A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Why is the Media Coverage of Luigi Mangione So Bad？

00:00:00.000 I have a good intro line for you. I have a really good intro line for you, I think.

00:00:03.800 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity, the podcast where we answer the question that

00:00:09.720 keeps New York Post writers up at night. What does Taylor Lorenz really think?

00:00:15.740 I thought that was good.

00:00:19.340 I thought it was good.

00:00:20.560 Oh my god. Yeah, they've been on me lately.

00:00:23.180 so if you followed the release schedule of this podcast closely which i realize that matters more

00:00:34.340 to me than it matters to any of you you would know that this should be an off week usually i upload

00:00:39.340 every other week that's how we do this here but sometimes in the media landscape of political news

00:00:46.400 something happens that is so ridiculous, so egregious, so tugs at my anxieties about the

00:00:53.540 way that media works and functions right now, that I feel compelled to sit down in front of

00:01:00.180 this camera and squeak into the mic for anyone who is willing to hear. The last time I did an

00:01:06.700 episode like this was during the campus Gaza protests, when everyone in the media made it

00:01:13.200 looked like these students who were doing something completely reasonable and respectable

00:01:17.520 and based in the history of protest made it look like they were just like radical fringe insane

00:01:23.900 anti-semitic like all of this stuff and i sat down and i made a similar episode and today we are

00:01:31.200 doing that about luigi mangioni if you've been online the last few weeks which if you're listening

00:01:38.440 this is a podcast there's a definite chance that you have been you are probably aware of the stark

00:01:45.100 difference between the way the internet and largely the public has reacted to luigioni

00:01:52.220 luigioni jesus christ

00:01:55.400 to luigi mangioni shooting the ceo of united healthcare brian thompson

00:02:03.200 hey there luigi what's it like in new york city i know when you get to prison you got something

00:02:11.360 planned for diddy yes you do you're my little vigilante boo my italy do

00:02:20.220 and the way that the mainstream media cnn fox news the new york times what have you

00:02:27.860 have depicted Luigi Mangione, the assassination.

00:02:32.200 The Instagram posts from nutbag people,

00:02:35.980 which I was sent in the commercial break earlier, crazy.

00:02:40.580 Like, he's cute, he's...

00:02:41.860 And people celebrating this, this is a sickness.

00:02:45.480 Honestly, it's so disappointing.

00:02:46.880 The disparity between the way that the public

00:02:49.940 has largely reacted to this event

00:02:51.940 and the way that the media has reported on it

00:02:54.200 and, in a way, what feels like slapping the public

00:02:56.720 on the wrist for how they've reacted, how we've reacted, feels really important to me and has me

00:03:02.640 circling around these questions in my head. Like, what is the role of these huge media institutions,

00:03:09.000 especially in moments like these? But first, I want to introduce Taylor. If you listen to this

00:03:13.820 podcast, you're familiar with her. If you read the New York Post, you're familiar with her in

00:03:17.780 an entirely different way. Taylor, welcome back. Thanks for having me. Taylor, how would you

00:03:22.920 summarize this disparity? Gosh, I think this news event was just one of the moments where you

00:03:29.740 realize that the traditional media is just fundamentally unprepared to cover this moment.

00:03:35.380 It was a watershed moment, I think, for really loss of trust in the traditional media.

00:03:41.760 It's so interesting because you've been a journalist at various traditional media

00:03:46.280 institutions for almost your entire career until about a month ago. You've worked at the Washington

00:03:53.980 Post, you worked at the New York Times, and now you're working independently. Side note, subscribe

00:03:58.720 to Taylor's newsletter. Link's in the description. But it feels like your career shift has almost

00:04:05.380 coincided with this event, which is largely representative of the fracturing of media right

00:04:11.220 now. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I quit right before the election. And I think we saw with the results

00:04:17.100 of this election, the power of new media. I mean, for the second time, Trump got elected largely on

00:04:23.280 the backs of content creators and the internet, podcasters, people like that. And then you see

00:04:28.940 a news event like this, where you really see how consent is manufactured and how, you know,

00:04:35.420 people in power push certain narratives. And I just, I think it's not working anymore.

00:04:40.620 I will say the moment that I knew something big was happening here, besides like the assassination itself, which we'll talk about briefly, I'm sure you don't need me to go into a ton of detail, you know what's going on, was so okay, right after Luigi Mangione, who we didn't yet know was Luigi Mangione, assassinated Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO,

00:05:03.480 there was largely an outpouring of tepid to total support for the event and mostly people using it

00:05:13.720 as an opportunity to air their grievances with the broken private health insurance system that

00:05:18.260 we have in the United States. And Ben Shapiro posted a YouTube video that you're in the thumbnail

00:05:23.920 of. Are you wearing the same sweater right now? Oh, God. I'm terrified. No, I'm wearing a different

00:05:29.420 sweater. That's from an MSNBC appearance that I did. They love clipping because I got upset on

00:05:34.600 air. They find ugly pictures of me. Yeah, it was a little bit of a jump scare to see myself

00:05:40.220 in that video. But ultimately, I felt very vindicated when I saw the comment section.

00:05:45.500 Right. Because so the title of the video that he made is The Evil Revolutionary Left

00:05:50.780 Cheers Murder. And right, this was the moment that I knew we had something. All of the comments

00:05:56.760 from Ben Shapiro's own viewers were basically telling him, Ben, this is not a left and a right

00:06:02.320 issue. We are cheering on the murderer too. And reading those, I like felt like I was hallucinating

00:06:09.580 because it was such a wild moment of like class solidarity. Yeah. That to be fair, like so many

00:06:15.780 people on the left have been advocating for for such a long time. And, you know, people like me

00:06:21.040 have been saying like, you know, trans people are being scapegoated. Yeah. They're putting in the

00:06:25.020 culture war to to disappear the class war and it felt like people were and are really united on

00:06:31.000 this no pun intended i think it's interesting how just these daily wire figures have completely

00:06:37.340 failed to navigate it like you mentioned it wasn't just ben shapiro it was also matt walsh and some

00:06:41.700 others on the right that i think initially tried to side again with the rich ceos that's what they

00:06:46.940 always do but just were so swiftly corrected that they kind of just stopped talking about the issue

00:06:51.240 I think they realized it was a loser for them. I also think that when it came out who Luigi is,

00:06:56.220 he doesn't fit the rights narrative. Luigi is not a person of color. Luigi is not poor. Luigi 0.95

00:07:02.120 is not LGBTQ. He's this handsome, young, privileged guy who frankly was part of the

00:07:10.960 systems that could have put him in a position of power to be an executive at somewhere like

00:07:15.940 UnitedHealth. So, you know, he was from that sort of like the type of background that I think would

00:07:21.780 made it very hard for them to weaponize. Totally. And we're going to actually get into a little bit

00:07:27.280 of who he is right now. Again, I don't want to stay here too long. But as is famous for the show,

00:07:31.720 I always give a little background. Luigi Mangione was born and raised in Maryland. He grew up in a

00:07:38.140 wealthy family with ties to Republican politics in Maryland. His family has owned country clubs

00:07:44.800 and health facilities. He graduated from high school, all boys private high school in 2016.

