping track. But this week, it must be going down in his season.

as the record-breaking for stand-your-ground shootings, and I put that in quotations. We have so many stories this week that are just mind-blowing. From Ralph Yarl, who is the 16-year-old young black boy, who is miraculously recovering at home from being shot in the head by an 84-year-old white man. Why? Because he rang the wrong doorbell when going to pick.

up his two little brothers. He's recovering, thankfully. Who isn't recovering right now? Kalyn Gillis, young white 20-year-old woman in a car with a couple of friends in upstate New York, makes a U-turn into a private driveway, if anybody's ever gone up to upstate New York. That happens a lot. The houses are far and few in between. It's very dark. A homeowner then steps out onto his porch, shoots into the car killing Kalyn Gillis. Then we move down to Texas where Peyton Washington, who is a young cheerleader, was with a couple of other cheerleaders on their way back from a competition and accidentally get into or approach the wrong car when trying to leave after their

competition meet. And they are shot at. Peyton is still in ICU. She is a very storied and meddled gymnast that is now in ICU for making the mistake of getting into or possibly approaching the wrong car. And then lastly, but not least, a father and daughter were shot in North Carolina by their neighbor. Why? Because a basketball bounced into their neighbor's yard and they dared to go get it. the six-year-old young girl was treated and released the father, I believe, still remains in the hospital. So, Andy, it is apparent that the Republican's wet dream of us living in the Wild Wild West has come to fruition this week.

One horrific story and shooting after another. It's really unbelievable. This was like every day there was another one this week. It felt like. And there's an old saying that the science fiction author Robert Heinlein, who was a libertarian-ish with some other weird little things involving incest. But we don't need to get into that. Great writer, though.

He had a phrase that I think he coined it. An armed society is a polite society. And he fully believed that if everyone walked around with a gun, that there would be less violence because people would be more polite to each other because they wouldn't want to get shot. I'm ashamed to admit that as a youth, I read his books and that made sense to me. And boy, are we seeing that the exact opposite is true? And that an armed society is, in fact, about as deadly a society as you can imagine. Because people don't seem to care about the possibility that someone might shoot back.

They just want to shoot. This is such an American problem. And as you said, you know, you alluded to the Wild Wild West. And look, that's our heritage, I guess. And, I mean, that's our mythology is what I should say. We were all sort of taught that that was not necessarily the good old days, but that that was sort of like this romantic, noble thing. And maybe it wasn't. And maybe people need to watch shows like Deadwood more often that show just how gross and disgusting it was.

That is so ingrained in our mythology. And it's just we are seeing that all come to fruition now. It's absolutely gross. And then we see, in the case of Kalyn Gillis, the New York. Post puts up a story saying, well, the headline was a house where Kalin Gillis turned into driveway had a no soliciting sign up. So what? What does that supposed to mean? Like, if you put up a no soliciting sign, you can then shoot anyone who turns into your driveway? I don't think that's how it works. And but that's the world we live in. And that's, that's the kind of coverage you're going to

see from the right. There's always going to be the sort of victim blaming and the rush to defend. the, you know, let's face it, usually white shooter and demonize the black victim. And that's where we are. And the thing is, look, yes, that's 100% racial. I actually think their love of guns trumps their love of being racial and that they are so consumed with gun lust that even if the situation were reversed, they would somehow find a way to blame the victim. I honestly think that that's how powerful their love of guns is. Is it even trumps their love of protecting white people over black people? And that's saying a lot because they do love the latter.

But we are at a crossroads here where either something has to be done, which it doesn't appear that it is, or we are just descending down a road that is not wide enough for us to do a U-turn and turn back. And that's my fear, is that we see this in state after state and city after city that are under Republican control. They are doing everything to loosen carry laws. They are doing everything to loosen the ease of getting a gun. And this is the road that they have chosen to go down.

And we have to get it back somehow. It's, you know, when you even use the term like, you know, we're down this path and like, can we make a U-turn? And the answer is no. Right. Like my apartment building has a sign that says no soliciting. I don't think that that gives me the license to then hang out my window and shoot somebody that wants to drop off a flyer. It's this illogical idea that even if you look at what happened

with Kalyn Gillis in upstate New York, if you look at the picture of where the house is and the driveway, that man just shot into the dark. Do you know what I'm saying? Like he just shot into a car. There was no, oh my goodness, they were rushing my house. Even in the case of Ralph Y'all, oh my goodness, I thought I was being robbed. Because robbers ring doorbells? Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. In the case in, in Texas, they're girls in cheerleading outfits. Like, where they come in a kill, like, what, what is the mindset? And I think that that to me is just, we have developed and cultivated through Fox News and Republican fear mongering this climate of fear and anxiety, and then attaching a gun to it and

saying, go get them. And it's this wild cocktail that we are living inside of that is combusting when you have road rage incidents that turn into children being shot. Yep. Like that happened in Florida the week before. Yeah. And look, I think it was the grandson of the 84-year-old man who said that the guy watched right-wing news all day long and there were reports. People said they could, you know, he would watch it while he's 84. He would watch it very loudly and they could hear it coming from his home. And you're absolutely right. That is the cocktail. It is organizations like Fox News and Newsmax and O-A-N and whatever combined with the ease of getting guns that is unrivaled in the world. There's that American exceptionalism, I guess. And you put those

two things together and you get an 84-year-old man convinced that a 16-year-old black child teenager is a mortal threat to him, a kid who did nothing but rang the doorbell because that's what criminals do. It's so frustrating. And we've talked about this. Like, I want to believe that we can somehow pull that U-turn, that we can do some, you know, fast and furious driving and turn the car around. But the road just keeps getting more and more narrow. And it's becoming harder and harder to see how that happens. Because, as I said earlier, every day, laws are passed in Republican cities, states, counties, whatever, that take us further down the road. I don't know what can be done about it. It really is a frustrating situation. And it's just heartbreaking to see these stories day after day. And it's

almost always children or kids. I mean, you know, fine. If you want to say 18 year old, cheer leaders are not children. They're still, they're kids. They're 18 years old. I mean, come on. It's just so sad. But we seem to just want to go further down this path. And it's just, it's terrifying. Again, you know, just going back to what the grandson of the 84-year-old that said about Fox. And here we have Fox in the news because of the Dominion settlement that they just had. The lawsuit, we know that they are full of lies. They have no journalistic integrity. And we all thought on this show, you and I have talked about it, oh, my God, maybe this is it. They're going to be held accountable.

