The Ricochet Podcast - The News Dudes

Episode Date: November 21, 2014

The week, Troy Senik sits in for Peter Robinson as we wrap up the Cruise, discuss Obama’s immigration overstep, talk about the business of news with journalist and author Sharyl Attkisson (buy her new book Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington), debate Bill Cosby’s future and Jonathan Gruber’s past. Listen up! Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie. But I am not a bully.

I'm the king of the world! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. Troy Sinek is sitting in for Peter Robinson today. I'm James Lilacs. Our guest is Cheryl Atkinson to discuss Benghazi, hacking, and newsroom culture. We'll get around to immigration. Oh, and all this and Gruber, too.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome to this, the Ricochet Podcast, number 239. It's brought to you by foodiedirect.com. Good food fills you up, but great food makes people happy, brings them together. Great food makes any holiday feast or gift even more memorable. Do you want to cook this holiday? Why don't you click instead of cooking and serve award-winning food shipped directly to you whenever you want it from foodiedirect.com just click, ship and enjoy

later in the show we'll tell you how to save $10 off your first order from foodiedirect.com and of course we're brought to you by well, should I say it? don't you know this is the month of Movember apparently that has something to do with beards and if you're growing out an epic handlebar mustache,

you might want some help with the trimming. Well, Harrys.com is the official razor partner of Movember and we'll be there for you the entire Harry or UnHarry month. Use the coupon code RICOSHET at checkout. A little bit more to say about both these friends later in the podcast. But first, we've got to welcome in Rob Long and Troy, who's sitting in for Peter today. Hey, guys. Hey, how are you, James? James, how are you? I'm fine. I feel like I haven't seen you in four podcast. But first, we've got to welcome in Rob Long and Troy, who's sitting in for Peter today. Hey, guys.

Hey, how are you, James? James, how are you? I'm fine. I feel like I haven't seen you in four days. It's been days. And, you know, Troy may have been on the cruise, but we wouldn't have known because there were just so many people there. Troy, were you on the cruise, Troy? No, I was not on the cruise. I was actually cursing the two of you while I was sitting here in Nashville, Tennessee, where here south of the Mason-Dixon line, it was 19

degrees while you all were gallivanting around the Caribbean. Yeah, well, I came home to nine below, and I'm about as happy as you can possibly imagine. But anyway, nobody cares about our vacation. We should just make that point clear. We should just note that the next National Review cruise is coming up next year in the middle of the summer.

We're going to Alaska, and it's an NR thing with ricochet overtones or undertones. And we welcome everybody from both communities there. We'll see you on the ship in Troy. I hope you're there. While we're there, of course, we may want to – well, let me just say this. If there's one thing that I love about ricochet, it proves that there will never, ever, ever be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

And you know how I know that? Because in 2014, at the end of the year, there is a long thread about Apple versus PC. This has been going on my entire adult life. But here it is again, intractable. The argument goes back and forth between these two camps. Troy, I have to ask. Which camp do you fall into? Oh, I'm an Apple guy across the board, which makes the Troy of six or seven years ago loathe the Troy of 2014.

I switched partisan allegiances pretty quickly on this, James. But you're right. I mean this is one of those insoluble problems of the human existence, right? I mean this is out of the crooked timber of humanity, James. We're going to be fighting this into the last days. Well, perhaps so, but I wonder if the Troy of 2027 is going to look back at the Troy of 2014 and say, oh, you had it good back then, guys. You only had three, four, five million illegal immigrants or undocumented aliens being regular brutalized. Now here in the future, there's billions of them

or at least that's what some say is going to be the result of the president's action which they're also calling one of the greatest constitutional floutings of our lifetime troy what do you think the president's doing and why i think they're right that it's one of the the greater constitutional floutings i mean i sort of think that in its way this is actually worse than than the obamacare scenario because that at least is a discrete program all right i mean that's something that you can go back after down the line. What's really dangerous here, the policy is bad. The precedent is worse and the idea that the separation of powers apparently has an expiration date if Congress ceases to cooperate with the president for a period of longer than 18 months. I mean the rationale here is extraordinary, especially because it contradicts what the president himself was saying a year ago, a year and a half ago when he was deflecting the criticism that he was getting from people who wanted this kind of action,

saying, look, I'm not an emperor. Apparently today he is. What I think is so extraordinary about this is that I don't even think it's going to achieve his ends. I mean, Barack Obama has the worst political thermometer in America today, and he thinks this is going to galvanize support, and I suspect it's only going to do is going to coalesce the opposition. I mean, I think in six months, nine months, he's going to be in the high 20s of approval. It's not going to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Well, it will coalesce the opposition.

But what is the opposition going to do about it? I think he's actually just sort of daring people to say the I word, hoping that will just show everybody. See what racist maniacs these people are. I try to do something nice for folks and they start talking impeachment. I think that's right. I think there's an aspect of this that is trying to bait the Republican Party into that. Partially because short of that, you're left with that question. What are you going to do about it?

Now, you can wait it out until – if you assume that you get a Republican president in 2016, they can undo this. But in the interim, you're stuck and I think you're right, James. I think that's what he's attempting to do at least in part. I also think Rob is correct though in so far as there was talk at one point – I've actually heard people who are fairly prominent conservatives say this, that this is a brilliant strategic gambit by the president because there's divisions within the Republican Party on immigration. I think that's wrong. I mean the divisions are real, but this is no longer about immigration policy. This is about executive branch Caesarism at this point, and that is something that is going to unite Republicans across the board.

I think it's going to unite Republicans, but it's also going to unite people who are independents and undecideds. This is an easily mockable and easily criticizable, I guess critiquable, what do you say,

decision he's taken. This executive action would have been better buried deep in a very complicated, to use realism, comprehensive immigration bill. That was the smart way to accomplish this. That was the political way to accomplish this and probably get it actually done. All he's done now is step way out in front and really all by himself and to, with a magic pen, I think he's going to do it tonight, with a magic pen, make an executive action that he could have, I mean, he could have buried it and he could have gotten everything he wants done more efficiently. That's why I find so baffling about this guy. He could have gruberized it if you wish. Yeah, of course.

