The Josh Innes Show - Why Do People Love Media Beef?

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Bomani Jones and Van Lathan discussed this on Bomani's podcast. We talk about it a lot on here. Why do people love media beef? Let's discuss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. All right, everybody, welcome in. I didn't know this until just a second ago, but apparently Hollis is banging Brent Selick's wife, was ex-wife, Susie Selick. I don't even know if I ever, I don't know if I met her or not. So apparently Tank and Susie Selick are a couple. Huh. The fucking world, man. Good for you, Tank.

I'll have to text him and see what the deal is. but that's on, saw that on the New York Post. The fact that that's a New York Post story is certainly interesting. But apparently Hollis and Susie Selik are boning. That's that. And then there's pictures of them kissing on a, boy, this is certainly,

wouldn't have seen that coming at all. I missed tank. God. Good for. All right, hold on. Let's play a couple commercials. What a legend tank is, though. All right, so people have been talking a lot about sports media beefs, you know,

and you had this shit in WFAN in New York with, you know, ex-host arguing with other hosts, and the other hosts get involved in it. And then you got WIP with Howard and his son and Spike and everybody going back and forth and Angelo. And apparently Jason Whitlock and Stephen A. Smith. all kind of, you know, they shit on each other all the time. Well, Bumani Jones talked about this with Van Lathen. Now, I like Van Lathen a lot. He's a Baton Rouge dude.

I think he's from Baker? I know one of our guys is from Baker. Did he go to Baker High School? Or was that, who else went to Baker High School? What's his name? Oh, old buddy that got fired at CNN. He's also a Baton Rouge guy that's from Baker, I believe. But Van Lathen, Baton, Baton,

Guy, BR, and BOMani, who, and I bring this up every time I mention Bumani Jones, and this is why I will never say a bad word about Bumani Jones. When I was, you know, getting in trouble at WIP for the thing with Kelsey, Bumani Jones responded to it on Twitter and is like, you know, like big picture, like I've seen far worse shit and I kind of get what you were trying to convey here. I mean, it may have sounded, you know, you might have done it poorly, but I don't think what you were saying was intended to be super harmful or anything. I appreciated that when the rest of the world just kind of glommed on to me. And I was the top story on the fucking news. And everybody's telling me I'm a scumbag racist piece of shit. And Bimani Jones is like, I don't see that. I mean, I'm like, well, I appreciate that.

But he and Van Lathen were talking about why people like media beef. And I'm kind of curious to see what their view on this is. Because this all stems from the Whitlock and Stephen A. Smith thing. But let's listen to some of this and see what his thoughts are. I can do is I'll just give you mine really quick. People love drama. And what we're learning in this era of social media where people have, you know, YouTube and people have their channels and their podcasts, people have to get their content out there because that's how you survive. Downloads, that is your lifeblood, the downloads of your podcast, the views are.

on YouTube. That is the lifeblood of this whole thing. And everybody's talking about sports shit. And for the most part, everybody's kind of got the same two or three opinions on every topic. There's either Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time or Michael Jordan isn't, or it's LeBron or it's Michael, or it's whatever the topic is. The Dallas Cowboys, like you're not going to differentiate yourself with your opinions unless you're totally outlandish. And then when you're totally outlandish, people can sense you're totally outlandish. Now, some of them are dumb and they'll fall for it anyway. But for the most part, people are like, that's such an outrageous opinion. There's no way anybody could have that.

Nobody believes it. So you have to find ways to get your content out there. And big picture, there's not a ton of drama in you and a buddy debating about LeBron and Michael, right? Where the drama exists is interpersonal drama. It's the beef. It's the fight, right? And then what's going to happen is there's going to be beef. and then other people are going to talk about your beef,

and then they're going to get run on their podcast. We are in a world where people love drama. Drama is number one. Our president is a fucking drama queen. They're just all taking from his playbook. He took it from the Howard Stern playbook. Drama is what drives all of this shit. Controversy creates cash.