Well, they pay out $787 million now because they recognize that the jurors in the case that was getting ready to take place this week, nine out of the 12 were people of color. That is not Fox's audience, right? So they decide to pay out. And mainstream media is saying, oh, it's historic. This is big. This is huge. It's 16% of their revenue.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Fox brings in about $4.5 billion. You have Rupert Murdoch, who is worth billions of dollars. Then you have Fox saying, ah, this payoff is going to be like tax deductible or covered by insurance. There's going to be no on-air apology. There is no knowledge in the sphere of Fox viewers that this has even happened. So people like the shooter of Ralph Yarl can continue to believe in the fallacy that Fox actually

does give them quote unquote news. There's no disruption. that is happening here. And I realized that when I thought that this case was going to come together, and I'm saying, oh my God, yes, democracy. Like, I'm waiting for the hero of the story, of this, like, just series of villains winning and getting bigger and more money. And then, no, they decide to settle. And they tell us that money is accountability. And I'm like, unless you were going to bankrupt this evil corporation, money was not going to be accountability here. My thoughts on this are, first of all, if you're still a billionaire after the settlement,

you won. And that's Rupert Murdoch. I'm not mad at Dominion. They did what was best for their business. That's their job. They're not there to save America, unfortunately. I'm not mad at them. I'm disappointed that this didn't go to trial.

And I do think Dominion is kind of fooling itself when it says things like money is accountability. And when the CEO of the company says to report. Fox has admitted to telling lies. No, they haven't. They absolutely haven't. And you see it in the statement that they gave afterwards. They say, we acknowledge the court's rulings, finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.

They don't say who made those claims. They don't say our claims. They say certain claims. They don't say what those claims are. They don't even admit that the claims are actually false. They only say that the court found that. And then they have the gall. to follow that up with this settlement reflects Fox's continued commitment to the highest

journalistic standards. So not only is there absolutely no admission of guilt there, they have the fucking chutzpah to put in a sentence about how paying a $787 million settlement to avoid a defamation trial reflects their commitment to journalistic standards. Nothing is going to change from this on Fox. The only thing I can see changing is. is maybe they'll be more careful and make their lies less actionable. Like, you know, they can still talk about a stolen election in 2020. They just won't say this company, Dominion. They'll keep it more vague because you can't get sued for saying, you know, we believe the election was stolen.

You can get sued for saying Dominion was part of a conspiracy to steal the election or whatever. Yes, you can then get sued by Dominion. But if you just keep it vague in general, you can still lie. You can lie every sentence. and you'll be fine. And that's what they'll do. There is no accountability. Unfortunately, I didn't expect there to be accountability.

I mean... See, I was trying not to be so cynical. I know. I was trying to wrestle with the fucking mustard seed of hope I carry around in my pocket and say like, oh, this motherfucker is going to sprout. Yeah. No. No, it's not.

No. You know, this is the Fox slash News Corp way. I mean, they paid their way out of the hacking scandals in Britain. They paid their way out of the Seth Rich, the lies that Sean Hannity told about Seth Rich's death. They paid their way out of sex scandals and harassment. Yeah. It's not a surprise that this shit is tax deductible because for them, this is just the cost of doing business. It's almost like they factor this in.

They probably do. I mean, I'm sure it's not an actual line item on the budget, but somewhere, someone in there is like, I figure maybe, you know. A billion dollars for lies. Yeah, a couple hundred million here, half a billion here, you know, whatever. We'll probably have to pay to settle stuff. Again, I'm not mad at Dominion. I'm not mad.

I'm just disappointed. You know, I sound like a parent now. But that's how I feel about Dominion. Like, I understand, you know, they got a settlement that is more money than I believe their company is worth. Hard to turn that down. But I am disappointed that this didn't. go to trial. And I do not understand something you said earlier. I don't understand anyone in media who thinks that this was some kind of huge loss for Fox News. I just don't understand it. It doesn't

make any sense to me. And I watched an entire rundown yesterday that was just like, oh, and you know, you have cynics on the left saying that this isn't a big deal. It's historic. It's going to change things. And I'm like, what exactly? If I were Dominion, what would have been contingent upon the money would have also been a full on-air apology for like the next series however long that they were spreading the big lie would be how long that all of the identified hosts that were carrying the water for the big lie would have to get on and open and close their shows with we apologize to Dominion for the lies that we told about the 2020 election that there would be some type of notification on Fox that says it is for entertainment purposes only something that

