The Megyn Kelly Show - Sharyl Attkisson on Media Bias, Narrative Vs. Facts, and Big Tech Censorship | Ep. 36

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Megyn Kelly is joined by Sharyl Attkisson, journalist and author of "Slanted," to talk about media bias she's witnessed over her career, facts vs. "The Narrative," #MeToo media coverage and double standards, her ongoing lawsuit against the Obama administration, the media suppression of voter fraud and Hunter Biden, Big Tech censorship, what comes next and how to fix the bias in the media, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, it's Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program we've got Cheryl Atkison. She is a badass journalist who is hosting her own show right now called Full Measure on Sunday mornings on Sinclair, multiple award-winning journalist, and she's also author of the new book, Slanted, How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism. I'm a big fan of hers. I've actually never met her, so this will be our first time talking and we can experience it together, but she's got a lot of thoughts on the media that are really interesting.

She comes at it from some familiar angles, but a lot of unfamiliar angles. And I think you're going to learn along with me. So we'll get to Cheryl in one second. But first, let's talk about Super Beats. Super Beats. Again, picture Mary Catherine Gallagher. That's how I picture Super Beats soft chews with the arms above the heads. Gets me excited.

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50, that's five Oh people percent off plus free shipping. Just go ahead and make your purchase at getsuperbeats.com slash MK for that deal. That's getsuperbeats.com slash MK 50% off. Hello on your second bag, getsuperbeats.com slash MK. And now Cheryl Atkinson. Thank you so much for being here. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Okay. So the book is called Slanted, How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism. You're on a roll with these books, which I've been loving, and you really are somebody, forgive me for using the phrase, who's speaking truth to power. I mean, what's happened to our media is disgusting.

It's stomach-turning to me how dishonest they are and how just you can see the few hangers on to this legacy media lie that these are the fair, impartial arbiters of news. And they're not. And your book points out the over-reliance on quote, narrative, the narrative versus the facts. So explain that just to kick it off. I would just say, I look at the narrative, the way I define it as a storyline

that some political or corporate interest usually wants furthered on the news or now on social media and online. And they find very clever ways and they pay a lot of money to make sure that the news is saturated with the narrative. Now, it doesn't mean that everything you hear when a storyline or a narrative is told is false. I explain that in the book, but it qualifies as a narrative when it's presented in a one-sided fashion, as it usually is, to the exclusion of contrary views, counterpoint, scientific studies that would give you a fuller, more robust picture, but they don't want you to have it because they're not out there to get you the facts on the ground. They're out there to further a narrative

for another goal. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about the narrative, which really saturates almost every news organization today, even those that still have some good reporting being done there. And there is a lot of good reporting if you can find it, if you look hard enough, but they're overwhelmed even at places like the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post by these narratives. So how does it happen? How does the narrative get introduced? It used to be, and I think I wrote more of this in the earlier books, that political and corporate interests knew how to get their nose under the tent at news organizations by, let's say, me, my example at CBS News. I get an email from Media Matters,

the left-wing propaganda group. And it sounds very rational, and they give me a lot of, quote, research. And hey, I don't blame them. It's one-sided research to further the goal of their donors and so on. But as a journalist, I understand that there may be something useful in there, but it's certainly nothing I report verbatim. But they figure out how to use middlemen and more of a masked way to lobby reporters in a way that looks more natural and organic. They use PR firms, crisis management firms, LLCs, political action committees, global law firms, and they figure out how to impact the newsroom, whether by pulling strings at the corporate level or using social media to controversialize a certain topic or reporter, but they figure out how to shape the news in this sort of indirect

way. But what's newer now that I see is we've actually allowed them to infiltrate, as I say, our newsrooms. We've now hired them into our newsrooms. They don't even have to lobby us and be so clever about it. They are us. They work as analysts and reporters and editorial people in the newsrooms. They no longer have to be sort of trying to convince us through these third party nonprofits and law firms and PR firms. So I think that's the big change. We've allowed the firewall to come down between us and them. And now they've pretty much, I think, largely taken over at many news organizations. You know, I'll give you one example of Media media matters, which I always looked at as a bunch of cranks, you know, just hacks who are just partisan operatives trying to bring down

Fox News and anybody who's not towing the left wing line in media. They would just make up things. I mean, they would just take three words completely out of context in, let's say, a segment in which you offer the opposite view, but they would just take your one one line and say she pushed this without noting that you then got to the other part and you had debated it. So they were just dishonest hacks. But and they and of course, they do that to everybody at Fox on any issue when it comes to sexism or racism or transphobia, whatever, you know, because they're dying to call you those things. And I always sort of shoulder shrugged it. And then when NBC and I departed ways, parted ways, they started releasing their fake list of all these allegedly insensitive things I had said over the years. And everyone ran with them. The left wing press is just like, oh, look at this long list of horrible things she said. I'm like, holy shit,

this is straight out of Media Matters. Everyone is just putting it on the air as though it's real. And it wasn't my first aha moment of knowing how dishonest and lazy the media is that they would take a Media Matters hit piece and put it in their previously respected newspaper. But on a personal level, it definitely brought it home for me. You know, I think one of the first times I understood how Media Matters was pulling strings at news organizations was I did a series of stories about green energy waste. This was under the Obama administration. And of course, it doesn't mean you're against green energy because you are simply following the money on waste. In fact, people who are pro-green energy should care

if companies are stealing or wasting the money. And that's, anyway, the approach I took because a lot of companies that got money under the stimulus plan were, in fact, going under. Executives were making off with the funds. There were just a lot of problems. This was after Solyndra. There were many, many more, as I say, Solyndras that weren't reported on. So I started reporting on them. And this proved to be a very, very, I guess, soft spot in the underbelly of the Obama administration. Again, I don't even think about politics a lot of times when I'm starting those stories, but I do understand it impacts an administration. We started hearing back from energy department folks under the Obama

administration who wouldn't talk for the interview. But once the story aired, the first story in the series I was going to do, they sort of flipped out and they wrote a letter to our legal. Of course, my stories, I always have them approved by legal. And they claimed this and that wasn't true. And of course, it all was true. We wrote a letter back. And when they kind of struck out there, because they wanted us to correct or retract our report, which was perfectly accurate, all of a sudden, out comes Media Matters with exactly what the energy department had said in their letter with false claims. In other words, they were working together. And then once Media Matters puts it out through their network of nonprofits and places they work with that people don't

understand are connected to Media Matters, it started to look like, wow, there's a groundswell of reporting that shows Cheryl's reporting was untrue. And it just took on a life of its own because like you say, reporters are either happy to serve the narrative, perhaps ideologically, or they're just too lazy and it seems like a delicious story and they don't decide to do their own legwork. But that was just one example that stood out to me where I started to understand. And in my second book, The Smear, a lot of people have networked out the Koch brother connections and

stuff like that, conservative and libertarian groups. But nobody had done that I had seen Media Matters to the extent that I did it. And I found dozens of groups that are all under the Media Matters umbrella that people think are independent, nonprofit, media watchdog, good government groups. But you follow the money and these are all connected. And that's how they can give the groundswell, the look that there's some sort of story going on. It may just be the Media Matters donors who want it to be a story, but they can put it out through 15 different organizations that all put out press releases and contact the news. And all of a sudden it's on the news. And of course, who's funding all of that?

Well, they keep that dark, as you may know. We did know that George Soros gave a million-dollar donation about the time Glenn Beck at Fox was talking about the Soros connection to Media Matters and other groups. They were kind of keeping it secret, but then he just came out and said it, that Soros was giving a million dollars primarily to go after Glenn Beck on Fox News through Media Matters. But shortly after that, they began using a third-party fundraiser. And that's a way to legally, I'll say, legally launder the money or the identities of the donors because the fundraiser's name goes on the disclosures, but you don't know who the fundraiser raised the money from,

and she doesn't have to tell. Can I tell you, and that you mentioned Glenn Beck, and you mentioned yourself, and I'm talking about myself. I do think they're very effective at trying to discredit people over time. Obviously, Glenn is a very colorful character, but he's not some loon. And they paint him like he's some nutcase. Meanwhile, you know, his attacks on Anita Dunn, he was on to something, right? It's like, he was the one saying a caliphate was coming in the Middle East. Everybody said he's a nutcase. Well, he was on to something, you know, and after you will get to this later, but your claims of being spied on by the Obama administration with your computers and so on, I felt like they were doing the same thing to you in the news. Like she's a nutcase. We've lost Cheryl. Like no one can listen to her anymore. And I mentioned what they did to me. So it really is a coordinated effort to try to bring down anybody who is threatening to their narrative. And it wouldn't work without their partners in the media like Slate and Salon and Vox and Huffington Post.

And they have these groups that will just echo and spread around these false narratives. And it takes hold in popular culture to some degree. You know, there's a lot of people that don't fall for that stuff, but there are a lot of people that probably, you know, I've talked to people who get their news from Media Matters and didn't know that it was a propaganda group. They thought it was a fair media watchdog group of some kind. And if that's what you do, that's where you get your information. You're going to have a picture of the world that's completely slanted. I interviewed Glenn Beck on my program recently, and he reminded me that one year he was in, I believe, the top three most admired men in the world on some survey by