Tell some select groups that people are racist and xenophobic so we can't really tell them what we're going to do and then we're going to bury it inside. That's a good point. But what he wants – he wants to be seen doing this I think as the messiah of the people that he's letting in and the great, great, great humanitarian that he is. And like I said before, daring the other side to do something. But what I'm concerned about is that the argument is going to be phrased in the media and the means that transmit information to people who don't pay attention. The argument is going to be transmitted as being about immigration more than it's about the constitutional aspect, because I think the constitutional aspect is the most important part of this, the abrogation of the separation of powers. And, you know, I've actually heard some

people say, well, you know, once we're in power, we can do that kind of stuff. Right. And as they said before, it was a filibuster in the Senate. And that is how you devolve every single standard and end up with Sula or Caesar. Yes, Ron?

In Central and South America, Central and Mexico, Central America and Mexico, when the president hinted he might be doing this, when it wasn't even a policy yet, we had 100,000 people amassing on the border. What's going to happen when he announces it on Thursday? This is just profoundly stupid.

On a political level, I'm just baffled by this maneuver here, and I think this is going to have horrible horrible blowback he can't blame anyone else for this it's just it's astonishing it's um someone said today on twitter i think it was iowa hawk said um uh uh brock obama has looked at looked at the looked at the midterm results and decided that the people the people wanted a change of government and he decided to get a change of people. And I think it's – I get the politics of that, but I don't understand the political logic of it, why he thinks he's going to get away with it. It's just a bad thing. Well, he will get away with it. The media will let him, and the Republicans are loathe to impeach him.

But I'm not worried, Rob, about all those people coming to the border. I'm really not, given the security that we have, the fence, the drones, the ditches. We're airtight, baby. Yeah, well, maybe not. But he's practically guaranteed. But Obama has practically guaranteed that the next step is going to be a justifiable fence and border patrol, no matter what happens. The response, I believe,

from a huge percentage of Americans will be we need border security. He's actually accomplished the opposite of what he wants. Yes. Well, that's because if you listen to the theory that says he's actually a secret Republican, this is all Barack Obama's way of making sure that the Republican agenda of offense is erected as soon as possible. Brilliant. Brilliant strategist. Right. Well, maybe not. If they start queuing up at the border,

I imagine the folks down who live around El Centro and El Paso and the rest will look out the window and see the long lines and say, hmm, well, let's set another plate at the table. We're going to have company. And if that's you and you're wondering exactly how you would do something like that, a thousand people showed up at your door hungry.

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And I'm waiting for my first order to arrive so I can tell you exactly what I enjoyed. Because if there's anything people want to hear about more than your vacation, it's what you ate. Yeah, exactly right. I enjoyed the chapino. I thought ate. Yeah, exactly right. I enjoyed the chapino. I thought it was really, really good. All the stuff is good. Expanded offerings. And I think I like your idea

that that's how we should handle the millions queuing on the border. I like that you said they were queuing. They won't be queuing, James. They're not Midwestern types. on the border. I like that you said they were queuing. They won't be queuing, James. They're not Midwestern, I guess, Midwestern types. They will amass on the border, and so it's going to be a whole lot of foodie direct we're going to need. You know, the odd thing is that even though they deliver everywhere, they probably

don't deliver at sea. So you can't go on a cruise and then have them deliver food. I don't know why you would want to necessarily because the food on that ship was pretty good. But if you're wondering whether or not internet delivery of anything is possible on a ship, you know, give them a few days, give them a few weeks. The internet on the ship was incredible. And I say this not to once again talk about a vacation, no one cares,

but to remind you what the future is bringing. You could stream news. You could actually stream a news program on your iPod, on your phone, on your laptop, as you walk around this enormous vessel. I mean it's just absolutely extraordinary. Now, that also made me think, however, that the potential for hacking your devices and finding out what you are listening to and seeing is enormous. And you can't tell me that the ship isn't noting those things, sifting through the data, finding out what their people would like so perhaps they can tailor their own little offerings accordingly.

You think? I think perhaps so. But that's probably in the user license that you signed up with and agreed to when you got Internet on the ship in the first place. But when it comes, however, to taking a look at people's information and their phones and going through their records and the like, one name comes to mind recently, and that's Cheryl Atkinson. She's an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist and author.

She became a Washington-based correspondent to CBS News in 1995, and prior to that, she anchored CBS's news up to the minute. Before joining CBS, she was an anchor and correspondent for CNN, 1990 to 1993, from 96 to 2001, in addition to CBS News duties. Atkinson hosted a half-hour weekly medical news program on PBS called Health Week. Their new book is Stonewalled, My Fight for Truth Against Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington. And we welcome her to the podcast. Hey, Charles Robb Long, New York.

Thanks for joining us. I have a question. So you were a CBS reporter, and you were an anchor and correspondent for CNN. Did you feel when you were there that your colleagues were sort of politically motivated at all? I mean, when did it sort of dawn on you? When did you feel that maybe you were reporting on things they didn't want you to report on? Well, over time, I think we all have that once in a while and you're battling and fighting different issues. But over time, I didn't consider it a major obstacle. I would say really the last two years or so that I was at CBS News is when I detected something different. And was it sort of obvious to you at that point that it was really about protecting a particularly favorite president?

Or was it just sort of weariness with scandal or weariness with your – essentially you're reporting on Benghazi. I think that was sort of the tripwire. Was it that or was it just the slow move from a Washington press score that had sort of been captured in large part by administration? At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football, the excitement, the roar,

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Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Well, I don't think it was bad. It was way before Benghazi. It started sort of up and down, a little hard to pigeonhole into a box because they would assign me to that reporting, such as Benghazi or healthcare.gov. And they would like the stories first, but then these propaganda pushback campaigns that are very well financed and well organized, more so in the last couple of years than before, would start, many of them launched by the administration and their surrogates and bloggers and so on, and the light switch would go off. So a story that they wanted last week, and they would say, please give us as much as you can, you know, great sources. They would appreciate those from my producer and me. All of a sudden, the next week, they wouldn't want it. And we could tell something was amiss. They never said exactly why.

