The Games We Play

Summary

On the Media: "The Games We Play" – A Detailed Summary

Release Date: October 23, 2020
Hosts: Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield
Produced by WNYC Studios

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1. AOC’s Twitch Livestream: Innovating Get-Out-The-Vote Efforts

The episode opens with a focus on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (AOC) innovative use of the streaming platform Twitch to engage voters. In an effort to mobilize the electorate, AOC hosted a three-hour livestream where she both played the popular game "Among Us" and delivered her political message.

Notable Moments:

• At [05:48], it's highlighted that during the livestream, AOC opened and closed the event with strong calls to action:

  “If you are able to vote, we are here. Iwillvote.com make sure that you make your voting plan.” – AOC [05:48]

• The stream attracted over 400,000 viewers, surpassing previous viral moments like Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Joe Biden:

  “At the peak point of the stream, folks at the DNC were saying that they were getting the most referrals to iwillvote.com than they ever have.” – McKenna Kelly [07:44]

• AOC’s interaction with viewers included moments that were later clipped and circulated widely, enhancing her reach:

  “You go to the doctor and you say, I have this problem... And then you just go pick it up and that's it...” – AOC [08:38]

2. The Power of "Stan" Culture in Political Campaigns

The discussion delves into the phenomenon of "Stan" culture—dedicated fanbases that passionately support their chosen figures. This culture played a significant role in Ed Markey’s successful campaign.

Key Insights:

• Patricia Hernandez explains how early fan art and online communities paved the way for robust support:

  “She has been building, building this community of people for a very, very long time.” – McKenna Kelly [09:28]

• Ed Markey’s digital team emulated successful strategies from the Bernie Sanders campaign, utilizing meme pages and grassroots online engagement to propel his reelection:

  “They saw how powerful that was. So they were building meme pages for Markey.” – McKenna Kelly [11:21]

3. Historical Context: The 1934 California Governor’s Race and the Birth of Media Politics

A pivotal segment explores the 1934 gubernatorial race in California between Upton Sinclair and opponents backed by powerful media moguls like William Randolph Hearst.

Highlights:

• Greg Mitchell, a historian, recounts how Sinclair's unexpected primary win ignited the first modern media campaign:

  “The reaction to Sinclair's primary win was swift and furious, ushering in the first modern media campaign.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [21:34]

• The Los Angeles Times, under the influence of editor Kyle Palmer, launched relentless negative advertising against Sinclair, marking a shift towards coordinated media attacks:

  “We're going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can.” – Kyle Palmer (as portrayed) [23:17]

• Hollywood's involvement included the creation of fabricated newsreels to tarnish Sinclair's image, illustrating early instances of media manipulation:

  “They hired actors to portray bums and other Sinclair supporters.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [23:53]

4. The Evolution and Impact of Negative Campaigning

The episode traces how negative advertising techniques developed during Sinclair's campaign have become standard in modern politics.

Key Points:

• Founders Clem Whitaker and Leon Baxter pioneered political consulting by focusing on attack ads and media spin, setting templates for future campaigns:

  “If you have to explain something, you've already lost the issue.” – Clem Whitaker (as portrayed) [30:05]

• Their strategies emphasized repetitive messaging and creating relentless narratives, akin to propaganda techniques:

  “You have to say something seven times to make a sale.” – Patricia Hernandez [30:13]

• The transition from party-led campaigns to consultant-driven strategies marked a significant change in political campaigning dynamics:

  “They turned the campaign over for the first time to what we now call political consultants.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [25:05]

5. Modern Disinformation and the Rise of Content Farms

Transitioning to contemporary issues, the hosts discuss how digital technology has facilitated sophisticated disinformation campaigns, paralleling historical tactics.

Notable Examples:

• Laura Walters’ Experience: A journalist was deceived by a fake organization, Peace Data, purportedly linked to Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA), highlighting vulnerabilities in modern journalism:

  “Alice Schultz messaged me on LinkedIn... Would you be interested in writing something for us?” – Laura Walters [36:25]

• The transformation of content farms into political propaganda machines, such as Newsinator and Locality Labs, demonstrates the seamless blending of misinformation with legitimate news content:

  “Locality Labs is a pay-for-play operation. Conservative clients paying for propaganda disguised as vetted local reporting.” – Bob Garfield [41:16]

• Priyanjana Bengani discusses the intricate methods used to mask the true intent behind these operations, making it challenging to trace and expose:

  “They charge their clients to create and publish made-to-order propaganda dressed up as news.” – Bob Garfield [41:16]

6. Media Trust and Political Manipulation

The conversation emphasizes the erosion of trust in media due to the proliferation of fake news and manipulated content, posing significant threats to democratic processes.

Insights:

• The ease of creating fake news outlets and forged documents has amplified misinformation, complicating efforts to ensure factual reporting:

  “Digital tools make it easy to create genuine looking forgeries of actual documents.” – Bob Garfield [37:37]

• Journalists like Laura Walters are urged to exercise heightened due diligence to combat these deceptive practices:

  “Alice Schulz used a Gmail account and not, you know, a staff account...” – Laura Walters [46:10]

7. Republican Party Dynamics and Media Narratives Under Trump

The episode critiques the media's portrayal of Republican fractures post-Trump era, arguing that many GOP members remain staunchly aligned with Trump despite media speculation.

Critical Observations:

• Li Zhu from Vox highlights that reports of a Republican exodus from Trump may be overstated, pointing out high voting alignment with Trump among key GOP figures:

  “Ben Sasse has voted with Trump 86.7% of the time... Martha McSally 94.8%.” – Bob Garfield [50:47]

• The hosts challenge media narratives suggesting imminent major splits within the Republican Party, likening them to unfounded fears rather than observable realities:

  “Each defection could cause a domino effect... But turns out that was one wall that went up and stayed up.” – Bob Garfield [51:17]

8. Conclusion: The Persistent Challenges of Media Manipulation

Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield conclude by reflecting on the enduring nature of media manipulation tactics and their implications for democracy. They underscore the necessity for vigilance and critical consumption of media to safeguard truth and transparency.