Time Magazine or some big group. Maybe it was even just Gallup. And he was between the Pope and President Obama or somebody like that. And then they got to town on him because he went to Fox and he started unearthing these unpleasant stories. And within a fairly short period of time, he was the most villainized and despised man in America or among them. So he went from, and that was just a propaganda campaign that did that, that took him from most admired to most despised very quickly. That infuriates me. I've known Glenn a long time since his time at Fox, and Glenn is a good man. They take a common here, a common there. You're on the air as much as he is or you are. I am. And obviously you're going to have moments that you didn't phrase things perfectly. You'd like to have back and he's owned that. But the complete smearing of him as a racist, as a kook is dishonest. It's dishonest and it's wrong. It's just one of the many examples. And one of my problems with what we're seeing now is stories like that. They're being put on the air

by CNN. CNN, it used to be my my place. I'd go for news. I, as a Fox News anchor, used to get my news over at CNN before I went on the air at the Kelly file because I liked Wolf Blitzer. I thought he was a straight shooter. I liked Anderson. He was, you know, not the most exciting thing to watch, but I thought he was a straight shooter. Of course I never enjoyed like Don Lemon's newscast was not my thing. And Chris Cuomo wasn't there when I was there. And at least he was on the morning show, trying to act like a big man. Finally, Alison Camerota managed to get him off of her partnership and sicked him on the primetime, which has been unfortunate for people looking for straight news at that hour. But

anyway, they're putting this stuff on the air. And you used to work at CNN. What do you think of what has happened to them? Well, it's shocking and it's really sickening. And I spoke to other CNNers, former CNNers, about what happened. They can't watch CNN. And I spoke to other CNNers, former CNNers about what happened. They can't watch CNN. And I spoke to executives that used to run CNN. I spoke to executives that know Zucker and talked about, talked with him about how he was going to create something and what he had in mind for taking things left and being sort of the counterpoint he thought to Fox News and that sort of thing. So I think it's more interesting in some respects what they said in the book, what they think of CNN, but it's what a lot of people think. And to hear it from insiders, many of whom told me they

lean left if they told me anything about their politics, they're just as appalled as anybody else because CNN still has some great folks that work there. And if you go to, if you travel around the world, as I've been doing for my program, and I sometimes hire CNN stringers, people I knew at CNN who still do some work for CNN, CNN International is still doing some great work. There are still some good people there, but they've made a concerted decision to just abandon any pretense of neutrality, which, gosh, when I was there, Megan, in 1990 to 93, we would not have dreamed of even uttering, the kind of news organization it was, if anybody had come out of a press conference with the president and said something like, that was a bad speech, then they would have been pulled off the air. They would just not be able

to keep their job there. Now it's what's expected. And I think that's the key. So you see former straight hard news journalists going kind of off the deep end with their opinions and bias because that's what's rewarded there. They get pats on the back. They get their own show. They get promoted. And that's what CNN wants. The question is what it becomes now. And in the book, we talked about with executives saying,

it's really made its name. It's kind of spoiled its reputation, but made a name with what it's done under the Trump era. What happens next? It can't exactly pull things back in and go back to being a straight news organization. What happens now? Well, I mean, there are reports that CNN is on the market. And if you know, if it does get sold, that'll determine a lot about its editorial direction in the future. I mean, you could you could get the reputation back if you fired the entire primetime. Right. That would help. But you'd have a lot to do. And frankly, it's not just primetime. I mean, I mentioned Alison Camerota. She used to be at Fox, but she's totally anti-Trump and very open about it in a news role now. And so is the daytime. I mean, pretty much everybody there has been very, very open about their hatred for Trump. And look,

I don't care if you hate Trump. I couldn't care less. You're just not supposed to show me. I'm supposed to, I'm not supposed to know as if you're a news anchor and they don't, they don't care. And my question to you on that is, do you think it is a personal hatred for Trump or do you think it is a Jeff Zucker directed thing? Like you were saying, like saying bad things, bad things about Trump, calling him a liar, being really opinionated, opinionated about him will be rewarded or is it both? I think it's both. I think they're in a place where they like, you know, they like being able to criticize Trump and they have a boss who encourages it. But again, I think this is all part of a larger plan not to cover the news in an accurate way to make sure, but to make sure to get Trump or to hurt Trump or to make sure he doesn't get elected

again. These are bigger goals that they're serving. It's not about telling us the truth. And then how does this hurt us in the big picture as journalists? When people watch the news, I think, Megan, and they see that the reporter's thumb is on the scale, they don't believe the stuff that you say. Even if they like it, maybe there's Trump haters watching people hating on Trump, but they know in the back of their mind that when they see other news or they hear a report about Trump, they know they may not be getting the whole truth. And same with the other side. People discount what they hear depending on who they heard it from. And I think there's a huge market out there for people who really want just the news that goes wherever it goes. They don't have to say, well, I saw it here.

Therefore, I'm probably not getting the whole truth on this side. They want to be able to go watch a news organization kind of like CNN used to be and think that's just where the chips fell. This is just what happened. Exactly. I used to say, being boring is one thing, but being boring and biased is unforgivable. And that's where they've crossed over to. I miss the old boring CNN that just presented the facts to me and they weren't sexy, but

they seemed real and they really did keep the bias out of it. And I appreciated that, especially, I mean, even at Fox News, I thought they're not fair and balanced. You know, I understand they're not loving the Republicans, but they're not totally unfair to them. And I can separate the wheat from the chaff, at least. Now it's just all, it's all chaff. There's no separating because there's nothing to separate.

You have always been somebody who has not been afraid to go where the reporting goes. And I correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was when you were at CBS that you you were the one. Did you either you either broke it or you were the one to first to sort to first go after Hillary Clinton's lie that she faced sniper fire during her 1996 trip to Bosnia. So this is during, her claim happened later during her presidential contest, but she was making a claim about her 1996 trip that you had been on. I was in the early years of CBS at the time. I don't cover politics. I have successfully avoided not being on a presidential campaign. CBS used to always try to assign me to a campaign. And I always saw that as no-win situation because you either report, you report the truth and it's either favorable to your candidate, but nobody believes it because they

think you're co-opted by the candidate or you're negative to the candidate or you're expected to be negative to the candidate and they think you're against it. It's just hard to, I think it's a no-win situation for a lot of those reporters. So I avoided that. But I was on a trip that the first lady, then first lady Hillary Clinton, went on to Bosnia and Greece and Turkey and some really interesting places with Chelsea. And we went to a demilitarized zone, former war zone shortly after the Bosnian war. And indeed, you know, it wasn't like the safest trip, but certainly they wouldn't have let us land because Chelsea's on the plane. I'm on the plane with Sinbad, the comedian who's going to be entertaining the troops, Sheryl Crow.

You know, it's not like they're going to land us in a war zone under sniper fire. But they told us if it got dicey, we just, you know, we probably wouldn't land. We'd go somewhere else. We didn't have to land there. Anyway, we landed. It was a pleasant trip. There were little girls on the runway greeting Mrs. Clinton with flowers and the troops took pictures. And so 12 years later, Hillary Clinton

has turned this story into, we landed under sniper fire and she's running for president against Obama. And all I could figure is, did she want to look like she had some kind of military experience or more of a hard-nosed war-like experience than Obama did? I don't know. But I had come back from I think a vacation actually overseas. And it must not have been with my husband because when I got back, he said, were you shot at when you were in Bosnia 12 years ago? And I said, no. He said, well, Hillary Clinton is giving speeches and saying that you guys were. And my first reaction was, she must be talking about another trip. Maybe she went back. So I started looking and no, she was talking about our trip and believe it or not, I don't save a lot, but I had video.

We didn't have a great archive at CBS, but I had video of 12 years ago showing we came off on the runway. We waved at the little girl, Hillary posed for pictures, yada, yada. And I told Rick Kaplan, you know, Rick Kaplan? Yeah. Yep. So he was the head of news at CBS at the time of the news division of the evening news. I said, I have video of this and I don't know why no other reporter, there were a lot of reporters on that trip. Nobody else made a deal out of this. Everybody just kind of let her say that. In fact, I think it was Sinbad who brought this up in a comedy routine that she was not telling the truth. So show the video on CBS, lead the news. And there's a little backstory to that. Rick Kaplan, we always heard, was friends with the Clintons, and he makes no secret of the fact that he leans left. But what a great boss. He just always loved

a good story. And I did a lot of investigative reporting when Kaplan was executive producer. He let me do that full time, in fact. And I remember when that story came up, I said to him, I turned to the script. He said, it's a great script. We're going to lead the show with it. And I said, well, I'm sorry for you. This must be awkward. And I meant his relationship with the Clintons, whatever it was. And he said, nope. He said, a great story is a great story. And, you know, that's how great journalists think of things. It doesn't matter how surely, you know, people have views sometimes, but they're able to keep that out of their news decisions.

At least they used to be able to. And so, yeah, that was a big story. And then afterwards, Hillary Clinton, by the way, did an interview that was videotaped, part of it with some newspaper publication, and kind of apologized and said, the only reason she said that is she had been sleepy or overtired, which didn't make sense to me. Do you think people are shooting at you years ago when you're overtired? But she then doubled down and said, you know, I did greet the little girls on the runway like you see in the video on CBS because I didn't want

to have them waiting there and not do that. But then we ran to the vehicle and then we had to dodge the sniper fire. And I'm thinking, how does she not realize I have video of that too, that shows that didn't happen? So we did two nights, we led the evening news showing each night that whatever she was saying was completely divorced from reality. And then as an aside- Didn't she say something like she misspoke? She misspoke. Like, well, many, many times about critical details. Right. And then I don't know if you want to talk about this, but one interesting thing I think in the book is about I never said she lied. And there's a reason for that. I said what she reported wasn't what she said wasn't true. I showed the contradiction and so on. But today, anything Trump does, even if it's a misspeaking situation, that's a lie. That's a headline.

It's a lie. More with Cheryl in one moment. But first, I shared a hot story a couple of weeks ago and it nearly crashed the Scoremaster website. The story is that the average American has 97 points, 97, that they can quickly add to their credit score. That's big, but most people have no idea how to get it. Well, here is the info. See score master credit scientists discovered an algorithm that will super boost your credit scores. Not just a few points, but 97 points fast. All of you, they could go way up. You don't have to take these crappy loans at these terrible rates. Improve your credit score with ScoreMaster. Imagine 97 points on top of your existing score. It's super important if you're refinancing your home or buying a car or applying for credit in any way. Let's say you have okay credit and you're buying a car. If you go to ScoreMaster first and

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I was on the air covering Obama every other night saying, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And we knew it wasn't true. So we would not use the word lie on my show, but we would say it isn't true. This is what the forecasts are showing. This is what the plan actually is. A lot of people are definitely going to lose their plans and their doctors.

