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- [00:02]
Oliver Darcy
If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the Internet doesn't mean you get away with murder.
- [00:14]
Jon Favreau
I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead.
- [00:17]
Oliver Darcy
This season I take you inside the business of suicide and the places desperate
- [00:22]
Jon Favreau
people go when they can't find what
- [00:23]
Oliver Darcy
they need in the real world. Hunting the Suicide Salesman available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:32]
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- [01:04]
Oliver Darcy
I think that it'd be nice if more advertisers had a backbone and said, you know what? We actually think journalism is important in society and we want to put our brand next to journalism. But these days they want to be around fun stuff, they want to be around sports. Everything has been polarized and politicized and for them, I think, let's say running an ad on a news network could be perceived as being anti Trump, right? Because the news is not typically positive for him. And so they don't want to alienate half the country and so they just shy away from that. And I think that's problematic. It would be certainly easier for people to build robust journalism businesses if they could count on advertiser support.
- [01:50]
Jon Favreau
Foreign. I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from today's guest, Oliver Darcy, founder of the Status newsletter and former senior media reporter at cnn. For a while now I've wanted to have a conversation with someone who can help make sense of the massive changes that are rapidly transforming the media landscape right now. Oliver's one of the best media reporters in the business, first at CNN's Reliable Sources and now at Status. He's become the go to reporter for the Ellison led takeover of cbs. He's the one who broke of Scott Pelley's confrontation with Barry Weiss that led to his firing at 60 minutes. I invited Oliver on to talk about what's happening inside cbs, how journalists at CNN are reacting to the seemingly inevitable Ellison takeover there, and what the corporate consolidation of our media at large is doing to the industry and to the news we consume. We talked about all that and so much more, including Comcast's announcement that it's going to spin off NBCUniversal, the latest MAGA media drama, and the future of independent news outlets like Oliver's and ours. We had a great conversation and we'll get to it in a minute. But before we do, please consider becoming a subscriber to Friends of the Pod. Subscribers get access to ad free episodes of their favorite crooked pods, including this one special subscriber only shows like Pod, Save America, only Friends and Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. Plus, as we'll talk all about in this episode, it is the best way to support pro democracy independent media, which is more important than ever right now. Head to cricket.com friends to subscribe. All right, here's Oliver Darcy. Oliver, welcome to offline.
- [03:27]
Oliver Darcy
I'm happy to be here. Excited.
- [03:29]
Jon Favreau
So the last month or so might be one of the fastest, strangest periods of media consolidation, at least in my lifetime. The Justice Department just cleared a $111 billion deal that hands Warner Brothers discovery, which includes CNN, to David Ellison, the billionaire who already owns CBS News. You spent seven years at CNN, then left to build status, which is now one of the go to independent outlets covering the story. Big picture. Before we get into it all, do you feel like you got out at the right time, like you're watching your old industry from a lifeboat?
- [04:06]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, I mean, when I was there, I felt like it was pretty rocky at times. You know, we had a new ownership under Warner Brother Discovery, which certainly I think tamp down the very aggressive posture of CNN against Trump that I was a part of. But now looking at it, it would be very difficult to cover the media industry inside one of the biggest stories of maybe our lifetimes in terms of media consolidation.
- [04:35]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I would imagine that's kind of tough to do as a media reporter.
- [04:38]
Oliver Darcy
I wouldn't want to work for Bari Weiss either. So if it was me inside and we just reported yesterday that Paula Reid, that CNN chief legal affairs analyst or correspondent is exiting because she was uncomfortable with the merger. But I would be like with Kara Swisher and saying, you know what, if this happens, I'm out. I'm not taking editorial direction from Barry Weiss. That's ridiculous.
- [05:02]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And she's kind of already got her hands full. So you've argued that legacy media has basically lost its grip on the future. Give us the one paragraph, maybe two paragraph version of how we got here. Like how did so much of American news end up in play all at
- [05:22]
Oliver Darcy
the same moment when you say in play. Do you mean in play to purchase or. Well, I mean, it's always been in play to purchase. I mean, you know, this goes back, you know, a long time. I'm not a historian, but people have always. Rich people have always bought newspapers and controlled the media. And this has been a tool of influence.
- [05:39]
Jon Favreau
I think it does seem like we're getting a lot of mergers and consolidations and acquisitions, like, all in the same couple years.
- [05:46]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah. I think what's disturbing is that we have, like, an authoritarian wannabe in the Oval Office right now, and these institutions that are being purchased are supposed to hold him to account and speak truth to power. And instead, what's happening is you're seeing billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Patrick Sun Chiang at the LA Times or David Ellison with Paramount, on and on it goes. But they're using these news organizations to curry favor with the White House. And so you don't want. They don't want to see the. Their actual news businesses do their jobs, at least do the jobs appropriately. They want to see them flatter the president. And I think that's what's disturbing a lot of people. You were in the White House. Imagine if Barack Obama were in office saying that CNN needs to be sold to new ownership, and any deal that involves the parent company of CNN must overhaul the entire editorial. I mean, that's what's happening now. It's crazy. And what's alarming is these billionaires are, instead of saying, that's wrong, Mr. President, we're not gonna do that. They are playing to him. They're saying, okay, we'll do it. David Ellison said on the record he has had great conversations with Donald Trump about cnn. And the only good conversations you have with Donald Trump about CNN is about blowing up the whole editorial process there.