They would just say things like, oh, you know, not enough room in today's broadcast and that sort of thing. But my producer and I had been around the block, so we could tell that something was happening. So do you think this is – oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Troy. Cheryl, this is Troy Sinek. I just wanted to ask you on that note.

When you have those kind of pushback campaigns, what is it that makes them effective, but sometimes I think it did. But it happened simultaneous to, at CBS News anyway, a change in management that had occurred on some of the broadcasts where across the board, many of my colleagues and I and some managers even discussed on a near daily basis that we felt there were some gatekeepers and managers that couldn't keep their ideologies out of their story decisions. I mean, that had not been an overwhelming problem in the previous 20 years because everybody's got opinions, but good journalists, and there are many at CBS News, keep their opinions out of their decisions. The last couple of years, we felt that that was an increasing problem, and not just political, on a political front, but because of the pushback campaigns and other influences, I felt my producer and I, even when we would offer stories that had nothing to do with politics at all, but would have to do with this sort of taxpayer watchdog issues or corporate issues, they often shied away from those as well, as if they just didn't want anything that went after powers that be, maybe to avoid the headaches and the pushback campaigns.

I'm not exactly sure why. Well, hey, Cheryl, try again. I mean just to speak for some of us on the right, some of our listeners on the right, there was no such hesitation under George W. Bush. At no point did it seem to us as consumers of news that there was anybody in newsrooms saying, hey, wait a minute, this story, we've already told this story a bunch of times. We don't want to go overboard on any host of scandals they decided to choose.

It does seem to us a little bit like, hey, welcome to the club. We've been feeling that way since Reagan was president, that there was a White House press corps arrayed, politically arrayed against any Republican and Republicans never get a fair shake. How do you respond to that? Were we too paranoid early on or is this just the biggest, most boldest relief case? I think there have been discussions in newsrooms,

even when Republicans were covered, at least among producers, reporters, and managers. Is this still a story? How much coverage should we be devoting to it? Those discussions take place. The difference is, you're right. When I would do stories as one that won an Emmy investigative award last year

that targeted Republican freshmen and their fundraising, the undercover investigation I did, the whisper campaign, the propaganda campaign didn't start. Nobody said, gee, you're a liberal mouthpiece. You're a mouthpiece for the Democrats. What's wrong with you? You're a liberal. That didn't happen. But if you touch upon these self-generated controversies by the Obama administration, there is this campaign, as I said, to say, oh, you're a conservative. Otherwise, you wouldn't dare be looking into our controversy. So there is a difference there. And then again, at the ground level, I think the reporters and producers are generally very fair. But I think there's key gatekeepers that can skew the whole look of, you know, the news organization by the decisions they make.

Yes, those gatekeepers. Cheryl, James Lilek's here in Minneapolis. I live, I work in a newsroom for a newspaper. And many years ago, mid-aughts, I was trying to get some reporters interested in a local angle on Islamic terrorism, which was a story related to the flying imams, as they were knowing here, three fellows who were kicked off a plane for causing a ruckus. And the pushback that I got on this seemed to be twofold. One, there was sort of squeamishness about doing something about this because it would help the other side.

It would help this right-wing xenophobia, which they realized wasn't helpful. And they didn't want to tread into that because it was just difficult and it was easier to leave it alone. Now, when you look at the newsrooms that you've left, would you say that the generation that's coming along to fill the slots that the old dinosaurs are leaving, do you think that they're more ideological or less ideological? Are they more interested in the story or do they have some greater meta idea

as to whether or not this eventually helps the right and we can't have that i think there's a huge mix i think the younger ones coming along some of them haven't been trained in journalism by the way but um they just sort of do their assignments that's what you do when you're at least at the network you're a new reporter they tell you to cover the weather and you cover the weather. They tell you to cover X and you do X. So I can't really tell. I think they're doing their job and not thinking too much about it. I will tell you, there's less idea of us as a watchdog of whatever powers that be rather than just accepting what they hand us because there are young journalists I've dealt with who I think aren't trying to be ideological, but when they get an answer from the government, no, we don't want to do an interview. No, we won't comment. No, we won't give you this information or even

a corporation. They don't fight back. They don't say, well, really, because we own the information. They don't do that pushback and create the tension that I think is so necessary for us to be doing our jobs and making sure that there's a balance. Part of the money from the book is I'm donating to the Breckner Center for Freedom of Information at University of Florida. Well, we're going to have a conference to teach young journalists the public owns this information. When you get that sort of pushback and those answers from politicians and government, don't

take no for an answer. And trying to do what I think should be coming naturally with journalists and teaching them how to push back and create that balance that I think should exist. Well, these journalists were all schooled on movies where the government would get into their computers and they would be the most evil possible thing. That's fiction, of course. But what happened to you is an example of what supposedly ought to make everybody's hackles go up in the back of their neck and cause an industry-wide revolt. Tell us the hacking story and where it stands now. I was approached in fall of 2012 by a couple of sources familiar with government practices who thought I was probably being surveilled. It sounded far-fetched because we didn't yet have the context of Edward Snowden, what the government was doing to the Associated Press with their phone records,

what the government was targeting a Fox News reporter as a potential co-conspirator. Not knowing that, it sounded a little silly in a way, and yet these people were well-informed. So I took advantage of someone who offered to get a forensics exam done on my computer with someone who had a specialty familiarity of government practices. And it confirmed a long-term monitoring and surveillance effort, software proprietary to a government agency, monitoring keystrokes, activating my Skype audio to listen in, finding all my passwords, looking at my Benghazi file, and so on. And then two more forensics exams were conducted over time by different entities, including one hired by CBS, that confirmed these highly sophisticated remote intrusions, not just

in my CBS laptop, but also my Apple desktop that I use at home, my family and I. So I think that's outrageous. And the status is, I have a team that's helping me investigate that's turned up some new forensics even in the past month or so. And, you know, it's a tough nut to crack because as sophisticated as they are and how they've tried to cover their tracks, getting to the bottom of proving the name of the person behind it isn't simple. But I'm not going to just let it go.