And then the reporting developed over time to show that not only was it untrue but he knew he knew it was untrue when he was saying it and that makes it a lie and i never called it a lie even when and then until we knew that and even then it felt uncomfortable to say that word you know like he knowingly misled felt more comfortable because the news media used to be so reticent to ascribe that subjective state of mind to the person speaking, especially when it's the president of the United States or the person running to be president of the United States in the case of Hillary. And now we've totally abandoned that. And I know in the book, you've got a story about how at some point somebody was talking to you

about the number of times that Trump had lied. This is during his contest against Hillary. And you pressed for more detail, having covered Hillary at length. And what happened? Well, this was, gosh, I don't want to say her name in case I remember it wrong. But this was someone who directed the Politico coverage at the time. And I was interviewing her at my show, Full Measure, about something unrelated, about media, kind of what's happening with the media and how they got 2016 so wrong. And I wasn't even talking about Trump in most of my questions. These were really media focused. And she inserted things about Trump in every answer. She clearly didn't like him, so she would talk about how bad Trump is and how much he lied. And she offered in one of her answers that when they were at Politico and covering the race, that they had clocked Trump at so many lies per second or per minute, whatever it was. And she gave me the number. And my natural question, which I think would be yours too, was, well, what was Hillary's rate of lies per whatever? Because she had far less time on TV and far less availability. I just

wondered how you would track both of those things and make them comparable. And she said to me, oh, we didn't have the staff to do Hillary too. And the notion that anybody at Politico, this is a national newsy organization, that they would have an assignment that says track one candidates lies, but not the others. I just think that's a, that's a dead giveaway. Or what about remember, uh, Benghazi, uh, and Jay, what's his name? Who is the white house spokesperson? Um, and Jay Carney, uh, and he's, he's now working for, I think, Amazon for Jeff Bezos. But anyway, Jay Carney was up there every other night saying, we didn't change any words in those Benghazi talking points. We didn't change what we only changed the word consulate to diplomatic facility.

And other than that, the White House did not touch the talking points about Benghazi. That was a diplomatic statement. We didn't. It was a lie. It was a total lie because we wound up seeing the actual earlier drafts that had been submitted to the White House and we saw the White House actual changes. And they had completely manipulated those talking points because they were in a panic about what happened in Benghazi, Libya and how it made the president look. And I know you've covered that story. That's another one for the record that Cheryl's taken a lot of shit for because the mainstream media, again, wants to paint her as some lunatic for rejecting their mainstream narrative about Benghazi and what did and did

not happen. And for the record, I'm 100% with you and your reporting. Well, it's interesting because before they controversialize a subject successfully, it's not controversial in terms of covering it. And I've seen this time and again with stories that I've started that everybody's on board with. It's getting, you know, initially very, people are very interested. And then you see it that somebody sees that as a danger or a risk, and they begin the discrediting campaign. And they use, again, the usual suspects in the quasi news media and the news media. They use social media. I have shown emails in some of my last books, the discussions of emails

that we found of government officials talking about controversializing me or my story or another reporter who's off the narrative and how they do it. And if other journalists or other people in our industry use their brain a little more often, they wouldn't allow themselves to be used that way. But unfortunately, they make it pretty easy for these narratives to discredit somebody who's covering a story that they actually want to discredit. They make it pretty easy to happen. When I first started to cover Benghazi, I was assigned to cover that story three weeks in at CBS because they thought there was some news that probably needed to be unearthed. And we had a whole team covering it and they just hadn't been able to dig anything up. So three weeks in, I started and the first

thing I want to do is what's the timeline? I constantly start there when I don't know anything about a story. The timeline started to be a giveaway, the things they were keeping secret, not telling us and gaps and so on. And initially this was very well received at CBS. This is exactly what they wanted me to do. Even at the end, toward the end, when there were certain people who did not want that story on television, many of my colleagues and my interim bosses, the medium bosses, like in the Washington Bureau, they love the stories. They were trying to get them on too. It wasn't everybody at CBS that were keeping them off. There are certain people. And we got so much pushback on the, like you said, the changing talking points emails. They were lobbying CBS. They were coming to the office. They were talking to the Bureau Chief, different people from the administration saying none of it was true. And they had to rein me in. And it's just constant. Almost every day,

there was some sort of lobbying effort in New York and DC by the White House and the administration and Media Matters and everybody to try to stop these stories. I don't even mind that when your bosses stand behind you, it's quite a triumph when you can get the stories on. And it's wonderful when you can get the information out despite these powerful interests that don't want it out. But when certain bosses get squiggly because they're now bending to these narratives, then you start to feel like, if I'm going to do this reporting, that's going to be under attack by these powerful people and the bosses are going to get squiggly, then how can I do it? And it got that way at CBS about Benghazi. Well, that was a situation where Benghazi happened, that terror attack happened

at our embassy right before the 2012 presidential contest. And Barack Obama had been saying, you know, what progress he'd made in the Middle East and how his policy was working. And it doesn't really advance that narrative to but Susan Rice was out there. It was all about the video. Hillary Clinton, it was about the video. And it was a premeditated terror attack that they kept misleading us on. And the White House had its hands directly in it, despite their denials that they had anything to do with the messaging. It was really controversial and it didn't help President Obama, which showed why many in the press wouldn't report on it at all and then needed to dismiss diminish anybody whether it was katherine harridge at fox news or you um with a contrary narrative and good for cbs back then for standing by you and cbs

i don't my own impression being outside you know that ecosystem now is that CBS is not as bad as NBC and certainly not as bad as CNN. But I don't know. I don't know how it is today more recently. What are your thoughts? More recently, I can't say. But when I was there, it was for most of my 20 years, I think it was probably better than, as you say, what we saw going on at NBC. Although all the networks, there was a time until the early 2000s, we were all doing the same kind of good reporting and competing for these stories. That changed in the mid-2000s, and I quit in 2014.

It just got to be outrageous. But CBS, even when I left, there were still a lot of middle managers and some of the sort of toppish managers who wanted this kind of reporting. They just couldn't win the fight with the few people that got to be influential. There were some upper management changes around this time period before I left that sealed the deal. I remember I had a set of really three excellent bosses in terms of being able to do investigative reporting that was unfettered where they didn't tell me what to do. And they just loved any good investigative story regardless of who it went after. And I remember saying to my husband when they were putting all these on TV, he's like,

I'm surprised to let you do that sometimes, this reporting that goes after X, Y, or Z interest. And I said, well, I'm good as long as all three of these bosses don't all get fired at one time. And what's the likelihood of that ever happening? Well, all three of those bosses left at, were, you know, moved at about one time. And that's when I saw really the biggest change in their replacements just had some people in there that were able to change how we did news at CBS. And I wasn't the only one complaining. There were a lot of, about the time I was trying to quit, I tried to quit a year before I actually quit. And I was told by Jeff Fager, who I really like, he was chairman of the board at CBS

at the time. And he told me, look, I know we have a lot of problems. I didn't even tell him why I was trying to quit. I just didn't come in one day. I had taken all my stuff out. I didn't tell my agent, Richard, because I thought he'd try to convince me not to. And I just said, tell him I'm not coming back. There's just, things have changed too much in our industry and I'm just not going to

do this. And Jeff Fager told me, you're not the only one. There's so many veterans who've complained. I understand we have a problem. I'm trying to fix it. It wasn't just me. It's just, I think I'm really one of the only ones that was in a position to and able to walk away. Who can walk away when you've got kids in college and bills to pay from these really lucrative jobs? And I knew, at least I thought, who else is going to hire me? I had to be able to walk away and know I was walking away from our industry, at least in my mind, because if I leave and write books and talk about these problems, who's going to hire me? Can you just give me the timeline on yours at CNN and yours at CBS and then when you left? I was at CNN from 90 to 93 when it was a really good news organization during Gulf War I.

I went to CBS in the 93 or so, worked out of CBS New York for a while, then got assigned to CBS in DC. And I worked there from in DC 95 until I quit in 2014. So I worked there 20 years, 94 to 2014. And what, I mean, what finally broke the camel's back? What was the last straw in leaving? I think the last straw was the Dreamliner fire, the Dreamliner fire story, if you want to hear it. And this has a Fox News tie. CBS assigned me to cover the Dreamliner fires, look into them. I broke what was probably a

really landmark story about it with a whistleblower that proved some important things that a National Transportation Safety Board official, the former head, said was the smoking gun. It got approved all the way up the line, legally approved, producers loved it. It never aired. And it never aired in my view because some powerful interest, and I can only assume it's Boeing, managed to step in and kill the story. And it was such an important story. There was no reason not to air it. And I wonder to this day, if we would have been able to prevent some of this latest Boeing problem with their plane that happened, that had some of these, this latest Boeing problem with their, with their plane that happened that had some of the same complaints and similarities that I would have unearthed with the Dreamliner, but the story never aired. But when I, when they killed that story, I said to my bureau chief,

Chris Isham, and he said, oh, that's, this is a damn shame. You know, I said, I don't see finishing out my contract under these circumstances. It was just the latest in a string of things, but this was a really important one. And he said, I know, like he understood. So when I did, I cleaned out my, I took maybe six to eight weeks, cleaned out my office, got my husband on board with the idea of me leaving my job, yada, yada. When I went in to quit, CBS tried to make me stay and kind of bullied me and to not tried to bully me into not quitting. In other words, instead of locking me out of my office,

they were trying to lock me in. As my husband said, it was kind of funny, but as part of this attack on me for wanting to leave and trying to convince me to stay, David Rose was in charge of the news division at the time, and he had come from Fox News. I don't know if he was there when you were there. Yeah, yeah. I know David. So I get ambushed as I go for, they're like, okay, we'll let you out of your contract if you just come back for an exit interview. So I came in and I got ambushed by a business affairs guy who'd flown down from New York and the bureau chief. And they started asking me why I wanted to leave. They didn't understand I was so upset and I was very well

respected and why can't I stay? But as part of this conversation, they said, you know, David Rhodes still has contacts at Fox News where he used to work. I said, so? He said, well, David Rhodes knows that when the Dreamliner story got killed, you gave it to Fox News. And my head starts spinning. I didn't know anybody at Fox News. I'd been on O'Reilly's show a couple of times as arranged by David Rhodes. I didn't even have O'Reilly's phone number or email. I didn't know anybody at Fox News. And they're accusing me of giving the killed story to Fox. Totally false. I ended up getting a lawyer and challenging them. They're accusing me of giving the killed story to Fox. Totally false. I ended up getting a lawyer and challenging them.