- [06:57]
Jon Favreau
I believe we moved Fox News back one row in the White House briefing room and generated an uproar for doing that. So, yeah, it would be different. It would be different. No, but that's on the political side, and that's all true. It also seems like on the business side there is just this sort of era of consolidation. And I don't know if this is just, you know, this is just a cycle. Things get bundled and then they get unbundled, and then they get bundled again or what. But it does seem like, just from a business industry side, that we are getting just fewer and fewer really big media companies that are sort of gobbling each other up.
- [07:43]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, I think that's true. And I think there's like, so there's like, two prongs to this. Like, these news organizations and media organizations are facing tremendous political pressure right now, but their business models are under tremendous pressure simultaneously.
- [07:56]
Jon Favreau
Right?
- [07:56]
Oliver Darcy
And so Big Tech, and this is. It gets a little confusing, but Big Tech has really gobbled up all the advertising dollars, and they have really upended the traditional models for these companies, whether they're entertainment companies with streaming or whether they're digital ad business or digital publishers that rely on ad businesses. Big Tech has totally torpedoed their business models. They are extremely weak right now. And for them, in their eyes, the only thing they can do to compete with these tech companies is to achieve more scale and to get bigger so they have a little more leverage with advertisers or with consumers to compete. And so I think that's why you're seeing Paramount could never survive on its own. It can't compete with Netflix. So they are like, okay, so we can buy Warner Brothers Discovery, the parent company of HBO and TNT and cnn, and maybe that will give us a little more scale to compete against a Netflix or an Amazon prime, et cetera. And I think in the same, in the same way with digital publishers, you've seen a similar bundling. And they're trying to also figure out, how do we compete against YouTube? That's a very big competitor. And right now, if you're a small business, you're no longer going to your local paper or news organization to advertise. You're going to Facebook or YouTube. And that's the lifeblood for these media organizations. And so that's another reason you're seeing them pivot to subscriptions, because at least maybe they can have a direct relationship with their audience to support some of the journalism. But that's not anywhere near the, you know, the revenue that the advertising community can provide.
- [09:36]
Jon Favreau
So let's start with cbs, because it's the most glaring example of new ownership dramatically changing the legacy media outlet. Last October, Ellison bought Barry Weiss's the Free Press for a reported $150 million, folded it into CBS News, made her editor in chief reporting straight to him. The pitch being that she understood the Internet in a way legacy TV people didn't. How is that move working out right now?
- [10:00]
Oliver Darcy
Not very well.
- [10:01]
Jon Favreau
What's the latest with cbs?
- [10:03]
Oliver Darcy
I mean, they are collapsing on every front. The CBS Evening News has hit historic low ratings. They struggle now to get 4 million viewers on the evening news, which would have been unthinkable just even a year ago. The CBS morning show with Gayle King is hit all time low ratings. Like, they are on pace to have posted their worst June of all time. They posted their worst May of all time in the ratings. Obviously, 60 Minutes is no longer, no longer resembles what we know 60 minutes to be. Anderson Cooper's gone. Cecilia Vega is gone. Sharon Alfonsi is gone. Scott Pelley's gone. The executive producer is gone. The executive editor is gone. That show is no longer what it once was. It carries the name forward, but that's probably about it at this point. And so, like the three programs you would really judge Bari Weiss on, I mean, CBS News is not a cable channel with 24 hours of programming. It's really three shows, four shows. Those three main shows are all in turmoil. And so if you just judged her based on the results, they're not very good. And you would judge based on ratings because that equals advertising revenue. And I must say, John, the idea that Bari Weiss is a digital guru also never really added up to me. I mean, look at their YouTube numbers on the Free Press. They're not tremendous YouTube numbers. There's a lot of money that's flowed into the Free Press from these billionaires at Sun Valley. They've got a lot of investment money. I think they had a million subscribers or something like that. It's not super impressive, I'd say, given the amount of investment that's gone into this company.
- [11:42]
Jon Favreau
Obviously, there's been pressure on ratings at NBC News, ABC News as well. But is the decline in CBS's ratings, like, much worse than ABC and NBC over the same period?
- [11:54]
Oliver Darcy
In fact, in some cases, ABC and NBC are gaining viewers while CBS is losing viewers, which suggests to us, because it's not like there are more people watching linear television today than there were yesterday. That's not what's happening. The pie is not growing, it's shrinking on tv. So the thing that makes sense there is that CBS News viewers are actively changing the channel and choosing to watch, let's say, David Muir or Tom Yamis versus Tony decouple.