00:07:51.140 He was the valedictorian and led the robotics club. He went on to earn both bachelor's and

00:07:57.440 master's degrees from University of Pennsylvania in computer science and worked as a data analyst

00:08:03.620 at Trucar, which is an online car retailer. He lived and worked remotely from Hawaii for a while,

00:08:10.660 where he had a back injury, which was worsened from surfing and hiking, which are things he

00:08:14.600 love to do which uh that really hot picture of him was born out of it looked like a he was hiking

00:08:20.840 shirtless with his turtle abs not to i don't know someone's gonna get mad at me for thirsting on the

00:08:27.300 mane here he ultimately got back surgery for this injury which as far as i can tell left him in more

00:08:33.220 pain than he was to begin with which back surgery often does he would talk about excruciating chronic

00:08:39.500 back pain among other things he couldn't have sex and when that was reported through a friend of his

00:08:46.460 a lot of people were joking about like oh like this like guy that people are lifting up as a

00:08:51.220 sex symbol like he couldn't have sex from his back pain but like sex is something that most people

00:08:56.180 require in some form and not being able to have sex I mean I know personally if I was physically 0.85

00:09:02.220 unable to have sex like that would change the state of my brain absolutely I don't know I just

00:09:06.360 thought it was it was like a sensationalized detail but i think it was a really meaningful

00:09:09.260 one i think it's a really meaningful one because again it's like this basic human thing that he

00:09:14.440 can't do he's a young man you know he's like a young guy in his 20s like must be incredibly

00:09:19.300 painful for him and isolating you know like you need that human connection yeah and people were

00:09:24.080 also slotting into slotting that detail into like the incel shooter narrative but this is not that

00:09:30.220 there's no evidence at least that i've seen that he was like an incel and incel is a very specific

00:09:34.560 sort of political ideology. You know, it's not as much about involuntary sex as it is about

00:09:39.520 blaming women for your failures as a man. I guess Luigi Mangione was like an incel in the purest

00:09:46.500 form, which was that he literally was involuntarily celibate. Exactly, right. But not, he was not an

00:09:52.140 incel the way that. Most of the incels are like, you know, I'm just a nice guy and these bitch 1.00

00:09:56.820 women won't fuck me. It's like, he wasn't that type of incel. He eventually left Hawaii and 1.00

00:10:02.180 ultimately caught off contact with friends and family he also around this time he left a long

00:10:07.160 trail of interest on goodreads where he reviewed among other things books critical of the private

00:10:12.360 health insurance industry and then took a month's long trip to japan earlier this year where nobody

00:10:18.400 heard from him one of the last things he said to a friend was he wanted to zen out and then he

00:10:23.260 re-emerged on december 4th allegedly on the streets of midtown manhattan where he allegedly

00:10:29.780 shot and killed brian thompson ceo of united healthcare before fleeing to pennsylvania where

00:10:36.080 he was arrested in a mcdonald's that was basically all the summary i put in here i think that's about

00:10:41.020 it i mean that's that's what happened that's what happened and so i wanted to kick off this analysis

00:10:47.120 with you because i already can read the comments and i want to get it out of the way fast taylor

00:10:52.840 Lorenz. Do you condemn violence? Oh my god, I condemn violence. We condemn violence. We condemn

00:11:01.780 violence. We condemned it. Which is exactly why we're against that for-profit health insurance

00:11:06.020 industry, by the way. Well said. Every piece of content, media, interviews, writings, essays,

00:11:12.900 everything that I've read from anyone who's tried to look at this entire sequence of events with a

00:11:17.940 critical eye that is critical of the healthcare industry, I haven't seen an instance of that

00:11:22.540 without a million comments being like, well, do you condemn violence?

00:11:26.880 It's an intentional effort to smear and sort of dismiss the very nuanced point that people

00:11:33.580 like myself and others are making. It's the same thing of the, do you condemn Hamas or do you

00:11:37.800 condemn, you know, that's what I wrote on my outline. It just, it's the same thing. It's this

00:11:42.480 bad faith framing. The thing is, is, I mean, I'll tell you my own personal views. I, first of all,

00:11:48.500 I don't even support the death penalty.

00:11:50.300 I'm generally against murder in all forms.

00:11:53.020 I also just don't support gun violence as a sort of means of retribution for things

00:11:59.140 because gun violence, I mean, in this instance, nobody else was hurt.

00:12:02.800 I was talking to Abene at The Guardian, a phenomenal gun violence reporter, and she

00:12:06.320 was talking about the fact that most people who carry out these sort of revenge killings

00:12:11.280 or politically motivated killings end up killing other people because, again, gun violence,

00:12:15.380 When you go to shoot someone, you usually don't do it in the way that Luigi did where he really got off without a hook. Things go wrong. People get hurt. So I think, sure, do we want everybody out shooting people in the streets? Obviously not. Okay? Obviously not.

00:12:31.160 However, I think it's a very intentional misdirection to try to dismiss people that are talking in a nuanced way about this issue by just sort of shouting them down with like, well, oh, so you don't condemn violence?

00:12:44.480 You know, oh, so you just you're you know, you think violence while completely dismissing the violence of the system.

00:12:49.500 I mean, it does remind me of the do you condemn Hamas because it's like we are ignoring the entire like violent nature of the occupation and the oppression that happens, right?

00:13:00.080 Like, you're both sizing this issue. And actually, you're the one sort of like morally equating an unfathomable amount of death and suffering with a single act of violence. And I think that that is actually incredibly dangerous and dismissive of violence.

00:13:14.080 It's interesting to me that the Hamas comparison hit you the exact same way.

00:13:17.820 It's a lot of the same people making those arguments, too.

00:13:19.960 that too. It's been, what, 14 months since last October. The official report says over 40,000

00:13:26.820 Palestinians dead, but other reports saying up to 200,000. And every time I talk about this,

00:13:32.140 still, I get comments from people being like, well, do you condemn Hamas? And it's like,

00:13:35.760 it's just such a bad faith thing. It's a way to make sure that the conversation goes nowhere.

00:13:40.340 Yeah, it's again, it's drawing this false equivalence between a single act of violence

00:13:45.460 or one sort of limited act of violence

00:13:47.220 and a long-term systemic campaign of violence.

00:13:50.940 Exactly.