They're like, we're not accusing you of anything. You know, we just want you to stay. I said, oh, you accused me of something. Yes, you did. So I wrote about this in the newest book, Slanted. And it's just really sick. And I kind of, my attorney tried to make them investigate where that tale came from, because in the end they said, oh, nevermind. You know, we recognize it was a mistake. I said, no, I want to find out how this accusation, this false accusation got made. Who told David Rhodes

that supposedly? And how did that get mentioned to me at my exit interview? Anyway, long story short, after all of this nightmare, and they're still trying to force me to stay, Jeff Fager, again, tip top of the news division who hadn't really been involved in this, calls me and says, can you fly up? And I flew up to see him and he says, listen, I don't know what all these conversations have gone on. I don't know what's been going on, but can I not get you to stay? I'm trying to fix things. And I said, well, how long? And he said, if you give me six months and I haven't greatly fixed a lot of the problems and you still want to get out of your contract, we'll talk about letting you go. So I stayed another year just because I was weary of trying to get out of the contract. I was walking away with nothing. I didn't ask for severance. I was just walking away. But it was such a miserable, horrible experience.

One conversation before this, David Rose had told my agent or my attorney, they'd let me out of my contract if I signed something that agreed anytime I mentioned CBS News the rest of my life in any context, I'd have to pay them $100,000. And they were just saying ridiculous, ridiculous stuff. Even non-derogatory mentions? Right. Like if I were teaching a class at University of Florida and said, I used to work at CBS News, I'd have to pay them $100,000. Wow. I mean, they all try to get you to sign non-disparagements. And Fox News tried to get

me to sign a non-disparagement when I left on very good terms, and I wouldn't. Just because I wasn't planning on disparaging them, but I'm, I was definitely planning on just telling the truth about them. And we've been fine. You know, they, they haven't given me a hard time. I've said some unkind things about them that are true and some kind things about them and that are true. And, and they've been grownups about it. They understand what, I mean, of course the lawyers are always going to try to get you to waive your rights, but I wouldn't. And then, um, I'll just leave what happened at my next employer up to people's imagination. But I've never heard anything like that.

I've never heard anything like that. Well, my attorney was like, that's just crazy. Nobody would ever, he's not even saying rational things. No one's ever discussed anything like that or had any kind of severance like that. And I didn't sign a non-disparagement either. And I was told they will never, never, never let you out of your contract without you signing a non-disparagement. And see, disparagement, part of the problem with that is it's in the eye of the beholder. What is disparagement? They could just say anything you say the rest of your life is disparagement. So I said, I'm never, never, never going to sign one of those things. And they can't make me if I'm not asking for things. If I'm asking for

money, if they're going to pay me a departure fee, that's one thing, but I didn't want to pay. And we ended up like you, we parted on good terms in the end. I got a very nice note from Jeff Fager the day that I quit, you know, my last day. And I'm still on good terms with him. And, you know, it was not it was not a horribly unpleasant thing by the time I left. I was just very glad to get out and not feel like I was being forced. So many of my stories were killed. The last year I was there, I actually got like, I think, four or five Emmy nominations

and two Emmy awards. I had a good year. I got a lot of news on, but a lot of really important stories that people don't know about never made and were killed. And that's what was just making me really suffer. So what's it? Does your, do you have, does your husband have a good job? I mean, why were you able to walk away? Well, my husband's retired, but we just have one daughter. She was finishing college. You know, we manage our money wisely. And he and I, he didn't want me to leave, by the way. He's like, why can't you just go there and do nothing? Because they would have been happy

if I didn't come in every day and done nothing, honestly. And I said, it's just, it's like, it's not in my DNA. Like most people who enjoy their jobs don't want to go to work and do nothing. That's torture. But we talked about we would have to, at some point, lower our standard of living, which is fine. I'm okay with all of that. I had to get him to be okay with it, too. But we've been smart with the money we've earned because I know I'm super lucky to be in this business.

And I know the money doesn't last forever. They pay you very well, but it's not necessarily for a long time. You're not going to do this when I'm 70, probably. So I don't know. We've made good decisions. And just having the one child that was almost finished with college enabled us to be able to make that decision. But then Sinclair offered me a job.

This is an independent company. And I make more money now than I ever did. So, you know, it wasn't quite pride. I just lucked out. So we're doing okay. Well, also because cream rises to the top. It just does. I keep seeing this, you know, as whatever.

Matt Taibbi, as he created his own column on Substack and sort of walked away. And Glenn Greenwald is doing the same now. And Barry Weiss left the New York Times. All these people either are doing better than they were or are about to. And you can see it very, very clearly. I mean, I would say even in my own case, I'm not getting paid more in this job than I was in my last job, just because I had reached the very, very top of the cable news and news industry in terms of broadcast.

But I don't give a shit. I have never been motivated by the money. I walked away from a very, very lucrative law job for a job that paid 17 grand a year on TV. I don't care. What I care about is my own editorial freedom and be my ethical compass. And I hear the same in you. It doesn't always work out between you and the press, the way people portray

you and so on. And you don't always have universal friendships, right? You can wind up making some enemies along the way if you pursue those goals, but you can sleep at night. You can look at yourself in the mirror and you can look at your children and know, you know, you did what you thought was right. More with Cheryl in a moment. We're going to get into the Me Too movement and what the media did in the course of that and whether it jumped the shark, right? Whether it is still viable post Kavanaugh, post Tara Reid and Biden, which is an interesting exchange. But first, before we get to that, let's talk coffee, black rifle coffee in particular. This is a company that is veteran owned. It's been serving premium coffee to people who love America for years.

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Evan would cheers his coffee mug with his team leader before heading out on patrols. And great coffee does have a way of grounding us no matter where we are. For Evan, it reminds him of cold mornings hunting in the Idaho mountains. Wherever you are, it is part of your morning, right? It's just warm and it's a treat

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Go to blackriflecoffee.com slash MK today and check out the best coffee in America. It really is delicious. America's Coffee makes your holiday shopping easy with personalized bundles, gifted subscriptions to the coffee club, gift cards, and a whole lot of premium coffee, apparel, and gear. Make your holidays better with Black Rifle Coffee. That's blackriflecoffee.com slash MK to get 20% off coffee, apparel, and gear, as well as 20% off your first month of the coffee club. And we're going to get right back to Cheryl, but first we're going to bring you a feature we do on the show called Asked and Answered, where our executive producer, Steve Krakauer, comes in with the asked half of the equation. Hey, Steve.

Hey, Megan. Yes, we are getting lots of great questions that are coming in at questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. But we are also compiling questions that come in from our social media accounts. So at Megyn Kelly Show, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, we're also getting your questions there. So if you have a question, ask them, follow us on all the social media platforms. This one came from Instagram, thought it was a good one. How can we keep our children sane in this insane world? Well, don't let them watch the news. That's for sure. I almost never let my kids watch the news. I don't trust it. I think it's going to like they've gotten too quick to report awful stories without an appreciation for who might be watching.

You know, it's like, it's the way I feel when I'm sort of sometimes surfing the net. I love Jonathan Turley. He's a legal commentator and I love his blog, JonathanTurley.org. But one thing I don't like about Jonathan Turley's blog, this is just one example, is he's an animal lover. So he's constantly posting stories about animal cruelty and there's no warning. So you hear, you've read the hide cruelty and there's no warning to hear you. You've read the hideous thing that's been done to somebody or something without willingly taking in that information and you can't unsee it. You know, your mind brings you there and you don't want it and it's jarring. And the news media does the same. I mean, they're very loosely talk about

school shootings and massive deaths and crime attacks,, murders and so on in a way that is not sensitive to children. And I just I don't want my kids watching the news. I also think in this time of COVID, this is my own personal judgment. Every parent makes a different decision and that's fine. But for me, we have played COVID way down with our kids. You know, in no way were we like it's a pandemic and, you know, people are dying and, you know, hand sanitize, hand sanitize and wash your hands. We've been like, look, it's not good. It's a virus.

They're going to come up with a cure. And for now, we've got to do our part to keep people safe. But we're good. We're all together. And, you know, just wash your hands and do the hand sanitizer before you, you know, whatever, go into this group and you'll be fine. And that's as much as we've telegraphed, because I do believe kids really pick up on your attitude. And you know this, don't you?

You know, like somebody hysterical in your neighborhood or in your school and their kids are super nervous and you can see they're turning into little neurotics. What? Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So don't be a tree like that, right? Like you gotta be calm. And unless you're a really great actor or actress, you have to actually be calm, right?

So like if you find yourself being that person, try not to be, try to calm yourself down. And the same thing, to be honest, about like school shootings, I hate to even talk about them out loud, but we don thing, to be honest about like school shootings, I hate to even talk about them out loud. Um, but we don't talk to our kids about those. I don't, I don't think there's any reason for them to spend time thinking about them. God forbid something were to happen. Uh, the school would do what it could to take care of all the children. But I just think letting those kinds

of news stories, rent space in your kids' heads is very damaging for them. And I just think letting those kinds of news stories rent space in your kids' heads is very damaging for them. And I just don't think there's any reason to keep putting all that bad information in there. They have to worry about bullying. They have to worry about crossing the street safely. There's a lot they actually do need to worry about. And I actually don't think these things are so much on the list.

So I think the more you can project you are safe and you are well, and this is not a world full of bad things trying to get you. In fact, it's a wonderful world that offers lots of soft spaces to fall. And when you encounter difficulty, mom will help. Dad will help. God will help. Uh, the better off you and your children will be. Uh, so as Steve said, questions, plural, at devilmaycaremedia.com if you want to participate. Or what are our Twitter handles again? I do go to our Twitter account, Steve.

It's the at the Megyn Kelly show, right? Yeah, at Megyn Kelly show on all platforms. No V, no need for the V. But yes, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all social media platforms, at Megyn Kelly show. Well, and what's uh all social media platforms at megan kelly show well and what's nice about social media where i do go sometimes for the show is i can respond to you if you make a comment on the apple reviews which i do like i am still reading them but i can't

respond so many times i want to respond you know to something like someone's like screw you i'm like screw you too no that's not what happens It's actually quite lovely. And I want to respond nicely, but I can't. In fact, I was asking my team, isn't there a way I can do it? Like, whatever. I don't have to put my real email in there. Is it going to show up? But apparently they don't allow it. I don't know.