Charles, this is Rob again. What has been the reaction from your colleagues to this? I mean, are there people who say, go get them, Cheryl, whatever you need, they'll help? Are there other people who were friends at one point say, come on, leave it alone? You know, why are you making so much trouble? No one said leave it alone. A lot of my colleagues think they may be surveilled as well. I certainly wouldn't have known because these efforts are pretty invisible if I didn't have the right sort of forensics experts that I stumbled across who wanted to help me.

So there are journalists, including an executive at another network, not Fox, who feel as though they may be monitored and surveilled, as do many politicians. And yet the level of outrage that you would expect, it's almost as if we're kind of accepting it. Yeah, our phone call is probably being listened to, and our computer may be monitored, but nobody's screaming about it. They're just commenting on it. And I think that's the strangest part, that there is more outrage. So how do you change that? One of our members has a question, which was like, how do you get the media and the Democratic Party's in power now out of this kind of incestuous relationship? What needs to happen in order to sort of break whatever that – it's a form of regulatory capture in a way. It's an industry that's been captured by the – who's ever in power. How do you bust that up? I'm not sure, but I think that the power lies

in the hands of the public to call it for what it is, to draw attention to it when they see it, to not succumb to the propaganda. I mean, social media, bloggers, and quasi-news media and news media can be so almost totally controlled where they can picture or present a false environment, a false reality of what's going on if we let them. And I think, you know, a lot of people know better, know things are wrong. And just to continue exposing it and putting a name on it is helpful. Well, there are a lot of people right now listening to this and saying, hey, what about Gruber? Why has Gruber been disappeared from the network news? Do you think that the soft peddling or even the smothering of the Jonathan Gruber

videotape story is sort of part of the same environment? Yes, I think I call it the soft censorship of some media outlets pretending a giant story doesn't exist. How are you a news outlet when you refuse to even address something that's on the tip of the tongues of so many Americans on a topic that affects so many people? Politicians are talking about it. It's almost as if they dig in their heels and just want you to believe it doesn't exist if they don't say so. And I think that really risks making them more and more irrelevant. You know, just the idea that people will tune in to see what's going on to your news outlet when they see you purposely ignoring stories of importance.

I think that's, you know, that's hastening the demise of a platform they're trying to protect. And how does that work in a newsroom? Just one person says, oh, I think we've covered this, and everybody else nods? Not really. I mean, there's, you know, at CBS, there was a lot of discussion and sometimes dissent where the whole Washington Bureau would agree something should be covered or shouldn't be covered, but could not seem to convince the New York managers. And if you have great New York managers, which we've had sometimes,

you know, over time, more often than not, when I was there, they listen to the people in the field, they measure everything. But when you have ideologically directed people, there are arguments that occur where some people will say, you should do this, and the others will say not, and the ones in charge may not listen, and they just dig in their heels. Well, I got one more question. What happens – I mean it was a member question. Will there be a Senate House Joint Committee to investigate Benghazi? There's been indications that there will be. What happens when that happens?

Will all of the stories that we haven't heard yet come out? Is there a lot more that we don't know? If that happens, how big do you think this story is going to get? Well, I think there's still information to be uncovered that can be uncovered. It depends on how aggressive they want to be. And there's been a hesitancy, even on the part of some Republicans, just like the media, to dig deeply into this controversy for various reasons. There's a lot of members who do want that joint committee. It will be up to McConnell, the leader in the Senate of the Republicans, and Boehner,

the leader in the House, as to whether that happens. If it doesn't, I would suggest the commitment to dig as deeply as some would like may not be there among the leadership for whatever reason. But, you know, that's definitely on the table and we'll have to see if it happens. I think they're going to call witnesses, the House committee either way will call some witnesses that have never been called over the past couple of years. I still think there are answers to questions we'll never have. It's almost like we've waited too long to exercise the ability to go after them when everything was still fresh. But I do think that we'll probably get some more information. Gerald, Troy Sinek, one last question from me.

I want to ask you about the future of your craft, of investigative journalism because the knock that we hear on media in the current environment now is that nobody is investing anymore in sort of the long-term work, the stuff where you really have to put your shoulder to the wheel like investigative journalism. What's your take on that? Is it under-resourced? How is it going to look in the future? I always argued it doesn't take as many resources as sometimes people say.

Yes, it can be expensive, but over the years, my producers and I managed to investigate without spending much money, just doing a lot of what I call brain work and thinking work and leg work. It doesn't necessarily cost a lot of money. And we could do that in between doing stories more quickly, not just spending time doing one story and taking six months. We were always working on 10 or 12 stories at the same time. So it's possible. And I think you can still find that. There's still great journalism done, investigative journalism done on a lot of places. It's just harder thought. The reporters will tell you it's not as easy to get them published. There's probably less of it,

more stories that don't get on than there used to be. I just think the hunt is on to find that on places probably on the web, like Project Censored and ProPublica and Center for Public Integrity, rather than the traditional atlas where you are used to seeing that kind of reporting. Yes, and alas, there'll be a lot of reporters who, when the Obama administration has come to its inevitable conclusion, will write stories about the wonderful things that they knew and make their bones, telling us the inside scoop, all the things that he didn't bother to make public during the president's tenure. And by then, of course, they'll be in the tank for Hillary. Hey, we thank you for coming by to the podcast today, Cheryl. Good luck with everything, and we'll continue to follow your career, your book, and where you go next.

Thank you very much for having me. Thanks, Cheryl. Thank you, Cheryl. What do you think of that? I should say, what do you think of that? I mean, it's hard. I mean, it's a weird position for her to be in, right? Because, I mean, what I didn't ask, which I guess maybe I should have.

I just didn't want to be that forward. It's like you're a Democrat, right? I mean, let's assume that she's a Democrat even now, right? Don't we both? Don't we all? Does everybody on this podcast right now assume that Cheryl's a Democrat and she voted for Obama? No? Not necessarily.

But I do. I mean I do. I mean I do and I kind of want to know – like I still – they didn't talk about you in the newsroom. Like come on. Get on the team. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too paranoid. It doesn't come up like that.