00:13:51.480 I mean, you went on, I don't know,

00:13:53.360 one of these talks, you're very brave.

00:13:55.140 I'll show up anywhere and fight with people

00:13:56.860 about what I care about.

00:13:58.780 I commend you for it, but you went on one of these

00:14:00.980 and you basically said the healthcare system is murder too.

00:14:04.040 And I completely believe that.

00:14:06.200 That's what a lot of this comes down to,

00:14:07.740 this like, well, do you condemn violence?

00:14:10.180 It's like, do you condemn violence?

00:14:11.680 The goal of all these conversations

00:14:12.760 is to derail the discussion away from talking about the systemic violent nature of our healthcare

00:14:19.500 system and how our for-profit insurance company commits murder and murders thousands of Americans

00:14:25.420 every year. That's something that I think most people actually in America, I think actually

00:14:29.680 sort of are aligned on this issue, but you have a lot of people in power and a lot of people in

00:14:35.460 the media that are not aligned on this issue. And they really want to sort of paint this movement

00:14:40.960 with a broad brush. They want to paint activists as always as violent, again, because it makes it

00:14:46.260 easier to crack down on them. It makes it easier to censor them. I literally got an opportunity

00:14:53.580 that I had canceled recently because they were worried I would incite violence. And I think it's 0.98

00:15:00.820 very funny because, again, I am against violence. That is why I have such strong opposition to our

00:15:07.680 for-profit healthcare system, which is murderous. Just want to take a quick break from this episode

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00:16:58.480 and now let's get back to the deep dive okay so we condemn violence we've established we condemn

00:17:06.000 violence no comments please back to the mainstream media i have gathered here a bunch of just like

00:17:12.580 really wild ways that this event has been covered by various legacy media outlets that i have found

00:17:21.820 to be like really at odds with the way that the public has absorbed the information about this

00:17:26.460 killing. I just want to go through some of them and kind of pick apart what the media is trying

00:17:31.300 to do versus what we think that they should be doing versus what the public is doing.

00:17:36.160 I first of all, I want to shout out Ken Klippenstein.

00:17:39.080 Amazing journalist.

00:17:40.400 Yeah, he's an independent journalist. And on this particular issue, he has just been

00:17:45.080 absolutely grinding out all of this information that is available to mainstream media outlets

00:17:51.360 that they're intentionally not publishing, the biggest being Luigi's Manifesto, which Ken

00:17:55.740 originally published when none of the other outlets would. But first, I have this article

00:18:01.000 here from the New York Times that went, can you say a New York Times article went viral?

00:18:05.540 It's just a large scale publication. And it's titled,

00:18:08.860 Suspect in CEO Killing Withdrew from a Life of Privilege and Promise.

00:18:15.140 Tell me, talk to me.

00:18:16.240 The framing is already trying to sort of shape the conversation, right? I think this is like

00:18:22.800 where you see a lot of discussions around his privilege it's like yes it's important to note

00:18:26.700 that he's privileged actually that again that actually threatens these narratives that a lot

00:18:31.180 of these uh conservative places in the mainstream media generally want to push about like you know

00:18:36.080 the deranged outsider on the fringes of society right it's like but but there's an effort to sort

00:18:42.500 of equate him with somebody making millions and millions of dollars a year that's the ceo of like

00:18:49.400 an insurance corporation. This is a 26-year-old that, yes, he grew up privileged. However,

00:18:54.440 he also was not a multimillionaire CEO of a major health corporation. But it's sort of this effort

00:19:01.180 to paint him as like a privileged rich kid who's spoiled and doesn't appreciate the things in life.

00:19:10.020 And you know what I mean? I think what you said at the beginning is so important, right?

00:19:14.260 The fact that someone who was not on the margins of society, the fact that someone who theoretically

00:19:18.760 could pay you know for private health insurance without issue the fact that he could become aware 0.52

00:19:25.080 of like how fucked up the system was how violent the system was through an injury of his own 0.82

00:19:30.240 is so threatening to like you know well if he can see this then everyone can see it and there's also 0.95

00:19:35.900 in all of this so much like you guys are all trying to paint luigi mangioni as a hero for

00:19:42.920 you know the underclass of america but really he's just a rich guy and it's like i think it's

00:19:48.280 more compelling that he doesn't even need to be part of a group that suffers from high health

00:19:53.220 insurance costs to see this. A rich person having class solidarity with average American workers

00:19:59.000 is threatening and dangerous to them. You know, they want you to keep focused on other sort of

00:20:04.360 like boogeymen in society and they don't want, you know, yeah, they don't want that sort of class

00:20:08.580 solidarity. Can I read a little bit from this article to you? This article, which got 7,000

00:20:14.260 comments on the New York Times website people were pissed Luigi Mangione the online version

00:20:19.600 of him was an Ivy League tech enthusiast who flaunted his tanned chiseled looks in beach

00:20:25.360 photos and party pictures with blue blazered frat buddies it's so this isn't even the point

00:20:31.560 but it's like I don't think that I've ever seen quite such a clear like attempt at cartoonizing

00:20:37.580 someone yes it's so bizarre it's like they they write about him like he's a fictional character

00:20:44.160 of like a preppy frat boy and not, not a human being. He was the valedictorian of a prestigious

00:20:50.380 Baltimore prep school who earned bachelor's and master's degrees at UPenn and served as a head

00:20:55.580 counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford. With his credentials and connections, he could

00:21:01.240 have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family's thriving

00:21:06.600 businesses. Instead, investigators suspect he took a different path. You know what this reminds me of?

00:21:12.800 what you've seen girl interrupted yes yes you know the beginning of the movie it's it's right

00:21:20.100 after trigger warning girl interrupted we're going to be mentioning suicide but it's right

00:21:24.860 after Winona Ryder's character Susanna Kaysen attempted suicide and is about to be committed 0.93

00:21:30.500 to a mental institution and you see all of these like kind of like country club women around her

00:21:35.740 at like a house party her family's having being like but you were such a sweet girl how could you

00:21:40.840 possibly sunk into this depth. Yes. It's like, why would you step outside the system?

00:21:46.200 You could have oppressed people too. You could have been part of these violent systems. If only

00:21:51.400 you just shut up and sided with us, you know, it's like you too could be an oppressor.

00:21:57.620 The family's wealth and work with charity made it well known in Baltimore. 0.54

00:22:01.960 Luigi Mangione was, quote, just the last person you would suspect, said Thomas Moronic Jr.,

00:22:07.640 a lawyer and radio host who knows several members of the Mangione family.

00:22:11.540 Quote, it was just a well-respected family

00:22:13.980 and such a prominent family within Baltimore County.

00:22:16.940 It's that framing where it's like, again, you were part of the upper class.