Eric Bischoff. Controversy creates cash. Where's their controversy? Well, you can't really contrive a bunch of controversy over hot baseball takes in April. But where you can come up with controversy and drum up controversy and create that cash is talking about media beef and acting like you're above it, but you're going to spend 25 minutes talking about it. And that's where there's money to be made is in drama. People are addicted to drama. The algorithms feed you drama. Then you argue with people. Drama. The shit that

we do. Okay. When we post shit on the radio station Facebook page here, When I post anything, like, hey, Josh and James are doing blah, blah, blah today. Here's a funny segment where Josh and James are riffing on something wacky that happened today. Nobody views it and no one shares it. And it just disappears. It just evaporates. It goes away. But if I post a video of me ripping on the other radio station, the classic rock station, when I do that, all the sudden it's shared by a million people and it's all over everybody's fucking Facebooks.

And it's, oh my God, this guy's a piece of shit. And is this all you ever talk about? And blah, blah, blah, blah. So the reason why people continue to engage in media beef is because people continue to consume media beef because we are all addicted to fucking drama. Why does Stephen A. Smith basically or Jason Whitlock talks shit about Stephen A. Smith. Because that's the shit that he does that gets the most run. And not just the shit from like white conservative guys who are like, yeah, I'm glad that a black guy feels the way I feel. certain shit, so I don't feel so bad about my thoughts, because there's a black guy that feels

exactly the way I feel about shit, which is usually the Whitlock thing. People see this, and he gets a ton of views from it. The question really is, though, why the fuck does Stephen A. Smith engage? That would be my biggest question, is your Stephen A. Smith, you make well into $10 million a year, if not more than that. You are the face of ESPN. You are the most recognized face that's on ESPN. You are the biggest name on ESPN. You are everywhere. You are inescapable. You are like Rocky at the beginning of Rocky 3. And most of the world is like Pauley waiting to throw a bottle of liquor into a pinball machine with your face on it. Why are you engaging with Jason Whitlock? And it's easier said than

done. And part of it is because he needs the clicks too. Because he's got a podcast that he's pimping. He wants to have something to fall back on when ESPN eventually stops or if he just wants to Stop doing ESPN and do his own thing. You need his many followers. Let's see. How many YouTube subscribers does Stephen A. Smith have? Let's see. Let's go to YouTube and let's look up Stephen A. Smith.

It's smart. Everything that Stephen A. Smith is doing is smart. He's a smart guy with what he's doing. Because you need to have a fallback. You need to have a channel. You need to have a place where, you know, if it all falls apart at ESPN or you just get sick of it, you have a place to go. I don't think anything he says is really of great consequence. But whatever.

So, straight shooter. It's got 1.35 million subscribers to Stephen A. Smith. That's still a pretty sizable audience. I don't know how that rates compared to others. I'm genuinely curious. Let me see here. Content producers with biggest YouTube subscribers. Let's see. I imagine Joe Rogan's got to be quadruple septuple that, right? Let's see here. Mr. Beast has 473 million subscribers. Okay, so 1.35, you know, compared to Mr. Beast is not gigantic by any means, but still 1.35 million. And a lot of these guys are singers and shit. It's just music video, so it's not really a fair question. But I'm talking about, like, you know, podcasters. Like, that's what I'm looking for. People who are, you know, podcasters. Like, Joe Rogan has 20.5 million subscribers. Okay. Kill Tony has 2.5 million subscribers. So like compare that to Stephen A. Smith who's got 1.35. It's not gigantic, but it's still almost a million and a half fucking people.

So it's still a pretty good audience, right? But the point being in all of this is you have to get people to your content. So the reason why Jason Whitlock, back in the day, the guy on the network, the big dog, would never fuck with a guy like Whitlock. When you're number one and you're on ESPN and he's taking shots at you from YouTube, you're like, eat shit. I don't have to acknowledge you. but because we're in the business of consuming content, and we're in the business of distributing content, and you need to have that out there in the world,

talking shit about people is going to get you more eyeballs than talking about fucking LeBron. They know what you think of LeBron, Stephen A. Smith. How many times can you say it? They know what you think of Michael Jordan. They know what you think of the Cowboys. They know what you think of the Eagles. They don't care.