- [12:20]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. So here's what I'm wondering about, Barry Weiss, is we hear about sort of the firings or people getting pushed out or sort of the potential editorial interference. Like, has she. Is there any concrete examples of a change she's made that's actually moving CBS towards becoming a more modern digital first news organization, a product, a hire, a format. Like, what else has she been doing besides what we see her in the headlines for?
- [12:52]
Oliver Darcy
I'm not sure. I mean, honestly, I couldn't tell you. I think this is the problem. For her is that she doesn't have any obvious wins under her belt. She wants to do a big interview. We reported that she wants to do the daily on the New York Times, and she's being advised against it by people close to her. And my guess would be, if you're a PR professional communications official, you'd say we don't want to go to press unless we have like three clear wins. Right. You don't want to do a big interview and be on the defense. You want to have some things to tout. Right. And honestly, there really isn't much like, I mean, a lot of the people she's tried to hire, she's been unable to court. She's, you know, there's not like some grand digital series that she's launched. You know, one of the things that she could have done is left the television shows the same and say, you know what, they're working. I'm not really gonna mess with those. But we're going to expand on digital and I'm going to launch these five podcasts, let's just say, and see how those do. It's not like we've seen that. And so I don't know. I mean, I think this is a problem. I mean, she's going to be a year in to the job later this year, and I don't see an obvious win.
- [14:01]
Jon Favreau
We're about a month out from the 60 Minutes debacle. I saw Dylan Byers report the other day that according to some anonymous CBS News employees, it's not as bad as the press is making it out to be there. What does your reporting tell you about how things feel in CBS News right now?
- [14:21]
Oliver Darcy
I'd say, John, the general rule of thumb in any reporting is it's always 100 times worse behind the scenes than what makes its way to the press.
- [14:29]
Jon Favreau
That is usually true.
- [14:30]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, that's usually the way it is. Right. It usually gets watered down by the time it makes its way into the press. I very much remember that being the case when I was at CNN and there was turmoil back then. My understanding is it's really bad behind the scenes at 60 minutes. Their morale is at all time lows. They are still concerned whether they can make air in an appropriate way by the fall. The show is never been this far off course this late into the summer. I mean, it seems like it's early in the summer, it's July. But they're already usually banking stories. They have the story assignments handed down to the correspondents. The correspondents have started figuring out when they're going to shoot these 60 minute stories. They're lengthy pieces and they're heavily vetted. It's like doing a New Yorker story in print. It takes a lot of time. It's not like you can turn this around in two days. And so people inside are very worried. And we're still seeing people leave 60 minutes every week. Senior producers, people who have been there for decades. And so it's bad inside there. And that's not even counting the morale. You have to keep in mind that if you work at a program, I mean, I'm only 35, okay? Some people have worked a 60 minutes longer than I've been alive. They've watched their colleagues get married. They've watched their colleagues have kids. They know their kids. They go to war. Literally, they've gone to war zones with these people, okay? And Barry Weiss comes in and just fires people and causes mass chaos without even so much as going to the team to explain what's going on. So you can imagine it's like a family being torn apart at the seams by someone in some secure facility across the street. And they're heartbroken, they're angry, and it's hard to focus on work. So I don't know why anyone would say it's not as bad as it has been portrayed in the press. I, frankly, I read a lot of the press. My job, I think a lot of the press has been deferential to Barry Weiss in saying things like, yeah, well, the show was good on Linear, but it needs to improve on digital. Even though Paramount was just bragging about how good it was doing on digital, like two weeks before Bari Weiss blew it up. But it's bad inside. That's the short answer.
- [16:55]
Jon Favreau
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- [19:48]
Oliver Darcy
Well, David Ellison said that CBS News editorial independence was going to be protected. If I'm not mistaken and then he installed Bari Weiss, who has totally upended that entire network and pushed the network into a pro MAGA direction. So, you know, actions speak a lot louder than words. And everything that we've seen happen at CBS News would certainly give you a lot of pause and a lot of room for doubt in what David Ellison is saying. We also have reporting not only from us, but look at what the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch's outlet, has reported that the Ellisons have promised sweeping changes to Donald Trump. There's a reason that Donald Trump is out there literally praising the Ellisons, right? He's saying they're great guys. He's ringside with David Ellison at the UFC fight. He's praising this guy. And we know that the only thing that Donald Trump cares about in this deal is cnn. He doesn't care about, like, the next season of Landman on Paramount. Plus, Right? Like, he's not watching Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon on hbo. He doesn't care about that stuff. He cares about CNN and CBS News and really only 60 Minutes on CBS News. So the fact that he's praising the Ellisons and has blessed this deal, reportedly the senior DOJ officials overrode career prosecutors who wanted to pause this deal or at least challenge the deal. The fact that Donald Trump has blessed this deal suggests to me that he is hearing things behind the scenes that he likes a lot. And those things would be about cnn. And the only thing that Donald Trump wants from cnn, he doesn't want them to be in the truth business. That's ridiculous. He wants them to bow down before his feet and to stop being aggressive and challenging what he's doing. So David Ellison can say whatever he wants, but he's the guy also hosting dinners honoring Trump on First Amendment grounds. So I just don't put much stock into what he's saying.