00:22:22.320 You too could have killed millions of innocent Americans

00:22:25.580 who couldn't afford health insurance.

00:22:27.820 You know, why would you go off this path?

00:22:30.180 It's like, why don't you want to be in the position of power?

00:22:33.380 I think so many people, especially in these elite institutions

00:22:35.840 or these elite circles, like they've already made that moral trade-off. Their goal is to sort of

00:22:41.580 like enter the halls of power and oppress people. That is sort of like the goal, right? Is to like

00:22:48.060 run one of these evil corporations or, you know, have positions of power over other people. They

00:22:53.980 don't view themselves as having solidarity with workers in this country, with vulnerable people

00:22:58.480 in this country, with people that are suffering in this country. And so, yeah, it is very confusing

00:23:02.720 for them because it's like why would you turn on this like life of luxury there's an undercurrent

00:23:07.620 with the framing of a lot of these articles and a lot of them sound exactly like what i just read

00:23:12.780 where it's almost like we can't believe that he would betray his you know class and job prospects

00:23:20.140 to become a murderer but like we're even more shocked that he would do it to like

00:23:25.840 be in solidarity with the working class because rich people have zero solidarity with the working

00:23:31.560 class. And often their success is predicated on exploiting the working class. And so I think it's

00:23:37.440 confusing to them. Well, and to your point, if Luigi Mangione became a healthcare CEO and murdered

00:23:43.580 people that way, there would not be an article written. Absolutely not. Because people don't

00:23:48.320 care about that kind of violence. Or rather, the New York Times and these sort of publications

00:23:52.800 don't cover those systems as violent. Did you see the New York Times opinion piece?

00:23:57.840 the brett stevens one yes indeed i didn't read it i saw the headline and i i don't want that man

00:24:04.160 i just assumed i knew what it said but tell me what it said do you want to tell the listener

00:24:09.140 the headline yeah let me pull it up oh my god it's actually like i don't know you know how

00:24:17.840 sometimes people will be like i'm not falling for that hot take you have a humiliation fetish

00:24:23.320 yes this reads like someone with with a humiliation fetish so brett stevens goes without 0.99

00:24:30.960 saying he's an idiot okay this man there's not a bad take he doesn't have published this article 0.99

00:24:36.120 titled brian thompson not luigi mangioni is the real working class hero and he basically tries 1.00

00:24:45.220 to argue that because he grew up in iowa and you know didn't grow up in sort of like upper middle

00:24:50.240 class like luigi that you know he's the real evil one he also he also completely once again

00:24:56.200 misrepresented what i say i was gonna say did you know that you were mentioned in this no i didn't

00:25:00.600 even know i was mentioned until right now but he says taylor lorenz said she felt quote joy at the

00:25:05.080 killing note how they only quote this this is the one word let me just tell you what the media does

00:25:10.920 we all remember remember when luann de la seps went to broadway do you remember luann you know

00:25:14.760 luann from real housewives the housewife yeah luann hold on let me find this for you because

00:25:18.780 i think it's i just i really think it's actually the perfect hold on i like just like how far

00:25:23.980 reaching our references can get in an episode completely unrelated like louanda lesseps

00:25:29.540 basically took a single word of a bad review i think that i can't remember what the word was

00:25:34.680 oh i know what you're talking about yes she took this like review that absolutely i think it was

00:25:39.920 in the new york times that absolutely savaged her show and took the single word that was like

00:25:45.320 I think it was like, it's amazing how bad this was or something, right? And then she took the

00:25:50.080 word, quote, amazing and put it on her poster. Amazing, the New York Times.

00:25:56.380 And this is what the New York Times and the other mainstream media is doing with my comment.

00:26:00.920 If you read my full comment, and I just want to read you exactly what I said,

00:26:04.700 because I think it'll really be clear. Sorry, this is really bothering me.

00:26:08.780 No, no, get it out. Like I said, this is the podcast where we figure out what Taylor Lorenz

00:26:12.580 really thinks. Exactly. So which everyone wants to know. Okay, here we go. I just want to read

00:26:18.500 you my full quote. And then tell me if you think it's accurately represented by the media. Okay,

00:26:23.580 wait, can I read the headlines first, like from the New York Post? Yes. Ex-Washington Post reporter

00:26:28.680 Taylor Lorenz tells Piers Morgan she felt, quote, joy over assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO.

00:26:35.320 Here's what I said. I feel joy because people like you who are rich and powerful on TV and

00:26:41.840 have access to all the healthcare privileges in the world are finally being forced to pay

00:26:46.720 attention to the barbaric healthcare system that murders tens of thousands of innocent Americans.

00:26:52.480 That is what I feel joy in. I feel joy that people like you are forced to confront these

00:26:57.720 systemic problems. They took one word out of that statement and applied it to a completely

00:27:04.860 different sentence. Oh yeah, here. It was Luanne de Lesseps' review on her cabaret.

00:27:10.100 okay listen here's wait sorry i just have to get this right because this is

00:27:16.580 i feel i feel crazy the new york times and the rest of the mainstream media

00:27:20.620 they are pulling a luann de la seps because this was what this was the actual new york times review

00:27:26.080 of luann's show they said tickets to the first performance went on sale and quickly sold out

00:27:32.080 inspiring miss de la seps to add a second date now she took the word inspiring and plastered it

00:27:39.140 all over her posters as if that was descriptive of the show this is what has happened to me

00:27:43.920 in the mainstream media the episode title is going to be the new york times is pulling a luann

00:27:48.800 they are maybe i'm actually just going to make the title of this taylor lorenz feels joy

00:27:54.400 can i read a little from this uh op-ed yeah let's get into it because i'm sure it's a lot worse than 0.92

00:28:02.040 i mean it's honestly like more of the same shit he yes he he complains that you felt joy 0.96

00:28:08.820 He writes, 0.99

00:28:38.820 and worked remotely from a nice apartment in Hawaii.

00:28:42.900 And while Mangione, like millions of people,

00:28:45.380 apparently suffered from debilitating back pain,

00:28:48.360 excellent healthcare is not generally an issue

00:28:50.780 for Americans of great wealth.

00:28:53.160 Well, he's able to correctly articulate the problem,

00:28:56.540 which is that access to healthcare

00:28:58.360 is generally not a problem for rich people,

00:29:00.760 very conveniently ignores the fact

00:29:02.380 that it is a problem for everyone else. 0.98

00:29:04.920 I mean, just to call him a scion

00:29:06.580 is just delusional and false and misleading. He's an upper middle-class kid from Baltimore. Again,

00:29:12.000 not like Baltimore is not some nice city. There are nice parts of Baltimore. But trust me,

00:29:15.860 I lived in Baltimore. It's Baltimore. We're not talking Beverly Hills.