You can't do it. Go to Insta or go to Twitter or Facebook and we can chat there. By the way, shout out to Instagram and Facebook because the comments we get there are so much nicer and more substantive than we get on Twitter, I will say. And I'm a big Twitter addict. And so I'm not, you know, I'm, you know, I don't take my advice on it. But, but yeah, Instagram and Facebook have been getting some great comments there. So thank you like the middle school bullies. That's where you go. The middle school bullies wind up living on Twitter. And for some reason, we've chosen to immerse ourselves in their presence forever. But Instagram and Facebook are much nicer. And actually, you can you can say more. So anyway, we'd love to hear from you guys there or anywhere. And now back to Cheryl. I think what you're saying is coming more to light, not just media bias. Everybody knows about that, but legacy media caving to pressure, elite pressure from the outside, not to cover a major story. And this year's biggest example was the ABC reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, which, you know, I got really interested in that because, A, I've been following the Epstein case like everybody. level at ABC was in the control room when Amy Robach went off about how ABC had killed her reporting that she had this story five years ago. She had everybody. She had Virginia Roberts, who was the chief complainant against Epstein and the woman who really brought him down. She had it on camera and ABC wouldn't let her report it. And and somebody told little Ashley

Bianco, who is really, you know, with respect to her, just a minion to mark the tape in the system because somebody behind the scenes knew it was quite a moment. And frankly, as talent, you tell me what you think. I think Amy Robach knew 100% what she was doing. We all do when we have a mic on. And I think she was laying the foundation for somebody to do what somebody at BC wound up doing. Anyway, someone other than Ashley wound up leaking the tape. And PS, Ashley, by that point had moved to CBS. She admitted she had marked it, but that she hadn't been the one who released it. And they fired her ass anyway, which was totally wrong. Anyway, that whole thing shined a light on how it works. Why

did the Epstein story get killed? When you got a guy who appears to be a serial predator, very young women, if not underaged women, stories involving Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton at a time when his wife was running for president. I mean, it's just as plain as the nose on your face if you care to see the truth. Well, I address that in a chapter I think I called or subtitled When Narratives Collide, because this is sort of a Me Too narrative. The original story is something the press should have loved. But on the other hand, it fought other narratives. They did not want to, for whatever reason, go after certain powerful interests. What do you do when a narrative you should like collides with something else you don't really want to report?

And I think the hallmark fingerprints of how this all works is in the fact that when this came to light, people, instead of being outraged, so outraged that the story was killed. I mean, some were, but the dominant narrative became how it was leaked and how this wasn know, this, this wasn't true. It was just, wasn't a good story in the beginning. It just didn't have all the verification they needed. I mean, that's just, when you see them go after whoever they are, the reporter or the producer that they said leaked, and they act like that's the bigger transgression than the thing, you know, the actual thing that the person blew the whistle on, you know, that people are pushing something and they're pushing a narrative and that there's these other interests pulling strings. It was so crazy. And the real leaker actually came out to James O'Keefe and said, without identifying him or herself, I am the leaker. And this is BS,

what they're doing to Ashley. She didn't have anything to do with it. You know, she marked the tape in the system because somebody told her to, but I'm the one who put it out there. And this person's terrified to identify because of course they're going to get fired if they do. And they still let her twist. And, and this girl, as far as I know, has not gotten another job, but I think she's suing them. So smart, get the lawyers involved.

That's what I would have done too. Um, what do you think about, you know, you talk about when narratives collide the me too movement and what happened to Brett Kavanaugh? Cause I know you, you covered this and we have similar feelings. Obviously I have a different sort of role in the me too movement, which I have no problem with. Um, but when I saw what happened to Brett Kavanaugh, my stomach turned. I thought it was disgusting. I thought it was predictable.

But I thought that the people, the press that were promoting people like Julie Swetnick killed the Me Too movement. They killed it because they were putting out these false accusers. So they were obviously false accusers and yelling at all of us that we had to believe all women or we weren't in support of women.

And it was obviously political. And the press pushed it. They published those claims without any reservations, right? Without any reservations. Well, and they did it because it served the interest that the press was serving, wanted this stuff out, regardless of what it was doing at the time then to the movement. Because I agree with you, when you start putting false accusations or uncorroborated accusations out there and giving them such credence, it hurts everybody. It hurts the true accusations. But think about the lack of verification and, in fact, the contradictory information that the press had or could have had if they had lifted a finger to even ask certain questions and how they went to town on this man versus what they expect in an allegation against Trump, which is, you know, anything.

I guess it's on the same. I'm arguing the same side. Almost nothing is expected in terms of verification if it's against the right people. And in this case, it's Kavanaugh. It's also against Trump. But if you look at it the other way, no accusation is good enough if it's against the wrong person. Let's say Biden. It doesn't matter what verification you have or witnesses or background or data. they say none of that's good enough. So exactly. That's when the narratives collided when Tara Reid came forward. Right. Right. Well, that's when the narratives collided when Tara Reid came forward and suddenly believe all women was what, what woman, what, well, it depends. I don't know. It's situational. Some women lie, which those of us who are fair had been saying all along, we don't get a truth-telling gene with our ovaries. We're human. We can lie just like men can. And there've been many examples where women do. I think in most cases, women alleging sexual assault or harassment are

truth-tellers, but certainly not in all., their principles were exposed when we got to the Joe Biden case and compare what they did to Tara Reid versus what they did to Christine Blasey Ford, who wound up on the cover of Time magazine. Well, I did a chapter on Me Too being weaponized. It's this very theme that in the environment in which I agree with you, most women in general probably aren't making up accusations. But because of that, dishonest women have learned in this environment, they can come forward and make up accusations and they'll get traction. And I profiled, as I call the weaponization of the Me Too movement, what happened to Jeff Fager, again, talking about CBS and that dust up over all of their sexual harassment claims and

sexual abuse claims and how he got swept in, in my view and in the view of some others at CBS who spoke to me, because it was a good opportunity to get him for other reasons to kind of sweep him up in these charges that were not true and that were widely reported. And I talk about a man named Trevor Fitzgibbon, who was falsely accused of rape, for God's sake. He was operating a liberal PR firm, used to work at Media Matters, by the way, but an honest guy, true believer. And he was a Bernie Sanders supporter, represented Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and some other characters who are controversial among the left who aren't quite sure what to do with those people. And because of that, he theorizes perhaps this is why he was targeted with a smear campaign involving Me Too that destroyed his company,

destroyed his life, again, got accused of false rape accusations that were later disproven and dropped. And of course, he of course he was cleared and the victim he sued, the alleged victim he sued and she had to apologize, but his life's destroyed. And I talk about that kind of how that came down in one of the chapters. That's a, you know, again, the media not doing its job took the ball and takes the ball in some of these cases,

because it's on point with whatever someone's trying to push and attacks and vilifies and ruins people without proper evidence and then moves on to the next thing. And there's never any repercussions for that. Well, what about on Fager? And I don't, I don't know the facts on Fager. I re what I remember is there was a story brewing about him. They were looking into it. And then he sent a threatening email to a correspondent there. Jerrica. I just remember her coming out. She read it on the air and it was definitely an inappropriate email. He was basically like Jerrica Duncan said that she was.

He basically said others who have reported on me, uh, something like have lived to regret it. And I'd be very careful if I were you, unless you make this all your own reporting. And it was clearly a threat coming from a guy in that position. And that's why CBS said it fired him. Not because of the me too allegations. Right. But if you look, if you Google his name, he's now listed falsely among a group of predators. He's listed with Jeffrey Epstein. If you Google like, I don't know, me too predators, his name is in there. And that was the, you know, I'm not defending and he doesn't defend writing the text messages that got him fired, that appeared threatening to that reporter. So that's a separate issue. But just because someone

does that, um, doesn't mean they're a sexual predator, which is an entirely different thing to destroy someone's life and act as though they're a sexual predator. And what he was upset about was he had falsely been wrapped up in claims, a lot of different claims about kind of boss he was, but I thought the most damaging ones were he was never accused of any kind of sexual assault. And there was like one anonymous claim of patting a girl on the butt, like welcome to 60 Minutes. That was it. And again, I'm not saying that's appropriate. Well, there was some, I mean, listen, I don't want to disparage Jeff because I haven't done my own independent reporting on it, but I remember reading a report in The Washington Post by the reporters who were looking into Fager saying something like that he had said to a young producer or something like, go ahead and grab my crotch. I'm hung like a horse. remember whether they actually reported that because they reported that allegation in a story

about how their reporting had been stifled. That's what they were saying. So with respect to Fager, I assume he would deny this. I assume he would say it's not true. But I think it was more than just, you know, a passing benign comment that they were working on in the story against him. Well, people can read the chapter and make of it what you will. I guess my point is, and I made the same point with the Trevor Fitzgibbon case, and some people may not like this point. Trevor Fitzgibbon, the PR man I mentioned, he acknowledges he was inappropriate with female colleagues, but he didn't rape anybody. One is an offense that could get you fired or get you human resources counseling. Another is something that could get you prosecuted and put in prison. And as bad as

people may think one thing is, to mix one or conflate one with the other, which is what happens too often and is easy to do in this environment, is a very damaging and dangerous thing. And that's what's happening to some people where it's very easy to lob a criminal accusation against somebody. And the press, because of these other accusations floating around about inappropriate behavior, it all gets conflated and reported and repeated. And before you know it, you know, you're destroyed as a predator, as a rapist, when you were never accused of that, you know, in Fager's case. Well, of course, in the case of Me Too, in the case of what we're seeing right now with this

sort of woke war on anybody who says something perceived by some unknown gods to be racially insensitive or insensitive to trans people. You know, you could go down the list. We're seeing similar things, which is, of course, it depends on who's being accused, how interested the media is. And I don't just mean fame. It doesn't matter degree of fame. I'm talking about politics. You know, there was a lawsuit filed against some people at Fox, including in passing Tucker Carlson, saying Tucker had allegedly asked this frequently appearing guest on the show to come back to his hotel room. Then Tucker comes out with evidence that the night that she's listed in her complaint, he was with his wife. It was the night of his Christmas party or it was something he had proof that he couldn't have done it and wouldn't have done it. The media reported about this like he was Harvey Weinstein. And then you look at Don Lemon over at CNN, who has a person in a bar who says Don Lemon shoved his hands down the front of his pants and his underwear, rubbed his own genitals and then rubbed this guy's face in a bar in front of other people

and produced a bartender who says, I was an eyewitness to it. I'm embarrassed because I wound up giving the guy it happened to a hard time kind of joking with him like, Hey, look what happened to you. And didn't realize how traumatic this was to this guy. Don Lemon denies it. Same as, you know, Tucker denied his too. No one's even read about it. No one has any interest in it, even though this guy has an eyewitness who's come forward on the record. Like, I'm not saying either one is true or untrue. I'm saying the difference in approach by the media is telling of a bias based on politics.