It doesn't have to. I mean like I say, I've worked in newsrooms since college and there's an assumption about – there's sort of – the default assumption is that you're a democrat, that you're either faintly progressive or really progressive. I mean there are various shades of red. So to speak. I mean I tell the story sometimes when somebody was editing a review I did about FIRE, the group that trumpets free speech on campuses, right? And it was a book about how the speech codes are destroying the atmosphere of freedom of expression on campuses. And the person who was editing it was typing away and all of a sudden she said, effing Republicans. And I asked her what she meant and she pointed to the author of the sudden she said, effing Republicans. And I asked her what she meant. And she pointed to the author of the book and said, they always have three names.

And I said, like Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she was angry with the review because while she couldn't really disagree with anything that the book had said. There was the problem of giving aid and comfort to the right because what the right really wanted, they didn't want freedom of expression. They just wanted to oppress a different kind of speech. But I think you got to that when you were talking to her, which I thought was interesting, and it was sort of off – it was something you and I have talked about James and I don't know if Troy has thoughts on this there was a point at which in the history of 20th century, 21st century American reporting journalism there's the cynical reporter

who didn't like anybody, didn't believe anything he had a press badge on his hat band the front page you're all crooks and everyone's lying I'm not advocating for anything i'm just telling you how you know i'm looking for a big story right um and then i think around the 60s and 70s watergate was a big deal and and um all the presidents of and all that stuff it became

um crusading we're going to crusade and we're going to change the the civil rights reporting the reporting from the northern northeastern news media outlets about what was going on in the south was this form of crusading journalism that I think we can all appreciate, right? Then it morphed into this therapizing, which happened I think in the 70s where we're not going to try to tell you the truth or uncover something that's been covered up. We're going to try to make you better. We're going to make you a better person. Reading the newspaper is not just going to give you the full news. It's going to teach you something and maybe teach you about your own problems, right? And that was a change that sort of took place slowly, gradually over time. But I think younger journalists really don't distinguish between telling the truth, what happened. It is, you know, it is colorful a way as possible, right? I'm not saying don't distinguish between telling the truth what happened uh it is you know it is colorful away as possible right it's most i'm not saying don't be interesting and nobody

wants homework and telling something that's going to make the reader change his or her mind or make them a better more progressive person and that's why i think journalism has like become less interesting to people and when people have turned away from newspapers is because it all seems like a therapist trying to give you some kind of encounter group steps to becoming more progressive like you're they write it from the perception that you're wrong your thoughts are wrong and they need to be corrected and here's the corrective i don't want to write about the imams in minneapolis because i know that you're a fool and that you'll you'll run too far with it.

I don't want to talk about Benghazi because Hillary Clinton will be a wonderful president for you, and you need to vote for her. All those things are really designed to therapize the audience, and no one of the audience is needing it, or am I just crazy? is really important too because I think conservatives who don't have experience being on the inside of media organizations tend to get the media bias concept slightly wrong, which is they think that it's a little bit more open. They think that everybody has got the Kucinich bumper sticker up in their cubicle and that it's just sort of everybody knows that we're all advocating for the same thing. But my experience has been the same as James and I think it's much more pernicious because of the way it's actually run, which is it's a set of sort of commonly held assumptions and sort of soft social sanctions if you're in that environment. Because if somebody is more explicit about this, it actually gives you a little bit more of an opportunity to rebel if you disagree with them.

But if this is just kind of the standards by which you need to operate if you want to get by day-to-day in the newsroom, it doesn't matter what kind of integrity you have. That wears on everybody after a while. Now, some people can resist it. Some people don't. But it's just kind of this sort of implicit, unspoken understanding that, look, these are the things that you do to work in this industry. These are the assumptions that you have to hold.

These are the ideological priors that you have to bring on board. And that I think in a way because it's so subtle is much harder to root out than more sort of explicit advocacy of the kind that I think conservatives think they're dealing with sometimes when they talk about media bias. Our newspaper, however – I can't speak for everybody in it. But I know that one of the reasons that we're doing well in hiring people is that we're going local. And there are certain things about local news that cannot be massaged or therapeutized or whatever word

Robin invented there. I haven't had enough coffee. I mean, a guy shoots a guy. You don't like my made-up words? Well, it's a perfectly cromulent word. A guy shoots a guy. That's a guy shooting a guy. A A guy shoots a guy. That's a guy shooting a guy. A guy knocks over a supermarket.

That's that. And people like to read about these things. People prefer to have their local paper filled with local stuff. Now, a buddy of mine who's a columnist, for all I know, where he exists on the ideological spectrum, I don't know. But I know that he's going after the school board, which is giving out huge, immense, gargantuan contracts to neighborhood groups that essentially are duplicating what the previous huge contract did for a neighborhood group. And you actually have a lot of people in the media looking at this and saying, hold on a second here.

Vast amounts of money spent for no results whatsoever. This is catnip for readers. It's great. And, you know, it kind of goes against the grain of the idea of the state being the all-seeing, all-wonderful, all-wise purveyor and provider. So, I mean, we're doing well because, I mean, it's taking a long time.

There were surveys that showed that people wouldn't buy our paper. They wouldn't pick it up if you wrapped it around a brick and threw it through the window because the brand was tainted as being the red star, the hammer and sickle, proud to buy the Mississippi. It's the best. You have Minnesota. Once upon a time. Things are now becoming more – I believe.

Yes, drop your – I have two anecdotes along that line, along those lines. Yes, drop your – It used to be the time when all of the local stations did everything they could and their network parent or affiliates would do everything they could to boost their ratings that week. They had miniseries and you had special guest stars in every sitcom and the local news would always try to do some kind of weird, lurid, is there a child pornographer in your neighborhood? Like trying to get you to watch it because that set the average for the ratings book for the next quarter. So like that was really important to get your number up because you're going to be selling off that number. And everybody tried some different stuff, the molester in your school, all this stuff. Does eating Doritos give you cancer? Whatever it was.