would alert their viewers and whether or not they left that bubble, you know, it's going to be up to them. But something that actually put a ding in this corporation and it's nothing. They get a big, they pay off a little bit of money and then they go on about business. It's bullshit. Yeah. Like I said, and like you said, this will change very little to nothing. And it's certainly not going to give them pause about lying, it'll just give them pause about lying about specific companies. And that's it. And that's not a win for not to get sort of, you know, grandiose about it. That is not a win for America, nor is it a win for journalism. God, I hate myself for saying that sentence. Pompous ass. Shut up.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal Shannon Watts, who is the founder of Mom's Demand action. Moms Demand Action, which I'm sure you have seen Shannon all over your TV screens, is an organization that is dedicated to reducing gun violence and is a part of every town for gun safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with nearly 10 million supporters. Shannon, it has been a really unbelievable week in America. I mean, it's been an unbelievable couple of weeks or a couple of months. There have been more shootings, more mass shootings that we have seen than days on this calendar year thus far. In one week of loan, we have seen young people, teenagers, make everyday common mistakes, ringing the wrong doorbell,

needing to make a U-turn out of somebody's driveway, accidentally having a basketball go on the other side of somebody's fence. These are meaningless mistakes that have turned into death for one, traumatic brain injury for another. How do you wrap your mind around what we are seeing and living with in a country that is addicted to guns and the violence keeps escalating? It's just there's there's so much that has gone into this soup over so many years, right? the fact that we have so much racism in this country and bigotry and misogyny, that we have a gun lobby that is marketing guns to dangerous people, you know, people who are a danger to themselves or others. The fact that we have unfettered access to guns, again, thanks to the gun lobby, and that red states are

actually weakening their gun laws. As the same goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so, you know, we have this 20-year-old woman who drove down a driveway and was shot simply by making an accident and needing to do a U-turn. We have a cheerleader who pulled on the handle of the wrong car in a Texas parking lot and was shot. We have a North Carolina six-year-old who simply had a basketball roll into a neighbor's yard and was shot. And then, of course, I think a more specific case when we're talking about white supremacy is the shooting of Ralph Yarl, you know, a 16-year-old. who went and knocked down the door of a white 85-year-old man who just shot with impunity, as if that's the solution to strangers knocking down your door. I mean, this is such a uniquely American tragedy.

If more guns made a safer, we would be the safest country in the world. And instead, what 400 million guns and very few gun laws have given us is a 25 times higher gun homicide rate than any other nation. I think that what is so frustrating, Frustrating isn't even the right word because I'll tell you as a black queer woman living in America that the shooting of Ralph Y'all was probably one of the most devastating days to learn about this shooting, to learn about this young boy and to think about the fact that we needed a national outcry because initially the shooter was not arrested. We needed a national outcry, community outcry in order for him to be arrested and still released on $200,000 bail. But when I think about particularly, I want to start with the kind of this mix that you spoke of, of racism and guns. And this idea that a lot of these stand your ground, quote unquote, laws came out of white supremacy, came out of this desire for white men in particular to be able to defend their quote unquote,

Well, Castle, the Castle Doctrine, it is referred to in a lot of places as well, against black people, coming into neighborhoods, integrating into neighborhoods and in schools. And so when you see this layered issue, as we've seen with Ralph Yarl, how do you make sense of it? Because it isn't just about guns in this instance. It is also about guns and racism and fear and disinformation. The suspects on grandson has said that today to the media. This is a man who is shot at home and listened to Fox News ad nauseum and is a racist and is a conspiracy theorist and is paranoid, right? So, you know, what's at the root of so much of the horrific shooting tragedies in this country is this armed paranoia fueled by racism and white supremacy?

And that's no accident. The gun industry and right-wing politicians and their allies in the media are constantly, fear-mongering to increase gun sales. And they do that by ginning up anger and getting ratings. And the result is this heavily armed society that is scared to death. And they are on edge and out of touch with reality. But if you dig deeper, the fear-mongering isn't about the crime. It's about fueling white resentment and racism. Because if crime is truly the issue, then gun safety is the answer. And you mentioned stand your ground, which we call shoot first. These laws have such a devastating impact, particularly on communities of color. You know, this is really a way to

enable people with racist or vigilante views to shoot first and ask questions later. And that can't be the kind of country that we agree to live in. These laws are, as you said, rooted in white supremacy, and they result in, you can look at the data, when a white person shoots and kills a black victim. It is deemed justifiable five times more often than when the situation is reversed. We know why they've created these laws, but we have to undo them. Shannon, like, how do you deal inside of a movement where you have the public on your side, overwhelmingly on your side? But what we are understanding in this kind of phase of our democracy is that the public will doesn't actually matter. The private interests of a few is what matters. You know, this movement has grown to 10 million.

It is grown in terms of public understanding that we should be able to send our kids to school and know that they're going to come back home safely, that we should be able to go to supermarkets and synagogues and churches and movies theaters and concerts and so on and so forth down the line and know that we and our loved ones are going to come back safe. And so how do you continue to fight when the job is not convincing the masses because the masses are with you? Yeah. I don't think it's dissimilar from any other social issue and activism in this country, right? That it often takes many election cycles, if not a decade or more, to get real progress on something.

I mean, I think driving is a good example of that. It took over a decade to change the state and federal laws of the culture in this country. I was a white woman living in the suburbs, and I got off the sidelines because I was afraid my kids weren't safe in their schools after the Sandy Hook school shooting. What you realize when you come to this issue is that school shootings and mass shootings are about 1% of the gun violence in this country, and that it is a complex issue that deserves holistic solutions. And that's really what we try to teach all of our volunteers because when there is a shooting tragedy in the news, for example, a school shooting, you know, we double or triple in size. But then that education process starts all over again. It is not as simple as calling for an assault weapons ban or just doing one protest or march, right?

People weren't, I think these things to burst and quick and to have instant change. And what you realize is, first of all, black and brown women have been doing this, for decades, really little attention, but also to change anything on an issue, it is incremental. And I know that's frustrating, but it is the way the systems are set up. And so it is about doing the unglamorous heavy lifting of grassroots activism. I have seen incrementalism lead to revolutions. When I started doing this, a quarter of all Democrats in Congress had an A rating from the NRA. Today, no Democrats have an A rating in Congress. We have 15 Republicans signers of the Bipartisan State for Communities Act last summer.

