Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
bringing you analysis,
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up-to-date news, and principles
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so that you can judge
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religious liberty developments
in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln
Steed and my guest is Andy Im.
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I do a double
take on your last name
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because I have another contact
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with the very similar last name,
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but nobody quite like you
and your job is very important
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as communication director
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for the Michigan Seventh-day
Adventist church division.
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And as I've said
a number of times
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before working with
campus crusade for young people,
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very significant
with religious liberty.
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And dealing with the
young people, I know...
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Well, I know you not
only know how they operate,
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you operate like them,
'cause you're still young.
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I am.
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And a characteristic
of the younger generation
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is to be very
computer literate, isn't it?
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Yes.
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And I, myself use the
computer from time to time,
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and I realize that the
world is at your fingertips.
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Yeah, you just
punch a couple of buttons
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and it's like you're
in the public library
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or better videos, and blogs,
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and music whatever you want.
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Is this information conduit
to the younger generation?
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Is it working to
their advantage or ours?
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What's your judgment on this?
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I think the
access to the information
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can be both good and bad.
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I think it's bad in
the sense that people
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or young people now
can just pick and choose
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what they want to hear.
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And that's not good
in the objective sense
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because you're not
getting a wide variety of use.
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Now you can just pick and choose
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what you want to hear.
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And so that's not
necessarily positive.
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Another thing for example,
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to give a specific
example with YouTube,
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you know, it's really
clips, little sound bytes,
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one minute clips of things
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that various
popular figures are saying
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and, you know, they get
millions of millions of hits.
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And so that
shift begins to shape
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their views on a
whole wide range of things
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from politics to social norms
and so forth and so there's...
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I'd say a lot of dangerous
or negative components to that.
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Yup, I agree with your point.
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Well, I'm a YouTube
user as I drive to work.
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I am too. Yes.
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And I watch a...
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Actually yesterday I
watched a three hour documentary
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on YouTube,
they're not little clips...
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It was a history of
the czars in Russia.
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I don't think it's
the length so much,
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I think it's what
often is missing is context,
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and it seems to me education
is not just absorbing facts.
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If that were
the case then people
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with photographic
memories would rule the world.
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But they don't
because they don't necessarily
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synthesize it correctly.
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And a lot of the input
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or the reaction
to their information
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or postings from other people.
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And I think that's
positively degrading of
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from what I've
seen of real knowledge,
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but perhaps it's
what the Bible says,
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forever learning and
never arriving at the truth.
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But information,
is it more accessible
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than ever before,
there's no question about that.
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And I know you have a burden
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as many in our
religious liberty fraternity do
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that we need to be careful
about conspiracy theories.
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Yes.
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And there's no
question, the internet exist
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on conspiracy
theories on one level,
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it's not the only thing.
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But if you're a
conspiracy theorist,
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that's the happy hunting ground.
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That's right and
it really satisfies
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our curiosity
for the sensational
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and that kind of thing
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and I think we need to
ensure that as Christians
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that doesn't become our message.
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I have been to some
gatherings if you're well aware,
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then entire sermon was
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just simply a conspiracy theory.
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And I think that's dangerous.
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You know there's a
lot of redirect to today
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of this anti
mainstream media movement.
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And I understand
that, lot of times
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the parent organizations
of these news companies,
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they do have
agenda, it's no secret,
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it's not a conspiracy
that's widely understood.
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The flip side of that
is you also don't want
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some 18 year old, 20 year old
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and I'm not being
pejorative to the age
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but some young
person sitting in a basement
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and, you know,
having millions of followers
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and he's just ranting off
his opinions on various events
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whether it involves politics
or other social concerns,
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and so I think we
need to be balanced...
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Well, tell me...
Yes, go ahead, yes.
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I agree with you but it
painted the sad picture there.
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Does that differ very
much from a frustrated...
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I'm trying to think how
to characterize the guy.
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Frustrated revolutionary
but it's not the best word
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I was looking for
sitting in prison,
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writing a little crazy pamphlet
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that disturbed
the whole country.
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Yeah.