- [21:46]
Jon Favreau
I guess potentially the most optimistic scenario is Ellison says all that to make sure that the deal goes through. And once it's through and he doesn't need Trump to bless any deals anymore, then he can sort of leave CNN to do what it wants, mostly. But I don't know, maybe.
- [22:06]
Oliver Darcy
I mean, that's super optimistic. I also think there's something with Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison is the Oracle billionaire who owns his own Hawaiian island. Interesting guy. He, according to the Washington Post, participated in an election denialism call after the 2020 election.
- [22:23]
Stacey Abrams
Cool.
- [22:23]
Oliver Darcy
He's. He's a pretty MAGA guy, I'd say. Right. And so I don't think he's gonna wanna Be on the golf course with his MAGA buddies, owning cnn, which is gonna be considered a liberal organization. I don't think he's gonna like that very much. It's similar to the way John Malone had no official role in CNN with Warner Brothers Discovery, but certainly has an outsized influence on what happens. And so it's Larry Ellison's money. Just follow the money. This guy is a supporter of Donald Trump. He apparently is an election denialist. He's never, we've asked him for, for comment. By the way, do you still believe the 2020 election was stolen? He won't say it one way or another. And this is the guy that's gonna own cnn. And by the way, he's gonna own cnn apparently with the Saudi, the Saudis, the Qataris and the Emiratis, which is also crazy.
- [23:12]
Jon Favreau
So I'm curious as how this is all playing out inside cnn. Some CNN journalists, Anderson Cooper chief among them, have reportedly balked at working for Bari Weiss. Paula Reid, you mentioned, is leaving. Do you think there's a mass exodus coming? And what does that look like? What are you guys hearing about what's going on inside cnn?
- [23:35]
Oliver Darcy
It's really bad inside cnn, I'd say. I think, you know, I talk to a lot of people there frequently and they have been closely watching what's happening at CBS in horror. They are very alarmed by what's going on there. They prefer that David Ellison is not the owner of cnn. Look, I think it's always tricky when something like this happens. There are people who have to pay mortgages. There are people that just kind of put their head down and do what they're told and try their best to ignore the drama. But I think the people, you know, the journalists there who have their faces on these stories, I do think that some of them are going to be leaving. And we've heard Kara Swisher very loudly say she will never work for the Ellisons. But someone like Paula Reed, no one was thinking she was going to be exiting the network over concerns about this merger until we reported it this week. I think there are going to be a lot more people who have opportunities elsewhere that are going to say, you know what? It's not for me. It depends on who's going to be in charge. We still don't know who's going to be in charge of cnn. Now if David Ellison leaves, let's say Mark Thompson, the current chief executive there in charge of cnn and Mark Thompson protects the editorial independence of CNN and doesn't let Bari Weiss in I think someone like Anderson Cooper might be comfortable staying. But Anderson Cooper left his much loved gig as a 60 Minutes correspondent after almost two decades working at that show because he was not happy with Bari Weiss. He didn't want to be under her editorial purview. And so I have a hard time thinking that Anderson Cooper's going to take any editorial direction from someone like Bari Weiss. And if push comes to shove, does he really need that job? It's not like he's hurting for money.
- [25:19]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Let's talk about the other recent media move, also a pretty big deal. Comcast announced it's splitting itself in two. It's spinning off NBCUniversal and Sky from the broadband and tech business into a separate company, on top of already carving its cable channels out into their own spinoff, Versant, which it did last year. What do you think a move like that right now says about how these media giants see the future of news?
- [25:49]
Oliver Darcy
Well, they don't care about the future of news. I think that's the short answer. I think that in many cases, particularly from Comcast, news has been a problem for them. Brian Roberts has felt the ire of Donald Trump. Brian Roberts is the head of Comcast and Robert Tram that controls Comcast. He's felt the ire of Donald Trump not for anything Comcast is doing on the broadband front, but because of Ms. Now and because of NBC News. And Donald Trump is constantly posting on True Social that Brian Roberts is a lowlife because of that. And so I think that Brian Roberts is happy to spin off these news organizations and move them far away from the broadband business because it's just a problem in this regulatory environment of Donald Trump as president. I also think that their focus, I mean, news companies are very high profile, but they're not moneymakers. For Brian Roberts, the thing that's making money is the cable and Internet business. And they're facing significant challenges there. So in terms of comcats, it's a little more complicated, I think. But he wants to separate that business from the media business so that he can maybe do some mergers or acquisitions on the broadband business and the media business can do its own thing. But at the end of the day, do billionaires care about the news? I think increasingly we're seeing, and I think it's alarming given how important it is for society, but increasingly we're seeing that they just don't care about the news and they care about their business interests a lot more.