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Notable Quotes:

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on AOC’s Twitch strategy:

  “You go to the doctor and you say, I have this problem... And then you just go pick it up and that's it.” [08:38]

• Greg Mitchell on Upton Sinclair’s impact:

  “The reaction to Sinclair's primary win was swift and furious, ushering in the first modern media campaign.” [21:34]

• Clem Whitaker on campaign messaging:

  “If you have to explain something, you've already lost the issue.” [30:05]

• Laura Walters on encountering disinformation:

  “I just can't help but laugh. It is to laugh or it is to cry.” [47:51]

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This episode of On the Media offers a comprehensive exploration of the intricate games played within political campaigns and media landscapes. By juxtaposing historical instances with contemporary challenges, Gladstone and Garfield provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the evolving tactics that shape public perception and democratic engagement.

Transcript

[Michael Ohringer]

Hey, OTM listeners, this is Michael Ohringer, reporter and producer with on the Media. Of course. Did you happen to hear my piece on the show last week about Zello, the walkie talkie app used by militia groups for recruitment and organizing? If you haven't heard it, you should probably cancel your plans for the evening and just go ahead and cue that right on up. But for real, that piece took us so, so long to make 100 hours at least. I was deep in the militia world, researching. I was on and off the phone with WNYC lawyers trying to figure out how to use the most precise language possible. Tons of interviews. I listened to God knows how much militia chatter on Zello. We felt that it was important for people to understand how some of these groups are coming together around the election and you know, what can be done to kind of mitigate the violence that so many of us are afraid of seeing on the news come November. Here's where I ask you for support. Without your support, it's just not possible. So I want to ask you for support, but actually there is a pretty sweet incentive we are serving up on the media. Branded masks. That's right. Stay healthy and stay fresh with the latest hot public radio fashion from OTM. All you have to do is just text OTM to 70101. You'll get a text back with a link where you can make a quick donation or visit onthemedia.org and click donate. Thanks so much.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Okay. Hello.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Hi everyone.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Holy cow. From WNYC in New York, this is on the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Bob Garfield]

And I'm Bob Garfield. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez took to the streaming site Twitch this week to play a video game. Oh, and to round up some new voters.

[McKenna Kelly]

At the peak point of the stream, folks at the DNC were saying that they were getting the Most referrals to iwillvote.com than they ever had have before.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Plus, how to leverage the failure of local newspapers to take advantage of desperate out of work journalists. I would never in a billion years work to promote political pacts and certainly not them. I feel really, really used.

[Bob Garfield]

Pink slime pay for play. Both. It's all coming up after this.

[Michael Ohringer]

On the Media is supported by progressive insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. I'm Ben Smith. I'm Max Tawney. And we host Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. The future of media feels like a moving target, so every Friday we pull back the curtain on the platforms, ideas and people that are shaping the new media landscape. We'll tell you what really matters and try to figure out what's coming next. Plus, we go behind the scenes with the most important players in media right now, whether you are yourself a media insider or just simply curious about who or what will be all over your feed. Next, Mixed Signals From Semaphore Media is the perfect addition to your media diet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bob Garfield]

From WNYC in New York, this is ON THE media. I'm Bob Garfield.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. First, some foresight from Ezekiel, Isaiah, Matthew, Paul and Pat Robertson, who spoke this week of what will follow the preordained reelection of Donald Trump. The Russians and North Korea will threaten us. There will be at least two attempts on the president's life. Blood will run in our streets. Great hordes will move against Israel and be wiped out by God. Then five years of blessed peace followed by cleansing apocalypse.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

The only thing that will fulfill what the word of Jesus that I'm going to give you in a minute is some kind of an asteroid strike on the globe.

[Brooke Gladstone]

He lets Matthew pick it up from.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

There and then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. And all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Then that asteroid strike and then the Rapture.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heaven to the other. To recap, there's going to be a war. Ezekiel 38 is going to be the next thing down the line. Then a time of peace, then maybe the end.

[Brooke Gladstone]

But first, the election is coming up, at which time, according to what I.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Believe the Lord told me, the president is going to be re elected. I'm saying by all means, get out and vote for whoever you want to.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Vote for another get out the vote. Message of a kind, directed to a particular audience. That's the theme of the hour. Fervent messages made to measure both sincere and later this hour. Cynical. But sincerity rules this segment. After all, some of us pray, some of us have already voted. And lo, some of us when called upon, Stan, all will be revealed. Hello.

[Patricia Hernandez]

Hi everyone.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Holy cow. On Tuesday this week, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio Cortez undertook a socially distant get out the vote effort through the streaming platform Twitch. Her pitch opened the three hour plus event and closed it, too. First things first, if you are able to vote, we are here. Iwillvote.com make sure that you make your voting plan. And if you can't vote, if you're under the age of 18, make sure you talk to someone that can vote and try to direct them to iwillvote.com and make sure that they get their voting plan in place. But 400,000 plus viewers hadn't pulled up AOC's first Twitch stream to hear her pitch. They were mainly there to watch her game. Oh my God. Oh my God.

[McKenna Kelly]

Oh my God.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I knew it. The first term representative's first kill in the game among us, which has lately become popular among video game streamers, some of whom joined her that evening.

[Michael Ohringer]

Aoc, do I.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Is that. Is that weird to just call you aoc? No, no, you guys can call me aoc.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Mike Pence can't call me aoc, but you guys can.

[Michael Ohringer]

All right.

[McKenna Kelly]

Okay, let's go.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Though many have politicked on social before, the old school playbook of the ground game and TV ads still dictate the 21st century campaign. But from the COVID era emerges a new playbook. According to the verge political reporter McKenna Kelly. And in that book, Tuesday's livestream marks a landmark event. McKenna, welcome to the show.

[McKenna Kelly]

Hey, it's great to be here.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So the stream was a massive success as far as viewership goes, but it was also billed as a get out the vote effort. Do we know how successful that was?