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I mean in essence
that's what Adolf Hitler did
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with Mein Kampf, same thing
but now it's accessible to any,
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not any but selected bloggers
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who could get a
big enough following.
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Yeah.
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The idea is
probably just as crazy
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but they hunt out there,
there are fellows all around.
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It's an
interesting dynamic and I...
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It is.
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I don't think anyone quite
yet knows what to make of it.
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Yeah.
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But from all that I can
observe I don't really think
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societal
knowledge is much advance,
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but information is available,
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but understanding
is obscure as ever.
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Yeah.
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I think as it
with any discipline,
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I believe very strongly
that it's important to find out
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who the players are
in any given discussion.
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There are editorial
list, there are writers
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who are respected
within the field of journalism
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that do their best
to remain objective.
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And of course
there's no, as you and I know
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there's no true objectivity
when you're reporting on news,
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people insert their viewpoint
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and we're gonna be
able to run away from that.
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Even
Christianity is a viewpoint,
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you know, it is
a biased viewpoint.
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And so we just need to
be responsible is my point.
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And as far as religious
liberty in being sensitive
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to what's happening
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in this regard around the world,
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I think to go to
many sources is good.
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That's right. I have
people that phone me up.
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They are on some right
wing religion does source
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and of course they
exaggerate everything
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for fundraising
if for nothing else.
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Yeah.
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And people can get
a very skewed view.
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And I originally
came from Australia,
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it was a long, long ago.
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And I've been
back many times. Yeah.
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But that sort of gives me a look
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from an outsider's
viewpoint and it's very obvious,
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most anyone outside the US knows
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that the news is
not very comprehensive
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or balanced in the US.
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And I don't think
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that's particularly from design.
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I think it's
from several sources,
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first of all this is a
big enough country to be...
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So many things happening,
you get self absorbed,
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so it's not
very outward looking.
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And then the news that
it gets is filtered through
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so many agencies and all,
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and particularly
in the US collared by
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a besetting sin of America,
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but it's also tied up
to its great strength,
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that we imagine
that everybody else
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thinks like us.
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Else where in the world,
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their thought
process is a different...
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Yeah.
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Their reality norms
are totally different.
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They can say something that
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even if it's translated
accurately which is often not.
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Yeah.
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It can still mean something
different to them than to us.
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The way we get over
it, I see it all the time.
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Oh, he said that
for domestic consumption
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but he doesn't mean that.
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Yeah.
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That's not good but I
think what's really going on
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and I see this at work
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is that with the computerization
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revolution
traditional print media
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and news media is on hard times.
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Yes.
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Remember the
Christian signs news service,
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they monitor in
that, oh, I had a business
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cut-down to almost nothing.
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And you can see signs of that
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when you go to
events in Washington.
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There's not that many reporters,
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they don't have
the facility with them
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and they don't have the time
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or the charter to give
on investigative journalism.
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So they go to the meeting,
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they come in the door,
and there's the handout.
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And I get those
handouts and I will see them,
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print it in the
newspaper without comment,
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you know, that's
not really journalism
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because the people in power
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whether they're
government leaders
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or even church
leaders, they love to you
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to be promulgators
of their viewpoint.
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That's right.
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It's in the questioning
that you get to the truth.
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Yeah.
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So we have a lazy, I just put it
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and of course
there's no question
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that more and
more the universities
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are pouring out people
are of a secular mindset.
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So the reporters
themselves may have
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somewhat biased
against say religion.
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But I don't think
that's the main thing.
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I think it's just
the superficiality.
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And then as we saw
during right after 9/11,
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there was self
censorship in the US
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that didn't
really serve the US well.
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I want to add to, you know,
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'cause you mentioned
the word superficial,
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you know, ultimately
the news organizations,
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and bloggers, and so forth.
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Ultimately they
have an incentive
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to either make money or
to increase their audience.
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And so lot of
times, you know, lot of,
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even many of the
serious news organizations
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are moving towards
more entertainment news
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and that kind of thing...
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Oh, that's
corrupting if it's part of their
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'cause much time given to,
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you know, some
dog was shot, shot,
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what, a pit-bull was
shot in the neighborhood
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because it went run amok.