- [27:20]
Jon Favreau
Well, it made me wonder because early speculation has centered on Netflix as a potential buyer for NBCUniversal. Down the road, though, the question is, as we just talked about with Brian Roberts, whether Ted Sarandos, who runs Netflix, wants all the legal and political drama that comes with owning a broadcast news network. I also saw other speculation in the New York Times that Amazon could be a potential buyer, but then there was a dystopian sentence or two that said, but they might not want to get all that money out the door that they need for data centers. What do you think in terms of who might buy NBCUniversal or whether it just might stand alone?
- [28:08]
Oliver Darcy
I think that if Netflix were interested in it, they'd probably be interested in the theme park business and the movie studio. But I'm not sure they would want to deal with owning NBC News and being in the news business or owning even the linear channel because they're a streaming company. They've been very future forward. And the linear channel, the broadcast channel, while it has NFL rights and NBA rights, I just don't know if they want to be in that business. That's not their business.
- [28:35]
Jon Favreau
So what happens? People at NBC News must have looked at this announcement.
- [28:40]
Oliver Darcy
I got messages from people at NBC News asking what it means, and I think the answer right now is we don't know what it means for NBC News. It's difficult to divorce NBC News from NBC, the broadcast channel. So I think that might be at least kind of good for the NBC News folks, because people might want the broadcast channel because of those NFL and NBA rights and other sports rights. The Olympics obviously are on NBC and have been on NBC for a long time. But I don't know. I think the problem for a lot of news companies is that they're not the prized asset and they're actually the problem asset for these either companies or billionaires who want to take over.
- [29:21]
Jon Favreau
What do you think all this media, this era of media consolidation, how do you think this affects people who want jobs in media, who have jobs in media, and then people who. The rest of us who consume media, who consume news?
- [29:38]
Oliver Darcy
Well, I think it's worrisome. I mean, I think it's really worrisome that someone like David Ellison can control the information environment the way he's about to. I mean, they have a stake in TikTok. They're going to own.
- [29:51]
Jon Favreau
Oh, yeah, I forgot about TikTok.
- [29:53]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, they're going to own two of the big movie studios, Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures. They're going to own two of the big news organizations, CBS News and cnn. They're going to own Channels like HBO networks like TNT and TBS and the Cartoon Network and the Golf Channel, I mean, they're gonna control a significant amount of information that you consume and entertainment that you consume. And you can certainly push an agenda with both of those. And I think that's alarming. And then you think about, well, who else is there controlling the news? You got Rupert Murdoch. I don't know if you wanna.
- [30:26]
Jon Favreau
I was gonna. Yeah.
- [30:28]
Oliver Darcy
Safeguarding democracy. You got the Sulzbergers with the New York Times, and then you got Jeff Bezos with the Was. I mean, it's not a great. It's not really great when those are the people who are supposed to be the bulwarks against an authoritarian government. And we've seen. It's strange, we're totally living in the twilight zone, that Rupert Murdoch, of all those people, has pushed back the hardest against Donald Trump and has said, you know what? We're not gonna settle this Wall Street Journal lawsuit. We're gonna take you to court. It's a strange time to be alive, but I feel like it's very disturbing seeing who's owning and controlling how we absorb information these days. And then you also have the tech billionaires. We haven't talked about Mark Zuckerberg, who has just totally bent the knee and kissed Donald Trump at the feet to keep his business alive, and the AI billionaires, the bros, who are just happy for Donald Trump to clear regulatory hurdles for themselves. How does it affect everyone? Well, everything you consume, whether through the AI bots, whether through Google and YouTube, whether through HBO and CNN, the New York Times, there aren't that many people controlling what you're consuming. And a lot of these people, the majority of these people are happy to kowtow to power if it means safeguarding their overall business interests.
- [31:51]
Jon Favreau
What do you think they do? Like, do you think they're thinking about what happens after Donald Trump leaves? And they have invested all this time and money and flattery in making sure that they can be close enough to Donald Trump or at least not piss him off enough so that they can pursue their business goals. Like, is there any thinking inside some of these media companies that, like, he's gonna be gone at some point and there could be a Democrat in the White House, and then what are we gonna do?
- [32:20]
Oliver Darcy
There should be. I mean, there really should be. Typically, CEOs have always thought about how the political winds change in Washington. I do wonder, though, whether they think Donald Trump's a different animal. And if a Democrat gets elected, they're certainly not going to Use the government for retribution in the same way that Donald Trump is, and so we'll be fine. Maybe that's what they're thinking. I don't know. And I actually wonder if that's a miscalculation, because, as you know, you're seeing a groundswell right now. People saying, no, I want David Ellison dragged before Congress. I want this whole company broken up. Elizabeth Warren's talking about it like she just sent out a pretty clear warning saying, if this gets approved right now, wait till we take back control over Washington. So maybe they're thinking they'll be fine, and maybe that will be the case, because I do think Democrats are not there. At least right now, they're not in the state, talking about, like, weaponizing the Justice Department and directing the Justice Department to block deals that they don't like or to break up companies they don't like. But I do think they're gonna face some scrutiny, and it's gonna be problematic the way they've conducted themselves over the past couple years.