00:29:19.720 So I want to talk a little bit about the manifesto. As we all probably know at this point,

00:29:23.900 when Luigi was found in the McDonald's, he had a manifesto on him. It was pretty brief.

00:29:29.460 and even in its brevity no major media outlet reported it not in full what they did after

00:29:37.580 being provided it by the police department of altoona pennsylvania is they published bits and

00:29:43.900 pieces and very very specifically editorialized bits and pieces and what's interesting is and

00:29:50.260 and this is true for this entire story in this entire situation but like the reason why we're

00:29:55.320 talking about mainstream media at large and not what I often talk about when I'm talking about

00:29:59.480 things like queer issues like I'll talk about Fox News or like OAN or Newsmax for these specifically

00:30:05.400 right-leaning media networks that Taylor and I talk about all the time but this was an event

00:30:10.160 where like MSNBC and CNN and the New York Post were all reporting the exact same thing which is

00:30:16.060 the only sentence that any of these outlets quoted not even a sentence fragment that any of these 0.92

00:30:21.140 outlets quoted from the manifesto was how luigi wrote these parasites had it coming

00:30:27.140 a manifesto was found and it referenced the health care industry and read in part 0.96

00:30:32.560 these parasites had it coming well he was railing against the health care industry which of course 0.96

00:30:39.620 fits into the scenario here he talks about how these parasites had it coming police arrested 0.99

00:30:47.020 him at a pennsylvania mcdonald's he was in possession of a manifesto that read in part 0.98

00:30:50.980 quote i do apologize for any strife or trauma but it had to be done these parasites had it coming

00:30:57.660 that's it that's the only what five words that did you see them report anything else at any point

00:31:03.940 before ken reported the manifesto no it was just these parasites had it coming yep because again

00:31:09.560 it's it allows them to frame him in a certain type of way and dismiss his very legitimate critiques

00:31:15.700 of the system which were made in the rest of the manifesto can i play a clip from cnn yes where

00:31:21.040 they're talking about the manifesto

00:31:22.940 all right so we just heard him yell that about it sort of something being unjust as an insult to

00:31:36.120 the intelligence of the american people let's bring in trial attorney mercedes colwin with us

00:31:41.220 I mean, this is someone on a mission, it appears.

00:31:45.100 He is the alleged killer in this case.

00:31:48.140 We have to be very clear about that.

00:31:49.920 He's facing an extradition hearing here.

00:31:52.060 But I just wonder what you think of a moment like that as you see it,

00:31:56.500 knowing the evidence that police say they have on this person.

00:32:02.020 Brianna, it's very disturbing.

00:32:03.600 And those types of outbursts will certainly be evaluated by his defense team

00:32:07.580 because that's just not normal.

00:32:09.120 I mean, we've already had reports that he has been very strange since over the summer, that he has become reclusive.

00:32:16.120 This manifesto is these rantings and ravings of an individual that obviously has some aberrant thoughts in his mind, and that's why he put it down on paper.

00:32:25.300 So all of that is certainly very disturbing.

00:32:27.720 The defense is going to have to evaluate whether this is an individual that really will even understand the charges.

00:32:33.800 I mean, they may, depending on how aberrant his thoughts are, he has to be able to understand the process and the proceedings, even at this at this stage.

00:32:43.740 Wow. Wow. Wow.

00:32:46.820 The rantings and ravings of an individual with aberrant thoughts.

00:32:51.080 The way that they stigmatize mental health issues and the language that they use to sort

00:32:58.400 of that stigmatizing language where they're even talking about like, is he even mentally

00:33:03.000 capable to like understand the charges when there's absolutely no evidence that this man

00:33:07.680 has lost touch with reality?

00:33:09.300 He just seems to have very specific views that don't fit their narrative.

00:33:13.560 It's just, it's wild.

00:33:15.140 I mean, just the language again, you have to listen to the words that these people use

00:33:19.020 because it's very intentional and it's meant to stigmatize and dismiss him and do that by painting

00:33:25.900 him, frankly, in pretty ableist ways, right? It's like, oh, this deranged lunatic, right? 0.95

00:33:32.880 Totally. Literally, the word lunatic is on the tip of her tongue. Also, I mean, I know we're 0.99

00:33:37.620 kind of stretching in a lot of directions here, but I think it's necessary. They're doing that

00:33:42.580 because look at the way that they talk about mentally ill people in news media. Look at the

00:33:46.800 way that they talked about Jordan Neely he was a mentally ill person and therefore we don't have 0.72

00:33:51.560 to care about him because he was less of a human if only Luigi Mangione could have been you know 0.93

00:33:55.760 had a recorded history of mental illness then we could be like oh well you know he's just a you

00:34:00.980 know another mentally ill guy you know went off the deep end when like clearly that's just not

00:34:06.500 the case and like I'm gonna read the manifesto but it's like it just seems so clearly like the 0.74

00:34:11.960 reason that they're you know and when I say they I mean all of these like media people but also like

00:34:16.440 politicians who have been echoing the same thing, you know, everything that we've been hearing on

00:34:20.940 CNN. They're so scared that any of us could relate to him. Yes. That any of us could see him as a

00:34:27.120 human being very similar to us with very similar struggles to us. And it's just it's it's bizarre.

00:34:33.480 So I want to read the manifesto. And to be clear, this was eventually published by Ken Klippenstein

00:34:39.460 through his sub stack, which I will also link in the episode description. But he basically said,

00:34:44.700 I don't know why none of the media outlets are publishing this. He got a hold of it and published

00:34:49.400 it. Here it is. To the feds, I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country.

00:34:55.760 Immediately. This is not a leftist. He's thanking the feds for what they do for this country in the

00:35:01.740 first sentence. This is, I mean, it makes sense why Ben Shapiro gave up on this because this is

00:35:06.700 not a lefty. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone.

00:35:13.120 This was fairly trivial.

00:35:14.760 Some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, and a lot of patience.

00:35:18.980 The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate

00:35:23.160 the gist of it.

00:35:24.280 My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info

00:35:28.000 there.

00:35:28.660 I do apologize for any strife or traumas, but it had to be done. 0.98

00:35:32.860 Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. 0.91

00:35:35.200 A reminder, the US has the number one most expensive healthcare in the world, yet we 0.96

00:35:40.160 rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy.