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than perhaps the
genocide in Rwanda or something.
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Exactly, exactly.
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That is more of a phenomenon
in the US to other countries.
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I mean that's not
unknown in other places
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but there's a huge imbalance
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and it largely is
entertainment venue
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but you can get the
news if people want to...
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Yeah.
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I don't name newspapers
'cause that will throw biased
00:11:59.35\00:12:01.58
but there's some more
serious news papers in the US...
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And you can go online
and different news services
00:12:04.49\00:12:08.49
from Holland, and
Germany, BBC, even Russian TV.
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Even if you allow it's
biased, it's another viewpoint
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then you can
synthesize that with that...
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One that's typically my practice
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and I'm not saying
people should follow what I do,
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but I tend to read, you
know, from organizations that,
00:12:24.34\00:12:30.91
you know, are right
leaning or left leaning
00:12:30.95\00:12:33.21
or more moderate.
00:12:33.25\00:12:35.52
And then synthesize
the information and data...
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And then if you
know how news works,
00:12:38.72\00:12:41.79
you can sort of
seek through a lot of it.
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That's right.
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I've been to some demonstrations
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that they might
just be 50 people there.
00:12:46.29\00:12:47.63
Yeah.
00:12:47.66\00:12:49.00
And they'll have
them cluster together
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or else frame it where
they're clustered together,
00:12:50.50\00:12:53.23
and you watch the evening news
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and all you see in
front of the camera,
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milling, yelling people.
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May be nothing around it,
try if it's going by as normal.
00:12:57.81\00:13:00.91
So it can create
huge misperception about
00:13:00.94\00:13:05.81
what's really going on.
00:13:05.85\00:13:07.25
It's not that
it's factually wrong
00:13:07.28\00:13:08.62
but it's
misrepresenting what went on.
00:13:08.65\00:13:10.92
What's really
happening, absolutely.
00:13:10.95\00:13:12.89
But what troubled
me more than anything
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and I'm
building to a point here.
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After 9/11 and I don't think
it would have mattered greatly
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which
administration were in charge.
00:13:22.40\00:13:26.03
But I think the
one we had at the time,
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had a certain vested
interest in encouraging
00:13:29.14\00:13:31.61
some of the worst tendencies.
00:13:31.64\00:13:35.04
Hiding things and
encouraging others.
00:13:35.08\00:13:37.81
And the media
should have seen it,
00:13:37.85\00:13:40.82
they probably knew it
but they didn't call it.
00:13:40.85\00:13:43.99
And some horrific things
were not mentioned like one
00:13:44.02\00:13:47.12
that still sticks in my mind,
the Washington Post a few days
00:13:47.16\00:13:52.59
after 9/11 ran a
picture with a caption
00:13:52.63\00:13:57.23
but no comment of the brother
of the then president shaking
00:13:57.27\00:14:01.64
Osama Bin Laden's brother's hand
00:14:01.67\00:14:03.91
just signed a big biz,
00:14:03.94\00:14:05.27
multimillion dollar
business deal in Saudi Arabia.
00:14:05.31\00:14:09.34
That was it, no comment.
00:14:09.38\00:14:11.85
Normally that would be
subject to a little question,
00:14:11.88\00:14:14.15
you know, how come
they're still in business
00:14:14.18\00:14:15.75
with the family.
00:14:15.78\00:14:18.45
And, you know, the Republic
didn't rise or fall on it
00:14:18.49\00:14:21.12
but to me it showed
that there was reticence
00:14:21.16\00:14:24.43
to deal with real topics, thing,
00:14:24.46\00:14:26.13
some things went hands off.
00:14:26.16\00:14:27.50
Yeah.
00:14:27.53\00:14:28.86
And so we can say proudly
we don't have censorship.
00:14:28.90\00:14:31.83
But why censor if you've created
00:14:31.87\00:14:34.04
the same thing
through intimidation.
00:14:34.07\00:14:38.87
We'll be back
after a short break,
00:14:38.91\00:14:40.48
stay with us.
00:14:40.51\00:14:41.84