Politics. Well, you sound like me. So I call it the substitution game. When you see someone treated entirely differently, depending on who they are, what they believe, or who wants to attack them versus similar behavior, even worse behavior by somebody else that they want to protect. That's the tell. And I think people at home, they play that game all the time in their head. They see that kind of reporting and it drives them crazy. Look at, look, just, just recently, uh, the, the younger sister to Miley Cyrus, her name is Noah Cyrus, and she's a successful singer too, called Candace Owens. I don't even know if I can repeat this. Um, she, she used the same term that Don Imus used about black female

basketball players that got him fired. The exact same term about the hair and the alleged whatever. She said it. And there's a couple of news articles about it. And then she came out and said, oh, I'm mortified that I used a term without knowing its context and its history. Thank you for educating me. I'll never use it again. Now, there's no context in which what she said against Candace Owens could be ambiguous or not understood. None. And Candace came out with saying liberals are OK with racism as long as it's directed at someone they don't like. She's got a point. It's not an I mean, I've watched this as a reporter share called Sarah Palin, the C word. No one cared. Melania Trump. She's been called a hooker, a ho bag by politicians. The New York

Times referred to her as a mannequin. No, no problem. Mika Brzezinski called Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, a wannabe dictator's butt boy. OK, not to mention what Joy Reid has said about gays and lesbians on her blog that she falsely claimed was hacked. All of it's fine. Why? Because you're going after conservatives. That's why you get a pass on sexism and racism and homophobia, just as long as the target is right of center. Yeah, I think that's true. You know, that's, again, when narratives are colliding. So they want, on the one hand, the narrative of, yes, let's listen to and protect women, as should be. But then that collides with who it's against and who it's not against. And then that determines how they cover and how much credence it gives. It's not consistent. What do you think of Ronan Farrow? I have yet to see his in-depth article with Tara Reid, but I believe he was speaking to her at least for a time. So, you know, perhaps Ronan did not believe Tara Reid.

I don't know. But what do you think of his reporting? I read his original article about CBS and I thought it was quite good other than mixing Jeff Fager in with the mix when they were completely different allegations and kind of, again, bringing him up in a way it looked like Fager could be attacked. And I talk in the book more about why I think that is. I thought it was quite a good article in terms of it was fair. It was research. It's an article that if it had been, if someone had wanted to not publish it, they would have said it didn't have enough, you know, but I thought there was firsthand. He had interviewed at 60 Minutes prior to this. And Fager had taken a pass on meeting with Ronan

because he didn't think Ronan was ready. And he didn't want to lead people on. Sometimes at CBS, if they want to hire somebody, they dangle, hey, you'll be able to maybe contribute to 60 Minutes. And Fager didn't like that and said, I really don't like that being dangled out there by people who have no shot really at contributing. And he didn't think Ronan was ready. So I don't know. I thought that was an interesting backdrop to the whole story that came out some months later.

Should Ronan have disclosed that? If this is true, should he have said somewhere in the piece, by the way, I tried to get a job with the people I'm reporting on and, you know, didn't get hired? I don't know. I think that's arguable. I think, you know, Ronan, his reporting at times has been flawed. There's no question about that. He's definitely gone with things, including in Kavanaugh, that he could not support, that I think he would not have reported if the target had been of a different political background. But I'll also say this about Ronan. It took somebody like that who was a bit of a cowboy, a journalistic cowboy, to really get the Me Too movement started

to go after and bring down a guy like Harvey Weinstein because everyone else was too scared. And he wasn't scared. He and Rich McHugh, who I really, really respect, his producer who hasn't gotten enough credit for his role. He's the guy who quit NBC and Disgust after they killed that story. And he hasn't gotten the Pulitzer Prize like Ronan has. He hasn't really gotten much of anything.

And he's really still looking for a job, but he was just as brave. But these guys, despite being told no, no, no, they stayed on it. And it did take somebody who was a little bit, you could say reckless if you were a detractor. I think it did require a certain amount of courage and a little bit of editorial laxity at times, but they got the story. And man, they had the Harvey story right. They certainly did. Yeah. Where do we go from here, Cheryl?

Because I think a lot of people are as equally disgusted with the media as you and I are, but don't know what to do. Right? Don't know. Don't you get asked this all the time? Like, where do I go for unbiased news? Well, I have probably a similar experience that you have. Maybe every week or two, I get called by the following, either an investor who's not someone who's trying to make money, but wants to know where to put his money to try to fund something that's fair, to try to stop this censorship.

And not just the news, but you go online and they don't want you to see certain peer-reviewed published studies because these corporate and political interests have been able to pull strings with Google and Twitter and Facebook, viewpoints they don't want you to see. So there are smart investors who are looking for, where can I put money to fund something that's independent, that's more like makes the internet freer access to information, that makes the news available to report factually without being deplatformed. And there are two other categories. There are journalists who want to do it. I get called every probably couple of weeks by journalists with an idea. They're trying to work on the problem.

And technical people like the former co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, who parted with Wikipedia because it's become, as you know, just wholly furthering agendas in many instances and smearing and so on by these agenda editors co-opted by all these PR firms and special interests. They're all looking for how can we report news and information and various viewpoints and scientific studies in a factual way and in a fair way and an open way and not be deplatformed. And if they controversialize the people doing it, how can we make it where it doesn't matter? People can still find them.

And they're working on all kinds of technical possibilities. One of them, and I don't fully understand any of them, one of them involves blockchain technology. In the interim, it involves doing things more like blogging on a website that's much harder to take down than somebody who's relying on YouTube for their YouTube channel, which is easy to take down. So who's relying on YouTube for their YouTube channel, which is easy to take down. So there's people working on the problems. And I think in the next four years, we'll have something new that comes of this. I don't know what form it takes, but in the meantime, we're just sort of stuck doing our own research, people who aren't in the news. How do they have the time to watch original sourcing, which is what I recommend? And how do they have time to hunt around?

You know, it's a tough place. I recommend the last chapter in Slanted, some off-narrative news sources. And I can't even say they're down the middle nonpartisan because there are a few in there. But there's so few of those that I'm actually recommending some conservative and some liberal places that you can go for certain stories. And Glenn Greenwald's one of them. Unfortunately, when I published the book, he was with The Intercept, his own news organization. I don't know if your listeners know what you said, but that he left his own news organization, The Intercept, which he started so it would be off narrative because they wouldn't let him publish an honest story on Joe Biden. But anyway, he's someone who, when you're talking about what's happened in the media, left meets right, and he's great on this topic. So I have some recommendations of where people can go on certain thing. Even five years ago, there weren't very many meaningful platforms if you wanted to leave cable, broadcast news, or the big papers, the big print reporters, reporting outlets. you know, from Patreon to Substack to podcasting. There's Sinclair, which is obviously right leaning, but is giving voice to more people who are pushing back on these mainstream narratives

who previously only had one place they could go, which was Fox. I think it's great. That's good. You know, more diversity in the mix is better and not, and I'm talking about ideological diversity, which people, you know, people who are lecturing us about diversity all the time always forget. How do you think how do things change, if at all, now that it appears Trump will be moving on from the presidency? I talked to some smart people about what they think is coming. And of course, CNN has to somehow redefine itself. And as you said, it may come in a sale with new ownership. Someone in the book who knows Zucker predicted that after Trump, Zucker will sail off into the sunset with his money and leaves CNN to flounder and figure out

what it's going to do next. That may indeed happen. But us as a news industry, I don't see the problems we've talked about at the news organizations we've talked about changing because their goal has been transformed. What would make them want to go back to doing normal news when, if my theory is true, and I think I make a pretty good case for it, if they have been turned into narrative machines by certain interests that still will have interests they want furthered, they're not going to go back to what we thought of as news. But I think what will happen is there will be so more of the same, but there will be other outlets and other platforms that arise where people can go for unbiased or less biased information or off-narrative reporting.

I don't think Joe Biden will get a pass. I mean, I'd be interested to hear what you think about this. He'll get a pass in many respects, like we saw during the campaign. But within the left, just like within the right, there are conflicting views and agendas, and he's going to probably get attacked by the press and those interested parties that control the press when he's off their narrative on key important topics. I think whenever you see the left, the New York Times and CNN and so on, attack Joe Biden for something or criticize him, it's because someone else or a more powerful corporate or political interest on the left wants that done. And I think you will see some of that. Oh, definitely. He's going to get it from the left flank and those who support it. The Bernie supporters don't like him. And so there will be more of a division in some of the press,

but the mainstream, the New York Times, CNN, all the broadcast networks, not to mention MSNBC, which doesn't really represent the Bernie wing, they're going to go after him. I mean, they're not going to go after him. They're going to defend him. And Fox News, of course, less than that of the mainstream because they were necessary. They were an antidote to what was uniformly left-wing press, and somebody had to represent the other side. And I feel like, thank God for Fox News for doing that because half of the country had no one for most of our television history representing their point of view. And now at least we have that. And there's no question Fox is not objective and right down the middle, but my opinion is they're a lot closer to it than anything I see on those left-wing platforms. I have two things to say about that, and I agree with you. It's odd that there are left-wing outlets that no one,

the same people don't criticize for being politically left or opinionated. And they always point to Fox as if Fox is the anomaly because this exposes their bias. The default position is that left-wing is normal and good and doesn't get called out. And when you work at CBS and PBS and CNN, as I did with liberal billionaire activists, donors running the news division or owning the company, nobody blinks. Everybody thinks that's good. And nobody says, well, your news is tainted because of all the left wing, left leaning liberals. But if it's Sinclair, which is owned by a right leaning family, but doesn't get at all involved in the editorial content of my program, unlike everywhere else I've worked. And yet that's

constantly by other journalists attacked with a presumption that makes me realize they don't understand that the one-sided application of the question they ask about what's it like to work at a place where there's a conservative, you a conservative activist or conservative donor that runs it, never got asked that question when I worked most of my career with the tables turned for liberals, billionaire activist donors. And so, yes, I think that it's interesting that the default position is everybody's supposed to be liberal and left and no questions asked. But if you then go work for the equivalent somewhere else, that's considered by the press and critics as somehow off, you know, beyond the pale, but also with Fox. So they were doing just what, filling a gap, as you said, because all the other media organizations were doing,

not doing that or doing the opposite. And so There's no recognition for that. It's just Fox came up and they're treated like a villain for doing what the others were doing on the left. Secondly, I will say that when I watch Fox versus when I watch some of the left-leaning places like CNN and MSNBC and I sample around, Fox will give you both sides. Maybe they'll tell you on their opinion shows or with, with some of their reports, you know how they feel, but you at least know what the other side said. I watched some places or read some articles. They pretend there is no other side. You, you wouldn't know if that's what you watched. You wouldn't know there was debating on a certain

issue because they've left it out. They don't even want that reported. And I think that's a big difference. What do you think, though, about the way they're covering in the way that all the news media is covering Trump's election claims, his contests, you know, the challenges that he's been filing? Because, you know, Fox has been I think they find themselves in a pickle. My my instincts on the outside tell me they don't, they don't believe in the president's claims, but they're trying not to abandon their audience. And that's why you see sort of different anchors popping up. There's of course, always Hannity who's, he defends Trump on everything, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs.