- [33:31]
Jon Favreau
And you know what? I don't even think Democrats need to be talking about weaponizing the Justice Department, because I don't think it is weaponizing the Justice Department to just say, donald Trump did a bunch of dirty, corrupt deals and we get power, we're gonna undo them. That's it.
- [33:47]
Oliver Darcy
I don't disagree with you. But the problem is, I think that we're living in a world where that will be portrayed as weaponizing, and half the country will believe it. And they'll say. And then they'll get back in office and say, well, the Democrats did this, so now we're gonna do this.
- [34:00]
Jon Favreau
They'll go back to it.
- [34:01]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, it's kind of like the doj. Like, what do you do if you have all these partisans installed? Does a Democrat come in and clean house and get rid of these people? And if they do, then there's this weird precedent where it's like, okay, the new guy comes in and they clean house. And so it's just a normalized thing, and the whole system is just politicized.
- [34:22]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, no, it needs. You can't just keep swinging back and forth. At some point, you need to pass some real structural reforms if you're gonna want to stop the cyber foreign. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Not everyone experiences summer as an endless parade of hot dogs, vacations, and pool parties. For some people, life's woes won't abate when the temperature climbs and the days get longer. If you've got the summertime blues or are simply feeling overwhelmed. BetterHelp is there when you need it with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, Having served over 6 million people globally and it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored wrecks look, everyone needs Everyone needs therapy. Everyone could use therapy. Even if you don't think so, it's always good to talk to someone. There's a lot going on in the world. I'm sure there's a lot going on in your life and better help makes it easy. You can just try it from the comfort of your home. You can do it online. You don't have to say yes to everything. This summer, find support in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com offline. That's betterhelp.com offline.
- [35:47]
Stacey Abrams
In moments like these, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and even easier to feel powerless. But we are neither. I'm Stacey Abrams and on my podcast Assembly Required, I take on each executive action, legislative battle and breaking news moment by asking three questions. What's really happening? What can we do about it? And how do we keep going together? This is a space for clarity, strategy and hope rooted in action, not denial. New episodes of Assembly Required Drop Tuesdays Tune in wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.
- [36:27]
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- [37:00]
Jon Favreau
I do want to ask about how these transformations are playing out in right wing media. Some of their stars who've gone independent, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens have openly broke with Trump over the Iran war. Tucker just mocked the President's bragging about ending the war. He said, shut up bitch. I don't take you seriously says that he's leaving the Republican Party. What do you think it means? That the rights information ecosystem is no longer marching in lockstep with Trump?
- [37:28]
Oliver Darcy
I think it means they sense some weakness and they are realizing that Donald Trump is no longer going to be the center of gravity in two years and three years. And they're. They also, I think, have their finger on the pulse. I think Donald Trump's actually lost pulse of his own movement to some extent. And someone like Tucker very much understands that people voted for Donald Trump for a few reasons. One of them is, like, no new wars, right? Yep. And he has just brazenly broken that agreement that he had with the American people on that. And I think Tucker realizes that, you know, Donald Trump's not gonna be here forever. And he's a smart guy. I mean, this is the guy. Like, I'm sure he actually. I think Tucker actually does not like foreign wars. I think that's something he actually believes in. One of the few things, maybe. But he's also a guy who is trashing Donald Trump in 2020. Right. You know, we saw those Dominion texts where he said, I hate this guy with, like, a passion. Right. And then he got on board with Donald Trump and campaigned for him. And why did he do that? Because he knew that Donald Trump was gonna be in power, I think, and that if he wants an audience, this is what he's gonna have to do. But I think now he's also making a calculated decision, which is that he's not going to be in power forever. The midterms are around the corner, and then it's like 2028 time. Right. Like, the presidential election's about to start in a year. So my guess is that that's why they're making these decisions. And I think it's problematic for Donald Trump, but he's not running again either.
- [38:50]
Jon Favreau
So, yeah, he probably doesn't. Probably why his information diet has changed, because he doesn't give as much of a shit anymore about sort of what people are saying about him. So he's more cloistered. He only gets good news. He only accepts good news from his loyal circle of advisors. And I do wonder how it's going to play out in that. Like, you know, if you look at polls, Tucker Carlson's favorability with Republicans has gone way down since he's broken with Donald Trump. So most, you know, Trump voters probably take Trump's side over Tucker's. But there's clearly a faction there that is noisy and growing and necessary for whoever wants to be President next on the Republican side. And it will be interesting to see how that plays out as we get into the 2028 primaries on the Republican side.
- [39:42]
Oliver Darcy
If Tucker were chasing away his audience on YouTube, right. By saying these things, he'd stop saying them.