[McKenna Kelly]

At the peak point of the stream, folks at the DNC were saying that they were getting the most referrals to the website, to iwillvote.com than they ever have.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Do we know how many that was?

[McKenna Kelly]

I was not able to get a specific figure, but during the vice presidential debate, they bought flywillvote.com and then when Taylor Swift said that she was going to endorse Joe Biden, they bought Taylor will vote.com so there have been huge referrals to this link before and saying that the AOC stream was bigger than, say, that huge viral moment with the Fly. And Taylor Swift, who is arguably one of the most famous celebrities in the world, says a lot.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Now, a lot of folks weren't going to sit through the entire thing, but there were moments that were clipped and put on Twitter or YouTube, like when AOC talked about socialized medicine with Hbomberguy.

[Michael Ohringer]

You go to the doctor and you say, I have this problem. And then they prescribe you the medicine, and then you just go pick it up and that's it. And then you go home and you Google how much it would have cost in America.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Oh, my gosh.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Later, he kills her. I'm actually a bit heartbroken. But hey, life is cheap. Can you talk about that moment?

[McKenna Kelly]

So people and users on Twitch are accustomed to diving in and out and jumping in the chat and chatting for a little bit and then maybe going watching some TV or some other videos. So an important part of the Twitch culture is the clips function. And when people do catch something interesting, those clips and those conversations can go viral and reach even bigger audiences on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube than they ever could on Twitch. Because Twitch, of course, is live. But these clips will last forever.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Now, Polygon senior editor Patricia Hernandez wrote this week that it wasn't just about organizing and savvy. This was fandom. Those hundreds of thousands of viewers included thousands of Stans, referring in this case to the AOC diehards. For people who, you know, aren't as hep to the jive as I am, Stan is a term that's drawn from the title of an Eminem song.

[McKenna Kelly]

Right, Right.

[Michael Ohringer]

My girlfri. Cause I talk about you 247 but she don't know you like I know you, slim no one does. She don't know what it was like for people like us growing up. You gotta call me, man. I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose. Sincerely yours, Stan. Pf we should be together too.

[McKenna Kelly]

When it comes to Stan culture, with pop culture and movies and television, oftentimes people will draw fan art of their favorite characters. And people were doing that for AOC in 2018, and she was reposting that fan art on her Instagram page. So she has been building, building this community of people for a very, very long time. And that's why Tuesday's stream was so successful. She already had this base. There were already people who stanned HBOMberguy. There are already people who Stan Hasan, Piker, and Pokemone and the other folks who were on there. There was just a bunch of communities colliding in a really interesting way. And then, of course, the Ed Markey stuff is the most important part here.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So you're talking about Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. His online supporters helped propel him past a primary challenge from Joe Kennedy III earlier this year. How did Stan's play a role in that campaign? And in his victory.

[McKenna Kelly]

Markey is a big Internet guy. He has been behind the Internet for a very long time, introducing privacy rights. He's a big net neutrality supporter. So he's always kind of been in this realm.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And by a very long time, you're talking about three decades.

[McKenna Kelly]

Exactly. So he's been there from the very beginning. Right. But it was new folks that they brought on their digital team, folks who really paid very close attention to what the Bernie Sanders campaign did in 2016, engaging with authentic, organic content from supporters there, and they saw how powerful that was. So they were building meme pages for Markie. There's a bunch of little accounts on Twitter. Harry Styles stands for Ed, Barbs for Ed, which is the word that refers to Nicki Minaj. Stands really built a crazy and kind of strange grassroots community of people to really propel Markey into reelection in September.

[Bob Garfield]

I'm Ed Markey. I'm Ed Markey.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I'm running for Congress because I want.

[Michael Ohringer]

To fight for the principles that I believe in.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

I'm Ed Markey, and I'll fight with you.

[Brooke Gladstone]

New York Times cultural critic Amanda Hess has written extensively about the stanification of politics, and she's often noted that aesthetics can become a shorthand for ideas. That a meme that feels so true and becomes so popular actually begins to maybe obscure a little the votes that a candidate has taken or the bills they want to see become law. Do you think this happened this year during the Markey Kennedy primary?

[McKenna Kelly]

It absolutely happened this year. People who really supported him online would pick out specific moments of humanity and authenticity with him. His Nike Air Jordan shoes that he wore to knock on doors became symbolism for how embedded in the community he is. Right. He's not wearing loafers. But also, just like his introduction of the green new, his support of that and the supporters really wanting to push forward on climate change and putting memes about Markey saving the environment did kind of obscure a lot of his past history. A lot of folks who support him now have a big gripe with his vote to approve the Iraq war. So a lot of that was kind of left behind.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Let's go back to Twitch for a sec. Ideally, participating in democracy requires more than hanging out. Tweeting is kind of a joke these days because people will sometimes do that instead of actually engaging in politics. Is there any danger of standom politics becoming like a sad substitute for genuine political engagement?

[McKenna Kelly]

Right. You can't vote online. All of this excitement needs to transition into action, and that's a very difficult metric to measure. You can't really poll everyone who retweets a Markey tweet to make sure that they voted for him, right? But there also has always been toxic culture in Standom and fandom, right?

[Brooke Gladstone]

There was in the Markey enterprise some really nasty people talking about the Kennedy assassination.

[McKenna Kelly]

We saw, even with the Bernie campaign in 2016 and 2020 the idea and concept of Bernie Bros who were harassing people online. The there's also the fandom around Kamala Harris, the K Hive, who also get criticized frequently online for launching terrible attacks on people on the Internet too. When I spoke to a ton of the Stans who have these accounts and kind of engage with the community on a daily basis, the community itself does a lot of self policing. So if they did see a really terrible JFK post, they would all tell the people in their Discord chats, in their Slack chats to go and report it. But the excitement and things like this. This does seem to inspire a lot of hateful and toxic behavior.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Seems only natural to compare AOC's success online to the Biden campaign's inroads into newer platforms, which are much more modest. Should the Democrats expect a similar level of online engagement from the Biden campaign? Or is that like asking Apple's to act like oranges?

