The Karol Markowicz Show: Media Misreporting, Information Warfare & Why We Must Question The Narrative with Ashley Rindsberg

Podcast: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show (iHeartPodcasts)
Episode Date: August 27, 2025
Host: Karol Markowicz
Guest: Ashley Rindsberg (Senior Editor at Pirate Wires, Author: The Gray Lady Winked)

Episode Overview

This episode features Karol Markowicz in conversation with journalist and author Ashley Rindsberg, focusing on media misreporting, institutional bias, and information warfare, especially in the digital era. The conversation explores the historic and ongoing consequences of misinformation, the manipulation of major platforms like Wikipedia, and the challenges facing truth-seeking in an AI-driven age. The episode also opens with a Q&A advice segment with Buck Sexton, discussing personal relationships and trust.

Key Segments & Discussion Points

[03:14] Listener Q&A: Relationship Dilemma with Buck Sexton

Scenario Presented

A newlywed listener, married four months, discovers his wife slept with someone else early in their dating relationship (before being official). He grapples with feelings of betrayal despite the lack of exclusivity at the time.

Buck Sexton’s Perspective

• Dating Expectations:
  “We have a...dating culture in America...people sleep with people. That is a thing that is happening on a regular basis.” [05:38]
• Rules of Engagement:
  “There are rules. And the rules are you have a conversation about exclusiveness and monogamy. And until that conversation occurs, you try to be respectful of the person. But they can’t have expectations beyond what has been stated and understood.” [07:29]
• Marriage vs. Dating:
  "I think that marriage...is such an elevation...if you’ve taken that step of marriage with somebody and...you're building a good life together, the dating phase is a different thing with entirely different expectations." [10:47]

Karol Markowicz’s Perspective

• Personal Standard:
  "If I found out today that my husband slept with somebody in the first few months we were dating, I don’t know that I would get over it.” [08:02]
• Advice to the Listener:
  “If you know yourself, and you don’t think you can live with yourself four months into the marriage, I think you have to make a very serious call. Don’t let it be four years into the marriage where you decide you can’t live with it anymore.” [13:22]

Notable Moment

• Buck urges counseling and clear communication:
  “I think having a conversation though...you may be able to reach a point where you realize: what she did when she didn’t really know you is not necessarily a reflection of her feelings for you now and how she will be as a spouse.” [16:36]

[21:59] Interview with Ashley Rindsberg: Media Misreporting & Information Warfare

Ashley’s Background & Influences

• Born in South Africa, raised in America.
• Not a career journalist by training; began by following a curiosity about misinformation after working at Internet Archive.
• The pivotal information: Discovery that the New York Times, on the day World War II began, printed Nazi propaganda as fact (“Poland invaded Germany”).
  • “How could the New York Times think that in 1939?” [23:13]
• This discovery led to his book The Gray Lady Winked, examining how the New York Times’ errors altered history.

Major Themes

1. Institutional Interests and Media Bias

• On the New York Times and the Ukraine famine:
  • “It was all about the New York Times ownership and business interest, as it always is with the New York Times…it was all about money, and it was all about getting access to the Russian market. And they denied it because that was in their interest to do so.” [25:12]
• Media errors can have devastating, even lethal, consequences.

2. Wikipedia as a Battlefield

• Ashley covers information warfare at Pirate Wires, focusing on platform manipulation.

• Wikipedia is being “hijacked by essentially edit gangs…pro-Hamas, pro-China…they’re able to completely contort all the articles in that given area and nobody really knows that. And it’s all getting fed into the LLMs and it’s getting pinned into Google as the top result, and we’re just not aware of it.” [28:40]

• It’s not just governments:
  “It’s everybody that’s involved in gaming every other platform…and gaming the entire digital information ecosystem…There is a massive…pay to play cottage industry…every single day on a massive scale.” [30:52]

3. Social Media, AI, and the Spread of Disinformation

• Young generations may be moving away from legacy platforms — but the “ideas seep in, the language seeps in. People start thinking in the way that they talk.” [37:31]
• LLMs (large language models) are already being manipulated:
  • “People are figuring out how to hack the LLMs just by publishing stuff online that just gets pulled by the machine and then spat back to the user.” [39:38]
  • Example: Pro-Hamas propaganda on Reddit doing just this.

4. The Speed and Scale of Modern Propaganda

• The pace: “Traditional media…played out slowly. Here, it’s just moment by moment.” [40:35]
• Reflects on the overwhelming volume of information, “some of it is just completely fake, just bought and paid for…this is what we consume. This is what our children are consuming.” [32:12]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the New York Times’ Power:
  “If people had known that this was happening…5 million people…could have changed things for America…Americans geopolitics…” (Rindsberg, [25:12])

• On Wikipedia Manipulation:
  “There is a massive, let’s say, pay to play cottage industry where if you want changes to an article…you’re going to pay these people illicitly. It happens every single day on a massive scale.” (Rindsberg, [30:52])

• On Social Media’s Insidious Effects:
  “We live our lives inside of social media…this is what we consume. This is what our children are consuming.” (Rindsberg, [32:12])

• On Advice to Listeners:
  “Read more and … read the books that are a little scary to you because they feel intimidating and challenging…sometimes those end up being books that give you a lot because you’re really with it.” (Rindsberg’s tip for self-improvement, [42:38])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:14]–[17:37]: Listener Q&A: Relationship dilemma and trust with Buck Sexton
• [21:59]–[43:32]: Main interview with Ashley Rindsberg
  • [22:18] Rindsberg’s career origin story
  • [25:12] NYT’s failings and historical impact
  • [28:40] Wikipedia as a battleground
  • [32:12] Social media and propaganda worries
  • [39:38] LLMs and the future of information warfare
  • [42:38] Life advice from Rindsberg

Takeaways

• Historic Media Misreporting: Even “elite” institutions like the New York Times have contributed to mass misinformation with devastating results, often driven by financial motives.
• Wikipedia’s Vulnerabilities: Far from being the impartial, crowd-sourced encyclopedia many trust, Wikipedia can be (and is) systematically manipulated by states, terrorist groups, and commercial interests—often for money.
• Digital Information Warfare: The fight over information is now automated and global. Platforms, LLMs, and search engines inadvertently amplify distortion, and most users are totally unaware.
• Skeptical Engagement: Readers and information consumers must question sources, seek context, and go beyond the surface, especially as AI-generated content and manipulated platforms become the norm.
• Personal Improvement: Read more—and challenge yourself with books that are daunting or outside your comfort zone to grow intellectually.

Closing Thoughts

This episode lays bare the dangers of media manipulation—both intentional and systematic—across old and new institutions. Ashley Rindsberg offers a rare insider’s look at the hidden machinations of information warfare, with urgent implications as AI and digital platforms reshape knowledge and belief. The message: Everything must be questioned, even (or especially) the information we take for granted.