- [39:47]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [39:48]
Oliver Darcy
I think Megyn Kelly were losing audience because she was speaking out against Donald Trump in the Iran war. She would probably shift her editorial. The fact that they are doubling down, tripling down on it to me, suggests that the audience is responding positively to
- [40:02]
Jon Favreau
it
- [40:04]
Oliver Darcy
and that's why they're saying these things. And the audience that consumes right wing media is the same audience that votes in Republican primaries. I've been saying this forever. If you want to know where the Republican Party is headed, stop listening to random congressmen on the Hill. They don't control the Republican Party. Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, even these days, Right. They control the future of the Republican Party. They're the ones who vote in GOP primaries. And so, you know, I don't know what to actually, I don't put much of stock actually in these polls that say Tucker versus Trump. Like, I don't really. That's not going to be a choice. And I think Tucker Carlson's popularity is actually really high in the Republican Party. He's a very popular figure. If he walked into, like a Republican dinner, I don't think he would be booed. I think that people would want to take his photo. So, like, that's just my take as an observer of this whole thing. So we'll see what happens. But they're making calculated decisions, and I'm assuming it's based on some data from their audiences.
- [40:59]
Jon Favreau
Tucker said something else the other day that sort of stood out at me. Said I think Trump is the last Fox News viewer. I'm so grateful every day that I got fired. Tucker likes to exaggerate, lots of hyperbole. But do you think he's directionally right in where Fox's ratings are going and like, what's going on at Fox as they see a lot of these, a lot of their former stars going independent media splinter, what's going on there?
- [41:27]
Oliver Darcy
I think Fox is still enormously powerful. They have a huge, I mean, they post huge ratings. It's just wild. They just crush everyone else in the ratings. Right. They're competing against broadcast channels, not cable channels in the ratings. That said, I think it's clear the energy has shifted away from Fox into the independent podcast creators. And it's rare. Just think about when was the Last time you saw a headline about what Sean Hannity said on his program, I
- [41:56]
Jon Favreau
know, it's like he disappeared.
- [41:57]
Oliver Darcy
It's like he's gone. He's on Fox every night. Right. He's saying this, but no one's paying attention. You see headlines every day about what Megyn Kelly said about Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens said about what Ben Shapiro's even saying. Even like Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist gets more attention in the zeitgeist, if you will, than it seems like Sean Hannity is these days. And so they're speaking to a large audience. But I think there's something about the momentum has moved to a new medium. And I think also Fox recognizes it because they acquired Red Sea Ventures, which is this company that does a lot of the business strategizing for people like Megyn Kelly. And so they understand they need to be in the creator space. But that's where the energy is these days. And that's where I think a lot of young people are also listening and getting their news. The younger conservatives are not watching Fox News in the same numbers as they are listening to Tucker or Ben Shapiro in their ears.
- [42:59]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. One hopeful development in all this is that independent media is genuinely thriving. One person can now build a real business on subscriptions and a direct line to an audience. You've done this with Status, but also people are being pushed toward the same paywall premium model. What do you think that does to the landscape? Because do you see independent newsletters as a real structural alternative to billionaire owned media? Or do you think that the potential audience of mostly higher educated, higher income subscribers is just smaller and more niche?
- [43:34]
Oliver Darcy
I mean, I think we worry about this a lot. I think it's problematic that only it seems like wealthier Americans can now afford to consume good information. A lot of the information that's free on the Internet is bad. And if you want good information, whether from independent sources like Status or like the New York Times or the Journal or the Post, wherever it is, you have to pay for it now. You have to have a subscription. Even places like CNN.com, which used to be free, are now moving to the paywall. I'm worried about what this is going to do to our information environment. And I think advertisers really, the model that had worked for so long is an advertiser supported model where the advertisers ate the cost of the journalism to produce. And they are so skittish these days around about putting their brands next to news. And I think that's problematic. I think that it'd be nice if more advertisers had a backbone and said, you know what, we actually think journalism is important in society and we want to put our brand next to journalism. But these days, they want to be around fun stuff, they want to be around sports. Everything has been polarized and politicized. And for them, I think, let's say running an ad on a news network could be perceived as being anti Trump because the news is not typically positive for him. And so they don't want to alienate half the country. And so they just shy away from that. And I think that's problematic. It would be certainly easier for people to build robust journalism businesses if they could count on advertiser support. But because advertisers have gone either to the big tech companies or just skittish around being next to news, it's forced a lot of organizations to say, okay, well, we now need to turn to readers to support our businesses because journalism is really expensive to produce high quality information is not free. So that's an issue. And I also think maybe people in our country need to understand that journalism does cost money to make. And, you know, it's about like the cost of a cup of coffee to, you know, for each week or whatever to support a institution that's doing good work. And no one thinks twice about getting that Starbucks coffee half the time. But if it's like $4 or $5 to support a institution holding the powerful to account, it's like, whoa, that's so I can't afford that. Right. And I think that the attitude around news from the public needs to also shift a little bit.
- [46:10]
Jon Favreau
It's really tough because I do think about that equal access problem a lot
- [46:13]
Stacey Abrams
and
- [46:16]
Jon Favreau
a future where there and there already is, but where there's an even deeper divide between people who consume news and consume good news, news that is well reported and fact checked and all that, and then everything else that's just slop on the Internet and some free stuff that's still good, but a lot of slop. I worry about it also with AI because if, you know, it is a good thing that some of these LLMs or a lot of these LLMs can't get behind the paywall on a bunch of media outlets. But that also means that when someone goes and asks an LLM a question about news, they're going to scrape from all the slop and all the free stuff. And right now it still works because there's enough free stuff that is good quality journalism. But I do worry about that going forward too.