[McKenna Kelly]

When the first kind of wave of the pandemic hit in the spring, Biden's team had a very difficult time transitioning to the Internet. Their first zoom call with supporters. The audio was busted.

[Bob Garfield]

I know this country will summon the.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Spirit of empathy, decency and unity.

[Brooke Gladstone]

We've never failed in a moment.

[McKenna Kelly]

A lot of those very Internet savvy digital folks from the Bernie team have moved over to the Biden campaign. They launched a Twitch channel themselves a couple weeks ago, and their first stream was just a video shot of the back of an Amtrak TR with lo fi hip hop beats playing in the background. Something for people just to have on while they work, which is something that already takes place on the platform and showed a real fluency in Twitch's audience. Right? Their design and creative team are doing design streams on Twitch now too. Those streams are extremely popular. There's so many famous Instagram artists who will just go and draw on Twitch for a little bit and talk to their followers. And and it's hard for me to talk about Biden's strategy without talking about their bout in the Animal New Horizons Nintendo game. The game is all about design. The Biden campaign introduced yard signs in September and people would take screenshots of the little Biden Harris yard sign in front of their virtual little home and post them on social media where they go viral. And then last week, the Biden campaign was like, okay, we saw how you guys like the yard signs. We're making an entire island for you to visit because you can't go to field offices anymore because of social distancing. Right?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

I have to say, whoever built this.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Put a lot of work into it. You can see the little Team Joe signs everywhere.

[Michael Ohringer]

One of their villagers is a bald.

[McKenna Kelly]

Eagle, and there's even a little Joe Biden figure who walks around and when you talk to him, he says, no malarkey. They just really took the time to familiarize themselves with the game. And those people who go and visit this island, they're taking screenshots and they're posting them on social media. But the thing is, is that when you take these big risks, there is a chance for you to have like a hello, fellow kids moment. Right? It seems disingenuous. It feels like you're doing this for clout, but for them, they were really attentive and respectful, and I think that's why the payoff was so big.

[Brooke Gladstone]

They tried to learn the language.

[McKenna Kelly]

They did.

[Brooke Gladstone]

McKenna, thank you very much.

[McKenna Kelly]

Yeah, no, this was so much fun.

[Brooke Gladstone]

McKenna Kelly is a politics reporter for the Verge.

[Bob Garfield]

Coming up, we looked at the future of political campaigning. Now let's consider the past.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on.

[Michael Ohringer]

Onthemedia is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. I'm Ben Smith. I'm Max Tawny. And we host Mick Signals from Semaphore Media. The future of media feels like a moving target. So every Friday, we pull back the curtain on the platforms, ideas and people that are shaping the new media landscape. We'll tell you what really matters and try to figure out what's coming next. Plus, we go behind the scenes with the most important players in media right now. Whether you are yourself a media insider or just simply curious about who or what will be all over your feed next. Mixed signals from Semaphore Media is the perfect addition to your media diet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bob Garfield]

This is on the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. There's hyperbole about the critical importance of every general election, but this time, the claim is most definitely warranted. The result may determine what our nation stands for for generations. But modern methods of ceding lies and his hysteria into a campaign, the precision of it, the craft can be traced back to a single race in 1934 for California governor. Some years back, we talked to two lifelong students of history about how that race was run and what it wrought. We began with Greg Mitchell, who's written a dozen books about U.S. politics and history of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was said that the governor's race was intensely watched because it was seen as a judgment on FDR's New Deal. Because seemingly out of nowhere, the Democratic primary was won by Upton Sinclair, the prolific muckraking author of the Jungle, which galvanized public outcry over the reckless disregard for public health and workers. Lives in the meatpacking industry. An unabashed socialist, his political star rose when he launched a hugely popular anti poverty campaign.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

There's no excuse for poverty in a.

[Michael Ohringer]

State as rich as California.

[Brooke Gladstone]

We can produce so much food that.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

We have to dump it into our bay.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I aimed at the public's heart, he wrote, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. Mitchell told us that the reaction to Sinclair's primary win was swift and furious, ushering in the first modern media campaign. Mitchell described him as, among other things, a militant vegetarian, erstwhile socialist and scourge of the ruling class. Erstwhile because after several unsuccessful runs as socialist, Sinclair changed his party affiliation to Democrat.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

He led a mass movement called End Poverty in California, or epic, and managed to sweep the Democratic primary in a landslide with hundreds of thousands of votes and was the favorite to win in November.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So people knew who they were voting for?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Oh, absolutely. He was one of the most famous authors in the world today. We remember him mainly for the Jungle. But at the time, he was always in and out of the headlines, getting arrested, and was certainly a famous figure in California and around the country.

[Brooke Gladstone]

As you describe it, the swiftest response to his winning the primary came from newspaper magnates like William Randolph Hearst and the Chandlers. Right, the family behind the Los Angeles Times and also Hollywood.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Well, of course, the newspapers at that time were extremely reactionary throughout the state. They were owned by families, they had a lot of money at stake. And, you know, Sinclair, bless his heart, had been one of the leading media critics of his day. We think of Sinclair today as this muckraker, like an investigative journalist or something. He was mainly a novelist. And even the Jungle is a novel. So what the newspapers would do is they would Take some outrageous thing that a character in one of Sinclair's novels said and would pretend that Sinclair had said it himself. So they would put it right on the front page and have him believing in free love and giving away money to everyone and hating the church. So, yeah, the newspapers were in the forefront of the fight.

[Brooke Gladstone]

The Los Angeles Times also took shots at Sinclair's followers.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Yeah, they called him the maggot. Like horror that it was so over the top.