And one local station, I think Channel 7, did something really brilliant. They said, we're going to go undercover in restaurants and show you your favorite local restaurants and the disgusting things that happened in that kitchen. And it was a perfect sweep-sweep news story. And it was riveting. It's all we talked about. People would bring into the office video cassettes. They would tape it for each other to watch and they would – and it caused an entire revolution in healthcare codes. In LA now for the first – I think it was the first city in the country. You have to put a letter grade for the health code in your restaurant. And people would drive by their favorite restaurants like, please don't be a C. Please don't be a C. That happened and then New York took over. This was a great local story and I remember talking to somebody who runs a news department at another station

and he kind of rolled his eyes and said, well, that's just so sensational. It's not even news. What an idiot. That's news. It's news if your local restaurant has cigarette butts in the salad, which we saw. And then the second anecdote is i was once sitting in a very um lofty perch in in in bel air with one of our investors rupert murdoch very smart guy knows a lot about the news business and we were musing out loud and fantasizing about what it would take to revitalize los angeles times and he said it's just so easy you just make sure that once a month you expose a corrupt politician and a corrupt political practice in the city. That's what you do. You do that once a month for 12 months and people learn that stop carrying water for whichever political party or progressive cause that sets your heart on fire. Instead, just tell people a great story that's true and relevant to their lives. Why is that so difficult?

Absolutely. culture where corruption is expected of their political officials and where perhaps when it comes to the cleanliness of the restaurant they're used to you know they're used to going down to the you know the place where the the lamb is rotating on a spit and it's covered with flies and the guy's got to take a scimitar and scrape them off like that uh which is their standard but here in america we have different standards and when it comes to taking a blade and scraping our standard unfortunately is expensive and sometimes uncomfortable and and you get nicked, and there's blood and the rest of it. Well, speaking of expensive and uncomfortable, what else is expensive and uncomfortable?

I don't know, Rob. They get nicks and stuff. You tell me. I don't know. I'm just guessing. I'm interlocuting. I'm just trying to, like, you know... Finish the sentence. You know, just, like, just want to hear where you're going. And it's on how your connection there is subtly breaking up as you step away, realizing in horror again what you've done.

Yes. I was in the process of gently attempting to use the little – if you've ever been on the bridge of a ship, they actually run those things with a small joystick, a small tiny little knob. A tiny little knob. But enough about Rob. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yes. That's fine.

I accept that. So let me just sidle this thing up to the dock and let everything off sponsor-wise. That would be, of course, Harry's, what we were talking about. And Harry's is – well, you know this, don't you? I mean, you know, they've been around for about a year now. You follow them. You know that they bought a plant that's 97 years old, and you're waiting for me to say it's 98 years old.

Don't worry, I'll tell you when. And you know it's a German plant, and you know they make the best blades ever, or Harry wouldn't have bought them. And you know this. It's a blade that comes to your door. You don't have to go to the store and spend 32 bucks for a bunch of cartridges. Harry's brings very good, very fine, nicely balanced, attractive looking stuff to your door with a range of facial emollients that will also help you before and

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Rob, you were mentioning that – We fed you and shaved you. Now it's time to take you to the chair. That's right. That's right. Spread the gel on the legs and attach the electrodes. You mentioned that sweep weeks would say we're going to tell you where a molester is in your neighborhood. Nowadays, of course, you have apps for that that actually – and in the future, you'll

probably have embedded RFID chips in sex criminals that will go right to your app so you'll be able to see if they're hanging around your neighborhood, plying you with Jell-O, for example. A whole lot of allegations about Mr. Cosby, which are unsavory and causing a lot of people to back away. And Troy, I'd like to hear your opinion on this. But Rob, you being the industry insider you are, didn't they just – didn't NBC or whoever it was just say, nope, not going to do it. Goodbye. Well, a lot of people did.

I mean NBC and Netflix. Netflix had a special concert they were going to broadcast. Netflix does this for big, big, big, big comedians. And they pulled it from him. NBC had a pilot. I suspect that pilot wasn't going to go anyway.

It's been going around for about two years, two and a half years. They've been trying to work on it. And this is a very, very convenient way to pull the plug and not have to pay anybody off, which is probably the only people happy about the executives at NBC. Look, this is really bad. This is a very, very – when it's a number greater than 10 of women telling the same story, it's really hard to keep saying these

are all lies. These are all lies. I mean, this is now we're reaching Bill Clinton's, you know, Monica Lewinsky deposition territory, where all these women came out. And we know they were all telling the truth. And I think a lot of these women with Cosby are telling the truth, too. It's also horrible, because he represented so much that was good and i think especially for people on our side he represented that was good he was the one african-american leader of stature saying things like go to school get a job get married um be a father uh pull up your pants um don't dress like a thug um speak proper english i mean doing all the things that white americans know in their hearts if they said out loud uh they'd get them

in trouble um and it was bill cosby who said that and bill cosby's phenomenally successful i mean it's almost it's hard to overstate just how successful this man – probably the most successful television personality in the history of the medium. I mean he – when his show premiered, the Cosby Show premiered, it premiered to a 40-plus share, meaning 40 percent of all TVs in use that night were tuned to his show. He saved – single-handedly saved a network in many ways. I mean there's a reason why he's got a billion plus dollars that's because he earned them and um i mean i don't think anyone can hear this and not be just sort of i don't know the word is heart sick because uh he's a great guy great man not a great guy he's a great man he's done great things um but he's also a reprehensible devil.

That's kind of been my reaction to it. I haven't followed it that closely for precisely this reason because this is the kind of human carnage that I try to opt out of when it shows up in the news. But the question I have, Rob, maybe you can explain this to me. Cosby is – I just had to pull it up. Bill Cosby is 77 years old. Bill Cosby has been on the public scene for a very long time. How is it that this just happens now?

I mean there was – I know there have been sort of titterings about this in the past. But how does somebody at that level of – the level of fame and success that you've just described skate for decades and then all of a sudden the dam breaks. I think it's the women. The women he preyed upon – now, this is all alleged. He's denying all of it. But the women that he allegedly preyed upon, they were not randomly chosen. They were – he mentored them. He seduced them in a way into putting themselves in these vulnerable positions. So I think there was probably for a lot of them, generationally, there was a lot of feeling that it was their fault. It was their shame. They were culpable.

It was their mistake and it's only that society and the culture has sort of moved past that that i think a lot of these women just thought well i just assumed i i didn't have any right to complain and or right to mention it you know some did mention it and i think there was probably some kind of even you just go back to what cheryl atkins was saying probably some general group think that well why are we gonna you know this is human carnage let's not talk about it everybody loves bill cosby why are we going to say this about him? So I'm sure – I think it's all those factors. Go ahead. No, I was just – I can't figure it out.