- [47:08]
Oliver Darcy
I do too. And a lot of the stuff on the Internet these days that is free, I mean, it's scraping from Reddit and some of these low quality sites, and it presents it so confidently like it is actual truth that I very much worry. I actually hope OpenAI is striking licensing deals with companies, but you haven't seen Google or some of these other big tech giants do the same. And I find that to be alarming as well. These big tech companies are using the content that news organizations paid for, in many cases, most of the cases, to produce. They're using it to enrich themselves and they're stealing the content, basically, and they're not even bothering to leave a check at the door. Not great.
- [47:58]
Jon Favreau
You've talked about how another consequence of all this is that everyone is sort of living in their own private version of reality because everyone's got their own information environment that is algorithmically designed just for them. Is there a scenario to try to end on a hopeful note? Is there a scenario where this gets better? What are the prospects for moving back towards some semblance of a shared reality in terms of the news that we're all consuming?
- [48:32]
Oliver Darcy
I'm so pessimistic on this. So you asked the wrong person to end on a positive note. I mean, I think what it would take is for people, particularly people who control the information pipes, to do the right thing, for just everyone just to do the right thing. For someone like Mark Zuckerberg to say, you know what? Fact checking is actually good to have on meta, we're gonna do the right thing. We're gonna have the fact checking. For Jeff Bezos to say, you know what, we are not going to kowtow to Trump. We're not going to flatter him. We're going to do really strong accountability to journalism. For someone like David Ellison to say, you know what? We're not gonna change cnn, we're not gonna blow it up. Like, I think if a number of people do the right thing, we can fix this. The problem is they're all doing the wrong thing. And I think they've actually learned the wrong lesson. I think one of the things Elon Musk did was teach these people that just don't be shamed by the press and just ignore them and do whatever you want. And whether that's laying off people en masse, whether that's just being a troll on the Internet, I think they've all looked at what Elon's been able to get away with. And thought, why are we even. What are we doing here? Like, we can just get away with anything. If Elon Musk can get away with all of that and still be the most powerful, wealthiest person on Earth and no one challenges him, what we're doing is tiny. And so I think that people doing the wrong thing has actually had the wrong effect, which is that it's given everyone else cover. Because they're all saying, well, we're not the only ones doing it. We're not the anomaly here. We're just all the tech billionaire bros are at the inauguration. Right.
- [50:08]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, well. And one way to avoid being completely reliant on people just doing the right thing is to have this thing called the government that puts in place laws and regulations and rules that everyone has to follow. That's also very true and incentivizes people to do the right thing that way. So that is one backstop that would be nice to have as well.
- [50:33]
Oliver Darcy
I will say too, the last thing is that we can't control what the David Ellisons and Mark Zuckerbergs do. But I genuinely think, mean this when I say it, and we talked about it a little bit earlier, was the public can support organizations doing the right thing. So organizations that are actually living up to their principles and holding power to account, like this stuff, we do this every day with media. It's not free to do it costs money and resources and we have to pay lawyers and photos and all this stuff because we're doing it the right way and you guys are doing the same thing. And people can actually make a difference by supporting institutions that align with their values. And I don't think we can underestimate that. In fact, in most cases, what we've seen so far under Trump is it's the everyday person who has risked everything to be out protesting ICE or protesting abuses of government. It's the people who have the most resources, who theoretically have the most protection, who have kowtowed to Trump everyone else. The everyday person has made a big difference. And so I think the same in the same way with news and the information environment. That's maybe the best, most positive way to end this.
- [51:43]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, some of us have more than others, but we all have agency here. So it's a good thing, good thing to leave people with. Oliver Darcy, thank you so much for joining everyone. Go subscribe to Status. It is for all the reasons we just talked about. And it's also just an excellent, excellent newsletter. You learn a lot about the media. So thanks for joining.
- [52:00]
Oliver Darcy
Thank you. John, take Care.
- [52:13]
Jon Favreau
Offline with Jon Favreau is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Emma Ilic Frank and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes Delon Villanueva, Mia Kelman, Charlotte Landis, Eric Schutte, Rachel Gajewski and Will Jones with support from Adrian Hill and Matt De Groat. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [52:46]
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- [53:31]
Stacey Abrams
In moments like these, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and even easier to feel powerless. But we are neither. I'm Stacey Abrams and on my podcast Assembly Required, I take on each executive action, legislative battle and breaking news moment by asking three questions. What's really happening? What can we do about it? And how do we keep going together? This is a space for clarity, strategy and hope rooted in action, not denial. New episodes of Assembly Required Drop Tuesdays. Tune in wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.
- [54:11]
Grainger Advertiser
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.