[Brooke Gladstone]

The political editor of the Los Angeles Times was a real kingmaker. His name was Kyle Palmer. And you cite this really amazing anecdote when he's having a conversation with the New York Times star reporter who is in California, a guy named Turner Catledge.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Turner came out there to cover the campaign in a fairly even handed way and was amazed. There was no coverage about Sinclair at all in the LA Times except for all the negative shots. And so he asked Kyle Palmer, how can you get away with only covering one campaign? And Palmer said, turner, forget it. We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can. We're going to kill him, quote unquote.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Okay, so what was Hollywood's beef with Upton Sinclair?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

They thought that Sinclair and his former socialist background was a threat to the movie industry itself. And so the first thing they did was they threatened to move to Florida. When that didn't work, they docked each of their employees one day's pay to be donated then to the GOP candidate. And then finally Irving Thalberg at MGM made these newsreels that presented Sinclair and his supporters in the worst possible light and were actually mainly faked footage. Some of it was shot on the studio lot. They hired actors to portray bums and other Sinclair supporters.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This was the famous humanitarian, Irving Thalberg.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Yeah, he admitted it after the campaign that he was the one. And I managed to find these newsreels. They were sort of missing to history. They were really the first attack ads on the screen. And people back then got a lot of their news off the newsreels and they thought they were the straight deal.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You say that this campaign marked the beginning of media politics. I want you to make that argument for me because certainly negative advertising did not begin with the gubernatorial campaign of Upton Sinclair.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

There, of course, had been dirty campaigns before this, but campaigns had always been run by political parties and their local leaders. But the Sinclair threat was so great, they turned the campaign over for the first time to what we now call political consultants, to PR people we now call spin doctors. The first turning over the campaign to advertising people, the use of radio and the screen to make attack ads and national fundraising from all over the country in one state race. All of those things were unprecedented.

[Brooke Gladstone]

What was the substance of these smears that made it so unprecedented?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Sinclair said that if he was elected, California would become such a paradise that the unemployed would want to come to California. And of course he was just joking about it. But they took that and they made radio dramas around it. They made two of these fake newsreels around it. They plastered it on billboards all over the state.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Horrific images of huddled masses crowding into California.

[Bob Garfield]

Your inquiring cameraman interviewed 30 stated that.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

They were on their way to California to spend the winter and to remain there permanently if the Epic plan went into effect. Hearst owned movie theaters, so he worked with MGM to get these newsreels into his movie theaters. You had all these people on every level of radio, newspapers, movies, advertising, all in the same room and saying, okay, how can we direct this campaign using all these different tools?

[Brooke Gladstone]

You're describing a sort of vertical integration of the political smear.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

That's right, yeah. One of the things that was continually used against Sinclair was that he was a free love advocate. Almost what you might call a hippie, bohemian and so forth. This was because there were characters in his books who had these traits. He was a vegetarian, you know, which at that time was seen as somehow un American. So he had some personal traits. But the odd thing was he was such a straight laced, not in any way a free spirit that they pictured him as.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So were you convinced that it was the negative advertising that took down Upton Sinclair?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

I think after coming off his primary win, which is at the very end of August, the Epic campaign was an incredible mass movement. I mean, they had 800 chapters around the state. They had a weekly newspaper that had 2 million circulation. I would say that if these new techniques and over the top incredible dirty tricks had not been employed, that Sinclair would have narrowly won.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Craig Mitchell is the author of, among many other books, the Campaign of the Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics?

[Bob Garfield]

Hollywood may have bankrolled and assembled the anti Sinclair ads, but who helped to shape them to coordinate them? Who honed the techniques of the out of context quotation and opposition research now part of the standard campaign playbook?

[Patricia Hernandez]

Sinclair writes a book about what's been done to him and he calls it the Lie Factory. But he doesn't even really know who's done it, who's behind it.

[Bob Garfield]

The masterminds behind that campaign were Clem Whitaker and Leon Baxter, the owners of Campaigns, Inc. The world's first political consulting firm.

[Patricia Hernandez]

They use invented organizations to print pamphlets all the time.

[Bob Garfield]

Jill Lepore, New Yorker staff writer, Harvard history professor and author of Just About Everything youg Need to Make Sense of American History. We spoke to her about eight years ago after she profiled the duo in the New Yorker.

[Patricia Hernandez]

Clem Whitaker had been a longtime newspaper reporter. He also founded a wire service, the California Feature Service. And Leon Baxter, who's this young widow, is hired to work with him on his first political campaign. They fall in love. He divorces his first wife and marries her. They work behind the scenes. No one really pays much attention to who they are. So it's very different from political consultants today, who very much adore the limelight and are very much celebrities.

[Bob Garfield]

And yet semi anonymous as they were, they dominated this fledgling industry, winning 70 out of 75 campaigns. What was their secret sauce?

[Patricia Hernandez]

The first thing they do is they hibernate for a weekend or some number of days when they're hired by any campaign and they come up with a plan of campaign. They come up with all the rhetoric that they're going to use exactly the way they're going to position their candidate. Then they write an opposition plan of campaign to imagine that there was someone actually opposing them. But there is no opposition. There are no other political consulting firms before the 1950s. So they're just really fighting their own shadow. They're boxing in the dark. But Whitaker says there's only two ways to interest Mr. Or Mrs. America in a political campaign. You either have to put on a fight or you have to put on a show. It's no coincidence that political consulting comes out of California. It's very much bound up with Hollywood. Whitaker and Baxter had a rule. You know, if you have to explain something, you've already lost the issue. You never explain. Your obligation is to simplify the message and go on the attack. You can't win a defensive campaign.

[Bob Garfield]

One of their tricks was to come up with an allegation and just repeat it endlessly, no matter how, you know, dubious its merits.

[Patricia Hernandez]

Among their rules was you have to say something seven times to make a sale.

[Bob Garfield]

It also has echoes of Goebbels, the dynamics of the big lie. Were they on the same track?

[Patricia Hernandez]

You know, it's something that people in the 1930s were very concerned about with radio in general. There's a lot of concern in the 30s about propaganda in Europe. There's obviously a lot of concern about the border between fact and fiction in American radio broadcasting. I mean, just think about War of the Worlds and the controversy that that sparks. Baxter, in particular, later in life, looking back at the work she had done, thought about, was there a difference between what she was doing in Nazi propaganda? Not obviously at the level of content. She thought what she was doing was principled and that her political arguments were sincere. And I think they indeed were sincere. But I think she had come to understand, and this is reflected in this quite powerful oral history interview that's conducted with her in her life. You know, it's like sort of believing in a benevolent dictatorship. You can't accept that these tools are a good thing if it depends on the nobility of the intentions of the people who hold them.