00:35:42.600 united is the largest company in the u.s by market cap behind only apple google and walmart

00:35:48.600 it has grown and grown but has our life expectancy no the reality is these indecipherable have simply

00:35:56.320 gotten too powerful and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the american

00:36:01.260 public has allowed them to get away with it obviously the problem is more complex but i do

00:36:06.200 not have space and frankly i do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full

00:36:10.960 argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed decades ago, and the problems simply

00:36:16.640 remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently,

00:36:22.920 I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty. Are these the rantings and ravings

00:36:28.960 of a lunatic? Absolutely not. I mean, I just, it's very clearly written and it's very like, 0.99

00:36:36.160 again it has a point of view it has a very clear well thought out point of view and i think that

00:36:42.720 is what terrifies them is that again he is not somebody that was unhoused or struggling like

00:36:49.880 this man is well educated he is you know can write clearly he can speak clearly i think this

00:36:56.660 is a very compelling manifesto which is again why they have tried to bury it when ken published this

00:37:02.060 He also asked a question, which I think is really interesting, especially for you, and which is kind of the question at the heart of a lot of this, right? Why didn't they publish this? Why are they only publishing, you know, for example, photos where Luigi is yelling at media instead of the ones where everyone is thirsting over him?

00:37:20.740 And what Ken wrote is basically, is it the media's job to pre-digest information for the public? Because what he was able to uncover were these internal like slack messages from people at the New York Times basically saying it's not in the public's interest. It's not in public interest to publish the manifesto. It's not in public interest to publish photos of Luigi's face. And it's like, does the New York Times decide what is in the interest of the public?

00:37:50.080 they used to and that's why we had the fucked up they used to and that's why we had such a mess 0.97

00:37:56.100 I guess we're already demonetized you can say fucked up you can say okay they used to and that's 0.98

00:38:00.680 why we had such a fucked up media ecosystem right they want to operate like it's 1995 and they can 0.98

00:38:07.140 control the narrative and you know the corporate media exists to prop up powerful institutions and 0.86

00:38:12.480 systems of power and you see them trying to do that even still today in 2024 when we all have

00:38:18.140 the internet. Thanks to independent journalists like Ken and others, and just the power of the

00:38:23.520 internet itself as this sort of crowdsourced information sharing ecosystem has allowed people

00:38:28.580 to circumvent those narratives that the press tries to manufacture, or rather the sort of elite

00:38:33.900 media tries to manufacture. Because there's a lot of journalists, myself, Ken, and others,

00:38:37.780 right, that have critiqued this system. But we're not at places like the New York Times.

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00:40:18.300 now let's get back to the episode it's it's interesting i mean one of the reasons that

00:40:25.520 the media has i guess kind of defended itself in its decision to like really selectively publish

00:40:30.600 here, which I don't find to be a compelling one, but I think we should address it for people who

00:40:36.020 might find it compelling, is it's basically out of fear that publishing his manifesto or his face,

00:40:41.140 you know, his face being attractive or the manifesto being relatable would inspire copycat

00:40:45.600 actions. It's just so deranged and delusional to think that way because you have to have complete

00:40:51.460 ignorance of the entire online media landscape. We can see pictures of his face. You're not

00:40:56.360 shielding us from pictures of his face there are multiple documentaries in the works right now and

00:41:01.720 i know people are pitching scripted series about this to streaming platforms ryan murphy put the

00:41:07.520 pen down like it just it bothers me so much when they're like oh this is america you know we don't

00:41:13.320 we don't glorify killers it's like please turn on netflix please oh what are you talking like

00:41:18.620 please just like look around in america just generally we celebrate violence all the time

00:41:24.560 right? It's just, do you celebrate acceptable violence or not acceptable violence? Because

00:41:29.220 the New York Times has no problem promoting violence. It's just, they promote violence that

00:41:34.200 they feel is justified. Again, look at their coverage of Israel and other sort of actions.

00:41:39.540 Like, I mean, some of the stuff that they cover, even just when you look at their crime coverage,

00:41:43.600 right? And how violence against unhoused people is covered or violence against other marginalized

00:41:48.860 people is covered in that same paper. They don't seem to espouse these concerns. So I think it's

00:41:54.060 worth asking why they're holding themselves to these standards with this incident specifically.

00:41:59.420 I mean, you literally had Laura Ingram at Fox News. Did you see that 28 second clip?

00:42:04.820 Absolutely. Yes. Where you see the coverage back to back. She's talking about Luigi and then

00:42:09.940 the man who killed Jordan Neely and sort of we don't lionize killers. Five seconds later,

00:42:15.600 this American hero, you know, killed, killed this deranged ill man and saved everyone. You know, 0.84

00:42:22.180 it's just ultimate hypocrisy. The Instagram posts from nutbag people, which I was sent in the 0.90

00:42:29.240 commercial break earlier. Crazy. Like he's cute. He's the and people celebrating this. This is 0.69

00:42:36.460 a sickness. Honestly, it's so disappointing. But I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Gentlemen,

00:42:41.340 thank you so much. And up next, the other big news out of New York, Daniel Penny. A lot of

00:42:45.820 people think he's a hero. And tonight he's not guilty. My take next. But you see it when you go

00:42:50.640 to the traditional media on so many of these like sort of elite legacy media websites, like you go

00:42:56.660 to these pages and you see article next to article, right? You see the article about sort of how

00:43:01.400 they're covering Luigi. And then you see another article about, again, violence against oppressed

00:43:06.200 people, marginalized people, unhoused people, police violence, like it is covered in such a

00:43:11.520 radically different way. And so I think we need to ask questions about those editorial decisions.

00:43:16.820 I guess now would be a good time to ask something that I wanted to fit in here somewhere, which is like, why do all of these huge publications like why do they so aggressively serve power and not the people like in a way that's become really apparent through this incident?

00:43:32.320 I think, first of all, it's important to distinguish like what sort of media we're talking about. There are these outlets like Democracy Now or ProPublica that is nonprofit, right? It is not corporate driven. It's not billionaire owned. These are nonprofit newsrooms or operate sort of on public money sort of for the public good. Again, ProPublica has done some of the best investigative reporting on the health care system. They are phenomenal. The journalists there deserve praise and nothing else.

00:43:58.840 then you have the sort of digital media or it doesn't really exist anymore but you used to

00:44:03.920 have the sort of digital media but you still have places like splinter or these sort of uh small

00:44:08.520 digital media outlets that will challenge power because again these are mostly journalists that

00:44:11.840 came from places like vice news or buzzfeed news or places that sort of like existed to hold the

00:44:17.100 media elite for lack of a better word to account then you have the billionaire controlled and owned

00:44:22.200 major sort of quote-unquote elite media you have places again like the new york times and others

00:44:27.780 These places exist to prop up institutional power.

00:44:31.040 These are for-profit businesses at the end of the day.

00:44:33.960 They're for-profit businesses.

00:44:35.220 They don't exist just for sunshine and rainbows to hold power to account.

00:44:41.340 They exist to sort of package news and information for an elite audience.

00:44:46.840 The audience of places like the New York Times and other elite media is wealthy executives.