I mean it is a question. Well, did either one of you see – this is really the extent to which I have on it. There was a column in I think the opinion section. There was a column that ran I believe in the Washington Post. I think it was last weekend from the woman who came forward initially who started this whole snowball rolling downhill. Assuming that what she says is true, there's obviously no defense for Cosby there. But it's a really surreal piece to read. I mean granted she's talking about something that happened a very long time ago, so you can I guess factor in that she's had time to adjust. But it's really – she wrote a column in a major national newspaper, about half of which was describing what happened to her, the second half of which was a press release. Basically explaining all of the efforts that she's involved in today, and it's just really – we've gotten to a sort of really strange place as a society where that seems to be part and parcel of the victim status now. I'm not belittling the victim status.

If what she said is true, it's awful. But it's weird that that just becomes – that becomes a handoff at this point for where you take your career next. I don't want to attack her for that, but it just sort of felt kind of weird and surreal and kind of slightly unsavory. I think it is real. I mean look. Look, this whole thing blew up I think because a comedian, Hannibal Buress, on stage or I think it was on TV, he called him a rapist.

And that's – you have to be transgressive, right? In order to get the truth out, it has to come from someplace that's not official so that everyone else can feel like, oh, I guess the rude guys broached it so we can broach it. I mean, not to go back to Cheryl Atkinson, but it's probably the same thing that happens the problem was it opened the floodgates. And so now we know fairly – we're fairly sure that the number of allegations that this is just one drop in the bucket. When I was a kid, I used to sit by the record player and listen to Cosby routines. And another one of my favorite things to listen to was a Rolf Harris song, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, which now probably is an S&M thing. I actually like the flip side

better, Big Black Cat. Around His Angle was a big black chain and Dragon on the Chain was a big black ball. Just love that song. And of course, Rolf Harris is now found out to have been a child molester or abuser. I'm just waiting to, you know, I listen to a lot of Bob Newhart. The next thing I know, he was dropping out of Feast and Drink. Well, I know Bob.

I know Bob Newhart. I work with Bob Newhart. Let me tell you something. Bob Newhart is exactly as you see him. I know. He's a buttoned down, laid back dude. He stammers in real life just like he stammers on stage. He wants nothing better than to sort of sit quietly and drink an iced tea on his Bel-Air backyard.

He's got a happy family and he's a great dad. So I just got to step into it there. Don't worry about Bobby Hart. I say that in jest. I have great respect for him and he's a wonderful, wonderful man. But I think one of the reasons that Cosby is being laid out is – well, I don't think it's a reason, but I think there's relief amongst some

that this delegitimizes what Cosby was doing in his later years, which was taking what some construed to be a political stance and saying that the problems in the African-American community stem from fatherlessness and certain pathologies in the culture. And I think it's safe now, the routine that uh that Rob mentioned there I think um that guy was was was was taking on that that new role that Cosby had said and saying uh well you know you don't use cuss words but you're a rapist right and it changes the discussion away from what he was saying and I think now when somebody starts to make Cosby-esque statements,

a disgraced spokesperson will help to discredit those accusations. This seems to be what's going on now in the culture. If we don't like the message – I mean, again, this is a hard thing to do because you've got to separate these – allegedly what he's done with his enormous body of work that is extraordinary. I mean Bill Cosby's comedy albums are as close to art as you get in popular culture. They're magnificent. His work in television was – you can't gainsay it.

The guy is just really, really good at what he does and he's done a lot of good with his money and he's done a lot of good with his megaphone. He really has. He's touched a lot of people's lives. The cultural importance of the Cosby show is hard to overstate. So that in one bucket and then there's the other bucket are these sort of alleged crimes and that's what they are, the crimes. It's really bad stuff that he is being accused of having done. But what's interesting is that we don't seem to be able and maybe we shouldn't. I don't know.

I'm asking. To separate those two things and when we don't like what someone says, we go after their character. You know, there was a mini scandal, yes, two days ago. A bunch of people went to a dinner party with a guy who ran a couple of executives from the Uber, the taxi company. And one of the guys there, a reporter for BuzzFeed, said he

said, he said he heard that one of the VP at Uber say, you know, when we're getting bad press from journalists in the tech business, we should just dig up – we should hire investigators to do oppo on them and talk about their lives and see how they like it. And I feel like there's an urge in the culture now to do that. The people we don't like, we want to prove they're bad people. And they may be bad people, but that doesn't mean that what they've said or what they've done is therefore illegitimate, does it? Your T is on.

May I ask a totally cynical showbiz question for a minute? Because when I look for a totally cynical showbiz analysis, I do turn to Rob. Bill Cosby, as we mentioned, is 77 years old. So this is – I mean he's coming to the final act of his career anyway. But let's say we spot him a quarter century. Cosby is 52. Does he come back from this? If you go five years later, is there a Bill Cosby sort of rehabilitation tour or is this over even then if he's mid-career? It's over. I think it's over. I mean there's only so much you can do. The problem is that the victims – I mean the problem, the situation for him is the victims have a face. And he's on a tax cheat. He didn't rob a bank. He didn't do anything that people can forgive you for.

He didn't beat up somebody when he was drunk. He's not Charlie Sheen. He was a man with enormous power, and he took advantage of that power in a really, really loathsome way. So you just can't look at him now. I mean, I guess that's I'm answering my first question. You can't look at him now and see the avuncular jello pudding salesman. Or the dad. The dad who's like... People forget the Cosby show was revolutionary.

It's the first time in 30 years where the father and the mother were right and the kids were stupid and lazy and the father and the mother were right and the kids were stupid and lazy and the father turned to his son in the pilot which is a one billion dollar really a one billion dollar moment on television turns to his son his son gives uh this uh his son's getting bad grades in school and he gives this incredibly uh long monologue of after being yelled at like you know jim why

can't you just love me for me, dad? You're a doctor. Mom's a lawyer. Maybe I'm just not academic. Maybe I'm just not a smart kid. Maybe I'm trying the best I can and you're always telling me I'm not good enough. Maybe you should just love me for me. And when he says that line, you could watch the pilot.