[Bob Garfield]

What's so spooky about your New Yorker piece is how much it seems to presage what goes on today. Tell me about the campaign against government mandated health insurance.

[Patricia Hernandez]

Whitaker and Baxter were first hired in the state of California to defeat Earl Warren's proposed statewide health insurance program in the 40s. They had actually gotten Warren elected governor, but he had then fired them. He was pretty concerned about the methods that they used. He proposed a health insurance program. They were hired by Whitaker and Baxter, hired by the California Medical association to defeat it. They used all their classical methods. They decided that what Warren was proposing was creeping socialism. They invoked the specter of Stalinism. They defeated it successfully by one vote. Warren was outraged. Harry Truman then picked up the cause. Both in California and nationwide. Compulsory health insurance was incredibly popular. What Whitaker and Baxter did when they were hired, then subsequently by the American Medical association, was take those same techniques that they'd used to defeat health insurance in California and bring them to the nation at large. And they did so very much with an eye toward defeating not only that proposal that Truman had offered, but health insurance forever afterward. They tell the ama, you are hiring us not just to defeat this piece of legislation, you are hiring us to put an end forever to the idea that the federal government could have anything to do with health care.

[Bob Garfield]

This whole conversation, Jill, is premised on the idea that Campaigns, Inc. Created in the 30s the template for all modern political campaigning. It's also completely protected by the thing we hold most dear, the First Amendment. Are we doomed to this kind of political cancer forever?

[Patricia Hernandez]

There was a great moment in the 50s when this political scientist named Stanley Kelly went around and interviewed a bunch of political consultants who were just starting out. He wrote this book about the founding of this industry. And he said, you know what's going to happen? What's going to happen with this stuff? And when Sky System I gave it a few months because really we're selling so much baloney. How much longer could anybody possibly believe a word we're telling them, you know?

[Bob Garfield]

Jill Lepore is the author of many books about American history, most recently if Then how the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. Coming up, the whole press corps sitting with Linus in the pumpkin patch.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on the Media.

[Michael Ohringer]

On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. I'm Ben Smith. I'm Max Tawney and we host Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. The future of media feels like a moving target. So every Friday we pull back the curtain on the platforms, ideas and people that are shaping the new media landscape. We'll tell you what really matters and try to figure out what's coming next. Plus, we go behind the scenes with the most important players in media right now. Whether you are yourself a media insider or just simply curious about who or what what will be all over your feed next, Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media is the perfect addition to your media diet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is ON THE media. I'm Brooke Gladstone and this third part of our episode on tailored messaging is even slimier than the second.

[Bob Garfield]

A few facts. One the newspaper business is in the toilet, decimating local journalism and putting thousands of reporters on the street. Two Digital tools and the Internet make it easy to create genuine looking forgeries of actual documents. Even entire bogus news outlets and three bad actors of all stripes are seizing the opportunities afforded by technology to poison the information. Well, with propaganda psyops and lies such as Russia's infamous Internet Research Agency, which contaminated our 2016 election. As one of the culprits explained on the CBC. I figured out early that the main goal was to create a picture of the world and the Internet that mirrored what was being shown on Russian television. All of the above is how Laura Walters wound up as a stooge for the Russians.

[Laura Walters]

I felt pretty stupid, I felt pretty embarrassed and I just thought, oh my gosh, how did I not pick this up? I'm usually the person who's reporting on these things. I'm usually the person who's spotting these things.

[Bob Garfield]

The specific thing the London based New Zealand journalist didn't spot was that the apparent do gooder publication that had solicited her work called Peace Data was a phony site set up by that same Internet research agency. This time the Russians covertly paid legitimate Western journalists for articles to establish a veneer of respectability for its disinformation.

[Laura Walters]

A person calling themselves Alice Schultz messaged me on LinkedIn and said, hey, we see you've written about issues like human rights and global social issues and geopolitical issues in the past and we've just started up a brand new not for profit organization. We're trying to get some good content on our new website and we're looking to publish the type content of of stuff you've been writing about. Would you be interested in writing something for us?

[Bob Garfield]

So she submitted a story that, as we shall see shortly, was the hope diamond of dark irony. But for now, let's just observe that Laura Walters is by no means alone. As reported over the past year by Reuters, Columbia Journalism Review, Deseret News, Lansing State Journal, and most recently the New York Times, various political actors have exploited the tools of digital technology and the financial hardship of struggling journalists to develop sophisticated propaganda operations fronted by innumerable unwitting accomplices. And they are everywhere.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Over 1,200 local news sites in all.

[Michael Ohringer]

50 states in the run up to the 2020 election.

[Brooke Gladstone]

That's a problem.

[Bob Garfield]

That was Christiane Amanpour. This political grift is an ugly evolution of the so called content farm which emerged about a decade ago to provide dirt cheap content for budget strapped news organizations. They scraped official data online, automated basic financial reporting, copied press releases and paid freelancers piecework to mass produce what looked like journalism but was mainly just filler. Such content came to be known by the same name applied to the dubious meat like product also used as filler. Gerald Zernstein grinds his own hamburger these days.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Why?

[Bob Garfield]

Because this former USDA scientist, now whistleblower.

[Michael Ohringer]

Knows that 70% of the ground beef.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

We buy at the supermarket contains something.

[Bob Garfield]

He calls pink slime. Cheap and filling. Yes, and also kind of nauseating.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

You know, it's hard to come by a good business model in local news nowadays.

[Bob Garfield]

Priyanjana Bengani is a senior research fellow at Columbia Journalism School's Tao center for Digital Journalism who has written extensively on the slime beat and its capacity for dressing up Readily available information is news.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

They use automotive techniques to just flood the pipelines with content which people may or may not care about.