00:44:51.960 It's upper middle class people.

00:44:53.300 It is people that, again, probably run in Brian Thompson circles.

00:44:56.820 That is the audience. So that is the sort of editorial view that you're going to get from

00:45:00.480 those places. Now, these outlets do allow certain reporters to challenge power. You have people

00:45:05.860 like someone like David Enrich. David Enrich is one of the best reporters working in America today.

00:45:11.780 He has written about not just the problems with sort of like healthcare, but also like,

00:45:16.500 I mean, Johnson and Johnson, like poisoning people with cancerous talc. Like he does amazing

00:45:21.440 investigative journalism, but he doesn't control the editorial page. And I think actually the work

00:45:26.040 that he and these other amazing investigative reporters do at the Times, and this is how I feel

00:45:30.240 too when I work at these places, is your amazing work holding power to account is used to launder

00:45:36.900 this broader business, which is about appealing to elites. And when you look at the top-down

00:45:42.780 editorial structure of who has power within these media organizations, it's not people that challenge

00:45:48.080 power. You have people like David Leonhardt at the New York Times or Brett Stevens, whose sole job

00:45:53.380 is to reinforce power structures. It is to tell the elites what they want to hear. It is to tell

00:46:00.020 rich people what they want to hear. It's a don't mess with the system because they play a key role

00:46:05.340 in the system. They don't want to, they're never going to push anti-capitalist sentiment because

00:46:09.520 they're a for-profit business owned by billionaires. It's also like there's that

00:46:13.840 great Noam Chomsky interview with that journalist where the journalist is like, well, I'm

00:46:19.180 independently minded. I'm independently minded. And they don't tell me what to say. And he's like,

00:46:24.440 the very reason that you're in this position sitting in that chair is because they know that

00:46:29.280 you will say a certain thing. And when you look at who gets hired at these places and who survives

00:46:33.920 working at these places, they share an ideology. And it is not an ideology that questions capitalism

00:46:39.700 or questions power. It's just not. Case in point, look at the people that get driven out of the New

00:46:46.020 times and get driven out of places like this. Not me. I quit on my own. Okay. I'm not a martyr,

00:46:50.760 but look at people like Jasmine Hughes or others that have been pushed out of these institutions

00:46:55.460 for critiquing power. I just want to say one other thing too. You're never going to hear

00:46:59.960 critiques of the system from these places because they rely on having access to CEOs for their

00:47:07.780 deal book conferences or whatever. Having access to elite halls of power is integral to their

00:47:14.300 business model, upholding these systems of power as integral to their business model.

00:47:19.040 And they recruit people that have a specific worldview. Again, this is why you don't have

00:47:24.200 tons of trans people, tons of anti-capitalists, tons of other people working at these institutions.

00:47:29.100 And that's not to say that a lot of the lower-level journalists don't share that ideology. Actually,

00:47:33.420 most journalists are working-class people. They're not making a lot of money. So there are these

00:47:37.940 amazing journalists at the New York Times that actually do believe those things. They're just

00:47:42.360 never going to get the megaphone that someone like David Leonhardt or Brett Stevens or any of

00:47:47.780 these other people will have. Right. I feel like all of this is kind of well encapsulated in right

00:47:53.220 the Washington Post famously like liberal leaning media publication. Their slogan is democracy dies

00:47:59.340 in darkness. And they've kind of like branded themselves as this like holding power to account

00:48:04.560 kind of thing. And they're owned by Jeff Bezos. Right. Who forebode them from endorsing Kamala

00:48:10.440 Harris, even endorsing Kamala Harris during the election. And then right afterwards, he goes and

00:48:15.900 congratulates Trump. So it's kind of just like, it feels like a business model that is fundamentally

00:48:21.000 at odds with what these media publications claim is their goal, and that it's doomed to fail.

00:48:27.440 Well, I think people are seeing through it. Thankfully, people are seeing through it,

00:48:31.520 right? People are starting to question and say, wow, maybe billionaires shouldn't control our

00:48:37.660 media ecosystem. Maybe we do need independent journalism. Maybe we do need people that aren't

00:48:43.000 beholden to access, that don't care if they get kicked out of the White House press briefing for

00:48:48.840 asking the wrong question. That is what we need. And again, I just want to say, because there are

00:48:53.180 these amazing journalists at these institutions, they are just not in leadership. That's the thing.

00:48:58.320 They use these people to write the critical stories that are allowed, because you have to

00:49:03.800 allow a certain amount of criticism, right? To maintain like credibility. Right. To maintain

00:49:08.840 your sort of credibility and be like, look, we do look at us. We did that tough story. Remember

00:49:13.140 back in that day, we did that tough story. It's like, well, yeah, because that was an acceptable

00:49:16.100 story for you to do. And you could sort of couch it in these things. But you're never going to

00:49:19.760 question the system, even the way when you go look at a lot of this investigative journalism

00:49:23.280 that comes out of these places, some of which is really high quality, it's done through a certain

00:49:27.480 editorial point of view. And it lets you question, not question the systems, but rather question one

00:49:34.940 bad executive or the wrongdoing of one bad company. It's never like, hey, look at this

00:49:41.040 whole system. Hey, why do billionaires control so much in our society? Why is capitalism so

00:49:46.340 off the rails? It's just like, look at this bad person over here, or we've uncovered this

00:49:50.840 wrongdoing. And sometimes, again, I just want to say, people like David Enrich, people like

00:49:55.980 Drew Harwell at the Washington Post. These are really good reporters. These people do not fuck

00:49:59.960 with power. These people question power. They work at these places, I believe, frankly, because 1.00

00:50:04.500 they are the only places that give them a platform and resources to do the phenomenal journalism

00:50:08.460 they do. They are not the editors-in-chief. They are not the managing editors. They are not the

00:50:13.900 bosses. They are not the billionaire owners. They're not the CEOs. And ultimately, it is those

00:50:17.860 people. They control the media institutions that they run, right? They're the powerful people.