That was unheard of before last year. We today just passed an assault weapons ban in Washington, and we've done that in two other states in the last year. We're getting ready to do it in Rhode Island. These are things that I never would have dreamed we could have done a decade ago. And so it is about committing to do the work, understanding that you have the vast majority of Americans on your side,

and now almost all Democrats on your side, and that if we all get off the sidelines and take a piece of this work and do it, we will eventually win. I understand, and I think that we all are starting to recognize the importance of not resting this issue at the federal level, that the state-by-state work is probably more important at this point. Yes. Than lobbying at the federal level when there is such gridlock, when there is no movement. when we have Republican members that replaced a flagpin with an AR-15, I can't wrap my mind around it.

I can't wrap my mind that that happened in this country. Because if it had happened anywhere else, the outrage. When we look at this, what do you think also needs to happen with the messaging? Because what I realized, too, is that there's oftentimes been this kind of finger-wagging shame that we've wanted to place at the feet of Republicans. And I'm saying, you can't shame the devil. You can't shame people who have showed you that they are shameless. What is the next kind of messaging maneuver then in order to really have the kind of public pressure and focus that stays in the spotlight once the victims fade? Yes, that's exactly the question. I agree with you completely.

You know, people are always saying, how can we change hearts and minds? I don't think we can change the hearts and minds of gun extremists. I think what we can do is make a here-to-for silent majority, a vocal majority. And I have seen moments along the way where things have cracked open. I think the Parkland shooting tragedy is a good example. Obviously, the Sandy Hook School Shooting Traged, because we started a mom's demand action. But I would say even recently, the school shooting in Nashville, because of the two black lawmakers there, that's a lot of the same thing. And stood up to these white gun extremists and were expelled for it and really shined a light on the disgusting behavior that's happening in that state house, the nation paid attention. Children were shot in their schools and what some people in Congress and definitely people in Tennessee were saying is there's nothing we can do, we aren't going to fix this. Yep. And I really think that that was shocking to the nation's consciousness. And so I do believe this was a moment. that people will remember. And I can just tell you anecdotally that we have four lawmakers in Missouri who used to be volunteers and they are in rural areas. And when they knocked doors in November,

they said conservative Republican in rural areas, we're saying, put your signs in our yard because we are so scared our kids aren't safe in their schools. Like this is a galvanizing issue now across party lines. And there is a reason that Mitch La Cicano whipped the votes for the bipartisan, and safer community act. It's not because he had to change apart or suddenly found a conscious. It's because he knew he's politically pragmatic and he knew they would be decimated more than they were in the midterm elections. And this issue I know, and sadly we are going into the summer season, which always needs more gun holds, which is sort of unbathomable. This will be top of my voters in November. I remember a time when the push for gun reform was met with more bipartisan

support where we didn't have generations of kids that are now understand and are trained in active shooter drills. But now it's not even like these Republicans are trying to quote unquote hold on to their guns. They want to put a gun in everyone's hands. So what do you make of the, I don't even want to call it a loosening. I just feel like they're just creating the Wild Wild West. I mean, we're having shootouts on highways in Florida over road rage. And we're. And we're. just started off this interview with talking about the young people that were shot and some who lost their lives this week for making mistakes. But you have these legislatures that are saying, oh, you don't need a permit. You don't need anything. You don't need a background check. You don't need a

permit. You can come here, fly into my state and get a gun the same way you can walk into a 7-Eleven and get a slurpee. Yep. That's exactly right. What do you make of the fact that there was a time when the laws that are being passed now would have been unthinkable 10 and 15 years ago. Well, we know exactly what's happened. So just like the Tea Party pulled the Congress to the right in the 90s, there are these extremist gun groups at a national level, but also at a state level, that have pulled the NRA to the right over the last decade. You know, in 1999, the NRA supported a background check on every gun sale. They opposed guns in schools. At the same time, they were being pulled to the right. They saw the demographics. You know, the writing was on

the wall that they would sell fewer guns to a more diverse demographic, a younger demographic. And so they had to essentially want and need guns anywhere for anyone at any time no questions asked. And that is exactly the strategy they followed. If they get the Congress and the president they want, they will very quickly pass permitless carry at a federal level. So that means you can carry a hidden loaded handgun of public, no vapor check, and no training. It is a very clear when you look at the states that have weakened their gun laws, red states, they have more gun violence and more gun death. And when you look at blue states that have strength of their gun laws, they have less than violence and less gun death. If we were actually following the data, we would do

the opposite of what red states are doing. But in part because we've elected gun extremists to office, but also because so many of these Republicans are afraid of being primaried by someone in Donald Trump's base, like by a Maga Republican, they are not going to fight back on these laws that they know will kill their constituents. Their police testify against these laws and they still pass them. I have to give it to you and folks that are in this fight every single day, day in and day out. And my last question for you is I had to peel myself off the couch this week. I have had to many a times after delving into the news to be able to analyze and report on it for our listeners. I am depleted. you stay hopeful in this, in this work and in this movement? I get asked that all the time. And I will

just tell you, I have been a full-time volunteer for a decade. So like when we ask our other volunteers, the same question, it's the same answer that I have. Why do you get involved and stay involved? And it's twofold. The first answer we get is because they know we're winning. We've passed 500 good gun laws in the last decade. We stopped the NRA's agenda in state houses 90% of the time every year for the last eight years. We also have sent home secure storage notifications with eight and a half million school families in this country. And we've elected hundreds of our own volunteers and many other candidates to office. In this last electoral cycle, we elected 140 months manned action volunteers and gun violence survivors to office. So that feeling that we are winning,