[Bob Garfield]

Sometimes, though, the human touch is required.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

If there was something that needed to be reported or that needed to have a little bit more of a human element, those stories would then be outsourced to the Philippines, where they could pay people very little money to either conjure up bylines or conjure up quotes.

[Bob Garfield]

In her mention of the Philippines, she refers particularly to a content farm called Journatic, founded in 2006 by Brian Timpone, which counted among its clients and investors such publishers as Hearst Newspapers and the Tribune Company. It was quite the industry darling until 2012, when this American Life revealed just how slimy the news substitute was.

[McKenna Kelly]

The reporter's name on the story is Ginny Cox, but there is no Ginnie Cox. Or even if there is a Ginnie Cox somewhere out there, she didn't write this story. The writer was someone named Giselle Bautista in the Philippines who works for Genatic. Again, looking at the computer system the.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Company uses to manage its stories, it.

[McKenna Kelly]

Seems that when Giselle worked on this real estate story, there was a button called Select Alias.

[Michael Ohringer]

When she clicked on it, she had a choice.

[Brooke Gladstone]

She could either be Ginny Cox or Glenda Smith.

[Bob Garfield]

That, says Bengani, was curtains for Journatic, but also the moment when pink slime turned into something far more nefarious.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

In 2014, 2015, Timpon created a new company called Newsinator and they started creating a network of local sites in Illinois. This was done in partnership or at least heavily funded by Dan Proft, who ran a super PAC called Liberty Principles. And Dan Proft has been described as a controversial figure in conservative politics in Illinois. Eventually what happened with Newsinator was somehow it rebranded to become something called LGIS or Local Government Information Services.

[Bob Garfield]

The main brand nowadays is called Locality Labs, but by any name she says, it is a pay for play operation. Conservative clients paying for propaganda disguised as vetted local reporting. There's a name for that, actually.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

I'm the president and you're fake news.

[Bob Garfield]

Only this is actual fake news from countless sites whose ownership is intentionally obscured by a confusing array of entities. It is the quintessential shadowy network which Bengani's Internet sleuthing and other reporters shoe led. The reporting has now bathed in unwelcome light.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

There are various metadata things and websites that you can identify what other domains are sitting on the same IP address as the Michigan sites. Who else is using the same Google Analytics ID or the Facebook Pixel id? Who else is sharing the same SSL certificate?

[Bob Garfield]

Essentially Timponi charges his almost entirely right wing clients to create and publish their made to order propaganda dressed up as news mixed in with some legitimate content, precisely like Laura Walters story in Peace data. In other words, a homegrown version of Russia's Internet research agency, the ira specifically.

[Michael Ohringer]

Sent people to the United States to study the political sphere in the US and to understand what the pressure points were.

[Bob Garfield]

From the HBO documentary Agents of Chaos.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

The depth of the content was surprising. Our assumption was that all of this content would be on one side politically.

[Michael Ohringer]

But what they had done very effectively was finding, find a friction point and.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Then try to manipulate people on both sides.

[Bob Garfield]

2016 Redux and again, the con depends on real journalists, some unwittingly, some not, who provide actual reporting as a cover for the scheme. Florida reporter Pat Morris, who until the Great Recession had been a staffer at a dozen small market dailies, weeklies and alt weeklies, has lately depended on freelance gigs, including a year in the Timponi Archipelago.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You know, I was laid off in 2009, so I haven't been in a newsroom since then. But yes, it never occurred to me I would be part of anything like that. Like I said, I read last November's, I guess the first thing that the Columbia Journalism Review had published and I just, I wanted to throw up. I really, really wanted to just throw up.

[Bob Garfield]

Not just because her stories created a cover for Political Mischief, but because her readers and her own story subjects were themselves abused in service of lies.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You know, talking to people like at the Urban League in Charleston, farmers who would stop and talk to me from their tractor for an hour while a tariff is killing them. Doing all that and trusting me, thinking that they're helping their communities, but instead.

[Bob Garfield]

Helping the purveyors of not pink but red, made in the usa Political slime.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You know, you kind of expect the Russians to do stuff to you, but you don't expect, you know, your own country to, you know, people using the mechanisms of your own country and the mechanisms of freedom of the press, which is not a Russian concept, but it's an American concept. I think it's certainly more hurtful personally, and I think it's more dangerous socially because, you know, Americans, if you're American, you know, you know how to do it. I mean, the Russians, I guess, were masters of social media, but what these guys are doing is using local community news and that's something that Americans know and trust.

[Bob Garfield]

We asked Tim Poney for comment, but he did not respond. So let's return now to the masters The Russians and the Story of Laura Walters. In the analog cloak and dagger world of espionage, intelligence operatives tend to seek agents who are vulnerable for one reason or another. The slime sites are no different.

[Laura Walters]

I did have a certain vulnerability. I didn't have that protection of being a staff reporter. I also didn't have the certainty of, you know, a weekly or a monthly paycheck. And it's not just being a freelancer, it's being a freelancer within the media environment during COVID you know, where there aren't a whole lot of jobs going. If anything, there are jobs being slashed. So of course that makes you vulnerable. It makes you more likely to, you know, jump on any opportunity that comes your way.

[Bob Garfield]

Which is why she and Pat Morris have gone on the record to warn others of the dangers, even if it means exposing the grim irony of failing to do the journalistic due diligence on their employers that they routinely do in their reporting.

[Laura Walters]

The fact that Alice Schulz used a Gmail account and not, you know, a staff account like data.com they used AI generated profile pictures. So these were pictures of people who don't exist and have never existed. And there are ways to pick up on those. Of course I didn't search, I didn't look into it, but if I had, maybe I would have of spotted that they only wanted to pay via PayPal. You know, they didn't want to use any other form of Internet transfer or payment option. And the social media accounts were quite new and quite unpopulated as well. So you'd think that someone who was, you know, very connected, working in an NGO space or a media space, would probably have had quite an established social media presence. And they did it. So those were some of the obvious things that jump out to me looking.