00:50:22.360 one other thing, can I just say? Yes. But it's also like you have to sort of like look at what

00:50:28.060 gets amplified because somebody like David Leonhardt, for instance, having the mouthpiece

00:50:33.000 that he does at the New York Times, this is a man who runs the morning newsletter who

00:50:36.100 speaks to over 15 million people, I think daily through his channels. He is given a platform that

00:50:42.620 other people at the New York Times are never given again because he shares an ideology with

00:50:47.680 the rich people that own and control the paper. So same thing with someone like Brett Stevens,

00:50:53.780 right? Why do we have all these people on the opinion pages that have this very specific

00:50:58.260 ideology that's a vaguely conservative ideology? Again, because the people in power want that 0.63

00:51:03.060 stuff amplified. So it's like, yes, of course, you've got the tech team and a lot of people

00:51:07.840 in the business section of the New York Times doing some of the best journalism out there,

00:51:11.740 like holding power to account, but it's never going to be blasted out in the same way. It's

00:51:15.920 never going to be like the tone of the paper is never going to reflect their work. It's going to

00:51:22.120 reflect people like Bret Stephens. And I'm just using the New York Times as an example. I think

00:51:25.880 this is true for all of these sort of mainstream traditional publications. And I think cable news

00:51:30.800 is actually 10 times worse because they don't even pretend to do journalism. Yeah, the rantings

00:51:34.600 and ravings. My rantings and ravings. The rantings and ravings of Taylor Lorenz. That's the episode

00:51:39.180 title. To your point, the people that they ultimately are indebted to, which are the people

00:51:45.480 funding them and the people at the tops of these billionaires big media companies it's the jeff

00:51:49.620 bezos right exactly i mean i think that like as long as newspapers are owned by people like jeff

00:51:54.280 bezos or rupert murdoch we're never going to get honest reporting about the very human aspects of

00:51:59.420 luigi mangioni because they're because they're terrified they are terrified that the average

00:52:05.320 person has so much more in common with luigi mangioni than they do with rupert murdoch and

00:52:09.900 the average person can relate so much more to luigi mangioni than they can to jeff bezos i wanted

00:52:15.260 And on kind of a lighter note, did you see the Among Us panic?

00:52:20.680 Of course.

00:52:23.460 I saw the NBC News headline and I laughed so hard.

00:52:27.800 I saw it on a meme account and I thought it was a joke.

00:52:30.220 When I realized it was serious, I went into, I was in a group chat.

00:52:33.060 Somebody spammed the link.

00:52:34.000 I literally laughed out loud.

00:52:36.080 Do you want to read the NBC headline?

00:52:37.740 It's so funny.

00:52:38.740 Yes, let me find it.

00:52:39.600 Okay, so NBC published this story that says, quote, extremely ironic.

00:52:43.940 suspect in united health ceo slang played video game killer friend recalls and they're talking

00:52:50.720 about among us they're talking about among us the new york post and these other outlets ran

00:52:56.660 united healthcare ceo brian thompson's suspected killer played assassin video game with friends

00:53:02.340 assassin video game and it's among us it's among us for the boomers among us can you explain what

00:53:09.920 among us among us is a children's video game that was very popular in 2020 sort of lockdown era

00:53:16.280 where you're basically like a little space you're like a little like roly-poly space man

00:53:21.160 and you're on a spaceship and your goal is to find the imposter there's like you play with a group of

00:53:27.020 maybe like 10 people and one is the quote-unquote imposter and the imposter's goal is to kind of

00:53:32.940 catch and and kill i mean kill in the sense of like these are like little like blob amorphous

00:53:39.060 like men that like fall over and they're like like there's no yeah it's like it's like the way

00:53:43.340 that you eat the alien in pac-man that's like the level of assassination we're talking about

00:53:47.620 it would be like if you wrote this about pac-man i think pac-man is the perfect comparison because

00:53:52.340 it's like yeah it would be like he slaughtered ghosts you know what i mean like luigi mangoni

00:53:58.700 obsessed with violent video game pac-man funny but it's just it just shows again how out of touch

00:54:07.300 this media industry can be. Among Us explained what to know about the game played by Luigi

00:54:14.040 Mangione, alleged CEO shooter. That is a headline from Forbes. What are we doing? To cap this off,

00:54:22.860 it's such a weird reckoning because I've always seen journalists and journalism as this sort of

00:54:28.380 aspirational, vital part of life in America. And it is. It is, right? Journalism is. Journalism

00:54:34.900 And the free press is hugely important. I believe in it. I encourage it. I guess maybe what I'm

00:54:41.480 feeling about all of this, and you tell me if my feelings are correct, is that the press that we

00:54:45.900 have right now, as long as it's beholden to these billionaires, isn't as free as we make it out to

00:54:51.020 be? Absolutely. I think, again, this is why, and I've said this my entire career, even when I

00:54:56.960 worked at these places, this is why we do not want billionaire-controlled media. That is not the

00:55:03.180 media ecosystem we want. We do not want a for-profit business model that caters to

00:55:08.800 upper middle class and rich people. We want a robust media ecosystem where, again, I'm not

00:55:14.740 saying CEOs shouldn't have their own news outlets. Sure, like I said, there's a lot of amazing

00:55:20.420 business coverage of Silicon Valley that is catered towards Silicon Valley people, but we also need

00:55:26.140 worker-driven media. We need media and journalism for those of us that actually suffer under the

00:55:32.240 healthcare system, those of us who have had medical debt, those of us who know how barbaric

00:55:35.740 these systems are and can center the struggles of working average people. And I think that's why

00:55:40.780 it's really important to support independent journalism, people like Ken Klippenstein,

00:55:44.360 people like others who are willing to speak truth to power and go into these spaces. I would hope

00:55:50.520 that I can count myself among those people too. But it's like you want journalists that are

00:55:56.100 comfortable doing that stuff. It's hard because there's not that many journalists that can do

00:56:00.200 that. And look at the backlash that you get. Look at the look at the way the traditional press has

00:56:05.340 tried to smear Ken. You know, look at how they took my like joy comment and like completely

00:56:10.220 misquoted it. It's like you get so much backlash and there's so much effort to silence independent

00:56:15.640 journalism in this country. And I think it's a shame because we desperately need a more diverse

00:56:21.600 media ecosystem. Taylor Lorenz derives, quote unquote, joy from killing puppies.

00:56:30.200 Taylor Lorenz derives joy from a robust, independent media ecosystem.

00:56:34.960 That's what I derive joy from.

00:56:37.000 That is a sexy article title right now.

00:56:39.960 That's one you will not see in the New York Post. 0.98

00:56:42.260 Well, this was the rantings and ravings of a frustrated homosexual. 1.00

00:56:49.060 I hope you enjoyed. 1.00

00:56:51.640 Thank you so much for joining us on this kind of random, special, highly topical, more so

00:56:58.420 than we usually do episode.

00:56:59.640 taylor lorenz where should people find you right now please subscribe to my youtube it's my main

00:57:06.340 thing for 2024 also my newsletter usermag.co that's also how that's how i pay my bills is

00:57:12.320 usermag.co it's a online culture newsletter i wrote a lot about all of this and more so check 0.80

00:57:19.660 it out thank you so much for being here it is weird fucking times make sure you're doing whatever

00:57:25.840 you need to do to stay afloat, however that looks for you. And until next time, stay fruity. 0.94

00:57:34.900 Free Luigi!

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - December 19, 2024

Why is the Media Coverage of Luigi Mangione So Bad？

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