Show Notes
Breaking news?
No. Broken news. That’s the biggest story today, as Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers explore Big Tech censorship and power on the latest episode of The Drill Down. Facebook, Twitter, and other big platforms have ruined how we get the news of the day. The mainstream media, desperate for approval and the audiences these platforms command, have given up being honest brokers of journalism. They would rather shape your behavior instead.
Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart.com, joins the hosts to talk about how the tech giants threaten not just your privacy, but your ability to find out what they don’t want you to know. Alex’s new book, “Breaking the News,” explores all this in great detail.
Peter mentions two big media stories right now: how poor the reporting on the Kyle Rittenhouse story has been, and why so many of the major networks have failed to examine China’s role in creating the Covid-19 virus. Why are the press so empty of curiosity?
Alex has the short answer: The major networks are part of massive corporations whose businesses depend on keeping China happy. “NBC isn’t just NBC,” Alex says. “It’s Comcast-Universal-NBC.” Universal Studios, he notes, actually built a theme park in China during the pandemic. So, it’s not hard to see how corporate pressure not to upset the Chinese government might stay the hand of its news network. ABC News, don’t forget, is owned by the Disney Corporation, with its own Chinese theme park and movie business to think about.
The social networks prefer to censor, rather than ignore things they don’t like. Facebook’s “content moderators” actually blocked searches for and positive posts about Kyle Rittenhouse within the site. It blocked links for contributions to his legal defense representation. Social media is trying hard to change hearts and minds. Remember that Facebook’s censoring of news favorable to Kyle Rittenhouse, especially in the early days after the tragedy occurred, potentially changes the hearts and minds of the jury pool for his trial.
Eric asks, “Why have polls shown that profound majorities of Americans apparently believed the people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse were black” when all three are white? What does that say about the continuing focus on the narrative?”
Alex recalls that President Joe Biden actually called Rittenhouse “a white supremacist” last year when the story first broke, without evidence of any kind. No one from the mainstream media has since called him on it, either.
Listeners of The Drill Down already know about the revolving door in Washington between the government and big business. Alex’s book shows how, in the world of Big Tech, that applies strongly to the door between the White House and Google. “They marry each other, both literally and figuratively.”
But the cozy relationships you don’t hear about are the most troubling. Like the Bloomberg executives who visit Chinese propagandists at the same time their contracts to operate in China are up for renewal. Like Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, who owns the Atlantic Monthly and Axios, and simultaneously has billions invested in stock in Disney and, of course, Apple, which are heavily dependent on keeping in China’s good graces for their own businesses.
Summing up what he learned writing the book, Alex says, “Either we are going to have a post-truth society, or we will finally awaken from this. We’ve got to be brave about it. We’ve got to walk toward the fire and not away from it.”