right? It may not always look like that if you're outside the movement, but if you're doing this work day in and day out, you know that we are making life-saving progress. sudden it's just a matter of time until we win. And the other thing is that, you know, you find your people doing grassroots activism. I hear so often when there's shootings like we're numb that I just don't believe it. I think we are traumatized. I think that when people are constantly exposed to gun pilots, whether it's they're experiencing it or they're just watching it on the television, they start to feel cynical or hopeless. And that can too often lead to an action. So, you know, everyone listening here should know they have a role to play. You don't have to be

mom or mothers and other students and survivors now. You can text the word ready to 64433, and we will plug you in where you live because there's absolutely strength in numbers. Shannon Watts, I thank you for the work that you do day in and day out that you've been doing for the last decade for your energy and your passion and just your commitment to changing the gun laws of this country. Really appreciate the time you made today. Thank you so much. Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Fever Dreams is a daily beast podcast, taking you inside the rights push to retake power, from the MAGA Acolytes to the straight-up grifters.

They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast. pub slash fever dreams to check it out. Danielle and I talked a little earlier about the Fox Settlement with Dominion, but here to give us his take and perhaps tell me why I am wrong, though it seems hard to believe that. Is NPR Media Correspondent, the great David Falkin-Flict? David, welcome back. Pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Absolutely. After the settlement was announced, you tweeted, although Fox averted trial by settling Dominion's defamation case, what we've learned will define the network for years. What did we learn and why does it matter? What we learned was the nature of Fox, fundamentally, the way people talk behind closed doors and private conversations, the emphasis they place. Fox has maintained over the years with varying degrees of intensity that it is a news organization of a different flavor. Those who don't like it may just not understand the way the real America

feels, the heartland of America feels, and that people who are culturally conservative are not represented in glass corner offices in New York or at cocktail parties in Beverly Hills. And so this is real America. It may just be a different flavor of news. What we either learned or saw confirmed was that news does not define any sort of imperative at Fox at all. That from their most prominent names to the great welter of their executives to their corporate bosses, you have a media organization that is thinking entirely as a business proposition. And that's not unique to Fox in a sense. Sure. in a way where they define their brand as delivering to their audience, which they hope to sustain and grow, content that that audience wants to consume.

And as a deep afterthought is the idea of content, which is to say news and information, that sometimes they may not want to hear but need to. The need to part, the idea that you're equipping people to act as citizens and not just consumers, is not a part of anything that we saw by anybody who really prevailed at Fox News during this moment of utter crisis. And to see that in black and white, it wasn't subtle, it wasn't coded, it wasn't done with a wink or some sort of misdirection. It was very concrete. The idea that those reporters working hard, and there are reporters, Fox and journalists who care about getting it right and getting it to their audience. But those reporters who are fact-checking some of the myths, wild conspiracy theories and outright lies being propagated by

people allied with then-President Donald Trump, that he was being cheated at the election and that it was being done intentionally in part by this election tech company called Dominion voting systems, that they were fact-checking it both what was being said publicly and even what was being said on Fox Airwaves, that that was the disgrace, that that was crapping all over our audience, that that was somehow a violation of brand identity and promise tells you that news may be the middle name of Fox, but it is not an imperative there. And that the journalistic imperatives kept getting drowned out. And you saw disillusionment. You saw a young producer, not for one of the opinion shows, but for Brett Bayer and special report say, you know, I can't do this anymore. We are giving. giving too much credence to these wild lies. And he got out. And, you know, I reached out to him.

He just said, I don't want to be part of this. It wasn't, didn't comment. And that's fine. But he didn't disavow what he had said either. Right. Other journalists also. So, you know, I think that just reading this in black and white makes it impossible for anyone who wants to pay attention.

And the reason it matters is because Foxplay is such a dominant and singular role. And, you know, when Ails was there, Roger Ales, the first CEO and later departed as a disgraced chairman. You know, when he was there, he talked about Fox as the most powerful name and news. And, you know, power is not supposedly an attribute one should be associating with a news out. Right. Right. It may be the most trusted and that gets argued over.

It may be the first. It may be the best. It may be the most interesting, the smartest, whatever. Might be the most conservative name and news. But the most powerful shouldn't be part of that formula. But, you know, Ailes and those that followed really pursued the idea that they were going to be exercising influence that amounted at times to power within a single political party, the Republican party, in a way that distorts both the way that news is identified and presented, but also the way

in which our public life and our body politics operates because it contributes to the sort of asymmetrical life that we currently live. So sort of along the lines of when I asked why does it matter. Over at NPR, you wrote, for Fox, what evidence dribbled out in court hearings and court documents piled embarrassment upon embarrassment upon disgrace. But I guess my question is, do you think that ultimately they are capable of feeling either of those? Because I don't think they are. The blowback from the official executive ranks at Fox was pretty intense. They were upset with our reporting on what their colleagues had said, even as they knew it was inevitable. I don't know that shame is possible. I think that it's the loss of control of the narrative, the loss of the ability to

say, because we have the largest audiences in cable news, we must be doing the best job in cable news. The argument that says, because we have generated the most profits in the news business, which I think they are far and away into the United States, right? Sure. That they are definitionally helping to determine what the standards are for news. All of that was damaged. And Fox likes to play this sort of double game where inside the bubble, they say, you and us folks, we're talking to you and you get us and we get you in a way nobody else does and everybody else is biased everybody else doesn't get you from the outset fair and balanced was saying the other guys are unbalanced and unfair and the best intellectually honest case that roger ails and rupertac and his

merry crew could make in the early years was really we're counterbalancing the others because we think they're liberal and there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that and that's fine right but in reality it became so unhinged and unbalanced that you know even that doesn't hold up really to scrutiny on its own terms as an argument. And I think that Fox, I think there are people within Fox who felt shame. And I heard from people in Fox who say, you're absolutely right. And this was before everything had come out in a flood. And it was really trickling out. And we had to do aggressive reporting to get to extract things from what was happening in the Dominion case, as opposed to suddenly we had a flood of documents in recent months and weeks.