What were the highest rated episodes, if I had to guess, the most watched episodes of a shamans? and Sharp Show. Probably when there's fucking drama. Like, oh, the chick's suing him for sexual assault or whatever. Drama. And that's why they continue to pump it out. If this were 15, 20 years ago and YouTube

weren't even a thought, and Stephen A. Smith is on ESPN and there's some guy on a much lesser platform just shitting on Stephen A. Smith. Stephen A. Smith wouldn't even acknowledge him. And big picture, you could argue that if all Stephen A. Smith's concern was was his gig at ESPN,

he wouldn't respond to Jason Whitlock, because Jason Whitlock is a tick on a bull's ass, relatively speaking. Let's see how many subscribers Jason Whitlock has. So let's look at Whitlock. So Stephen A has 1.35 million. Whitlock's probably got a third of that if I had to guess. Let's see here. Jason Whitlock has 580,000.

So that's not a third. I mean, it's over a third, right? I don't know. I suck at math. Point being is that's a good following too. I don't have 580,000 subscribers. So, like, my point being is, if you're somebody that is trying to win in this world and you know that what people are clicking on and watching is drama because people are addicted to drama

and the president's all about drama and that's all we have, then you're going to keep pumping that out. Like, sometimes I think it's possible for us to look at things and go, do people really like something or are they just consuming it because it's what's there, right? Like, I don't think people give a shit about women's basketball at all. It had a moment, and it was a race-driven moment, and it was a politics-driven moment. And now, do you notice? Nobody's talking about college basketball anymore. You know, the women's tournament is happening right now.

Tell me one player that plays in the women's tournament. I couldn't name one player. There's some, you know, rather thick lady that plays at USC. Don't know her fucking name. She's like Naya Jacks out on the basketball court. have no fucking clue what her name is. Now, two years ago, you knew all the names. And it was driven by racial drama and political drama and all this bullshit.

But that's why you knew it. It had a moment. No one cares about women's basketball anymore. But what they do is they force women's basketball upon you. So you watch it on ABC or ESP. And then they spit these numbers out at you and say, see, people are into it. I don't think people are legitimately into it. They just, you know, they put it on.

But then there's also things that people seek out. out. And people seek out drama. For whatever reason, people seek out drama. It's just they're addicted to it. And part of it's the algorithms. And we've created a world of people who can only be entertained by the drama of people's situations. And then people like Stephen A need eyeballs because that's going to be their lifeblood at some point.

And they're drawing people. Again, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, there would have never been a scenario where a Stephen A. Smith, probably 20 years ago, would have to go on television and shit on somebody who is nowhere near him in terms of the level of exposure. It's like when we were at WIP and I shit on Mike because Mike was winning. I should have stopped shitting on Mike the second we started winning, which was after a month. Because generally speaking, when you're the big dog, all you're doing is drawing attention to the other person when you talk shit about them.

But I never really grasped that and I kept going and going and going. and I should have stopped a little bit earlier, although it led to some great moments in the show. I should have stopped it earlier once we killed him and just fucking focused on doing more shit, but I couldn't help myself because I'm a fucking cluster fucking. It is what it is. But generally speaking, like when I was in 610 in Houston,

we were always beating 790. There was no reason to ever shit on 790 because 790 was nothing. Like ratings-wise, they weren't close to us, but I'd still get on there and occasionally shit on them. And then Gavin would come in He'd do his whole deal where he'd tell me that the Yankees don't talk shit about whomever. And, you know, we would do that.

We very rarely talk shit on that station about other stations, though. But anyway, all that said, now that we've laid that part of it out there, let's do this. Let's get another episode. Let's listen to some of this Van Lathen and Bomani Jones audio. Let's see why he thinks people are addicted to social media beef. Mine, I was very simple and rudimentary with it. But let's see what these guys have to say.