The audience in the studio, the studio audience applauds. They've been trained to like that message. Yes. And Cosby just looks at him and it goes silent. And he says – Cosby says, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Five minutes of applause. Unbelievable laugh. Huge laugh.

And right then was when Cosby became a billionaire because he did something no one had done, and he did it funny, and he did it with total authenticity because that's the kind of dad he was. So I don't know. Same dynamic that you were talking about earlier with the press. He gave the audience permission to have that thought. You were able to exhale on the punchline rather than just go with the Pavlovian conditioning. And I was sort of like, oh my god, that's – he's right. He's right. That is stupid and lazy. And he says, you think – he says, you think that if you do your homework, your brain is going to somehow break or something. You're going to get those A's, and he yells at the kid.

And the audience just goes, oh, I like this family. I like this dad. I like these people. I want to be with them. Even though they were upper class and professional, they resonated with all classes across America and that's why he got a billion dollars. As Fritosphere points out in the members feed, however, one of the interesting things about Gruber's gate is that

Gruber himself, this guy who regards vast swaths of the American population as stupid and in need of some obfuscatory mechanism to make them take their medicine. Mr. Gruber is part of a credentialed class which doesn't really seem to get down in terra firma with the rest of the hoi polloi. Do you not find this interesting that what we, that I think one of the reasons perhaps that this hasn't gotten more traction is I think a lot of people in the media feel a professional

and cultural affinity with Gruber. They do believe that the American people are stupid. And they do believe that we need our betters to manage and direct them. But do you see this as a moment where a lot of people are going to look at this, look at the president's extra-constitutional action and say that we're actually being governed by people who are not particularly friendly towards what we have regarded as the general American experience both in its law and both in its citizenry? We'll go out on this one.

This was Frida's member feed point. They should. That's theida's member feed point. They should. That's the message they should take away. Although there's a curious aspect to the coverage of the story, which has all been pretty much the conservative press. I mean Rob was right. The network news has basically just ignored it, which is everybody got the most worked up over the stupid comment, over him saying that the American people are stupid. I think deep in our heart of hearts, everybody actually agrees with that.

We just think it's the other half of the electorate, right? I mean how many political discussions do you have where it comes down to, well, I just never understand. I think we got lost there because if you actually listen to what he's describing, the way that they hoodwinked people on how they were going to tax the Cadillac plans and all these other things that they hid from people, that was basically the argument, right? He's not talking about stupidity. Stupidity is a lack of judgment. He's talking about ignorance.

He's talking about the fact that we didn't know what was going on. And the reality of it is this system is built to perpetuate that ignorance. When you write a 900-page bill that nobody reads and then the bill is still essentially a capsule and it goes into the executive branch, into the administrative state and HHS writes, I don't know where it is now, but 11,000 pages of – how the hell is anybody supposed to know what's inside of it? Exactly. This is the way that the system is designed so that people like Gruber can make the decisions without consulting us so that they can get rich off of it as he seems to have. And so that enormous amounts of power get invested in people who are out of arm's reach for the electorate?

I mean what difference does it make to replace your senator if they're not going to read these things anyway? And if the guy who's really making the decision is some bureaucrat in the office at HHS – I mean people forget. We're like six months removed from this now. But when we had the big contraception mandate fight, that's not in the statute. It's not in the law. The text in the law is about preventative care, which you can meditate for a moment

on the sort of perversity of defining birth control as preventative care. But that was enacted within HHS. That's administrative rulemaking. So Gruber is basically mocking us for the fact that we're not in on the con. It's not about stupidity. Gruber is basically mocking us for the fact that we're not in on the con. It's not about stupidity. It's funny because every con man says the same thing, which you cannot cheat an honest man. That in order for me to con you, I first have to prey upon your greed. I first have to say, well, listen, I've got these diamonds here and I need some money and you're going to make some money.

An honest person doesn't get conned. It's only somebody who thinks they're going to get something for nothing or get something for a lot less than it's worth. In the same way, any magician, ask any professional magician and they trick people for a living and they have incredible – any professional magician has incredible respect for the audience. They're always trying to make sure that the audience is truly captured and delighted and they work very hard to make sure that happens so even con men and magicians have respect they don't think their audience is stupid what's so bizarre about this and i think freda sphere is

totally right about it is that it helps everyone in a certain you know i don't know socioeconomic bubble or we'll call the sort of the progressive elites. They all have – they all anointed themselves. You and I, the three of us have had this experience before. They've all anointed themselves experts in public opinion. So whenever you're having a political conversation with somebody who has lived for his entire life in a metropolitan area, DC, New York or. and has never been to, I don't know, pick a state, Illinois, Mississippi, Iowa.

You ask them – talk about a policy question and then at some point they'll lean back and with incredible smugness say, yeah, well, the American people just wouldn't accept that as if they've ever met an American people, as if they know. They just – everyone now is an expert running their own little focus group, which happens to return results that are convenient for them. And so Fred Spurs is right on. He's right on that. And I feel like if there's a political movement to capture, a political taste that's

burgeoning, it's the anti-DC, anti-Washington, anti-elite bandwagon. And I suspect that that will be the race in 2016. And that is an excellent point, Rob. And we could probably sit here and make them all day. But unfortunately, alas, we've got to go. Time is short and podcasts have to end eventually. However, can't get out without reminding you that Harry's, harrys.com, is the place where you can get five bucks off your first purchase if you use the coupon code RICOSHAY for the best shave you've ever had. And also, FoodieDirect.com has got something waiting for you if you use the coupon code RICOSHAY10.

Try it once for Thanksgiving, you'll be trying it for Christmas and the holidays beyond. Thanks to Troy for sitting in for Peter. Thanks, Rob, as always. And we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. point O. From all the unborn chicken voices in my head What's there? What's there? My name is Barak, Barak, Barak, Barak, Barak. When I am king, you will be first against all. Ricochet.

Join the conversation. What's there? What's there? I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Yes, sir. Are you listening? Yes, sir, Are you listening? Yes, I am. Plastics. you