And Fox was very angry with being depicted in the way that its own communications captured. And they are right that any major institution that had its internal communications publicly disgorged like this, right, and picked over would look terrible. And that's probably true for ABC or The Washington Post or NPR. But fundamentally, you would also have found a lot of journalists trying to get it right and a lot of senior figures saying, well, we got to listen to this. That is not something that you heard from Fox News in that moment. Right. And I think that's very telling. The reason that it's an inside outside game is inside the bubble and inside the audience and on the air,

they say we get you and you get us and we have a bond here. Outside that, they talk about having respect for the viewer that others don't, but they're contemptuous of the viewer's ability and need and desire to just hear the truth. They're contemptuous of that. And they want to have the patina of respectability outside of their audience where, you know, Brett Beyer or Shannon Bremer or others will hobnob with the, you know, Nora O'Donnells and Jake Tappers and Joe Kons of the world, right? the top news executives and news leaders and be seen as equals going to the White House, talking to top administration officials or foreign leaders or the like. But when they get back, you know, Brett Bayer has to say, as he said in sworn depositions, you know, where he's taking

questions from the lawyers for Dominion under oath, he says, you know, I control the 60 minutes a day that I have in my show. I have blinders on to everything else. I don't pay attention to what my opinion colleagues say. And I look at myself like a hockey goalie. the bad pucks out of the net. And one of the things I wrote is that a lot of those bad pucks were being fired by people on his own team. Of course. And that's not the way in which, you know, the Washington Post or NBC News are operating. I guess I just think they care so much more about the bubble than they do about the external stuff. When I said, I don't think that they're capable of feeling embarrassment or disgrace. Obviously, there are people there who are. I mean,

Look, I worked there for a long time, and I remember putting my head down on my desk a bunch of times because I would have Fox News on during the day, although towards the end I stopped doing that, having it on, that is. But look, you noted that this is not the first time Murdoch has paid his way out of legal trouble. A couple of the things you pointed to were over $900 million to settle allegations of fraud and anti-competitive practices against News America, hundreds of millions for the hacking scandal across the pond, another couple hundred million to keep, you know, more de-competitive. details of sexual harassment away from a courtroom.

So why is this settlement different from all other settlements, as my people ask? You know, it's funny. We do what we call two ways, right? So you go on all things considered morning edition, and you get to have the host ask you questions. And you can suggest, you know, I'm always actually happier when they come up with their own because then it's more of a conversation. But you draft questions as suggested.

And then, you know, you riff on what they ask based on the reporting you've done. And I always treat it like, oh, it's, look, this is Passover. you have the four questions. Why is to stay different from all others? Why does this matter? That $900 million settlement was from this crazy offshoot of the Murdoch Media World.

Right. It's really a division of their newspapers that became its own thing because it was a marketing arm. And this particular version element of it did stuff with like coupons that you pull off the rack at supermarkets and the decals advertising

products and discounts that are slapped on to the floor. And it's like the least glamorous part, but for a lot of years, it made a lot of money. And they were accused of, and this may sound familiar, kind of threatening their rivals, intimidating people who left the company to work for some of their competitors, and hacking into their computer systems. And this was sort of at that time a global settlement involving several companies and former clients. So it wasn't like a single $900 million check, right? Sure. This is the largest single settlement the Murdox have ever done. It is believed to be by far the largest defamation payment ever given.

by a media company in the United States. It is a ton of money by any definition. And there is also the acknowledgement that the statements Fox made was false. And I think it is about the stingiest, most austere statement of wrongdoing you could imagine. Yes. That still contains any acknowledgement of anything. And one of the things I think I said to you maybe before this happened was if there's a settlement, there'll be a seesaw effect.

The less generous, the apology, the greater the dollar figure. And I think the fact that this dollar figure, even though it was just a sneeze below half of what Dominion had asked for, you know, literally $12.5 million below the $800 million mark that would have been right there. Right. It's just a galactically large figure when you think about the stakes. And we've got to remember that if they had won a jury verdict that held Fox liable and there were damages attached to that, you know, not only was it possible that'd be held up in court for years and that that figure would likely be reduced by an appellate court or judge. judges, but juries don't mandate people apologize. So it wasn't really a comparison to, well, if you had seen it through to a jury, you could have gotten an apology.

No, there would have been no apology. It's just that a jury would have found that they were liable for defaming them. The thing is in this case, the judge did a lot of the heavy lifting. The judge already found that the Dominion had made its case, that the statements were false. The judge found that the statements couldn't be excused for being opinion. The judge found the statements couldn't be excused because in a game, given sentence here or there, it didn't involve the word dominion. He's like, no, no, no, common sense reading. He's like going to be very pragmatic here. The judge also said, we're not

letting you off the hook because you're just a neutral reporters who are conveying what these other crazy people are saying because those crazy people are newsworthy because they include the president United States and his lawyers. Nope, that doesn't get you off the hook. You know, it's not like you did at once. You repeatedly, with information in hand, failed to test it. And the judge also said, perhaps most importantly, this was defamatory. That is, it was false. And, and, And it was harmful and wrongly harmful to your reputation, right? To me, you know, I don't think this is a fully satisfying resolution for people who want to see Fox held accountable. And I think you can argue whether or not this represents accountability.