And then there's the straight news anchors who seem to be on a different page message wise. And I I'll tell you just approaching it myself. I just had an argument with my pal, Dan Abrams, who I really like and respect. Um, he's got a show on serious radio and he runs media and some other media entities like long crime network. Anyway, I've always found him to be he's center left, but he's straight. He's a straight shooter. We had an argument on his serious show the other day because he was like, why, was like, why won't you say it's done? Why won't you say Joe Biden's the president elect? And I said, I haven't gone into the court and lookedus. I haven't done my homework. And I think very few people have gone to those lengths. Now, people I trust have people like Andy McCarthy,

he's been doing that and he's a Trump fan and he's telling me publicly, he's telling everyone he doesn't think there's there, there. But and I've been open with the audience that I don't I don't get the sense that these are robust claims. But I'm open-minded. I'm going to watch them play out and trust the system. The reality is the system isn't set up to really handle this amount of voter fraud claims within the time Trump has. And so realistically, I think this thing's going to get – the electoral college is going to meet. The votes are going to be cast before Trump can actually resolve any of these claims. I mean, the remaining ones in court, but what do you think? Well, two things. What's the harm journalistically into the public

of reserving judgment as a unbiased journalist of simply reporting what they're saying. And you can let the analysts come on and the Andy McCarthy's and say what they think. There's no problem with that. But I don't understand when I've seen a lot of straight news reporters who I know, okay, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I haven't read the pleadings, like you said, and done a broad investigation into the claims. And on the very front end, we're saying there was nothing to see. And I think, how does it benefit the public or you?

Because the public wants to trust you, but you look like you have your thumb on the scale. Now they're not going to believe a lot of stuff you say because of that. How is it a benefit not to reserve judgment until it plays out further when there's so much dispute in such a contentious time? Another quick point. We were told in 2016 that Russia and China interfered and or tried to interfere in the election would do it again. We know there were bad domestic actors that took political steps. And in the case of at least one FBI lawyer,

illegal steps to impact the Trump campaign spy illegally on a former Trump campaign associate, Carter Page. We should have and could have been very open to the notion, those who cover elections should have been on the ground in all of these places looking for foreign interference, mischief by the Biden campaign, mischief by the Trump campaign. But instead, it's this double standard when it turned out that it was Trump

who's trying to say there was a problem. After we were told there would be, all of a sudden everybody's like, well, that's crazy. This is the best election ever. What makes you think such a thing? And I have spent some time looking at this stuff. And I'm not a lawyer. You're a lawyer.

So you know a lot more than I do. But I know enough to say that normally if there were criminal fraud claims, and some of these do come from what appear to be credible witnesses and sworn affidavits with some evidence, and some are even admitted, but it's not fraud. It's more of an accident. So it's a question of how big it was. But if there was a criminal voter fraud claim in the past, or if it's something that's important, normally a law enforcement body would get involved. And over the course of, and one of Trump's lawyers made this argument in court in the last few days, over the course of weeks, but probably months or years, they would gather evidence with the help of subpoenas.

They could collect forensic evidence by confiscating machines and conducting examinations and forcing people to take depositions under oath. They can't do any of that. They don't have any law enforcement body that's helping them. So it's sort of like looking at an alleged victim of a murder, let's say someone in their family got murdered, and looking at them the next day and going, we'll prove it. And they don't have the way to go do fiber analysis and to go into private property and confiscate evidence, but you're telling them prove it with no help from law enforcement to help, you know, compel evidence. So I feel like the Trump people are in sort of that predicament where they're pursuing civil cases because they

have no help from law enforcement. They don't have the tools to compel, you know, the testimony and to get the forensic evidence they would need if some of these claims are true, and they have this truncated timeline that's almost impossible. And it kind of makes me wonder if there is fraud in the future, let's put this aside, how would we ever find it, expose it, and prosecute it in the timeframe allotted? I think we're now seeing that that would be a problem. I feel like to some extent, we're dealing with the same problems that we started the interview with, which are bias and laziness. They they don't want to believe that there's any problem with a vote that elected the guy they're supporting Biden. And they're too lazy to go take a hard look at all of these these claims and exhibits and so on because see point number one,

right? There's no motivation to get off their ass and do it, whereas there totally would be. If the situation were reversed and it was Joe Biden claiming this stuff, you don't think the New York Times would have teams of reporters interviewing these witnesses and finding more who could support the claims of fraud, they would be, you know, you and I know they would be. That's, that's the thing that makes me most hesitant to jump on board because as you know, now you're getting shamed even as the reporter, if you don't, if you don't jump on board the New York times narrative of this is all absurd, it's outrageous. And it's an undermining of our democracy. And as I said to Dan the other day, I'm like, your problem is you want me to get upset and

I'm not. I'm just not. You want me to be emotional and I'm not. I'm waiting to see how it plays out. And the hypocrisy of the press and the left on this is glaring at me as I evaluate. Here's the dangerous part of it. So now it's being made because of what you discussed. If the tables were turned, the tables would be turned.

But now you can't even find the information to make an assessment because the press has just dismissed it on the front end. Instead of telling you there is this and that, they simply say without evidence that there's no evidence. Instead of pointing to what evidence exists, they just simply say everything's being lost. There's no evidence. Instead of pointing to what evidence exists, they just simply say everything's being lost, there's no evidence. So I had to hunt for, and I put together a resource at my website of a lot of the claims, a lot of the links, a lot of the depositions, a lot of the affidavits, so that people can at least see it. I mean,

I think they should have access to what the claims are. And instead of being told, you can't see them. if you try to circulate the legal documents, for example, one of the Sidney Powell lawsuits that I tried to circulate on Twitter, it won't circulate like they have prevented it. So they don't want people. I think that's a tell in a way. Is that right, Cheryl? So it's not just the little, are you sure you don't want to read this before you recirculate? So they're not even letting you retweet it. It says it's a link that is bad or malicious and it's not. So I've linked to it on my site and they've put out a note saying it's not, but they put some flag where you can't even

share it on Twitter. So again, that's the tell when they're saying, you don't need to see all this pesky information because they're afraid you might make up your mind and it might be the wrong decision that you make. I say, put it all out there, let people decide for themselves what they want to think about it. Well, that's of course what they did with the Hunter Biden story. And then there was some survey done of people asking if you had known about this story prior to the presidential election, would it have affected your vote? Might you have changed your vote? And a large, large proportion said, yes, yes. What what Hunter Biden story? These were Biden voters who were very interested to know more. Twitter's in on it. Big tech is in on it. And, you know, I don't have it all figured out how they're doing it. I can see

with my eyes the stuff they do on Twitter where they suppress stories or they just won't circulate a report from the New York Post, as the Post kept pointing out, a paper founded by Alexander Hamilton. So I can see those efforts to tamp down news that they don't like. But what worries me is the stuff I can't see. That's true. And they became, in my view, desperate in the weeks before the election because the interests that have convinced big tech to step in the same way these interests influence the news. Big tech didn't want to do this. This started in 2016 after a lobbying effort that guess who? Media Matters' David Brock takes credit for convincing Facebook in 2016 to launch what I call these fake fact checks.

Big Tech didn't want to. They've been pressed by political and corporate interests to do it. And they should have said, you know, we're hands-off information, except that's what's illegal. But they've gone down this slippery slope. And, you know, I think the invisible stuff that they do is more insidious. They got desperate. And we saw it before the election because they saw Trump might get reelected and they worried that he would, but they'd been doing, let's take coronavirus, the partnership we knew about because they announced it, but most of the stuff they

don't announce. Google partners with the World Health Organization to direct your searches to WHO information that proved to be wrong by WHO's own admission. That's the danger. But Google is deciding on the front end whose information you get to see first and how they're going to make it hard to see or discredit information that's contrary that may actually be true. And they're doing this every day, like you say, in invisible ways. If I post a, you know, I get, I'm down throttled on Facebook and Twitter. I don't have

that many followers, probably minuscule compared to you, but let's say a few tens of thousands of followers on Facebook, I'll post something on my professional page and it will say zero people saw it. And on Twitter, same thing, you know, I may get a few thousand impressions, but if I go to Parler where I just signed up the same tweet, same time, we'll get one to two million impressions. You can see what they're doing when you compare it like that, but it's kind of invisible. You just don't show up on people's timeline. Your tweets, it says they've disappeared or they don't exist anymore. It's all of this invisible stuff that they're doing that I think is very insidious. The COVID stuff is infuriating too. And it was so irresponsible and dangerous. You know,

they want to look at people who cast any doubt on the, you know, interminable lockdowns as dangerous and irresponsible. I think their reporting has been dangerous and irresponsible. Their unwillingness to look at the actual costs of these lockdowns and the other lives that it's going to cost and to try to shame anybody with a divergent viewpoint lockdowns and the other lives that it's going to cost and to try to shame anybody with a divergent viewpoint. I mean, that's what today's day and age is all about. Shame anybody with a divergent viewpoint, whether it's on race or gender or COVID. It's no longer just we disagree and I have the better argument.