[Bob Garfield]

Back at it, but irony wise, really, that's nothing. Earlier, I promised you a true gobsmacker and I am about to deliver. Laura Walters wrote exactly one piece for Peace Data. It was a thousand word story about a sinister foreign scheme to plant disinformation in her home country. A story Alice Schulz or Vladimir Mickputin or whoever the editor really was said was just perfect.

[Laura Walters]

I got this gushing response where they said, we'd all like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It's such a fantastic piece. And then Ellis went on to say, it's hard to believe how totalitarian countries like China or Russia are finding their ways to meddle even in the strongest democracies around the globe. And of course at the time I thought nothing of that. Now, you know, I look back at that and I just can't help but laugh.

[Bob Garfield]

It is to laugh or it is to cry.

[Laura Walters]

Exactly. And I teetered on the edge. I really did.

[Bob Garfield]

Don't we all? Don't we all? And democracy right along with us.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Yes, we may teeter and even totter, but we can always rely on the insights from the insiders and farseers of our political press, extrapolating from the pronouncements of our elected officials. Even as Bob observes, when they are wrong, time after time, the fact that they feel so sure is reassuring.

[Michael Ohringer]

Right?

[Bob Garfield]

This was Republican Ben Sasse last week dumping on Donald Trump the way he kisses dictators butts.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I mean, he and I have a.

[Bob Garfield]

Very different foreign policy.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It isn't just that he fails to.

[Bob Garfield]

Lead our allies, it's that we, the United States, now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership.

[Michael Ohringer]

The way he treats women and spends.

[Bob Garfield]

Like a drunken sailor. Sass goes on and on, triggering a spasm of triumphal journalism about Senate Republicans like Sasse, like John Cornyn of Texas and Martha McSally of Arizona finally fleeing the sinking Trump ship, running for the lifeboats, as the Hill put it. CNN's Brianna Keller Some are coming to.

[McKenna Kelly]

The realization that they're towing a President Trump shaped anchor.

[Bob Garfield]

Different nautical analogy, but whatever. At Vox Politics and Policy reporter Li Zhu described, quote, a broader trend of Republicans doing what many GOP lawmakers have long been unwilling to signal a break with Trump. That's true. Republicans have long been unwilling to break with Trump on Brett Kavanaugh's court nomination on climate change, on immigration, on impeachment, on Covid, on health care, on the wall, on thousands of lies and cowardly attacks. The press, on the other hand, has been super willing to see such breaks coming. Just after the perfect call to Ukraine's president that triggered impeachment, Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times ventured that, quote, the GOP establishment might desert Mr. Trump as swiftly and unexpectedly as it bent the knee to him in 2016. In Fortune a year ago, quote, public support for impeachment inquiry surges as key Republicans distance themselves from Trump. And Business Insider headlined a story Cracks appear in GOP Red wall of support for Trump. Nope. Turns out that was one wall that went up and stayed up. Whether this and all the other crack noticing was a case of careless extrapolation or just wishful thinking this time of year, it all sounds so familiar.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Hey, aren't you gonna wait and greet the Great Pumpkin, huh?

[Bob Garfield]

It won't be long now the press's Great Pumpkin vigil actually began before Trump ever took office. The Republican civil War has begun, wrote Rolling Stone in March of 2016. Republican exodus from Trump grows claimed the Hill, which went all Dwight Eisenhower on how was all going to happen.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Each defection could cause a domino effect.

[Bob Garfield]

For the Republican Party and good old Morning Joe, they're not going to be able to endorse a guy that makes racist statements. So many exoduses that weren't so many growing distances, so many journal geologists detecting so many fault lines, perhaps especially at the Washington Post, which sees cracks everywhere October 2019 the Republican cracks on impeachment are starting to show September 2019 Cracks emerge among Senate Republicans March 2019 GOP unity behind Trump is cracking January 2019 as Trump appeals to nation for wall cracks show in his GOP support and Post columnist Michael Gerson in August 2017, that sound you hear is the wall of elected Republican support for President Trump beginning to crack, or just the sound of magical thinking. Meanwhile, as the press goes gaga over the candor, humility and raw political courage of Ben, please Note that over four years the senator has voted with Trump 86.7% of the time, including on Brett Kavanaugh, including repealing Obamacare, including the border wall, including arms to Saudi Arabia, including the ruinous tax cuts, and including confirmation of Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Linda McMahon and Bill Bowman, and including impeachment. The Heroic renegade Martha McSally has voted with the President 94.8%, John Cornyn 95.1%. With distance like that, who needs blind loyalty? But on the Hallows Eve of election, here's the press once more suckered into the Exodus narrative. Some have compared some such chronic gullibility to Charlie Brown thinking Lucy will finally let him kick the football. But how can we possibly trivialize a matter as grave as media failure by comparing it to Charlie Brown? Come on, be serious.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

What did he leave us?

[Michael Ohringer]

Did he leave us any toys?

[Bob Garfield]

I was robbed.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I spent the whole night waiting for.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

The Great Pumpkin when I could have.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Been out for tricks or treats.

[Bob Garfield]

Halloween is over and I've missed it. That's it for this week's show on the Media is produced by Alana Casanova Burgess, Michael Lowinger, Leah Feder, John Hanrahan and Eloise Blondio, with help from Ava Sasani. And our show was edited by Brooke our technical directors, Jennifer Munson. Our engineers this week were Sam Baer and Josh Hahn.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Katya Rogers is our executive producer on the media is a production of WNYC Studios and I'm inviting you to hang out with us on November 3rd for election night. It'll be on Zoom or something like that. Like Zoom. So you'll actually be seeing us and our guests. Just go to the Greenspace that's G R e e n e-space.org for more info or text. OTMLive to 70101 to get updates by text. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Bob Garfield]

And I'm Bob Garfield.

[Brooke Gladstone]

NYC now delivers the most up to date local news from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday and evening with three updates a day. Listeners get breaking news, top headlines, and in depth coverage from across New York City by sponsoring programming like NYC Now. You'll reach our community of dedicated listeners with premium messaging and an uncluttered audio experience. Visit Sponsorship WNYC to get in touch and find out more.