But because the figure is so large and because the figure was instantly disclosed as opposed to buried in a footnote and some financial filing that we find out about later, that acknowledgement of a huge public payment is the accountability. and it's saying, look, the Murdox don't give away money easily. They're actually relatively thrifty. Logan Roy is not an entirely fictional creation, right? Murdoch is perfectly capable of telling people to fuck off. Right. You know, in this case, though, when things get dire and when things have implications on the corporate side, they pay. And here's the thing.

In this instance, you know, in the hacking scandal, in Britain, where Murdoch's beloved tabloids occurred, James Murdoch was implicated because he said yes to a request to pay a guy whose cell phone messages had been hacked into by investigators working for the news of the world in Britain. A million bucks, I think is what it was. And he basically just said yes. And he said, I didn't really read the full email chain and understand everything that was going on. They just said a problem would be solved by paying this. And I was at my kid's soccer game and said yes. Hard to know if that's true, but that doesn't sound impossible to me.

that's how deeply the Murdox were personally implicated. In this, Rupert and Lockland Murdoch are on email chains with the chief executive of Fox News, giving her advice, probing her, testing her. In one case, on Murdoch's behalf, late in the game, you know, right, I think, before January 6th, maybe right after it. But right there in January, Murdoch says, you know, I think it's really important. I think it was on the eve of January 6th, 2021. It's really important perhaps for our top opinion hosts,

a primetime host to go on TV, maybe they could do it together and say, by the way, this election was won fairly and squarely by Joe Biden. He's like, I think that would go a long way. And Suzanne Scott, the chief executive, says, you know, we have to bring people along slowly. And what she said to them over the course of time is, you know, they're going through the five stages of loss. And so we've really got to be careful and do this slowly. The host themselves are there off the air, but, you know, we don't need them to be saying

that on the air. And Murdoch goes along with that. Well, they're going to be shareholders suing the Murdo. Fox, or breach of their fiduciary responsibilities and corporate leadership as a result of Lockland and Rupert repeatedly being involved in conversations. Rupert says, hey, I mean, you and I talked about this previously, so I'll do this briefly, but let's remember the original sin, as far as this goes, is on election night, Fox calls Arizona for Joe Biden, which makes it clearly very difficult for Donald Trump to win.

And Fox is the first to do that. So, you know, Fox viewers don't want to hear that fact. Fox viewers, by and large, particularly don't want to hear that from Fox, and they really don't want to hear it first from Fox. So the decision desk and the political leadership of the Washington Bureau basically say, we're not reversing this, even though they're pressed by this, even though Brett Bayer asks, you know, Martha McCallum sort of asks, is there a way to overturn this? There's sensitivity with viewers and clearly the Trump people ticked off and they say no. Murdoch says to Suzanne Scott, we should really get rid of Bill Salmon at that time, the Washington, managing by the decision publicly. He's like, and the other guy, too, meaning Chris Steyerwald, who is the political director.

And Suzanne Scott says, I've already told Bill he's leaving and I'm going to tell Chris tomorrow. You know, like they are involved in these decisions. Oh, sure. So they're willing to pay because they don't want to be asked about it on the witness stand. They don't want to be held responsible in the future. 92-year-old Rupert, you know, at 72, you couldn't really control what Rupert was going to say or not say. 92, who knows? So I think there are a bunch of reasons why they went into pay, but I don't know if there's corporate liability in here that that gets to be settled by the courts.

But I do know that morally, and in terms of leadership question, you know, the Murdox were very much engaged in this issue in a way that despite what their lawyer said, all the evidence points otherwise. Can I ask you one question? Please. You were not, shall we say, competing with Brett on the Brett Bayer on the Pentagon beat, but you were in a red box for a number of years. I was there. The question that I've been asked, and I feel like I have an answer for it, but I'm interested in your take, is whether this would have happened were Roger Ailes running the place. I don't think it would have. I mean, Roger Ailes was a monster. I'm not looking to defend him at all here. I think just from a self-preservation perspective, I don't think he would have let anchors get away with stuff the way Suzanne Scott did, the Tucker's and the Ingrams of the world. Look, when he was there, he ran the place. I don't think Suzanne Scott runs the place. I think Tucker Carl, and et cetera, run the place.

And that is something that Roger just would never have let that happen. He would not have ceded power. Suzanne Scott ain't Roger. And she came in. And the post Roger Fox is, I mean, I was there for, I can't remember, like maybe a year or two after Al's was forced to leave. And you could already feel that like nobody was taking Suzanne Scott seriously the way they took Roger Al's seriously.

And again, Al's was, look, he was an absolute monster. he was also a singular figure. So you can't really come into that place and be the new Roger L's. I mean, in a lot of ways, thankfully, there is no new Roger L's. But I do somehow feel that he would have tamped down on this before he got to this point. But I could be completely wrong. It tells you something about the fact that this is a leader. You know, we're talking about the CEO and the leader as opposed to, well, there's also a head of news, Jay Wallace.

There's also vice president over the news or news programming. anyway. There's DNA in the place which speaks the idea that there should be journalism there. None of that even comes up in conversation, right? It's all, can Suzanne Scott keep a hold on Janine Piro, Hannity, Tucker, et cetera. You know, yes, they forced out Dobbs the day after the smartmatic suit. But, you know, none of that other stuff comes up, right? No, not at all. You know, I used to say that Fox's job in the mornings and in basically prime time was to simultaneously assure its audience and rile them up. And it was to assure them that they weren't alone and that other people felt the way they did. And it was also to rile them up by saying, you look at what these

liberals are doing or whatever. And now I would just say that of basically the whole 24 hours there. I don't think there's any attention to news at all. Brett Bear, I think is a good journalist. I think that whole blinders on thing only works so far. And after that, you are just, you're willfully sticking your head in the sand. And as a journalist, I don't think that's something you're supposed to do. So I just feel like the entire day at Fox Now is now aimed at assuring their viewers that they're not alone and riling them up. And that is its purpose for being. And news ain't part of that. David, thank you so much for being here. Always a pleasure to talk to you. You are such an informative person. I just talk a lot, Andy. Let's be honest with each other. Well, that's my definition of informative.

Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. God, that sounded exasperated. Not with you. Just with what I'm about to talk about. Okay. Andy, how are we ending this fine, fine week in America? Who is your fuck that guy? God.

I'm going to try to keep this short because it's like I'm going to talk about a couple of different things. And there could be more that I could have talked about, but there's no time. Let's take a trip down to Florida. Except that probably not a good place for you to go to as a group called Equality Florida has warned against travel to that state for LGBTQ plus people because of the insane number of anti-gay, anti-trans laws and statements and actions from good old Meatball Ron and his government, they say that all of this put together poses a risk to the health and safety of queer people who might want to visit the state of Florida. So there's that. This was reported by Aaron Reed, who's a great journalist.

I think we have her on the show next week, which I'm excited about. So there's that. And then there's a new article from Vice News that basically the headline is Florida's anti-trans laws could completely wipe out LGBTQ clinics. And they basically, they talk to a bunch of clinic owners, a bunch of who specialize in health care for queer trans people, et cetera. They are now not sure if they can even stay in business. They don't know. One owner told vice organizations like mine could collapse completely. And so there's that. And then there is truly one of the worst people in this country is a woman named Christina Pusha or Pusha or Pshaw. I don't really know how it's pronounced. I believe she was Ron DeSantis's press secretary and now she has, ironically enough, she has transitioned

and is now his rapid response director, I believe for his burgeoning presidential campaign that may or may not crash and burn on liftoff, much like a certain rocket that it was supposed to go up today. She's truly a horrific person, just a hateful, hateful individual. She quote tweeted there was a tweet that had pointed to a survey that a majority of queer parents are considering leaving Florida because of all this stuff going on. and she quote tweeted that with a little hand-waving emoji, like basically saying bye-bye, good riddance. She's such a hateful person, and she is very much indicative of the kind of campaign that Ron DeSantis will run as a presidential candidate,

should he run. It is absolutely indicative of the kind of governor he's been, and it is just everything that is going on down there politically is so bad and so hateful, and it appears that they are about to extend their don't say gay law, which initially was supposed to just cover, I guess, younger children in public schools. They are now extending that to all public schools. So that is up through the senior year of high school,

will not be able to be taught basically that gay people exist and that trans people exist. And everyone who was watching this said, yeah, of course, that's what they want. Everyone said that initially. And they were told, no, that's not it. It's just we don't want this. We don't think five-year-olds need to be taught about this. And you're a groomer if you think that. And now, of course, however long after the initial rollout was,

they're expanding it to all of public school. So my fuck that guy is just the entire state government of Florida, I guess. I guess that's not fair because there are people who oppose this. But I can't take it anymore. It's just fuck those people so hard. Ah, the hate state of Florida. Yep. Well done.

So who is your fuck that guy, Danielle, to end this lovely week? Oh, to end the week? Well, we move from a place where we can't say gay to another state of Kentucky, who is my fuck that state of the week, which has now outlawed the teaching of sex ed, including puberty, even to students who are already going through it. Like, what in the fuck is wrong with the Republican Party? Like, by the way, this happens to be like one of the states that was also trying to lower the age to get married. That's like they are lowering the age to get married.

They're lowering the age for kids to enter into the workforce. But you can't talk about any of the things that are going through with your body. And oh, like, carry a baby if you're 10 years old because that's what a woman's body was made for, but do you know that? Probably not, because you have no education whatsoever. It's as if the desire of the Republican Party is to keep people as stupid, as ignorant, as uninformed, as fearful, and as small and narrow as possible. That's the goal here, because I don't know how talking about puberty, how your body is changing if a young girl were to get her period, which has, happens to so many in the middle of the school day, I guess she can't talk about it. Maybe she'll

just sit there and just, you know, bleed through classes. Like I just, I'm so fucking sick of these people and I think about every time that they sign a piece of legislation, there are all these smiling white evangelical faces around them. Like this is the Christo-fascist state that they want where we're all, I guess, like somehow, I don't, you know what? I don't even want to do the comparison. I don't need to do a comparison to other like regressive, disgusting, anti-woman religions. What I will say is that what Kentucky is doing, what Florida is doing, what Texas is doing, what all of these places are doing is to keep people small, ignorant, fearful, and strapped. That's the goal here. And so this new law in Kentucky will ban instruction of sexuality

and sexually transmitted infections. Also, these also happen to be places where, you know, teen pregnancy is high. Yep. But so long as, you know, you can put that baby to work in a meat grinding factory. As soon as they can walk, I guess that will be good for the state. I don't know if people can flee, you know, seek asylum in neighboring blue states that aren't fucking crazy. But at this point, maybe they're planned.

Andy, maybe the Republicans' overall plan for walk with me here for immigration is to make people hate America so much and make America so fucking like bullet hole and riddled with hate and all of these things that no one wants to come here. And then everyone else is just fleeing. Maybe that's the ultimate goal. You might be right. They want 13 year old girls barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and they want 13-year-old boys on the assembly line with an AR-15 over their shoulder and probably a cigarette in their mouth. That's apparently their view of utopia. Wow. Their black mirror is twisted as fuck.

Welcome to hell. This is white mirror, baby. Yes. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh and our star-studied The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.