Now it's you're a bad person. You need to be silenced because your views are dangerous. And meanwhile, you look around your neighborhood. Not only in my case, do I have friends I know who have died of COVID, but I have friends I know whose lives have been ruined by these lockdowns. And you're just told you're not allowed to talk about it. And the press is the one saying it. Well, the scary thing I've talked to quite a few virologists and scientists, including some

who work for the government and some respective in academic doing various studies and aspects of coronavirus research. They disagree with some of these public health official narratives and directives and don't want to say it. And two of them told me separately, they don't want to tell what they see as the truth, or at least a contradiction of what ought to be done for fear, they said, of being labeled a coronavirus doubter and or for fear of appearing to contradict Dr. Fauci. And I said to both of these guys that said that, boy, it's a scary time when scientists won't tell you about science. So we're only going to get one side or one view on something where there are many views because they're afraid of being controversialized by this industry and by these powerful interests.

Yep. We just had the doctors from the Great Barrington Declaration on, and these are three really respected doctors. I think it's Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford saying, yes, keep people safe, but we're going about this all wrong. What we need to be doing is protecting the most vulnerable, the elderly, the immunocompromised, and the rest of us should be out there living our lives. If you feel more comfortable wearing a mask while you do that and socially distancing while you do that, then go right ahead. But they shouldn't be mandatory and there should be no lockdowns. And this is the way forward as we even now, as we wait for the vaccine, that that is what's responsible, given the massive, massive health problems that the lockdowns cause that, again, you're not allowed to report on. Or, you know, if big tech always links back to the WHO, as you point out, they're the ones who are saying masks don't help. Masks do help. Masks, wait,

what? Who am I supposed to believe? And then they act like we're crazy. Oh, why are you questioning? It's like, well, you're the ones that told us two opposite things. So this is what undermines the public trust in its institutions, public health officials and so on. They're the ones creating that. even more exciting if you could find something that was like just straight down the middle on fact reporting, whether it hurt left or right, you know, just actual investigative reporting. But you also do need scientists like that. Like I had Debra So on the show and she's a scientist who studied gender and she removed herself. She kind of got forced out of her industry because they were telling her you're going to get kicked out for writing that there was only two genders and there's only two biological sexes and there's only two genders. And that's that.

And she's respectful of people who don't identify as male or female. But as a scientific matter, she is where she is as a scientist. We need new scientists because this is happening in fields where it's dangerous. And COVID, you know, COVID's the same in that lane. I don't know if there's anybody working like we're working in our lane to create that for the scientists. That's what really scares me. It is scary. I've interviewed the former head of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marsha Angel, who's at Harvard, and a current editor of British Journal, I think it was Lancet, who both say peer-reviewed published

medical journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet and others, have been completely co-opted by pharmaceutical interests and special interests, just like everything else, that it's no longer possible to believe most of what's reported in those journals, which everybody relies on. Your doctors rely on and my doctors rely on. And this is scientists. Again, it's like the news. It used to be that scientific discussion was welcome. But now, just like the news, if you're off the narrative of whatever the pharmaceutical interest that's powerful wants you to have or whoever it may be, political interest, they don't want your view heard at all. How are you ever going to get to the truth with some science? Because it's evolving as we learn more. We would never know, I argue, that cigarettes can

cause lung cancer today if this were the atmosphere back in the 1950s because their view and the industry's view was that it couldn't. And if you try to say that it could, or if you had a study that showed that it did, you would be controversialized and Google would direct your searches away from that study and you would never know they exist. And we, you know, this is this managed news environment we live in now. You're right. It impacts science and everything. I got to ask you about your lawsuit against the federal government before I let you go. Could you just give us the quick 411 on why you sued them and what you were alleging

they did to you? Well, before Edward Snowden, we knew about AP being spied on and James Rosen at Fox News. I had been approached by two separate intel sources I didn't know very well who told me I was likely being monitored because of the reporting that I was doing. And when I said why, they both used similar phrases about the American public would be shocked at the extent to which the Obama administration is spying on ordinary citizens. Long story short, I was able to get an intel contact forensic exam. Nobody else would have been able to find this software and this intrusion. I was able to document a long-term intrusion effort in my CBS computers, and they got into the CBS system, keystroke monitoring, had my passwords. They planted

classified documents in there. CBS conducted an independent exam and found the remote intrusion had occurred and infiltrated the CBS computers. They announced that publicly in 2013. FBI opened a case with me as the victim, but never told me. I only found out about that through a FOIA request that I sued them for sometime later. Found out through a whistleblower that Department of Justice, FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office was all part of it. It was more than one phase. I certainly wasn't the only one they were spying on. Many hundreds of people, if not thousands, in different operations. And because the Department of Justice, even though our forensics are airtight and cannot be refuted that the government did this, the Department of Justice is defending the guilty

agents and getting my cases thrown out on technicalities. And now I have a case in Maryland that the Department of Justice is defending against Rod Rosenstein and others who are involved. And one of the federal agents involved, ex-agents, has admitted it and has said he doesn't want the case dismissed because he's ready to tell the truth. Will it ever get in court? Again, you're a lawyer. You can see how even if you have evidence and someone admitting what they did, if you can't get that before a jury, if they get you on statute of limitations or whatever technicality, and you can never get discovery to get the names of all the

people and all the proof, nothing happens. But I'm just trying to sue DOJ to get accountability because I always argued, starting in 2014, if those people aren't held accountable, why won't they do it again? And I think this is exactly what happened in 2016 to the political campaign, and no reason to think it's not going to continue if people aren't held accountable. What had you been reporting on that you think led to them spying on you? I had done so many stories. It could have been anything. The energy story I mentioned, the other cylinders they were so sensitive about in the Obama administration, Fast and Furious. I had broken a lot of stories on Fast and Furious. They were very't sure, but the forensic analysis did show they were very interested in the Fast and Furious reporting during that time period. They looked at my photos, my work photos and access my work file on that topic.

And then a separate phase of monitoring began when I was covering Benghazi. They had different ways they came into the computer systems and my home systems. So they were doing it over a long period of time. So I think it was primarily Fast and Furious and Benghazi, but I believe these interests were actually watching for whatever I might be reporting on to get a heads up before it came out and to be able to spin it and controversialize it. If they could know, and also who was talking to me, if they could know in advance, they could help take care of it and get on the other side of it publicly before it came out. Not now that people are spying on her. Just remember what happened to James Rosen. The Obama administration was spying on him, trying to find out who his source was on North Korea and what had exchanged between them and his parents. And we know that that has been proven.

It's been admitted in court documents. That is a fact. And so if you don't think they were capable of it, you haven't been paying attention. They were capable of it. And the only question is whether Cheryl can prove it in court. And I know that when the court, when the court of appeals dismissed your, one of your cases, they said it's without prejudice. So you can come back if you get more evidence, which now you say you have. And so that's an active case that's pending where you're going to try to prove it with hopefully the testimony of this person who says they were part of it.

Yes. And we always had a stumbling block because again, the forensics are irrefutable, but we need, the courts wanted us to have the names of all the agents and we need a discovery to find out who had access to these IP address. How are you supposed to know that? So it's a circular loop. They say, because you don't have the names, you can't get discovery. How are you supposed to know that? So they're requiring me to have something I can't possibly get because the alleged perpetrators hold the information and won't give it to me. And we tried discovery. They didn't give us a single piece of paper, nothing, not a single document over the course of the time that we've tried to pursue this. I remember reading that. I will verify your account of what the judge said.

I remember the frustration of like, how is she supposed to do this? You won't give her the name. So how is she supposed to provide the, or get the discovery to prove her case? It's so incredibly frustrating. And to me, it's just been upsetting because I don't want anybody, I don't want to see somebody like you or anybody diminished by the, I mean, who cares what the far left says, you know, but it just is infuriating because you're a stellar reporter. I think most people know that anyway. You've got a five time Emmy Award winner, Murrow Award recipient, all of the things. But just hopefully people who are fair, they know the truth and they're not listening to Mother Jones, which, unlike you, really has an agenda? Well, Media Matters put out some pretty strong, ridiculous stuff that the, again, their partners picked up that was about a computer that said I had a backspace key stuck,

which there is no backspace key on it. It was not the computer involved. It was not a stuck key. They're really, and they'd had nobody examine it, but they put out some computer expert that said it looked like nothing happened to me. And there's a lot of technical stuff about, I don't even want to get into, but if people want to read, it's at my website, CherylAksanick.com. If you look under special investigations and you hear these crazy things being said, it's all discussed there and it's sorted out with the facts and the information. I don't hear too much about that. You have the usual suspects

who want to controversialize me on other stories, bring up that or falsely say that I'm anti-vaccine or falsely say that I had no computer intrusion. And I don't really, maybe I just don't hear much about it, but I don't really get blowback from that in the circles that I circulate. And it certainly hasn't hurt my platform such as it is, you know, with my TV show, Full Measure or anything else that I've done. So I'm, I'm okay with it. But I'm, I'm determined to fight just because it's right, you know, as far as the lawsuit, it's just such a travesty that this is happening to people. It's just like anything, people who are agenda driven and have a reason to want to diminish you

will go with it. And people who are fair minded won't. So it's almost like legally you have every right to fight and you should, but PR wise, there's no point, right? No one is going to be convinced one way or the other, and they don't need to be. Your career is going great. I love watching your reporting and I love what you're doing now. And I've been a big fan for a long time. So thank you and come back when we have more information in the case, because I'm watching and I've been a big fan for a long time. So thank you and come back when we have more information in the case because I'm watching it, I'm interested. It's great.

Well, thank you. It's been fun to finally talk with you in person, which I don't think we'd ever done before, believe it or not. So I really appreciate it. It was a good chat. Today's episode was brought to you in part by Super Beats Soft Chews.

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five stars and do fill out a review. I know I'm asking a lot like comments on Insta or Facebook and then reviews here, but I like reading the reviews and it does make me feel like I know what my audience is thinking, what you want more of, what you enjoy, what you don't. So please, if you feel like you want to do it i would love it and i want to tell you that uh next on the show on monday we're gonna have sam harris so sam harris is incredibly brilliant and i hope i can hang with him intellectually but he's a philosopher he's a podcaster he's an author and he is the guest more than any other we have had suggested to us by our audience that they want to hear from. So I'm looking forward to this, too.

I feel like like most of these shows we learn together and I think probably especially so on Monday. So here we go. Have a great weekend and I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.